Chapter 3

I endured the excruciating pain in my body and used the only smartwatch I had left to hire a hospital aide.

She carried me downstairs and hailed a cab to Caleb’s company.

I needed to retrieve my mother’s belongings from the safe, as well as my paper medical records.

The moment I entered the lobby, the security guards stopped me.

Caleb stepped out of the elevator. When he saw me in my wheelchair, there was undisguised disgust on his face.

“Get her out of here!

“My sister is mentally unstable from the trauma of losing her leg. She’s no longer capable of making rational decisions. No one is allowed to let her touch any of the company’s property or documents!”

My eyes were bloodshot as I gripped the handles of my wheelchair.

“Caleb! My medical records are in the safe. They can prove that everything I said is true!”

Caleb’s expression immediately darkened.

He sneered and ordered someone to retrieve the file.

I breathed a sigh of relief. As long as he opened it, he would know the whole truth and realize that I was innocent.

But Caleb didn’t open it.

Instead, right in front of me, he threw the file into the shredder beside him.

The machine roared to life, shredding the papers into tiny pieces.

I lunged toward it like a madwoman and fell hard onto the tiled floor, my injured leg dragging across the ground and leaving a streak of blood behind.

“No!”

I reached out desperately, trying to grab the shredded papers, but Caleb stepped on the back of my hand.

“Natalie, have you had enough?

“No one would joke about their own life.

“Besides, a debt of gratitude for saving someone’s life outweighs everything.

“If you cause another scene today, I’ll consider myself an only child.”

The security guards dragged me outside.

Standing in the rain, I remembered Isla’s words. I begged the hospital aide to take me back to the apartment in the city.

As soon as we stepped out of the elevator, I found the front door wide open.

Several construction workers were tearing apart the living room I had carefully decorated.

Isla was sitting openly on the sofa, directing them.

“Take down that awful wedding photo on the wall and throw it straight into the trash outside.

“And that old wooden cabinet that looks so tacky? Get rid of it too.”

But that cabinet had been custom-made for me by my mother. It was my most precious wedding dowry.

My eyes widened with fury as I pushed my wheelchair forward and blocked the workers.

Isla turned around. When she saw me, she immediately put on a pitiful expression.

“Natalie, I’m very weak right now. I can’t stand seeing all these old, shabby things. Adrian said he’d replace them for me.”

Knowing that Adrian had allowed this, I stopped moving.

My heart went completely cold toward the man I had loved for five years.

I wheeled myself straight toward the storage room.

I needed to retrieve my identification documents and private savings. I had to find a way to stay alive first.

Isla immediately followed me.

“Natalie, you have trouble getting around. Let me help you.”

She reached out as if she were going to support me.

The moment she turned around, she deliberately kicked over a toolbox on the floor.

Hammers and wrenches scattered everywhere.

Isla let out a scream and deliberately fell backward into the mess.

“Ah! Natalie, why did you push me?”

At that exact moment, the front door was pushed open, and Adrian rushed inside.

He completely ignored my pale face. His attention went entirely to Isla, who was clutching her ankle and crying.

When he saw the bruising on her ankle, he completely lost his reason.

In a fit of rage, Adrian kicked my wheelchair hard.

“You vicious woman! How dare you hurt her!”

The wheelchair lost its balance.

I went tumbling down several steps with it.

My body slammed against the wooden floor, and the freshly stitched wound on my injured leg split open.

Blood gushed out, quickly soaking into the floorboards.

When Adrian saw the blood covering the floor, he hesitated for a split second.

Isla immediately clutched her chest and pretended to feel dizzy and nauseous as she collapsed into his arms.

“Adrian... I feel so dizzy. Am I going to die?”

Adrian snapped back to reality.

Without the slightest hesitation, he scooped Isla into his arms.

As he turned around, he warned the workers nearby,

“None of you interfere!

“Call security and have them throw this crazy woman pretending to be dead out of the complex!”

The security guards hauled me up and dragged me to the roadside outside the residential complex.

Rain poured down in torrents.

My phone had been smashed when I fell down the stairs and was completely dead.

Lying helplessly in the muddy water, I closed my eyes in despair.