Chapter 2

I arrived home, a place that was saturated with Steve's rules—hands must be sanitized upon entry, the couch must remain perfectly unwrinkled, and the smell of cooking oil was absolutely forbidden.

He had treated me like nothing more than a live-in cleaning lady.

I walked into the kitchen and filled a bucket with water. Then, I took his prized collection of books and dropped them in, one by one.

But that wasn't enough.

I dug out a few bottles of cheap air freshener from the cabinet and sprayed them wildly throughout the house. This was the smell Steve hated the most. In fact, he called it the stench of the lower class.

Once I was done, I sat on the couch and waited quietly.

At 2:00 am, the door opened. The overpowering stench of pigsty and foot odor flooded the living room.

Steve sauntered in hand-in-hand with Paige, brazen and unapologetic.

Seeing the mess in the house, he froze for a moment. But soon, an expression of pure enjoyment spread across his face. With a deep inhale, he savored Paige's scent.

"That's more like it," he said as he pushed up his glasses, his eyes gleaming with feverish excitement. "Audrey, you've finally shattered that fake veneer of refinement. This chaos and this cheap scent—that's real life. This is the deconstruction of postmodernism."

I almost choked on his shamelessness.

He led Paige over to the leather couch, the one I had carefully picked out.

Paige, with her feet covered in dead skin, plopped right down and rubbed herself back and forth against it.

"Oh wow, this couch is really soft. It's even softer than a pig's belly back home," she announced loudly, throwing the banana peel onto the carpet.

Steve looked on adoringly. "I'm glad you like it. This is going to be your home from now on."

He then turned to me. "Paige's hungry, so go cook. She wants beef stew. Use plenty of oil, and don't cook it too long. The meat should still be chewy."

I didn't move from my seat. "I'm not your maid. If she wants beef stew, make it yourself."

Instead of getting angry, Steve rolled up his sleeves. "Fine, I'll do it myself. Your cooking never had any soul anyway."

Half an hour later, he actually emerged from the kitchen carrying a large bowl of greasy beef stew. Not even bothering with utensils, he and Paige just dug in with their hands.

They ate noisily, smacking their lips and feeding each other chunks of meat. It was a truly nauseating sight.

Unable to take it any longer, I rushed into the bathroom and dry-heaved.

All these years, if I so much as ate something slightly greasy, Steve would scold me for smelling like rotten meat. He forced a strictly plant-based diet on me for three years, where eggs weren't even allowed.

Now it seemed, it wasn't that he was a vegan, he just wanted to eat meat with someone like Paige.

The next day, the school suspended my classes, citing family issues that supposedly affected my teaching quality. There was no doubt that it had to be Steve's doing.

With his extensive connections in the faculty, a few twisted remarks from him were enough to land me under investigation.

I didn't make a scene. Instead, I packed up and went straight home.

The moment I walked in, I saw Paige sitting at my dressing table. She had dumped all my cosmetics—each bottle worth thousands of dollars—onto the floor.

As she poured them out, she cursed, "What a load of nonsense. These cosmetics are nothing but capitalist poison. Professor Malone says if you put on too much of this stuff, it'll make your face thick and make you unlucky!"

Instead of panicking when she saw me return, she patted her stomach smugly.

"Sweetheart, you're back! Perfect timing—I'm hungry. Make some chicken soup for me. Professor Malone says this baby is going to be really bright. A future valedictorian for sure."

Her baby bump wasn't even showing yet, but she made a point of sticking it out. However, this just made her look like a bloated toad.

"Since you can't get pregnant, you should just step aside. Can't blame me for stepping in to bear the child for you."

I went into the kitchen and took a few strong laxative pills from my bag, then put them in a supplement bottle. Of course, I had no intention of inducing a miscarriage. As long as she didn't take too much, the most she would experience was diarrhea.

I walked out holding the bottle. Then, forcing a stiff smile onto my face, I said, "You're right, the baby comes first. These are precious prenatal supplements I had someone buy. It's said to support the baby's development and even boost intelligence."