I didn't hear Valerie come up behind me. One light push on the chair.
“Ah——”
I hit the floor hard. My ankle buckled under me on the way down, and the pain locked my whole body in place.
Valerie heard the front door open. She rushed over, all concern, reaching down to help me up. I swung at her face. Missed.
Jim walked in right at that moment.
“Mia! What the hell are you doing!”
He pulled Valerie into his arms, checking her over.
He didn't glance at me once. Not once. I was crumpled on the floor, in too much pain to speak or move.
Tears soaked into my clothes, the fabric washed so many times it had gone white.
Three years. I'd hauled bricks on construction sites in the summer heat until I passed out. In winter I couldn't bring myself to buy a decent pair of boots, and my feet were covered in chilblains.
Every dirty, backbreaking job I could find, I grabbed. I never let Jim lift a finger at home—terrified this little prince who'd dropped out of the sky might have to rough it even once.
And him? He'd tossed a black card to his mistress without thinking twice, while faking poverty and letting me grind through three years of misery for nothing.
And now, right in front of me, the difference in how he treated us couldn't have been more obvious.
The second Jim's back was turned, Valerie stamped down hard on my injured ankle.
“Ah——”
I screamed. Before Jim could even turn toward me, Valerie let out a whine at the exact same moment.
“Jim, my face hurts so so much. What if it scars? What am I gonna do?”
That was all it took. His attention locked onto Valerie, eyes full of worry, and he scooped her up in his arms.
“Valerie, I'm taking you to the hospital.”
His voice went cold：
“You—stay right here. You don't move, you don't leave. Sit and think about what you did.”
So I lay there in pain all afternoon.
I couldn't get to a hospital on my own. The tears kept coming, hopeless and unending.
Then the hospital called.
“Ms. Fox, your father's surgery was unsuccessful. He doesn't have long. Please come to the hospital immediately if you want to see him one last time.”
Lightning through my skull. I grabbed the broom handle beside me and hauled myself upright.
I dragged myself to the door. The bodyguards stepped into my path.
“My father is dying! Please, let me go!”
“Sorry, ma'am. No order from CEO Gilbert, you're not going anywhere.”
I called Jim. Over and over, frantic, I don't know how many times before he finally picked up.
“Ah——Jim, slower——”
None of that mattered. I opened my mouth to scream his name, but he hung up.
Just as despair swallowed me whole, the hospital called again.
“I'm sorry, Ms. Fox. Your father has passed. Our condolences.”
The phone slipped from my hand. The room tilted and spun. I didn't know where I was anymore.
My mother died when I was three. My father was the only family I had left.
Now he was gone too. I didn't see the point of still being alive.
The old fruit knife on the coffee table caught my eye.
A flash of the blade. Blood everywhere.
I blacked out.
When I opened my eyes I was in a hospital bed. Jim sat beside me, haggard, but I felt nothing, as if my soul had been pulled clean out of my body.
He held my hand：
“I'm sorry, Mia. I'll give your father the most lavish funeral money can buy.”
After that, Jim started spending more time with me.
He washed my feet himself, ran ten blocks to buy me candied hawthorn sticks, showered me with over a hundred designer bags, and gave me a black card just like Valerie's.
Everything I'd never dared dream of, he handed to me now. I didn't want any of it.
After I was discharged, I went back to working. Day shifts and night shifts, back to back, so exhausted I'd fall asleep on the bus.
It wasn't that I liked suffering. It was that only when my body hurt badly enough could it drown out what was happening in my head.
