Chapter 6
Marcus’s expression shattered instantly as if someone had stabbed him straight through the chest.
As he staggered back, he knocked over the photo frame on the coffee table. It was the only photo we had ever taken together. Now, the glass lay shattered across the floor.
“I’ll spend a lifetime making it up to you.” He dropped to his knees among the shards, letting the blood drip from his knees. “I will transfer all of my shares to you, and I will send Nina abroad. I…”
I ignored him and walked away from that home with no hesitation.
However, a few days later, the butler phoned to inform me that Marcus was in the hospital.
The fluorescent lights in the hospital hallway pierced my eyes.
“Mrs. Hamilton…” the butler’s voice trembled. “Mr. Hamilton took 30 sleeping pills and slit his wrists.”
I stood outside the glass window of the ICU and looked at Marcus, who was plugged with tubes inside. His wrists were heavily bandaged, and his face was paler than the sheets beneath him.
“He said if you didn’t come, he wouldn’t cooperate with treatment,” the butler cried. “The doctor said he’s in critical condition.”
I slowly pushed open the door to his hospital room.
Marcus opened his eyes unexpectedly, amidst the beeping machines. For
a minute, his gaze seemed unfocused, but when he noticed me, it
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brightened.
“Emi… Emily…” He struggled to sit up, and the IV tube rattled as he moved.
Under the oxygen mask, his lips were cracked and bleeding. “Don’t… leave.”
Doctors and nurses rushed in to restrain him. Amid the chaos, I saw the scar on his chest that he got shielding me during the explosion in the car
crash.
A new wound had been sewn over it, the black threads ugly and twisted.
“The patient is too agitated!” a doctor shouted. “Hold him down!”
Marcus suddenly surged with strength and yanked out his needle. Blood sprayed from the back of his hand, splashing onto the white bedsheet.
“Sign… sign…” He pointed, trembling, at the nightstand.
The butler quickly brought over a file box. Inside were neatly arranged property deeds, share transfers, bankbooks—and on top, a signed will.
If he died, everything would go to me.
My eyes flashed as I looked at the fortune that most people could never imagine. Because of that will, I forced myself to stay and care for him.
But I hadn’t expected him to drug me and get me pregnant again. He intended to use another child to fully bind me to him.
I said coldly, “If you truly love me, you should let me leave. I will return the shares. I do not want any of your assets.”
Marcus grasped the divorce papers so firmly that his knuckles became white. His bloodshot eyes focused on me. His voice hoarse as he pleaded,
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Chapter
“Emily, I don’t want anything else. I only want you.”
I quietly packed my belongings and returned each expensive item of jewelry to its velvet box.
Douchero
These presents that had previously made me thrilled now seemed like a ridiculous joke.
Thunder and lightning struck outside the window, and the rain poured in
torrents.
The flash of lightning lit up Marcus’s pale face. He looked like a drowning man, desperately clutching at his last hope.
“I can give you freedom.” He knelt on one knee, trembling, and held my hand. “Just don’t leave me.”
“I scoffed. “Don’t act like you love me. I’m done falling for it.
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If you don’t agree to the divorce, I will file for divorce in court. I have more than enough evidence that you cheated.”
“Marcus’s expression turned dark. Just as I turned to leave, he said, “I know you’ve been financially supporting those children in the villages. Emily, you wouldn’t want them to be stuck there for the rest of their lives because of you, would you?”
My fingers clenched the suitcase handle so tightly that my knuckles
turned white.
The sound of rain crashing against the windows sounded just like the dull thud of a stick hitting me.
I slowly turned around and saw Marcus’s face twist into a confident, triumphant smile I hadn’t seen in a long time.
His voice echoed behind me. “Especially the girl named Abigail Flores…
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Chapter 6
Didn’t she just get accepted to college this year?”
“How dare you threaten me!” I slapped him across the face.
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His eyes pooled with tears as he hugged me tightly and sobbed, “I have no other way. This is the only way to keep you.”
Suffocating despair wrapped around my throat. At that moment, I realized that as long as Marcus was alive, I would never escape him.
In the end, he didn’t do anything else but imprison me.
On a stormy night, I stood before the floor–to–ceiling window of the villa, staring at my pale reflection in the glass.
It had been three months since I was confined in this gilded cage. Every day, I took the “antidepressants” he gave me on schedule.
“Emily, time for your meds.”
Marcus walked in with a glass of warm water, dressed in a tailored suit. He looked just like the charming man I had fallen for the first time we
met.
I obediently swallowed the pills and gave him a weak smile. “Can I use my phone today? I want to check Abigail’s admission notice.”
He stroked my hair, and his gaze was disgustingly gentle. “I’ll give you your phone when your condition stabilizes.”
As soon as he left, I ran into the bathroom and stuck my fingers down my throat. The white pills were flushed down the toilet. In these three months, I had never actually swallowed those medicines that would dull my mind.
I looked so thin in the mirror that I was unrecognizable, but my eyes were incredibly bright.
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07:05
I gently touched the scars on my abdomen left from four miscarriages, then pulled out a hidden spare phone from the lining of my bra.
The screen lit up with a message from Abigail. “She’s taken the bait.”
다
