Chapter 3

My mind buzzed, and all the blood in my body seemed to run backward.

"You can't do this to me! I'm your wife!"

But no matter how I struggled, I was still tied up, a rag stuffed in my mouth so I couldn't make a sound.

Jayden left with Julia, locking me in the room.

Before long, a dozen or so people filed in one after another, and their eyes lit up when they saw me.

"We were just missing a female lead like her, a story where a kidnapped woman runs into her old lover and sparks fly."

I froze, staring in disbelief at the group of people in front of me.

One of the men walked toward me.

The lights shone down on me, the camera aimed straight at my face, and the shame inside me was almost enough to break me.

I was like a rag doll, handled by him again and again.

The pitch-black lens, like a demon, recorded this unbearable scene.

I don't know how much time passed, but my tears had already run dry.

Beneath me was a smear of blood-red, and my whole body felt like it was splitting apart with pain.

By the time I walked out of the room, I had been tortured beyond recognition.

Then, out of nowhere, a memory flashed through my mind, of when I was eighteen, when Jayden spent every cent of his savings just to buy me a necklace I had glanced at one time too many, all to win me over.

Later he studied like his life depended on it and worked part-time jobs, and with the money he earned he bought me the first little house I ever owned.

He went with me to climb a snow-capped mountain, and halfway up we ran into an avalanche, and he risked half his life to shield me.

Back then he said he would be good to me for the rest of his life.

Later, when my father fell ill and needed Jayden to perform the second-stage surgery, his phone could not be reached, no matter what.

My father was just that little bit away from a full recovery.

When I returned, utterly shattered, to the home Jayden and I shared, I saw him locked in an embrace with another woman, unable to pull apart. In that instant, all I could hear was a roar in my ears.

He knelt before me, crying, and swore there would never be a next time, that his phone just happened to be on silent, and he just happened to be drunk.

I cried until my whole body shook, until I nearly fainted.

But later there came a second time he was drunk, and a third.

And he went from wishing he could die to atone to now treating it as a matter of course.

"Daniela, be good."

"Your father still depends on me, doesn't he?"

"Last time, because of your willfulness, your father didn't get timely treatment, and his recovery kept dragging on and on. Is that what you want to see happen?"

The love that had once burned so fiercely had shattered to pieces just like that.

Before I could even leave, Julia sent someone to bring me before her.

She looked at the wretched state I was in, and a smug smile curved at her lips.

"Now you've become just like me."

I stared at her, my gaze heavy, my voice hoarse.

"And then what? Does that make you any better?"

"Jayden never takes you to meet his friends, because you're not fit to be seen."

A flicker of anger crossed Julia's face, but then she smiled again.

"So what? If I ruin you, he'll have no one to love but me!"

"Don't think I don't know your dad's still lying in that hospital bed! The surgery's supposed to be at two in the afternoon, isn't it? If I tell Jayden I'm sick, guess where he'll turn up?"

My heart pounded like a drum as I looked at Julia in disbelief.

"Are you insane? You can't!"

She burst into reckless laughter and leaned in close. "Do you know what Jayden loves about me?"

"It's this streak of madness in me."

The moment the words left her mouth, she had someone take me to my father's bedside.

As the time crept closer to two o'clock, Jayden was still nowhere to be found.

The doctors were like a body without a head, and not one of them dared to step up and perform the surgery.

Jayden was the only expert in this area.

So it turned out Julia hadn't sent me to my father out of any kindness, but to make me watch, helpless, as I lost the person I loved most.

Like someone gone mad, I broke free of my restraints and ran to every place he might possibly be.

At last, at Jayden's house, I found him holding Julia in his arms as she cried.