2: 2

2

Eric Henson was standing beside that woman, and she had her arm hooked cozily through his.

In front of everyone, he announced that he'd given her a hillside mansion as a birthday gift.

She melted into his arms, bashful, and kissed his cheek.

"Thank you, honey."

I felt the blood in my veins turn slowly cold.

Rita Fox.

Three years ago, at the very first stop of my world piano tour, my fingers were crushed. I could never play again.

The tour carried a sky-high penalty clause, so someone had to step in and take my place on stage.

That someone was Rita Fox.

My brother, Paul Pruitt, and my best friend, Mabel James, were furious on my behalf. They went and fought with her.

Mabel even slapped her in public, calling her out for stealing my place.

And yet here they all were, in the banquet hall.

Every person I'd ever been close to, gathered together in warm high spirits, celebrating Rita Fox's birthday.

I shoved the door open.

Every gaze in the room swung toward me at once.

Eric's face shifted through one expression after another.

Paul and Mabel froze mid-motion.

Rita walked over and gave me a little smile.

"Long time no see, Maisie. Are you here for my birthday party too?"

She tilted her head, a thread of pity in her voice.

"You know, what happened to your fingers back then, I've always felt so bad about it."

"I suppose... it's just fate. Some places are meant to be kept for the ones who are prepared for them."

She reached out and stroked her own belly, her voice gentle.

"And it's perfect timing, because today I wanted to announce that I'm expecting. Come share in the good luck too."

Eric crossed to my side in quick strides and dropped his voice.

"Why did you come? Go home first. I'll explain later."

I stared him dead in the eye.

"Explain? What's left to explain? Explain that you had another family this whole time, that you played me like a fool while I ran in circles? Is that it?"

Mabel came in too, brows knit.

"Maisie, don't make a scene here. Whatever it is, we'll talk about it back home. Rita's pregnant. What if you upset her?"

Paul watched me, all guarded.

I looked coldly at the lot of them, feeling my heart sink lower and lower, all the way to the bottom.

In that moment, my whole body went cold.

I stared at them, my voice shaking.

"My fingers, back then... it was you. You did it, didn't you?"

My brother finally lifted his head, awkward.

"Rita really had it hard. Her family nearly bankrupted themselves so she could study piano."

"And back then she'd just been diagnosed with cancer... a piano tour was her dream. We couldn't let her down."

I laughed out loud, but my eyes had gone red.

"So you buried my dream instead? Is that it?!"

My brother said quickly,

"Maisie, you're not like her! You've had us loving you your whole life. You've got a thousand roads ahead of you. Just give this one up for her. What does it matter?"

I looked at these people, my throat closing.

"Give up my fiancé too, is that it?"

Eric pressed a hand to my shoulder.

"Rita really was dying of cancer back then. She said her one wish before she died was to sign the marriage license with me, so I agreed. Later she beat it..."

"Just step outside first, all right? Don't make this any uglier than it has to be."

I looked down at my own crooked fingers.

These hands had once flown wild across black and white keys.

Now they trembled just holding a cup of water.

For three years I'd forced myself to believe it was an accident, it was fate, I was just unlucky.

Only now did I understand: the people closest to me had destroyed me with their own hands.

Suddenly the whole thing struck me as absurd.

"One cancer diagnosis, and quite a lot of wishes to go with it."

"First my tour, then my fiancé. Is my life next on the list?"

"The times I was committed to the psychiatric hospital, you were all in on that too, weren't you?"

My brother's head snapped up, glaring.

"Maisie, can you not be so vicious with your mouth?"

I didn't answer him. I only looked at Eric.

"Eric. We're done. As of now."

Then I turned my head to face Mabel and Paul.

"And you two. My best friend. My own brother..."

"From today on, I, Maisie Pruitt, will live as though I never had a brother, never had a friend."

I walked out of the banquet hall into a downpour already hammering the night.

I looked down at the thin dress on my body and laughed at myself. Even the heavens had come to join in.

I drew a deep breath and stepped into the rain.

I don't know how long it was before a black Porsche pulled slowly to a stop beside me.

The window came down. My brother sat in the driver's seat.

"Get in."

3: 3

3

I wiped the rain off my face and finally made up my mind to get in.

Only when I pulled the door open did I see Mabel was already there, in the back seat.

I sat down beside her.

A tissue appeared in front of me.

"Maisie, dry off."

I didn't take it.

"When did the two of you first meet Rita Fox?"

Mabel sighed.

"Freshman year. We went to celebrate Eric's birthday. It was the time you had a fever and couldn't come."

"Rita was working part-time at a bar and got harassed by a bunch of thugs. We stepped in and helped her."

"She's incredibly strong, really. Both her parents were seriously ill, she had a little brother in grade school, and she'd been diagnosed with cancer herself. So all through college we took turns supporting her."

My eyes went hot.

"And all of it, you kept from me."

My brother sighed.

"Maisie, you've been spoiled and headstrong since you were a kid. If you'd known we were helping Rita, you'd have made a scene."

I let out a short laugh.

"So that's who I am, to the two of you."

"But here's what you don't know. Back in high school, I supported three or four girls myself. One of them was Rita Fox."

Mabel and my brother froze at the same time.

I watched the color change in their faces, and something in me turned bitter.

"My guess is, Rita put herself in front of you on purpose. She knew who you were, so she planned out every single step."

My brother slammed on the brakes.

"Maisie Pruitt! How can you say that about her!"

I sneered.

"You sound more like her real brother than mine."

"You and Eric worked together to lock me in the psych ward, over and over. Amazing, the things you people can come up with."

Mabel's face went cold.

"Maisie, Rita is kind, she's a good person, you don't need to smear her like this."

"We took you to the hospital because we didn't want to watch you humiliate yourself. But now you're making me feel like you're not worth one of Rita's fingers."

I said it quietly.

"That's right. Not worth a single finger. Because my fingers are the ones people like you ruined."

My brother hit the brakes again and spoke coldly.

"Get out."

Without a second's hesitation I opened the door, and the downpour soaked me through all over again.

By the time I got home I'd started to run a fever.

I collapsed onto the bed, and the past kept turning over and over in my head, spinning like a lantern that wouldn't stop.

I remembered how Eric had said, since we were children, that he was going to marry me. I remembered all the years we grew up together.

Back then I thought he was the one, for the rest of my life.

Now everything had changed.

The fever left me hazy, and when I woke my whole body ached.

Eric was sitting at the edge of the bed. When he saw my eyes open, his lit up.

"Maisie! You're awake!"

I frowned at him.

"Eric, what are you doing here?"

He blinked.

"I'm in my own home. Is there a problem?"

He folded my hand into his palm.

"Maisie, hear me out. Rita and I signed the marriage license, yes, but the wedding, I'll only have with you."

"Rita's generous about it. She said from now on I can spend half my time here with you."

"I love you, but I can't let her go either. Maisie, can't you understand the position I'm in?"

I stared at him, unable to believe it.

"Eric, have you lost your mind?"

His brow knotted, and he looked as if he were in more pain than I was.

"I can't give you up, but I can't wrong Rita either. When she got sick, all I wanted was to grant her wish. But she's pregnant now. I can't just walk away from that."

The tears came.

"Eric, you want me to be the mistress in your marriage?"

He grabbed my hand, urgent.

"Of course not! It's only a piece of paper."

His tone turned pleading.

"Our wedding goes ahead just the same. Rita's soft-hearted, she won't mind any of this."

I clenched my teeth.

"But I mind."

"Get out!"

"Years ago, for Rita's sake, you people ruined my fingers. And now, so I wouldn't find out you'd registered the marriage, you sent me to the psych ward again and again. If you loved me, you'd never have put me through this kind of pain."

He sighed and stood up.

"You're upset right now. We'll talk later."

The door closed, and I drifted off again into a hazy sleep.

When I woke, Rita Fox was standing beside the bed, looking down at me.

"Maisie Pruitt, you really are pitiful."

"You may come from a good family, but all I have to do is lift a finger and everyone around you comes running to me. Everything you have is mine."

I drew a deep breath and asked, my voice hoarse, "Rita, I supported you back then. Why repay kindness with this?"

She blinked, all innocence.

"Because I envied you. When I was a child my father beat me half to death, threw me out of the house half-naked. School was a luxury I could only dream of."

"But you? One bracelet you tossed off without a thought was more than I could earn in ten years, even if I never ate or drank. So the rule I live by is: fight for it, and if you can't win it, take it."

I coughed.

"You've won. Whatever. I don't care anymore."

The corner of her mouth curved.

"Don't worry. There's still something better waiting for you."

...

Late that night, I suddenly heard sounds outside the room.

"Honey, let's do it right here, all right? She's asleep anyway. She won't hear."

Eric made a low sound in his throat, and the intimate noises grew louder and louder, deafening.

On the other side of the door, my stomach heaved.

Just then, Rita spoke up.

"Honey, who's better in bed, do you think? Her, or me?"

Eric was silent for a second.

"You, of course. She's got issues in that department. Never once let me touch her."

Every string in my mind snapped clean through.

"Oh, come on. A young lady like her, it's not as if she wanted the thing that happened to her."

*

There's a secret I can never bring myself to speak.

Once, I was kidnapped, and violated by a group of people.

It was the deepest, most hidden scar I carry in my bones.

I only ever told one person. Eric.

And he handed it to Rita Fox, just like that.

I gasped for air, yanked open the drawer, grabbed a fistful of sleeping pills and shoved them into my mouth. I didn't want to hear anything, ever again.

When I woke the next day, they were gone.

And one piece of news set the whole internet on fire.

【The Pruitt Daughter Kidnapping Case: the secret from back then is finally exposed!】

4

Rage burned my eyes red. I was going to find Eric and make him tell me the truth.

That was when the door slammed open from the outside.

Eric charged in and clamped a hand around my throat.

“Where have you hidden Rita?!”

“She's pregnant! How could you do this?!”

“Every wrong here is mine! I pitied her! I went soft! I slept with her! You want to take it out on someone, take it out on me. Why would you hurt her?!”

His grip cut off my breath, and my face flushed dark red.

We stayed locked like that for a moment, then all at once he let go.

I dropped to the floor and broke into violent coughing.

Eric stood over me, looking down.

“Talk. Where is Rita?”

I coughed and coughed.

“I don't know……I really don't know……”

His hand came up and slapped me across the face.

I held my cheek and lifted my head to look at him.

“Even if you kill me……I still don't know where she is.”

He seemed right at the edge of exploding, and instead of anger he laughed.

“Fine. Very good.”

He turned and gave the order to the bodyguards behind him.

“Take her to the hospital. Whatever it takes, get Rita's whereabouts out of her.”

Several bodyguards rushed forward, seized my arms roughly, and dragged me into a psychiatric hospital.

In front of me was an electroshock chair.

A wave of raw panic swept through me.

They strapped me down tight to the chair.

Eric stood beside it, his face cold and hard.

“Begin.”

I fought with everything I had.

“Eric! How can you do this to me! I told you, I really don't know where Rita is! Why won't you believe me!”

My eyes stung, and the tears spilled over.

I felt my heart being torn apart, piece by piece.

He said coldly,

“She took your first-chair seat, and she's carrying my child. Of course you hate her. You just shouldn't have gone this far.”

The next second, he pressed the button himself.

A savage current bored into every limb, into my bones.

I screamed from the pain.

“It hurts! Help me! Ahh!!!”

“Please……let me go……”

Three rounds of shocks, and I was completely broken.

In a daze, I was unfastened from the chair, my whole body twitching.

The next second, someone gripped me by the collar and shoved me down hard into water.

“Still not talking?”

I thrashed under the water, my hands clawing at the air.

“Just kill me……”

For three whole days, they tortured me in shifts.

By the third day, the hallucinations came again and again.

Then a sudden heat below me, and warm liquid poured out from between my legs.

I looked down and saw the dark red spreading across my dress.

I pressed a hand to my belly, looked at the blood in my palm, and let out a soft laugh.

“Heh.”

A voice in my head kept repeating,

“You deserve to die. Go on and die.”

“See? Nobody cares about you. What are you living for?”

Just then, someone reported from the doorway,

“Mr. Henson, Miss Fox has been found.”

They threw me down on the floor, and I gulped for air, every breath tasting of blood.

Eric spun around and rushed downstairs.

He had just reached the courtyard, hadn't gotten into the car yet.

Then he sensed something above him.

He looked up and saw me sitting at the window.

I looked at him the way you'd look at a stranger.

The next second, I spread my arms and threw myself out.

Wind screamed past my ears, and everything went quiet.

Eric's eyes split wide with horror.

“Maisie! Don't——”