After my husband was kidnapped, I went bankrupt raising the ransom.

For my safety, my parents secretly took the ransom money to rescue him, but they died in a car accident on the way.

I was filled with guilt.

While I was handling my parents’ funeral arrangements, my younger sister received a call from the kidnappers.

To ease my worries, she went alone with the money.

When I nervously arrived at the exchange location, I found my sister barely alive, her clothes torn, locked inside an old warehouse. When she saw me, her eyes flickered with pain and resentment.

“Elena, your husband wasn’t really kidnapped. He’s been playing our whole family for fools.”

As if to confirm her words, several men’s mocking laughter echoed from the back of the warehouse.

“Damien, your skills in controlling your wife are impressive. The eldest Miss Hart actually sold the whole company for you. Amazing!"

“But Damien, aren’t you afraid that Miss Hart will find out the truth and divorce you?”

Damien chuckled lightly, full of pride in his tone.

“Elena won’t. She’d go bankrupt for me. This little joke is nothing to her!”

So in Damien’s eyes, ruining me financially and destroying my family was just a little joke.

Holding my lifeless sister in my arms, my hatred trembled to my very bones.

Damien, I will never forgive you again!

——

“Why didn’t you come to pick me up?”

When Damien found me in the rental room, I had already been sitting in silence for a whole day and night.

Seeing that I wasn’t speaking, the anger on his face deepened and his voice rose sharply.

“Do you know that today, I was planning to propose to you? I spent the whole night setting up the proposal scene!”

How could I not know?

When I left, covered in blood and carrying my sister on my back, I saw him from a distance, joking and laughing with those men as they decorated the proposal venue.

Seeing the smiles on all their faces, I wanted to rush out and kill them a thousand times.

But I couldn’t. I knew I couldn’t win against them.

“Say something, Elena. You could sell your company and your house for me. Why couldn’t you come to redeem me? Were you scared?”

My lips trembled as I opened my mouth, but in the end, no words came out.

I had lost my voice. From the moment the doctor announced my sister’s death, I lost the ability to speak.

Damien seemed utterly infuriated by my silence. He strode over in a few quick steps and grabbed my arm.

“Elena, are you throwing a tantrum at me? Did I mess up by preparing a surprise for you? I’m telling you, if you don’t appreciate it, plenty of others will.”

With that, he flung my hand away, walked to the door and took someone else’s hand.

Only then did I notice that Vanessa had been waiting at the door all along.

When she saw me look over, she curled her lips into a smile.

“Elena, Damien can be a bit impulsive sometimes, but he doesn’t mean any harm. Always putting on airs isn’t good for your relationship. Today, I’ll take Damien with me. You both need to cool off.”

Damien intertwined his fingers with hers and gave a tug.

“Why waste so many words on her? She’s the one who didn’t cherish it. She has no one to blame but herself!”

He was always like this, doing shocking, outrageous things just to see me panic and care, so that after the fright, I would feel what he called a “surprise.”

Like the first time, I was negotiating a four thousand dollars deal when he called to say he'd been in a car accident.

I was overwhelmed with worry and ran nine red lights in a row.

But when I arrived, he was standing at an intersection, heart-shaped candles lit, flowers laid out on the ground, proposing to me.

I couldn’t even describe what I was feeling. All I knew was that I was terrified. I clutched him tightly, begging him never to joke about something like that again.

But not only did he not listen, he took it even further.

Things like being trapped in a fire, falling off a mountain, getting seriously ill... and on and on.

Every single time, he said he wanted to propose to me 520 times, to make it a symbol of our love.

Because I loved him and because I was afraid of the “what if”, I never dared to let a “boy who cried wolf” effect take root.

I just never imagined that this time, he would go as far as faking a kidnapping… and because of it, my family was destroyed.

But he and Vanessa thought it was just a joke, The other thought it was just a bit of fun.

What a perfect match they were.

Suddenly, I felt an overwhelming wave of regret for the decision I made back then.

Six years ago, the Cole Family went bankrupt. Vanessa, who was engaged to him, publicly called off the engagement.

His face turned ashen, humiliated and furious and it was then that I took his hand.

I said to everyone, “If Vanessa won’t marry him, I will!”

“In this life, whether Damien is rich or poor, ordinary or outstanding, I love him!”

That very day, Damien held my hand and said he would never let me down for the rest of his life.

Times had changed.

In the end, that promise from years ago was nothing but empty words.

The door shut right in front of me. I pulled the pink diamond ring off my ring finger and placed it on the coffee table.

The next moment, a vase came crashing down, shattering the table. Porcelain and glass shards flew in all directions. The fragments sliced across my cheek, my arm, my leg.

But I felt nothing.

I crouched down and, amidst the wreckage, silently searched for that pink diamond— leaving only the empty ring band lying among the debris.

That pink diamond…

Before my wedding with Damien, my sister had saved up her pocket money for three months just to buy it for me.

I still remember that time, she, being clever and full of mischief, came up with every trick to get money from me and our parents.

After buying the diamond, she secretly met with Damien and together, they designed this ring.

Back then, none of us could’ve imagined that she’d go through so much trouble, all just to give me a wedding ring.

On the day of the wedding, the joy I felt wearing that ring was now matched only by the pain I felt taking it off.

Tears slid down from the corners of my eyes, mingling with blood as they fell onto the pink diamond.

I tried to wipe them away, but no matter how hard I wiped, it wouldn’t come clean.

I held the ring close and cried my heart out.

In the end, I still brought it with me to the police station.

Ever since my sister’s passing, I had been hesitating whether to report it or not.

Not for Damien’s sake, but because when I found my sister in that abandoned warehouse, her trembling body, her terrified eyes, everything in her told me just how afraid she had been.

She was terrified of others seeing her like that, even more afraid that someone might touch her body.

Calling the police would mean her body being seen by even more people, possibly even dissected. Even if those people were forensic doctors.

But I had no other choice. I didn’t have the strength to avenge her myself. But I couldn’t just sit by and watch those monsters walk free.

When Damien called, my sister’s body had just been taken away right in front of me.

I was sitting in the hallway, crying uncontrollably.

On the other end of the phone, his voice exploded in fury, laced with disbelief.

"Elena, you called the police? Didn’t I tell you? It was just a joke—a prank to surprise you! The whole thing was a farce. Why would you call the police and have them arrested? Don’t go too far! Withdraw the case right now. If even one of them ends up in jail because of you, I won’t let this go…"

I didn’t listen to the rest of what he said.

Every time he said “joke”, “prank”, it was like a knife stabbing straight into my heart.

I wanted to scream. I wanted to break down and shout at him.

Because of his so-called “joke”, his “prank”, three people in my family died tragically.

All I did was call the police. How was that going too far?

Where exactly had I gone too far?

I hurled my phone hard against the wall. The screen shattered instantly and it never made another sound.

When I got back to the apartment, Damien and Vanessa were already waiting at the door.

He froze for a second when he saw me, the anger in his eyes momentarily replaced by surprise.

"Where did you go? Why do you look like this?"

I had no intention of speaking to either of them.

I pulled out my key and went straight to unlock the door.

He frowned and yanked my shoulder roughly.

"Elena, what’s the point of blowing things out of proportion like this? I’m here to ask you, do you really want to make such a fuss? Are you saying you don’t want to be with me anymore?"

Hearing that, I couldn’t help but laugh bitterly.

Was there even a 'we' left to go on with?

Because of my stubbornness, this relationship had cost my entire family their lives.

How could we possibly continue?

I tilted my head, letting tears fill my eyes. I didn’t know how to express what I was feeling,

So I just flailed my hands randomly to try to communicate.

But Damien didn’t understand. He grew more impatient and slapped my arm.

“Stop the gesturing! Are you mute or what? Enough with the nonsense, okay?”

His strength was heavy and after two days of no food and no sleep, my body was weak.

Caught off guard, I was spun around by the force and my forehead slammed against the wall nearby.

Stars flashed in my vision as I steadied myself against the wall, slowly sliding down to the floor.

When I lifted my hand from my forehead, I saw blood on my palm.

His voice suddenly cut off.

As he moved forward to help me, Vanessa grabbed him from behind.

“Damien, Elena’s emotions aren’t stable right now. You two probably can’t communicate well. Let me handle this. You go wait downstairs first.”

Damien hesitated, glanced at me twice, then obediently went downstairs.

Vanessa squatted down to meet my gaze, brushing aside the hair from my forehead with a finger, her voice dripping with mocking laughter.

“Elena, do you really think putting on this act to gain sympathy is worth it? You don’t actually believe Damien loves you, do you?”

“Let me tell you a little secret! Damien’s family never went bankrupt. The so-called bankruptcy back then was just them moving all their assets overseas. All these years, you’ve just been someone Damien amuses himself with when he’s bored!”

I stared at her in disbelief, unable to guess what was true or false in her words.

All these years, my whole family believed Damien’s family was truly bankrupt. We were afraid to upset him and always catered to his feelings, not even daring to mention the word “bankruptcy” during family conversations.

He kept testing my family with illness and accidents and we just thought he was insecure and lacked a sense of security.

Even though he scared me half to death every time, I never once complained about him.

But now, Vanessa told me that the Cole Family never went bankrupt from the start. So what was all my family’s accommodation and patience over the past six years worth?

I leaned against the wall and got up, numb, wanting to go back inside.

Vanessa grabbed me. “Elena, I advise you to break up with Damien as soon as possible. I know you only had the wedding ceremony. You never got the marriage certificate.”

“The whole ‘520 proposals’ thing is just an excuse for him to mess with you. Do you really think Damien would propose to you 520 times? How many has he done so far? If he really proposed 520 times, you’d be an old woman by then. Who do you think would want you then?”

I had no energy to argue with her, so I raised my hand to brush her off. But she suddenly gasped and fell backward onto the floor.

In less than a minute, Damien rushed up from downstairs.

Vanessa quickly got up from the floor and stood firmly between me and Damien, tears streaming down her face.