Chapter 2
Before I could react, the ring was ripped off my finger.
It tore away a strip of skin, but I didn't feel a thing.
"Please. Playing hard to get, are we? Like Mr. Bennett hasn't always been the one begging you to come around. You actually think you're some kind of socialite? Give me a break."
She was talking about the last time I'd had a breakdown, when Samuel had pulled my tear-soaked face into his arms.
"Olivia, don't be like your mother. She made scenes until she ended up in a psych ward with nobody left to even claim her body."
My crying stopped dead.
The warmth of his embrace felt exactly like the day we'd gotten our marriage certificate, the same day I'd received news of my mother's death. He had knelt down and slipped his own mother's ring onto my finger.
"Olivia, you still have me. I'll take care of you for the rest of your life."
But now it only cut to the bone.
I looked down at my bloodied hand, and the tears I'd been holding back finally fell.
My quiet sobs mixed with the laughter from the next room and ripped my heart right out of my chest.
In the middle of the night, I heard my door open and close. A brutal force dragged me off the bed.
"Olivia, Jessica already apologized to you. She didn't even hold your rudeness against you. How dare you go after the baby!"
I had no idea what he was talking about.
My arm popped out of its socket. I winced.
The baby's cries seeped through the wall. Samuel's voice chilled me to the bone.
"Does it hurt? Jessica's pain is ten times worse than yours. With a vindictive streak like that, no wonder your father abandoned his wife and daughter for some girl who wasn't even his blood."
I bit through my lower lip, my entire body trembling.
That was the first time I'd ever seen my mother lose her mind.
My mother had pinched every penny she earned, and then she got hit by a car. Meanwhile, my father transferred every asset he owned to a divorced newspaper vendor and screwed her in my parents' bed.
My mother, still hooked up to tubes, had wailed until she was coughing blood.
"I gave you 20 years! What right does that thing have to wear my jewelry?"
She'd caused scenes everywhere and even resorted to self-harm to win him back. All it earned her was a psychiatric evaluation.
When I begged my father to let her out, he kicked me straight into a police station while shielding another girl and calling her his daughter.
I'd thought I was numb to it by now, but hearing it from Samuel's mouth was suffocating.
That was when Jessica burst through the door and lunged at me, her voice shrill and piercing.
"Mrs. Bennett, take it out on me if you want, but don't hurt the baby! You're going to be a mother yourself someday. How could you be so cruel?"
She was hysterical, pounding her fists against me.
As I struggled, my clothes ripped open.
The sound of tearing fabric mixed with Jessica's screams as she covered her eyes. Samuel patted her back, soothing her.
"Don't be scared. Just think of it as a badly done patch with a slug crawling on it."
His words made her laugh. They made me want to die.
The next second, he reached out and covered her eyes.
"Don't look. It's disgusting."
Disgusting?
I looked down at the twisted, ruined skin, and tears slid silently down my face.
The longest scar stretched from my chest all the way down to my waist.
The kidnappers had tortured me for the thrill of it, using my agony to make Samuel suffer.
The anesthesia had worn off halfway through. Eighteen hours of surgery, and I hadn't cried out once.
My once-flawless skin had turned into a landscape of charred wreckage, and I'd never regretted it. Not once.
Now every single one of those battle scars had become a poisoned arrow through my heart.
Seeing me like that, he instinctively stepped forward.
But the baby's cries pulled Jessica away in a panic, and Samuel scrambled after her without even noticing he'd stepped on my leg.
Wave after wave of searing pain. All I could do was laugh at how absurd it all was.
When I got back to my room, every piece of my furniture was gone. In its place were countless hand-sewn baby clothes and accessories.
They'd been framed and put on display.
The butler was awkwardly hauling my luggage out, his expression stiff.
"Mr. Bennett couldn't bear to actually use them. He posted them online and got so many compliments, so he..."
A memory hit me. I'd once tried to knit a scarf, just as young couples do when winter comes.
Samuel had taken one look at it, snorted, and tossed it to a servant.
"Olivia, if you've got nothing better to do, knit a few more and hand them out to the homeless."
Back then, I'd stormed out in a huff and given it to a street sweeper instead.
That same night, he'd won me over with nothing more than a cake.
From now on, he'd never be able to fix things again. And I no longer needed him to.
My new room turned out to be the basement. The door slammed shut behind me.
Then something on the wall made my eyes go wide.