Chapter 2

After dinner, I fiddled with a USB drive in my hand. It contained a copy of the video. I was thinking about how to bring it up.

Jeremy came out of the bathroom, freshly showered, with only a towel around his waist. He wrapped his damp arms around me, rubbing his stubbly chin against my face. He picked up the USB drive.

“What’s on this?”

I took a deep breath. “Why don’t you take a look?”

Curious, he plugged it into the computer. Just as he was about to open the file, I stopped him because of a sharp pain in my abdomen—the worst pain I had ever felt. My legs started to tremble.

I collapsed to the ground, clutching my stomach.

He rushed over, trying to soothe my pain.

“I can’t… I need to go to the hospital…”

He quickly threw on some clothes, scooped me up, and sped off to the hospital.

After enduring a grueling blood test and examination, I was left utterly drained, sweat pouring down my forehead as I sat in the sterile, clinical room. My body trembled, a prelude to the fever that soon consumed me.

The diagnosis was acute liver damage, cause unknown.

I spent the night vomiting and with diarrhea, the fever raging on. I even started talking nonsense, calling out for my parents. Jeremy took care of me the whole night, and I felt slightly better the next day.

The doctor suggested that my condition might be due to inappropriate medication.

Jeremy and I exchanged puzzled looks. I hadn’t taken any medication recently, and my diet had been quite ordinary. The only difference was the soup my mother-in-law had insisted on making for me that night, saying it was to nourish my body, made especially for me.

Under Jeremy’s questioning, my mother-in-law finally admitted that the soup contained medicine she had gotten from a “master”.

“What kind of medicine?”

“A fertility tonic.”

I was utterly spent, both physically and emotionally. From childhood, I had been frail, and the doctor had long advised against pregnancy. My inclination towards a child-free life had always been clear, a choice Jeremy and I had meticulously discussed before our marriage. He had steadfastly supported my decision

Driven by a pang of guilt, my family had covered the full cost of our marital home.

When the time came for her to move in, I didn’t hesitate. She had previously tried to feed me all manner of bizarre remedies, each one a disturbing echo of her control, but I always managed to find an excuse to refuse them.

I had voiced my concerns to Jeremy, only to be met with his dismissive attitude. He brushed it off, attributing it to the quirks of the older generation and urging me not to take it to heart.

But now, she had gone too far. If it had been any more serious, I could have accused her of attempted murder!