He Punished Me for Erasing Her Ink, by Carving His Rage Into My Flesh Chapter 01

He Punished Me for Erasing Her Ink, by Carving His Rage Into My Flesh Chapter 01

I had been fragile since birth, so delicate that my husband refused to touch me.

Every night, he shut himself inside his study and took care of his needs alone.

He used to cradle me as I wept with guilt, murmuring, “Baby, sex is just a cheap thrill. I can get through it.”

“We’ve been together for so many years. After everything we’ve survived, don’t you know how much I love you?”

Later, he couldn’t hold back anymore and found a spirited coed to act as his physical outlet.

The girl was young, reckless, and fearless. She even had his name tattooed across her chest.

In a fit of rage, I forced her to have it removed.

The next day, my family went bankrupt.

I went to Adrian Blackwell for help, but he took me to a tattoo parlor instead.

He raised an eyebrow. “One tattoo for a million-dollar loan. How does that sound?”

That was the moment I realized my family’s bankruptcy had been Adrian’s punishment for what I had done to his pampered little mistress.

I had erased one tattoo from her body.

So he wanted ten carved into mine.

The first humiliating tattoo was inked on my inner thigh. I bit my tongue until it bled.

The second tattoo branded the words “Harder” across my lower back, ink mixing with the blood that refused to clot.

By the time it was over, infection had spread across my body, and my mind was slipping in and out of consciousness.

Adrian only tossed a few bills at me.

Ten million Vietnamese dong, worth less than four hundred bucks.

This time, I didn’t scream.

I didn’t cry.

I picked up the money and smiled at him.

“Thank you, Mr. Blackwell. This is enough.”

Enough to buy myself a decent urn.

******

As I bent down to pick up the last bill, Adrian’s polished dress shoe came down on my hand.

“What did you call me?”

He reached down and caught my chin between his fingers.

“You used to call me baby. Now it’s Mr. Blackwell?”

Blood kept seeping from my skin. Every inch of me felt as if it had been flayed alive.

I lowered my eyes and backed down to him for the first time in my life.

“Adrian, draw up the papers. I’ll sign them.”

Once, a single tear from me would have made his heart ache for days.

Now his eyes were ice-cold.

A faint smile touched his mouth.

“You want a divorce? After I spent all this time keeping you alive? Why would I hand you over to another man?”

Then he ordered, with no room for argument, “Clear your things out of the master bedroom. Isla’s staying there from now on. She’s young, and she gets cold easily.”

I stopped fighting.

I just nodded.

When I walked out of the tattoo parlor, I was shaking from the pain.

I counted the money in my hand.

He had given me an extra hundred.

I was about to push the door open and return it when I heard the tattoo artist’s excited voice from inside.

“Mr. Blackwell, the livestream just hit ten million views!”

Something inside my head snapped.

The shame of having my body exposed to strangers nearly crushed me.

Every filthy word on my skin hurt worse than the needle ever had.

Because I had been born with epidermolysis bullosa, even the lightest touch could split my skin open and make me bleed.

Adrian had once held me in his arms and sworn, “I’ll protect you with my life. Always.”

But later, he met Isla Monroe at a game.

She was young, bright, full of laughter and energy.

She belonged to a completely different world from mine.

Again and again, in bed, Adrian told her, “Isla, I could die inside you and still call it worth it.”

Now, when Adrian heard what the tattoo artist said, something seemed to occur to him.

His eyes narrowed. “Did you get her face on camera?”

“Just as you instructed, sir. your wife’s face was blurred the whole time.”

I fumbled for my phone.

Only then did I realize the words tattooed across my body had all been chosen by viewers in the livestream.

“Sewer.”

“Harbor City’s Free Sample.”

“Beg for It.”

Filthy, degrading phrases covered me from head to toe.

Screenshots from the livestream were going viral.

By now, all of Harbor City was guessing who the faceless woman in the video was.

Adrian’s shoulders relaxed.

In a calm voice, he said, “If Claire had behaved herself, I wouldn’t have had to do this to her.”

“When Isla sees the screenshots, she should calm down. Maybe she’ll finally talk to me again.”

The wind outside was bitterly cold, but it was nothing compared to the chill settling in my bones.

All of this had happened because I couldn’t bear to see my husband’s initials on another woman’s body.

A few days earlier, I had hired muscle to forcefully remove the tattoo from Isla’s chest.

But Adrian had paid me back tenfold.

I pulled my coat tight around my neck, hiding the obscene words there.

Then I fled that tattoo parlor as if I were escaping hell.

My husband of ten years knew better than anyone that getting those tattoos had already pushed my body to its limit.

There was no way I could survive the pain of laser removal.

Those disgusting words would stay on me for the rest of my life.

I didn’t go back to the mansion.

Instead, I told the cab driver to turn around.

After my family collapsed, my mother had moved out of our old house and into a rundown apartment building.

It was less than sixty square feet, the kind of place people in Harbor City cruelly called a coffin room.

When I got out of the cab, I saw an ambulance parked by the curb.

Two paramedics hurried out with a stretcher.

The person on it was covered from head to toe with a white sheet.

Dread clawed at my chest.

With trembling hands, I dialed my mother’s number.

In the next second, the custom ringtone I had recorded for her rang out from beneath that white sheet.