Chapter 16
The man’s gaze, however, remained deeply fixed on the last place in the household that still held my presence. As he listened to the three maids pledging their loyalty with exaggerated gestures and voices, a faint smile tugged at the corners of his lips.}
“Very well, come with me.”
He led the three women to the room next to his own, took away the few remaining pieces of my clothing and then set fire to the servant’s
room.§
The three women, each harboring dreams of rising to the top, entered the room in high spirits. Soon, the sound of a man and three women panting echoed through the air.
In the room next door, Aveline bit her lower lip hard and kept her eyes open until dawn.”
The packet of medicine in her hand was clenched so tightly that it became stained with bright red blood.”
The next moming, just as she sat down, three blushing maids took their seats beside her. Thayer’s eyes were faintly bruised and his neck was covered in red and purple love bites.
“Aveline, you’ve always been considerate and generous, unlike that jealous shrew Althea. So I’ll leave these three to you to arrange as you see fit. Don’t let me down.”
With that, he sat down to eat. Aveline looked toward Harvant, who sat at the head of the table, silently pleading for him to say something on her behalf.
Thayer couldn’t help but sneer. If he had calculated things so precisely, why hadn’t he looked into what kind of man his scumbag father really was? During a family crisis, that man was someone who used flowery words to trick a woman into getting pregnant before marriage just to extort money from her father. Even during the pregnancy, he kept cheating.
Aveline, what man doesn’t fool around? You should try to be more understanding.”
“But Thayer, you really went too far. Next time, don’t do it right in front of Aveline.”
The hope in Aveline’s eyes shattered. Obediently, she led the three women to the kitchen to bring out the nourishing soup she had prepared.
Thayer refused the bowl she offered, but instead drank every last drop from the bowls meant for the other three women.}
“These three little lovers are all quite pleasing. Aveline, don’t treat them poorly. Let them pick whatever they like. And if they take a liking to something of yours, don’t fuss over it with them for now.”
Aveline listened to his instructions with a heart full of pain. Looking at the lips that had just kissed others, she felt sick to her stomach. When she tried to back away, the man forcefully pulled her into his arms, aggressively pressing his lips to hers, their mouths entwined. Then he pulled away, coldly watching as she keeled over, dry heaving uncontrollably.
He wanted to laugh, but the sound wouldn’t come. Aveline had felt a flicker of real affection even as he used her, yet now she was sick with disgust. Then what about me, who had once loved him with all her heart?
Thayer didn’t dare think too deeply, but the image of me scrubbing myself raw in the shower after every intimate encounter with him, as if trying to scrub off a layer of my skin, kept replaying in his mind.
It was only then that he suddenly realized–he remembered everything about me, the woman he claimed to hate so much.
Even on our wedding night, he remembered vividly when he lay with my bearing scratch marks from another woman and I vomited several times.
I had cried miserably, lying on the cold bathroom floor, my voice hoarse and broken.
I had said, “Thayer… just kill me… just kill me.”}
A sharp, sudden pain stabbed at his heart. Thayer snatched the suit jacket the servant handed him and rushed out to the car as if being chased by a wild beast.”
Aveline watched his retreating figure and let a smile slip across her face. Only when she noticed Harvant’s suspicious gaze did she switch back to her gentle and demure expression.
“As the future daughter–in–law of the Alcott Family, you must remember to be generous,” Harvant instructed her with a few words of advice before fingering his prayer beads and having the driver take him to the temple on the mountain.
Only after all the men of the house had left did Aveline truly smile. She began praising the three women as if they were heavenly fairies, letting them ransack the room however they pleased.”
