Chapter 4

The correction center's public lounge now masquerades as an exclusive, WASP-style private party.

The air hangs heavy with the scent of expensive champagne and cloying custom perfume. It creates a sickeningly absurd contrast with the foul stench of festering wounds radiating from my own body.

Two orderlies pin me hard against a wheelchair in the corner. I haven't had a drop of water in three days. Combined with the massive infection from the power washer blasts, I am burning up with a fever pushing 104 degrees.

In the center of the room, my mother raises a crystal flute.

"Thank you all for being here today, alumni and close family friends. We have some incredibly wonderful news to share." My mother's gaze sweeps over the crowd, shooting me a fleeting look of contempt before she beams at the stage. "Liam and our precious Mia are officially tying the knot. Mia is already carrying the next generation of our family. To celebrate, we are transferring the full family trust fund, along with the Ivy League legacy admission spot, entirely to the happy couple."

Thunderous applause erupts across the room.

"As for Chloe..." My father takes the microphone. His tone is as cold as if he is writing off a bad asset. "Due to severe mental illness, she will remain at the center indefinitely for treatment. She is no longer a part of our family."

I sit in the dim corner, a biting sneer curling my cracked lips.

Stripping away my education, stealing my trust fund, and even getting pregnant like they couldn't wait another second. They don't even bother hiding it anymore. They simply built a stage for their carnival right on top of my own flesh and blood.

The crowd parts. Mia struts toward me, swaying her hips, flanked by a few socialite followers.

She stops in front of the wheelchair, looking down her nose at me while tossing around an obsidian amulet with worn edges.

"Pretty, isn't it, sis?" Mia deliberately dangles the crystal right in front of my face. "Liam says it's the most precious gift he's ever received. Now he's given it to me and the baby."

My pupils constrict sharply.

It takes me back to Boston two years ago, fully shut down by a blizzard. Liam's arrogance pissed off some punks from a rival team, and six of them cornered and beat him in a dark alley. I skipped my finals, trudged through knee-deep snow, and threw my body over his to shield him. Their baseball bats shattered my right shoulder blade, leaving me with a permanent, incurable injury.

I bought that crystal from a street vendor to keep him safe, dragging my dislocated arm through ten miles of that blizzard.

But the day I got out of the hospital, a fully recovered Liam listened to Mia's bullshit. He tossed that stone onto the table and sneered at me. "Chloe, you did this to yourself just to guilt-trip me, didn't you? Your cheap little stunts are suffocating."

"Treating trash someone else bought with their life like a treasure." I grit my teeth. "Mia, you're just a scavenger feeding on leftovers. It's disgusting."

Mia's face instantly turns livid. Just as she is about to lose it, the whispered gossip of a few Ivy League alumni nearby drifts into my ears.

"They call it a drug trial, but it's just a front. Mia doesn't even have any rare neurological disease."

"Shh, keep your voice down! It's a money-laundering scheme for that underground clinic to fake FDA clinical data. By turning her into a lunatic, all the money trails go up in smoke."

"Man, what a pathetic scapegoat..."

The blood in my veins completely freezes.

No disease.

She was never sick at all!

From start to finish, nobody needs saving! My compromises, my sacrifices, my brain nerves literally destroyed on the operating table. Was it all just an elaborate slaughterhouse designed to cover up their financial fraud and illegal experiments?

I actually tried to suppress the apathy caused by my brain damage for these scumbags. I tried to claw back some trace of human emotion.

Mia notices my chest heaving violently. Thinking I am finally breaking down, she leans in with pure excitement, pressing her red lips right next to my ear.

"You know what, Chloe? While you were strapped down in that sterile room, twitching and screaming for help, Liam and I were making out in the monitoring room right next door. He looked at the flatlining chart of your brainwaves and said you were finally no longer an eyesore."

A deafening explosion goes off in my head.

My physically severed empathy doesn't allow me to feel sorrow. But the absolute rage and the humiliation of being played for a complete fool instantly mutate into pure, unadulterated destructive lust.

"Get the hell away from me!"

I let out a hoarse roar. I have no idea where the strength comes from, but I violently tear free from the wheelchair restraints and ram my head straight into Mia's stomach.

Mia shrieks, stumbling backward until she crashes hard into the champagne tower.

The massive crash of shattered glass instantly sends the whole room into chaos.

"Grab her! Get this psycho!" My mother's piercing scream tears through the hall.

Six heavily armed security guards swarm me like hunting dogs. I clutch a shard of broken glass tight, aiming to slash the carotid artery of the nearest orderly. But my sheer physical exhaustion makes me a second too slow.

A heavy thud echoes.

They slam me brutally onto the marble floor. A heavy boot stomps down hard on my right shoulder.

Crack. Along with the sickening sound of snapping bone, the very injury I suffered protecting Liam gets violently crushed out of its socket.

Piercing agony shoots through my entire body like an electric current. I bite down viciously on my lip, keeping my neck stiff, and lock my bloodshot eyes straight ahead.

Past the endless sea of expensive heels and dress shoes, I spot Liam standing at the very back of the crowd.

A doctor in a white coat walks right past him. He holds a syringe as thick as a forearm, loaded with a massive dose of cloudy tranquilizer.

Liam doesn't step forward.

The needle tip catches the harsh light, plunging straight toward my carotid artery.