Part 2My Husband’s Betrayal

After the forty lashes, I was thrown into the woodshed. I collapsed onto a pile of straw, too weak to move, listening to the rats scurrying nearby.

Suddenly, the wooden door creaked open. A tall figure stepped inside, silhouetted against the dim light of the corridor.

It was Adrian.

He stood over me, his face mostly hidden in shadow, his expression unreadable.

“You’re hurt that badly?” His voice held a note of surprise, as if he were just a casual passerby. “This healing salve is quite effective. You should use it.”

A small, cool porcelain jar landed on the straw beside me.

I kept my eyes closed. I didn’t move. Not even an eyelash flickered.

He paused, then his tone became lecturing. “Behave yourself from now on. Serve the mistress well and don’t provoke her again. You’ll suffer less for it.”

When I still didn’t react, he actually bent down, his hand reaching to lift the tattered fabric of my clothes. “Is the wound on your back? Let me help you…”

The moment his fingertips brushed my sleeve, I summoned every ounce of strength I had and recoiled, my voice a raw, broken whisper. “It would be… improper… This servant dares not trouble… my lord.”

Adrian’s hand froze in mid-air.

I slowly lifted my head and, for the first time in this “world,” I looked him directly in the eyes, with nothing held back.

There was no pleading, no shock, no lingering affection. Only a flat, chilling emptiness.

Perhaps my gaze was too direct. Adrian’s expression darkened instantly.

“Insolent fool!”

He flung his sleeve, striking me across the face with the back of his hand, and then smashed the delicate medicine jar on the ground.

“If you’re so tough, then you can tough it out! Someone get in here, bandage her wounds, and then take her to the main courtyard to serve for the night!”

He stormed out, leaving a stone-faced “servant” to dab some ointment on me.

Then, I was taken to their chambers in the main courtyard. By the time I arrived, Adrian and Vivian had already bathed and were sitting on the edge of the bed in their nightclothes.

“You will stand vigil tonight,” Adrian announced, his voice calm once more.

Vivian snuggled against him, a sultry smile on her lips. She shot me a disdainful glance. “My love, with her standing guard outside, I’ll sleep much more soundly.”

I lowered my head and silently walked to my designated spot.

The bed curtains were drawn, hiding their entwined figures but not the sounds of carefully suppressed laughter and moans that soon followed.

Those sounds flayed what was left of my dignity. I was forced to listen to the man I loved be intimate with another woman, every shared memory we once had now feeling like a cruel joke. My nails dug into my palms, the sharp pain the only thing keeping me from shattering completely.

I stood there all night.

I listened as their passion faded into the steady rhythm of sleep. The wounds on my back throbbed with a pain that seemed to seep into my bones, and my legs grew numb, losing all feeling.

Just as the sky began to lighten, Vivian’s lazy voice drifted from behind the curtain. “You may leave, servant.”

I dragged my numb legs and walked out, step by agonizing step.

The “actors” hadn’t started their day yet, so the courtyard was quiet.

I remembered a place in this estate that we were forbidden to approach. The other “servants” had told me it was the master’s private sanctuary, and anyone who went near would be beaten to death.

Now, I wondered if it was the only flaw in this Truman Show-like world, a place where I might find a clue to the outside.

My pace quickened.

Just as I suspected, in a corner of the forbidden area, hidden among overgrown weeds, I found several cigarette butts, soaked by the rain and nearly invisible.

Cigarettes. That meant I was close to the real world. The exit had to be nearby.

My heart, which had been dead and still in the abyss of despair, for the first time, gave a violent throb.