The Billionaire Ex-Wife's Return (Cynthia and Ethan) novel Chapter 288

Chapter 288

Ethan's POV

Six months.

One hundred and eighty-three days since I'd woken up in a strange bed, pain radiating through my chest, my head pounding, my memories completely blank except for fragments — scattered pieces of a puzzle I couldn't put together.

My name was Ethan.

I knew that much because the old man who'd found me half-dead in his field had gone through my pockets looking for identification and found nothing except a wedding ring.

A simple gold band that had two names engraved on the inside.

Ethan & Cynthia

Ethan. That was me.

And Cynthia... Cynthia was someone important. Someone I'd married. Someone I needed to find.

But I didn't know who she was.

Couldn't picture her face. Couldn't recall a single moment we'd shared together.

Just her name, burning in my mind like a brand.

Cynthia.

The old man's name was Gavin.

He was in his seventies, weathered and bent from decades of farm work, with kind eyes and calloused hands that had carefully tended to my wounds when he'd found me bleeding out in his wheat field.

"Thought you were dead at first," he'd told me once I was conscious enough to have conversations. "All that blood. The hole in your chest. Figured you were a goner for sure."

But I hadn't died.

Somehow, impossibly, I'd survived.

Gavin had patched me up as best he could with his limited medical knowledge—cleaned the wound, stopped the bleeding, kept infection at bay with whatever antibiotics he could get from the local pharmacy and with some herbs.

It had taken weeks before I could stand without help.

Months before the pain faded to a dull, manageable ache.

And even now, I could feel the scar tissue pulling when I moved certain ways. A permanent reminder of whatever had happened to me.

But what had happened?

I didn't know.

I couldn't remember.

The doctors at the tiny rural clinic Gavin had eventually taken me to said it was trauma-induced amnesia. That the gunshot wound combined with possible head trauma had essentially wiped my memory clean.

"Might come back," one doctor had said with a shrug. "Might not. Brain's a funny thing."

So I'd been stuck here ever since.

Living in Gavin's farmhouse with him and his daughter, Prisca, working the fields to earn my keep, searching desperately for any clue about who I was or where I came from.

But there was nothing.

No identification. No phone. No wallet. Nothing that could tell me where I belonged or how to get back there.

Just a wedding ring with a name I couldn't forget.

Cynthia.

…

Prisca was twenty-eight years old, unmarried, and very clearly interested in me.

She'd been kind when I first arrived—helping her father care for me, bringing me food, changing my bandages with gentle hands.

But as I recovered, her attention had shifted into something else.

Something I didn't want and couldn't reciprocate.

Lingering touches when she handed me things. Comments about how strong I looked working in the fields. Suggestions that I should stay permanently, that I fit well into their life here.

And Gavin encouraged it.

The words died in my throat.

Because Prisca wasn't hurt.

Wasn't in danger.

Wasn't in distress at all.

She was lying on her bed.

Completely naked.

Every inch of her skin on full display, her body positioned in a way that was unmistakably deliberate.

Seductive.

An invitation.

She looked at me with heavy-lidded eyes and smiled.

"I'm so glad you came," she said, her voice dropping to something husky. "I've been waiting."

She shifted slightly, arching her back, making sure I saw everything.

Then she lifted one hand and crooked a finger at me.

"Come here," Prisca said. "Come have me."

I stood frozen in the doorway, my brain struggling to process what I was seeing.

This wasn't an accident.

Wasn't a misunderstanding.

This was a calculated seduction.

A trap I'd walked right into.

And every instinct in my body was screaming at me to run.