Chapter 9

The soldiers immediately stepped forward to take Joe's friends away.

"Stop!"

Joe hurled the wineglass in his hand to the floor. Glass shattered everywhere.

"This is my birthday party! These are my guests! I'd like to see which one of you dares touch them!"

The soldiers hesitated.

"Mr. Kingston, we have our orders. Please don't make this difficult for us."

Joe looked at Fiona's retreating figure, then at his friends, whose faces had gone pale.

A crushing wave of anger, grief, and despair swept over him.

He clenched his jaw.

"You're determined to punish someone, right? Fine."

"This is my party. I'm the one responsible for everything that happens here. Whatever punishment you were going to give them, I'll take it for them."

"Joe, don't!" his friends protested, reaching for him.

Joe shook them off, his expression resolute.

"This started because of me. I'll be the one to end it. You guys go home."

Then he looked at the soldiers.

"Lead the way."

Outside the military detention building, the heavy baton came down again and again, each blow landing with a sickening thud.

Joe lay facedown on a bench, his lower lip bleeding from how hard he was biting it.

But he refused to make a sound.

By the time all eighty strikes were over, the skin from his back down to his thighs was torn and bloody, the entire area nearly numb.

"Mr. Kingston..."

Even the soldiers carrying out the punishment couldn't help feeling sorry for him.

Joe braced his shaking arms against the bench and slowly forced his battered body upright.

His face was white as a sheet, his forehead drenched in cold sweat.

Still, he made himself stand straight.

Then he looked at his anxious friends and managed a weak smile.

"I'm... fine. You guys... go home."

Without another word, he turned and made his way home alone.

Every step tore at the wounds on his back, sending waves of pain through him until his vision went black around the edges.

The moment he made it inside, his strength finally gave out.

He collapsed facedown onto the living room rug.

He didn't call a doctor.

He didn't call for any of the staff.

He simply lay there for a long time until he finally found the strength to drag himself up and retrieve the first-aid kit.

Then, little by little, he struggled to treat the brutal wounds across his back himself.

Every touch sent excruciating pain through him, leaving his entire body drenched in cold sweat.

But he only bit down hard on a towel and endured it in silence.

Fiona didn't come home once over the next several days.

Joe never asked where she was.

He simply recovered in silence and continued packing.

Then one day, he received a call from his father, George Kingston.

"The divorce has been approved. The announcement will be published tomorrow so everyone in Hemsouth City knows the two of you are officially divorced. I'll give Fiona the medication then too."

George paused before adding sharply, "The moment you get the divorce papers, I want you gone. Go as far away as you can and don't come back here causing trouble again."

Joe listened to his father's cold voice.

By now, his heart was too numb to feel anything.

"George Kingston, you disgust me."

Before his father could explode, Joe hung up.

He stood there for a long time, slowly looking around the house he had once shared with Fiona.

Then he picked up the luggage he had already packed.

Without a single backward glance, he left for the airport and boarded a flight overseas.

From that day on, Joe Kingston was gone from Hemsouth City.