Chapter 5

I was being choked, unable to breathe, desperately slapping at his hands:

"Cough... what Harrison..."

Lucas furiously flung me aside and kicked the table over with one foot.

"Bella already told me! You attacked her like a madwoman this afternoon!"

"She just took the child to the pharmacy to bandage her wound, and when she turned around, Harrison was gone!"

"Besides you, who else would kidnap a three-year-old child?!"

I coughed violently, looking at the enraged man before me in disbelief.

"I haven't even left the house! Lucas, are you insane?!"

"You're the one who's insane!"

Lucas was so frantic his eyes were bloodshot, pointing at my nose and roaring.

"You've been spraying me with alcohol every day for half a year---your mind is already twisted! Now you won't even spare an innocent child!"

"Call back whoever you hired right now!"

I gritted my teeth and stepped back: "I told you I haven't seen him! If you can't stand it, then get a divorce!"

I turned to grab the divorce agreement on the table.

"Don't even think about going anywhere until you tell me where the child is!"

Lucas suddenly grabbed my collar from behind.

A ripping sound.

The tremendous force directly tore my shirt dress, buttons scattering across the floor.

My naked body was exposed to the air.

Before I could react, he seized my wrist and dragged me toward the bathroom like hauling a criminal.

"Lucas, what are you doing! Let me go!"

I screamed in terror.

The hands of those men in the alley when I was sixteen and Lucas's hands completely overlapped in this moment.

"If you won't hand over the child, I have to make you wake up today!"

He kicked open the bathroom door and threw me bodily into the ice-cold bathtub.

"SPLASH---"

He turned on the showerhead, and icy, bone-chilling cold water came pouring down on my head.

"Cough cough... help..."

I struggled violently, choking on water, trying to climb out of the tub.

Lucas pulled his belt from his waist, twisted my hands behind my back, and tied them tightly to the metal handrail of the bathtub.

I twisted my body frantically, trembling violently in the ice water.

Lucas turned around and pulled out that large container of high-concentration disinfectant alcohol from under the sink.

He unscrewed the cap and poured the pungent alcohol directly over me from above.

"Don't you love tormenting people with alcohol? Talk! Where is the child!"

The intense alcohol fumes instantly robbed me of oxygen, my eyes stinging with pain.

But Lucas didn't care at all. He pressed my head forcefully into the disinfectant water in the bathtub.

I choked until I could only make a few garbled sounds, my stomach cramping violently.

"It hurts..."

Before I finished speaking, my lower abdomen suddenly sent out an extremely sharp, knife-like pain.

Then a warm liquid flowed down my inner thigh.

That warmth merged into the icy bathwater, instantly blooming into a shocking red.

I stared blankly at the blood blossoming in the water, forgetting to struggle.

Just then, the phone he'd tossed on the sink counter rang.

After seeing the caller ID, he paused before answering.

On the other end, a police officer's voice came through, tinged with some exasperation:

"Is this Mr. Lucas? The child isn't missing!"

"The little guy ran to the top floor of the mall to play on the slide by himself. When we found him, he was eating ice cream."

"Parents don't watch their own kid properly, then claim it's a deliberate kidnapping and murder plot. Isn't this a waste of police resources?"

In an instant, only the sound of water from the showerhead remained in the bathroom.

CLANG.

Lucas's phone and the alcohol container both crashed to the floor simultaneously.

He whipped around, his face instantly turning deathly pale!