On the day my daughter turned one month old, Janet Shelton called me to her office to deliver some documents.

The temperature inside was unbearable—114.8 degrees Fahrenheit. I reached for the air conditioner, but her male assistant stopped me.

"Sir, I’ve had a cold body since childhood. I can’t handle the cold. Please leave the air conditioner off," he said.

I glanced at my daughter, her cheeks red from the heat. I couldn’t risk her getting heatstroke. Without saying a word, I turned the air conditioner on.

Later that evening, Janet returned from a social event. As soon as she walked in, she asked coldly, "Hector is sensitive to cold. Did you know that 38 minutes and 19 seconds of cool air gave him a high fever and landed him in the ICU?"

"Janet, really? Half an hour of air conditioning and he ends up in the ICU? Do you think I’m an idiot? My daughter is one month old. If she had a heatstroke, it could’ve killed her. What were you drinking—bootleg wine?"

She gave a tight smile and nodded. "You’re right. I wasn’t thinking."

That night, as usual, she gently coaxed us to sleep.

But when I woke up, I found myself and my daughter trapped in a cold storage room. glass walls on all sides, while people circled us, laughing.

Outside the cold storage, Janet leaned casually against Hector’s arm, flashing me a cruel smile. “Worried about heatstroke? Don’t be. You and your daughter can cool off now.”

My chest tightened. I stayed calm, pulled out my phone and took pictures of every single one of them. Then I made a call. “Dad, I don’t want any of these people to see the sunrise tomorrow.”

——

The moment I ended the call, silence fell, then came the laughter, loud and mocking.

“Yoseph, your father was dumped into the sea and fed to sharks half a year ago. You gone mad from the cold?”

“Still think you’re the Gardner Family’s heir? Wake up, you can’t even pull that off in your dreams.”

Janet stood there, soaking in the jeers, her eyes filled with smug satisfaction.

She gently placed her mink coat on Hector’s shoulders, took his hand and walked slowly to the cold storage.

Tapping her finger lightly on the glass, she looked at me and spoke sweetly. “Yoseph, are you cold? Feeling sorry yet?”

The glowing red thermometer behind her read -58 degrees.

I curled my body around my daughter, trembling in the thin pajamas I had worn to bed.

Where my skin met the frozen floor, it had turned numb and purplish.

Sharp stabs of pain rippled through me. My daughter sobbed uncontrollably in my arms, her tiny body wracked with cold.

I stumbled toward Janet and Hector, slamming my fist against the glass. “Janet, what did I do wrong?! Isn’t it normal to turn on the air conditioner when the room is burning hot? Newborns can’t handle that heat. If they get heatstroke, they could die!”

My sudden outburst made my hand tremble, and in that moment, my daughter’s tiny hand brushed against the edge of the cold storage.

From the rough movement, a piece of skin was torn from her delicate little hand in an instant.

Panicked, I immediately shielded her in my arms and crouched down, holding her close.

I stared at Janet with bloodshot eyes. “Janet, let us out. You know how much she means to me. I can’t lose her.”

For a second, something flickered in Janet’s gaze, something unspoken. She, of all people, knew what it meant to finally have a child.

Years ago, an accident left her nearly infertile.

We’d sought out thousands of renowned doctors. For eight long years, she endured hundreds of egg retrieval procedures, needles as long as a forearm piercing into her body again and again.

Eventually, we had this one child. She once broke a servant’s arm just because the milk heated for our daughter was one degree off.

And now, for Hector… she didn’t hesitate to lock me and my daughter inside a freezing cold storage unit.

She was truly out of her mind.

I felt a bitterness rise in my chest and was about to speak again.

However, Hector suddenly shrugged off the mink coat Janet had just draped over him and cried out, his voice full of false grievance, “Janet, let him out! They’re so delicate, they can’t take this kind of torture. Not like a poor kid like me… I was frozen to the point of fainting in that air-conditioned room and didn’t even dare to speak…”

Fainted? From the cold? I had only turned on the air conditioner for half an hour.

When I left Janet’s office, Hector was still grinning, chatting with a group of women about meeting up at the bar that night.

I opened my mouth, ready to explain, but Janet’s face changed in an instant. Her voice turned sharp and cold. “Someone go in and take his clothes off! Isn’t he delicate and tender? Then today, let him experience what it’s like to be a poor child!”

She bent down to pick up the mink coat and gently placed it back on Hector’s shoulders, then shot me a cold look.

“When you understand what you did wrong, then you can come out. The doctor said my daughter is perfectly healthy, don’t use her as an excuse to avoid punishment.”

Then she leaned up, brushing her fingers across Hector’s face, her voice full of unshakable devotion. “Hector, your body runs cold. You can’t afford to be chilled. Stay here, in my arms. I dare anyone to say a word about it.”

Janet had just sat down with Hector in her arms when a group of strong men came charging toward me, grinning.

I clutched my thin pajamas and shrank into a corner, but no matter how hard I struggled, I couldn’t fight off the strength of several grown men.

The flimsy fabric was ripped in half and in an instant, the cold air rushed in, seeping into every inch of my skin through my pores.

With the last layer of protection gone, the child in my arms began to shiver uncontrollably.

As those lackeys walked out, they pointed at my daughter, now frozen and pale and laughed.

“Janet, your daughter’s just like you! Look at that little face, still rosy! She’s fine!”

“Yeah, red looks adorable on her!”

“From red to purple, that’s the color of wealth and glory!”

I held my daughter tightly, trying to keep her as warm as I could, but all I could do was shield the air vent closest to us.

My bare skin pressed against the icy metal and when I shifted even slightly, a patch of it tore clean off.

The sharp pain tore through me, straight to the heart.

Bright red blood oozed from the torn flesh, stark against the sterile white of the frozen chamber.

Janet saw it. She gently put Hector down and stepped closer.

Her gaze followed the blood as it slowly crept toward her feet. She opened her mouth, as if to say something.

However, Hector suddenly ran over from behind, touched the blood on the glass and trembled. “Please… just admit your mistake. Janet has so many friends here. If you don’t, things won’t end well for her…”

I stared at Hector. “Why should I admit anything? I saw how comfortable you were with the air conditioning today and how you were flirting with those girls…”

Janet caught what I said and gave Hector a quick glance, a flicker of suspicion flashing in her eyes.

But before I could say more, Hector suddenly slapped himself across the face.

Then, with a loud thump, he dropped to his knees, clutching Janet’s hand and shaking all over. “Janet! I can’t bear to see Yoseph suffer like this anymore. If he still refuses to apologize, then I’ll do it for him, I’ll apologize with him!”

The moment Hector knelt, the doubt in Janet’s eyes vanished.

She rushed to help Hector to his feet, then turned to me, her expression twisted with disgust.

“Yoseph, you’ve been coddled for far too long. Hector has endured your temper in silence for years. And now, when it’s clearly your fault, he still suffers for your sake. How can you just stand there like this?

“I’m not letting this go. If you won’t admit your mistake, don’t even dream of leaving.”

She snapped her fingers at the people nearby. “Bring in more ice bricks, stack them around him. Drench the ice with water and make sure he presses right up against it!”

Just as she finished, a woman tugged at her sleeve. “Janet, please. If you pour water over ice and force skin to touch it, it’ll freeze instantly. If he moves, the skin will rip right off. And he’s holding a child... something could go very wrong.”

Janet paused, her hand still in the air. The silence stretched, until Hector’s quiet voice broke it. “Janet, let it go. The ICU wasn’t as bad as you think.”

His words made Janet’s eyes turn icy. She lowered her hand and said coldly, “Do it. Just like I said.”

The woman opened her mouth to argue, but Janet cut her off with a wave. “This is nothing compared to what Hector’s endured. I’ve already got an ambulance on standby. He’ll survive.”

The young woman fell silent as soon as Janet spoke.

On her signal, the group carrying the ice cubes reentered the cold storage.

They grabbed my hair, shoved me back and surrounded me with blocks of ice. Then came a basin of freezing water, dumped straight over my head.

My skin clung to the ice as if it had fused. My daughter let out a heart-wrenching cry, shaken by the shock of the cold.

The chill drilled into my bones, seeping in through every pore.

We had been trapped here for over five hours. Her tiny limbs had turned a dark shade of purple, almost black.

I tried to shift—to reposition myself and shield her better from the cold—but even the smallest movement ripped flesh from my body where it had frozen to the ice.

Her breathing was faint, each breath weaker than the last. I ignored the pain and forced my body to move, inch by inch, curling around her like a shield.

Blood began to stain the clear ice, turning it a deep crimson. By the time I adjusted my posture, the ice around us was red.

The people who had been mocking us moments ago fell silent, their laughter swallowed by the sight before them.

I screamed through the crimson-stained glass, my voice shaking, "Janet! If anything happens to this child, you, her own mother, will be her killer! I’ll pray at her grave every day, just to curse you with a miserable end!"

Janet flinched. The certainty in her eyes wavered. She took a slow step forward, trying to peer through the bloodied frost to see us.

Then, a sudden voice echoed behind her. "Janet! My dad just said a plane was spotted on the Gardner Family’s private flight path!"

Her expression shifted in an instant. Rage overtook her.

She slammed her fist against the glass and shouted, "Yoseph! What the hell is this?! Are you trying to control me with your Gardner name for the rest of my life?"

Before I could speak, Hector moved beside her, gently rubbing her back, his eyes full of blame as he stared at me.