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A chill hung in the early spring air. I shivered involuntarily as I walked along the asphalt road.

I had walked this road countless times.

The most humiliating time was when the Shaw Family's fortunes turned. My family's elders drugged me and stuffed me into Julian Rhodes's bed like a piece of merchandise, all to trade me for a sliver of hope for the Shaw Family's survival.

Now, the Shaw Family was completely gone.

I no longer had to grovel, and I felt a sense of relief, almost like liberation.

"Ms. Shaw!"

Fordham's voice called out from behind me, his footsteps rushed.

Before I could turn around, a coat was draped over my shoulders.

"Ms. Shaw, President Rhodes asked me to bring you this coat."

"President Rhodes still has feelings for you. You two love each other, so why must you..."

"Fordham, please thank him for me," I interrupted.

Fordham sighed, said no more, and turned to leave.

I looked down at the familiar coat on my shoulders and was lost in memories.

This coat was a gift from Julian Rhodes.

Back then, I was still the little princess of the Shaw Family, doted on by everyone.

When he gave me the coat, his eyes were full of love.

He said he would protect me for a lifetime.

Ever since we were children, he had always protected me, never allowing me to suffer the slightest grievance.

The first time I was bullied, he brought his friends and beat the person up. When the Shaw Family found out, they punished him according to the family rules.

Even while lying in bed recovering, he couldn't stay still, insisting on making funny faces to make me laugh.

My heart ached for him and I cried. He frantically wiped away my tears. "Moira, don't cry. I'm here. No one is allowed to make you cry!"

In high school, I was cornered by some hooligans from school.

He charged in alone, like a ray of light, and was beaten until he was covered in injuries.

By the time people from the Shaw Family arrived, he couldn't even stand steady, yet he still foolishly asked me if I was scared.

He angered me so much that I laughed through my tears.

Back then, he never got close to any other girls besides me. He would always boast smugly to his buddies, "My girl at home is the jealous type—keeps me on a short leash."

Julian Rhodes and I were childhood sweethearts, innocent and carefree.

Everyone envied us, saying we were a match made in heaven.

We were just waiting for the date set by our families to walk down the aisle together and become the most important person in each other's lives.

But fate had other plans. Due to a poor business decision, the Shaw Family faced a major financial crisis.

Afraid the Rhodes Family would call off the wedding, they drugged me unconscious and put me in Julian Rhodes's bed.

And the glass of drugged red wine that Julian Rhodes drank... I was the one who handed it to him.

I explained to him countless times that I truly didn't know the wine was drugged.

But every time he looked at me, his gaze was the same as it was in that moment he woke up in bed.

It was filled with disgust and contempt, condescending, as if he were sizing up an object.

He was convinced that I had resorted to despicable means to save the Shaw Family—offering myself up to force his hand.

From that moment on, in his eyes, I was nailed to a pillar of shame.

I no longer had any right to defend myself.

But he still went through with the marriage.

He gave me a grand wedding that was the envy of everyone.

He still saved the Shaw Family.

'I thought he still had feelings for me.'

But on our wedding night, he brought another woman home.

After that, he brought women home every single day.

Everyone in City A knew that Young Master Rhodes had enough women at his house to open a nightclub.

He found endless ways to humiliate me, taking pleasure in it. It seemed the only thing that made him happy was seeing me in pain.

I endured it day after day, thinking that once he had vented enough, he would be able to sit down and listen to me.

'I thought we would have a day when we could reconcile.'

I never expected that "enduring" would last for three years.

And what I was waiting for, in the end, was... the complete collapse of the Shaw Family, and my parents, in their despair, jumping to their deaths.

: Shattered Shackles

I was penniless. I had to walk barefoot from the Rhodes Family's villa in Crestview all the way down to the city.

By the time I reached the park, my feet were raw and bleeding profusely.

Fortunately, I still had the pen I'd used for signing when I left. I asked someone for a few sheets of blank paper, sat on the park steps, and quietly sketched the scenery before me.

The tranquility of the moment seemed to transport me back to the time before I married Julian Rhodes.

I laid the finished drawings on the ground, one by one. Each piece was small and exquisitely detailed.

Until a little girl crouched down in front of me.

"Miss, your feet are bleeding. Doesn't it hurt?"

I looked down, my gaze fixed on my feet.

After such a long walk down the mountain, the soles of my feet were a raw, bloody mess.

But I felt nothing at all.

'So it's true. The pain in your heart can really overshadow the pain in your body.'

Not wanting to scare the little girl, I tucked my feet away and said with a smile, "It doesn't hurt."

The little girl looked at me, her head tilted, and pulled a crumpled ten-dollar bill from her pocket.

"Miss, this is all I have. Can I buy a drawing from you? You draw so beautifully, just like an old friend of mine."

I couldn't help but laugh at her precocious, grown-up tone.

'How old could she be? And she already has an "old friend"?'

"It's wonderful that you like them. Just take them all. And thank you for the ten dollars."

I never would have thought.

That one day, the only ten dollars I possessed would be given to me by a child.

But I truly needed that money.

With the money in hand, I went into a small internet cafe and exchanged the ten dollars for an hour of computer time.

I turned on the computer and logged into the social media account that had been my torment for three years.

"As a woman, one must follow The Three Obediences and Four Virtues and regard her husband as her sky."

"A wife must be gentle and virtuous, accepting all hardships without the slightest complaint."

"Chastity is the foundation of a woman's character. She must guard her purity like jade, never allowing it to be sullied in the slightest."

These nauseating pinned posts were all things Julian Rhodes had forced me to write.

When we were first married, I still had hope for him.

Every time he brought another woman home, I would argue with him.

Later, the first time he punished me, he made me kneel in the garden. He had his mistress watch as he lectured me from a copy of the *Codex of Feminine Virtue* he'd bought somewhere. I resisted frantically.

The consequence was that he forced me to post those words online.

He said I was merchandise he'd paid for, and I should act like it.

He said he wanted everyone to see what a wonderfully "virtuous" wife Moira Shaw was.

After that, whenever I angered him, he would force me to post those statements online. It became our twisted routine.

And my account became a battlefield, a target for the condemnations of countless netizens.

They called me a brainwashed relic, a feudal throwback, a disgrace to modern women.

I couldn't argue back, nor was I allowed to.

Silence was my best means of escape.

Julian Rhodes gradually grew dissatisfied with this. He started making me personally wait on the women he brought home.

He even had me personally "train" the women who would end up in his bed.

He said that someone as shameless as me would know best how to please a man.

During those moments, he would stand aside, his eyes filled with mockery and scorn, savoring the sight of my humiliation and pain.

Eventually, I grew numb. I stopped resisting, stopped arguing.

He, in turn, grew bored and stopped watching me so closely.

Instead, he found a new way: making me beg him not to divorce me.

Time and again, I had compromised for the sake of my family. But now, I had nothing left, and I no longer had to beg him for anything.

Staring at the completely empty page, I let out a long sigh of relief.

As the last of the text was deleted,

I could almost hear the shackles around me shattering.

Completely drained, I collapsed onto the desk, my mind and body utterly empty.

For a moment, I didn't even know if I was alive or dead.

Until someone tapped me gently on the back.

"Moira Shaw?"