Stella's POV

The last two months felt like they'd been lived by someone else. A woman who looked like me, used my name, wore the same clothes, slept on the same mattress… but who had completely lost her sense of self.

That woman, another version of Stella Harper, was living between extremes. Pleasure and anguish. Affection and humiliation.

Damian Winter was solely responsible for the way I was living now. Unstable. Contradictory. Threatening. He pulled me close when he wanted to drown in me, then pushed me away when it suited him. There was no middle ground. And I, like an idiot, slowly got used to that roller coaster disguised as routine.

He told me to go home, then showed up in the middle of the night to get me. Called me incompetent, then let me fall asleep on his chest. Touched my body like it belonged only to him, then appeared in photos the next day with another woman, as if I were nothing more than a mistress.

Sophie Peterson.

I knew her name. Everyone did. She was t