Chapter One Hundred Ten: The Jungle and the Knife
The door opened.
I wasn't ready for this.
The figure that stepped into the dim light of my cell was a ghost—a corpse risen from the grave, a nightmare I had buried in the blood-soaked floor of a cathedral. His face was thinner than I remembered, the cheekbones sharper, the eyes deeper set. A scar ran from his temple to his jaw, pale and raised, a souvenir from the bullet that should have ended him.
Park Jihoon.
He smiled, and the expression didn't reach his eyes. Those eyes—cold, calculating, hungry—raked over me like I was a possession he had simply misplaced, not a woman he had tried to sell.
"How have you been, darling?"
My blood turned to ice. My hands curled into fists at my sides. The bandage on my head pulsed with a dull, angry throb.
"You're dead." The words came out flat, disbelieving. "I watched you die."
He tilted his head, that reptilian smile widening. "You remember me? I thought you forgot everything."
"I remember blood on marble floors. I remember a body that stopped moving. I remember Taehyun standing over you with a gun in his hand and nothing in his eyes."
"Ah." Jihoon stepped closer, and I stepped back, my spine pressing against the cold stone wall. "You remember the performance. Not the reality."
"Reality?"
He spread his hands, the picture of magnanimity. "The bullet was real. The blood was real. The death—" His smile turned sharp. "The death was a lie. A very expensive, very carefully crafted lie. I paid a lot of money to disappear. To let Kim Taehyun think he'd won."
My heart was a hammer against my ribs. "Why?"
"Because I knew, even then, that he wouldn't stop hunting me. Not while I was a threat. Not while I still drew breath." He took another step, and I pressed harder against the wall, wishing it would open, swallow me, take me anywhere but here. "So I became a ghost. I let him bury me. I let him mourn my death—not that he mourned, the bastard probably celebrated—and I waited."
"Waited for what?"
"For you." His eyes glittered in the dim light. "For the right moment. For him to let his guard down. For him to love you so much that he forgot to be careful."
"I don't believe you."
"You don't have to believe me. You just have to be here." He reached out, his fingers brushing my chin, tilting my face toward the light. I flinched, but he didn't let go. "You've become more beautiful. The years have been kind to you. Or maybe it's just him—maybe being loved by a monster agrees with you.
"Don't touch me."
"This time, he won't take you away from me." Jihoon's voice dropped, softer now, almost tender. "I will marry you. We will create a family. Our kids will look like me—I can imagine how cute they will be."
"In your dreams." The words tore from me, raw and fierce. "I will never marry you. I'm married to Kim Taehyun."
"I heard he keeps you like a sacred thing. Locked away. Protected. Worshiped." His smile turned sharp. "It must be exhausting, being someone's religion."
His hand dropped. The smile remained.
"You love him. I can see it in your eyes. In the way you say his name. In the way you flinched when I touched you—not because you're afraid of me, but because you're afraid of betraying him." He shook his head, mock-sorrowful. "It's touching, really. Tragic, but touching."
"You don't know anything about us."
"I know everything." He stepped back, circling me slowly, a predator toying with his prey. "I know about the wedding. The cathedral. The blood on your dress. I know about the mansion, the brothers, the way he braids your hair like a lovesick schoolboy." His voice dropped, venomous. "I know about the diary. The one where you wrote about him before you forgot. The one he keeps like a shrine to a woman who doesn't even remember being in love with him."
My breath caught.
"How do you know about the diary?"
"I have eyes everywhere. Ears in every wall. Patience—the kind of patience that comes from being dead." He stopped in front of me, close enough that I could smell the cologne he wore—expensive, cloying, a mask for the rot beneath. "You love him. But do you know that he's the reason you forgot everything? Your past. Your family. Your real name."
I shook my head. "You're lying."
"I'm not,An accident that wasn't an accident. An accident orchestrated by Kim Taehyun's enemies—but covered up by Kim Taehyun himself."
"He didn't want you to remember," Jihoon continued, his voice soft, almost gentle. "He didn't want you to know that you had a life before him. A family. A future. He wanted you empty. Dependent. His."
I looked up, my eyes burning. "You're lying."
"Am I? Then why can't you remember? Why are there gaps in your memory that even the doctors can't explain? Why does he have a diary full of your words—words you don't remember writing?"
"Stop."
"He's been manipulating you from the beginning. The marriage. The protection. The love." He leaned closer, his breath warm on my cheek. "It's all been a performance. A very convincing performance. But a performance nonetheless."
"I don't believe you."
"Then don't." He shrugged, stepping back. "But ask yourself this: if he truly loved you, why didn't he tell you the truth? Why did he let you believe you were someone else? Why did he let you fall in love with him without ever giving you the choice?"
I had no answer.
The silence stretched between us, thick and suffocating.
"You'll forget him," Jihoon said finally. "My doctors made sure of it. When you were unconscious, they administered a treatment—something experimental, very expensive, very effective. In three days, you won't remember Kim Taehyun at all."
My blood ran cold. "What?"
"His face. His voice. His touch. Everything you feel for him—everything you've felt for him—it will be gone. Erased. Replaced." He smiled, and it was the most terrifying thing I'd ever seen. "With me."
"You're insane."
"Perhaps." He reached for me again, his fingers tangling in my hair, his lips brushing my ear. "But in three days, you won't remember why you should be afraid of me. You'll only remember that I'm yours. And you are mine."
I pushed him.
Hard.
His back hit the opposite wall, his eyes widening in shock. But I was already moving—my hand slipping beneath the thin mattress where I'd hidden the knife, the one I'd stolen from the guard who brought water, the one I'd been waiting to use.
The blade was small, but it was sharp.
I stabbed him in the shoulder.
He screamed—a raw, animal sound that echoed off the stone walls—and stumbled back, clutching at the wound, blood seeping through his fingers. I didn't wait. I ran.
The door was open. His men were distracted by his scream. I slipped through, bare feet slapping against the cold stone floor, my grey shift billowing behind me.
"Stop her!"
The shout came from behind me, but I didn't look back. I ran. Through corridors, past doors, up stairs that seemed to go on forever. The building was old—stone and timber, with windows that looked out onto a darkness I couldn't see.
I burst through a door and into the night.
Jungle.
Thick and dark and impenetrable, the trees pressing close, the vines hanging like snakes, the ground soft and wet beneath my bare feet. I didn't hesitate. I ran into the darkness, branches scratching at my arms, thorns tearing at my shift, my breath coming in ragged gasps.
"Find her! She can't have gone far!"
Voices behind me. Flashlights cutting through the dark. The sound of boots on wet earth.
I ran faster.
The jungle swallowed me whole.