Before I married Gavin Whitaker, his mother put me through a so-called premarital obedience test. She made me kneel and serve tea to the entire family, so I knelt.

She made me walk barefoot across a reflexology path to prove my "resilience". I went through it.

She made me sign a prenuptial agreement stating that if we ever divorced, I would leave with nothing. I signed.

Throughout it all, Gavin watched coldly from the sidelines. All he said was, "Sienna, don’t make a big deal out of this. Just bear with it. These are our family’s rules."

I smiled and nodded, even as tears slid down my face.

The final test came without warning. His mother slapped me hard across the face.

"If you marry into this family, you need to understand what humility means."

I didn’t move.

However, upstairs in the study, where Gavin was in the middle of a video conference, he suddenly spat out a mouthful of blood and collapsed. He clutched his face and stared at me in terror.

[System Notification: You and Gavin Whitaker have successfully bound to the Empathy Sync System. From this moment on, all harm inflicted upon the host will be experienced in full by the other party.]

The stinging pain on my face had not yet faded when Gavin Whitaker suddenly stiffened like a puppet whose strings had been cut and collapsed straight backward.

That face of his, which was always etched with arrogance and disdain, twisted with pure terror.

"Gavin!"

"Sir!"

The Whitakers' living room erupted instantly.

Screams, sobs, the crash of overturned furniture—everything collided into a chaotic, deafening mess.

I stood where I was, watching them scramble in panic as they lifted Gavin onto a stretcher and rushed him toward the ambulance.

As for the instigator of it all, his mother, Mrs. Whitaker, froze for only a heartbeat before pointing straight at my nose and exploding into curses.

"You jinx! You filthy curse!" she shrieked. "It’s all because of you! You bring disaster wherever you go! My son collapses in his own home because of you!"

I said nothing.

I only lifted my hand and lightly touched my left cheek. It was already swelling and burning hot, almost the same temperature as my heart.

The hospital’s diagnosis came quickly: acute concussion, accompanied by facial soft-tissue contusions. Cause unknown.

When Gavin finally woke up, I was the only one in the hospital room.

His gaze landed on the clear red imprint of five fingers on my face. It was the exact same impact his own cheek had felt in his memory. The confusion in his eyes vanished, replaced instantly by something dark and vicious.

"Sienna Moore," he demanded hoarsely, his voice heavy with judgment, "what did you do to me?"

I looked at him calmly. "I didn’t do anything. Your mother slapped me. Then you collapsed."

"Ridiculous." He let out a short, mocking laugh. "My mother hit you, and I’m the one who coughs up blood and passes out? Sienna, you’re now making up this kind of nonsense just to get my sympathy?"

"This isn’t nonsense," I spoke slowly, clearly. "Just now, we were bound by an Empathy Sync System. From now on, every bit of harm I suffer—physical or emotional—you will feel it all, exactly the same."

Gavin stared at me, his eyes filled with undisguised disgust and contempt.

"A new trick, hmm?" he sneered. "Sienna, I really underestimated you. Just to make me look at you once more, you’ll stoop to anything."

"You don’t believe me?" I asked.

"I believe you’re insane," he replied coldly.

I laughed.

Tears fell again, betraying me despite myself. I wiped them away and looked at the man I had loved for ten years, a man whose heart I had never managed to warm, and spoke in a tone so icy it startled even me.

"Gavin, let’s make a bet."

"A bet on what?" He raised a brow, as if watching a clown perform.

"We’ll bet on this," I said. "I’ll make you experience firsthand just how painful the suffering I’ve endured all these years really is."

He did not answer. He simply turned his head away and called for the nurse, making it clear through his actions alone that even one more word from me disgusted him.

I looked out at the pitch-black night beyond the window and whispered softly, "You will believe me."

When I returned to the Whitaker estate, the first thing that greeted me was Mrs. Whitaker’s face, twisted with rage.

"You still have the nerve to come back?" she screeched. "You husband-cursing bitch! Gavin has never even lost a single hair his entire life, and the moment you marry into this family, he ends up in the hospital! You’re nothing but a walking jinx!"

As she shouted, she ordered the servants to bring over the horsewhip that hung on the wall as decoration. It was made of oiled cowhide, dark and glossy.

I stared at the whip, my heart tightening violently.

I thought back to when Gavin and I first met. Back then, he had been just like this—spirited and high-strung, like a proud wild horse.

I followed behind him, believing that as long as I worked hard enough, one day I would be able to stand shoulder to shoulder with him.

Now, I was nothing more than an object in his home, something that could be beaten or scolded at will.

The television in the living room was still on, tuned to a financial news channel.

"Breaking news: Whitaker Group CEO Gavin Whitaker was rushed to the hospital today. His childhood sweetheart and top pop diva, Lydia Vale, arrived at the hospital immediately to visit him. The two stayed together throughout the visit and appeared extremely close, effectively dispelling earlier rumors that Mr. Whitaker had married an unknown civilian woman…"

On the screen, Lydia looked worried as she carefully tucked the blanket around Gavin. The way Gavin looked at her with that gentleness in his eyes was something I had never once received.

So he was not cold by nature. He had simply given all his warmth to someone else.

As for me, I could not even earn a shred of his trust.

A massive wave of grief and fury swallowed me whole.

Crack!

The first lash landed hard across my back. My skin split open instantly, and the pain was so sharp it nearly drove me to my knees.

"How dare you seduce my son, you little tramp!" Mrs. Whitaker screamed. "I’ll beat you to death!"

She went completely mad, whipping me again and again without restraint.

Just then, my phone rang. It was Gavin.

I used every last bit of strength I had to answer the call.

"Sienna!" His voice burst through the line, strained and furious, while laced with pain. "What kind of self-harm stunt are you pulling now to get my attention? I’m warning you, stop it immediately! Doing this will only make me hate you more!"

His voice carried clearly through the receiver. Mrs. Whitaker heard it too. She thought I was tattling.

Her expression grew even more vicious. "You still dare complain? Looks like you haven’t been beaten enough!"

She raised her arm and brought the whip down with full force again!

"Ah—!"

On the other end of the line, Gavin’s furious shouting turned instantly into a piercing scream. The sound tore through the ear, filled with unimaginable agony.

Mrs. Whitaker froze.

From the phone, Gavin’s cries continued, each one more tortured than the last.

Panic finally set in.

She dropped the whip, snatched my phone, and shouted desperately into the receiver, "Gavin? Gavin, what’s wrong? Don’t scare me!"

On the other end, Gavin’s breathing came in broken gasps. "Mom… my back… it hurts… it hurts so bad…"

"Your back?" Mrs. Whitaker turned toward me in confusion.

I was sprawled on the floor, my back a bloody mess.

She immediately shouted into the phone, "Don’t be afraid, Gavin! I'm coming right now! It must be that witch cursing you again!"

She hung up and rushed out in a hurry.

At the hospital, Gavin lay on the bed, cold sweat pouring down his back from the pain. He grabbed his mother’s hand as she rushed in and asked suspiciously, "Mom… did you just… hit Sienna?"

Mrs. Whitaker’s eyes flickered. She denied it at once. "Of course not! How could I hit her? She was the one acting crazy at home, crying and making a scene. I only scolded her a bit."

Standing nearby, Lydia immediately chimed in, her voice soft and aggrieved. "That’s right, Gavin. Mrs. Whitaker has always cared so much about Sienna. It was Sienna who seemed to be saying strange things on the phone just now. She even upset Mrs. Whitaker so badly that Mrs. Whitaker started feeling uncomfortable."

As she spoke, she gently rubbed Mrs. Whitaker’s back.

Gavin looked at his wronged mother and the seemingly understanding Lydia. Then he thought of the deathly silence on the phone from Sienna earlier.

The last trace of doubt in his heart vanished completely.

He became convinced that even if an Empathy System really existed, it had to be Sienna deliberately hurting herself to gain sympathy.

In his eyes, her scheming was truly unfathomable.

The day Gavin was discharged from the hospital, Lydia came back to the Whitaker estate with him, ostensibly to take care of him.

Mrs. Whitaker was naturally delighted.

While Gavin was upstairs in the study handling work, Mrs. Whitaker and Lydia called me downstairs. They swept a pile of shattered antique porcelain onto the floor.

"The floor is dirty. Kneel and wipe it clean," Mrs. Whitaker ordered, arms crossed while looking down at me from above.

Lydia stood to the side, putting on a show of gentle concern. "Sienna, you should listen to Mrs. Whitaker. She is doing this for your own good, trying to teach you some manners. Gavin does not like women who do not know how to behave."

My knees were already bruised and swollen from the whipping. Now, kneeling on the sharp porcelain shards, every small movement felt like countless steel needles stabbing straight into my bones.

Upstairs in the study, Gavin was leaning back in his chair with his eyes closed, resting, when a sudden, piercing pain shot through his knees. The pain was so sharp it forced his eyes open.

This feeling...

It was exactly the same as the unbearable pain he had felt in his back that day.

His heart jolted. He sprang to his feet, shoved the door open, and rushed downstairs.

He reached the stairway just in time to see Lydia holding a basin of water. She let out a small "oh!" as if she had lost her footing, and the entire basin of cold water poured straight down over my head.

The icy water made my whole body shudder. My knee wounds were soaked, and the pain made my vision go black.

The moment she saw Gavin, Lydia immediately threw herself into his arms, crying as if drenched in tears. "Gavin, I didn't do it on purpose! Sienna suddenly tried to stand up, so I... Is she trying to hurt herself with the broken porcelain so she can frame us?"

Mrs. Whitaker immediately echoed her. "Exactly! This woman is far too vicious! Gavin, you cannot indulge her anymore. She will destroy our family!"

Gavin looked at my miserable state, then at Lydia, who was trembling in his arms. The trace of hesitation in his eyes was once again buried under disgust.

"Bind her to a chair," he barked at the servants. "I want to see how she is going to self-harm now!"

Two strong servants dragged me up roughly and used coarse hemp rope to wind around me again and again, tying me tightly to a chair in the living room. I could not move at all.

Gavin shot me a cold glance, then helped Lydia upstairs.

Back in the study, the moment he sat down, a strange sense of restraint spread throughout his body. His bones, his muscles, every joint felt as if they were being tightly bound by invisible ropes, making it hard for him even to breathe.

He understood immediately.

Sienna was bound, so he would feel bound as well.

Could that absurd Empathy Sync System actually be real?

A terrifying thought began to take shape in his mind.

He suddenly stood up and said to Lydia, who was peeling an apple for him, "Go out with my mom and do some shopping. I want to be alone for a while."

Then he turned to Mrs. Whitaker. "Mom, you must be tired too. Go relax. Use the card however you like."

Mrs. Whitaker and Lydia could not wait to leave. They smiled brightly and headed out the door at once.

The villa fell silent in an instant.

Almost the moment the front door closed, the suffocating sense of restraint on Gavin's body vanished abruptly.

He stood where he was, his expression shifting back and forth.

After a long time, he walked downstairs step by step and stopped in front of me, still bound to the chair.

I was soaked through. Water dripped from my hair and slid down my cheeks, and it was impossible to tell whether it was water or tears.

He looked at me in silence.

For the first time, there was no cold disgust in his eyes.

He crouched down, his voice carrying a hoarseness he did not even realize himself.

"Is it really... true that someone has been hurting you?"