Chapter 5

In the middle of the night, a bodyguard kicked the bedroom door open. Then, a huge bucket of ice water was dumped all over Bradley. The freezing water jolted him awake, its chill shooting straight to his brain.

Through his blurry vision, he saw Harvey sneering at him. "My face still hurts, and you're over here sleeping like a baby? Not a chance, you bastard."

Harvey raised his hand and signaled the bodyguards to force Bradley's jaw open. Then, he quickly poured a bowl of murky liquid down Bradley's throat.

When they finally let go, Bradley couldn't stop himself from leaning over the side of the bed, gagging and heaving. When he spotted tiny flecks of ash in the liquid he had thrown up, his pupils contracted in horror.

He exclaimed, "What the hell did you make me drink?"

"You seriously can't tell?" Harvey suddenly let out a laugh. "That's the taste of your dear old mom!"

A loud ringing suddenly filled Bradley's ears. He whipped around and saw that the urn he had locked away had been smashed open, and it was completely empty inside.

It hit Bradley all at once that Harvey had mixed his mother's ashes into water and forced him to drink it.

"Harvey!" Bradley's whole world was turned upside down. His voice turned shrill as he completely lost control, and he lunged toward Harvey. However, the bodyguards grabbed him before he could reach him.

"Let go of me!" Bradley struggled like a cornered animal, his voice rough and furious. "Do you know who I am? I'm Sierra's fiancé, so let me go!"

The bodyguards hesitated for a moment.

Harvey said casually, "Sure, but the person Sierra actually cares about is me."

That one simple sentence was all it took for the hesitation to disappear from the bodyguards' eyes. After all, Sierra's favoritism toward Harvey was so obvious that her own people felt entitled to disregard Bradley's status as her fiancé.

"He's trying to hurt me, so why aren't you holding him down?" Harvey barked.

A sharp pain immediately shot up Bradley's arms, as if they were about to be torn right off. His arms were twisted behind his back and shoved down hard, and he was forced to his knees in a humiliating position.

"Harvey!" Bradley's chest heaved rapidly, and his eyes were bloodshot and brimming with tears. "You should rot in hell!"

The moment he said it, he saw Harvey pull out a black-and-white photo. In the picture, Kristey was smiling gently and warmly, yet the sight of it hit Bradley like a knife to the heart.

His whole body shook, and his voice finally cracked. "Harvey, please don't... Give it back to me. I'm begging you..."

It was the last memorial photo he had of Kristey.

Yet the more desperately Bradley begged, the more brazen Harvey became. "So you do get scared sometimes?"

He pulled out a lighter and drawled, "Too bad for you. You messed with me, and I never forget a grudge."

The flame reflected in Bradley's eyes, and he screamed, struggled, and roared like a madman. Even so, black smoke still rose into the air.

Harvey pretended to sound apologetic. "Mrs. Jaeger, I'm so sorry about this. But you have no idea how disgusting your precious son is. He shamelessly threw himself at Sierra and practically offered himself up to her, and that's the only reason he got this engagement.

"Are you watching this? He's such a joke, groveling at my feet like this. He's lower than dirt. You're the one who brought him into this world, honestly, wouldn't you say you had it coming too?"

Bradley shook his head as hard as he could. He didn't want Kristey to hear any of this. All he had ever wanted was for her to rest in peace. Through his tears, he desperately tried to deny Harvey's accusations, but he eventually broke down completely.

"Shut up! Harvey! Shut your mouth!" His desperate screams tore at his throat until it burned with pain.

By the time the photo had burned to nothing, Bradley had screamed himself hoarse and couldn't make a sound. The bodyguards finally let him go, since he had no fight left in him. He just collapsed on the floor, cradling the still-warm ashes in his hands as the tears kept pouring down his face.

...

Sierra was sitting beside Bradley's hospital bed. When she saw him slowly open his eyes, she looked at him with a distant expression.

"Feeling better? Harvey accidentally spilled water on the photo, and that was his mistake. I already docked half a day of his intern pay." She paused, then added calmly, "But you didn't need to make such a big deal out of it and act like it was the end of the world."

Bradley thought, "Just half a day's pay..."

He met her cold, emotionless eyes and asked, "Where's Harvey?"

Sierra's delicate brows furrowed slightly. "Why are you still looking for him? I've already punished him on your behalf..."

"Sierra!" Bradley clenched his fists and cut her off, his voice raw. "Half a day of intern pay? The cufflinks you gave him were worth a fortune, and the watch you bought him cost as much as a luxury home! Are you punishing him, or are you letting him get away with it? Tell me, where the hell is he?"

Sierra's expression went cold. "So what else do you want from me? Bradley, why do you keep fighting me over a dead woman? There's literally nothing left of her. Fine. She was your mother, but I'm going to be your wife!"

Wife. Bradley repeated the word in his head, but it only left a cold, bitter taste in his mouth. His eyes were blank and empty as he mumbled, "Sierra, if you'd said that to me a while ago, I probably would have been so happy that I'd walk around in a daze all day like an idiot."

"But now..." He lowered his eyes and suddenly let out a quiet laugh. He laughed until his eyes turned red and his thin shoulders started to tremble. "Sierra, what makes you so sure I'm still going to marry you?"

Sierra's breath caught, and her heart clenched. "What did you just say?"

At that exact moment, Bradley's phone buzzed. It was a travel reminder letting him know that he would be leaving the city in ten days.

Sierra reached over, grabbed the phone, and tapped the screen to light it up.