You Lost Me: The Genius Heiress's Comeback

Ava POV

I tore the IV from the back of my hand.

Dark, thick blood welled up, dripping onto the pristine white sheets, but the pain didn't register. The sting was nothing compared to the freezing void expanding inside my chest.

"Mrs. Phelps-Ava, you can't just leave!" a nurse cried out, rushing into the room as I swung my legs over the side of the bed.

"I'm not Mrs. Phelps." My voice was hollow, stripped of the tremor that usually accompanied my fear. "I'm no one."

I walked out of the hospital wearing clothes still stiff with dried blood from the bank. I didn't call a driver. I didn't call Harrison. I hailed a cab to the estate, the gilded cage I had spent three years polishing.

The house was silent when I entered. It reeked of lemon polish and expensive lilies-the scent of a funeral home.

I went straight to the master bedroom.

I didn't pack a bag. I didn't want the clothes he bought. I didn't want the jewelry that felt like shackles. I wanted to erase him.

I grabbed the wedding photo from the nightstand. In it, Harrison smiled that charming, lethal smile, his hand clamped possessively on my waist. I looked at myself in the photo-young, hopeful, and stupid.

I hurled it against the floor.

The glass shattered explosively. It felt good.

I moved to the closet. I yanked down his suits, his Italian silk ties, his shirts that smelled like sandalwood and lies. I threw them into a heap in the center of the room. I went to the bathroom and swept the bottles of cologne, the razors, the expensive creams into the trash.

I was panting, my injured shoulder screaming in protest, but I couldn't stop. I needed to purge the infection.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?"

His voice cracked like a whip from the doorway.

Harrison stood there. He looked disheveled, his tie loose, his hair messy. For a split second, he looked like a worried husband. Then his eyes shifted to the pile of his clothes, and the mask fell.

"Just tidying up," I said. I picked up a bottle of whiskey from the dresser-his favorite rare blend-and cracked the seal.

"Put that down," he warned, stepping into the room. The air pressure dropped. The mask was gone. The predator had returned.

I upended the bottle, pouring the amber liquid over the pile of suits.

"Ava!" He lunged.

He snatched my wrist, twisting it hard. I gasped, dropping the empty bottle. It thudded dully against the carpet. He shoved me back against the wall, his body pinning mine.

"Have you lost your mind?" he snarled, his face inches from mine. "You walk out of the hospital, you ignore my calls, and now you destroy my property?"

"Property." I laughed. It was a jagged, broken sound. "That's all I am to you, isn't it? Insurance. A prop."

"You're hysterical," he said, his voice dropping to that patronizing calm that used to make me feel safe. Now it made my skin crawl. "You're traumatized from the bank. You're not thinking straight."

"I know about the marriage license, Harrison."

He froze. His grip on my wrist tightened until my bones ground together.

"Henderson talks too much," he muttered. "It was just paperwork, Ava. An oversight. It doesn't change us."

"It changes everything! It means I'm nothing to you! You chose her!" I screamed, the rage finally breaking through the numbness. "You let them put a bullet in me!"

"I made a tactical decision!" he roared back, shaking me. "Brooke held the codes to the offshore accounts! You didn't! I saved the money, Ava! I saved the Family!"

"You saved your mistress!"

His hand struck my face.

It wasn't hard enough to knock me down, but the shock of it silenced the room. Harrison breathed heavily, staring at his own hand, then at my reddening cheek.

"Look what you made me do," he whispered.

He grabbed a silk tie from the floor-one that had escaped the whiskey. Before I could process his movement, he spun me around and shoved me face-down onto the bed.

"No! Harrison, stop!" I kicked, I fought, but I was weak from blood loss and surgery.

He bound my wrists to the mahogany headboard. He pulled the knots tight, cutting off the circulation.

"You need to calm down," he said, smoothing my hair as I sobbed into the mattress. "You're sick. You're upset about the baby. I get it. But you can't act like this."

My phone began to ring from inside his pocket.

He pulled it out. The screen lit up with a name: Brooke.

He looked at me, bound and broken on the bed we shared. Then he looked at the phone.

"I have to take this," he said.

"Don't you dare," I whispered. "Don't you leave me like this."

He walked to the door. "I'll be back in the morning, Ava. Try to get some sleep. We'll talk when you're rational."

He turned off the lights.

The door clicked shut. The lock turned.

I lay there in the dark, tied to the bed of a man who didn't exist, listening to the silence of a house that had never been my home.