Learning Her Lesson

Everyone in the city said I was the luckiest woman alive. I was the diner waitress who saved the amnesiac tech billionaire, Hudson Scott. He fell in love with me, and when his memory returned, he married me against his family's wishes, telling the world I was his one true love.

But that was a lie. The man I loved vanished the day the billionaire came back. In his place was a possessive monster who saw me as a possession, and he had just found a new obsession: an artist named Ginger.

That’s when the punishments began. Tonight, because Ginger claimed I’d glared at her, he dragged me to a derelict warehouse. My sick mother was tied to a chair, surrounded by open cans of gasoline.

He flicked a lighter open, giving me ten seconds to confess to a lie. The man who once worked odd jobs to buy her medicine was now threatening to burn her alive because another woman cried.

But it was all a sick performance. Just as he tossed the lighter and flames erupted, his men dragged my mother to safety. “See what happens when you’re not a good girl?” he whispered, before leaving with Ginger.

As I carried my mother out of that hellhole, I made a call to a number I hadn't used in years.

“Cason? I need your help. I need to disappear.”

This time, his world would be the one going up in flames.

Chapter 1

Everyone in the city said I, Aleen Anthony, was the luckiest woman alive.

They said I had climbed the social ladder, a Cinderella story for the modern age.

They said Hudson Scott, the tech billionaire, the man who held the city's economy in the palm of his hand, doted on me, cherished me, loved me to the bone.

It was a beautiful story.

A compassionate diner waitress rescues a handsome amnesiac after a terrible car crash. She nurses him back to health in her small, working-class town. They fall in love, a simple, pure love built in a tiny apartment that always smelled like grease and bleach.

His name was just Hudson then. He had nothing but the clothes on his back and me.

I had nothing but my ailing mother and him.

We were each other's everything.

He would work odd jobs, his hands, which I later learned were meant for billion-dollar deals, getting calloused from manual labor. He' d save every penny to buy my mother, Ira, her expensive medication.

Then, one year to the day of the crash, his memory came back.

The world was stunned when Hudson Scott, the ruthless tech mogul who had been presumed dead, reappeared. They were even more stunned when he, against his family' s furious objections and the ridicule of his entire social circle, insisted on marrying me.

At the press conference announcing his return, he held my hand and told the world, "Aleen is my wife. My love for her will never change, no matter who I am."

It was a fairy tale.

But I knew the truth. I knew it the moment his eyes, once so gentle, looked at me with a new, chilling glint.

The man I loved, the gentle Hudson who would peel oranges for me, died the day Hudson Scott came back to life.

In his place was a monster. A paranoid, pathologically possessive stranger who saw me not as a wife, but as a possession.

His love became a cage.

And then he met Ginger Nash. A provocative, self-proclaimed performance artist who breathed chaos. He became infatuated.

That' s when the punishments began.

"You looked at the waiter for too long, Aleen," he' d say, his voice a low growl. And for that, I' d be locked in a dark room for a day.

Tonight, the punishment was for something new. Ginger had tearfully told him that I' d "glared" at her during a gallery event, making her feel "unsafe."

"Hudson, I didn't," I pleaded, my voice trembling as he dragged me from the car. "I never even spoke to her."

He said nothing. His face was a mask of cold fury. He pulled me through the doors of a derelict warehouse on the outskirts of the city, the air thick with the smell of mildew and gasoline.

My blood ran cold. I knew this place. He'd bought it last month.

He shoved me into the main room, and my heart stopped.

My mother, Ira, was tied to a chair in the center of the room. Her face was pale with terror, her weak lungs struggling for breath. Cans of gasoline surrounded her.

"What did you say to Ginger?" Hudson' s voice was calm, which was far more terrifying than his anger. He walked over to my mother, a lighter flicking open in his hand. The flame danced in the darkness.

"Hudson, no! Please!" I scrambled towards him, falling to my knees. "She's my mother! She's all I have!"