Chapter3

The moment Liam's order left his lips, the bodyguard closest to me moved.

I didn’t even have time to dodge. He delivered a vicious kick squarely to the back of my knee.

My legs gave out instantly, my high heel twisted, and I crashed heavily onto the floor.

My knee slammed into a shattered wine glass, sending a piercing string of agony shooting up my leg. I instinctively reached out my right hand to brace against the floor, trying to scramble back up.

But before I could even straighten up, a black combat boot stomped mercilessly onto my right wrist, grinding down with savage force.

In that single second, cold sweat completely entirely soaked my back.

"Ah!" A few of the more faint-hearted women in the crowd clamped their hands over their eyes, shrieking in horror.

Mia cowered behind someone else, her eyes glued to my crushed wrist. The gloating in her eyes practically spilled over.

"Does it hurt?" Liam stared coldly at my violently trembling right arm. "Have you finally learned how to kneel and bow your head?"

I panted heavily, my teeth biting down on a lower lip I had already chewed raw.

Then, I suddenly burst into laughter.

The sole of the boot grinding into my wrist noticeably stiffened.

Liam furrowed his brows. "What the hell are you laughing at? Are you crazy?"

"I'm laughing because your little tricks are pathetic."

My laughter died in my throat, and I locked my eyes onto a dead, unblinking glare at him.

"What is this pain, Liam? Compared to what you did to my son three years ago, what is a broken wrist?!"

"Shut up!" Liam’s voice spiked into a roar, the veins bulging aggressively on the back of the hand gripping the urn.

I completely ignored his roaring. In one breath, I ripped off the three-year-old bloody scab festering at the bottom of my heart, tearing it raw and bloody for everyone to see.

"That blizzard night three years ago! All because this bitch Mia complained that four-year-old Leo got a speck of dirt on her couture dress!" I lunged forward with my left hand, pointing sharply at the hiding Mia as my voice tore through the room. "You, the almighty CEO, personally dragged your own sick flesh and blood—wearing nothing but a thin shirt—down the stairs like a dead dog, and locked him inside a sub-zero wine cellar!"

A collective, incredulous gasp erupted from the crowd. The elites surrounding Liam, who had spent the entire night currying his favor, visibly drained of color.

"You're lying! You crazy bitch, you're slandering us!" Mia shrieked.

"Slandering?" I snapped my head back to drill my gaze into Liam. "He was behind that door, crying, begging, screaming how cold he was! He had an asthma attack in the pitch dark, unable to even draw a breath! And you, Liam? You took the only set of car keys and the satellite phone with you!"

I watched the last trace of blood vanish from Liam's face.

"While that four-year-old child was slowly freezing into a block of ice behind that iron door... you were upstairs, basking in the heat, setting off a sky full of birthday fireworks for another woman!"

The entire banquet hall exploded.

A second ago, they had looked at Liam with awe and reverence. Now, those eyes stared at him as if he were a monster. Several corporate executives who had been standing intimately close to him instinctively stumbled several steps back.

The frantic whispers surged toward Liam like a tidal wave.

"My god... locked his own four-year-old son in the freezing cold?"

"Isn't that murder...?"

"No wonder they claimed it was an accident back then..."

The lies were stripped bare to the bone in public. His painstakingly crafted persona of the "devoted, grieving father" shattered into a thousand pieces on the floor.

Liam's chest heaved violently. A humiliating, blinding rage severed his final thread of sanity.

He refused to face this bloody truth.

"You lying bitch!"

Liam shoved the urn into his assistant’s arms and strode aggressively toward me.

"Get the hell out of the way!" He kicked aside the bodyguard still stomping on my hand, directly looming over me himself.

He leaned down, roaring as his hands reached out to crush my throat. "Since you miss him so much, I'll send you down to see him right now!"

Gasps echoed through the room, but no one dared to step forward and stop a madman.

He got closer. And closer.

I lay flat on my back. My body trembled uncontrollably from the excruciating pain of my broken hand, but I didn't shrink back a single inch.

Under the cover of the shadows and the thick carpet, my uninjured left hand crept silently to my side.

My fingers brushed against a heavy, jagged shard of glass that had scattered when the champagne tower fell.

I locked my grip around it.

Come on. Just a little closer.