Chapter 3

Mia POV

After spending a week completing the handover, I returned to the mansion with a complicated heart, only to see Willow standing in my room.

She held a lighter, using it to set fire to a stuffed doll.

"What are you doing?!"

My face instantly drained of color.

I ran over, snatched the doll, and extinguished the flames with my bare hands, but it was too late.

The cloth doll, once ignited, burned quickly. Even with my desperate attempts to save it, only a few charred cotton remnants and shredded fabric remained.

This doll was the only thing I had carried with me during my homeless days, and my only connection to my birth parents.

I had carefully preserved it for twenty years, and now it was gone, just like that.

"How dare you destroy my property?!"

Willow, however, merely chuckled dismissively. "Oh, I thought it was just some trash."

"You're getting so worked up over a piece of garbage. How can you be Caleb Hayes's wife and still be so common?"

"Did you get addicted to picking up trash when you were a kid?"

I frowned. "What nonsense are you talking about!"

The commotion attracted Caleb and Willow's mother, but before they reached us, Willow suddenly slapped herself.

By the time I realized what she was doing, Willow had completely changed her expression, her face a mask of grievance as she rushed into her mother's arms, who had just entered the room.

"Mom, Mia suddenly lost it and slapped me because of a broken doll."

Willow's mother's gaze instantly turned icy.

"Caleb, are you trying to insult us? My daughter finally forgave you for breaking off your engagement, and now you let her suffer such humiliation? Do you still want our families' collaboration to continue?"

Caleb's face darkened. "Mia, what are you doing? Apologize at once!"

The blisters on my hand from the fire stung, and I gritted my teeth. "Apologize for what? Can't you see this blatant setup? I didn't hit her; she burned my doll!"

"You know that doll was the only thing my parents left me!"

Willow, her eyes red and swollen with tears, said, "I'm sorry, Mia. That doll was so tattered, I thought it was garbage. I didn't know what it meant to you."

"But your parents didn't want you, and keeping that doll won't make them want you now."

Her words completely infuriated me. I bristled, like a cat whose tail had been stepped on, and lunged forward, wanting to slap Willow's provoking face.

But before I could even touch Willow, Caleb shoved me away. My head slammed directly against a table, the pain so intense that my vision blurred.

"Enough, Mia! Look at where we are!"

"This isn't a big deal; why would you hit her?"

Caleb's face was grim. "Besides, is she wrong? It's been over twenty years. If your parents really wanted you, they would have found you by now."

"Hitting someone over a broken doll. When did you become so unreasonable?"

"You may not have parents to care for you, but others do! Apologize!"

The man before me spoke the most hurtful words.

He had personally witnessed people pinning me down, forcing me to admit I was unwanted trash.

I was beaten until I coughed blood, but I never broke down.

Yet, he would still, for Willow, stab a knife into my heart.

And the sharpest blade, no less.

I suddenly laughed.

Laughed at my own foolish self-pity.

He said he would prepare everything for me, secretly handling the orphanage's problems.

I had thought he at least held a little genuine feeling for me.

Slap! I landed a harsh blow across Caleb's face.

Before anyone could react, I raised my hand again.

Another slap!

"Caleb, this is unreasonable."

My voice was ice-cold.

Caleb's face darkened, and he, too, was enraged.

After all, even during his time on the streets, no one had ever hit him like that.

And after five years with the Hayes family, he was no longer the orphan who had to endure to survive.

"I've spoiled you too much, allowing your old bad habits to fester into this. You're due for a bit of hardship."