Chapter 4 My Father Watched from the Balcony as I Crawled

I said coldly, "Get your hands off me. I'm married."

Then I knelt without hesitation.

The first thorn pierced my knee and my entire body seized, like an electric shock. Before I could recover, the second and third drove in one after another. My stockings tore. Skin split open. Blood seeped out and stained the hem of my dress. I bit down on my lower lip, braced my hands against the ground, and inched forward step by step.

It hurt. The pain cut to the bone. But what hurt more was that my father stood on the second-floor balcony, looking down at me from above.

"Hand over the payment form now, and it's not too late." His voice fell from overhead, cold and without a shred of warmth.

"Nobody forced you to kneel. You chose to retaliate against your own family and treat a piece of paper as more important than your body. Don't go around playing the victim later, saying we abused you." He'd already crafted the narrative. His daughter had an emotional breakdown. Self-harm. And he was simply a helpless father.

My hands were trembling, not from pain but from his words. I'd thought seeing me like this might move him, even a little. It didn't. He was already calculating how to contain the fallout.

Claire stood on the steps, feigning concern. "You've really gone too far, Evelyn. You're actually torturing yourself just to guilt Dad and Ethan."

I kept crawling forward. Thorns sliced open my palms. Blood dripped between my fingers. The gardener, the housekeeper, the servants all stood nearby. Some looked pained, wanting to come help, but my father's single sentence nailed them in place: "Anyone who helps her can find a new job tomorrow." Every head dropped.

My father scoffed. "Evelyn has always been tough. This won't kill her."

Tough? My fingernails clawed into the dirt. So my toughness was just his excuse to keep hurting me.

I finally crawled to the end of the path and reached for the ring box. At that moment, Claire rushed over. "Let me help you up, Evelyn!" But her heel came down hard on the back of my hand.

Crack. The setting buckled. The rose diamond split down the middle. A hidden compartment in the ring box sprang open, exposing the corner of the payment form.

Claire's eyes shifted. She bent down to grab it. I pressed the paper flat with everything I had. She pressed harder with her foot, the heel grinding almost into the bone of my hand. She hissed under her breath, "Let go! You'd really throw your own father and Ethan in prison over a scrap of paper? How vicious can you be?"

"If one piece of paper is enough to destroy them," I was drenched in sweat, but my voice came out steadier than even I expected, "then what destroys them isn't me. It's what's written on it."

Her face twisted. She ground her heel down again. "You got kicked out and now you sleep in a tent with a homeless man, yet you think you're some kind of prosecutor? You filthy little bitch. Drop dead!"

She kicked me aside and snatched the fragment. I hit the ground. The wounds on my knees tore open again, blood spreading in dark patches. I clutched the shattered ring, my nails embedded in my palms.

My father finally came down from the balcony. But Claire staggered back with a shriek and dropped to the ground. "I was trying to help you up, Evelyn, and you pushed me? When are you going to learn to be kind?"

A slap struck my face. Ethan's expression was grim. "Enough. Are you done?"

My father helped Claire up. "When will you ever learn to behave?"

I struggled to my feet, my knees buckling with pain. I looked at my father one last time. In that single look, I burned away over twenty years of hope, grievance, and wishful thinking.

"From today on," my voice was quiet, but every word landed on the stone steps like a hammer, "you can be Claire's father alone."

My father's face turned ashen. "Spare me the childish threats. Once you've had a taste of suffering out there, you'll come crawling back."

"It's not a threat." I clutched the shattered ring box and turned away. The tears finally came, hot and violent, leaving me shaking. "It's notice."

My nose was bleeding. The slap had left a ringing in my ears. Claire looked at me with that delicate, helpless expression. "Oh no, Evelyn's bleeding."

But my father only scoffed. "Let's see how long you last. If you insist on fighting us, you can stay here and kneel until you're ready to apologize."

My mind split open with shock. "You promised you'd give me the ring back! How dare you?"

Then the world spun. Someone shoved me hard, and I fell into the pool. Water closed over my head.

I couldn't hear anyone on the shore anymore.

Nobody came to save me.

Was I going to die? After a moment, dark silhouettes gathered at the edge of the pool, holding what looked like guns.

I forced my eyes open. A face swam into view, familiar but impossibly out of place. My husband.

"Evelyn..."