Chapter 1

For three years of marriage, I thought my husband was simply too busy with work.

Until late one night, I stumbled upon his Mental Deterioration Plan.

High-frequency noise at dawn. Slow-acting sedatives in the aromatherapy diffuser. Step by step, he was forcing me into becoming a “madwoman.”

He stole my father’s design drawings and forced me to kneel in the ruins, all to clear the real murderer’s name.

What he didn’t know was that every pill I swallowed, I kept under my tongue. Every time I went mad, I was acting.

When he thought I had jumped into the sea and died, I was standing on a stage in Paris wearing hearing aids, accepting an award.

Everything they took from me, I would take back tenfold.

Sienna Shaw POV

In the middle of the night, I got up to use the bathroom. When I passed the study, I saw Lucas Lawson’s tablet glowing on the desk.

He hadn’t locked the screen. The system was still on the page he had just been reading.

It was a hidden folder.

I had only meant to turn it off for him, but the instant my fingertip touched the screen, it froze on one line of text.

[Sienna Shaw Mental Deterioration Plan.]

Below it were the specific steps:

[2:00 a.m. to 4:00 a.m.: Turn on the high-frequency noise device in the attic to induce auditory hallucinations.]

[Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays: Add slow-acting sedative to the bedroom aromatherapy diffuser to confuse her memory.]

The signature at the very bottom was: Lucas Lawson.

The room’s frigid air seeped into my skin, my fingertips growing numb by the second.

I opened the deepest folder. Inside were saved chat records between Lucas Lawson and Serena Stone.

Serena Stone: [That church is almost finished, but the ownership rights are still in Sienna Shaw’s hands. If she ever comes to her senses and sues me for plagiarism...]

Lucas Lawson replied: [Don’t worry. I’ve already drafted tomorrow’s transfer agreement. As soon as the awards ceremony ends, I’ll have her sign it. From now on, the ownership rights to that church will belong only to you.]

Lucas Lawson wrote again: [Sienna Shaw takes medication every day. Her mind isn’t clear. Getting her to sign something will be easy.]

I stared at the screen, my knuckles turning white from gripping too hard.

Those were the church design drawings my father, Charles Shaw, had spent his entire life creating.

For that building, my father drew tens of thousands of manuscript drafts. The red seal in the lower right corner was one I had gone with him to have carved.

But three months ago, on the eve of that church’s completion, my father was accused of plagiarism.

My father, who had guarded his good name all his life, jumped from the top floor of the half-built church in humiliation and smashed into the ground in a bloody, unrecognizable mess.

Lucas Lawson stubbornly believed my father had pushed his sister, Jenny Lawson, into the sea and caused her to drown.

Lucas Lawson married me, doted on me, and in the end, poisoned me and set a trap for me.

All of it was nothing more than revenge for his sister, to drive the Shaw family step by step toward death.

But he had no idea that back then, Jenny Lawson had clearly been pushed into the sea by Serena Stone herself, all so Serena could cover up the secret of stealing the drawings!

They didn’t just want to steal my father’s reputation and use his drawings to win the Gold Award.

Tomorrow, they also wanted to take the ownership rights to that church completely.

My stomach suddenly cramped.

I braced myself against the desk, bent over, and began retching violently.

The pain made me curl into a ball, my fingers digging into the hard gaps in the floorboards.

Because I used too much force, half of one fingernail snapped off, and blood seeped out.

But I couldn’t feel the pain in my finger.

All I could see was the horrifying image of my father after he fell onto the concrete ground.

And Lucas Lawson’s hypocritical smile every day as he held me and coaxed me into taking calming medication.

He forced my father to his death!

He kept me like a madwoman in a cage!

The person poisoning me every single day was actually the husband I had loved for three years!

From outside came the sound of the front door unlocking.

Lucas Lawson was back.

I stared at the doorway, my fingertips trembling slightly.

At the fastest speed I could manage, I inserted a card into the tablet and copied all the data.

Then I put the tablet back exactly where it had been, making sure there was no trace that anything had been moved.

After that, I took two earplugs out of my pocket.

They were ones I had used before to block noise. Once worn, they could shut out most sound.

I pushed the earplugs deep into my ears.

The world fell silent, leaving only the sound of my own heavy breathing.

The door opened. Lucas Lawson stepped through the door in a tailored black suit, soft warmth masking every trace of malice on his face.

But when he saw me collapsed on the floor, a chill flashed through his eyes.

“Sienna? Why are you sitting on the floor with the lights off?” Lucas Lawson quickly walked over, crouched down, and took my ice-cold hand.

The instant I touched his skin, goose bumps rose all over my body.

I wanted nothing more than to claw that hypocritical face to shreds and demand to know why he had killed my father!

But I gritted my teeth and swallowed down my hatred.

I knew very well that if I confronted him now, I not only wouldn’t get the drawings back, I might not even make it out of this door.

I had to play the part of a completely ruined madwoman.

“Lucas...”

I obediently let him hold me, my body shaking violently, tears splashing onto the back of Lucas Lawson’s hand.

“That sound came back. There are bugs crawling inside my head, gnawing at my brain. Lucas, am I really going insane?”

Crying, I slammed my head into Lucas Lawson’s chest, my fingers clutching his white shirt. The blood in the gaps beneath my nails smeared a bloody mark across his clean clothes.

Lucas Lawson gently patted my back, his touch soft, as if he were stroking a toy.

“It’s all right, Sienna. It’s just auditory hallucinations. You’ve been under too much stress lately.”

Lucas Lawson’s voice was low and full of heartache.

But I knew perfectly well that at this very moment, the noise device in the attic was running at full power.

Lucas Lawson was coldly watching me go mad.

“Come on. Take your medicine. Sleep for a while and you’ll be fine.”

Lucas Lawson took out a small white pill bottle, poured out a blue capsule, then brought over warm water and held it to my lips.

I stared at that blue capsule.

This was the slow-acting poison that made my memory chaotic.

Without hesitation, I swallowed the pill with the warm water. When the pill slid past my throat, I pressed it with the tip of my tongue and hid it in the gap between my gum and cheek.

“Good girl.”

Lucas Lawson gently stroked my hair, a flash of relaxed mockery passing through his eyes.

“Go upstairs and sleep. Tomorrow I’ll take you to the design competition awards ceremony. Serena won the Gold Award, and she needs you, her good friend, to go support her.”

To support the murderer who killed my father. He was stabbing me straight through the heart.

I lowered my head, my long hair hiding the hatred in my eyes.

“Okay.”

My voice was hoarse, my answer docile.