He Faked a Disease to Test Me for Three Years, I Used the Time to Earn My Escape Chapter 05
The storage room lights were off. Light from the hallway poured in behind Adrian, illuminating a large patch of dark red across the floor that stretched from where he stood all the way to the corner.
I was leaning against the wall, my face tilted slightly to one side. A dried gash marked one side of my forehead, swollen into a dark purple lump so large that it distorted the shape of my eye.
Blood from my nose had run down over my mouth to my jaw, smearing across my cheeks and ears.
The front of my shirt no longer showed its original color. It was soaked through with blood.
The pool of blood beneath me had spread to the edge of Adrian’s shoes, thick and sticky.
“Ivy?”
Adrian’s voice trembled slightly. Then he called again.
“Ivy?”
My mother had been happy because Ava had returned, but when she saw Adrian storming in, she followed him to the storage room.
The scene before her made her scream. She covered her mouth and stumbled half a step back.
My father had been comforting Ava after her supposed scare. When he heard the noise and hurried over, his face also went pale with shock.
Ava peeked out from behind my father.
She had just cried in front of my parents, so her eyes were still red. In a soft, delicate voice, she said, “What happened to Ivy? That blood isn’t fake, is it?”
“Adrian pretended to have ALS for three years. Maybe Ivy resented him for it, so she used fake blood and pretended to pass out just to scare us.”
“She grew up in a trafficker’s house. She knows how to lie better than anyone…”
“Shut up!”
Ava shrank back from the shout, and tears instantly fell from her eyes.
“How dare you talk to Ava like that?”
My mother immediately shielded Ava behind her and turned cold toward Adrian as well.
“She was frightened too. It’s bad enough that you aren’t comforting her. Why are you yelling at her?”
Adrian did not answer my mother.
He lifted me into his arms and strode outside while giving orders. “Get the car. We’re going to the hospital. Call the ER and tell them we’re bringing her in.”
The car sped toward the hospital.
All the way there, Adrian held me without letting go, his palms slick with cold sweat.
The past three years kept flashing through Adrian’s mind.
When we first met again, Adrian had deliberately made things difficult for me under the excuse of testing me.
Sometimes, he would deliberately knock over his bowl and use it as an excuse to berate me.
He repeatedly brought up how I had caused our parents’ and sister’s deaths, forcing me to bow under the guilt again and again and devote myself even more completely to caring for him.
Back then, he had thought that one month of testing would be enough.
That would be enough to see whether the traffickers had twisted who I was.
A month later, Ava called him and sobbed as if her heart were breaking. “Are you going to stop loving me now that you have her? Blood really does matter
more, doesn’t it? Even though you hadn’t seen her in ten years, you trusted her
completely after just one month together. I guess an adopted daughter like me
can never compare.”