Chapter 5

Leah Sterling POV

Back at the villa, I locked myself in the dark bedroom.

I didn't turn on the lights, just sat on the floor and took out that black sketchbook.

The pen tip scratched across the paper with such force it nearly tore through the page:

"To avoid upsetting Vanessa Sullivan, he gave me long-term birth control pills, stripping me of my right to be a mother. Deduct 20 points."

Twenty points deducted at once. Fifty points left.

At eleven that night, a heavy door slam echoed from downstairs.

Tristan Cole, reeking of alcohol, kicked open the bedroom door. He strode toward me, grabbed my wrist, and roughly yanked me up from the floor.

"Leah Sterling, how dare you do that! You pushed Vanessa at the beach this afternoon and had the nerve to run away?" Tristan's eyes were like poisoned knives. "Vanessa was frightened and caught in the sea breeze. Now she has a fever of 102 degrees, crying in her dreams, begging you not to push her!"

My wrist felt like the bones were being crushed. I looked at this hateful man before me, feeling only endless desolation.

"I didn't push her. She fell down herself."

"You still dare to argue!" Tristan laughed in extreme anger. "Vanessa wouldn't even step on an ant. Would she risk her own life to frame you? Leah Sterling, you're too malicious."

He violently released my hand and pointed at the door. "Now, immediately go to Vanessa's apartment and kneel by her bed to apologize. Don't come back until her fever breaks and she forgives you!"

I stepped back twice, my spine against the cold wall. I looked at Tristan, my heart strangely calm. "What if I don't go?"

"Won't go?" Tristan sneered, then dragged me by my hair like dragging a lifeless object all the way down the stairs, throwing me directly into the villa's cold, damp basement.

With a "bang," the heavy iron door closed mercilessly and was locked.

"Stay here and reflect properly! Without my permission, no one is allowed to bring her food or water!" Tristan's voice came through the iron door like a judgment from hell.

There was no heating in the basement. On a late autumn night, the temperature approached freezing.

I was already injured, and having gone a whole day without eating, the cramping in my stomach and the dragging pain in my lower abdomen struck simultaneously.

I curled up on the cold cement floor in agony, drenched in cold sweat. I bit my lip hard until I tasted blood, both hands tightly protecting my lower abdomen.

"Baby... I'm sorry... you're all Mommy has left... you must be strong..." I murmured desperately in the deathly silent darkness.

The physical pain wasn't even one ten-thousandth of what was in my heart. I had loved him so much. Yet he was torturing me nearly to death while I was pregnant with his child. All for another woman's few tears.

The next morning, the iron door was finally opened.

I was already in so much pain I'd nearly lost consciousness, my lips cracked and dry.

A servant helped me back to my room. I forced myself to hold onto my last thread of consciousness and wrote in the sketchbook:

"Forced me to kneel to Vanessa Sullivan and locked sick me in the basement overnight. Deduct 10 points."

Forty points left. Almost done. Almost over.