Chapter 5

“Get off me!”

I struggled relentlessly, but it was no use.

“Look how delicate you are, want to bet I’ll have my way with you right here?! I’ll make you scream for mercy!”

I had never in my life suffered such an insult.

I pushed and resisted, but it only made Grant’s taunts and advances more fervent.

Just then, Caleb and Serena emerged from the forest, carrying wild fruit.

Seeing the scene, a surge of blood rushed through Caleb’s body, and anger blazed through him.

He was just about to rush forward when Serena called out to him.

“Caleb, don’t you hate her? Don’t help her, let her figure it out herself. She’s your enemy.”

Caleb’s heart ached intensely. In those few seconds of hesitation, Grant had already ripped my clothes.

“You animal! What the hell are you doing?!”

Caleb still didn’t intervene.

Because Leo had returned.

The firewood in his arms scattered everywhere as he darted forward, tackling Grant.

I cowered to the side, clutching my shoulders tightly, my pained eyes fixed on Caleb’s face.

They remained there, unmoving.

This man who had raised me, this man I would willingly give my life to save, was watching me being violated, and he did nothing.

A sliver of confusion emerged from the despair.

I had heard everything Serena said just now.

Serena had said the same thing before.

She said… Caleb hated me.

The chaotic scene finally ended. Grant was beaten to a pulp by Leo, no longer daring to make a sound.

But a shadow had been cast over my heart forever.

The others built a makeshift shelter on the beach, and as night fell, everyone gradually went to sleep.

I secretly called Serena out.

“What did you mean by what you said earlier this evening? Why did you say my uncle hates me? Why am I his enemy?”

Serena seemed to have anticipated my coming to her, and immediately let out a cold laugh.

“You still don’t know, do you? Your uncle found out your true identity six months ago. And guess how coincidental it is: the truck driver who killed your adoptive parents—his brother and sister-in-law—was *your biological father*, the one who abandoned you twenty years ago!”

In that moment, I felt like plunging into an icy abyss.

My heart felt like it was being repeatedly stabbed by the sharpest knife.

The pain spread through every fiber of my being, leaving me unable to breathe, unable to move a single inch.

…My biological father?

That term felt impossibly distant to me.

I had grown up in an orphanage, never knowing my birth parents.

When I was eight, my adoptive parents brought me home.

That was the first time I felt the warmth of a family.

Two years later, when I was ten, my adoptive parents died in a car crash. Caleb brought me home, a second orphan.

For ten years, he raised me from a little girl into a young woman, watched me grow, and treated me with thousands of kindnesses, more than anyone else in the world.

Caleb didn’t know, but I had fallen in love with him long ago.

He was the secret crush of my teenage years, the sole star of my most vivid dreams, the one constant in my life for all these years.

On my eighteenth birthday, I drank a glass of red wine and waltzed with him, my arms around his neck.

I deliberately wore a seductive dress, a clumsy attempt at seduction, an innocent provocation.

After ten years, I had grown thirty centimeters taller; I could reach his lips on tiptoe.

And I did.

I pressed my lips against his, trembling as if struck by lightning.

My tongue traced the tight seam of his lips, desperate for even the slightest hint of a response.

The next second, he pushed me away.

“What the hell is wrong with you?!”

His eyes blazing red, he shoved me away. The cake crashed to the floor, a messy ruin, and he stormed out of the house.

He was gone for two years.

When he returned, he had a fiancée.

He seemed like a different person, treating me with utter coldness.

I thought it was because of our forbidden love, but it wasn't until today that I realized it was more than that.

I had become the daughter of the man who killed his brother and sister-in-law, his enemies.

But I was a victim too.

I didn't even know that man.

Did sharing the same blood make us family?

I couldn't understand it, only felt a deeper despair.

There was too great a distance between me and the man I loved most. No matter how far I walked, I couldn't reach him.