Chapter 1

I was abducted for three years. By the time my husband, James Carter, found me and brought me home, his childhood sweetheart, Rachel Summers, had already been sticking close to him for two and a half years.

While my husband was away, Rachel doused my head with red wine and ordered me to crawl over the shards of broken wine glass on the floor.

"Don't you love playing the victim?" she sneered. "Crawl over, and I might let you stay as a house maid."

I nodded submissively and crawled over the glass with my hands and knees. In an instant, my skin tore open, blood and flesh mingled together.

Just then, James walked in. His face went deathly pale as he dragged me up, roaring, "Are you insane? If you ever hurt yourself like this again, I'll sew your legs together myself!"

In submission, that very night I found a needle and threads with which I densely stitched my legs together.

James completely lost it. With trembling hands he snipped the threads apart, while staring at me like I was some kind of monster.

As time went by, when Rachel was diagnosed with kidney failure, James wanted me to get tested as a donor match.

I obediently picked up a fruit knife to stab it deep into my waist.

James screamed, covering my blood-squirting waist with his hands. "You're crazy! Call an ambulance, call an ambulance, now!!"

I blinked, my head spinning from all the blood I'd lost.

James had no idea. None of this was really about him.

Because in those three years of captivity, the traffickers had already taught me how to obey the rules, with an electric baton.

*****

Warm blood splattered across the face of James, and for the first time, furrows appeared on his always composed, aristocratic face.

He screamed, frantically pressing both hands against the wound in my waist, futilely trying to stop the squirting blood.

"Ah" Rachel screamed.

She had probably never seen anything like this. She shrieked and collapsed to the floor, peeing her pants.

My vision started to blur, the world spinning wildly.

I looked at James, struggling to apologize, "Sorry... I couldn't gouge it out. The knife was too short, I couldn't reach..."

"Shut up!" James shouted.

James, blood-soaked, roared at the dumbstruck housekeeper in the doorway, "Call an ambulance! Now!"

Hot tears dropped on my face. They were James' tears.

He was weeping.

I tried to give him a comforting smile, but my vision went completely dark.

When I woke up, I was in the ICU.

My wrists and ankles were strapped to the hospital bed, leaving me completely immobile.

A man in a white gown and wearing a pair of gold-rimmed glasses sat by my bedside.

"Hi, I'm Alex Grant, your psychiatrist," he said.

I just gawked at him, saying nothing.

He held a report in his hand and spoke softly. "You're not insane. You've simply... developed an extreme conditioned obedience response syndrome."

Outside the door, James was trying to explain something to someone, "She wasn't like this before. She is actually a supercilious person. She hurt herself only in order to make me feel guilty and distraught!"

Alex laughed dismissively, stood up to open the door, and tossed the injury report right at James.

Alex said to James, "To make you distraught? You really think she'd go this far just to mess with you? Look at her—137 electric burns, 34 blunt force injuries, and more than a dozen scars that will never heal?

"Mr. Carter, she's not putting on an act. She's a wreck."

Rachel staggered over, leaning against the wall, her face ashen. And she pleaded, "James, don't blame Emily. She didn't mean it..."

For the first time, James looked visibly irritated. He pushed her aside.

"Go home," he said to her.

After sending Rachel away, James slouched into the ICU ward.

Alex sat back beside my bed, picked up a pair of scissors to cut off the straps that were restraining my limbs.

My body started shaking violently, completely out of my control.

"No..." I begged.

"Please, don't hurt me. I'll be good, I'll obey everything..."

The scissors clattered to the floor with a sharp noise.

James stood petrified in the doorway, as if he'd just been struck by lightning.

He took a step forward, his voice trembling. "Emily..."

I was terrified, curled into a ball, instinctively crouching to shield my head and begging for mercy in broken sentences, "Please, master, have mercy!

"Please, master, I'm sorry! I won't do it again!"