"Celia lost her temper for a moment, so it's only natural she'd want to throw me out."
I never imagined Eleanor Rowe could turn black into white so brazenly.
This afternoon, it was clearly she who had said it.
That she would one day become Neville Pruitt's wife, fair and square, and that I should know my place and quietly get out.
She'd even boasted that the one Neville had loved all along, from start to finish, was her.
Even this marital home we'd bought together—Neville had handed the largest master bedroom over to her.
"Celia, let me tell you the truth. Neville says he'll treat my child as his own."
"As for you, he never once intended to have a child with you."
"That's why he kept finding excuse after excuse to refuse you."
Her words cut into me until I couldn't stand it anymore.
So I threw her out, her things along with her.
What I didn't expect was that she would deliberately trip herself.
She fell onto the lawn by the door.
It caused heavy bleeding down below, and she was rushed to the hospital.
All of it—she had clearly done it on purpose.
And now she was the one pointing fingers.
Heaping every bit of the blame onto me.
"No, that's not how it was…"
Before I could finish.
Neville, his face full of impatience, took a whistle from the butler's hand.
It was the tool he usually used to train his mastiffs.
As the whistle's shrill note rang out.
His icy words sounded against my ear.
"Tear every scrap of her clothes off her!"
"Didn't she throw all of Eleanor's things out the door?"
"Today I'll let her get a real taste of what it feels like to be alone and helpless."
With that, he pulled Eleanor Rowe close into his arms, intimate and tender.
"Eleanor, don't you worry. Every wrong you've suffered, I'll get it back for you in full today, down to the last bit."
The mastiffs, given their command, lunged at me without a moment's hesitation.
Their sharp teeth shredded my clothes into pieces in seconds.
A violent pain began tearing through my lower belly.
Thinking of the child inside me, all I could do was beg Neville for mercy.
"Neville, let me go. I know I was wrong, I really do."
With nothing left to cover me, I was bared naked before the crowd in an instant.
The people coming and going through the complex turned their eyes on me, one after another.
Among them were more than a few sleazy ones, leering at me with lust in their stares.
"Tsk, tsk. Not only does this woman have a great body, she's fair-skinned and gorgeous too. One look and a man's mind starts wandering."
"Who knew our complex came with a perk like this."
"This place was worth every penny."
Out of fear, my whole body trembled.
I curled in on myself, lying inside the dog cage.
My clothes, already chewed to shreds by the mastiffs, lay tossed in the corner.
The dogs were lapping at their water now, off to one side.
Waiting for Neville to give his next command.
The lustful stares all around me, the mocking voices.
They made me wish the ground would swallow me whole.
I struggled to cover my naked body.
Trembling, I inched toward the corner.
But the pain in my body wrenched cries out of me that I couldn't hold back.
A whole chunk of flesh had been torn from my arm, blood soon sliding slowly down my wrist, and sweat began breaking out across my forehead without stopping.
The sweat seeped into the wound, and the pain nearly made me black out.
I clenched my teeth hard, trying, in this way.
To draw my focus off the pain.
But it did nothing at all.
Perhaps because he noticed how ghostly pale my face had gone, Neville's brow knit tight.
He let go of Eleanor Rowe and strode over to stand before me.
And when he saw the wound on my arm, he couldn't help the sharp breath he sucked in.
