Chapter 2

I was soaked to the bone, which only made Scott angrier. "Is this your idea of an apology? Fine. You asked for this!"

With that, he rummaged furiously through a drawer and flung countless photos into the air.

One of them landed at my feet.

My breath caught. It was one of my intimate photos, the very ones he'd sworn he had destroyed.

The employees lunged at them like madmen, snatching up the photos to "admire" them. Their leering stares nearly bored right through me.

I tore them to shreds in a frenzy, screaming hysterically, "Scott, you're a bastard!"

Scott's eyes darted away for a moment. Then he turned and instructed his bodyguards, "Take my wife home. She needs to cool off."

The bodyguards locked me in the basement at home, and in the darkness, I fell apart even more.

Years ago, I'd been kidnapped on my way to an international piano competition. It was in a dark room that those people had taken ninety-nine intimate photos of me.

I'd suffered from claustrophobia ever since.

I pounded on the door like a madwoman until my fingertips and nails were bleeding and my voice was hoarse from screaming.

Finally, Scott opened the door and glared down at me, his expression dark. "I thought you'd learned your lesson. I never expected you to go and post the video anyway!"

His phone screen showed that the fifteenth video had been posted successfully. It was the very video I'd recorded in the office.

I was about to explain that I hadn't posted it, that I hadn't even had time to hit the send button.

But the next second, the door slammed shut again.

Scott let out a cryptic snort. "I'll make you regret this!"

Soon, the sounds of a man and a woman tangled together drifted in from outside the door.

With every movement, the piano keys let out a muffled thud that struck my heart like a sledgehammer.

That piano was the only thing my parents had left me before they both died in a car accident.

On the eve of the international piano competition, they'd rushed back from abroad to watch me perform. That same night, they found out someone had taken intimate photos of me, panicked, and crashed their car.

I missed the competition I'd spent years preparing for, and I lost the two people who mattered most to me.

Now, their keepsake had become a toy for Scott and Kelsey to spice things up.

The woman's voice came out in broken gasps, "She's still listening next door... What if she posts another video online? That would be so embarrassing."

"Let her. Don't you think that makes it even more exciting? Hmm?"

The chaotic, pounding notes pierced my eardrums, and there was no shutting them out. I curled up in agony as my stress response kicked in, and I couldn't stop throwing up.

I had no idea how long the sounds outside went on before a video came in on my phone.

It was footage from the award ceremony at that piano competition years ago.

Kelsey stood on the stage holding the trophy, her eyes brimming with tears. "If my opponent hadn't run into a little 'accident', I probably would have had a hard time winning this award today."

She gazed tenderly into the camera. "I also have my wonderful boss to thank. He promised he'd make sure I took first place, and sure enough, I did!"

In an instant, the blood in my veins ran cold.

So my only rival in that competition had been... Kelsey.

When those people threatened me back then, they'd said, "If you dare go to that competition, we'll post all these photos online!"

So they'd been working with Kelsey all along.

But who was the "boss" she'd mentioned?

Just as I told myself it couldn't possibly be that much of a coincidence, the camera suddenly panned.

The face on the screen was unmistakably Scott's, full of doting affection.