I dont really know the best way to tell this story, but I just felt like I needed to write it down. Maybe because some things stay in your chest for too long, and if you dont let them out, they start hurting in a different way. This is not just drama or some made up fairytale. It’s one of those stories that feels messy, emotional, and a little too real sometimes. Maybe you will understand it, maybe you wont, but this story stayed with me for a long time. So im sharing it here the way I can.
Chapter 1
After I was rescued from five years of being trafficked, Nathaniel Blake spoke as if it were nothing.
“The people who took you were arranged by me. I was in the alley when you were forced into the car.”
My body went rigid.
Then my brother, Marcus Hart—the wealthiest magnate in Crestwood City—spoke up.
“I paid for it.”
“We only meant to punish you for three years before bringing you back, but Julian was worried you hadn’t learned your lesson and might still bully Seraphina. So we kept you in Barlow Hollow for two more years.”
Julian Cross… the orphan I had taken in as a child.
After I was taken, every night someone forced himself on me. I became pregnant six times—and lost every single one.
I wanted to die, but I couldn’t.
I tried to escape, but my legs were shattered, leaving me dependent on cheap prosthetic limbs.
I fought with everything I had just to see the three men in front of me again.
I never imagined they were the ones behind it all.
My blood turned ice-cold as I trembled. My voice came out hoarse.
“Why would you destroy me?”
Marcus and Julian hesitated, but Nathaniel spoke first.
“You abused our affection and bullied Seraphina. We just wanted to teach you a lesson.”
“Seraphina is pregnant with my child. If you can’t accept that, we can get a divorce.”
The metallic taste of blood filled my mouth.
Then, a long-forgotten voice echoed in my mind.
[Host, do you wish to abandon the redemption mission and leave this world?]
The system—gone for years—suddenly reappeared, leaving me dazed.
I looked at Nathaniel’s expressionless face, then at Marcus and Julian beside him, calmly instructing the servants to prepare food for Seraphina.
A sharp pain stabbed through my heart.
Back then, they had told me they’d been in a car accident on the way to my birthday celebration.
Terrified out of my mind, I rushed out to find them, taking a shortcut without thinking.
That was when I was abducted… and thrown into a living hell.
After everything I endured—after finally being rescued—they were now telling me it had all been done just to vent Seraphina’s anger.
[Leave,] I answered the system silently.
[Confirmed. Departure countdown: ten hours. Due to the emergency protocol, when you leave this world, all three targets must be present.]
For a second, I thought I had finally gone insane.
Then the countdown appeared in the corner of my vision like a faint red burn mark only I could see.
10:00:00.
Nathaniel must have mistaken the tears on my face for submission. He stepped closer and wiped the corner of my eye with his thumb. The calluses on his hand scraped my skin raw.
His voice was gentle.
His words were poison.
“You don’t have to divorce me if you don’t want to.”
He glanced toward the dining room, where the house staff were bustling around Seraphina as if she were the mistress of the estate.
“She’s been spoiled for years. Don’t lay a hand on her again.”
He paused, then added in the same calm tone, “You can’t have children anymore. Seraphina said she’s willing to let her baby carry your name.”
For one heartbeat, I forgot how to breathe.
I had once carried Nathaniel’s child too.
I was six months pregnant when Seraphina shoved me from a second-floor balcony at a private club. I lost the baby that night. The damage to my body was permanent.
When I woke up in the hospital and tried to make her pay for it, I only got one slap in before Nathaniel grabbed me and stopped me cold.
He locked me in the villa.
And the moment my body was barely recovering, they sent me straight into that nightmare.
My throat felt packed with broken glass. “So because I slapped Seraphina once… you decided I deserved five years in hell?”
“Yes,” Nathaniel said without a flicker of remorse. “You failed to protect your own pregnancy and then blamed her for it. Do you have any idea how unfit that made you to stand beside me?”
He looked at me the way people look at something spoiled and unpleasant.
“As long as you behave from now on, I promise I won’t send you away again.”
A laugh nearly tore itself out of me.
From now on?
There was no from now on.
Not for me.
Not in this world.
I looked up at him through blurred vision. “If you lied to me for this long, why tell me the truth now?”
Marcus let out a low sigh, but Julian answered first, his voice cool and steady.
“Because you and Seraphina are sisters. We wanted you to remember this lesson. Only then will you learn to protect her the way we do.”
Protect her?
Something inside me snapped.
I swept my arm across the table, sending porcelain tea cups crashing to the floor. The sound rang through the room like a gunshot.
Then I shoved up my sleeve and revealed the scars that crisscrossed my arm—old burns, half-healed wounds, marks I could never explain away.
“They tortured me day and night,” I said, shaking so badly my teeth clicked together. “Do you even know what they did to me? Do you know what happened to my legs—”
“Enough.”
Nathaniel’s voice cracked through the room like a whip.
His eyes filled with disgust.
“You even fake your scars well now. You really haven’t changed.”
Marcus and Julian both stared at me with that same cold disappointment, as though I were some pathetic liar desperate for attention.
Not one of them believed me.
Not one.
Nathaniel grabbed my arm so hard my shoulder screamed, then dragged me down the hallway and threw me into the dark storage room at the back of the house.
“If you still don’t know how to apologize by the time Seraphina comes home,” he said, standing over me like a judge delivering sentence, “I’ll personally send you back to Barlow Hollow.”
The door slammed.
The lock clicked.
And just like that, the air vanished from my lungs.