Chapter 9

The night sky gradually devoured the twilight, inch by inch.

I stood within the fading, blood-red glow of the sunset, replying with calm indifference.

“Yes.”

I said, “Once I got you, I realized you were nothing special. Boring.”

After a few seconds of silence, Leo Archer spoke, his voice trembling slightly:

“I told you, don’t play me, Victoria Sterling…”

“How could you take those unspoken pleasantries between adults seriously?”

I let out a faint laugh.

“I warned you, Leo Archer. I’m no better than Julian Thorne–we’re both not good people.”

On the other end, there was only a dead silence.

A moment later, the call ended.

I pushed open the door and walked in.

A ceramic plate came flying at me, shattering against my forehead.

“Victoria Sterling, I told you to marry into the Thorne Family, to please Julian Thorne, to maintain the long-term partnership between the Sterling Family and the Thorne Group.”

“You only had one thing to do, and you still couldn’t manage it?”

My father stood in the living room, his expression cold as frost.

“Go to the study.”

There was a leather whip in the study.

The crisscrossed scars on my back were left there from when I refused to marry Julian Thorne.

Back then, his original girlfriend was Seraphina Sterling, my father’s daughter with his first wife.

But after a quarrel, Seraphina, out of spite, married someone else.

Enraged, Julian Thorne threatened to cut ties with the Sterling Family.

Helpless, my father brought me–the illegitimate daughter who had spent twenty years in the slums–back home.

Forty lashes in total. By the end, I was sprawled on the ground, my back torn and bloody, nearly exposing bone.

Amidst the overwhelming agony, I heard my own voice:

“Fine… I’ll do it.”

“I’ll find a way to make him marry me.”

It was just like four years ago.

The whip sliced through the air and landed on me, but this time, I didn’t shed a single tear.

Only my burning ambition, mixed with pain, surged and grew swiftly within my wounded flesh.

Bathed in the study’s bright light, I lifted my head and smiled.

“Dad, I’ll find a way to make the Thorne Group keep working with the Sterling Family.”