“Hey, what are you doing? Let go of me!”
Instead of releasing me, his grip tightened painfully. His voice was filled with fury.
“Goddamn it, Venice! Do you feel no remorse at all? You pushed Verona down and even framed her! It was just a freaking pink diamond. Why would you go that far over a ring? Because of you, she got into a car accident!”
No matter how I struggled, he refused to loosen his grip. He dragged me straight to the hospital.
Outside the operating room, he bound me tightly, his voice cutting through the cold air.
“You made this mistake. You’ve got to pay for it yourself.”
Then, he ordered someone to bring a needle as thick as a child’s arm. Without hesitation, he plunged it into mine!
“Jericho!” I shouted. “I told you! You can check the surveillance! It wasn’t me!”
My head spun, and I used the last of my strength to talk some sense into him, but he only stared at me with that same unyielding calm.
Slowly, blood drawn from my arm filled bag after bag, each one marked about 14 ounces.
Even the doctor’s hands began to tremble.
“Sir,” the doctor said cautiously, “we’ve already taken over a quart of blood from Ma’am Venice. If we keep going, she might not make it. Ms. MacGill has already gotten enough for the transfusion. Perhaps we should—”
“Draw another fourteen ounces,” Jericho interrupted. “Consider it her punishment.”
When the final bag was filled, my lips were blue, my face deathly pale. As soon as the needle was removed, my body gave out, and I collapsed to the floor.
In the last fleeting second before I lost consciousness, I clearly heard his voice again.
“Remove everything in the villa that has anything to do with her mom. Don’t leave a single trace. As for Venice’s belongings, clear them all out to the storage room. From now on, this villa belongs to Verona.”
No… My mom’s keepsakes!
I tried desperately to open my eyes, but the pain was too much. Darkness swallowed me whole.
When I woke up again, I was so weak that I couldn’t even open my eyes.
Just then, Verona’s delicate and sweet voice drifted to my ear.
“Jericho, what if Venice finds out she lost her baby?”
A moment later, Jericho’s indifferent answer followed.
“It doesn’t matter if she does. That child was never really hers anyway. I know you’re afraid of pain and didn’t want to give birth. The embryo in Venice’s womb carried our genes—yours and mine.”