He Locked The AC At Sixteen While I Bled In Pain Chapter 02

He Locked The AC At Sixteen While I Bled In Pain Chapter 02

The moment he spoke, his assistant pushed the front door open. Several movers walked in, carrying heavy loads.

Ten thick, cheap synthetic comforters were piled squarely at my feet.

“Didn’t you complain about being cold?” Ethan said, his brow furrowing with disappointment and impatience. “I told you to use a couple more blankets, but you just had to make a scene. Are these enough for you now?”

“Anna has hyperthyroidism and breaks out in hives if she sweats even a little,” he continued. “Can’t you grow up and stop using this kind of self-harm just to get attention? We’re all adults here. Staging a drama like this only makes things embarrassing for everyone.”

I stared at the ten comforters at my feet.

Suddenly, I understood. In his eyes, my pain no longer even existed. He wasn’t blind; he just didn’t care.

He wasn’t checking to see if I was cold, nor was he worried about my injury. He was simply using these ten heavy blankets to righteously shut my mouth.

He wanted to use this absurd, punitive version of “extra care” to safeguard Anna’s non-negotiable sixty-degree air conditioning.

“Nadia, I’m so sorry…” Anna whispered from behind Ethan, her eyes red. “It’s all my fault. I shouldn’t have complained about the heat. Please don’t be mad at Ethan. I’ll help you carry these blankets inside…”

“Stay right there. Don’t touch them,” Ethan said, grabbing Anna’s wrist to pull her back behind him while throwing a cold look at me. “She brought this on herself. Let her move them on her own.”

The air seemed to freeze in that instant. I didn’t cry, nor did I throw a fit by ripping the blankets apart like he expected.

I just found it incredibly funny. Not just funny, but nauseating.

Under Ethan’s watchful, cold gaze, I expressionlessly lifted my foot and kicked the blankets out of my way.

“Ethan, you are truly disgusting,” I said.

I didn’t say another word. No arguments, no accusations.

I stepped over the cheap synthetic fabric, turned around without looking back, and walked straight into my bedroom. The door locked behind me, completely shutting out the man who had once lovingly blown on my scraped finger.

Since the house couldn’t be sold, I didn’t bother wasting any more energy. I simply chose to live like a ghost in this space.

I left early and returned late. I stopped complaining about the sixty-degree chill, stopped touching anything in the kitchen, and stopped giving Ethan and Anna even a passing glance.

In Ethan’s eyes, my silence was the exact behavior he had been waiting for.

“See? Things are so much better when you behave,” Ethan remarked three days later.

I didn’t get home until ten o’clock that night due to working overtime. The living room was pitched in darkness.

Exhausted, I walked toward the master suite, taking off my sweat-soaked jacket along the way until I was left in just a thin, sleeveless camisole.

But the moment I looked up, I stopped dead in my tracks.

In a blind spot on the hallway ceiling, a tiny red light was blinking. Using the moonlight filtering through the window, I saw exactly what it was—a smart security camera with a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view.

The lens was pointed directly at my bedroom door.

I slammed on the hallway light and whipped around to look at the rest of the space. It wasn’t just the hallway. There was one above the TV wall in the living room and another right next to the dining room chandelier.

They had installed three cameras in total, and every single lens intersected perfectly with the daily paths I had to walk.