Chapter 3

At night, the haunting memories of those years returned in my dreams, leaving me drenched in cold sweat.

I woke up, tears streaming down my face as I recalled the nightmare that haunted me like a living hell.

I was sold by traffickers to a remote village, bought by an old man to be a young girl forced into servitude and marriage for their mentally challenged son.

From that day on, I had to rise before dawn to work-washing heaps of dirty clothes, feeding pigs, laboring in the fields, and feeding the son.

They even bought a heavy iron chain to lock me to him.

After finishing my chores, I had to follow him around, taking the brunt of bullying from children our age.

If he had so much as a scratch, they would beat me twice as hard.

Every night, I curled up under his bed to sleep.

Half a year passed like this, and a semblance of affection grew between us as we ate and slept together.

I tricked him into unlocking the chain, hoping to escape, but I was caught at the village entrance and dragged back.

They beat me so savagely that two bamboo sticks broke, leaving me drenched in my own blood.

My leg was fractured.

If it weren't for their need to keep me capable of caring for him, they wouldn't have bothered to treat my leg.

As punishment for trying to escape, I was chained in the pigsty and starved for three days.

I was so hungry that I felt dizzy, my eyes filled with desperation as I stared at the pig feed.

But chained in the far corner of the sty, I couldn't even reach it.

Three days later, the son's brother brought me a bowl of sour, moldy rice, covered in a green fuzz, sticky and stringy.

It was so rancid that my starved stomach couldn't bear the smell.

I wanted to vomit, but he forced my face into the bowl, sneering, "If you don't want to eat this, then starve for another three days!"

I refused to taste the bitterness of life slipping away again-I wanted to survive, even without dignity.

Holding my breath, I swallowed the rotten rice bite by bite.

He ran off gleefully, "Haha, I won the bet! The idiot's wife can even eat what even the pigs wouldn't touch!"

After he left, I vomited all the rice.

From then on, I suffered from severe stomach issues.

When I met Louis, he learned about my condition and began waking early each day to make a pot of porridge for my stomach, delivering it to my door.

My friends praised me for finding such an exceptional boyfriend, devoted to me.

But I truly had no idea he had ties to Sonya, or I wouldn't have been with him.

I had already endured the nightmare of losing my parents and brother to her, unwilling to let anyone around me be involved with Sonya.

Five months into my pregnancy, Sonya returned from abroad, and only then did I discover they were each other's first love.

On the day Sonya returned, I saw Louis visibly shaken, smoking on the balcony all night.

He had quit smoking for months for the sake of our unborn child.

Perhaps I should have realized then-against Sonya, I would lose everything I hold dear.

The next morning, I rose to find Louis, who hadn't slept all night, busy in the kitchen.

Upon seeing me, he eagerly served me a bowl of porridge.

"Sweetheart, your stomach isn't well. Drink up the porridge I made for you."

My heart warmed for a moment, but then I noticed the thermal lunchbox he held, and my gaze turned cold.

His expression faltered briefly as he tried to hide the lunchbox behind him.

"Sweetheart, don't misunderstand. Mom asked me to make porridge for Sonya since she has no appetite."

I gave a bitter smile, "Louis, when you were making porridge, were you caring for your pregnant wife or worrying about your depressed, suicidal ex-girlfriend?"