Chapter 1

The day I personally caught Tristan cheating in bed, Harbor City was hit by heavy rain.

Nora was sitting on his lap, and he had his arms around her waist, smiling exactly the way he did when he was pursuing me all those years ago.

After that, everyone said I'd lost my mind.

I hired people to monitor him. If he came home five minutes late, I'd call the police. If he replied to work messages in the middle of the night, I'd grab scissors and threaten to castrate him.

At first, Tristan would try to placate me.

He knelt before me saying he was sorry, that it was a moment of weakness, that I was the only one he'd ever love in this lifetime.

Until Nora fell down the stairs, her dress covered in blood.

He signed that disciplinary agreement, his eyes cold and venomous. "Susie, you're being very naughty. Nora is researching behavioral correction programs. Since you enjoy tormenting people so much, go there and learn to control that temper of yours."

"Learn how to be a proper, sensible Mrs. Kingsley."

Five years passed in the blink of an eye. The day Tristan came to the academy to pick me up, Harbor City was hit by another rainstorm.

We hadn't seen each other in years. When he looked at me, his eyes held scrutiny and a subtle satisfaction.

The instructor beside me smiled and said, "Mr. Kingsley, you can rest assured. Miss Reed has learned how to be the most exemplary wife of an elite family."

I kept my eyes lowered, knees slightly bent.

This was the standard posture the academy taught—never looking people in the eye, never standing with a straight back, always ready to assume a submissive stance.

Tristan scoffed. "She's certainly learned to put on a good show."

He wasn't wrong. I really had learned well.