"Ms. Thorne, it's time."

The moment the door opened, Clarissa curled into a ball, clutching her knees, her body shaking violently with uncontrollable fear.

"No, please, no! I was wrong, I really know I was wrong! Let Julian come here, I want to see him!"

The bodyguards remained expressionless. They flattened her recently set hand and stepped down with force. A crisp crack echoed as the healing bone shattered again. The heart-piercing pain left her back drenched in cold sweat.

But that wasn't enough. They placed her on an operating table, and a stun gun struck her body repeatedly. Unbearable agony swept over her again as her muscles spasmed. Her consciousness blurred. When the men finally left, she stumbled off the bed, only to feel a sudden wetness beneath her.

She realized that at some point, she had lost control of her bladder and bowels.

The filthy fluid mixed with her tattered clothes and hair. She became catatonic, her eyes wide with extreme terror. Her vision went black, and she finally fainted, unable to endure more.

However, this was just an ordinary day in the life she would lead from now on.

Julian would neither let her die nor let her live in peace.

The wounds on her body would become infected and inflamed repeatedly, but whenever she was on the brink of death, he would call in doctors to save her, only to begin a new round of torture once she recovered.

A few months passed. The once-glamorous eldest miss of the Thorne family had transformed into a psychiatric patient.

When Julian went to see her again, she was huddled in a corner, incoherent, her hair a mess. The skin exposed on her body had become hideous due to repeated ulceration and scarring.

Meeting Julian’s gaze, Clarissa’s pupils dilated. She instinctively hugged her knees, begging incessantly, "Don't hit me, I was wrong, I really know I was wrong."

"I have some good news and some bad news." Julian walked up to her, looking down with a cold arch to his lips. "Which one do you want to hear first?"

Clarissa didn't answer. She scrambled to his feet again, using all her strength to grip his hem like a drowning person clutching a piece of driftwood, repeating "I was wrong."

Seeing this, Julian knelt and lifted her chin. Her once beautiful eyes now reflected his expressionless face.

"The good news is, I’m letting you go." He smiled at the sudden light in her eyes and continued, "The bad news is, your mother will be bedridden for the rest of her life."

The sentence struck Clarissa like a bolt of lightning.

Her eyes widened in disbelief. Shaking with rage, she finally let out an agonized, furious roar.

"JULIAN STERLING!!!"

Julian watched her despair with detached amusement as she suddenly stood up and coughed up a mouthful of blood.

She looked at him sideways, a crazed look suddenly filling her eyes as she screamed hoarsely.

"You blame everything on me! But every injury Seraphina suffered—didn't you condone it? Every bit of harm she took was caused by you!" As she spoke, she propped herself up against the wall, staring at his increasingly pale face. Each word was crystal clear.

"Julian Sterling, you were the one who killed her."

After saying this, she looked at the open door behind him and ran out barefoot, stumbling all the way to the foot of the mountain without pausing to breathe.

She had only one thought in her mind.

To escape Julian Sterling forever, to flee the cage that had tortured her nearly to death.

But in the next instant, a massive boom echoed.

The sound of a heavy impact and emergency braking rang out simultaneously.

A large truck had smashed through a gap in the guardrail.

Clarissa lay in a pool of blood, her eyes wide with resentment and regret.

The sound of the truck driver calling for help and the sirens of police cars felt like they were on the other side of a glass pane, blurred and distant.

She tried to lift her hand for help, but she found her internal organs had shifted, making every movement a heart-wrenching agony.

Finally, unable to hold on any longer, her breathing weakened, and she heavily closed her eyes.

Chapter 15

However, Julian was aware of none of this.

He remained standing where he was, Clarissa’s words echoing in his mind, feeling a bone-chilling cold spread through his entire body.

The warm summer breeze brushed against his face, yet it could not penetrate his cold, fragile heart.

During this time, he had projected all his longing, obsession, and remorse for Seraphina onto Clarissa.

He had believed, almost paranoiacally, that she was the one who had killed her.

But if he hadn't indulged Clarissa in every possible way, how could Seraphina have been driven to such a dead end?

It was true that his secondary personality had occupied his primary consciousness, but every scar on her body caused by him was real, and every ounce of harm she suffered was even more real.

If it weren't for him, Seraphina would not be dead.

Julian had always known this, but he never had the courage to face it, much less admit that he had personally driven the person he loved most to her death.

Clarissa’s words, however, were like a sharp scalpel, bloodily slicing open the hidden, unacknowledged truths deep within his heart.

His heart felt as though it were being squeezed by a pair of giant hands, making it impossible for him to breathe.

Returning to his study, Julian looked despondently at the lake that had just been excavated below. Suddenly, as if possessed, he asked,

"Which hospital is Seraphina’s mother currently settled in?"

Hearing his inquiry, the assistant searched the nearby hospitals as quickly as possible, only to find something strange: there was no record of her mother’s admission not only in Seattle but in the entire country.

When he reported the results to Julian, his voice trembled slightly.

Lately, Julian’s temperament had been unpredictable; he would fly into a rage over the smallest matters and had even replaced several groups of employees without cause. The veteran staff were suffering in silence, yet no one dared to speak up.

Sure enough, after hearing the report, Julian looked up at him, his fingertips tapping rhythmically on the desk, his gaze heavy with oppressive force.

After a long silence, he spoke in a commanding tone,

"Search again. By any means necessary, I want to know the result within half an hour. Otherwise, go straight to the finance department to collect your final paycheck. The Sterling Group has no room for useless people."

The assistant lowered his head, not even daring to breathe too loudly. He then spent a fortune hiring top private investigators and utilizing various networks, finally uncovering a faint trace of her mother’s whereabouts.

However, when the clues were fully presented on the computer screen, Julian’s breath hitched.

The surveillance footage had clearly undergone some special processing; the figure of Seraphina’s mother lying on a hospital bed appeared at the airport for only a second before vanishing.

Julian stared at that disappearing figure, his heart racing with increasing alarm and a strange, unspeakable hope. He immediately issued another order to his assistant,

"Restore this video footage at maximum speed. Also, I want to know exactly where Seraphina’s mother eventually went."

The investigative team worked with lightning speed. Not only did they hack into the airport network to find all the surveillance videos from that period, but they also used technical means to fully restore all the processed images.

Thus, when Julian saw the woman in the footage—wearing a white mask with long hair draped over her shoulders—appear at the boarding gate, he felt as though his heart had stopped beating.

For no other reason than that this woman, in both stature and temperament, was identical to Seraphina.

Chapter 16

But clearly, on that day, Seraphina had jumped into the sea to end her life. The distance between the airport and the coast was vast—how could she have appeared in two places at once?

Furthermore, the surveillance footage finally showed the woman entering the boarding gate without looking back, while at that time, the real Seraphina had already fallen into the sea and died.

But how could there be someone so similar in this world?

Julian stared fixedly at the woman’s figure on the screen, as if trying to bore a hole through it.

"Have you found any related videos from the day Madam jumped into the sea?"

"No, but we hacked into the police system and found the forensic report and Madam’s identification documents."

The assistant’s words instantly extinguished the spark of hope that had ignited within him. He slumped back in his office chair, letting out a self-deprecating laugh.

Yes, she was dead. She had died because of him, died completely. How could he still harbor such fantasies?

But in the next instant, after seeing the video frame, he suddenly stood up, his gaze locked onto the woman. The surrounding noise seemed to vanish, leaving only a roaring sound in his ears.