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?"

My lips moved. All the grievance and despair I had bottled up were right on the verge of spilling out.

Then, at that very moment, the villa’s front door clicked open.

Mrs. Whitaker and Lydia were back.

"Oh, right, we forgot to pick up the new limited-edition bags," Lydia said with a sweet laugh as she walked in. When she saw Gavin crouched in front of me, the smile on her face froze instantly. "Gavin... what are you doing?"

Mrs. Whitaker saw it too. Her face darkened at once. She strode over and yanked Gavin away.

"What is there to say to this jinx!" she snapped. "Look at her, pretending to be half-dead just to act pitiful in front of you!" She pointed at me and said to Gavin, "Son, don't let her fool you. A woman like this has a black heart!"

Gavin stood up. The flicker of doubt that had just begun to form was shattered once again by his mother’s words and Lydia’s presence.

He looked at me. His eyes returned to their usual cold impatience.

He said nothing and turned to go upstairs.

The tiny spark of hope that had just ignited was doused completely by a bucket of cold water. I watched his retreating figure as my heart turned cold, inch by inch.

That evening, Gavin left the house because of an urgent company matter.

As she watched him go, the jealousy and malice in Lydia’s eyes could no longer be concealed.

She walked over to Mrs. Whitaker and said in a low voice, "Mrs. Whitaker, the way Gavin looked at that witch today was wrong. He was starting to soften. We cannot wait any longer. We have to give her a final lesson and make her give up completely."

Mrs. Whitaker agreed wholeheartedly.

The two exchanged a look and walked straight toward me.

They untied the ropes around me. Before I could even react, they each grabbed one of my arms and dragged me into the second-floor bathroom.

"You want to seduce my son?" Mrs. Whitaker snarled. "I will show you what seduction gets you!"

Her face was twisted with rage. She grabbed my hair and used all her strength to slam my head straight into the toilet!

Cold, filthy water instantly flooded my mouth and nose!

I struggled desperately, my hands flailing, but Lydia pinned me down with a single forceful shove.

The suffocating pressure crashed over me like a tidal wave. My lungs burned as if they were being torn apart, my head buzzing violently from lack of oxygen.

Just when I thought I was about to die, Mrs. Whitaker suddenly yanked my head up.

I gulped fresh air greedily, coughing violently, tears and mucus streaking down my face.

"Please... please..." I begged weakly.

"Begging us?" Lydia sneered. She grabbed a toilet brush from the side and rubbed it across my face. "Wash your face with toilet water. Wake up and take a good look at what you are. You think someone like you deserves to be with Gavin?"

Mrs. Whitaker did not give me a second to recover. She grabbed my hair and shoved my head back into the toilet again!

Cold, filthy water swallowed my mouth and nose once more. The suffocation closed in like a rising tide.

My lungs felt as if they were being ripped apart. My head buzzed violently from oxygen deprivation. My consciousness began to blur, everything in my vision spinning into black dots.

My struggles grew weaker and weaker. Never had the shadow of death loomed so clearly over me.

Just as the last shred of consciousness was about to slip away, there was a loud bang.

The bathroom door was kicked open from the outside!

I was yanked violently out of the water and collapsed onto the floor, like a dying fish, retching water in huge gulps and coughing until my chest felt like it would tear apart.

Through my blurred vision, I saw Gavin.

He charged in, his face filled with terror and fury I had never seen before. He shoved Mrs. Whitaker away and dragged me back from the toilet.

Gavin’s eyes were bloodshot. He pointed at her and Lydia, his voice shaking with uncontrollable rage, as if he had crawled straight out of hell itself.

"Mom! Lydia! What are you doing?! Were you trying to drown her?!"