Chapter 1
Ava's POV:
I hit the final send button.
I hadn't even slipped the satellite phone back into my pocket when a brutal force slammed into my lower back.
My husband, Luke Callahan, drove his knee hard into me.
"Delete it right now!" Luke barked.
He snatched the phone from my hands, his fingers flying across the screen. The instant the red confirmation window appeared, he grabbed my jaw and forced my face upward. His nails dug painfully into the corner of my eye.
"Open your eyes!" he demanded. "I need the iris verification!"
"Are you insane?" I shot back, locking both hands around his wrist.
"The one who's insane is you! Are you calling for rescue over a single piece of clothing? Do you realize what that means? Everything we've worked for will be ruined!" His knee dug even harder into my ribs.
I squeezed my eyes shut and struggled against him. "I don't care!"
His free hand slipped into his pocket, revealing part of a folding knife. "Either open your eyes and cancel the message, or..."
A ragged breath escaped my throat.
I shoved against his hand with all my strength. My eyelids trembled violently, but I refused to open them.
"Luke, you..."
He finally lost his patience.
With a vicious kick, he sent me stumbling backward.
"We're reaching that summit," he snarled. "No matter what."
The moment he released me, a deafening roar erupted across the mountainside—an avalanche.
In an instant, snow and ice crashed through the area like a living monster, swallowing everything in its path.
When I finally forced my eyes open, coughing and choking on snow, everything around us had become a swirling white haze.
The satellite phone Luke had been holding was gone.
Completely gone.
He cursed under his breath while tearing open the last packet of hand warmers. Without hesitation, he stuffed several of them into Beatrice Ellington's jacket.
Beatrice immediately wrapped my sleeping bag more tightly around herself and deliberately zipped it all the way to her chin, then smiled at me.
"Thanks, Ava," she said sweetly, patting the sleeping bag. "Without this, I'd probably be frozen solid by now."
My fingernails dug into the snow. "That's my emergency survival gear!"
"A skiing champion afraid of a little cold?" Luke scoffed.
Back when Callahan Global Holdings wanted to expand into the winter sports industry, the company desperately needed a recognizable public figure.
Luke had held my hands and pleaded with me. "Ava, you're an incredible skier. Please help me with this once."
Because of him, I endured enormous pressure and entered the competition. In the end, I won.
That championship gave Callahan Global Holdings publicity and credibility almost overnight.
Now the very achievement that had helped build his success had become another weapon he used against me.
Luke leaned over to adjust the edge of Beatrice's sleeping bag. Then he turned and threw a wet towel at my chest, its surface covered in ice crystals.
"Stop acting," he said coldly. "Beatrice was kind enough to leave you a cooling towel, and you're still complaining."
My fingers trembled as I gripped the frozen cloth. "Luke, this towel was soaked in snow."
"So what?" he snapped. "You've skied in worse conditions before. I gave you the lingerie, and you didn't want it. I gave you the towel, and you don't want that either. What exactly are you complaining about?"
He wrapped an arm possessively around Beatrice's waist. "Beatrice is delicate. She needs my protection far more than you do."
A bitter laugh escaped me, and a second later, tears followed. "Then take care of her."
I had abandoned the comfortable life of a wealthy heiress to help build this man's future.
In the end, I lost to his childhood sweetheart.
My reward was a skimpy lingerie set and a towel soaked in snow.
And somehow I was the unreasonable one.
Anger and despair twisted inside me.
Snow pellets hammered against my goggles. My fingers had turned purple from the cold, making it difficult to unfasten my backpack.
After several failed attempts, I finally managed to pull out my emergency glucose tablets.
Suddenly, Luke grabbed my wrist.
Before I could react, he ripped the packet from my hands and slammed it against my goggles.
A jagged fracture spread across the lens.
"What are you hiding?" he demanded.
His voice sliced through the storm. "Beatrice's health is precious. How dare you hold anything back from her? You selfish woman."
I shouted until I tasted blood in my throat. "That's my emergency medication!"
"Emergency medication?" Luke laughed harshly. "Don't pretend you're weak. You're as strong as an ox."
The moment he finished speaking, he shoved me toward the icy slope.
I staggered backward.
Only my ice axe kept me from falling into the abyss below.
Meanwhile, Luke crouched beside Beatrice and opened the glucose tablets for her, not even bothering to look at me.
"If you hadn't insisted on taking this ridiculous route, would we even be trapped here?" Luke snapped.
I struggled back up the slope and reached for the tablets, but he slapped my hand away. The packet burst open.
Half the tablets scattered into the snow and disappeared beneath the drifts.
"Get the f**k out of my face!" He grabbed an ice axe and pointed it directly at me.
"Haven't you caused enough problems already? You forced everyone to take this stupid detour," he shouted.
I stared at him in disbelief.
Just moments earlier, I had fought through the blizzard alone.
I had climbed nearly a mile and a half up an ice-covered slope to find this sheltered rock formation.
Without it, all of us could have died in the storm.
Yet my own husband showed no concern for whether I lived or died.
Instead, he took every single item that might have kept me alive.
"I risked my life in avalanche conditions to find this shelter!" I shouted into the storm. "Who was hiding behind the rocks and refusing to move earlier?"
The wind swallowed my words almost instantly. Still, I raised my ice axe and pointed it directly at Luke.
"If it weren't for me, none of us would have survived!"
