Chapter 5
Avery had no idea what he meant.
Reed grabbed her wrist harshly.
“Stop pretending! It’s just a dog, but you not only scalded and beat Victoria, now you’ve kidnapped her? What else are you planning to do?”
Only then did Avery finally understood-Victoria had been kidnapped, and he thought she was responsible.
That heart she thought had gone numb was now being sliced piece by piece.
She remembered once when she got lost while traveling, Reed had been just as frantic. In the end, it was Sugar who led him to her.
Back then, he’d held her with trembling arms, saying, “Avery, if you disappeared, I’d lose my mind.”
He said Sugar had helped find her, so Sugar was his brother, their family member.
But now, he said, “just a dog.”
Avery bit her lip hard to keep the tears from falling.
“I didn’t bring tulip pollen, I didn’t smash the bracelet, and I absolutely did NOT kidnap Victoria!”
“And Sugar wasn’t ‘just a dog’-he was my family! VICTORIA KILLED SUGAR AND COOKED HIM TO EAT!”
She practically screamed the last sentence.
Seeing her reddened eyes, Reed’s grip on her hand loosened, and inexplicable panic flashed across his face.
His tone softened slightly. “These past few months, you’ve tried everything to get me back. Now Sugar’s just been sent away, but you’re claiming Victoria killed him, and on top of that, you’ve kidnapped her? You’ve already hit her-what more do you want?”
Avery suddenly felt exhausted, more tired than she’d ever been.
“I don’t know where Victoria is. I have two days left. Do whatever you want, just leave me alone.”
“What do you mean ‘two days left”?”
Reed was about to press further when his phone rang-it was his assistant.
“Sir, we found Miss Hayes. But… she was almost… by several men. She’s not in good shape…”
From the other end of the line came a man’s desperate pleading:
“It was Avery Walsh! She ordered us to do it!”
Chapter S
Reed’s head snapped up to look at Avery, his eyes colder than she’d ever seen.
He grabbed her wrist again, nearly crushing the bone.
“You don’t know where Victoria is? I’ll take you to see her right now!”
He dragged Avery into the car.
At the top floor of an abandoned building, Victoria’s hair was disheveled, her clothes torn, a bruise on her temple as she huddled in a corner, trembling.
When she saw Reed, she threw herself into his arms, sobbing:
“Reed, I was so scared… Avery wanted to ruin me before our wedding. She’s so cruel…”
Reed immediately released Avery, embracing Victoria tightly, consoling her softly.
Avery flexed her painful wrist, the bruise Reed had left far worse than the one on Victoria’s forehead.
Several men kneeling on the ground suddenly crawled over, clutching at her pant leg.
“Miss Walsh, you told us to do this! Help us!”
Avery frowned, backing away from their touch, about to ask who they were.
“Avery Walsh! Don’t you know Victoria is seriously ill? How could you be so vicious?” Reed glared at her furiously, eyes full of disappointment.
“When did you become this cruel?”
Avery suddenly laughed. As she laughed, the tears she’d been holding back finally fell.
“So
you
DO remember what I was like before? Having regrets about ever loving me?”
She pointed at Victoria in his arms. “Is her illness real or fake? You know perfectly well, don’t you, Reed Bennett?”
Reed panicked inwardly but stubbornly insisted: “I don’t know what you’re talking about!”
Avery laughed harder, doubling over.
“Fine, if you’re convinced I did this, then so be it. How do you want to retaliate this time? Just kill me outright? I couldn’t care less.”
Seeing her like this, Reed felt a suffocating unease in his chest.
He picked up Victoria and hurriedly left.
“Lock the door. After Victoria’s been examined, we’ll make her and these scumbags pay for what they did to Victoria.”
Outside, he instructed his assistant.
The assistant hesitated. “Sir, is it safe to leave Mrs.-Miss Walsh locked in with them?”
Chapter S
Reed let out a cold laugh: “She hired them, didn’t she? What’s there to worry about?”
Victoria, cradled in his arms, flashed a venomous, triumphant look through the closing door, signaling to the men with her
eyes.
The door locked from the outside.
The men who had been kneeling and crying moments ago instantly transformed.
They leered as they approached Avery, pinning her against an old wooden table by the window.
In her struggle, Avery saw through the glassless window frame that Reed was carrying Victoria to the car.
From beginning to end, he never once looked back.
Suddenly, she stopped fighting.
Like a puppet with cut strings, she let them roughly tie her hands and feet to the table legs.
W
