Constance's expression darkened. She swung her foot and kicked my hand away.
The back of my hand slammed against the stone trough beside me, scraping off a layer of skin.
She pulled a white silk handkerchief from her breast pocket.
Constance bent down and scrubbed viciously at the spot on her heels where I'd touched them.
"Wipe that disgusting look off your face."
She crumpled the handkerchief into a ball and threw it at my face.
It slid off, landing in the blood pooling on the ground.
"Caspian hasn't forgiven you yet. You don't get to touch me."
I stared at the handkerchief. I didn't reach for it.
I had to get away from her.
Constance straightened up and waved to her bodyguards.
"Take him. Don't dirty my car."
Two bodyguards stepped forward.
They seized my left and right arms and dragged me off the pile of straw.
My legs had been broken months ago. The bones had healed crooked, fused at wrong angles, unable to straighten.
As the bodyguards hauled me forward, my deadened legs scraped across the ground of crushed gravel and mud, carving two long trails behind me.
The skin and flesh over my kneecaps split open against the rocks, exposing white shards of bone.
Constance walked out of the pigsty and stood on the dirt road at the village entrance.
Chief Grogan waited at the roadside with a handful of villagers, thick wads of hundred-dollar bills clutched in their fists.
Constance swept her gaze over them.
"You've done well these three years. He was here with you, and the act was very convincing."
The Chief nodded eagerly and stuffed the money into the pocket of his threadbare coat.
The bodyguards dragged me in front of Constance and dropped me on the ground.
My body hit the gravel road hard.
Constance looked down at my legs from where she stood.
"You didn't want to do hard labor, so you went and broke your own legs."
She let out a cold scoff through her nose.
"Playing the beggar for sympathy? Making yourself reek like this—did you think I'd go soft?"
I closed my eyes.
Three years ago today, I'd been in the kitchen of the villa, slicing an apple.
The blade slipped and nicked my index finger, drawing a thin line of blood, a single bead welling to the surface.
Constance came running in from the living room and snatched the knife from my hand.
She held my finger under the faucet for ten minutes, then brought out the first-aid kit and wrapped it in so much gauze it looked like a cotton ball.
A month later, she booked out an entire private island.
Every inch of it was covered in red roses.
She held up a ten-carat men's diamond ring and slid it onto my ring finger.
Two days after that, Caspian Holloway came back from overseas.
He moved into the guest room at the villa.
A week later, Caspian came down the stairs wearing one of my white dress shirts.
He picked up the scissors from the coffee table and dragged the blade across his own forearm, opening a streak of blood.
Constance pushed through the front door just as he did it. Caspian clutched his wound and pointed at me.
"Constance, he cut me with the scissors."
Constance ripped the glass of water from my hand and pulled Caspian behind her.
Another week passed. Caspian was carrying a cup of freshly boiled coffee.
He poured every drop of it onto his own shoulder and shrieked, crumpling into the corner of the sofa.
Constance came racing down from the second floor.
Caspian pointed at me.
"He tried to scald me to death with boiling water."
The next day, Caspian stood on the ledge of a thirtieth-floor rooftop.
Constance rushed forward and grabbed him.
After that, in front of a crowd of reporters, Constance tore our marriage contract to pieces.
She froze every one of my bank accounts and had her bodyguards shove me into a car.
She drove me to the Greystone Mountains herself and handed a sum of money to the village chief.
She told me I would stay here for three years. To feel what Caspian had felt.
Those three years were real torture.
After the Chief took the money, he locked me in the pigsty.
