CHAPTER 3

Laurette POV

My stomach was in severe discomfort.

I hadn't eaten anything all day and was vomiting only acid, which burned my throat and made tears roll down my face involuntarily.

I crouched beside a garbage bin, suddenly overwhelmed with sadness.

How did I end up living like this?

Bryce was already in a bad mood, and seeing me crouched there crying made his handsome face darken.

A flash of darkness passed through his deep pupils.

He strode forward and grabbed my wrist, forcefully pulling me up from the ground.

"Why are you crying? You're just ignoring what I said and feeling sorry for yourself, aren't you?"

I was already feeling terrible, and I didn't expect him to be there, mocking me.

"Bryce, I hate you. Can't you just disappear from my sight?" My nose was red from crying, and although I was terrified of him, I couldn't help but scratch at him.

Bryce's eyes were filled with anger, and the moment I said those words, any softness he had felt before disappeared.

"You hate me? Then who do you like, Tyson?" Bryce was furious and dragged me forcefully into a dark corner.

His grip was so tight that it felt like he was about to crush my wrist.

"Good, very good. Today, I'll show you who your man really is!"

I had never seen Bryce like this before.

He seemed like he was going to devour me.

As I watched him drag me into a secluded corner, I felt my hands and feet go cold.

What was he going to do?

"What are you doing? Help, help me.." My voice was barely out of my mouth when Bryce covered it with his hand.

I was petite and weak, and no match for Bryce.

I struggled for a few moments before he dragged me into the corner.

With a tearing sound, my little black dress was ripped off by the man.

Bryce's originally pitch-blue eyes turned particularly bloodshot at this moment.

His fierce gaze made his face look especially terrifying, like a fierce ghost in the hell of endless suffering.

"Laurette, remember this, I am your man!" He hated betrayal the most in his life.

Even if this woman was not the one he loved, he had used me, so I was his.

He couldn't tolerate me being entangled with my ex-lover.

"Ah!" My stomach was burning with pain.

I bit my lip tightly, afraid to make a sound, for fear of attracting the guests in the banquet hall to come and watch.

Bryce was like a raging storm, ravaging the fragile little sapling.

I curled up in the corner, wrapped in a smoky gray suit.

Bryce always showed his thoughtfulness at inappropriate times, which made his previous violence even more ironic.

I took a long time to recover before I stood up with my tired and sore body.

Just as I walked out of the darkness, I saw Calista, my mother, walking over from the corridor.

I panicked and tried to retreat back to the corner to hide, but it was too late.

"Laurette, I've been looking for you everywhere. Why did you come here to hide?" Calista's eyes lit up when she saw me, and she walked over quickly.

When she got closer, Calista saw the suit wrapped around my body.

My hair was messy, there were still tears on my face, my lips were swollen and broken, and my neck was covered in visible marks.

As someone who had been through it, she immediately understood what had just happened.

Instead of worrying, she was happy. "Bryce really loves you. He can't even hold back at a banquet. Laurette, let me tell you, you have to hold onto him tightly."

"Mom!" I was physically and mentally exhausted.

My mother's thought process was always different from normal people's.

I didn't expect her to see the violence that Bryce had just inflicted on me, but at least she shouldn't say anything cold here.

"I'm a bit tired, I'll go back first."

My mother saw that my skirt was torn to shreds, but luckily the suit was long enough to barely cover my graceful body.

"Why is your stomach so unreliable?" she asked in frustration.

I couldn't help but roll my eyes.

"It's been five years. If that child hadn't been lost, he could have been running around by now," My mother grew angrier as she thought about it.

She slapped me hard on the back, "It's all your fault. You can't even keep a child. What use are you?"

My legs were weak and almost fell to the ground from my mother's slap.

Tears rolled down my cheeks.

I couldn't hold back my grievances, "Child, child, you talk about it every day. If you like children so much, why don't you have one yourself?"

"What did you say?" Calista was furious, "I urged you to have a child for whose sake? The Rodriguez family was willing to marry you because you were pregnant with their eldest grandson.

But you lost the six-month-old fetus. Bryce didn't divorce you, and it's already a blessing for our Thompson family ancestors."

My eyes turned red.

If it were someone else who said this to me, I could bear it.

But even my own mother was saying this. It wasn't me who climbed onto Bryce's bed back then.

I took a deep breath and suppressed the sourness that was surging out of my heart.

"Yes, I should be grateful, cherish my blessings, and serve him well, holding onto this golden thigh."

Calista finally noticed that something was wrong with my emotions.

She looked at my expression, "Laurette, did you have a fight with Bryce?"

"What can we argue about?" I sneered in my heart.

Bryce and I couldn't argue at all. He could crush me unilaterally with violence.

As he put it, if I didn't agree, he would "do" until I agreed.

Calista breathed a sigh of relief and the topic returned to the child, "Look how cute Nico is. You and Bryce should have one quickly. You both look so good-looking, and your child will definitely be very beautiful."

I didn't want to listen to my mother's nagging about children anymore.

I turned around and walked towards the hotel entrance.

"Hey, Laurette, are you listening to me? If you want to stand firm in the Rodriguez family, you have to give them a grandchild..." Laurette Mother's words were cut off as she bumped into my back.

I was about to be driven crazy by them.

Mrs. Ava was pressuring me to have a child, and my mother was also pressuring me to have a child.

But why didn't they ask Bryce if he wanted a child or not?

I turned around abruptly, my eyes red as I stared at my Mother.

"Don't push me, I can't give birth, not in this lifetime. Are you satisfied?"

Laurette Mother was frightened by my hysterical appearance.

She was about to say something when she noticed a man standing behind me, whom she didn't know when he had arrived.

Her face changed slightly, and she hurriedly greeted him. "Bryce, Laurette is talking nonsense. Don't take it to heart."

Bryce's face was gloomy as he walked step by step towards me,

His nearly two-meter height gave people a strong sense of oppression.

"What did you just say? Say it again!"