Chapter 5

Zachary trembled uncontrollably and instinctively hung up.

He was desperately trying to come up with an excuse when Vincent suddenly rushed out of the house barefoot, his face deathly pale. "Something terrible has happened! Naomi, the twins are missing!"

"What did you say?" Naomi jolted in shock, her expression changing drastically. "What happened?"

Vincent sobbed, his entire body trembling. "The twins were in their bassinets just now. I was about to pick them up and feed them when two masked men suddenly burst in and took them away!

"Didn't you say the house's security system was highly encrypted? How could they possibly have gotten in without the access code?"

Vincent suddenly turned toward Zachary, his next words laden with accusation. "Mr. Brooks, y-you've been kneeling outside this whole time. Didn't you see any strangers come in?"

The moment those words left his mouth, realization seemed to dawn on Naomi. Her face turned livid as she glared at Zachary. "Was it you? When you said you were leaving just now, did you mean you were going to take the children away?"

Naomi trembled with fury and slapped Zachary hard across the face. "Zachary Brooks! All I did was punish you by making you kneel outside for one night, and you had the heart to do something so cruel? Do you actually want those two children dead?

"They're just newborn babies who can barely leave their swaddles. What could they possibly have done to you?"

A deafening roar filled Zachary's ears. He froze, feeling as though his entire world had come crashing down around him.

He shook his head frantically. "It wasn't me—"

Before he could explain further, Vincent suddenly dropped to his knees with a heavy thud. "Mr. Brooks, please! I'm begging you! Don't hurt the children!"

He began slapping himself frantically. "Please tell me where the children are. I'll work like a slave for you for the rest of my life if I have to. I'll do anything! Please..."

An icy chill spread through Zachary's entire body. "It really wasn't me."

"I heard it with my own ears, and you still refuse to admit it!" In a fit of rage, Naomi seized Zachary by the arm and shoved him backward.

"Call the police!" she spat through clenched teeth, her eyes bloodshot with fury. "If we can't force you to tell us where the children are, we'll let the police investigate! Call them now! Tell them there's a kidnapper here and have them take him into custody immediately!"

Zachary was dragged toward the mansion's entrance. Sharp gravel scraped against his skin, and excruciating pain tore through his stomach.

…

"It really wasn't me!" Zachary could only manage one final, desperate denial before he was violently shoved into a police car.

He was taken straight to a detention center, where he endured three days of utter despair.

Throughout those three days, the other detainees subjected him to relentless torture.

They drove sharpened pencil tips deep into all ten of his fingertips. They pressed pillows over his mouth until he nearly suffocated, only to release him at the last possible moment.

They repeated the ordeal again and again, pushing him to the brink of death each time.

They slashed his skin repeatedly with small knives, careful to avoid inflicting any fatal wounds.

...

As Zachary lay helplessly on the ground, the man who had been torturing him watched with a gleam of excitement in his eyes. "Zachary, if you want someone to blame, blame yourself for offending someone you shouldn't have.

"I'm getting 1,000,000 dollars just for torturing you for three days. Why would I turn down easy money like that?"

…

At last, Zachary's detention came to an end.

He was escorted back to the place that was supposed to be his home.

He staggered toward the spare bedroom, but as he passed the master bedroom, he heard the unmistakable sounds of intimacy from within.

"Naomi, Mr. Brooks is being released today. Aren't you going to pick him up?"

Naomi gently kissed the corner of Vincent's eye. "Vincent, don't bring up irrelevant people. I intend to spend today with you. Picking him up isn't part of my plans."

A bitter, mocking smile tugged at Zachary's lips.

Of course. He had never been part of her plans for the future in the first place.

If she hadn't been so determined to keep her plans which didn't include divorce, she probably would have discarded him without a second thought the very day Vincent returned, wouldn't she?