Wave after wave of heat surged through my body.

I reached for Dean, begging,

“Dean, take me away, please……”

He looked down at me. “Rebecca, playing the victim won't work.”

I started thrashing on the floor, rolling wildly. My shirt buttons popped open, exposing bare skin.

My mind went blank.

The next second, my hands moved on their own and latched around Miles's ankle.

My chest pressed against his leg.

The room erupted in jeers.

“Oh, this little kitten's really in heat, throwing herself at him like that!”

Dean stared at me. His eyes shifted from ice-cold to disbelief, then to pure rage.

“Crash!”

He hurled his glass into the floor.

“Rebecca! You're absolutely disgusting!”

Dean shot to his feet, yanked me up by the arm, and slapped me across the face.

My cheek swelled instantly.

“Whore!”

He didn't stop. One slap after another, ten in a row.

People around us were laughing, egging him on, whistling.

“Is that it? Any man will do for you?

I looked at his contorted face, and my chest ached so badly it burned.

He dragged me out of the private room and threw me onto the couch in the room next door.

The door didn't close all the way. I could still hear the laughter outside.

I fought through the nausea and the shame. “Not here. Close the door……please……”

He didn't listen.

He got rougher.

I tried to hold back the sounds in my throat. But the drug had control of my body, and they slipped out anyway, one after another.

It went quiet outside the door for a moment. Then someone laughed, low and knowing.

I turned my head and through the gap in the door saw shadows shifting.

They were listening.

My tears finally broke loose.

“Why……why are you doing this to me……”

Consciousness blurred, and memories flooded in like a tide.

Dean and I had once been the couple everyone envied.

Years ago, my parents had been Good Samaritans. They stopped a kidnapper snatching a child off the street and saved the kid. The man escaped in the chaos. No one imagined he'd come back for revenge.

They mistook Dean's sister, Juliana, for me.

What happened next was unspeakable. Juliana was brutalized beyond anything human, left in a permanent vegetative state.

Not long after, my family went bankrupt. Both my parents died in a car accident.

Everything we owned was sold off. The only thing I refused to give up was the house I'd grown up in.

I knelt before Dean.

He looked at me the way you look at an enemy.

“Sure. I'll take out a loan to get the house back for you. You stay by my side.”

“Every time I take you, I'll pay you ten thousand dollars.”

I agreed.

I agreed to everything.

I pulled myself out of the memory. My lower back felt like it was about to snap.

He was gritting his teeth, each time harder than the last.

“You want to know why I treat you like this? You still have the nerve to ask?”

“My sister had just gotten into Berkeley. Just gotten engaged to her boyfriend. Her whole future was wide open. Your parents and their hero act destroyed her entire life. And you're asking me why?”

By the end, his voice was shaking too.

When he finally opened the door and walked out, the others were already gone. Gwendolen had been sent home by her driver at some point.

He brought me back to the Henson residence.

That night, he used me over and over until I passed out.

Then he picked me up and dropped me into the bathtub.

When I woke, it was already light out.

Dean was holding a washcloth, scrubbing my lips over and over, until the skin split raw.

His voice carried no warmth at all.

“You were throwing yourself at him like a bitch in heat last night. Enjoyed it, didn't you?”

My throat was raw, but I forced out the words.

“Dean, Miles put something in my drink. It was drugs.”

He scoffed, his eyes full of contempt.

“You think I'd believe that? I think you're just cheap to the bone.”

He tossed the rag aside, pulled a thick stack of bills from his wallet, and flung them in my face.

“You know why I'm marrying Gwendolen? Because she's ten thousand times cleaner than you.”

I got on my knees in silence and picked up the bills one by one.

This was the last installment for the house.

Dean's phone erupted with a frantic ringtone.

He answered, and the color drained from his face.

“What?”

He hung up. The look he gave me could have cut through steel.

“The hospital just called. Juliana's heart stopped for several minutes!”

He seized my arm and hauled me up, speeding toward the hospital the entire way.

“If anything happens to my sister, you're going in the ground with her!”

When we reached the ICU doors, Gwendolen rushed up and slapped me across the face.

“This is all because of you, you jinx!”

“Everyone near you gets destroyed. Why don't you just die!!”

Dean didn't stop her. He shot me one cold look, then walked into the room.

After the resuscitation was over, the doctor said Juliana's heart was beating again.

“Mr. Henson, the international specialist we mentioned before has recently made a breakthrough in his research. If we could bring him in for a consultation, there may still be hope for your sister.”

Dean's eyes lit up. “Even if there's a one-in-ten-thousand chance, I'm taking it.”

Over the next few days, he was on the phone nonstop, firing off emails around the clock.

My English was strong, so he kept me at his side to communicate back and forth with the specialist, a man named Professor Joe.

Gwendolen caught sight of us working together more than once. Each time, her expression soured.

One day, I was carrying coffee to the study, about to knock, when I heard Gwendolen's voice through the door.

She sounded bitter, resentful. “You destroyed her parents' company. You arranged the car accident that killed them. You've been tormenting her for three years already. What's the point of keeping her around?”

My feet nailed themselves to the floor.

Two seconds of silence from the study. Then Dean's voice. “For what my sister went through, every last person in the Pruitt family could die and it still wouldn't be enough.”

I stood by the door. A high-pitched ringing filled my ears.

He killed my parents.

Back then, everything had fallen apart so fast I never had time to question any of it.

I'd believed that staying by Dean's side, enduring his cruelty, would at least ease some of the guilt I carried over what happened to Juliana.

I never imagined his hatred for me and my parents ran this deep.

For three years I'd stayed in the Henson household and let him do whatever he wanted to me. For the house. For the guilt. For whatever pathetic scrap of feeling I still had for him that refused to die.

I'd given him everything.

And in the end, I'd been serving the man who murdered my parents.

I pressed my hand hard against my chest, forcing the scream back down my throat.

It hurt. God, it hurt.

The pain doubled me over.

I turned and ran out the front door, faster and faster.

The sky opened up without warning, and rain poured down.

I ran all the way to the cemetery on the outskirts of the city and collapsed to my knees before my parents' headstones.

“Dad, Mom! I'm sorry! I'm so sorry!”

“You died and no one ever told me the truth, and I've been waiting on the man who killed you.”

“Three years! I served him for three years. I thought I was atoning……”

“But it wasn't that. It was never an accident.”

“What do I do? I have no proof……I don't even know how to face him……”

The rain came down harder and harder. I knelt in the mud, my forehead pressed against the headstone, and cried for a long, long time.

It took a while before I could stand.

I was soaked through when I got back to the Henson residence. The moment I pushed the door open, I saw Dean and Gwendolen sitting in the living room.

Dean's expression was dark. “Where the hell were you?”

I lowered my eyes. “I went to get groceries.”

Gwendolen covered her mouth and laughed. “Then where are they? Rebecca, you don't even bother making your lies believable. What, were you out meeting some man?”

The bodyguard behind Dean spoke up. “Mr. Henson, Ms. Pruitt went to the cemetery.”

He pulled out his phone and showed a photo of me wiping the headstone.

Dean's face went rigid. He raised his hand and slapped me across the face.

“You lying bitch.”

My head snapped to the side, my cheek burning.

Then I turned back. For the first time, I looked him in the eye.

“I was cleaning my parents' headstone. Is that a crime?”

Dean let out a cold laugh.

“Your parents don't deserve a burial. When they were destroying my sister's life, did they ever stop to think that her life mattered too?”

My fists clenched. For the first time, I raised my voice.

“My parents never tried to hurt anyone! Juliana was my best friend. When she got hurt, I was devastated too. I felt guilty too! I've already given up everything I have……”

“Shut up!”

Dean kicked me in the knee.

I crashed to the floor. My vision went black.

Gwendolen's face lit up with satisfaction. She crouched down, reaching out as if to help me.

But the instant her fingers brushed my arm, her body lurched backward and she fell.

“Ah——”

Dean rushed over and caught her in his arms. “Gwen!”

Gwendolen's eyes brimmed with tears, her voice small and wounded.

“Dean……I was just trying to help her up, and she pushed me……”

Dean lifted his head. His gaze cut into me like a blade.

“You piece of trash! You ruined my sister, and now you're going after Gwen!”

He turned to his men.

“Break both her arms.”

Two of them grabbed my arms. A wet, snapping “crack”.

Both arms went limp, dangling at wrong angles. My mouth opened, but the pain was so blinding that no sound came out.

Dean left with Gwendolen.

I writhed on the floor, cold sweat soaking through my clothes.

Shadows appeared in the doorway.

Miles Dickerson. The one who drugged me at the party.

He leaned against the doorframe, looking me up and down, the corner of his mouth curling.

“Hey, sweetheart. Last time we played that little game, the turn landed on me. You still owe me my prize.”

I stared at them, chest heaving. “What do you want?”

Miles grinned. “I won the game fair and square, and I never collected. Your Mr. Henson told me to come get my reward myself.”

I shook my head hard. “That's impossible, he wouldn't……”

The words died halfway out.

Something sharp twisted inside my chest.

Of course it was possible. Dean hated me enough to want me torn apart. He hadn't even blinked when he ordered my arms broken.

I shrank back. “This is the Henson residence. You can't do this here.”

Right then, my phone rang.

I used the last scrap of strength I had to nudge my wrist forward and push the phone against my ear.

It was Dean.

“Dean! Dean, I was wrong, I was wrong, I shouldn't have gone to my parents' graves, please let me go, don't let these men hurt me……”

His voice was flat with impatience. “Professor Joe is here. I don't have time for you right now.”

He paused. When he spoke again, his tone was colder. “Don't try anything stupid.”