Chapter 3

“Tasmin, you owe me an explanation!”

I snorted dismissively.

This only provoked Hugh further.

Without another word, he grabbed me by the arm, dragged me into the car, and drove all the way to the hospital.

When we reached the ward, I saw Lana sitting there hugging a pair of rag dolls. Her face was streaked with tears.

“Because of you, Lana fell into a severe depression. The doctor says that unless she works through this trauma, she’s never going to get better.

“You need to apologize to her and own up to what you did!”

Seeing Hugh act as if he were on the right made me sneer.

‘Apologize to Lana? She did not deserve an apology at all!’ I thought.

I turned to leave, but then I heard a video playing behind me.

It made my blood run cold, and I stopped in my tracks.

“Taz, don’t make me do this.”

After my father’s seven trusted men met their brutal ends, Hugh had destroyed that humiliating video back then.

When I heard my own screams from the video, I reflexively lunged to the side and began retching violently.

A flicker of reluctance flashed in Hugh’s eyes when he saw my reaction.

Just as he was about to reach out to me, Lana heard the noise outside her ward and stepped out.

When she saw me, she yelled, “You trash, give me back my baby!

“Huey, our baby is gone! The doctor said I’ll never be able to have another child ever again!”

She wailed in anguish, “I want you to slap yourself and beg our baby for forgiveness!”

Hugh held her tightly, and the reluctance in his eyes hardened into resolve.

“Taz, I’d have given you everything in the Sheargold family. But Lana and the baby were innocent. You had no right to go after them!

“You’ve got five minutes to do what Lana says. After that, I will upload this video to every social media platform.”

I looked at him, and the nausea I had just suppressed surged back up.

Did he actually say the baby was innocent?

Did he remember that he once had two children?

I was pregnant with twins, a boy and a girl, but they had still been embryos when I chose to abort them. I had done that because I had tested the new drugs on myself as treatment for his paralyzed legs.

The doctor told me that my body was too weak and that if I terminated the pregnancy, I would never conceive again.

I did not regret it for a moment.

“No one matters more to me than him in this world,” I had said.

The cumulative side effects of years of drug trials nearly killed me on the operating table.

In the end, my uterus had to be removed, and I lost all chance of bearing children.

When Lana saw Hugh begin to waver because of my tears, she snatched the phone from his hand and sent out the video.

“Tasmin, you’re a walking curse! You got your own parents killed, and you’re nothing but a worn-out joke of a woman! You’ll never have a family. This is what you deserve!”

Hugh’s expression changed, but his attempt to stop her came too late.

Bennett arrived with his men and pinned Hugh to the floor.

“Taz, don’t hurt her!”

I curled my lips into a cruel smirk, pulled a dagger from my thigh holster, and slashed a deep, bloody gash across Lana’s mouth in a few swift moves.

I grabbed her by the hair and slammed her head against the floor.

“If you miss your baby so much, why don’t you go down to hell and join him?!”

After my anger was vented enough, I tossed her aside.

Without a moment’s hesitation, I snapped the delicate dagger in two.

Hugh had forged the dagger himself as a gift for me.

I had kept it close to me for all these years.

Since he no longer loved me, carrying it even a second longer made me sick.

Before leaving, I walked up to him, grabbed his dark hair, and yanked it hard.

I met his vacant stare and smiled defiantly.

“Hugh, a dog shouldn’t bite the hand that feeds it.

“Even without you, the Sheargold family is mine.”

Hugh glanced at Lana lying in a pool of blood. He said in a strained voice, “Your father was right about you.

“A monster like you doesn’t deserve to be loved by anyone!”

I was born after a difficult labor, and my mother had bled to death.

After my father remarried, my pregnant stepmother fell down the stairs when she was with me. It killed both her and the unborn baby.

From that day on, every member of the Sheargold family saw me as a jinx.

Until the day he died, my father refused to see me even once.