Finnegan looked like he didn't want to waste another minute talking to me. He whipped out his phone and called his secretary.
Seeing this, I immediately rushed up to him, but the bodyguards quickly held me back.
"Don't call! Don't call!" I yelled, repeated those two words with every ounce of strength I had left in my body. My throat muscles constricted at the pressure and caused a piercing pain to shoot down my esophagus.
"I'll kneel…"
Under Finnegan's watchful eyes, I shuffled over to the first step and looked up at the flight of stairs carved into the stone, letting my mind wander. I was hesitating.
"Mom, Dad, I'm sorry," I thought. "I know you told me that I always had to repay everyone in full for the kindness they showed me. I have no way to repay Gordon for his kindness, but I cannot allow his hard work to go to ruins because of me."
The bakery that Gordon owned was just a very small family bakery run by himself. In the past, I had lived a luxurious life as Ms. Brooke and never bothered lowering myself to understand the pains of those who barely scraped by in society.
But now, I was just Winter Brooke, and I knew of all the pains and tribulations that they had to go through.
"Are you doing it or not? Stop wasting my time!"
Finnegan yelled at me when he saw that I still stood there like a dummy without moving. He was only in a rush because he was eager to go back to Colette. I was sure of it.
I turned to look at him. I knew that anxious feeling more than anything in the world.
After three years of studying in college, I gave up on my lecturer's offer to recommend me to an established laboratory for my internship because I wanted to get home as quickly as possible to be with Finnegan, who'd lost his eyesight.
At that time, I thought that nothing in the world compared to him holding my hand and smiling at me, saying, "You've studied hard, Winnie."
The sweeter the memories, the more bitter the present. Nobody would ever believe that the high-and-mighty Ms. Winter Brooke would actually fall in love with a neglected, abandoned child who was also the youngest of the lot.
It was equally as unbelievable that I would give up my studies for a blind person like him.
Finnegan believed it. However, he believed that Colette had been the one who accompanied him all along while pretending to be me. After all, only "Winter Brooke" could freely move about between houses and go wherever she wanted without being restricted.
Slowly, I got to my knees, my tears dripping down into the soil. There was only one thought left in my head, and that was, my love meant nothing to anyone, and neither did my dignity anymore.
They were worthless.
After what felt like forever, my knees felt as though they were on fire. The color of the jeans fabric at my knees had turned completely black from the dirt.
My head was in a whirl. I turned around to look at how far I'd gone, and realized that I had only managed to climb about 30 steps up.
I was quite familiar with this path as I'd walked on it countless times before and accurately counted every step I took. However, nobody told me that it would be so tiring for me to climb all the way up on only my knees.
It was mentally exhausting and excruciatingly painful, at least a hundred times more than I ever thought it would be.
Finnegan just stood to the side as he watched me coldly. I didn't know what I was thinking when I suddenly opened my mouth and asked him, "Can I… please… rest…"
"No," he answered mercilessly. "How are you ever going to atone for your sins if you're not sincere about this?"
Atone for my sins? So, when he told me to beg Colette for forgiveness, he'd meant that I should be atoning for my sins as well?
He really treated her like a god. He made her so important, like she was the center of his life.
I smiled bitterly. He was doing the same thing I used to do in the past.
I forced myself to toughen up and continued climbing the stairs on my knees. Maybe Finnegan thought that it was too easy for me—now, he even demanded that I crouched down and touched the ground with my forehead with each step I took, while repeating the words, "I was wrong".
I refused to say it because I didn't know what wrong I had committed.
Finnegan then grabbed me by the chin and forced me to look him in the eyes through my messy and unruly hair.
"You are in no position to negotiate anything with me."
He had hundreds of ways to continue trampling on my dignity until it completely disappeared, after all.
When I finally reached the 60th step, my knees and palms were bloodied, and I could feel a warm, sticky liquid oozing through my jeans. But other than that, I couldn't feel anything else anymore.
I gasped heavily. My lips were pale and my throat tasted like blood.
"I was wrong…"
I straightened up my back and hugged myself tightly. The cold sweat that dripped down my spine made me shiver uncontrollably.
I was wrong. I'd been wrong.
Had I known earlier that I would end up experiencing such pain and torment, I would have just ended my life back then. However, if I really were to go, who would end up having to pay off my family's debt? Mom and Dad would never be able to rest in peace in their graves, either.
