The day he paid cash in full for the riverside penthouse, Neville Pruitt household butler handed the master bedroom—the one with the best light—to Eleanor Rowe, the girl he called his adopted sister, declaring he'd give her the most comfortable postpartum recovery money could buy.

I wasn't about to let my marital home turn into Eleanor's recovery suite, so I threw her out, belongings and all.

When Neville found out, he rushed home from the office and gave me two vicious slaps across the face.

"Celia Gilbert, Eleanor's divorced and raising a kid alone. All I'm doing is letting her recover here in our home. Is that really so impossible for you to tolerate?"

"When did you turn into someone this petty and small-minded!"

Watching Neville defend her like that left me cold to the bone.

That same day, Neville shut me inside a dog cage and let his hounds tear at my body.

Outside the cage, he stood there with his arm around Eleanor, watching with cold eyes.

"Celia Gilbert, it's your jealousy that made Eleanor hemorrhage today. She nearly died on me."

"This—all of this—is exactly the punishment you deserve."

It took only a heartbeat for something inside me to die. I pulled out my phone and called my father.

"Dad, Neville and Eleanor—I'm going to make them wish they were dead!"

——

When the words landed, Neville faltered for a moment, then let out a cold, utterly contemptuous laugh.

"Celia Gilbert, you're nothing but a poor country girl. Who do you think you are?"

"Don't go imagining that just because your last name is Gilbert, you're some heiress of the Gilbert family of Northport."

The butler trailing behind Neville chimed right in.

"That's right. For Mr. Pruitt to even look twice at you, to actually marry you—that's a blessing you couldn't have earned in several lifetimes."

"You'd best not push your luck."

Seeing me say nothing, Neville assumed I'd been frightened into silence.

He slid his arm intimately around Eleanor's waist and walked up to the cage.

"Celia Gilbert, if you admit right now that you were wrong, I might consider letting you out."

I was curled up inside the cage, barely waist-high.

Behind me were the two mastiffs Neville kept.

Right now they were fixed on me, eyes hungry and predatory.

Waiting, silent, for Neville to give the command.

Fear had soaked the back of my shirt with sweat, layer upon layer.

Even my body had begun to tremble, and I couldn't stop it.

Even so, I forced myself to sound calm as I spoke to Neville.

"Neville, that's clearly our marital home."

"What gives you the right to hand it over to Eleanor as her recovery room?"

"I will never agree to let her move in, and I will never apologize to her!"

From staying curled up so long, a cramping pain began to twist through my lower belly, wave after wave.

I clutched my stomach, swallowing the pain, and ground out the words at him.

"Neville, let me out of here now. Do you not understand that I'm pregnant!"

The fury in Neville's gaze slowly stilled at those words.

His eyes drifted down to my lower belly.

Yet he made no move at all.

Back when his company went public, he'd told me he didn't want to be distracted, that he needed to throw himself into building his career.

He'd said he didn't want a child for the time being.

And so, through all five years we'd been together,

we had always used protection.

I knew his hesitation now was only because he thought I was lying to him.

Trying to use an excuse like this to get him to let me out.

Just as I was about to speak again,

Eleanor, standing at his side, looked at him with a face full of weakness.

"Neville, Celia says she's pregnant too. You should hurry and let her out."

"When it comes down to it, this whole thing is my fault."

"I shouldn't have intruded on your lives during my recovery."

"Celia lost her temper for a moment, so it's only natural she'd want to throw me out."

I never imagined Eleanor Rowe could turn black into white so brazenly.

This afternoon, it was clearly she who had said it.

That she would one day become Neville Pruitt's wife, fair and square, and that I should know my place and quietly get out.

She'd even boasted that the one Neville had loved all along, from start to finish, was her.

Even this marital home we'd bought together—Neville had handed the largest master bedroom over to her.

"Celia, let me tell you the truth. Neville says he'll treat my child as his own."

"As for you, he never once intended to have a child with you."

"That's why he kept finding excuse after excuse to refuse you."

Her words cut into me until I couldn't stand it anymore.

So I threw her out, her things along with her.

What I didn't expect was that she would deliberately trip herself.

She fell onto the lawn by the door.

It caused heavy bleeding down below, and she was rushed to the hospital.

All of it—she had clearly done it on purpose.

And now she was the one pointing fingers.

Heaping every bit of the blame onto me.

"No, that's not how it was…"

Before I could finish.

Neville, his face full of impatience, took a whistle from the butler's hand.

It was the tool he usually used to train his mastiffs.

As the whistle's shrill note rang out.

His icy words sounded against my ear.

"Tear every scrap of her clothes off her!"

"Didn't she throw all of Eleanor's things out the door?"

"Today I'll let her get a real taste of what it feels like to be alone and helpless."

With that, he pulled Eleanor Rowe close into his arms, intimate and tender.

"Eleanor, don't you worry. Every wrong you've suffered, I'll get it back for you in full today, down to the last bit."

The mastiffs, given their command, lunged at me without a moment's hesitation.

Their sharp teeth shredded my clothes into pieces in seconds.

A violent pain began tearing through my lower belly.

Thinking of the child inside me, all I could do was beg Neville for mercy.

"Neville, let me go. I know I was wrong, I really do."

With nothing left to cover me, I was bared naked before the crowd in an instant.

The people coming and going through the complex turned their eyes on me, one after another.

Among them were more than a few sleazy ones, leering at me with lust in their stares.

"Tsk, tsk. Not only does this woman have a great body, she's fair-skinned and gorgeous too. One look and a man's mind starts wandering."

"Who knew our complex came with a perk like this."

"This place was worth every penny."

Out of fear, my whole body trembled.

I curled in on myself, lying inside the dog cage.

My clothes, already chewed to shreds by the mastiffs, lay tossed in the corner.

The dogs were lapping at their water now, off to one side.

Waiting for Neville to give his next command.

The lustful stares all around me, the mocking voices.

They made me wish the ground would swallow me whole.

I struggled to cover my naked body.

Trembling, I inched toward the corner.

But the pain in my body wrenched cries out of me that I couldn't hold back.

A whole chunk of flesh had been torn from my arm, blood soon sliding slowly down my wrist, and sweat began breaking out across my forehead without stopping.

The sweat seeped into the wound, and the pain nearly made me black out.

I clenched my teeth hard, trying, in this way.

To draw my focus off the pain.

But it did nothing at all.

Perhaps because he noticed how ghostly pale my face had gone, Neville's brow knit tight.

He let go of Eleanor Rowe and strode over to stand before me.

And when he saw the wound on my arm, he couldn't help the sharp breath he sucked in.

Just as he was about to speak, Eleanor edged up behind him, right on cue, and opened her mouth.

"Neville, don't be angry with Celia anymore."

"It's all my fault. That's the only reason she threw me out of the room."

"Celia, I know you did nothing wrong. It was all me."

"Let me kneel down and apologize to you properly, all right?"

Even now, she was still putting on a show.

But the pain was so bad I couldn't get a single word out.

All I could do was glare at her, shaking with fury.

If I could, I would have torn that mask off her face and made Neville see.

See exactly what kind of vile creature Eleanor really was. Catching sight of me, filthy and broken inside that dog cage, she curled her lips into a cold little smile where no one else could see.

Then, in front of everyone, she really did drop to her knees in front of me, every gesture pure performance.

She even bowed her head to the ground in apology.

"Celia, it's all my fault."

"Whatever you're upset about, take it out on me."

"I know I'm a divorced single mother. I deserve to be hated and resented and thrown out of the house."

"Since you can't stand having me around, I'll leave right now. I won't be an eyesore to you anymore."

"I only beg you, don't be angry with Neville over this. Please?"

Eleanor knelt before me, tears streaming down her face like rain on pear blossoms.

At the sight, what little tolerance Neville had left for me vanished in an instant.

He helped Eleanor up, then settled her into a chair.

When he turned his head back toward me, there was nothing in his eyes but boundless disgust.

"Celia, you really are vicious!"

"All this time I thought you were kind and sensible and considerate. I never imagined you could be this poisonous behind closed doors."

"I told you, Eleanor just had her baby. She's still weak and fragile. I asked you to take better care of her."

"And instead you threw her out of the house, and nearly caused her to hemorrhage. She almost died."

"I truly regret ever falling for a hypocrite like you!"

"And now you won't forgive her, and you keep up this stubborn act!"

"Fine. Today I'm going to make you pay. I'll teach you exactly what it means to get what you deserve."

With that, he raised the whistle again, about to blow it.

In the crowd, there were plenty of women who couldn't bear to watch, and one after another they spoke up to plead for me.

"That's enough, isn't it? Look at her, the dogs already stripped her bare and shredded her clothes, and she's covered in this many wounds."

"Her face is so pale, and her belly's a little swollen. She really does look like she's pregnant."

Hearing that, Neville's hand froze just as he was about to blow the whistle.

And in the moment he wavered, undecided.

Eleanor, right beside him, crumpled to the floor at exactly the right time.

Neville rushed to gather her into his arms.

"Eleanor, are you okay?"

Eleanor shook her head and, right in front of me, made a show of leaning into Neville's embrace.

"Neville, I'm fine. It was my own carelessness that made me fall and start bleeding."

"None of this has anything to do with Celia."

"Just forgive Celia this once, please."

Wounded tears slid slowly down Eleanor's cheeks at precisely the right moment.

Seeing her like that, the faint trace of forgiveness Neville had felt toward me an instant ago was wiped away completely.

This time, he didn't hesitate for even a second. He turned toward the two mastiffs and blew the whistle.

"Carelessness, my foot. If she hadn't shoved you, how could you possibly have bled like that!"

"Celia, since you did wrong, then you'll take the punishment you've earned."

"Bite her hands! Crush them!"