Chapter 5

Over the next month, I resigned myself to fate. I stopped begging and crying for help.

Even if Delilah approached me with the stun gun, I no longer flinched at her and just endured it numbly.

People eventually thought of me as the disabled husband who'd finally become grateful toward his wife. And when Elijah came to visit me again later, I held Delilah's hand in mine and said, "I'm sorry for the last time, Mr. Santos.

"Lila has been treating me very well. I'm the one who dragged her down and caused trouble for her."

Delilah tightly held my hand in return, looking comforted as though her efforts had finally been acknowledged by me.

After the neighbors left, Dakota rolled her eyes coldly at me and said, "You should have done this earlier. By the way, I have a Civil Law exam next month, and they're also doing a background check then. You'd better not be causing any trouble for me."

"Got it. I won't be causing any trouble for you, Dakota."

I lowered my eyes as I spoke in a calm, docile voice, sounding exactly like a dog that had been trained to behave. It was as if Delilah finally had firm control of everything about me.

This thrill of absolute control made her lower her guard against me.

That day, Delilah sipped on her red wine and said with a red face, "See? This is how you should be behaving, Ron. As long as you'll continue obeying me, we'll both still be the model couple the entire city envies."

It turned out that her deeds of caring for me had been reported in the news, and she had just been named the city's "Person of the Year".

I sneered inwardly when I heard that. I couldn't believe that such a complete devil was being praised and held in such high regard by the rest of the world.

It was just absurd.

"You deserve it, Lila," I said, smiling gently at her. "I wish to be present during the awards ceremony. I want to personally tell everyone just how good you've been to me."

Delilah was absolutely delighted. She thought that this was another great opportunity for her to further enhance her reputation.

So, the night before the awards ceremony, she opened a bottle of expensive red wine at home for the first time ever.

"You're coming onstage with me as well tomorrow, Dakota," Delilah said, slightly tipsy. "We'll show the whole world what true familial love and filial piety actually look like."

She then looked at me, her eyes filled with contempt.

"The only value in your life is to highlight my greatness, Aaron Bradshaw."

"Really?" I asked, looking at the warm water glass in my hands while sitting in my wheelchair. "Do you remember the night five years ago when your parents got into a horrible accident?"

Delilah's glass froze mid-air.

"What did you just say?"

"Did your hands get shaky when you cut the brake line in their car clean before they got into it for a drive?"

I continued smiling at her, my eyes as cold as ice.

Delilah leaped to her feet at once, lunging at me with a horribly twisted expression on her face. She then wrapped her hands around me and began choking me as hard as she could.

"How did you find out about it! Who told you about it!"

"Nobody. I saw everything with my own eyes," I said, struggling to breathe. However, I laughed even more loudly after that.

"You didn't just kill your own parents, Delilah Rowland. You even wanted to kill Dakota and me. How could a monster like you be receiving the "Person of the Year" award in the first place?"

"Shut up! Shut up!" Delilah screamed, completely losing her mind. "You should never have known about anything… I can't keep you around anymore!"

She then turned to Dakota next to her and said with a deranged look in her eyes, "This crazy man is trying to destroy us! What do you think we should do about him, Dakota?"

Dakota set down her wine glass, looking slightly dilemmatic. However, the look was quickly replaced with one of resolve.

"You're right, Mom. He's gone completely crazy. He can't live till tomorrow anymore."

Delilah nodded with a deranged smile on her face.

"Yes. We must kill him. We'll just say he got a heart attack… The pills are already on the table anyway."

Then, she grabbed a handful of the deadly pills and pried my mouth open before forcefully stuffing them in.

"Go to hell, Aaron Bradshaw! Die! You and your horrible secrets will be buried forever!"

The pills got lodged in my mouth, and my face instantly turned red as I fought hard to breathe. However, I was paralyzed waist-down, and I could only fight back with my hands.

At the most critical moment, the door suddenly opened, and a clear voice rang into the living room.

"Hello? Is this the home of Ms. Delilah Rowland?"