Chapter3

The faint light of dawn pierced through the blizzard, casting a deathly white glow on the balcony. My lungs felt like they were filled with shards of glass, and each breath brought out bloody, icy fragments.

The instinct for survival is the last ember of fire burning within me. Through the floor-to-ceiling glass, I stared intently at the Red Cross first-aid kit under the coffee table. It contained not only antibiotics to suppress a high fever, but also emergency injections to maintain adrenaline levels. If I could get my hands on it, I could still breathe.

At seven o'clock in the morning, Brody yawned, pushed open the glass door a crack, and casually intended to throw a bag of bloody raw meat and bones onto the balcony.

I sprang up from the blind spot, forcefully squeezed open the crack in the door, and lunged at the coffee table! My fingertips were already touching the cold nylon handle of the first-aid kit—

But I underestimated their malice. This was not a careless act of taking out the trash, but a premeditated trap.

"Got the rat!" Brody laughed wildly, his massive, bear-like body slamming down from the side, slamming me hard against the hard bulletproof glass.

Before I could even struggle, a heavy weight pressed down on my back. Derek, wearing heavy tactical boots, crushed my last shred of resistance with a single step, pinning me firmly to the icy floor.

"Look who this is? Our former master not only didn't freeze to death, but he's quite energetic." Derek said with a half-smoked cigar dangling from his mouth, his tone full of mocking cruelty.

Frank emerged from the shadows. This father-in-law, who usually greeted me with a beaming smile and was utterly hypocritical, was now weighing the meter-long demolition bar in his hand.

"You want medicine, huh? I'll write you a prescription." Frank grinned maliciously, raising the frost-covered iron rod high in the air.

A sharp, chilling sound.

The iron rod whistled through the air and struck my left wrist without missing a beat. "Crack!"—a shattered bone spur pierced through my flesh instantly, and blood gushed out like a torrent. The excruciating pain shot through my brain like an electric shock. I opened my mouth to scream, but only hoarse, gurgling sounds came from my throat.

"It's so noisy, let's cool it down!"

Brody picked up a basin of ice water that had been left outside for half an hour and poured it over my blood-soaked face.

The moment water at sub-zero temperatures touches the skin, it crystallizes rapidly at a speed visible to the naked eye. The icy chill, like countless steel needles, instantly pierces through the pores and into the internal organs, even freezing the blood flow due to this terrifyingly low temperature.

“Honey, just throw him out. The floor is covered in his dirty blood .” Chloe took an elegant sip of her hot coffee, as if looking at a piece of disgusting garbage.

Derek nodded, then grabbed me by the back of my collar like he was dragging a dead dog. The moment the door opened, the deathly air in the corridor, at minus eighty degrees Celsius, felt like tangible ice blades, frantically cutting into every inch of my skin.

"No...no!" I gripped the edge of the door frame with my intact right hand, my nails scratching desperate, bloody marks on the metal. I knew that once I was thrown through that door, it would be a true and irreversible end.

"Get out of here!" Derek raised his tomahawk-like military boot and kicked me hard in the chest.

Chloe stood in the warm light of the doorway, looking down at me.

"Go to hell and take your house!"

"Bang--!"

I lay on the rough cement floor. The blood from the broken bone in my left hand had stopped flowing, and the blood in the wound had been completely frozen into dark red ice.

The senses are being stripped away layer by layer, and the heartbeat is getting slower and slower.

But under extreme physiological despair, my brain entered a strange state of clarity.

The stolen winter coat, the trampled Wagyu beef, the forcibly pressed fingerprints, the left arm broken by an iron bar... Chloe's final, piercing laugh echoed endlessly in the silent, icy ground.

I'm not reconciled. I'm not reconciled to die such a pathetic death outside my own city!