His Unwanted Wife Is Madame Lan

The sudden, violent shatter of glass from the downstairs foyer sounded like a bomb detonating in the dead of night.

Andrea Villarreal's eyes snapped open. Her heart hammered against her ribs, a violent, erratic rhythm that sent a rush of cold adrenaline straight to her fingertips. Two a.m. She lay frozen in the pitch-black master bedroom of the sprawling Morse estate, listening to the heavy, unfamiliar boots echoing on the hardwood floor below.

She didn't groan. She didn't rub her eyes. She simply reached out, her fingers stiff, and grabbed her phone off the nightstand. She dialed the only number she was supposed to rely on.

"What?" Gregory Morse's voice came through the speaker, the icy irritation in his voice thick enough to choke on. "I am in the middle of a summit in London. Make it fast."

Andrea's stomach twisted into a tight, hard knot. The acid burned the back of her throat. Him. Gregory Morse. The man who looked at her only as a ghost. Her tormentor. Her husband.

"Gregory, someone broke into the house," Andrea whispered, her tone turning to absolute ice out of pure terror. "I hear them on the stairs. Please, call the estate security. I can't reach them."

"Stop playing these pathetic games, Andrea," Gregory sighed, the sound dripping with disgust. "Genevra never resorted to such cheap, attention-seeking stunts. If you want my attention, this is the worst way to get it."

"Gregory, I swear-"

The line went dead. He hung up.

Andrea threw off the heavy duvet. The cold air of the bedroom hit her bare skin, but she barely felt it. She walked to the walk-in closet, bypassing the rows of designer clothes he had forced her to wear to mimic his dead fiancée, and knelt before the hidden wall safe. She punched in the code. The heavy metal door clicked open.

She didn't reach for a weapon. She reached for something far more vital for her survival: a heavy encrypted hard drive and a stack of confidential sketchbooks.

Ten minutes later, Andrea slipped out of the second-story window, scaling down the trellis. She wore a tailored black trench coat over a high-necked sweater, buttoned to the top. It was her armor. She kept her head down, bypassing the shadows of the intruders ransacking the ground floor, and slipped into the dense woods lining the property.

The run through the freezing night was silent. The sharp branches tore at her clothes, each one adding a layer of frost to her demeanor.

When she finally reached the safety of a 24-hour diner miles away, the smell of stale coffee and grease hit her like a physical blow. The linoleum floor was littered with napkins. A bottle of ketchup lay on its side, red liquid soaking into the table.

Andrea sat on the edge of the vinyl booth, wrapped in a coat that barely covered her shivering frame. She was holding her phone up, adjusting her messy dark hair, talking to the local police