Chapter 5

In the Heaven on Earth suite, Lily lay sprawled in the middle of the stage, surrounded by empty liquor bottles. Her once-clean clothes were soaked with alcohol, the faded white fabric of her shirt clinging to her painfully thin frame.

She'd already been forced to drink more than ten bottles of liquor.

"Come on, drink up! What's with that miserable face? Feeling sorry for yourself?"

"Seven years ago, you nearly killed Mrs. Whitmore with your vicious schemes. Now you're throwing yourself at Mason, trying to become his mistress!"

"Trying to seduce him into cheating on his girlfriend? Have you no shame?"

Earlier, Mason had summoned their former classmates and forced Lily to stand onstage and publicly admit that she'd tried to seduce him. He'd also made her bow to Grace one hundred times.

Yet Grace still wasn't satisfied. She insisted that Lily drink one hundred bottles of hard liquor before she'd consider forgiving her.

Lily had dropped to her knees, desperately slapping herself.

"Ms. Walker, I'm shameless! I'm a slut, a whore! I was completely out of line, and it's all my fault! Please, punish me some other way. I can't drink. I really can't!"

With stomach cancer, alcohol was the last thing she could afford to touch.

She knew she didn't have much time left, but she hadn't seen Yvonne yet, nor had she given her sister the thirty thousand she'd managed to save over the years.

She couldn't die here tonight.

Grace had kicked her away in disgust. Mason stopped his girlfriend from attacking her further, but at the same time, he gave the former classmates watching nearby a meaningful look.

They immediately dragged Lily back onto the stage.

The liquor burned through her stomach like a knife. She kept drinking and vomiting until she was lying in a puddle of spilled alcohol, her entire body convulsing.

Eventually, even the onlookers realized something was wrong. No one dared force another drink down her throat, and they turned to Mason, waiting to see what he would do.

Mason stared at Lily's flushed body, his heart suddenly skipping a beat.

When had she gotten so thin?

A faint frown crossed his face, but when he turned to Grace, his expression softened into its usual tenderness.

"Feeling better now, baby? Gotten it out of your system?"

"Hmph!" Grace folded her arms and turned away. "What, are you feeling sorry for her?"

Mason frowned, and whatever fleeting sympathy he'd felt for Lily vanished.

"Of course not."

Why would he feel sorry for the woman he hated?

A malicious glint appeared in Grace's eyes.

"I don't believe you. Not unless you tear up that photograph she's wearing around her neck. Do it yourself!"

The demand instantly jolted Lily out of her drunken stupor.

She clutched the locket hanging against her chest, her eyes wide with the terror of a frightened animal.

"Mason, please don't. I'm begging you, don't do that..."

For a moment, Mason hesitated. Then he thought of his mother, still lying unconscious in her hospital bed, and his hatred swept away whatever reservations he'd had.

He rose and slowly approached Lily.

She shrank back into a corner, but there was nowhere left to run. The pain in her stomach had spread through her limbs, leaving her too weak to resist.

All she could do was watch as Mason pried her swollen fingers apart, one by one, and forcibly took the locket from her.

"Mason Whitmore! You already burned every picture I had of my parents! You destroyed everything they left behind, every trace that they ever existed! Are you really going to take away the last thing I have to remember them by?"

Lily reached desperately for the locket, almost screaming.

After everything had happened seven years ago, Mason had stormed into the Yates family home and burned her parents' photographs and belongings, destroying them one after another.

Yvonne had been only six at the time. She'd huddled in Lily's arms, sobbing uncontrollably, while Lily begged Mason to stop and pleaded her innocence.

Nothing she'd said had moved him.

"How can you be so cruel, Mason?"

Her words sent a fresh surge of anger through him.

"Cruel? You think I'm cruel?"

Right in front of her, he tore the photograph to pieces and scattered the scraps over her head before seizing her by the throat.

"What about what you did to my mother? Wasn't that cruel? All I destroyed were things. You hurt a living, breathing person!"

The photograph had been destroyed so suddenly that Lily barely had time to react. By then, she'd already given up trying to fight him.

What was the point? No matter how hard she resisted, Mason would never show her mercy.

She'd upset his beloved Grace, and until he'd destroyed something precious to Lily in return, how could he possibly feel that justice had been served?

Her eyes went blank, utterly devoid of life.

Mason and the others were about to leave when Lily suddenly spoke.

"Mason Whitmore, I hate you."

He had already reached the door, but her words brought him back.

Grabbing a fistful of her hair, he leaned close to her right ear.

"Funny. I hate you too."

He noticed how sensitive her right ear was, the skin already turning red. Moving to her other side, he spoke into her left ear instead.

"But what I hate more is that I still love you!"

The admission left a complicated look in his eyes, love and hatred mingling as he stared at her.

Lily gazed back at him, bewildered by his expression.

Then he walked away.

What Mason didn't know was that Lily had lost hearing in her left ear, and she hadn't heard a single word of his confession.