Chapter 4

I was knocked right out of my wheelchair and onto the floor. Sprawled helplessly on the ground, I could only look up as Vanessa screamed at me in a blind rage.

“I know you hate me! I know you resent me for stealing your childhood friend, your brother, and even the man you loved! But the baby is innocent! How old is he? How could he possibly survive a fall like that? How could you be so heartless? How could you do this to him!”

Attracted by the commotion, Ethan, Hudson, and Logan came rushing into the room from different directions.

Ethan’s expression turned livid. He took a massive stride forward, instantly dropping to his knees to quickly inspect Sonny’s condition. Then, he snapped his head up, his eyes burning with pure hatred as he glared at me.

“Eva York, what the hell did you do!” Ethan roared. “You just got back, and you’re already misbehaving? Do you want me to send you right back to where you came from?”

Logan rushed over next. He looked at his nephew crying hysterically on the floor, listened to Vanessa’s sobbing accusations, and then turned his gaze upon me, his eyes filled with disgust.

“Eva, how could you lay your hands on such a small child?” Logan snapped.

Meanwhile, Hudson handed the baby over to the medical staff waiting behind him. He didn’t say a single word, but his cold, ferocious eyes never left me.

It felt like… I was being falsely accused all over again. It was no different from the countless times I had been framed over the past three years. Back then, when the matron accused me of stealing, my denials only earned me a harsher whipping. When a servant girl claimed I was seducing the stable hands, my explanations resulted in being stripped and publicly humiliated. When Ethan believed a rumor that I was trying to escape, a water dungeon was the reward for my defense.

I wanted to explain myself, to say it wasn’t true and that I didn’t do it. There was a lot I wanted to say, but in the end, I chose to keep quiet because nobody would believe me anyway. Just like countless times in the past, defending myself would only invite deeper malice and harsher punishment.

So, I curled up into a ball on the floor and whispered weakly, “I’m sorry…”

Vanessa suddenly lunged at me.

“Sorry? A simple 'sorry' is going to fix this? I’ll beat you to death, you bitch!”

Her fists and boots rained down on me, while the three men simply stood by and watched in silence.

At some point, someone casually remarked, “Don’t hit her belly. She’s pregnant.”

However, that was it. Nobody moved to stop her. They just stood on the sidelines, completely indifferent, exactly like they used to be.

As her fists and boots continued to rain down on my body and face, all I felt was pain. The pain was so intense it felt as if my flesh was exploding.

As my consciousness began to drift, I noticed the floating numbers in front of my eyes rapidly decreasing.

[Countdown: 24 hours, 27 minutes, 43 seconds.]

[Countdown: 20 hours, 13 minutes, 5 seconds.]

[Countdown: 15 hours, 39 minutes, 17 seconds.]

…

Finally, someone pulled Vanessa back, and she stopped. The timer froze at “4 hours, 1 minute, 25 seconds.”

Ethan slowly walked over, looking down at me from his towering height.

“Do you know what you did wrong now?” he asked. “Why can’t you ever learn to be obedient?”

I coughed twice, choking on the metallic taste of blood pooling in my throat. Instead of answering his question, I reached out and tugged at the hem of Ethan’s pants, asking him one last thing.

“Didn’t you say… nobody would ever hurt me again here?”

Ethan went dead silent. He pulled his leg away coldly, wrenching his trousers out of my weak grasp.

“But you made a mistake,” he said. “And when you make a mistake, you must be punished. Those are the rules. Lock her in the utility room. Once the doctors confirm the baby is perfectly fine, I’ll let her out.”

However, I didn’t want to be locked away anymore. I had been imprisoned for three long years, and I refused to spend the final four hours of my life being penned up like cattle.

Just as I wanted to plead with Ethan again, he turned his back on me. So, I shifted my gaze to Logan. Yet, he immediately averted his eyes, focusing instead on softly comforting the deeply shaken Vanessa. Hudson, on the other hand, had hurried out of the room to check on the baby. As expected, no one was willing to save me, and so I stopped struggling. I let the servants drag my limp body across the floor and brutally dump me onto the ground of the utility room.

Counting my own fading heartbeats, I watched the clock tick away, second by second. I had no idea what would happen once everything hit zero, but for the current me, the absolute worst-case scenario was merely death, and death would be a beautiful release.

[Countdown: 0 hours, 0 minutes, 0 seconds.]

When the numbers finally hit zero, I closed my eyes, and my heartbeat stopped. Beneath my body, a massive pool of dark red blood silently began to spread across the floor.

A servant came in to deliver food half an hour later, and a moment later, a bloodcurdling shriek pierced through the entire manor house.

The servant practically crawled and scrambled out of the room, rushing frantically toward Ethan while screaming at the top of her lungs, “Ah! She’s dead! Miss Eva is dead! There’s blood everywhere!”