Chapter 6 Even His Disdain Is Breathtaking
The video played.
+10 Free Coins
On screen. Sharon, dressed in a red riding outfit, yanked Natalie’s hair and slammed her head against a rusted pipe. Blood streamed down from Natalie’s lashes like a curtain of crimson.
“You filthy bitch. You stole eighteen years of my life in luxury. You should’ve died, Natalie!”
She kept slamming Natalie’s head again and again.
Natalie crumpled like a rag doll.
Her eighteen–year–old back was already torn to shreds–raw, bloody, barely human. But Sharon raised her crocodile–skin whip again and cracked it through the air.
“Go to hell!”
“Ah!”
The pain wracked through Natalie’s body. She screamed, trembling violently as she curled in on herself.
She crawled forward, dragging herself toward Quincy’s embroidered hem.
“Mom, please… please save me. You raised me for eighteen years. We were mother and daughter for eighteen years. That has to count for something. I swear I’ll be good to you. I’ll be the best daughter ever, I promise.”
Blood and tears blurred her face, but Quincy didn’t even flinch.
She wrinkled her nose and took a step back, silk slipping from Natalie’s hands.
Fiddling with her bracelet, as if the scent of blood offended her, Quincy said calmly, “Natalie, if it weren’t for you, our real daughter wouldn’t have spent eighteen years out there suffering. If you truly care about us, then let Sharon vent.”
“But I’ll die like this! Mom, she’ll kill me!”
Natalie’s voice shook, raw with fear.
“Then die. That’s your fate,” Quincy said coldly. “As long as my daughter is happy, I don’t care what happens to you.”
She turned to Sharon with a gentle smile. “Sharon, there’s plenty of time. You can beat her more later. Don’t tire yourself out before our family portrait session.”
Sharon snorted and tossed the whip aside.
“Fine. I’ll finish her off after the photos.”
She took two steps, then paused and turned.
“Hey. I heard salt water disinfects wounds. Bring a whole bucket of sea salt and dump it on her. She won’t
1/3
7:29 pm PD
Chapter 6 Even His Disdain Is Breathtaking
0191
+10 Free Coins
die from that—and I’ll get to keep her around longer. Plus, it’ll leave scars. I want this bitch to remember for the rest of her life that she was born to be my punching bag.”
“No! Please, no! Mom, don’t let her do this to me!”
Natalie tried to crawl away, but she had no strength left. The butler pinned her easily.
The salt water poured over her shredded skin, and her scream tore out of the screen like a blade.
Everyone in the room recoiled.
Jensen’s fists clenched tight. His eyes burned with shock and guilt.
He remembered her just like that–half–dead, covered in wounds–when he’d found her. But it had been Sharon all along?
How could she?
He ripped his arm out of Sharon’s grip, eyes as cold as steel.
“It was you?”
“No! No, it wasn’t me! That video is fake!”
Sharon was panicking.
How? There were no cameras in the basement. How did that bitch get a recording?
She couldn’t let Jensen hate her. The Summers family needed the Luke family’s money. She couldn’t let Jensen feel anything for Natalie.
She pointed at Natalie and shrieked, “She faked it! We never had surveillance down there! She made this video to frame me and my mom!”
“Yes! Sharon’s telling the truth!”
Quincy stepped forward, eyes gleaming with venom.
“Natalie, I raised you like a princess for eighteen years! Even when we found out you weren’t really our daughter, I still let you live with us. But you couldn’t stop sleeping around. We had no choice but to send you away. And now you’re spreading lies? What did I ever do to deserve this?”
Her eyes glistened with fake tears. Everyone turned to Natalie.
But Natalie had known. She knew five years ago–Quincy didn’t care about her at all.
Now, watching Quincy throw her under the bus to protect Sharon, Natalie wasn’t surprised.
She laughed coldly.
“Madam Quincy, you’re right. There wasn’t a camera in the basement at first. But do you remember that night you went down there alone to retrieve something and fell? No one noticed until I went to look for you and pulled you out. After that, I installed a pinhole camera without telling anyone. Just in case it happened again.”
2/3
7:29 pm PD.
Chapter 6 Even His Disdain Is Breathtaking
Quincy’s face paled.
+10 Free Coins
She remembered–vaguely. She’d gone to get something precious in secret, not wanting the staff to see. She’d fallen. She’d really thought she might be stuck there all night.
But Natalie had come for her. Natalie had saved her.
And Natalie had always treated the Summers family well.
Sharon saw the flicker of guilt in her mother’s eyes and quickly grabbed her hand.
“Mom, she’s lying, right? You’re the lady of the house. There’s no way you’d go down to the basement alone. She’s making it up, right?”
Quincy looked into Sharon’s panicked eyes and caved.
“Yes. Natalie is lying. I’ve never been in that basement. A place like that isn’t where someone like me would ever go.”
Natalie’s fingers dug into her palms. Her nails pierced skin, grounding her in the pain.
What now?
This mother and daughter were so shameless. If they refused to admit the truth of the recording, how could she prove that everything she endured was real?
Then a deep male voice rang out.
“Is that so? Then why don’t we ask your butler to confirm what really happened?”
The light from the chandelier seemed to freeze. The crowd parted like water.
He stood tall–six–foot–two–with a presence like a blade unsheathed. His brow cast shadows over eyes dark as deep pools. But a solitary beauty mark near one eye cut through the cold like a scar.
When his gaze swept over Natalie’s scarred shoulders, his throat bobbed in a motion so sharp, it made her chest tighten.
Power radiated from him like smoke. And yet, a faded tattoo curled beneath the cuff of his sleeve.
As a single stray thread brushed his lapel, he calmly dusted it away.
The gesture–so effortless, so disdainful–was enough to make every flashbulb in the room stutter and lose focus.
He was the kind of man whose disgust was more breathtaking than most men’s love.
3/3
7:29 pm PD
Chapt
