Chapter 3
Penniless, I had no choice but to walk barefoot from the Hayes family mansion on the hillside down to the city below.
By the time I reached the park, my feet were bleeding and raw.
Thankfully, the pen I’d used to sign the papers was still in my hand. I asked someone for a few sheets of paper and sat on the park steps, quietly sketching the scenery before me.
This moment of tranquility seemed to transport me back to before I married Liam.
I laid out the finished drawings, one by one, on the ground. Each one was small and intricate.
Until a little girl knelt in front of me.
“Miss, your feet are bleeding. Doesn’t it hurt?”
I looked down, my gaze fixed on my feet.
After walking such a long distance, the soles of my feet were already a bloody mess.
But I felt nothing.
It turned out the pain in my heart truly overshadowed any physical agony.
Not wanting to scare the little girl, I tucked my feet away and smiled. “No, it doesn’t hurt.”
The little girl tilted her head, then pulled out a crumpled ten-dollar bill from her pocket.
“Miss, I only have this much. Can I buy one of your paintings? They’re so beautiful, they remind me of someone I used to know.”
Hearing her speak like such a grown-up, I couldn’t help but smile.
How old was she to have “someone she used to know”?
“It’s enough that you like them. Take all of these. Thank you for your ten dollars.”
I never thought.
One day, the only ten dollars I had would come from a child.
But I truly needed that money.
Holding the bill, I walked into a small internet cafe, exchanging the ten dollars for an hour of online time.
I opened the computer and logged into the social media account that had been my torment for three years.
“A true woman is submissive and puts her husband first.”
“Wives should be meek, compliant, and never voice a single complaint.”
“A woman’s honor lies in her purity; she must guard it fiercely.”
These sickening, pinned posts were all things Liam had forced me to publish.
When we first got married, I still had hope for him.
Every time he brought a woman home, I would argue with him.
Later, the first time he punished me by making me kneel in the garden, making his mistress watch me as he read from some ancient treatises on female conduct he’d bought, I resisted fiercely.
The consequence was that he forced me to post these things online.
He told me I was merchandise he’d bought, and I should act like it.
He said he wanted everyone to see what a ‘virtuous and benevolent’ wife I, Eleanor Sterling, truly was.
After that, whenever I made him angry, he’d force me to publish these statements online. It became our twisted routine.
And my account became a battleground for countless online users to condemn me.
They called me a “brainwashed traditionalist,” a “feudal relic,” a “disgrace to modern women.”
I couldn’t refute them, nor was I allowed to.
Silence became my best escape from everything.
Liam gradually grew dissatisfied with just that. He made me personally ‘attend’ to the women he brought home.
The ones who even slept in his bed? I was forced to ‘prepare’ them myself.
He’d sneer, “Someone as shameless as you knows best how to please a man.”
Each time, he’d stand by, watching my humiliated, pained expression with a look of amusement and mockery.
Later, I gradually grew numb. I no longer resisted, no longer argued.
He found it boring, too, and stopped scrutinizing me.
Instead, he changed his method, making me beg him, beg him not to divorce me.
I compromised again and again for my family, but now, I had nothing left, and I no longer needed to beg him.
Looking at the emptied page, I let out a long breath.
As the last post was finally deleted.
I felt as if the shackles on my body had shattered.
I collapsed onto the table, utterly drained, my entire being emptied from the inside out.
In that moment, I didn’t even know if I was alive or dead.
Until someone gently tapped my back.
“Ellie?”