Chapter 3

The silver laptop lay quietly on the glass coffee table.

It held the only proof that Leo had ever lived in this world.

"This is the step where exposure therapy enters deep waters," Blaire pulled a cable from her bag and cleanly connected it to a projector. "Using the imagery she depends on most for a flooding experience."

The cold lights in the living room dimmed, and a massive projection screen lit up.

A faint crackle of static came from the speakers, followed immediately by Leo's tender laughter echoing through the entire living room.

On the screen, my five-year-old son was wearing a paper dinosaur mask, stumbling toward the camera, yelling in his sweet, milky voice, "Mommy! Watch me eat you up!"

My tears broke instantly like a shattered dam.

I desperately shoved my shoulders forward, making the chair and straps creak heavily. Like a wild dog fiercely guarding its food, I tried with everything I had to get closer to the screen. That was my Leo. That was my living, breathing Leo!

Blaire watched my immersed state and turned to Adrian. "Big A, your mercy right now is cruelty to her. Cut it off. Only if you do it yourself will she truly give up."

Adrian's face tightened. He looked at our son on the screen, a flash of pain crossing his eyes.

But trapped by Blaire's rational-sounding rhetoric of "it’s for her own good," he took a long stride toward the coffee table.

"Don't touch it!" I frantically mouthed the words, shaking my head at him in sheer desperation.

Adrian didn't look deeply into my eyes.

He violently yanked out the connection cable, hoisted the laptop high into the air, and smashed it ruthlessly against the cold, hard marble floor!

Crash—Crack!

The projection instantly died.

The hard shell twisted, the black screen shattered, and components scattered across the floor.

I felt as if my spine had been snapped, collapsing limply into the restraints.

The main hard drive, holding every memory, popped entirely out of the casing and landed right at Blaire's feet.

Blaire lifted her foot, her stiletto heel stomping precisely onto the hard drive's metal casing. "If it must break, it should break thoroughly."

Her ankle twisted, grinding down with force.

No! Not that!

There was no backup. If it broke, there would truly be nothing left!

A colossal surge of energy exploded from the depths of my soul.

I erupted with the desperate strength of a cornered beast, arching my back violently and kicking hard against the rug.

With a heavy thud, the massive medical chair was actually forced off the ground by my momentum.

Chair and all, like a dying cannonball, I crashed brutally into Blaire's back!

"Ah!"

Blaire let out a shriek. Caught entirely off guard, she was knocked solidly to the floor.

Due to the recoil, I also slammed hard onto the ground, chair and all, my vision going black in patches.

"What the hell are you doing?!" Adrian roared. He immediately rushed forward to help Blaire up, then used an immense amount of force to flip me and the chair upright again.

Blaire pushed Adrian away and casually wiped the blood from her palm where she had been cut by broken glass.

When she looked down at me, her facade of hypocrisy vanished completely, leaving only an unimaginably venomous resentment in her eyes.

"Good. Very good." Blaire shook off the drops of blood from her hand with a cold sneer. "It seems the sugar-coated bullets are too light for you."

Moving rapidly, she pulled out her phone and cast it directly to the projection screen. "Since mild desensitization isn't working, let's switch to something more intense."

The projection screen lit up again.

This time there was no sound, only the basement security camera footage stamped with cold blue timecodes.

On the screen, the basement was already on fire.

The moment tiny Leo pushed the door open, the explosive flames swallowed him whole like a vicious hound.

That tiny figure turned into a human torch, rolling desperately on the ground, his mouth thrown wide open in a silent scream.

"Wu..." My blood froze instantly. My eyes bulged wildly, and my entire body convulsed so violently the straps felt like they would snap.

"Look! Open your eyes and look!" Blaire grabbed me by the hair, forcing my face to point dead-center at the screen. "Look at how he was burned to a crisp!"

The flames scorched directly into my retinas.

The searing pain and suffocation, locked in the absolute deepest part of my subconscious, detonated in my brain like a nuclear bomb.

"No... no..."

My vocal cords tore by force, the taste of blood rushing backward up my throat.

"No... Ahhhh——!!!"

A desolate, desperate, inhuman screech finally tore through half a year of dead silence, ripping its way out of my throat!

I made a sound.

The price was sacrificing my soul to hell.

But what was even more hellish was the sound that came from above me.

Clap, clap, clap—

This broken scream actually made the living room boil with excitement.

Blaire was the first to applaud, followed by the men holding their whiskey glasses, clapping as though they had truly witnessed something miraculous.

Trembling, I looked over at Adrian.

He looked at my pale, tear-streaked face, heard the syllables I emitted, and his deeply locked brows actually unfurled. A flash of relieved exhale even crossed his eyes—as long as his wife could make a sound, this extreme "treatment" was a success.

"See?" Blaire released her grip on my hair. "The ash blocking her throat, didn't she just spit it out?"

I lay paralyzed in the chair, feeling that some part inside me had shattered even more completely than the hard drive.

"Since her throat is cleared, it means her psychological defenses have entirely collapsed." Blaire had no intention of giving me a chance to breathe. Pivoting sharply, her tone suddenly became incredibly teasing. "Big A, since we're cleaning out the wound, we might as well clean a hundred percent of it. It’s time to face the true cancer in your marriage, apart from the child."

The room fell quiet.

Adrian froze slightly too, looking at her in confusion.

Blaire walked over to her bag but didn't pull out any medical documents.

She slowly drew out a thick manila envelope, sealed tightly with red wax.

She tossed the completely unopened envelope lightly onto the glass coffee table, right among the shards of broken glass.

"Do you know why, after losing her child, she fell into such a deep psychological defense mechanism that she subconsciously chose to become mute?" Blaire stared right at me, though her words were directed at the entire room.

Pointing at the envelope, she announced, pausing to emphasize each word: "It’s not just grief. It’s a guilty conscience. Inside this is evidence of Elena’s affair, spanning several years before the fire."

The air froze instantly in that second.

The relief on Adrian's face abruptly solidified. He stared at the envelope in absolute disbelief, then whipped his head around to glare at me. "What are you talking about?!"

I stared dead at the envelope too, entirely forgetting the agonizing pain across my body. The sheer shock made my breath stop.

An affair?

How could I possibly have had an affair?! Every day of my life revolved entirely around my husband and son; my universe consisted only of them. I had absolutely never done anything to betray my marriage!

Yet Blaire proclaimed my infidelity with such absolute certainty.

That could only mean one thing—

This so-called "evidence" was a complete fabrication, entirely concocted by her hands to thoroughly ruin my name!

Trauma intervention, exposure therapy, it was all a front.

She never intended to cure me today. She meant to utterly destroy my sanity, then, in front of everyone, use a fabricated crime to nail me to the cross of the lethal fire and betrayal.