Chapter 1

I was his possession. The entire world knew that Jackson Walters, the ruthless tech mogul, had destroyed my life to claim me.

Then he brought home his new intern, Kaila, and sat me down.

"I've decided," he said casually, "I want you both."

When I fought back, he dragged me to a remote warehouse to teach me a lesson. My parents were bound and gagged, suspended by ropes over a massive, grumbling wood chipper.

He gave me ten seconds to accept Kaila, or he'd drop them. "I agree!" I screamed in surrender. But it was too late. A frayed rope snapped, and I watched my parents plunge into the machine's grinding teeth.

The horror of it all killed me. But when I opened my eyes again, I was back in his bed. The date on my phone was the day he brought Kaila home. This time, I wouldn't fight him. I would be his perfect, obedient wife. And while he was distracted, I would fake my own death and disappear forever.

Chapter 1

Allyson Mccray POV:

I was his possession. It wasn't a secret. The entire world knew that Jackson Walters, the ruthless tech mogul with a god complex, had claimed me. He hadn't asked. He had taken.

It had been years ago. I was an art gallery curator, talented and happy, with a life that was mine. I had a boyfriend, a sweet, kind man named Mark who planned our future in a small apartment filled with secondhand books and laughter. Then Jackson saw me.

He decided he wanted me, and what Jackson Walters wants, he gets. He used his immense wealth like a wrecking ball, systematically destroying my life until all I had left was him. Mark' s small architecture firm was driven into bankruptcy by a series of engineered disasters. My gallery lost its funding overnight. My landlord mysteriously terminated my lease. One by one, the pillars of my world crumbled, and in the dust stood Jackson, holding out his hand. It wasn' t an offer; it was a demand.

He moved me into his gilded cage, a sprawling penthouse overlooking the city, a monument to his power and my captivity. The first year was a blur of tears and resistance. I fought him at every turn. His touch felt like a brand, his presence suffocating. He was relentless, a force of nature I couldn't escape. His nights were filled with a brutal, possessive claiming of my body, leaving me exhausted and hollowed out.

There was a time I hated him so much I grabbed a fruit knife from the kitchen counter, my hand shaking as I pointed it at his heart. He had just returned from a hostile takeover, his suit still smelling of victory and power. He didn't even flinch. He simply walked toward me, his eyes dark and unreadable, until the tip of the knife pressed against his expensive shirt.

"Do it, Allyson," he whispered, his voice a low, dangerous caress. "But know this. If I live, I will chain you to my bed and never let you see the sun again. If I die, my will ensures you inherit nothing but debt, and your parents will spend the rest of their lives on the street."

He didn't care about the wound. He cared about the possession.

His love, if you could call it that, was a twisted, all-consuming obsession. He said he loved me. He said it while his hands bruised my wrists. He said it after he destroyed anyone who dared to look at me for too long. "You are mine, Allyson," he would breathe into my hair, his voice a possessive growl. "Mine to cherish, mine to break, mine to keep. Forever."

The world whispered about it. They saw the way he watched me at galas, his eyes never leaving my form, a predator guarding his most prized kill. They saw the way he would publicly humiliate a business rival for simply offering me a glass of champagne.

But then... the cracks in my resistance began to show. Jackson, for all his monstrous possessiveness, could also be devastatingly tender. I remembered the time I had a fever, and he, the man who never slept more than four hours, stayed by my bedside for three days straight, personally feeding me soup and wiping my brow. He fired a world-renowned chef because the broth wasn't to my liking.

He had never cooked in his life, but he spent a week with that same chef, learning to make the simple chicken noodle soup my mother used to make for me. I' d woken up one morning to the smell of burnt onions and found him in the kitchen, a smudge of flour on his billion-dollar face, looking utterly lost and frustrated over a pot. The soup was terrible, but I ate every last drop.

And there was the charity auction, where I casually mentioned liking a painting by a little-known artist. The next day, he bought the entire gallery and gifted it to me. Not just the painting. The entire gallery. He stood before the press and said, "My wife's smile is worth more than all the art in the world."

He learned to play the piano, a clumsy, halting rendition of a song I' d loved in college, and played it for me on our anniversary in the middle of a ballroom he had emptied just for us.

Slowly, insidiously, his intense, possessive "love" began to feel... like love. The violence became passion. The control became protection. The cage began to feel like a sanctuary. My resistance, worn down by years of his relentless, all-encompassing attention, finally crumbled. I started to believe that this monstrous, beautiful man truly did love me in his own terrifying way. I began to develop feelings for him. I became Allyson Walters. His wife.

And then my world shattered.

It happened on a Tuesday. He brought home a young intern from his company, Kaila Rice. She was barely twenty, with wide, innocent eyes and a naive smile that seemed to radiate harmlessness. She looked at Jackson with pure, unadulterated adoration. She looked at me with a flicker of something I couldn't quite name.

That night, I heard them in the guest room. I didn't need to press my ear to the door. Her breathless moans and his guttural growls were a symphony of my betrayal. My heart, which had just learned to beat for him again, stopped.

The next morning, his affections had already transferred. He served Kaila the orange juice, peeled her apple, and ignored my presence completely. He then sat me down, Kaila perched on his lap like a pampered kitten, and delivered the sentence that would sign my death warrant.

"Allyson," he said, his tone casual, as if discussing the weather. "I've decided. I want you both."

The air left my lungs. I felt my body turn to stone. The crystal glass in my hand slipped, shattering on the marble floor, but I didn't hear it. The only sound was the roaring in my ears.

"What... what did you say?" My voice was a strangled whisper.

"I love you, Allyson. You are my wife, the queen of my empire. Nothing will change that," he said, his gaze holding no warmth. "But I find I have feelings for Kaila, too. She's young, vibrant. She reminds me of you, when I first met you." He smiled, a cruel, self-satisfied smirk. "I am a man of great appetites. I can love you both. You will remain my wife. Kaila will stay here as my companion. You will treat her with the respect she deserves."

"The vows, Jackson," I choked out, tears blurring my vision. "You promised. You promised forever. Only me."

"I am rewriting the rules," he said simply.

A guttural scream ripped from my throat. I was a wild animal, tearing through the pristine living room, smashing priceless vases, ripping down silk curtains. He just watched, his expression cold and detached, while Kaila clung to him, feigning fear.

"Get her out!" I shrieked, my voice raw. "Get her out of my house!"

"This is my house," he corrected me, his voice dropping to that dangerous low I knew so well. "And she is staying."

In the days that followed, I descended into a private hell. I tried to reason with Kaila, offering her a blank check, begging her to leave. She took the check, smiled sweetly, and then went straight to Jackson, crying about how I was bullying her, trying to buy her off like a common prostitute.

That was when the true horror began.

Jackson's patience, already thin, snapped. He saw my desperation not as the grief of a betrayed wife, but as a direct challenge to his authority. To force me into submission, he did the unthinkable.

I was dragged to one of his remote warehouses. My parents, my loving, middle-class parents who had only ever wanted my happiness, were there. They were bound and gagged, suspended by ropes over a massive, grumbling wood chipper.

Jackson stood beside the machine's controls, his face a mask of cold fury. "You have made me very unhappy, Allyson," he said, his voice echoing in the cavernous space. "You have been disrespectful to my guest. To Kaila. You have made her cry."

"Jackson, please," I sobbed, struggling against the two guards holding me. "Please, don't do this. They have nothing to do with this."

"They have everything to do with this," he hissed. "They are your weakness. And I will use them to teach you a lesson. Accept Kaila. Welcome her into our home as I have commanded. Or they die."

Tears streamed down my face. My body shook uncontrollably. "You said you loved me," I whispered, the words tasting like ash. "You promised to protect me, to cherish me."

He frowned, a flicker of annoyance crossing his features. "Don't be dramatic. I am protecting you. From your own foolishness. Our marriage contract, if you recall article seven, subsection B, states that any act of infidelity on my part does not constitute grounds for divorce, but rather a modification of the cohabitation agreement, subject to my discretion."

I stared at him, the absurdity of his words crashing over me. He was quoting legal clauses while my parents' lives hung in the balance.

"I still love you, Allyson," he said, and the words were a vile poison. "You are, and always will be, Mrs. Walters. The original. But a man can fall in love more than once. I have fallen for Kaila. It is a simple fact."

He gestured to Kaila, who stood a few feet away, her face a perfect mask of tear-streaked concern. "She is my love now, too. You will accept it."

His tone was so calm, so matter-of-fact, as if he were discussing a stock portfolio.

I laughed, a broken, hysterical sound. "Love? You think you can split your heart like a stock dividend? Ten percent for her, ninety for me? Is that how your twisted mind works, Jackson?"

He ignored me. "You have ten seconds to agree, Allyson. Or I will demonstrate the consequences of your disobedience." He nodded to one of his men. The low growl of the wood chipper intensified.

"Ten."

My mother's muffled sobs were a knife in my gut.

"Nine."

The ropes holding my parents began to lower, inch by terrifying inch.

"No! Stop! Please!" I screamed, my voice raw with terror.

The guards held me fast. My struggles were useless.

"Eight."

The ropes lowered again. The machine's steel teeth glinted below their dangling feet.

"I hate you!" I shrieked, the words torn from the depths of my soul. "I hate you, Jackson Walters!"

My parents' cries, my screams, the roar of the machine-it was a cacophony from hell. Their feet were now just inches from the churning blades.

"Three!"

"Two!"

"One!"

"I agree!" The words ripped from my throat in a final, desperate surrender. "I agree! I'll do whatever you want! Just let them go! Please, let my parents go!"

Jackson raised a hand. The machine stopped. The ropes ceased their descent. A cruel, triumphant smile spread across his face.

"See? Was that so hard?" he said, his voice dripping with condescending satisfaction. "I knew you'd make the right choice. I would hate to have to harm them."

He gestured to his men. "Let them down."

And then it happened. As his men moved to release the harnesses, one of the ropes, frayed and worn, snapped with a sickening crack.

Time slowed. I watched, my eyes wide with horror, as my mother and father plunged into the waiting maw of the machine.

There was a single, horrifying shriek, instantly silenced by the crunch of bone and the wet, tearing sound of flesh. The roar of the engine was replaced by a gruesome, grinding noise. A fine red mist sprayed into the air, coating the concrete floor. Then, silence. A profound, world-ending silence.

My world didn't just shatter. It ceased to exist. The sound was ripped from my lungs, my vision, my very being. All I could see was the red. All I could feel was a cold, spreading numbness.

My pupils dilated. My mind went blank. A torrent of hot, thick blood surged up my throat and spilled from my lips.

Then, blackness. I fell forward, my consciousness winking out like a snuffed candle.

I woke with a gasp, my vision swimming from blurry to sharp, then blurry again. The familiar pattern of the damask wallpaper, the scent of lavender and Jackson's expensive cologne, the weight of the silk sheets. I was in his bedroom. Our bedroom.

I sat bolt upright, my heart hammering against my ribs. I frantically checked my body. No blood. No pain. Just the phantom ache of a broken heart.

I wasn't dead.

My panicked eyes scanned the room, landing on my phone on the bedside table. I snatched it, my fingers trembling as I pressed the home button.

The screen lit up.

The date stared back at me, a cruel, impossible joke.

It was the day Jackson brought Kaila Rice home.

The images of my parents' deaths flashed behind my eyes, so vivid, so real. The sound of the wood chipper, the red mist, the finality of it all. It wasn't a nightmare. It had happened. And I was back.

A wave of grief so powerful it buckled me over washed through me. I choked on a sob, pressing my hands to my mouth to stifle the sound. They were alive. My parents were alive right now. And I had a chance to save them.

In that moment, something inside me broke and reformed into something hard and cold. The love I had painstakingly rebuilt for Jackson, the love he had so brutally betrayed, died. It was gone, replaced by a chilling, absolute certainty.

I would not love him. I would not fight him. I would not give him the satisfaction of breaking me again.

I would play his game. I would be the perfect, obedient wife he wanted. I would let him have his precious Kaila. I would let them humiliate me, torture me, use me as they saw fit.

And while they were distracted by their sick little games, I would disappear.

Wiping the tears from my face with a furious, determined swipe, I scrambled out of bed and ran. I ran out of the penthouse, past the stunned doorman, and hailed a cab. I didn't care that I was in my pajamas.

When the cab pulled up to my parents' small, familiar house, I saw them through the window. My mother was watering her prize-winning roses. My father was reading the newspaper on the porch swing. They were safe. They were whole.

Tears I thought had run dry streamed down my face. I burst through the gate and threw myself into their arms, clinging to them, breathing in their scent, feeling the warmth of their bodies.

"Allyson? Honey, what's wrong?" my mother asked, her voice laced with concern as she hugged me back.

I pulled away, my hands gripping their arms. "We have to leave," I said, my voice urgent and shaking. "We have to leave now."

"Leave? What are you talking about?" my father asked, confused. "Did you and Jackson have a fight? He's been so good to you, Allyson. Remember when he-"

"It's not a fight!" I cried, cutting him off. The memory of Jackson's "goodness" was a bitter poison in my mouth. He had been good. Until he wasn't. Until his love became a death sentence.

How could I explain? How could I tell them that in another life, the man they thought was my savior had murdered them in the most horrific way imaginable, all because he'd fallen for a younger woman? They would think I was insane.

"Please," I begged, my voice breaking. "Just trust me. We have to disappear. Legally. We need new identities, a new life. Far away from here."

They looked at me, at the sheer terror and desperation in my eyes, and something shifted. The love and trust between a parent and child, a bond stronger than any billionaire's power, won out. My father nodded slowly. "Okay, honey. We trust you."

That day, I set my plan in motion. I contacted a lawyer who specialized in the impossible, paying him an exorbitant, untraceable fee from a secret account I'd set up years ago as a small act of rebellion. We began the process of legally declaring ourselves dead, of creating new identities, of becoming ghosts.

Jackson' s paranoia was his weakness. He would never believe I could simply leave him. A divorce would be a war I couldn't win; he would hunt me to the ends of the earth. But death? Death was final. A legal death, a faked, widely-publicized death, would sever his obsessive ties and grant me the freedom I so desperately craved. I would become someone else. My parents would become someone else. We would vanish.

To avoid suspicion, I returned to the penthouse. I walked in just as Jackson was leading Kaila into the living room, a triumphant gleam in his eye.

"Allyson, darling," he said, his voice smooth as silk. "Come meet Kaila. She'll be staying with us for a while."

He looked at me, expecting a storm, a fight, a repeat of the hysteria he had witnessed in my first life.

I looked at him, at the man who would murder my parents, and then at the simpering girl who would be his accomplice. The grief for my parents was a cold, hard stone in my chest, a constant reminder of my purpose.

I smiled. A calm, serene, and utterly empty smile.

"Of course, Jackson," I said, my voice as smooth and placid as a frozen lake. "Whatever makes you happy."