Chapter 2
As expected, the moment Thayer heard Aveline’s words, he chuckled and posted a message in the company group chat.
“Fourteen thousand dollars to whoever comes up with a punishment that satisfies me. The money’s yours.”
The chat instantly lit up.
One person suggested I bark like a dog. Another said I should wear a sign saying “I’m an idiot” and stand in front of the company building.
Yet another said I deserved to be doused in buckets of cold water “to snap me out of it.”>
Three suggestions quickly surged to the top.
Thayer seemed especially interested in the sign idea, but after a moment’s thought, likely for the sake of the company’s stock price, he simply curled his lips and said, “Althea, consider yourself lucky. We’ll go with the cold water. You need to wake up.”}
As soon as he gave the word, Aveline eagerly ordered the security guards to bring over more than a dozen buckets of ice water.
My body was already wracked with pain and my vision blurred so badly that everything appeared in doubles.
Leaning weakly against my desk for support, I tried to explain, barely able to get the words out.?
“Tha… Thayer, I’m really… not feeling well…”
Thayer looked down at me with nothing but scorn. He pulled the woman beside him into his arms and kissed her in front of everyone. “Althea, drop the act. Is this your latest trick to get my attention? Let me tell you something. I’m not blind. Stop being so pathetic.”}
The sultry woman clung to his body, rubbing up against him as if she belonged there. Ice-cold water came crashing down on me, soaking me to the bone. Thayer, meanwhile, laughed with unabashed joy.}
The men around me looked like they couldn’t get enough, some practically glued their phone cameras to me, their filthy, lecherous stares crawling across my drenched body. The exhaustion, both physical and emotional, became unbearable.
That incident all those years ago wasn’t my choice. But because of it, he had hated me for five long years.}
I didn’t know after how many buckets it happened, but eventually, I lost consciousness. My head struck the edge of the desk, splitting open with a sharp crack.
Just before the darkness took me, I thought I heard his panicked voice.
“Aveline, what are you doing? Hurry up and get her to a hospital!”}
When I finally came to, the first thing I saw was Thayer staring at me from the side of the hospital bed, his eyes full of disgust. “Althea, you really are just like your mother born pathetic.”
“What now? Can’t you live without a man? Faking illness just to make me come running? You must’ve worked so hard to put on this act.”
Five years ago.
I was just a housemaid’s daughter. I’d just received an offer from a top-tier research company.
Then one night, I woke up in bed with Thayer and outside the room, the hallway was swarmed with reporters.
To stabilize the stock price, Thayer’s gravely ill grandfather publicly announced online that I was to be his future granddaughter-in-law. On the day of our engagement, he passed away.
Neither my ailing mother’s attempt to take the blame, claiming she coveted the Alcott Family’s status and was trying to marry me off for gain, nor my repeated explanations that neither of us had anything to do with that incident, could dissolve the hatred Thayer held toward
- me.
“Althea, ever since we started dating, I personally prepared everything for our wedding. I even knelt in the ancestral hall for a full month just to get Grandpa’s approval. How dare you… how dare you do this to me! To the Alcott Family!”}
That night, he crushed the engagement ring he had designed for me underfoot, shredded the wedding dress he had chosen and tore apart the meticulously crafted wedding plan he had spent six months designing-then hurled the pieces in my face.
On our wedding day, the groom never showed up. That very night, he brought home his first mistress.}
He locked me in the bathroom of the bridal suite, forcing me to listen as the two of them went at it again and again in the bedroom I had lovingly decorated.
Afterward, he made me kneel and clean up for them.”
The next morning, all my belongings were thrown into the servant’s quarters and his mistress moved into our bedroom.
My mother had repeatedly rejected Mr. Alcott’s proposal to unite our families. I didn’t believe she was the one behind that scheme. But Thayer refused to listen and refused to believe otherwise.}
Looking at the man before me, his expression dark and cold, I felt nothing but a dull ache in my heart.
“I’ll let you go.”
Thayer let out a scornful laugh, curling his fingers toward the door with disdain.!
1
“Then you’d better keep your word. And while you’re at it, prepare a room for my thirty-ninth lover. Make sure to stock it with jewelry and clothes that young girls like.”>
I used to scream and argue hysterically, but this time, I was unusually quiet and accommodating.
“Do
you
need a condom? What flavor do you prefer?”>
