Chapter 2

1

My name is Katherine Moretti.

No, that wasn't my original name. My maiden name was Chen, and my name was Katherine Moon. My mom used to say my name meant that even if the moon falls from the sky, it must keep shining.

But the day I married Cole Moretti, everything stopped shining.

Cole was the eldest son of the Moretti family, the crown prince of Chicago's underworld. His father, Anthony Moretti, controlled half of the logistics business from Lake Michigan to the Great Plains. On the surface, he ran three shipping companies and five high-end Italian restaurants. Underground―well, let's just say those things are better left unsaid.

I met him while I was studying Art History at NYU. I was twenty-three, wearing a khaki trench coat I'd thrifted, standing in the Monet gallery at the Metropolitan Museum, staring blankly at the "Water Lilies."

He walked up behind me and said: "Do you like this one?"

I said: "I like the water."

He smiled, a look I never saw on him again―not that condescending, controlling smirk, but a smile that actually looked… moved.

Three months later, we were married.

Six months later, I was locked in the basement.

I have been here for three years now. The basement is about two hundred square feet, concrete floor, no windows, with an iron cot and a toilet in the corner. The lightbulb on the ceiling is never turned off―he told me that darkness was too kind and I didn't deserve it.

At first, I thought it was just a temporary loss of control.

Later, I realized this wasn't about him losing control. It was his long-calculated plan. He didn't want a wife; he wanted a prisoner―a living thing he could fully control that would never escape. He practiced his "power" on me just like he practiced with his guns, getting more addicted the more he did it.

The reason I was still alive was because I still had uses. I was his punching bag, the specimen he showed his underlings to prove "what happens when you don't listen," and the only person he could vent to when he had a mental breakdown without worrying about the consequences.

Three years.

One thousand and ninety-five days.

He thought I had been ground to dust.

He was wrong.