He Asked How to Compensate Me While I Was Dying Chapter 03
“No!”
A slender figure threw herself between us and shielded Grant with her body.
The crop hissed through the air.
Mallory screamed.
Her body swayed and collapsed, but Grant caught her before she touched the floor.
When he looked up at me, his eyes were hard as ice.
“Arden, you went too far this time.”
He carried the supposedly unconscious Mallory out, slamming the door hard enough to shake the room.
I remained where I was, my hand trembling too badly to hold the crop.
That night, after the nurse finished her rounds, someone rushed from the shadows and clamped a cloth over my nose and mouth.
A harsh chemical odor flooded my lungs.
I struggled twice before the room disappeared.
When I woke again, everything was black.
I had been blindfolded and tied to a chair, unable to move my hands.
Crack!
The first lash struck my chest.
Pain tore from my collarbone to my abdomen and folded me forward.
“You offended someone you should never have crossed,” a man said. “This is your punishment.”
The crop fell again and again.
Each blow whistled through the air and split already tender skin.
“Is this for Mallory?” I forced out through clenched teeth.
The blows stopped for several long seconds, then resumed faster than before.
The beating continued until I drifted in and out of consciousness.
At last, I heard someone place a call.
“Mr. and Mrs. Bennett, it’s done,” the man said respectfully.
My mother’s familiar voice came through the speaker.
“Good. I’ll update Grant. Take her back now.”
Every drop of blood in my body turned cold.
That was my mother.
Because I had accidentally struck Mallory once, they had ordered a man to give me ninety-nine lashes.
Pain and cold swallowed me as the System spoke inside my head.
[Host, hold on. I’ll be able to take you home soon.]
I remained unconscious for two weeks, and nearly everyone believed I would die.
According to the doctors, Grant and my parents never left the hospital.
They donated blood, contacted specialists across the country, and spent every waking hour trying to keep me alive.
When Grant reached for the call button, his sleeve slipped back and revealed fresh lash marks around his wrist and forearm.
His eyes were heavy with guilt.
“Arden, I failed to protect you. Those abductors took you and hurt you so badly. I gave myself one lash for every mark on your body. I needed to carve your pain into my bones so I would never fail you again.”
My laugh was so broken that tears came with it.
Had he not designed the kidnapping himself?
Had he not ordered the beating?
Even the “rapist’s baby” inside me had been a nightmare he forced upon me.
I turned my face away. I did not want to give him another word.
Grant assumed I was sulking and began bringing me boxes of expensive firearm accessories every day.
My parents tried to win me over with the finest tactical field gear money could buy.
Yet the moment they left, taunting messages arrived on my phone.
Mallory posed inside a fully equipped private armory. The components spread across her workbench were identical to Grant’s gifts to me.
My parents’ equipment was just as easy to recognize: surplus from Mallory’s collection.
[Trash belongs with trash. If my life were as pathetic as yours, I would have died already. LOL.]
I did not need a signature to know who had sent it.