During my days in the hospital, Sonia never stopped sending me intimate photos of her and Alvin, along with pictures from her prenatal checkups.

I saved every one of them and forwarded them to my lawyer.

The worse Sonia behaved, the stronger my claim to my rightful share of the assets when the divorce came through.

I handled the discharge paperwork alone and left the hospital.

When I got back to the villa, though, I saw several workers gathered in the back courtyard.

A bad feeling pressed in on me, and I hurried over.

One of the workers was swinging at the wall.

"Stop!"

I rushed forward.

"Well, look who's home."

Sonia stepped out of the memorial shrine, the little tablet I had carved with my own hands turning over and over in her fingers.

She glanced at me, then tossed the wooden tablet to the ground and stamped on it.

"A baby that died before it was ever born, and you keep its tablet in the house? Bad luck, don't you think?"

She laughed and ran a hand over the swell of her belly. "My baby still needs to be born safe and sound. All this is nothing but a curse on the house."

The blood shot straight to my head.

Six years ago, the knife I took for Alvin didn't just cost me my womb. It cost me my first child.

Afterward, I built a small shrine for that child in the back courtyard, set up a tablet, and paid my respects every single day.

Even when we divorced three years ago, Alvin never touched this shrine.

He had once said he would remember this child forever.

"Alvin agreed to it."

Sonia seemed to read my mind, and her smile grew brighter. "He said keeping these things in the house was too unlucky. Isn't that right, sister?"

Alvin's old promise, his old guilt—now they were a joke.

I lunged forward to stop them.

Several bodyguards in black stepped out and blocked me.

Sonia walked up to me and slapped me hard across the face.

"You think playing the gentle, dutiful wife will win Alvin's heart back?"

"Dream on. If it weren't for you, I'd already be the rightful Mrs. Henson, and my child would be the only heir. Since you insist on coming back, I will never let you off!"

She grabbed a fistful of my hair.

"Take a good look at how your child gets leveled."

The worker's hammer came down on the gray brick, again and again.

The small urn underneath came into view.

My heart seemed to stop.

"Let go of me!"

I struggled with everything I had, my nails raking across Sonia's arm.

She screamed and let go.

I threw myself down, kneeling in the broken brick, and clutched the urn tight against my chest.

"What are you doing!"

Alvin's voice came from behind me.

I turned and saw him stride into the back courtyard.

Sonia clutched her arm, eyes rimmed red, and flung herself into his arms. "Alvin, I only wanted to give the urn back to her, but she wouldn't take it. She cursed at me, said I wasn't allowed to touch her child, and she pushed me…"

Alvin wrapped an arm around Sonia, his gaze landing on me, cold as ice.

"Smash it."

"No!"

I held the urn fast against me. "Alvin, your child is in here!"

His eyes didn't so much as flicker.

"I told you. Stay away from Sonia."

"Even if this is my child, you have no right to use it as an excuse to hurt Sonia."

"Sonia is pregnant. She can't be upset. And yet the moment you come back, you stir up a scene like this."

He turned his head and looked at Sonia, his voice softening. "Are you hurting anywhere?"

Sonia bit her lip and shook her head, her eyes red.

Alvin's words were like a knife, driving into my heart, stroke after stroke.

Even his own flesh-and-blood child—for Sonia, he wouldn't waver.

A bodyguard wrenched the urn from me and slammed it to the ground.

The wood splintered, and the ashes inside scattered across the dirt.

I threw myself down, scrabbling to gather the ash back into my arms.

But a gust of wind came, and it scattered.

No matter how I clawed at it, I couldn't hold it, and the tears wouldn't stop falling.

Sonia watched me, smug, and turned to Alvin. "Since sister can't bear to part with her own child, why not have her eat the ashes, bit by bit? Then the child will be inside her forever. How nice."

Alvin stood beside her, brows drawing together slightly, as if even he found the idea too much.

But the moment Sonia mentioned again that her belly was hurting, Alvin gave his consent.

I couldn't believe it. "Alvin, you've lost your mind!"

I fought with everything I had, but the bodyguards pried my mouth open and forced it in.

Sonia laughed brightly and cooed at Alvin, "I'm scared something will happen to the baby. Let the doctor come check on me, okay?"

Alvin nodded, looked at me in silence, then signaled the bodyguards to release me and walked off with Sonia.

After everyone was gone, I knelt on the ground, retching and retching, then reached for the tablet that had been thrown aside, held it to me, and wept aloud.

I gathered what was left of my child's ashes back into the handkerchief, bit by bit, folding it shut with great care and tucking it against my chest, over my heart.

Feeling its warmth there, the hatred in me only burned hotter.

Back at the villa, I pushed open the bedroom door and froze.

Everything in the room that belonged to me was gone.

One of the maids saw me standing in the doorway and said, head bowed, "Ma'am, your things have been moved to the room downstairs."

The room downstairs was the servants' quarters.

The only person with the authority to order that was, in all likelihood, Sonia.

I turned and went down, pushing open that narrow little door.

The whole room was cramped and cluttered, my clothes shoved haphazardly into a plastic bin.

I tucked the handkerchief of ashes under the pillow.

The door stood open.

At some point Alvin had walked in. Seeing me standing there in silence, he offered an explanation. "Sonia needs to rest properly for the pregnancy. The room upstairs gets good light, so I'm giving it to her."

"You'll stay here. Tell the maids if you need anything."

I didn't look at him, and I didn't say a word.

That room had once been built to order, by Alvin, just for me, the largest in the house and the one with the best light.

Back then he'd promised me that once our child was born, he'd have a nursery opened up right beside the bedroom, that our child would have the very best of everything.

But now, Alvin probably didn't even remember.

He seemed pleased by how compliant I was, and went on. "Sonia said she wants the chicken soup you make. She's picky with the pregnancy, and it's rare for her to actually want something. Go make it and bring it up to her."

I lifted my head and looked at him.

I understood that even if I refused, Alvin had a thousand ways to make me comply.

I truly didn't have the strength to argue with him anymore, so I just nodded.

"Fine."

Looking at me, so obedient, Alvin pressed his lips together. He seemed about to say something, but in the end he turned and left.

I went to the kitchen and worked for two hours to get it right, but when the soup was carried up, Sonia took a single sip and frowned.

"Too salty."

Her hand slipped, and the whole bowl tipped over onto my arm.

A searing pain burst across the surface of my skin. I bit down on my lip and didn't make a sound.

Alvin's gaze fell on my arm, already reddening and swelling, and his brow creased faintly.

But Sonia spoke first. "Oh, I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to."

Alvin was silent a moment. "I'll go down and get you some burn ointment."

After he left, I quietly started cleaning up the mess on the floor, only for Sonia to stamp down on the back of my hand.

The sole of her shoe ground into my fingers, and the sharp pain made me suck in a breath. I instinctively tried to pull my hand back, but she only pressed harder, a smile tugging at her lips.

"No need to rush off."

She bent down, her voice low enough that only I could hear. "Your brother, in there. Don't you want to know how he's doing?"

My pupils contracted, and I met her eyes, brimming with malice.

"A place like prison, you get all kinds of people. Your brother's got such a refined look to him. He must be quite popular, don't you think?"

She tilted her head. "I heard last week he got beaten in there. Two broken ribs. Don't tell me you didn't even know that."

Those words were the last straw.

The string that had been pulled taut in my mind all this time finally snapped.

I yanked my hand free, snatched up that bowl of scalding chicken soup, and flung it into Sonia's face.

She shrieked and sprang up, her face and arms flushing red in an instant.

"My face... it's so hot... Alvin! Alvin!"

Alvin came rushing in at once, and the moment he saw the scene before him, he slapped me across the face.

He put his full strength into it. I went sprawling to the floor, the back of my head cracking against the leg of the bed, my vision blacking out.

"Isabella! Have you lost your mind!"

Alvin crouched down and pulled Sonia into his arms. "Sonia, Sonia, are you all right?"

Sonia had passed out cold, giving no response at all.

Alvin looked at me, his words almost ground out through his teeth. "If anything happens to her, I'll have your life for it."

He swept Sonia up and rushed out of the room.

Before he left, he gave an order to a few of the bodyguards. "Lock her in the freezer! Don't let her out without my word!"

I was dragged into the freezer, the darkness and the sub-zero cold flooding in together.

My mind began to blur.

Just as I was about to slip under, I thought of my brother in prison, of my unborn child, of every humiliation I'd endured these past years.

I couldn't die yet.

I bit into the tip of my tongue, fighting to stay conscious.

By the time my whole body had nearly frozen stiff, the freezer door opened, and I was hauled into a car like a dead dog dragged by its legs.

The car jolted for what felt like forever before it finally stopped.

Hands hauled me out and dragged me in front of Alvin.

He bent down to look at me. "Sonia got burned. Her skin is damaged. She's always taken pride in her looks, and she can't stand this. Since you're the one who did it, you're the one who's going to pay it back."

My blood froze in an instant.

"What do you mean?"

I braced myself against the floor and tried to stand, but my legs gave out and I dropped back down.

Alvin watched me, cold and unmoving, and the words he said next turned my heart to ice.

"Your skin is going to be grafted onto Sonia."

I'd long since lost the strength to fight. Two bodyguards seized me by the arms and dragged me into an operating room.

It must have been on Alvin's orders. The surgeon deliberately gave me no anesthesia.

Several times the pain dragged me under, only for the scalpel cutting into my skin to jolt me awake again.

By the time the surgery was over, I'd been tortured to within an inch of resembling anything human.

When I came to, I was wrapped head to foot in bandages, and the thigh where they'd taken the skin throbbed with a pain that bored straight into the bone.

My phone buzzed. A message from the investigator: "I dug up a few things. You'll probably be interested."

I opened the attachment and found Sonia's entire history laid out in front of me.

Back when Alvin had cheated on me with Sonia, I'd only learned the truth afterward.

He'd gotten drunk at a bar and forced himself on her by accident, and it was the guilt over that which had tangled them together in the first place.

It was only now, reading what the investigator sent, that I understood Sonia's background was anything but simple.

Before she'd ever gotten close to Alvin, she already had money moving back and forth with his business rival, and even that so-called "accident" had been her doing. She'd paid someone off to slip Alvin a drug.

And Sonia herself was nothing more than a hostess from a bar.

It was almost laughable, how completely Alvin had believed her story about being a poor college girl working her way through school behind that bar.

I saved every file, one by one.

I would wait for the right moment, then put all of it in front of Alvin's own eyes.

Let him see, after all these years, exactly what kind of creature he'd been protecting.

The day I was discharged was Sonia's recovery banquet. She must have dreamed up some new way to torment me, because she had Alvin tell me to attend.

I barely had a chance to refuse before I was loaded into a car.

By the time I arrived, the hall was full of clinking glasses and idle chatter.

Sonia wore a champagne-colored gown, her belly faintly rounded, hemmed in on all sides by that little circle of girlfriends of hers.

She saw me walk in, and one corner of her mouth lifted.

I clenched my fists, thinking that tomorrow I could leave this place, that whatever happened tonight I would swallow it down.

But Sonia clearly had no intention of letting me off.

"Well, well, if it isn't Mrs. Henson."

One of Sonia's friends came tottering over on her heels and bumped my shoulder on purpose, the liquid in her glass splashing across my cuff. "Oh dear, so sorry, didn't see you there."

I said nothing, just gave her a cold look.

Sonia carried her glass over to me, looking me up and down. "You don't look well, sis. Still sore about what happened before?"

She held out her glass, wanting me to toast with her.

I didn't lift a hand.

Sonia wasn't bothered. She drew the glass back, unhurriedly fished her phone out of her clutch, tapped a few times, and turned the screen toward me.

I'd braced myself for this before I even came.

And yet the image on that screen still left my whole body rigid.