Chapter 4

Gwen's POV

Not long after I cleared the auditorium steps, I leaned against the exterior wall to catch my breath, my vision swimming with dark spots.

As I tried to steady my breathing, a hand suddenly shot out from behind me, clamping hard over my mouth.

I tried to scream, but no sound came out. Before I could even kick, I was dragged and shoved into a backstage dressing room.

The door slammed shut with a heavy kick. Outside, the muffled bustle of the dispersing crowd hummed, but inside, there were only three men looking at me like I was a piece of merchandise.

Burning with fever and weak all over, I was pinned to the icy tiled floor after barely two seconds of struggling. My knees struck the hard surface with a dull, throbbing pain.

One of them crouched down, shoving a phone into my face with the camera recording.

"Go on, cry," he sneered, grinding his knee into my hands. "Weren't you acting all tough on stage just now? Why aren't you crying?"

"Let me go... this is a felony," I forced out through gritted teeth.

"A felony? Honey, why don't you ask your dear boyfriend if he even knows who you are first?" The man laughed.

I turned my face away, biting down hard to stay silent.

I hadn't eaten a bite or slept a wink since last night. I was a collapsed mess on the floor, lacking even the strength to lift my head.

Another man grabbed a fistful of my hair, wrenching my face toward the camera lens.

My scalp burned with pain. Tears mingled with the cold sweat of my fever, smearing across my face.

The man behind the lens laughed, recording the whole thing while telling his buddies to search me.

"Don't break her phone," he said, making a face at the camera. "We need it to extort her family."

The phone I had just wiped clean was pulled from my pocket.

"Got her phone."

The crouched man took it, scrolled through the contacts, and stopped on a name.

"Ethan?" He looked up, mouthing the words to the camera. "Isn't this that big-shot Ethan?"

He dialed the number on the spot and put it on speaker.

It rang twice before connecting. The background was noisy, with women talking and music drifting through.

"Hello?" It was Ethan's voice.

Hearing his voice, my heart loosened slightly.

I had just ended things with him in public this morning.

Ending things was one thing. But right now, if he acknowledged knowing me, these men wouldn't dare lay a hand on me; if he just said I was his, I could make it out of here alive.

The man holding the phone shoved the camera downward, capturing my pinned, disheveled face on the floor.

"Mr. Miller, right?" The man grinned slyly. "Your girlfriend is in our hands. Five million ransom. Wire it over, or this video goes viral across the entire internet."

"Ethan!" I screamed with every ounce of strength left in my body. "Help me—"

"Shut up!" The hand pinning me twisted violently.

Silence fell on the other end for a second.

Pinned to the floor, I strained desperately away from the camera, letting out muffled, desperate pleas for help. But with someone stepping on me, barely a coherent word reached the receiver.

I heard a woman on the other end ask flirtatiously who it was. I heard Ethan tell her impatiently not to worry about it. And then came the words that chilled me to the bone.

"Who is this?" Ethan's tone went completely cold. "Whoever she claims to be, it has nothing to do with me."

The man holding the phone froze.

"Mr. Miller, this is literally your—"

"Wrong number. I don't know her. Do whatever you want with her," Ethan cut him off.

"Ethan!" I shrieked. "You swore to me! Look at me—"

*Click.* The call ended.

The dial tone beeped steadily through the speaker.

The men traded bewildered glances before bursting into loud laughter.

"Hear that? The man said he doesn't know you." He waved the phone in front of my face. "You're not even worth five hundred bucks, sweetheart."

The other two joined in, their laughter bouncing off the walls of the dressing room.

"See that?" The leader crouched down, leaning in close to my ear. "That's the guy you gave everything to."

I stared blankly at the phone. The screen went black, reflecting my pathetic, ruined face.

Right then and there, they forwarded the recorded video into eleven different chat groups.

Once that was done, the three men laughed and stood up. The leader casually kicked me in the ribs, sending me curling into a ball, before they finally pushed the door open and left me alone on the dressing room floor.

The door clicked shut, cutting off the noise from outside. The room plummeted into silence, leaving only my ragged breathing and the freezing cold seeping from the tiles into my spine.

I lay on the ice-cold floor, staring blankly at the flickering ceiling light overhead.

The high fever refused to break. My body throbbed, my scalp pulsed with pain, my knees were bruised, and my palms were scraped raw.

Yet all of that combined couldn't compare to that single sentence through the phone: *It has nothing to do with me.*

When I broke up with him on stage, I had still kept a tiny corner of my heart reserved for him.

That corner held on to one belief: no matter how biased he was, he wouldn't leave me to die if I was in real danger.

Today, he claimed over the phone that I was nothing to him. When he said it, there was music playing, someone talking to him, and he didn't even bother to utter my name.

That little corner was completely empty now. And I had no intention of ever letting anyone back in.

I lay there motionless for a very long time, tears running down my temples, soaking into my hair and ears, icy cold.

Footsteps passed through the corridor outside—people chatting, laughing, the click of dress shoes approaching and fading away.

I pushed myself up from the floor and retrieved the discarded phone. A fresh crack ran across the screen.

From this moment on, there was no room left for him in my heart.