Love Me, Mr. CEO

The rain poured down heavily, as if the sky had decided to wash away all the sins of the world.

The prison guard stood before the huge iron gate and tossed her a small plastic bag containing her old clothes and a battered phone.

"Your sentence is over... Go."

The girl slowly raised her head. Her face was pale, her body thin, so thin that the gray prison coat looked frighteningly loose on her. Her hair was tangled, her lips dry and cracked, and her eyes empty of any spark.

She took her first step outside the gate.

She stopped.

She couldn't do it.

Her legs suddenly trembled, and she collapsed to her knees on the wet ground, breathing heavily.

Three years.

But she didn't remember the cell first —

She remembered that night three years ago.

---

She had just enrolled in university, and her acceptance letter to the piano department was still placed under the glass on her desk. She was eighteen, full of hope for the future, even though she lived as the "illegitimate daughter" in the farthest maid's room in the Winters family house. She believed that with hard work she could change everything.

That night, there was a party at the Winters residence, the hall was filled with guests. Celia was on the second floor carrying her music book, heading toward the stairs,

Suddenly she heard a loud thud in a room she passed by, she stopped...

She knocked on the door, no one answered. She pushed the door and entered — it was pitch dark, and she saw only the shape of a person lying on the sofa.

She approached him slowly...

As the moonlight reflected on his face, Celia recognized him immediately.

"M.. Mr. Hamilton, are you okay?!"

Junior Hamilton slowly opened his eyes and saw Celia's small face.

To wake him up, Celia quickly got up, "I'll get a doctor, wait a moment..."

Junior quickly raised his hand and grabbed her... pulled her toward him and lunged at her...

She tried to resist, she screamed, but his strength was greater than hers. She smelled the heavy scent of alcohol and another strange smell.

When she woke up, dawn had broken.

Her whole body ached, and she was lying on a strange bed, covered by nothing but a thin blanket. She turned her head — and saw Junior Hamilton's face.

Handsome, cold, and his eyes fixed on her with anger.

He was awake. And he was completely naked.

Celia trembled with fear, and rolled out of bed wrapping herself in the blanket, trying to explain in a shaking voice:

"I... I don't know... I came to get the wine..."

Junior sat up, and looked at her as if she were mere trash.

"The illegitimate daughter of the Winters family," he said slowly, "climbing into my bed?"

"No! I really just wanted to help you by getting a doctor for you —"

"Your calculations are clear." He got off the bed, picked up his shirt from the floor, and put it on very slowly. "You drug me, climb into my bed, then get pregnant by me and enter the Hamilton family?"

Celia was trembling violently. She couldn't form a coherent sentence, and just repeated: "I didn't do anything.. I..."

The last buttons of his shirt settled into place. He turned toward her, and looked at the girl kneeling before him.

He leaned down, and grabbed her chin, as if she were a dirty piece of cloth.

"Did you think that by sleeping with me for one night I would marry you?"

He released her, and wiped his fingertips as if getting rid of dust.

"An illegitimate daughter should stay in her place."

She saw his back moving away through the door.

When the door closed, her world closed too.

Three days later, the police took her away. The charge: "Planning, infiltration, and theft of trade secrets" — she knew nothing about those files, the drugging and the exploitation...

It was her own father who was responsible for imprisoning her, despite her pleas he didn't even listen to her...

No one listened to her explanations.

In court, she saw Evelyn Winters — her half-sister — standing among the attendees, smiling at her.

In that moment, she understood everything.

The drugging was from Evelyn. The room was from Evelyn. The fingerprints and signatures were also from Evelyn.

But when the judge announced the verdict, Evelyn clapped quietly under the table.

Three years. She was sentenced to three years.

---

On her first day in prison, she was stripped of her clothes and forced to shower under cold water that poured like needles on her skin. She bit her lip and did not cry.

"New face? Soft skin... clearly you haven't tasted bitterness in your life." said the leader of the inmates, looking at her like a piece of meat on a table.

That night, after the lights were turned off, they dragged her to the laundry room. Punches and kicks, her hair being torn as she was slammed against the wall. Her forehead hit the cold iron, and she felt warm blood running down her nose.

"You dare seduce rich men? Pretending to be innocent?"

She curled up in the corner, covering her head with her arms, she didn't resist, she didn't scream. She knew screaming was useless — the guard stood outside the door, looked through the small window for a moment, then left.

The next morning, she was forced to kneel and clean the blood stain. The skin on her knees broke, and grains of sand entered her flesh.

"Hurry!" The guard slapped her back with a whip.

The whip had a metal tip, leaving a deep red line. She made no sound, she just moved faster.

But she didn't know it was just the beginning.

In the second month, she was put in solitary confinement for "indiscipline". Three days and two nights, with no water or food, only darkness and the squeaking of rats on her feet.

She learned to count her heartbeats to pass the time. One, two, a hundred, a thousand — when she reached ten thousand, the door opened.

She came out of it, having lost five kilograms of her weight.

In the third month, the leader of the inmates said her face was "too annoying", and used a broken bottle to draw three lines on her arm. "A mark to remind you that you are no longer a lady."

When the blood poured, she finally cried. Not from the pain — but because she suddenly remembered that two months ago she was sitting in the university piano hall playing Chopin.

She looked at her bleeding hand, at the dirt and dried blood between her fingers, then laughed.

She laughed until the guard was bewildered.

From that day on, she never cried again.

The cruelest moment was a year and a half after she entered prison. She was accused of "hiding a message" — in reality, it was just a small piece of paper from another inmate with "keep going" written on it.

They tied her to an iron chair, and covered her eyes. She didn't see who was hitting her, she only felt fists falling on her ribs and stomach and back. She heard her bones cracking, and her breathing becoming heavier and heavier.

That day, she did not beg.

She gritted her teeth, and waited until everything was over, then returned to her wooden bed, and counted the cracks in the ceiling. One, two, three.

She escaped to the piano room in her imagination, and played Moonlight Sonata all night.

Then they started forcing her to "copy".

Thousands of numbers daily. Her fingers blistered, bled, healed then blistered again. Her joints swelled until they were like walnuts, and her fingers stiffened so she couldn't straighten them after gripping the pen.

"This is an order from Mr. Hamilton."

The guard would say that every time he threw a new pile of papers in front of her.

She heard this sentence five hundred and thirty-seven times.

Each time it was like a knife, cutting something warm that was still in her heart.

After three years, her hands were no longer able to play.

But she learned something else —

Not to cry, not to justify.

---

She opened her eyes.

The rain was still falling.

She hugged the small plastic bag to her chest, as if it were all she had left in the world.

She took out her old phone. The only number she had memorized by heart was her mother's number.

She pressed it with a trembling hand.

It rang...

Then it rang again.

And finally her mother's warm voice came.

"My love?"

Her tears poured immediately.

But she swallowed her crying, and said smiling despite the tears, in a tired voice:

"Mom... sorry I couldn't visit you. Studying was very exhausting."

Her mother laughed lightly, despite her intermittent cough.

"I'm fine, my little one, don't worry. Focus on your studies."

Celia closed her eyes tightly.

Three years, and her mother still believed her lie.

She ended the call, and wiped her tears. But she felt a strange urge to call the hospital that her mother had been going to for years.

She called.

A nurse answered calmly.

"Hello."

She introduced herself, and asked about her mother's condition.

Silence fell for a few seconds.

Then the nurse said in surprise:

"Are you her daughter?"

"Yes."

The nurse sighed.

"We've been trying to reach you for months."

Her heart stopped.

"What... what happened?"

The nurse said in a sad voice:

"Your mother is suffering from a serious tumor, and her condition has deteriorated for about a year. She needs surgery as soon as possible, but the cost is exorbitant, and she couldn't afford it."

A year...?

Meaning her mother had been sick all this time...

And she didn't tell her.

Just as she had hidden the truth about being in prison.

Her voice choked as she asked:

"How... how much does the operation cost?"

The nurse mentioned a number that almost made the phone fall from her hand.

She ended the call slowly.

She stood in the middle of the rain.

No home waiting for her.

No family to welcome her.

And no one knew she had come out of hell.

But she knew only one thing —

No matter what happens... she must save her mother.

She tightened her grip on the small bag, and started walking towards a city she no longer knew.

Unaware that the first person she would meet there...

Would be the man who destroyed her life.

And the man who will turn her life upside down again, and again.