In her third year at the psychiatric hospital.
The aide came in from the corridor with her brows knitted so tight they almost formed a knot, then lifted a foot and kicked apart the pile of patients tangled together on the floor like some messed-up human stack.
Only when those people scattered, shrieking and twisting, did the woman pinned at the very bottom finally show.
She was curled up and motionless.
Her hair was such a matted mess it hung over her face like a spiderweb. Her eyes were dull and empty. Then she heard the aide snap harshly above her head, "Number 1030, someone from your family is here. Get up and make yourself presentable."
Family...
Did she mean the people who had dumped her in this madhouse and never looked back for three whole years?
Those people were not her family anymore.
Seeing her lie there without moving, like a corpse that had given up, the aide lost patience. She grabbed a fistful of her hair and yanked her upright. "What, are you dead? Didn't you hear me talking to you?"
Amelia Ashford clutched her head with both hands as she was roughly dragged by the collar into the bathroom.
The woman turned on a high-pressure hose and sprayed Amelia at random while she crouched in the corner. It didn't look like she was cleaning a person. It looked like she was hosing down livestock in a pen.
Twenty minutes later, Amelia was brought into the visitation room.
"Second Young Master Ashford, number 1030 is here."
Amelia's flat, emotionless gaze landed on the man sitting on the sofa in front of her.
His hands were clasped together, elbows braced on his knees, his brows faintly furrowed. The look on his face gave off nothing but irritation and a heavy kind of exhaustion.
This was her second brother, Brendan Ashford.
Back when she was little, her mother had fought with her father. After giving birth to Amelia, she stormed out in a fit of anger.
Her father searched for years and found nothing. He died when she was thirteen. After that, it was her eldest brother and Brendan who held the family together.
Back then, they had sworn to her again and again that as long as they were around, no one would ever get to bully her.
Now, seeing this familiar face from her memories again, Amelia felt a sharp stab in her chest.
But her eyes only turned colder as they lowered.
The hurt was real. The resentment was real too.
Her second brother didn’t dote on her anymore. He was even the one who had personally sent her into the mental hospital.
Brendan Ashford lifted his eyes and looked at Amelia Ashford too.
On the way here, he had still been imagining things. Three years apart—surely she had reflected by now, surely she knew she was wrong, surely the second she saw him she would rush into his arms and beg him to forgive her.
But none of that happened.
She just stood there, not moving an inch, her face blank and cold.
He had come here in such a good mood, carrying the joy of finally taking his little sister home. Yet after three whole years, she didn’t even call him “Second Brother.”
The movement he had made to get up and hug her paused halfway, then quietly withdrew. His tone turned stiff, a little dark. “Clarissa said she missed you. She kept begging me to bring you home, so I came. Starting today, you can leave this place.”
At last, Amelia reacted, but Brendan’s voice changed right after that. “There’s one condition. After you go back, you are not allowed to make things hard for Clarissa again.”
Amelia’s face fell at once.
Did they seriously think that as long as she stopped bothering Clarissa Dunmore, everything in the family would magically be fine?
Back then, the reason she had been thrown into this mental hospital in the first place was because Clarissa had pushed everything along behind the scenes.
Five years ago, the police brought back their mother, who had been missing for fifteen years, along with Clarissa, a girl one year younger than Amelia, and sent them to the Ashford family.
That was when Amelia finally learned the truth: the mother who had never held her even once had been trafficked into a remote mountain village, and Clarissa was the child she had been forced to give birth to.
In other words, Clarissa was her younger sister through the same mother but a different father.
After the family was reunited, both her eldest brother and second brother were deeply moved. Not only did they not dislike Clarissa in the slightest, they treated her like a real little sister and spoiled her to the skies.
At first, Amelia had also been genuinely good to Clarissa. She had opened her heart, wanted to make up for everything the girl had suffered, wanted to treat her better.
Who would’ve thought Clarissa was all tricks and angles—petty schemes here, false accusations there, always setting her up in the dark.
Amelia had kept swallowing it all.
She didn’t want her brothers to get annoyed. She didn’t want their mother to be put on the spot. So as long as she could endure it, she endured.
Until three years ago, when she was trapped in that fire.
Clarissa insisted on rushing in to save her. But when Brendan found the two of them, he snatched Amelia’s gas mask away with his own hands and gave it to Clarissa.
Then he carried Clarissa out of the flames and left Amelia behind, when she was already seconds away from blacking out.
Afterward, Clarissa had even gone out of her way to provoke her, saying Amelia had run into the fire on purpose, just to see who Brendan would choose to save.
The Ashford family only needed one daughter.
The one who wasn’t loved was the extra one.
She’d been so mad she exposed Clarissa Dunmore right there in front of everyone. But Clarissa just threw herself into Brendan Ashford’s arms, squeezed out a few tears, and that was it. The whole family rushed to comfort Clarissa, while Amelia got called vicious, ungrateful, a total white-eyed wolf.
In the end, Clarissa even grabbed Amelia’s hand on purpose and used it to stab herself. When everyone turned around, all they saw was Amelia clutching the knife handle.
So they all decided she was insane.
And that was how they sent her to the asylum.
Seeing Amelia sitting there with that cold, shut-down expression, Brendan felt his temper spike for no reason. He was already giving her an out. All she had to do was nod, just one little nod, and she could go home. What exactly was she still unhappy about?
"You’re not talking because you want to stay in the asylum and keep enjoying the good life?"
The good life?
Amelia was so stunned by that line she almost laughed.
Did he even know what kind of place an asylum was? It was packed with lunatics, people so far gone that neither rules nor basic human decency could hold them back.
They could rip at her clothes whenever they felt like it. They could jab her face with spoon handles just for fun. Their favorite game was piling on top of her, one after another, pressing her under the very bottom until her ribs and hips felt like they were being crushed flat, until she couldn’t breathe, until her vision went black.
Even if one of those mad people killed her, nobody would really be held responsible.
Of course Brendan would never know any of that.
Because in these three years, he had never come to see her even once. In his head, she had probably been resting quietly in the asylum, taking it easy, lying around all day, basically coasting through life.
Amelia knew Brendan too well.
In Brendan’s eyes, she was a liar through and through, a crazy woman with a rotten heart and nasty tricks.
No matter how she explained it, he would never believe her. Even if she showed him her wounds, he would probably just think she staged them herself for sympathy.
And the nurses here would never admit they had let the patients bully her, let alone helped make it happen.
Amelia had already tested this kind of thing on Brendan more times than she could count.
Trying to complain to someone biased was the dumbest move possible.
When Brendan saw that Amelia still looked dead-faced and indifferent, like she couldn’t even be bothered to answer him, the anger in his chest rose higher and higher.
"Looks like your madness still isn’t fully cured," he said sharply. "What, if I take you home, are you just going to go after Clarissa again?"
What Brendan wanted was simple: he wanted Amelia to lower her head and admit she was wrong.
But her cold, detached silence made his chest feel tight, like something was jammed there and wouldn’t go down. Acting out of pure frustration, he suddenly kicked the little brazier in front of him—the one they had been using to heat tea—straight toward Amelia.
A few sparks jumped out of the stove.
Amelia jerked back hard, almost stumbling, her whole face going pale with fear as she quickly hid both hands behind her back.
Brendan stared at her and said, "If you dare to reach in and grab the coals, I’ll believe you’re better. Then you can leave this place."
The meaning underneath his words was crystal clear.
If she didn’t dare do it, then that meant she wasn’t cured.
And if she wasn’t cured, then she had to stay here and keep being treated.
Ever since the fire three years ago, Amelia Ashford had been scared of flames.
Brendan Ashford caught the fear in her eyes, and his chest finally loosened a little.
He knew better than anyone that she was terrified of fire, terrified of pain. So there was no way she’d really dare to reach in. As long as she promised she’d stop hurting Clarissa Dunmore, he could let the past slide.
But the second that thought crossed his mind, Brendan’s expression changed hard.
Amelia suddenly shoved her hand straight into the brazier.
"Who told you to actually grab it?!" Brendan rushed over and yanked her hand back.
Her palm was already burned raw, the skin split open and bleeding.
Seeing her grit her teeth, her whole body shaking from the pain while she forced herself not to make a sound, Brendan froze for a beat.
She used to be the one who feared pain the most.
Back then, even a tiny scrape on her hand would bring tears to her eyes. She’d look so wronged, so pitiful, and cling to him until he coaxed her forever.
So why now, with a burn this bad across her palm, was she not saying a single word?
...The little sister he had spoiled for twenty years—when had she stopped acting spoiled with him?
A sharp ache twisted through Brendan’s chest. This was the sister he had always loved the most. How could he not feel for her? His voice dropped without meaning to. "Does it hurt?"
Amelia pulled her hand back from his grip and hid it behind her, then said flatly, "I’m better now. I’m not crazy anymore. Can I leave the hospital?"
Brendan’s brows locked together instantly, deep as a knot. He snapped, "I came here out of kindness to take you home, and this is the attitude you give me? The cold face, the sarcasm—who are you putting that on for?"
"You stabbed Clarissa. The fact that we didn’t send you straight to prison is already more than generous, and now you’re the one acting wronged?"
His anger kept climbing, layer by layer. "You think hurting yourself will make me indulge you like before?"
He turned and strode out of the asylum, his voice cold as ice.
"Leave or don’t. Do whatever you want."
