When Ophelia was tired, it was my fault. Whenever anyone felt dissatisfied, everything, absolutely everything, was blamed on me.
Years ago, I naively believed that if I worked hard enough, I could earn my parents’ love.
So I fought desperately to be first in every exam, to build businesses, to make investments.
Yet all my efforts together could never compare to my younger sister softly calling once, “Mom, Dad.”
Fortunately, I grew up. I found both the strength and the courage to resist.
When my mother once again raised that platinum handbag against my head, I slapped her, forcing her into silence.
“If you don’t leave within five minutes, I’ll see you in court.”
The sting left her frozen, and when she finally came to her senses, she only grew more hysterical.
She yanked my hair and roared, “You’re driving me out? You’re driving me out! I carried you for ten months, gave birth to you, raised you with such pain, and this is how you repay me! You ungrateful little slut. Rather than letting you climb on my head and run wild, I might as well beat you to death right now!”
In her fury, Mom even grabbed the house vase and ornaments and hurled them at me.
Just as a crystal sculpture hurtled toward my face, a tall figure stepped in and shielded me.
“Mrs. Hansen, I already said, Cassidy has long had nothing to do with the family. If you bully my fiancée again, I won’t hesitate to use special means to protect her!”
Looking at Kendrick’s broad back, my nose prickled with tears. All my life, what I had longed for most was simple: when I was beaten and helpless, someone to stand in front of me.
But now, as I looked at Kendrick’s tall figure, my heart filled only with bitterness, because before he came, I had already caught that faint trace of perfume clinging to him, one that belonged only to Ophelia.
Even so, it was Kendrick who had driven this trouble away for me. After my mother left, he crouched down to tend my wounds. When his eyes fell on the bruises and blood, his brows tightened.
“Cassidy, how can you be so foolish? When others bully you, don’t you know how to fight back?”
“Got used to it,” I answered calmly, used to being bullied, mocked, and patching myself together again and again with clumsy lies.
Kendrick’s hand froze, then slowly he pulled me into his arms.
“Don’t be afraid. From now on, I’ll protect you. I won’t let you suffer the slightest grievance again.”
I curved my lips in a distant smile, offering no reply. The answer had long taken root in my heart.
After that fleeting episode, the wedding still pressed forward according to plan.
Until the eve of it, when explicit photos exploded across the internet.
Kendrick and my younger sister Ophelia were inside my car, their shameless indulgence caught on surveillance.
The timestamp read July 19th, 10:35 a.m., only ten minutes before Kendrick had wrapped me in his arms, whispering that he would shield me for a lifetime, never letting me endure a single grievance.
In the blink of an eye, Kendrick and Ophelia were dragged beneath the weight of public scorn.
Reporters blocked the company, crowded around the villa, relentless in their siege.
I scrolled through the endless reports with nothing but weariness in my chest.
It was as though, in the past ten years, I had never known Kendrick at all.
What I clung to had been nothing but a hollow shell.
