four

The heavy iron door of the basement was kicked open with a deafening crash.

The micro-device hidden inside my waistband vibrated faintly.

A smirk of grim satisfaction tugged at the corners of my mouth. I raised my wrists—chafed raw and red by the handcuffs—and looked at the unhinged man before me. For the entire day I had been locked down here, he hadn't given me a single drop of water or a morsel of food.

Ethan crossed the room in a few long strides. He grabbed a handful of my hair, ruthlessly hauling me up from the freezing, damp concrete. Smack! He viciously slammed a blood-smeared plastic bag against my face.

"You venomous bitch! You're worse than a demon crawling out of hell! Look at what you've done!" Ethan’s eyes were bloodshot, glaring with the feral rage of a rabid beast. His jaw clamped so hard his teeth audibly ground together, spit flying onto my cheeks as he roared. "You paid off that nurse with fifty thousand dollars to lace Lily’s IV with abortion pills! My only heir... turned into a puddle of blood because of you!"

Panting heavily, I stared at the contents of the bag: an ultrasound scan and an empty pill bottle.

It was genuinely laughable. Tumbling down the stairs—with the pathetic force of that whore's fall, it wouldn't have caused a miscarriage at all. She did it because she knew the bastard in her womb was never Ethan’s to begin with. Terrified that I had seen right through her charade, she panicked like a cornered rat. So, she directed this self-inflicted miscarriage melodrama right there in the hospital. Not only did it flawlessly eradicate the ticking time bomb of her infidelity, but it also securely pinned the label of 'murderer' right onto my head.

"What the hell are you laughing at?!" My reaction seemed to push him completely over the edge. His hand shot out, suffocating my throat as he slammed me hard against the mildewed wall. "You didn't just murder my child, you destroyed the Blackwell family's four-billion-dollar trust! Did you really think you were untouchable, Grace?"

"Idiot... you've been played. I've been locked up down here, watched by your men... how could I possibly bribe someone to drug her?" I choked out, fighting for a fraction of air through his crushing grip. "And... you don't even know... whose spawn it really was..."

Just then, Ethan's phone rang. A doctor's urgent voice came through the speaker: "Sir, everything is prepped. We're just waiting for the blood bags."

"Shut up!" Ethan snarled at me, immediately hanging up the phone. He hurled me onto the ground and turned toward the foot of the stairs, where an unfamiliar man in a white lab coat stood waiting.

"Begin," Ethan ordered, his voice dropping to a glacial chill.

The man descended the steps, clutching a metal medical case. Two burly bodyguards stepped forward, grabbing me fiercely by the arms. They hauled me up like a slab of dead meat and dragged me directly to a rusted iron bed. Abrasive leather straps immediately buckled down over my wrists, ankles, and waist.

"Let me go! Ethan, the people coming to rescue me are almost here! I'm warning you, let me go!" I thrashed violently, fighting with every last ounce of my strength.

The black-market doctor snapped open his metal case. He pulled out a horrifyingly thick gauge needle and attached it to a heavy, clear tube.

"Lily lost too much blood, and she has a rare blood type," Ethan said, stepping up to the makeshift operating table. He loomed over me, looking down with cold detachment. "Your blood is a perfect match. The doctor says draining half your blood volume will be just enough to pull her back from the brink." He let out a dark scoff. "Besides, I'm the one who saved your life! You're just a lowly orphan—who the hell would ever come to rescue you?!"

My heart seized in my chest. He had actually brought an unlicensed butcher down here to bleed me dry just to save his mistress.

"She deserved to lose that bastard..." I glared at him with pure, unadulterated hatred. "You're going to drain me alive to keep that whore breathing? Ethan, when I get out of here, I'll make you fall on your knees."

"The moment you murdered my child, you became nothing but a walking blood bank," Ethan retorted smoothly. "And you are never walking out of those doors today."

Ethan turned his ruthless profile away, looking at the doctor who was adjusting the dials. He issued his final, absolute order: "No anesthetics. Draw it directly. I want her to feel every agonizing second of the pain Lily felt when she lost our baby."

The underground doctor froze, sucking in a sharp breath. "Mr. Blackwell, without sedation, considering how weak she already is, she might..."

"Did I stutter?" Ethan snapped viciously. "Do it!"

The black-market doctor took an alcohol-soaked cotton swab and wiped a spot on my arm with clinical indifference.

"Forgive me."

The moment the words left his mouth, the massive steel needle savagely pierced through my skin.

"Ahhhhh!" I couldn't control it; a bloodcurdling scream ripped from my throat. Ethan knew perfectly well about my severe phobia of needles—knew exactly how my mind would magnify the physical agony a hundredfold. This was his uniquely tailored way of taking his revenge.

My ten fingers clamped like vises onto the edges of the iron frame. Huge drops of sweat mingled with my tears, pooling endlessly onto the rusted metal beneath me.

The two bodyguards threw their massive weight over my arms and legs, pinning down my frantically thrashing limbs as my body spasmed from the severe pain. A dark crimson liquid violently surged through the clear tubing, ruthlessly siphoned away from my veins.

And yet, amidst this desperate, hellish despair, I could faintly hear the commotion from the upper floors.

"Handle her gently. Set the heated blanket precisely to 99.5 degrees." That was the voice of a top-tier specialist from Mount Sinai Hospital.

"Mr. Ethan gave explicit orders. Miss Lily is extremely frail right now; airlift the absolute best supplements immediately. She is the most honorable lady of the house—you all better serve her meticulously."

Upstairs: multi-million-dollar, luxurious pampering.

Down in the basement: my merciless torture.

I bit down on my jaw so hard it ached, my soft tongue chewed into a bloody pulp by my own teeth just to keep from screaming again. I fought to turn my head, fixing a death glare on Ethan standing a few feet away.

He was looking down at his watch, his face etched with blatant impatience.

"Speed it up! Lily is waiting for this transfusion upstairs. Stop wasting my time!"

The blood flowed faster and faster through the tube. My core temperature plummeted rapidly. Even drawing breath became perilously weak.

Staring at the irritated silhouette of the man, I swore a low, fractured vow: "Ethan... for the humiliation I, Grace Morgan, suffered today... I will make you pay it back a hundredfold."

The cheap heart rate monitor attached to me began screeching, its warning alarm growing shriller and more frantic.

"Sir! We've drained too much! We can't take anymore!" The black-market doctor’s hands were trembling violently now.

The edges of my vision were completely swallowed by a suffocating blackness. The absolute last thing I saw was the emotionless curve of Ethan’s profile.

Then, my heart stopped beating.