She Died in Chains , Now He's Crawling Back

He pulled a white silk handkerchief from his breast pocket.

Leigh bent down and scrubbed hard at the spot on his shoe where I'd touched him.

"Wipe that disgusting look off your face."

He balled up the handkerchief and threw it at me.

It slid off my face and landed in the blood pooling on the ground.

"Ivy Chambers hasn't forgiven you yet. You don't get to touch me."

I stared at the handkerchief. I didn't reach for it.

I had to get away from him.

Leigh straightened up and waved at the bodyguards.

"Get her out of here. Don't dirty my car."

Two bodyguards stepped forward.

They each grabbed one of my arms and dragged me off the pile of hay.

My legs had been broken months ago. The bones had healed crooked, fused at wrong angles, impossible to straighten.

As the bodyguards hauled me forward, my deadened legs scraped across the ground, carving two long trails through the gravel and mud.

The skin over my kneecaps split open against the rocks, exposing white slivers of bone beneath.

Leigh walked out of the pigsty and stood on the dirt road at the edge of the village.

Chief Hargrove and a handful of villagers waited by the roadside, thick wads of hundred-dollar bills clutched in their fists.

Leigh swept his gaze over them.

"You've all played your parts well these three years. Her stay here was very convincing."

The Chief nodded eagerly, stuffing the money into the pocket of his threadbare coat.

The bodyguards dragged me in front of Leigh and dropped me on the ground.

My body slammed against the gravel road.

Leigh looked down at my legs from where he stood.

"You didn't want to do farmwork, so you broke your own legs."

He let out a scoff through his nose.

"Trying to play the crippled beggar for sympathy? Making yourself reek like this—you think that's going to make me feel sorry for you?"

I closed my eyes.

Three years ago today, I'd been slicing an apple in the kitchen of the villa.

The blade slipped, leaving a shallow cut on my index finger. A tiny bead of blood welled up.

Leigh had come running in from the living room and snatched the knife out of my hand.

He held my finger under the faucet for ten minutes, then brought the first-aid kit and wrapped my finger in so much gauze it looked like a cotton ball.

A month later, he rented out an entire private island.

The grounds were carpeted in red roses.

He knelt on one knee among the blossoms and slid a ten-carat diamond ring onto my finger.

Two days later, Ivy came back from overseas.

She moved into the guest room at the villa.

A week after that, Ivy walked down the staircase wearing a white dress that belonged to me.

She picked up the scissors from the coffee table and dragged the blade across her own forearm, opening a line of red.

Leigh pushed through the front door and walked in.

Ivy clutched her wound and pointed at me.

"Leigh, she cut me with the scissors."

Leigh knocked the glass of water out of my hand and pulled Ivy behind him.

Another week passed. Ivy was carrying a cup of freshly boiled coffee.

She poured every drop of it onto her own shoulder and screamed, curling into the corner of the sofa.

Leigh came rushing down from the second floor.

Ivy pointed at me.

"She tried to scald me to death with boiling water."

The next day, Ivy stood on the ledge of a thirtieth-floor rooftop.

Leigh sprinted over and grabbed her.

After that, Leigh tore up our marriage contract in front of the reporters.

He canceled every one of my bank cards and had his bodyguards shove me into a car.

He personally drove me to the Bleakridge mountains and handed a sum of money to the Chief.

He told me I would stay here for three years, to experience the pain I'd caused Ivy.

Those three years were real suffering.

After the Chief took the money, he locked me in the pigsty.

A heavy iron chain was fastened around my neck.

Every day, the only thing I was given to eat was rancid slop.