Chapter 6
All I could see was a blur of red, my vision completely overtaken by it.
Numbly, I turned and walked out.
Before leaving, I grabbed my phone from the coffee table.
From behind me came Harvey's icy voice. "One day, you'll come crawling back to beg me."
Without a word, I walked out.
All of a sudden, the sky opened up and rain started pouring down.
I trudged a long way through the pouring rain before finally hailing a cab home, soaked to the bone and utterly exhausted.
On the way back, it suddenly hit me that the Harvey of old would never have let me get caught in the rain.
Soaked to the bone, I stumbled home, giving my father quite a fright.
Ever since that incident five years ago, my father's health had completely broken down.
He could no longer work and was always walking on eggshells around me.
He carefully prepared nutritious soup for me and brought it to my bedroom.
His voice was heavy with heartache and guilt as he said softly, "If Emely were still with us, you wouldn't have to go through all this by yourself."
Realizing what he'd said, his face went pale. "I'm sorry, Sariah… Dad didn't mean to…"
I forced a composed smile. "It's Okay, Dad. That's all water under the bridge now."
My father, clearly afraid of saying something wrong again, hurried out of the bedroom.
Emely Weiss used to be my father's wife.
My mother passed away from postpartum depression shortly after giving birth to me.
It was my idea for Dad to remarry.
I felt he was profoundly lonely.
He had no one to confide in, no companion or caretaker by his side.
Emely brought along her son, Adrien Weiss, who was two years older than me.
After that, laughter finally filled our home, until the nightmare began.
I ran a high fever for two straight days.
Delirious with fever, I felt those fragmented memories crashing through my mind again: the man who held me in the darkness and those helpless days.
In my feverish haze, that blurry face before my eyes slowly morphed into Harvey.
I knew it had to be him. It could only be Harvey.
So I reached out and wrapped my arms around Harvey's neck, desperate for the comfort only he could give me.
In a flash, my father—eyes blazing with fury—drove the knife straight into Adrien's heart.
Seventeen brutal stabs, and Adrien died instantly.
My father was acquitted and released on the grounds of self-defense.
Then came Emely's piercing, grief-stricken wails.
Emely lay sprawled beneath the rooftop, blood pooling everywhere.
After Harvey and I broke up, severe depression had ravaged me, leaving me a hollow shell.
At my breaking point, I'd fumble for my phone, barely coherent, ready to dial Harvey.
Just then, the nurse walked in with my test results and said I was pregnant.
Abortion was not recommended due to anemia.
It turned out the birth control pills I'd taken were fake.
The back-alley clinic that sold me those pills? Turns out, it was run by a relative of Emely's ex-husband.
One by one, I deleted every digit of Harvey's number from my phone.
Eventually, when I was almost three months pregnant, my anemia finally started to improve.
I seized what might be my last chance and, risking everything, ended the pregnancy.
My father fell gravely ill.
The neighbors were spreading vicious rumors that I'd seduced my stepbrother, Adrien.
They were spreading rumors that my father had killed someone and escaped from prison.
The vilest rumors spread like wildfire.
No matter how many places we moved to, the Weiss family's relentless vengeance still pursued us.
My father had been out of work for a long time, and our savings slowly dwindled away.
One day, my father had a medical emergency. I rushed him to the hospital in a panic, only to realize in despair that I simply couldn't afford the medical bills.
Sitting in the hospital hallway, I pulled out my phone, my fingers instinctively hovering over Harvey's number once again.
Then I saw a social media post from Harvey—a photo of him intimately holding hands with a woman, their fingers tightly intertwined.
The diamond ring on the girl's ring finger glared at me, impossible to ignore.
It hit me then that Harvey and I had already been broken up for almost a year.
Lance covered my medical bills.
After that, I wiped every trace of Harvey from my life—and never reached out to him again.
I thought we'd never meet again.