A sudden avalanche struck the Aspen mountains, trapping our company's executive retreat in an isolated luxury resort.

In the midst of the crisis, I handed the only remaining satellite phone to my husband, Damon Hawthorne.

He contacted a private rescue team, but gave my spot to his assistant, Cathy Mason.

In front of the last private rescue helicopter, he shoved me to the ground.

I slammed hard against the icy rock, a searing agony tore through my abdomen. Blood instantly stained the snow beneath me, steaming in the frigid air.

When the paramedics tried to lift me onto a stretcher, Damon stopped them.

"Ava has a scratch. Why is she on a stretcher? Get Cathy on first. Her condition is critical—she needs to be seen at the hospital immediately!"

The rescue captain and the team's paramedic stared, dumbfounded. They looked at my blood-soaked pants, then at Cathy, who was crying her eyes out over her frostbitten fingers.

My colleague tried to argue, "But, Mr. Hawthorne, Ava's injuries are clearly more severe!"

Damon gritted his teeth and snarled, "Enough! I'm her husband. Don't you think I know her condition? If you delay Cathy's treatment, you'll answer for it. And I'll have all of your jobs for this!"

Clutching my slightly rounded belly, I nodded in pain, agreeing to let Cathy get on the helicopter first.

From this moment, I knew. My child and I owed Damon Hawthorne nothing.

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1

Once I relented, Damon Hawthorne snorted in contempt.

"I knew it," he sneered. "Always performing. Always pulling the same pathetic stunts for attention. It's disgusting."

He shoved aside the colleague who was trying to help me up, clearing a path for his assistant, Cathy Mason, to stroll to the helicopter.

The pain stole my breath, leaving me unable to scream as my body convulsed, curling into a ball in the snow.

Seeing that I wasn't screaming, Damon turned and jeered, "That shut you up, didn't it? You really are pathetic."

I could feel the warmth and life draining out of me with the blood pooling on the ground. Despair tore at my heart, and the biting Aspen wind cut across my cheeks like a knife.

My unborn child was nothing more than a stark, crimson stain on the snow, while their father was carefully draping his expensive cashmere coat over Cathy.

"Cathy, be careful. Don't hurt yourself again."

Cathy held up her barely frostbitten fingers, sobbing uncontrollably like a frightened child.

"Damon, I think my fingers are going numb. I'm so scared! If I lose my fingers... if I'm disabled... you won't want me anymore, will you?"

Damon gazed at her, his expression softening with concern. "Here, let me see." He gently blew on her reddened fingertips. "Better? Silly girl. Of course I'll always want you. Don't worry, I'll contact the best specialist in Beverly Hills for you right away. I won't let a single scar mar these beautiful fingers."

The rescue team members watched this scene in disbelief. One of them pointed at my ashen face and reminded Damon, "Sir, she's lost a lot of blood and is going into shock! She's the one who's critically injured!"

Only then did Damon glance at me impatiently. "Don't be fooled by her," Damon snapped. "She's a suspense novelist. This is what she does—she creates drama. It's just a pathetic ploy to get my attention because she's jealous. I'm her husband; I know her better than anyone."

The rescue captain's jaw nearly dropped. He shot a look between us, his disbelief warring with disgust. A husband? Damon's behavior was a cruel mockery of the word.

With that, Damon strode over, roughly yanked me up from the snow, and forced me to spin around for everyone to see. "See? She's perfectly fine. There's nothing wrong with her!"

My entire body was almost numb from the agony. As he manipulated me like a puppet, cold sweat drenched my face and neck, freezing into frost.

The paramedic beside us stared, aghast. She stammered, pointing at the crimson snow pooling beneath me. "Can't you see the blood? It's everywhere!"

Damon laughed, a chilling sound. "You must be new at this, Doc. It's prop blood. She concocts this stuff for her novels, for 'inspiration'."

He let go, and I, already exhausted, collapsed onto the hard ice. I cried out in pain, but it didn't arouse a shred of pity in him.

He wiped his hands on his pants. Sticky blood coated his fingertips, but Damon just smiled. "Ava, tell us where you bought this realistic 'prop blood.' It looks quite convincing."

Due to the intense pain and shock, my throat felt sealed shut.

Faced with Damon's humiliation, I could only shake my head, unable to utter a single word. I struggled to crawl away from the helicopter, away from them.

Fine. Let Cathy go. I just had to get away. As far away from them as possible.

I crawled on my hands and knees toward a snowmobile left by the rescue team. The shattered ice on the ground cut my palms and knees, leaving a shocking trail of bloody marks on the pristine white snow.

"Ava Monroe!" Damon's voice boomed from behind me. "Don't think this little performance gets you off the hook! You will apologize to Cathy for her hands. This is your fault!"

Before, those words would have shattered me. I would have cried, pleaded, begged him to believe me. But now, after the agony of having my child torn from me, there was nothing left inside me to care.

I clutched my now-empty belly, a sob tearing through me. This time, the debt was paid. Paid in my blood, and my child's.

A female doctor leaped from another rescue helicopter as it touched down. Her eyes landed on me, covered in blood and crawling through the snow. "Are you all insane?" she screamed, her voice hoarse with horror. "There's a critically injured woman here! Why is no one helping her?"

My body went limp, strength abandoning my limbs as I collapsed to the ground.

Due to the massive blood loss, the sounds around me became muffled, and my eyelids felt impossibly heavy.

Damon walked over, looking utterly self-assured, and waved a dismissive hand at the doctor. "Doctor, don't worry about her. She's fine. This is just another one of her little tricks to get my attention. Wasting medical resources like this is a serious offense. You'll be hearing from my lawyer."

The doctor's eyes widened in disbelief. She screamed, "She's dying, and you're telling me not to worry about her? I'm a doctor! Do you think I can't tell the difference between a performance and a patient bleeding out?"

Her screams attracted more people from the resort's periphery. Everyone in the company knew I was Damon's wife, the rightful Mrs. Hawthorne.

Humiliation burned across Damon's face. The CEO of a public company, being openly chastised in front of his employees. His embarrassment twisted into rage, and he kicked me as I lay on the ground.

"That's enough, Ava! You're overacting. Don't push it! Don't think that just because you're my wife, you can slander me in front of my employees. If you keep this up, I'll have my lawyer sue you for defamation!"

Seeing no reaction from me, Damon crouched down, roughly pinched my chin, and forced my head up. He commanded, "Ava, speak. Tell them the truth. Or the tabloids will be writing about me abusing my wife tomorrow."

Seeing my half-closed eyes and my ashen, near-death appearance, Damon lost his patience and slapped me across the face, right there in public.

The slap pulled me back from the brink of unconsciousness. Amidst the searing pain, the ringing in my ears faded, and the first words I heard were, "Speak, Ava! Tell them you're acting. Tell them you're making it all up, just like always."

I shook my head, my chapped lips unable to make a sound. My hand fluttered to my belly.

It was pure instinct, a mother's last, desperate impulse to shield her child.

Damon's gaze followed my hand. He snorted. "Still in character, huh? What, are you going to tell me you're pregnant? With whose bastard?"

At those words, tears finally streamed from my bloodshot eyes, falling onto the snow and melting small pits into its surface.

Yes, we had a child. But that child had just been murdered by his own father.

Seeing me cry, Damon rolled his eyes contemptuously. "Crying on cue? With acting skills like that, you should be in Hollywood winning an Oscar."

He looked up at the female doctor and the crowd. "See?" he said. "I told you she was acting. Now she's so guilty she can't even speak. Alright, show's over. Everyone, move along."

The doctor was completely frantic. "You lunatic!" she shrieked, shoving Damon hard. "Are you blind? The internal bleeding—she's miscarrying! She will die if we don't get her to a hospital now!"

Damon stumbled back a few steps and fell into the snow. His first reaction wasn't to look at me, but to demand sharply, "Did she pay you to say this? Do you know the price of slandering me?"

This time, even the colleagues watching from the side couldn't bear it.

They shouted, "Mr. Hawthorne, Ava is your wife! You've been married for ten years. She was with you through the tough times in Silicon Valley. How can you not believe her?"

Damon sneered, brushing the snow from his expensive trousers. "If she was pregnant, then it's a good thing the child is gone."

His eyes darkened. "I haven't touched her in years. A woman carrying another man's bastard has no right to be my wife."

Hearing this, I closed my eyes in despair.

He was telling the truth. Ever since Cathy appeared, Damon had rarely come home, let alone shared my bed. But just over a month ago, on a stormy night, he came home drunk, mistook me for Cathy, and forced himself on me.

If Damon knew the child I had just lost was from that night, would he feel even a sliver of regret?

At that moment, I swore to myself: if I make it off this mountain alive, I am done with Damon Hawthorne forever.

The kind doctor rushed to my side, calling for her colleagues to help get me onto a stretcher. I was taken onto the medical helicopter for emergency treatment.

Just as I thought I had a chance of survival, Cathy ran out from the crowd.

She pointed at me, shouting to the onlookers and the arriving police, "Doctor, don't save her! She deserves to die! She's the one who destroyed the resort's communication equipment!"

Cathy held up a smashed GPS tracker and a severed communication cable for everyone to see.

She pointed at me, her voice shrill with accusation. "It was her! She destroyed all the communication equipment, trying to trap us all here to die! She caused the company tens of millions of dollars in losses and put all of us in danger! She's a lunatic!"

Hearing this, Damon, who had been sitting on the ground, shot to his feet. He roughly pushed aside the doctors and nurses who were treating me.

He lunged forward and grabbed my collar. "I brought you here out of the kindness of my heart, and this is how you repay me?" he hissed. "This retreat was critical for the merger! You sabotaged it! You don't deserve a helicopter; you deserve a prison cell!"

As he spoke, he ignored the IV lines in my arms and began dragging me out by my collar.

Dragging me along, he yelled to the police on the perimeter, "Officer, I've found the saboteur! Arrest her! Send her to prison! Get me Legal! Where's the head of our legal department? Draft the lawsuit. I'm going to make this vicious woman pay for everything!"

Under Damon's rough handling, my collar tightened, cutting off my windpipe. I could barely breathe, my face turning a dusky purple.

Maya Jones, my best friend and a senior partner at the company, had seen enough. She surged forward, prying Damon's fingers from my throat and allowing me to breathe.

My face was purple from suffocation. Once I could get air, I coughed violently, spitting up bloody foam.

Maya held me protectively, her face streaked with tears of heartache. "Ava, how... how did it come to this..."

Damon's face darkened. "Maya," his voice was dangerously low. "You work for me. Are you choosing her side? Say one more word for her, and you're finished on Wall Street. I'll personally see to it that you never work in this town again."

A chilling silence fell over the onlookers. No one dared to move, unwilling to risk their careers by stepping into the CEO's family warzone.

I pushed at Maya, trying to tell her to go, not to ruin her future for me. But she refused.

She drew herself up and turned on Damon. "Mr. Hawthorne, a broken tracker proves nothing. You're the CEO of this company. Can't you show a shred of common sense or fair judgment?"

Damon snorted dismissively. "She's a suspense novelist. She studies criminal methods all day, and she was messing with high-tech devices for no reason. Isn't that suspicious? And after the avalanche, the whole resort lost contact, yet she just happened to have a satellite phone. If she's not the saboteur, why was she so prepared?"

Maya's voice was hoarse with indignation. "She's your wife! What's wrong with her having your spare satellite phone?"

"And destroying a base station and communication equipment requires professional knowledge. Ava's a writer! She finds setting up a router too complicated. How could she possibly know how to do any of this?"

"As for that equipment, you put Cathy in charge of it. You should be asking her where it was and how it got damaged!"

Damon's expression flickered. "Nonsense!" he said sharply. "Cathy would never..."

Cathy began to tremble, waving her hands defensively. "Damon, I didn't! I never touched those things! Ava is framing me!"

Cathy's denial only made Damon's face grow darker.

Maya looked down at my blood-soaked lower body, and fresh tears welled in her eyes. She sobbed, "Ava, the baby... is the baby gone?"

Damon stiffened. "Baby? What baby? What is she talking about?"

I shook my head, gripping Maya's hand, signaling her not to say another word about the child to this cold-hearted man.

Damon seemed to realize something. He started toward me, desperate for an answer, but just then, FBI agents arrived on the scene.

The lead agent flashed his badge. "We received a report that someone here deliberately sabotaged a communication base station. Who is the suspect?"