Marry The Villain

Alice woke with a violent gasp as freezing water crashed over her body, soaking through her clothes and bedsheets so completely that for one disoriented moment she could not tell whether she was awake or trapped inside some terrible nightmare. Her chest rose and fell unevenly while icy droplets slid from her hair onto her face and neck, leaving her shivering beneath the darkness surrounding her room.

The shock of the cold had dragged her out of sleep too abruptly for her mind to catch up with reality. Her thoughts remained sluggish, tangled somewhere between unconsciousness and panic as she blinked repeatedly into the shadows gathered around her bed.

At first, the figures standing there did not even seem real.

They appeared almost shapeless in the darkness, silent and unmoving, watching her without speaking. Her pulse quickened painfully as fear crept beneath her skin. She rubbed her eyes quickly with trembling fingers, convinced exhaustion was distorting her vision.

But when her sight finally sharpened, the dread settling in her stomach deepened instead of fading.

Her family stood around her bed.

The air inside the room felt unbearably heavy.

Her father stood nearest to her, his face half-hidden beneath the dim bedside lamp, though even in the weak light she could see the fury carved into his expression. Beside him stood Nina, perfectly composed despite the lateness of the hour, her posture rigid and cold while her gaze rested upon Alice with an unsettling absence of warmth. Linda lingered slightly behind them, dressed elegantly even in sleepwear, her arms folded loosely as she watched in complete silence.

None of them spoke.

None of them moved.

Their stillness frightened Alice more than shouting would have.

Slowly, she pushed herself upright despite the freezing water clinging uncomfortably to her skin. Her damp hair stuck to her face while confusion clouded every part of her expression.

“Dad…” she began uncertainly, her voice rough from sleep and fear. “What’s going on?”

No one answered her.

The silence stretched painfully.

Alice looked between their faces, waiting for someone to explain why they were standing over her in the middle of the night like strangers preparing for something dreadful.

“Did something happen?” she asked again, more carefully this time.

Still nothing.

The unease inside her chest thickened into fear.

She swung her legs off the bed and stood slowly, her knees weak beneath her as cold water dripped onto the floor around her bare feet. The silence pressing against her ears had begun to feel unbearable.

“Dad?” she repeated softly as she stepped toward him.

The moment she reached him, his hand struck her across the face with such brutal force that her entire body flew sideways before crashing hard against the floor.

Pain exploded through her cheek instantly.

For several seconds she could not breathe.

The room spun violently around her while a sharp ringing filled her ears, drowning out everything else. Alice remained frozen on the ground, one trembling hand pressed against the burning side of her face, disbelief washed through her in waves so intense they left her numb.

Her father had hit her.

In all twenty two years of her life, he had never once laid a hand on her.

“You are a disgrace to this family!” he shouted furiously.

His voice thundered through the room with such force that Alice flinched instinctively.

“How dare you sleep with your sister’s fiancé?”

The accusation struck her harder than the slap itself.

Alice stared upward at him, unable to process what she had just heard. Her thoughts tangled together uselessly as though the words had been spoken in another language entirely.

“What?” she whispered faintly in confusion.

“You heard me perfectly well,” he snapped.

Alice’s lips parted soundlessly while panic slowly crept into her chest.

“No… Dad, I don’t understand…”

“Look at the evidence.”

A stack of photographs was suddenly thrown at her.

They scattered across the floor around her like broken fragments of a life she no longer recognized.

Alice stared at them blankly for a moment before reaching toward the nearest picture with shaking fingers.

The instant she saw what it contained, her blood turned cold.

A man and woman lay tangled together intimately on a what seems to be a hotel bed.

The man was unmistakable.

Matthew Leej.

Linda’s fiancé.

But Alice barely noticed him because her eyes remained fixed upon the woman beneath him.

The woman looked exactly like her. Exactly like her, same face, hair, body and eyes.

Alice felt her breathing falter.

“No… it can’t be,” she whispered.

Her fingers tightened around the photographs as panic began spreading through her body.

“No, this isn’t me, please believe me!”

Her father let out a harsh laugh filled entirely with disgust.

“You still want to lie after this?”

“It’s not me,” Alice insisted desperately as she looked back at him, tears already beginning to gather in her eyes. “Dad, I swear to you, it’s not me. I would never do something like that.”

Linda finally spoke, her voice quiet but sharp enough to cut straight through Alice.

“I always knew you envied me,” she said coldly. “But I never imagined you’d humiliate me like this.”

Alice stared at her in disbelief.

“Linda, no… you know me. You know I would never—”

“I thought I did! I thought I knew you.”

The disappointment in Linda’s voice sounded practiced somehow, polished too perfectly to feel genuine, but Alice was too overwhelmed to understand why.

“I am your sister, mother please help me.” Alice pleaded desperately.

“No,” Nina interrupted.

The single word silenced the room instantly.

Alice slowly turned toward the woman she had called mother her entire life.

Nina’s face remained completely expressionless, cold even.

“Don’t call me that,” Nina said sharply. “I am not your mother.”

Alice felt the ground beneath her disappear.

For several long seconds she simply stared at Nina, certain she must have misheard.

“…What?”

Nina’s gaze did not soften.

“Your real mother was a shameless woman who slept with my husband even when she knew he was married to me,” she said with cruel calmness. “She became pregnant with you but died while giving birth.”

Each word struck Alice with unbearable force.

The room suddenly felt suffocating.

“I raised you because I had no choice,” Nina continued. “But you were never truly my daughter, you can’t compete with her.”

Alice’s lips trembled.

“No…” she whispered weakly.

But even as denial rose inside her, something far more painful began unfolding beneath it.

Understanding.

Tiny memories she had ignored throughout her childhood, throughout her entire life suddenly resurfaced one after another.

The subtle difference in the way she had always been treated compared to Linda. Moments she had dismissed before now twisted into something horrifyingly clear.

The warmth she constantly chased from Nina had never existed because it had never been meant for her in the first place. Her chest tightened painfully.

“You’re lying,” Alice said, though the words lacked conviction even to her own ears.

Linda stepped forward then, satisfaction flickering openly across her face.

“If you want proof,” she said casually, “your mother’s buried at Floor Cemetery.”

Alice looked at her slowly.

“Her name was Mona S’Lene.”

The unfamiliar name echoed strangely inside her mind.

Mona S’Lene.

Her real mother.

The thought alone shattered something deep within her. Before she could speak again, her father suddenly grabbed her arm harshly and pulled her upright.

“Dad—!”

“Get out.”

Fear crashed through her instantly.

“Please listen to me,” Alice cried as he dragged her toward the bedroom door. “I didn’t do anything wrong!”

Her father ignored her completely.

“Dad, please!”

She stumbled desperately after him as he hauled her down the hallway with frightening force. Her bare feet slipped repeatedly against the polished floors while tears streamed uncontrollably down her face.

Nina never moved to stop him.

Linda merely watched.

Alice’s voice echoed through the mansion as panic consumed her completely.

“Please, Dad, I swear it wasn’t me! Please just listen to me!”

No one answered.

No one defended her.

No one even looked at her with pity.

The grand staircase blurred before her tear-filled eyes as she was dragged downstairs like a criminal being thrown out of her own life.

When they reached the front entrance, her father yanked the doors open violently. Cold night air rushed inside immediately.

Then, without hesitation, he shoved her outside. Alice lost her balance instantly and crashed painfully onto the stone driveway. Sharp pain shot through her knees and palms as the freezing ground scraped against her skin.

A suitcase came flying after her. Then another.

The front doors slammed shut with a deafening finality that echoed through the silent night.

Alice remained on the ground motionless. Her mind could not catch up with reality. Everything had happened too quickly.

Only minutes ago she had been asleep in her bed. Now she was outside.

Alone.

Discarded.

Slowly, she lifted her head toward the mansion.

Warm golden lights glowed behind the towering windows, illuminating the home she had spent her entire life believing belonged to her.

But now it looked unfamiliar somehow. Distant, like a place she had never truly been welcome in. Movement near the gate caught her attention.

Linda stood there watching her. A slow smile curved across her lips.

Not sadness.

Not guilt.

Satisfaction.

The sight of it chilled Alice more deeply than the freezing night air surrounding her.

Then Linda turned away and disappeared back inside without another glance, leaving Alice standing alone outside the mansion while the heavy iron gates remained firmly shut between her and the only home she had ever known.

As the silence settled around her once more, Alice felt something deep inside her break completely beneath the crushing weight of humiliation, betrayal, and disbelief. She remained standing there for several long moments staring toward the mansion windows as though she still expected someone to come back for her, perhaps her father opening the door after calming down or Nina realizing a mistake had been made, but nothing happened.

No one returned.

No voice called her name.

Only silence answered her existence.

Her breathing gradually became uneven again, she lowered her gaze toward the photographs still clutched weakly in her trembling hand, the images now blurred slightly from the tears falling steadily onto them while her thoughts spiraled uncontrollably inside her mind.

‘I didn’t sleep with him.’

The thought repeated desperately over and over again like she could somehow anchor herself to reality through sheer repetition alone.

‘I’m still a virgin. I would know.’

The certainty of that truth only made the situation more horrifying because the photographs looked painfully real, detailed enough to destroy any attempt at denial no matter how desperately she wanted to fight against them. Her stomach twisted violently as confusion and fear tangled together inside her chest while questions continued crashing through her mind without pause.

How could those pictures exist?

How could someone create something so convincing?

Slowly, painfully, realization began settling inside her.

This had not been sudden anger born from misunderstanding.

This had been planned.

Carefully.

Deliberately.

The more she thought about it, the more terrifying the realization became because nothing about tonight felt impulsive anymore. The photographs had been prepared beforehand. The confrontation had been staged too perfectly. Even Linda’s expression carried the satisfaction of someone watching a long-awaited plan finally unfold exactly as intended.

Alice wiped frantically at the tears covering her face before stumbling back toward the mansion doors, desperation overtaking the shock numbing her body as she climbed the steps again and knocked shakily against the heavy wood.

“Please,” she cried while pounding harder against the doors. “Please open the door.”

Nothing answered her.

The silence inside the mansion felt cold and absolute.

“Dad!”

Her voice echoed through the night, trembling with panic and desperation.

Still no response came.

“Please… I didn’t do it…”

Her voice cracked painfully beneath the weight of her sobs while tears continued streaming uncontrollably down her face.

The mansion stood silent before her beneath the dark night sky, enormous and distant despite being only inches away, and for the first time in her life Alice realized that a place could stop feeling like home within a single moment.

She pressed her trembling hands flat against the doors again while her chest tightened so painfully she could barely breathe.

“Please let me explain…”

The complete absence of response hurt more deeply than the accusations themselves because it made one thing painfully clear: they had already decided her place in their lives long before tonight.

Slowly, her strength began slipping away beneath the crushing exhaustion overtaking her body and mind. She stepped backward unsteadily until she reached the edge of the driveway beneath a dim streetlight while the cold night wind cut mercilessly through her soaked clothes and tears continued falling endlessly down her face.

Her suitcases sat beside her like cruel reminders that she had truly been discarded without hesitation, as though twenty years of her existence inside that mansion had meant absolutely nothing in the end.

At twenty years old, she suddenly had nothing left.

No home.

No family.

No place to go.

And perhaps worst of all, no understanding of why this had happened to her at all.

Alice looked back toward the mansion one final time while her vision blurred heavily with tears and pain tightened mercilessly around her chest until breathing itself began to hurt. The warm lights glowing behind the massive windows now felt impossibly distant from her, like a feeling belonging to another life entirely, and the realization that nobody inside cared whether she survived the night nearly shattered what little strength she still possessed.

Then, in a voice so broken it hardly sounded like her own anymore, she whispered helplessly into the empty darkness surrounding her,

“What do I do now?”