The Obedience Trial

The day Gavin was discharged from the hospital, Lydia came back to the Whitaker estate with him, ostensibly to take care of him.

Mrs. Whitaker was naturally delighted.

While Gavin was upstairs in the study handling work, Mrs. Whitaker and Lydia called me downstairs. They swept a pile of shattered antique porcelain onto the floor.

"The floor is dirty. Kneel and wipe it clean," Mrs. Whitaker ordered, arms crossed while looking down at me from above.

Lydia stood to the side, putting on a show of gentle concern. "Sienna, you should listen to Mrs. Whitaker. She is doing this for your own good, trying to teach you some manners. Gavin does not like women who do not know how to behave."

My knees were already bruised and swollen from the whipping. Now, kneeling on the sharp porcelain shards, every small movement felt like countless steel needles stabbing straight into my bones.

Upstairs in the study, Gavin was leaning back in his chair with his eyes closed, resting, when a sudden, piercing pain shot through his knees. The pain was so sharp it forced his eyes open.

This feeling...

It was exactly the same as the unbearable pain he had felt in his back that day.

His heart jolted. He sprang to his feet, shoved the door open, and rushed downstairs.

He reached the stairway just in time to see Lydia holding a basin of water. She let out a small "oh!" as if she had lost her footing, and the entire basin of cold water poured straight down over my head.

The icy water made my whole body shudder. My knee wounds were soaked, and the pain made my vision go black.

The moment she saw Gavin, Lydia immediately threw herself into his arms, crying as if drenched in tears. "Gavin, I didn't do it on purpose! Sienna suddenly tried to stand up, so I... Is she trying to hurt herself with the broken porcelain so she can frame us?"

Mrs. Whitaker immediately echoed her. "Exactly! This woman is far too vicious! Gavin, you cannot indulge her anymore. She will destroy our family!"

Gavin looked at my miserable state, then at Lydia, who was trembling in his arms. The trace of hesitation in his eyes was once again buried under disgust.

"Bind her to a chair," he barked at the servants. "I want to see how she is going to self-harm now!"

Two strong servants dragged me up roughly and used coarse hemp rope to wind around me again and again, tying me tightly to a chair in the living room. I could not move at all.

Gavin shot me a cold glance, then helped Lydia upstairs.

Back in the study, the moment he sat down, a strange sense of restraint spread throughout his body. His bones, his muscles, every joint felt as if they were being tightly bound by invisible ropes, making it hard for him even to breathe.

He understood immediately.

Sienna was bound, so he would feel bound as well.

Could that absurd Empathy Sync System actually be real?

A terrifying thought began to take shape in his mind.

He suddenly stood up and said to Lydia, who was peeling an apple for him, "Go out with my mom and do some shopping. I want to be alone for a while."

Then he turned to Mrs. Whitaker. "Mom, you must be tired too. Go relax. Use the card however you like."

Mrs. Whitaker and Lydia could not wait to leave. They smiled brightly and headed out the door at once.

The villa fell silent in an instant.

Almost the moment the front door closed, the suffocating sense of restraint on Gavin's body vanished abruptly.

He stood where he was, his expression shifting back and forth.

After a long time, he walked downstairs step by step and stopped in front of me, still bound to the chair.

I was soaked through. Water dripped from my hair and slid down my cheeks, and it was impossible to tell whether it was water or tears.

He looked at me in silence.

For the first time, there was no cold disgust in his eyes.

He crouched down, his voice carrying a hoarseness he did not even realize himself.

"Is it really... true that someone has been hurting you?"