Chapter 3

When I woke up, I was still lying on the cold floor.

The blood on my knees had already dried. The wedding gown they'd stripped off me lay nearby, marked with several footprints.

The banquet hall for our remarriage was completely empty.

There was a hundred-thousand-dollar transfer from Thomas in my bank account. This was how Thomas usually made things up to me.

Bracing myself against the wall, I got to my feet. I pulled out my phone and booked the cheapest standing-room ticket on an old, slow train, then arranged the safest possible hospital transfer for my daughter.

Finally, I opened the texts my adoptive mother had sent me.

Mom: [Rose, honey, if your birth parents aren't treating you right, your dad and I will sell the few hundred head of cattle we've got and come find you.]

Mom: [My precious girl, if you can't get used to living with the Brownings, just come on home to the mountains. There'll always be a place for you here.]

...

This time, I didn't lie and tell her I was fine. I wiped away my tears and replied: [Mom, I've booked my train ticket home. See you tomorrow.]

Back at the villa, I started packing my things.

The first time, it had taken me a whole day. This time, it took less than an hour.

Our wedding photo still hung on the wall; only my face had been completely smeared over with Stacie's lipstick.

Back when Thomas was just starting out in business, he always said a man's love goes wherever his money goes.

He spent three months' salary taking me to have those wedding photos done. After that, he wiped the frame three times a day.

Yet later, while I was suffering through a difficult labor, he slept with Stacie right in front of our wedding photo.

The overlapping handprints on the photo were a constant reminder of just how wild things had gotten between them.

Even now, I couldn't wrap my head around it. Who on earth was that man who once said he couldn't live without me?

While I was lost in thought, a payment reminder came in from the hospital.

But I had just transferred ninety thousand dollars to them.

Then the bank called. The previous hundred-thousand-dollar transfer, they said, had been sent by mistake on Thomas's part, and all the money had been returned to its original owner.

With my daughter's life hanging by a thread, I tracked Thomas down as fast as I could.

I was just about to push open the door to the private room when I heard Thomas talking with his friends inside.

"Thomas, you're out of your mind. Rose cheated on you, so why did you remarry her?"

Thomas swirled the wine in his glass and chuckled. "She doesn't have the guts. If she'd really betrayed me, do you think I would've married her?"

Everyone immediately perked up.

Thomas downed his drink in one gulp and laughed loudly. "Back when Stacie drugged me, I let Rose in on purpose. So the girl is my biological daughter."

Everyone stared at him wide-eyed.

"Then why do you keep humiliating her..."

Thomas smiled smugly and went on, "You all know Rose has always been proud and aloof. She's just some country bumpkin from the mountains, and she had the nerve to say she was saving her first time for our wedding night?"

I could barely breathe. I dug my nails into my palms just to keep myself from losing it.

Someone slapped his thigh as it dawned on him, "So you staged this whole show, Thomas, to make Rose believe she was really pregnant with some random guy's kid. That way, that proud, high-and-mighty woman would grovel at your feet forever, right?"

Thomas nodded, then sighed, "But once I had her, it just got kind of boring. I married young. I can't be tied down to Rose for the rest of my life, can I?

"Besides, Stacie saved me back when I was drowning. I promised her I'd help her become the real Browning heiress.

"Even if Rose loses everything, at least she still has me loving her. Favoring Stacie a little is only fair."

My whole body trembled. My nails gouged scratch after scratch into the wall.

So all these years of undeserved suffering had been staged by Thomas himself!

The last thread holding me together snapped. Rage flooded my chest and drowned out all reason.

Just as I pulled the fire axe off its mount beside the fire hydrant, the hospital called.

"Ms. McCarthy, we have bad news. Your daughter..."

By the time I rushed to the hospital, all that awaited me was the news that my daughter had passed away.

As I looked at the tiny body under the white sheet, a sudden, sharp pain tore through my lower abdomen.

All the strength drained out of me, and I collapsed to the floor in a heap. Blood trickled down between my legs, slowly staining my skirt red.

"Ms. McCarthy! You... I think you're having a miscarriage..."

The voices around me gradually faded.

When I woke up again, I had lost the baby.

And I had lost my daughter too.

Before I could even begin to surface from my grief, two Browning family bodyguards burst into the hospital room and forcibly dragged me back to the Browning villa.