“Nindy, don’t be afraid. Your brother is here with you,” my brother murmured, his voice filled with forced reassurance. “Chris has already arranged for a private plane to bring in top medical experts. They just haven’t arrived yet… but they will be here by tomorrow. I promise you.”
He spoke as if his words could bridge the unbearable pain coursing through my broken body.
“You love painting, don’t you?” he continued, placing a hand over his chest as if making an unshakable vow. “I swear, you’ll be able to continue doing what you love.”
I pressed my trembling fingers against my aching heart and whispered, “Brother, can I… can I really stand again?”
For a moment, he hesitated. His usually unwavering gaze faltered, unable to meet mine. “Of course you can. Trust me.”
But after spinning so many lies, even he must have lost track of what was real and what wasn’t. He had sacrificed too much for Bella. How could he possibly let me remain a threat?
One was my own blood, the brother who once swore to help me reclaim the love I had lost in childhood. The other was my childhood companion, the boy who had promised to take me across the world when we were young.
And yet, for the sake of that venomous snake, Bella—the imposter who schemed and manipulated from the shadows—they had both chosen to betray me. To pave the way for her future, they had abandoned me without hesitation.
The very people who once promised to pull me from the darkness were the ones who had pushed me into an abyss with no end. Despair wrapped around me like an iron shroud. I turned my head away, unwilling to look at them any longer.
The doctor approached, medical tools in hand. His gaze swept over my battered body—my bloodied limbs, my lower body soaked in crimson. He had seen countless horrors in his profession, yet even he could not suppress the sadness in his eyes.
“Miss Jain, please bear with it for a little while. The surgery will take some time, but for now, we need to clean your wounds to prevent infection.”
I clenched the bedsheet beneath me, my nails digging into the fabric, smearing it with my own blood. The pain was excruciating—so intense that I nearly lost consciousness. But the real agony did not stem from my broken body. It was my heart that suffered the deepest wounds.
Chris turned away, unable to watch me writhe in pain, his silent tears falling to the floor. My brother stood stiffly beside him. As he looked at me, his breathing grew ragged and his eyes turned red at the edges, brimming with feigned grief. His concern appeared so genuine. If I had not known better, I might have believed it. But I had long since become numb to his deception.
As the doctors worked on my wounds, I overheard my brother and Chris speaking in hushed voices outside my hospital room.
Chris’s voice carried an edge of guilt. “Do we really have to go through with this? Nindy is already like this… and now you still want to expose her through those live-streamers?”
My brother sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. A second later, his voice turned cold, decisive.
“Of course we do. If we stop now, wouldn’t all the suffering she endured be meaningless? Besides, she’s already tainted—one more incident won’t change anything. The judges of the Painting Association despise artists with moral corruption. This will destroy any hope she has left.”
He paused before adding, “I’m doing this for her own good. She needs to learn her lesson. One day, she’ll understand that everything I did was for her benefit.”
My heart turned to ice. This was my life. The life I had spent countless sleepless nights fighting for. The years I had poured into my craft, the blisters and callouses that had formed from gripping my paintbrush too tightly. And with just a few words, he was trying to erase all of it.
If I had known that returning to this house would lead to this nightmare, I might have been better off letting my foster mother force me into an unwanted marriage.
The sound of hurried footsteps filled the corridor. A moment later, a group of live-streamers burst into my hospital room.
The small space was instantly overwhelmed by their presence. Cameras were shoved in my face, microphones pressed against my lips. I was drowning in a sea of flashing lights and jeering voices. Surrounded by demons in human skin, I had never felt smaller… more powerless.
“Miss Jain, rumors say that you sought out dangerous thrills and ended up in the hospital because of your own depraved actions. How do you respond to that?”
“Miss Jain, do you have a peculiar fetish? Are normal men no longer enough to satisfy you? Is that why you turned to beggars?”
“Miss Jain, during your university years, it was said that you seduced other women’s boyfriends and even became a mistress, kept by a wealthy man. Are these allegations true?”
