Chapter 3

Hannah struck Samuel so hard that his face turned to the side. An intense roaring filled his ears. He felt warm, sticky blood trickling out of the corner of his mouth.

Looking frosty, Hannah gripped Samuel's wrist and pulled him aside. There was no hiding the threat in her lowered voice. "Another word out of you, Samuel, and I won't let it slide.

"Now take Benjamin and go back to the bungalow! Neither of you is to leave the premises without my permission!"

With that, she turned and took Tristan into her arms, patiently comforting him. Her gestures were jarringly affectionate.

A sense of bitterness seized Samuel. In the end, the corner of his mouth curled up. He tightened his arms around Benjamin and turned to head downstairs.

However, before he could take the first step down the flight of stairs, a vicious shove from behind sent him toppling forward. Benjamin's small body flew out of his arms and into the air, only to strike the wall, rebound, and land with a sickening thud.

Samuel, on the other hand, tumbled down the stairs like a rolling pin. He tasted copper in his mouth, but he bit his tongue and forced the blood back down his throat. He couldn't care less about his own pain as he crawled to Benjamin's side.

"Benjamin, I'm sorry… I'm so sorry…" He was so devastated by how gruesome and broken Benjamin looked that the last of his sensibility snapped.

A guttural, animalistic scream tore free from him. He couldn't even save Benjamin from disfigurement at the very end.

He whirled around and pinned a deadly look on the person at the top of the stairs. "I'll kill you, Tyler! I'll kill you! I want you dead! Go to hell!"

Samuel surged up the stairs like a maniac, staggering on the way, but he hadn't even gotten close to Tyler when Hannah caught him in her vise-like grip.

"That's enough nonsense from you, Samuel! Tyler only lost control and shoved you down the stairs because you showed up here with Benjamin and provoked him first!

"It's your fault things ended up this way. Now, take Benjamin back to the bungalow with you, and don't freaking leave the house unless I say so!"

Trembling, Samuel eyed the woman before him in disbelief. "Hannah, Benjamin's dead—"

"Ow! My head hurts…" Tyler suddenly clutched his head and crouched, looking agonized as he interrupted Samuel once again.

Hannah scowled and shoved Samuel aside. "Get out of here, and take Benjamin with you! I'll explain the rest to you once Tristan gets better."

She helped a grimacing Tyler to his feet and left the stairwell.

Samuel watched her leave mercilessly, and a humorless snort escaped him. Tears sprang from his eyes as he snarled behind her, "I hate you, Hannah!"

He watched her go still for only a second, then disappear from view.

He'd been with Hannah since he was 18, and now he was 28. A decade had passed, and today, their relationship was over.

He dried his tears, leaving only an icy, unforgiving look in his eyes.

Samuel gathered Benjamin, now little more than a disfigured mess, in his arms and headed to the funeral parlor. It wasn't long before the four-year-old little boy was reduced to a pile of ash.

Clutching the box of ashes close to him, Samuel fished out his phone and dialed a number.

"I'll give you my shares in Garber Corporation and help you become executive director, but on two conditions." Samuel's words were laced with unadulterated hatred. "One: I want Hannah and Tyler to pay for what they did to my son!

"And two: I want ten million dollars as compensation and a passport. I'm going abroad."

The woman on the other line chuckled. "Very well. You'll get what you want after a week."