Chapter 5

The rental complex was old and dilapidated.

The streetlamps on either side of the cracked pathway were dead.

The dark stairwell used to terrify me, but tonight, an overwhelming sense of relief washed over me.

"Dad, Mom... the sins I brought upon us can finally be washed away."

A dim, yellow light flickered from the seventh-floor balcony. I saw a silhouette shifting by the railing and recognized my father.

I waved frantically.

"Dad! I got the funding! I have the money!"

I yelled up at him, desperate to share the miracle.

Dad didn't answer.

He just stood at the edge of the railing, looking down at me in the dark.

I paused, slightly confused.

I held up the black titanium card, waving it proudly like a prize:

"Dad, look! The money's here!"

He moved.

He swung his legs over the railing and threw himself off into the empty air.

My breath caught in my throat, paralyzed with horror.

Seven floors! That was the seventh floor!

"DAD!"

A falling human body looks like a drifting leaf on the way down, deceptively light, until the impact shatters the earth with a sickening, deafening crash.

Car alarms down the street instantly wailed in frantic discord.

The quiet courtyard erupted into chaos.

"Someone jumped! Someone killed themselves!"

Doors banged open as neighbors poured out into the night.

My feet were glued to the pavement.

Every drop of blood in my veins turned to ice.

I threw myself forward like a madwoman, scrambling toward the broken figure lying in a pooling crimson sea.

All I saw were his wide, unblinking eyes, refusing to close.

"Dad! Dad!"

My entire world turned a blinding, suffocating red.

I couldn't understand. I had the money. The nightmare was supposed to be over. Why was he gone?!

His unseeing eyes stared straight through me, filled with unbearable agony.

"Dad!"

I wailed, my chest tearing apart from the inside out.

"Why didn't you wait for me?! I got the funds! I got the money, Dad!"

I shoved the black card against his cold, limp fingers, babbling incoherently:

"Look! Dad, look at me! I got the money! Our family is saved! Wake up, please!"

I screamed.

I begged.

But my father never took another breath.

My sanity splintered into pieces.

Why? When hope was finally within our grasp, why did this have to happen?!

"You monster! You filthy girl!"

Through the screaming crowd, my mother charged toward me, her hair disheveled, looking like a phantom.

Her fists rained down upon me, hitting my shoulders, my chest, using every ounce of strength left in her frail body.

"Look at what you did! Look at what you've done to your father!"

"Why would you do that?! We would rather die a thousand times over than let you sell yourself to save us!"

Weeping hysterically, she hurled a phone against my chest.

The screen was playing a video on a relentless loop.

It was the footage from Christian's penthouse suite—me begging him to save my family. Then Christian's deep, mocking drawl echoed through the speaker:

Sure. But you've always been so stiff and boring in bed. If you put on a show like an adult film star... maybe I'll think about it."

Then came my own desperate, trembling voice:

"...Okay."

The video played on and on.

Right beside my father's bleeding, unmoving corpse.