He killed that kind woman who only knew how to fast and pray, who shed tears before my father’s portrait.

The wedding I had anticipated for years became my nightmare.

All I remember is my mother’s blood soaking my wedding dress.

A world of crimson.

Julian pressed my head down, whispering like a demon.

“I never loved you.”

Marrying you was, at first, because your father forced me.

Later, it was because of hate.

He said Sophia Rossi was his true love.

Just because someone saw Sophia secretly bringing him medicine after he was injured.

Her face was slashed and she was driven out of the Vaughn estate.

Because of that, he hated me, hated the Vaughn family.

“Sophia and I were innocent! What right did you have to hurt her!”

“She was the only pure thing in my heart, and I won’t allow anyone to defile her!”

“Shannon, you must pay the price for this!”

He gripped my slender ankle and pointed to a dog cage not far away.

A half-smile played on his lips. “Don’t you like me so much? Don’t you want to be with me?”

“I’m going to break your legs and keep you chained to my side forever!”

It was only then that I understood.

Julian’s hatred for me ran so deep.

He hated me, and he hated himself.

He hated me for making him stain his hands with blood, for pushing him past the point of no return.

He hated me for standing in his and Sophia’s way.

So, he wanted to drag me down with him, to rot together in this sunless hell.

I didn’t know if there was a misunderstanding in all of this.

I only knew that my mother, who only wished for good, was innocent.

Just as my eighteen-year-old heart, which I gave to Julian, was also innocent.

The life I saved back then could be balanced out by the eight years he raised me.

But the murder of my mother was a debt that could only be paid in blood.

I had to make him pay with his life.