2
Caius kept hurting her until sunrise before he finally stopped.
When it was over, Caius didn’t spare Vera another look. He turned around and headed straight to the bathroom.
Vera dragged her exhausted body and pulled the blanket over herself to hide her ruined state.
The sound of running water came from the bathroom, and every drop felt like a knife stabbing into her pride.
Caius hated her because he thought she was dirty.
After their first night together, Caius scrubbed himself in the bathroom until his skin started bleeding.
The second time, Caius would rather suffer through the pain than touch her. In the end, when he was close to passing out, Vera chose to help him herself.
Later, Caius realized fighting it was pointless. Every time after sleeping with her, he would repeatedly wash himself until none of her scent stayed on his body.
The bedroom door opened, and Ophelia walked in while holding a bowl of medicine.
She sat beside the bed and looked over Vera with disgust in her eyes. “Looks like this time you didn’t get tortured until you passed out. Drink it.”
It was contraceptive medicine.
The drug inside Caius’s body was too powerful. Every time, Vera would suffer until she fainted, and afterward, Ophelia would force the medicine into her mouth.
This was the first time Vera drank the medicine while fully awake.
For five years, she drank medicine every time after it ended, yet she still became pregnant five times.
Vera opened her mouth and swallowed a large mouthful, but after one sip, she immediately noticed something was wrong.
This wasn’t contraceptive medicine.
It was an herbal root soup, a medicine used to help prepare for pregnancy.
Vera’s eyes widened in shock as she stared at Ophelia. Then she threw the bowl in her hand onto the floor.
The bowl broke apart, and the medicine spread everywhere across the ground.
“This isn’t contraceptive medicine.”
Watching her reaction, Ophelia smiled. “Only after losing five children do you finally react, Sister Vera. That’s all you can do.”
Those words stabbed into Vera’s heart like a bloody knife.
Those five children weren’t roadside weeds or flowers. There were five living children.
Even the last child had almost fully formed already.
A loud slap suddenly sounded.
Vera lifted her hand and slapped Ophelia across the face.
But one slap wasn’t enough. It could never repay the lives of her five children.
Before Vera could react again, Ophelia lightly pushed her, and she instantly rolled off the bed.
Right now, Vera was far too weak. That slap earlier had already drained the last bit of her strength.
“Sister Vera, do you really think all I can do is make you drink pregnancy medicine?”
Ophelia lifted her eyebrows and looked back at her.
“Why is it that even though we started from the same place, Caius is always the one choosing you?”
“Why am I not worse than you, yet you’re always the one receiving the awards?”
“Why do you always have to be better than me in everything? Even when it came to getting pregnant with Giselle, it took me two whole years! But you only needed two months for your first pregnancy!”
“At first, I only planned to make you miscarry once to get revenge, and I thought that would be enough. But it wasn’t enough!”
As Vera listened to Ophelia’s words, she tightly bit her lips, while her eyes showed nothing except fear and shock.
“You already think this is terrifying?”
“Sister Vera, let me tell you something. Not only those five miscarried children, but even these three years of suffering were gifts I personally gave you.”
Vera’s entire body shook as she collapsed onto the floor.
“It was you… You drugged him, and you were the one who pushed me into his room…”
The truth was already so close.
Vera struggled up from the ground and quickly ran toward the doorway.
She wanted to tell Caius everything, wanted to explain the truth clearly, wanted to prove her innocence, and wanted to leave this nightmare behind.
“Caius… Caius, can you hear me? I didn’t intentionally climb into your bed…”
Yet before she even walked out the door, Ophelia struck her across the face.
Vera’s sight suddenly darkened. Her body had already become too weak to endure another slap, and she immediately fell backward onto the floor.
When Vera finally regained consciousness and opened her eyes again, Caius already stood before her.
3
“Caius, I…”
Before Vera could finish speaking, Caius suddenly grabbed her by the neck.
“Vera, this is the last time I’m warning you. Don’t say my name again. Hearing it from you disgusts me.”
After that night, Caius never allowed her to call him by his name again.
The only way she could address him was “teacher.”
“Teacher, I didn’t purposely get into your bed. She was the one who drugged you, and she was also the one who sent me to your bed. She admitted it herself…”
“Me?” Ophelia instantly put on a helpless expression. “It was me? No… not me…”
“Sister Vera, what should I even say? If you mean that I told you to drink the contraceptive medicine and not throw the bowl, then fine, I admit that part.”
Just a few simple words from Ophelia completely destroyed the explanation Vera tried so hard to give.
“Why didn’t you drink the medicine?”
Caius looked at the broken mess on the floor, his face dark with anger.
“That wasn’t contraceptive medicine. What Ophelia gave me was pregnancy preparation medicine. She admitted it herself just now…”
“Enough!”
Caius cut her off with an angry shout. “Vera, when are you finally going to stop causing problems?”
That single sentence completely blocked every explanation Vera tried to make.
The truth had been so close, and only then did Vera realize she had ignored the most important thing.
Caius loved Ophelia, not Vera.
Caius trusted Ophelia, never her.
“Bring over all the boiled medicine.”
After hearing his order, Ophelia poured the remaining medicine from the half-filled clay pot in the kitchen into bowls and carried them over.
Caius tightly held Vera’s chin with one hand, forcing her to lift her face and open her mouth.
The medicine tasted extremely bitter, but Vera didn’t struggle.
Because resisting only brought something even worse.
He forcefully made her drink two full bowls of medicine. After swallowing everything, Vera fell onto the floor and stayed there for a long time before recovering.
Before leaving, Caius coldly dropped one sentence behind.
“Clean this place up. For the next two days, no one’s giving you food or water. If you did something wrong, then accept the punishment.”
After that, only the cold sound of the door slamming shut remained.
Vera bent down to pick up the broken bowl from the floor, but her finger got sliced before she could grab it.
Drops of blood fell into the medicine, slowly spreading red through the soup.
She had already become used to this kind of punishment.
In the beginning, she resisted and kept trying to escape. The first time she broke out of confinement, Caius publicly brought her back and shut her inside for one whole month.
The second time she tried running away, Caius tortured her through three full days and nights during the full moon. By the end of it, she couldn’t hold on anymore and ended up in the hospital.
After that, she started behaving quietly. Resistance was pointless, so she gave up fighting back.
Caius only punished her in one way, by locking her up.
Because only while she remained alive could Caius continue living, he never dared truly harm her.
Vera had already suffered even longer periods of confinement before. Although she had just gone through a miscarriage surgery and her body felt weak, she could still survive two days and nights.
Caius finally let her out on the third day.
After eating a little food, Vera went straight to the laboratory.
As soon as she opened the laboratory door, Vera stood there stunned.
The worktable, the cabinets, even the incubator room… everything was in complete disorder.
All the test tubes had fallen onto the floor, the laboratory equipment had been smashed apart, the incubator room door stood wide open, and a revealing red lace underwear even hung from the door handle…
“Sister Vera, why are you standing there blankly? Did you finish the work Caius asked you to do?”
Ophelia walked inside from outside the room, and the smug look in her eyes was almost impossible to hide.
“After you finish your part, don’t forget mine too. Last night wore me out badly. My waist still hurts, and I don’t even have the strength left to work.”
4
The entire place had become chaotic. Vera didn’t waste time paying attention to Ophelia’s mocking words and rushed straight into the incubator room.
Once she noticed the undamaged incubator resting in the corner, she quietly sighed in relief.
Caius’s medicine was inside.
Only five days remained. After five more days, she could finally escape.
Vera’s emotionless response made Ophelia feel even more annoyed.
“Vera, this is just the beginning. One after another, I’ll hand you all the wonderful gifts I prepared.”
Ophelia stepped closer and seized the front of her collar.
Even then, Vera still showed no extra emotion.
If she resisted, the punishment would only become worse, so she remained quiet.
Ophelia always talked about taking revenge on her. There were only five days left now. Maybe it would happen once she was gone.
At that point, she would leave the medicine behind, leave this place, and never let anyone disturb her again.
After speaking, Ophelia glared fiercely at her before turning around and leaving.
The disorder around the room also carried the unpleasant scent left after their intimacy.
After Vera moved the incubator into a more hidden spot, she carefully cleaned the room.
She hadn’t taken the “special gift” Ophelia talked about seriously until that evening, when “Vera's nude photos” suddenly reached the trending searches.
The video from three days earlier, showing her painful struggle on the bed that night, was directly displayed on the huge screen at the national competition hall.
That clip suddenly popped out from a regular opening science video used in Ophelia’s competition entry.
And that same project had been stolen from Vera’s hands.
At the livestream venue, Caius smashed the projection screen with an ugly expression on his face.
The competition got canceled right there on the spot.
The event ended at six-thirty that evening. Exactly at seven o’clock, Caius showed up in front of her.
“You’re not going to explain?”
Explain. Those two words painfully stabbed the weakest part of her heart like knives.
“Explain what? Explain why the project I worked hard on for two months ended up being used by Ophelia in the competition?”
“Or explain why someone filmed what happened that night and intentionally played it on the giant screen?”
Vera questioned him emotionally.
“Keep pretending.”
“Continue acting!”
“Only your hands ever touched Ophelia’s project! And you’re the only person living in this house. If you weren’t the one who installed the camera and recorded the video, then who else did it?”
As Vera raised her voice, Caius also became more upset.
His big hand struck the living room table hard, making the glass cup on top fall and shatter.
That single sentence completely woke Vera up.
He still refused to trust her.
The hand that once protected her from everyone had now landed on her instead.
It truly hurt.
“Teacher, stop wasting time. You don’t trust me anyway, and I don’t want to explain anymore. So how do you plan to punish me this time?”
“Lock me up? Or leave me without food and water?”
Vera already stopped caring.
No matter how much she explained or how much proof stood in front of him, Caius still wouldn’t trust her.
Since the ending was always her being punished, it was better to just speak directly.
That word, “teacher,” seemed to light his anger.
Caius grabbed her wrist and pushed her onto the sofa.
With a ripping sound, Caius instantly tore apart her clothes.
“Vera, just because you’re my antidote, do you really think I wouldn’t dare touch you?”
