In the seventh year of serving a prison sentence for Ethan Foster, I was released early for good behavior. When I walked out of prison, Ethan held up a priceless pink diamond and proposed to me. Everyone praised him for never abandoning me. It was not until the night before the wedding that I learned his real wedding gift to me was putting my virginity up for auction. The starting bid was one dollar. Ethan’s friends burst into laughter. “Ethan, your bride just got out of prison, and she’s carrying all that bad luck with her, so I bet she won’t even sell for a dollar.” “Exactly, you get to enjoy your wedding night with your lover Chloe while leaving trash like this for us.” He sat in the shadows, his expression indifferent. “If she doesn’t sell, then make her free, because if Grandpa hadn’t said I could only get the company shares by marrying her, I’d think she was too filthy to even look at.” “I heard Chloe argued with Ethan for days over Evelyn and wouldn’t even let Ethan into her bed, and if he hadn’t come up with the idea of auctioning off the wedding night, Chloe would probably still be mad.” “She upset Chloe the moment she got out, so she really does deserve a lesson.” Ethan gave a disdainful sneer. “What kind of lesson is this?” “Evelyn spent seven years in prison, seven full years without touching a man, so she must be dying of loneliness by now.” “And she has always had strong needs, since she used to tempt me so badly that I wouldn’t leave the bedroom for days.” Ethan kept looking down and scrolling through his phone, then suddenly curled his lips and said, “Found it.” After saying that, he lifted his phone. “There’s video proof.” “This is a video from before Evelyn went to prison, and back then we were together every day, but she still wouldn’t let me rest.” “Now that she’s been lonely for seven years, I’m sure she’s even wilder.” Broken, breathy moans came from the phone, making everyone present flush. Then his friends whistled like hooligans, and their laughter and shrieks rose wave after wave. Ethan’s expression stayed calm, as if the person at the center of the topic had nothing to do with him. Amid the overwhelming mockery, tears rolled down my face, and my whole body trembled uncontrollably. Ethan was not like this before. I was a child sponsored by the Foster family, and I had followed Ethan around since I was little. In name, I was his playmate, but in reality, I was a bodyguard trained specifically to protect him. When I was eighteen, he took my body while drunk. From then on, I had another identity, Ethan Foster’s bed partner. I knew I could never climb into the Foster family’s world, so I never dared to have any other thoughts. But Ethan refused to accept that. When he was young, his love was passionate and sincere, and he swore again and again that he would marry me and give me a home. During those years, everyone in the city knew it. The eldest son of the Foster family, Ethan Foster, had a girl he loved down to his bones. Until Ethan was kidnapped. I broke into an abandoned factory alone to save him. Everything had been going smoothly, but just before we left, one of the kidnappers touched my calf. That one touch made Ethan’s expression change on the spot. He chopped off the kidnapper’s right hand, then stabbed a knife into his heart. Even though the Foster family was powerful and influential, killing someone still meant paying with a life. Ethan was the only son, the lifeblood of the Foster family. Because of that, Grandpa Foster came to me and asked me to take the blame and go to prison for Ethan. In return, once I finished my sentence and was released, the Foster family would acknowledge me as their daughter-in-law. Grandpa Foster had shown me kindness, and Ethan was the man I loved. After sitting in silence for an entire night, I signed the confession. Before I went to prison, Ethan knelt in front of me and cried bitterly.
“Evelyn, when you get out, I will make it up to you with the grandest wedding.” His vow still rang in my ears, but the man before me was no longer the man from back then. No wonder he often hid from me to make phone calls, and each call lasted all night. No wonder he insisted on sleeping in separate rooms from me, and he would not even eat at the same table with me. No wonder whenever he accidentally touched me, he sprang away as if he had been burned. How ridiculous that I only thought he was having trouble adjusting, so I lay in bed waiting for him in the lingerie he had once loved most. That day, Ethan flew into a rage, dragged me into the bathroom, and threw a steel wool scrubber at me. “You just got out of prison, so it’s impossible for you not to be dirty, and we’ll talk after you wash yourself clean.” After my whole body was scrubbed until the skin peeled, I curled up in the corner while tears slid down together with blood. Just as my heart was about to die, he carried me back to the bedroom and promised to give me a wedding night I would never forget. Naively, I thought he had finally changed his mind. It turned out he had only thought of an even more humiliating way to shame me. Seven years was too long. So long that the man I loved had become completely unrecognizable. Since that was the case, I would let go. Holding back the sharp pain in my heart, I called Grandpa Foster and spoke numbly. “My wedding night has been put up for auction, Grandpa, and Ethan doesn’t love me anymore, so please let me leave.” It was nearly dawn when Ethan came home. For once, he entered my bedroom and called my name in a hoarse voice. I had already gone to sleep, and his voice startled me awake, leaving me full of annoyance, but the moment I met his eyes, that anger somehow faded. Ethan and I had once had feelings for each other. When our love had been at its strongest, he had always looked at me with those eyes and said I was the most beautiful girl in the world, the one who moved his heart the most. As if possessed, I reached out and touched his brows and eyes. But when I remembered the filthy things he and his friends had said, my hand stopped halfway, then snapped back. “It’s late, so hurry up and rest.” When he heard me say that, he frowned, but he still coaxed me patiently. “Evelyn, I was wrong these past few days, and I didn’t take good care of you.” “I didn’t even notice your lips were cracked, so I made you honey water specially, come on, try some.” Sensing something strange about him, I resisted. But as soon as I turned over and got out of bed to run, the man grabbed my calf and dragged me back. “I made it with my own hands, so drink it before you leave.” He pinched my chin, forced my mouth open, and poured all the honey water into my mouth. “Cough, cough,” I choked until my face turned red and coughed violently. When I looked up again, Ethan had doubled in my vision, and my head had become heavy and dizzy. He had drugged the water. When I regained consciousness, I was tied to a European-style high-backed chair with only a layer of thin gauze draped over me. Several unsightly tags were wrapped around my ankles. Murderer, new Foster bride, cheap goods. Ethan’s assistant had even thoughtfully noted my measurements, accurate to two decimal places. The seats below the stage were filled with people, and their gazes fell over me without restraint, as if they wished they could devour me clean with their eyes. “Mr. Foster really is thoughtful, since he was worried no one would dare take a murderer like this, so he even let us inspect the merchandise first.” “Evelyn may be a little older, but her body is seriously amazing, with that tiny waist and those long legs, and I can barely hold myself back now.” “Although the starting bid is only one dollar, there are so many rich men and big shots here tonight that who knows how much it’ll cost to take her away, so I might as well feast my eyes first.”
Those filthy words were like countless sharp knives, stabbing straight into me and slicing away my dignity inch by inch. In the shadows at one corner of the auction hall, Ethan and a girl leaned together intimately. That must have been Chloe, the woman his friends had mentioned. I could not lift my eyelids, so I could only narrow my eyes and look over. The girl had long hair and wore a white dress, and from a distance, she looked somewhat like me when I was young. I did not know what she said, but it made the man beside her darken his gaze, his face full of desire. He picked the girl up in his arms and walked straight into the lounge backstage. After he had only taken a few steps, one of his friends asked, “Ethan, your wife is still here, so where are you going?” Without looking back, Ethan threw out one sentence. “Chloe is hungry, so I’m going to feed her.” Then he paused and ordered coldly, “Evelyn took the drug, so she won’t know what happens tonight, and after the inspection is over, just find someone to throw her back home, but none of you are allowed to disturb my fun.” Tears slid silently from the corners of my eyes. My heart kept falling until it fell into a bottomless abyss and made no more sound. Ethan thought that under the effect of the drug, I would not remember anything. But he did not know that so I could better protect Ethan, Grandpa Foster had long ago trained me to resist ether-type drugs. The lounge door closed with a bang. Without Ethan present, the words of the men below the stage became even more explicit. Someone even slowly approached me, the desire in his eyes completely undisguised. The gauze was torn away, and several greasy hands roamed freely over my body at the same time. Just when I was drowning in despair, someone glanced at the lounge door. Perhaps thinking of how Ethan had once protected me, they did not dare to truly do anything. The bitterness in my heart spread little by little. Ethan, who had once been jealous if someone so much as looked at me, now placed me in such a humiliating place and let others bully me. My mind grew hazy, and I did not know when I fell asleep. When I opened my eyes again, I was lying in my own bedroom with my pajamas intact. If not for the faint red marks still left on my wrists, I probably would have thought everything from last night was an absurd nightmare. Before I could gather myself, the bedroom door opened, and more than a dozen people rushed in at once. They hurriedly dragged me up. They did my makeup while changing me into a wedding dress. Only then did I realize in a daze that the day of my wedding to Ethan had arrived. After I changed into the wedding dress, I discovered that it was not the one I had originally chosen. The neckline of the dress I was wearing was extremely low, and without lowering my head, half of my pale chest could be seen. I was ashamed and angry, and my hands instinctively covered my chest tightly. But the woman in charge was not satisfied and forcefully pulled my hands away. “Miss Harper spent a few years in prison, and now she really has no manners at all, because what bride acts so timid at her own wedding and doesn’t even fear embarrassing the Foster family?” “This is the wedding dress Mr. Foster personally chose for you, and he said it suits a woman like you best.” I gritted my teeth as tears swirled in my eyes. Life in prison had been extremely hard, but every time I thought that after I got out, I could become Ethan’s wife openly and properly, I found the strength to keep going. It turned out the love of our youth had trapped only me from beginning to end. In a daze, I was dragged and shoved all the way to the wedding venue.
The guests were all prominent New York families, and they were dressed appropriately. Only I wore a wedding dress that barely covered my private parts, like a ridiculous clown, unsure of what to do under everyone’s gaze. As soon as he saw me, Ethan brought the girl from last night forward. “This is Chloe, the neighbor girl I grew up with, and she’s here today to be your bridesmaid.” Now even his lies were this careless and perfunctory. We had grown up together, so how could I not know whether he had some neighbor girl? What was more, the train of Chloe’s bridesmaid dress was a full ten feet long and covered in rhinestones. On her ring finger was a fourteen-carat Oppenheimer pink diamond. I remembered it, because it was the pink diamond Ethan had used to propose to me on the day I was released from prison. Only back then, he had said the pink diamond ring was expensive, so he would personally put it on me on our wedding day. No bridesmaid in the world was more glamorous than the bride. Unless she was not a bridesmaid, but the woman the groom truly wanted to marry. I did not expose him and simply looked at Ethan’s features from across the space between us. The man who had sworn again and again that he would marry no one but me had died long ago. Inside this body now was a completely unfamiliar soul. Perhaps I stayed silent for too long, because Chloe stepped forward and warmly linked her arm with mine. “Your figure is seriously amazing, and this wedding dress is such a good choice today, because it shows off your whole body so well that even a girl like me is about to get a nosebleed.” The next second, a burst of laughter suddenly rang through the banquet hall. “The Foster family’s new daughter-in-law really is shameless enough, dressing like that after being in prison, and I have no idea how Mr. Foster could have fallen for her.” “She came up to a perfectly good wedding dressed like this, like some cheap hooker, and she really can’t be brought into high society.” Mockery louder than the last was like a sharp blade, stabbing straight into my heart and making me hurt so badly that I could barely breathe. My face darkened, and I shoved Chloe away. “Since you like it so much, you can wear it instead.” Ethan protected Chloe in his arms and frowned, clearly a little displeased. “What do you mean by that?” “Chloe was complimenting your figure, so why are you being so passive-aggressive here?” “You’ve been in prison so long that you’re out of touch with society, and you can’t even tell good words from bad.” Prison, prison, prison again. Ethan had probably long forgotten that if it were not for me, those two words should have been nailed to him instead. Seeing that my face was still cold, Chloe raised a wineglass to me. “What I said just now was wrong.” “Come on, I’ll toast you, and consider it my apology.” Staring at the slightly cloudy liquid in the glass, alarm bells went off in my heart. When I looked up again, I realized everyone present had their eyes locked tightly on me. Thinking of last night’s cup of honey water, I understood at once. Yesterday was the inspection, and today was the official auction. “What, are you not going to give me this little bit of respect?” Chloe urged sweetly, with a hint of grievance in her tone. “Drink this wine yourself,” I said coldly, “because I don’t dare drink anything you offer.” Chloe’s face instantly became very ugly, and she turned to look at Ethan with tears filling her eyes. “Ethan, Evelyn, she...” Ethan frowned and stepped forward. “Evelyn Harper, don’t go too far.” “Chloe only wants to make peace with you, so why do you have to be so aggressive?” I looked directly into his eyes and asked each word slowly. “What exactly are you trying to do?” Guilt flashed through the man’s eyes, then he took the wineglass from Chloe’s hand and approached me step by step. I kept backing away until my back pressed against the cold wall and there was nowhere left to retreat. “Ethan Foster, do you want to force it into my mouth again like you did last night?” As soon as I finished speaking, he pinched my chin again. The wineglass in his hand was lifted high, the wine sloshed, and the next second, it all poured into my mouth. The cold wine flowed down the corners of my mouth, soaked the front of my wedding dress, then ran into my neck. Soon, under the effect of the drug, my consciousness became blurry again. Everything before my eyes grew shadowy, and Ethan and Chloe’s figures twisted in my blurred vision. I wanted to resist, and I wanted to call for help. But my body would not obey me, and my limbs were soft and powerless, so I could only let myself slide to the floor. My reaction stirred up everyone present into a frenzy. They cheered and screamed as they surrounded me in the middle. I did not know who squatted down and blew smoke into my face, and a cold lighter slapped my face hard twice. “We finally waited until the official auction, and after seeing you last night, you’ve been stuck in my head the whole time, making me wish I could have you right away.” “Baby, even though you just got out of prison, plenty of people are bidding on you, and I heard the price has already reached seven figures.”
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