Jade's face was flushed—not with embarrassment, but victory. "Do you really think a marriage license can tie you and Connor down forever?"
She stepped closer, her tone dripping with cruelty.
"Connor said this charade won't last more than three months. Once he secures the company shares, he'll divorce you."
"I know," I replied calmly.
Jade froze. She hadn't expected agreement.
It wasn't just that Connor wanted to divorce me—I didn't want him anymore, either.
"You've finally thought it through?" she sneered. "Or are you planning to make another scene and slit your wrists for sympathy?"
To force Connor into this marriage, I had attempted suicide four times.
Jacob Delgado and my parents couldn't bear to watch me suffer, so they'd used the Delgado Shares as leverage, forcing Connor to bow his head.
I offered a bleak smile. "You and Connor are the perfect match, Jade. I'm just the clown."
Jade let out a sharp, cold laugh. Then her hand flew across my face.
"Don't think playing victim will get us to forgive you!"
I wiped blood from the corner of my mouth. "I wouldn't dare."
I never dared hope for anyone's forgiveness. I only wanted my Wanwan to live.
"However," I added, my voice steady, "for these next three months, Connor is mine. What do you have to say about that?"
Jade's eyes reddened with rage. She burst into tears and fled the room.
Connor instinctively tried to rush after her, but his injured leg failed him. He couldn't leave the bed.
I seized the moment. I pushed him back down, unraveled his silk tie, and bound his wrists to the headboard.
I was about to "humiliate" him.
Connor roared, eyes bloodshot with fury. "Samantha, don't you find yourself disgusting?"
Disgusting?
Perhaps. In his eyes, I was soiled goods because I had slept with a stranger. But wasn't that the very "favor" he and Jade had orchestrated for me?
After he finished—wearing an expression of utter torment, as if he were a flower being trampled by a beast—I calmly helped him pull up his pants.
He kept cursing me. I turned a deaf ear.
I picked up the insulated lunch box from the table, sat by the bed, and brought a spoonful of soup to his lips.
Connor shoved my arm violently, knocking the thermos over. Hot soup splashed across my chest.
I blinked, feeling the heat soak through my clothes as tears rolled silently down into the dark, wet collar of my shirt.
Without a word, I crouched down and cleaned the mess from the floor.
"Connor, Grandpa will only sign over the shares if I get pregnant."
I dropped the bomb quietly.
Connor glared at me with pure hatred. "In your dreams."
"Other than Jade, I will never have a child with any woman."
He'd said this to me no fewer than nine times.
I already knew he wouldn't agree, which was why I had to force him. Today was my ovulation window.
But he was cruel to the end. Before leaving the house, he sent his assistant to force-feed me emergency contraceptive pills.
His handsome face didn't carry the slightest trace of affection.
"Samantha, you have to atone for the mistakes you made in the past."
The medicine was extremely bitter. It stuck in my throat, triggering my gag reflex, but I swallowed it under his watch.
The moment he was gone, I rushed to a corner where he couldn't see. I jammed my fingers down my throat, retching violently until I threw up everything—the pills, bile, the sour water from my stomach.
To ensure he wouldn't have to share a bed with me again, Connor called Jade to the house.
With his leg injured, she became his personal nurse.
The two of them were inseparable, sickeningly sweet. When I was present, they ramped up the intimacy just to spite me.
I cannot eat spicy food. Yet Connor ordered the nanny to cook only the heavy, chili-laden dishes that he and Jade preferred. I was left with nothing but a bowl of plain white rice.
Connor had a severe obsession with cleanliness. His intimate apparel had to be hand-washed, and he forbade the nanny from touching them. He specifically named me for the task.
In the past, I would have done it gladly.
Even though it was foolish, it was a service I had been willing to provide.
But to humiliate me further, he threw Jade's lace underwear into the pile for me to wash as well.
He installed Jade in the master bedroom—the room that belonged to me and him—and banished me to the guest room next door.
Every night, I tossed and turned, listening to the sounds of their pleasure filtering through the wall.
To quell his anger, I endured it all without a word.
I hid under my blanket and cried in secret until sleep finally took me.
