Chapter 8
“WHAT?!” Her father slammed his hand on the table, making the teacups rattle.
Her mother lunged forward, delivering another stinging slap to Jordan’s face. “You monster! How could I have given birth to such a daughter?!”
Jordan’s face snapped to the side, blood seeping from the corner of her mouth.
She slowly turned back, her gaze calmly sweeping over everyone in the room-
Her father’s contorted face twisted with rage, her mother’s hysterical expression, the cold fury in Maxwell’s eyes, and Vanessa nestled in Maxwell’s embrace, flashing that triumphant smile.
“I didn’t,” Jordan said softly, her voice remarkably clear.
“Still lying!” her father roared. “The evidence is overwhelming!”
Maxwell carefully handed Vanessa to her mother and walked over to Jordan.
His towering figure loomed over her, emanating suffocating pressure. “Uncle Hayes, how should we handle this?”
‘We’re done with this disgrace!” Her father held the sobbing Vanessa, his voice ice-cold. “After all, she’s your fiancée, Maxwell. Do whatever you want with her!”
Maxwell’s eyes turned glacial. “In that case, I’ll take her away.”
‘Guards, take her away. Military discipline applies.”
Maxwell’s frigid command exploded in Jordan’s ears like a sharp knife, severing her last thread of hope.
[wo soldiers immediately stepped forward, grabbing Jordan’s arms on either side.
Her knees dragged across the ground, leaving a trail of blood, yet she stubbornly refused to cry out in pain.
On the training field, the sun blazed mercilessly.
Coarse rope bit into Jordan’s wrists, drawing blood. She was tied to a punishment frame, her back exposed to the scorching
Sun
At Maxwell’s command, the whip whistled through the air.
With the first lash, Jordan bit through her lip.
By the fifth, her nails dug so deeply into her palms that blood dripped through her fingers.
By the tenth, her vision began to darken, ears ringing.
At the fifteenth, she clearly heard one of her bones crack.
Chapter 8
When the twentieth lash fell, Jordan could no longer feel the pain.
The sun scorched her wounds as her consciousness began to fade. Before her eyes flashed Maxwell’s cold gaze, Vanessa’s smug smile, her parents’ disgusted expressions…
As darkness finally consumed her, Jordan collapsed heavily to the ground.
When she regained consciousness, Jordan found herself lying in her familiar bed.
Her back burned with fiery pain, every inch of skin feeling as if it had been set aflame.
She struggled to sit up and noticed a stack of money and a letter on her bedside table.
With trembling fingers, she opened the envelope to find Maxwell’s familiar handwriting:
[Today is Vanessa’s college registration day. I’m taking your parents to see her off. Stay home and rest. When I return, we’ll get married.]
jordan stared at these few lines, suddenly laughing through her tears.
How absurd.
He had beaten her half to death, yet still expected her to wait docilely for him to marry her?
Taking up a pen, she wrote heavily on the back of the letter:
No need. I will not marry you. Maxwell Stone, let us never meet again.]
She slapped the note onto the bedside table and painfully rose, retrieving her packed belongings from under the bed.
Inside was the money she had secretly saved and her real college acceptance letter.
Outside, dawn was breaking.
ordan took one last look at the home where she had lived for twenty years, then headed toward the train station without ooking back.
As Maxwell’s car headed toward Vanessa’s so-called “college,” Jordan’s train was slowly pulling away toward her new
begging.
