공유

Chapter 20

작가: Danielle
last update 최신 업데이트: 2025-03-21 08:48:59

Three days without nourishment seemed like forever. Silvia's stomach had transitioned long ago from sharp hunger pains to a void that caused her limbs to feel heavy as lead. She had been allowed water and slight comforts, but even that made her feel queasy as she drank it gradually from the bathroom faucet.

On the morning of the third day, Silvia pulled herself out of bed, her uniform fitting more loosely than earlier. The mirror showed hollow cheeks and shadows under her eyes. Spraying cold water on her face, she tried to brighten herself for the day's activities.

On that day, Silvia was especially cautious with her work: arranging the heavy bottles in the wine cellar, and dusting off the Persian rugs on the front porch. These tasks kept demanding energy that Silvia no longer had.

"You look terrible," Rebecca remarked with glee as Silvia entered the kitchen for her instructions. Savoring her morning espresso, she sat at the counter, the strong, rich smell causing Silvia's hungry be
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  • Signed to Suffer, Destined to Love   Chapter 21

    The sunlight streamed in between the curtains, waking Silvia from her the slumber she had experienced months ago. With her body still frail, she felt relieved after the broth sha had yesterday.Silvia rose gradually, gauging her energy. Her head had stopped spinning, but her limbs still felt unsteady. A rap at her door surprised her. "Y-yes?" she shouted, her voice more assertive than the day before. Then the door swung open...before Ralph entered, dressed in a tailored suit, with a perfectly shaped beards. He stood uncomfortably at the entrance, hesitant to step in."You're awake," he noted, his voice calm. "How do you feel?" Silvia wrapped the lightweight blanket around her shoulders, experiencing a feeling of consciousness. "Improved, sir." "I appreciate the meal." Ralph replied with a decisive nod. "Put on your clothes and join me in my study in fifteen minutes. We have to discuss an issue." Before she had a chance to reply, he shut the door, leaving Silvia looking at him in b

    최신 업데이트 : 2025-03-21
  • Signed to Suffer, Destined to Love   Chapter 22

    Her breath stalled as she touched her swollen lips. He had kissed her. Silvia considered herself resilient and strong, she knew she could endure anything as long as it was for a good cause, but this was levels above what she expected would happen to her in this cursed place.Hunger, thirst, being overworked, beatings. They were all bearable as long as she still had her body and her soul to herself. But he had kissed her like he wanted to suck out her soul.Silvia had never felt so helpless in her life. A tear slipped down her cheeks and she blinked, snapping out of it. She wiped it, she still had her life, it was a one time thing. It would never happen again. She hoped.A part of her was curious about who this Alexander was. If he truly was Ralph’s brother, why had Ralph kissed her? Did he have non-brotherly feelings for this Alexander? She found it highly unnatural. She found everything that went on in the house highly unnatural. They were so rich but they appeared to be suffering ev

    최신 업데이트 : 2025-03-22
  • Signed to Suffer, Destined to Love   Chapter 23

    “Do your vocal cords suddenly stop working? Is that enjoyable?” Ralph asked again, his eyes flashing with an emotion Silvia couldn't name.“I don’t understand sir”.“You’re smiling”, he said, pointing to her lips and sitting on a stool. She had no idea Ralph Spade knew how to sit on a stool. Wasn’t he only accustomed to the finest things? What was an old wooden stool even doing in a mansion as fancy as this? She adjusted her smile, making her expression serious. Was smiling grounds for a punishment?“Forgive my manners sir”, she bowed her head. Sometimes she felt like she was in an ancient drama. Slave to the evil emperor. Except this time the emperor had kissed her. He was a foolish emperor.“How dramatic. I’m not asking you to stop”, Ralph’s face hardened. Silvia stretched her lips into something that resembled more of a grimace than a smile. It reminded her of the times where her mother would scold her and force her to smile. Her mother that she couldn’t see, because of this man.

    최신 업데이트 : 2025-03-23
  • Signed to Suffer, Destined to Love   Chapter 24

    Chapter 24 Silvia's hand trembled slightly as the overpowering smell of cows, pigs, and chickens—still very much alive—forced her to hold her breath. She knew this would lead to more problems than she wanted because when she finally had to take a breath again, she would inhale a lot of contaminated air.She rushed back inside and took a deep breath, relieved to escape the nauseating smell. What kind of wealthy people were these? They were the dirty type. She should have realized it when she was asked to clean those filthy windows. Why was the window in his own study so dirty? The man inhaled dust every day; no wonder he was acting so erratically. Was it really that difficult to ask for the animals to be washed before bringing them inside?Was she being punished extra? She couldn’t believe Donna went through this every week. The woman was strong. Very strong. Silvia was weak. Very Weak.“Howdy, I got this week’s batch of ‘nimals. Gonna sign or what?”, the driver stretched out his head

    최신 업데이트 : 2025-03-24
  • Signed to Suffer, Destined to Love   Chapter 25

    She walked into the main kitchen again, shivering from the pressure she felt surrounding her. Goosebumps prickled her skin, and an unsettling sensation that she was being watched lingered in the air. However, she knew she couldn't let that distract her from her cleaning duties. With a sigh, she moved on to her next set of chores.A shadow came over Silvia and she turned sharply to see a very tall, very stone-faced Ralph Spade standing behind her.“Breaking the rules aren’t you? You are not to speak to anyone unless I command it”, his voice rumbled like an earthquake as he leaned on the wall right behind her.He abruptly straigntened and began to walk towards Silvia which startled her and made her jump away from him. He just shaved about ten years off her lifespan with that sudden appearance.“S-sir, I-”“There is no excuse!”, he yelled, slamming his palm against the counter in a loud slam that made her ears pop. A small part of her hoped he had gotten injured by the sharp edges.He fu

    최신 업데이트 : 2025-03-24
  • Signed to Suffer, Destined to Love   Chapter 26

    The next day, Silvia woke up drenched. Not in her own sweat. In water. She gasped as she felt the splash and jerked awake immediately. Now who was it? Would she ever have any peace in this house?“What the hell?!” She sat up and tried wiping her eyes so she could open it, forgetting to temper her tongue in case it was one of her bosses that did it.“In his bed again?! You’re dead today!”, Rebecca’s shrill satisfied voice echoed throughout the room. In whose bed? Silvia hoped she had somehow followed the driver home and his mother was the one yelling at her. Any other alternative was better than what it seemed to be.She succeeded in wiping her eyes to see a room she had prayed she would never have to see again. The universe hated her and wanted her dead, and it sent her death in the form of a witch named Rebecca, because why the hell was Silvia in Ralph’s bed again? It happened just last week and here it was again?She shot up from the bed in a hurry, colliding with Rebecca who didn’t

    최신 업데이트 : 2025-03-25
  • Signed to Suffer, Destined to Love   Chapter 27

    Silvia wished she could have a lock on her room door to prevent people from entering whenever they wanted. What prompted this thought? She was trying to dry off after Rebecca had splashed water on her.She was thankful it wasn’t smelly water. Knowing the new Rebecca, she could have gone to invest in nasty things just to get revenge against the woman she thought was sleeping with her precious boyfriend. It seemed like she was still more afraid of offending Ralph than venting out her jealousy.As Silvia stood drying herself in front of her window, arms and legs spread wide like a star, Donna suddenly burst into her room. In that moment, Silvia felt certain she had never looked more foolish in her life—even more so than when she had been beaten. “What…are you doing?” Donna’s excited entry had reduced into a half-concerned, half-baffled whisper. Silvia couldn’t blame her. Not everybody had the unique opportunity to be woken up with Ralph’s girlfriend’s special care treatment.“Airing out

    최신 업데이트 : 2025-03-27
  • Signed to Suffer, Destined to Love   Chapter 28

    "Silvia, he said softly, his voice dangerously even, "why does it always have to be you?"Silvia and Donna each whirled back, their eyes widening as Ralph stood at the entrance, his expression a mask of stern disapproval. The remnants of his earlier outburst were still evident in the tight traces of his face, causing Silvia’s heart to sink. She was already soaked and in trouble; now she was caught slacking off.“We… we had been just discussing the, uh, laundry schedule,” Donna stammered, her eyes darting nervously between Ralph and Silvia.Ralph’s gaze shifted to Silvia, his eyes narrowing. And you? What do you have got to say for yourself?”Silvia swallowed, her throat suddenly dry. “I… I was simply explaining what happened this morning, sir. To Donna.”“Explaining the way you found yourself on my mattress?” Ralph’s voice became dangerously low.Silvia’s cheeks flushed. “It wasn’t intentional, sir. I… I think I sleepwalked.”Ralph raised an eyebrow, his skepticism palpable. “Sleepwal

    최신 업데이트 : 2025-03-28

최신 챕터

  • Signed to Suffer, Destined to Love   CHAPTER 78

    Silvia froze in Laurent's hold, her eyes wide open in obvious fright. She clenched and unclenched her fists, sweat beading on her forehead in tiny dots. Then, just as suddenly as it had died, the light flared back on with a harsh, yellowish-white glare, illuminating the nightmare once more.Laurent’s grip remained iron-tight. The gun was still there, pressed against Silvia’s temple like a threat carved from steel.The tears she had been holding back broke loose when she saw the defeated look on Ralph's face."Time is ticking, boy or maybe you need more incentive, huh?" Laurent Laurent growled, the gun shifting slightly as he toyed with the trigger.Ralph subconsciously took a step forward, a hand stretched out—not in surrender, but in silent desperation. "Not another step closer, Ralphie unless you want to see what the inside of her head looks like."Silvia whimpered again, her teary eyes seeking reassurance from Ralph. Their eyes met and his lips pressed together into a thin line.

  • Signed to Suffer, Destined to Love   Chapter 77

    Ralph pinched the bridge of his nose, careful not to make any sudden movements that would give his father any crazy ideas. His father...who knew that they would have such an unexpected reunion and in such an aggressive manner?His father, waving a gun at him and his daughter-in-law as if they were not his family because he wanted the rights of a company he abandoned? Nothing made any sense but all he knew was that he could not put Silvia's life in danger for something she knew nothing about."Let her go," Ralph croaked, scratching his suddenly itchy beard. The room was stuffy and hot because the windows were locked. But for the flashlights on, the room would have been pitch black."What?" Both his father and Silvia asked simultaneously, whipping their heads around to look at him with a mix of confusion and disbelief. Silvia gulped down the rest of her courage and shrank into her husband's side when her crazy father-in-law glared at her with so much piercing intensity."She has nothin

  • Signed to Suffer, Destined to Love   Chapter 76

    "Did you hear that?" Silvia's hold on Ralph's arm tightened as she stared down at the dark hallway in their country house. The lights had flickered a moment, leaving the old house with an eerie half-darkness lit only by the dim brightness of backup lights.Ralph's voice faded away, his senses immediately on high alert. The tranquility of their weekend escape had been abruptly disrupted. "Listen to what, sweetheart? Just the wind, I guess. The old house creaks with every breeze." He tried to sound soothing, but a trickle of nervousness had started at the back of his neck."No, it wasn't the wind," Silvia insisted, her voice little more than a whisper. "It sounded. nearer. A footfall on the landing."He listened attentively, the only noise the constant ticking of an old grandfather clock in the distance. "I don't hear anything now." He gave her hand a gentle squeeze. "Most likely just the house settling. It's an old house, keep in mind?""But I'm sure of it," Silvia insisted, her gaze f

  • Signed to Suffer, Destined to Love   Chapter 75

    Time became a salve, soothing the rough edges of their shared trauma. The trial was over, Rebecca's sentencing a brutal ending to that dismal episode. The mansion shed its final trappings of ominous presence, supplanted by a warmth that radiated from Ralph and Silvia's remade existence.Ralph's memory kept its gradual, inexorable return, here and there by way of the most unexpected sensory details – rain on dry ground evoked by a covert mid-day walk, a whiff of a particular spice evoking a recalled taste at an impromptu, laugh-soaked community meal. Each fragment regained was precious, laboriously interwoven into the tapestry of their past.Their bodies approached one another, unguarded now but filled with tender depth and revived passion. Whatever pretenses still existed were erased by reciprocal exposure, and an unmixed, unvarnished connection was all that was left. There was a raw chemical reaction to every touch, an unspoken vocabulary of yearning and remembrance. Every touch h

  • Signed to Suffer, Destined to Love   Chapter 73

    The initial days with Rebecca's detention were a blur of legal hearings, police interrogation, and the agonizing, painstaking process of attempting to reconstruct Ralph's fractured recall. The mansion, once the background against which Rebecca's lies were enacted, felt stifling in its quiet, its immensity filled with the unwilling reappearance of Ralph and Silvia's collective past.Overjoyed to have Silvia back, Ralph was plagued by the deafening silence of the empty areas in his mind. Months of unfulfilled days stretched like a chasm between the man he once had been and the one he still sought to reclaim. With each passing moment of bliss spent with Silvia, however, came nagging reminders of the man he had become when he was under Rebecca's control and his attempt to bridge the soul gap that had formed during her absence.The memories didn't return in a rush of recall, only disjointed flashbacks – a witticism spoken, his burning palm where her palm had rested, her perfume in his no

  • Signed to Suffer, Destined to Love   Chapter 72

    The air in the library was electric with a new tension, the heavy weight of Ralph's increasing awareness pressing down on Rebecca like a physical force as Ralph's fragmented memories struggled to see the light.Rebecca's eyes protruded in terror as the mask she had built so carefully disintegrated, and she could no longer hide.She trembled as she tried to reach out to Ralph, her voice ringing in a desperate cry. "Darling, you're not thinking. This woman...this woman means nothing to you. I am here, I have cared for you, loved you."Ralph withdrew from her reach and gazed steadily at the silver locket he held. The smile of Silvia, whose face shone out at him with joy, seemed to give off a glow that pierced through the icy smog of his loss of memory, as the light of a lighthouse calls a man home to a world out of which he had unwittingly strayed."Loving me?" Ralph repeated, his voice laced with increasing doubt. He looked at Rebecca, his eyes challenging, questioning. "Or controlling

  • Signed to Suffer, Destined to Love   Chapter 71

    The tarnished silver locket, clenched tight in Ralph's fist, was physical proof of memories Rebecca had callously tried to bury. The smiling faces on its diminutive borders were constant reminders of an erased past, a tug on the fragile strands of his amnesia.Rebecca's attempts to brush off the locket as belonging to "old friends" sounded insincere next to Ralph's mounting sense of recognition brewing in his mind. The falsehood clung to her voice like oil on water.He was taken with the little photo, studying her face, her laugh humming at the back of his mind. The tiny photograph smiled up at him—two faces, one unmistakably his, the other a woman who stirred echoes in the hollow spaces of his fractured memory.He would run his thumb over the line of her smile, feeling loss and regret engulfing him, a sense of yearning for something he couldn't quite identify."Who is she, Rebecca?" Ralph would ask again and again, his tone growing more insistent. "Why does she mean so much?"Her re

  • Signed to Suffer, Destined to Love   Chapter 70

    The doubts sown by Silvia and Burke were beginning to sprout in Ralph's mind, creeping like ghosts into the darkness of his thoughts.He was increasingly plagued by the lingering feeling, a feeling something was terribly amiss in this laboriously built world provided by Rebecca. He would find himself staring off into space, a furrow on his forehead, trying to grasp a wisp of an image, a whisper of a recollection. It was at such times of unrest that Rebecca would reappear out of nowhere, her voice low and calm, anchoring him in the present, pulling him back from the brink of his own turbulent mind; back to her."What's on your mind, sweetheart?" she would say, her arm on his. "Don't worry about unimportant things. Just focus on getting better. Focus on us."And Ralph would try. He would concentrate on Rebecca's smile, her words of support, her worry-free assurance. Still, though, that nagging feeling remained an itch that couldn't be scratched.One afternoon, when Rebecca was on a lo

  • Signed to Suffer, Destined to Love   Chapter 68

    The uncertainty lingered, a stark contrast to Rebecca's commanding presence. The pen clattered sharply beside the contract, a bold reminder that his company's fate and his very future hinged on that decisive moment. The air crackled with tension as she prepared to take control of the situation, knowing that every second counted in solidifying her position. Her grip on his arm suddenly tightened ever so subtly. "Darling," she said softly, her voice a soothing comfort, her eyes masking an unspoken urgency, "after thorough discussions, we have reached a point where we need to move forward with the Spire proposal. It's important to embark on this direction we’re taking. Trust me."Ralph's gaze shifted from the contract to her reassuring smile. The familiarity of her, the absolute certainty in her voice, were lifelines amidst amnesia's sea. He had to believe her, must believe her. The disturbing encounter with the crazy woman, that haunting melody disturbing interventions into the neat

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