Following a yearlong coma, Jolie Bellevue—or so she's called—wakes up with almost complete amnesia. She has no memory of her life before the accident, and subsequently, has no idea who she is.
When Marco Reus, a handsome billionaire who claims to be a "friend", shows up to visit her, she begs him to help her start her life over—it's evident that she has no family or friends to do so, and needs him more than anything—otherwise she's better off dead.
As Jolie spends more and more time with Marco, she finds herself helplessly subjected to his manipulative nature and the control he has over her and what she does. Despite falling for his charm, looks, and charity, she feels as if she's his puppet; at his complete will.
A line is crossed, and she can no longer tell whether or not Marco is offering her his charity, or if he's holding her captive from the truth about herself and the world around her. Eventually, as dark secrets become revealed, she learns that he isn't at all the man he's made himself out to be—and that she, too, isn't the woman that she'd been lead to believe she was.
January 2021 A/N: this story is incomplete and will never be completed. there is a much better version of this story under work that I'm co-writing with celestials- titled "The Beguiled", and you can find it on her page. I highly recommend reading that instead of this, but this book is my baby so I'm trying to edit it/put it back up as well!
—
It felt like being born again. Death. Or Tabula rasa. Jolie couldn't remember anything about anyone. Not even herself. This was the first day of her life.
She knew the basics of her situation: she had been in a coma for a year, following a horrible accident, and it was believed that she would never wake up. Her survival was some sort of miracle. If she'd remained comatose a 6 hours longer, they would've pulled the plug on her. It would've been an exact 365 days.
It wasn't until she stared at the wristband on her arm that read Bellevue, Jolie, that she figured her name was Jolie Bellevue. The nurse, Silas, told her later that day that her name translated to Pretty beautiful view in French. And that she was—at least, she used to be. But she didn't know that.
Jolie had been in a comatose state for so long that all her injuries—a broken ankle, fractured ribs, and sprained wrist, to name a few—had healed. There were quite a few stitches from surgeries and quite a few bruises, but she was, for the most part, okay. Except for one darned issue: she had amnesia.
A fair price to pay, a nurse had declared, for a rare survival.
Jolie sat in her bed and stared at her reflection in disgust. This was not the beautiful woman she wished she was. This woman was pale, dull-haired, hollow, and vacant-eyed.
She was bored. She'd tried to go for a walk in the gardens, but found herself sneezing uncontrollably. She learned she was allergic to pollen. So she went back to her room, and hadn't left since. It'd been an entire day.
She wondered if she had any friends. Obviously not, or they weren't good ones, because they hadn't come to see her. Did she even have a family? They clearly didn't care very much about her, either.
Jolie stared at the ceiling. The television played cheesy romantic movies that had even managed to make her cry earlier that day. Of course it wasn't just the movies, though. More the fact that she couldn't recall any memories from between the day she'd been born and now, a time in which she was practically being born again.
