Chapter 3Trading Fates: The Gilded Cage and the Sunlit Path

In my past life, looking at my approachable, youthful stepmother, I often wondered why she chose to be with my father.

Not only that, she specifically demanded that my father bring one of his daughters to be her stepdaughter.

Until one night, I heard someone quietly unlocking my bedroom door.

Half-asleep, I felt someone leaning over my bed, staring at me.

I tried to pry my heavy eyelids open, comforting myself that I was just imagining things.

But then, a wave of hot, foul breath hit my face, immediately scattering my exhaustion.

At the same time, hands started roughly grabbing at my clothes.

I snapped my eyes open in horror and fumbled for the bedside lamp.

The light revealed a strange man with a deeply unsettling, manic grin.

Terror clamped around my throat like an invisible hand.

I couldn't even scream. I just kicked out as hard as I could, but the next second, he bounced right back onto me like a rubber ball, his hands violent and bruising.

From the living room, I heard the sound of my dad's slippers as he came out to get a glass of water.

Like grasping at a lifeline, I screamed toward the sliver of light under my door, "Dad! Help!"

The footsteps moved closer, and then... they stopped.

I heard my stepmother's gentle voice: "It's fine. Tommy is just playing rough with her."

My dad calmly replied with an "Oh."

He even added a lecture for me: "Tommy is sick. You need to accommodate him. Don't hurt him."

The living room light clicked off, plunging the space back into darkness.

Extinguished right along with it was every shred of hope in my heart.

He knew everything.

That woman didn't marry him out of love. She married him—and demanded a stepdaughter—out of a twisted, sick, selfish desire.

She figured my dad was a pushover, easily manipulated.

She planned to lock me in this house, letting her violently unstable brother use me as a punching bag and whatever else he wanted, keeping the "problem" entirely in the family.

Because of the massive difference in physical strength, I struggled desperately. The man suddenly stopped, sitting up in surprise. Like a completely different person, he gently wiped my tears.

He smiled, a dark, unpredictable look in his eyes.

"Don't worry. I won't kill you yet. I'll wait until you're eighteen. Then we can play forever!"

He glanced up at the smoke detector on the ceiling, its tiny light blinking, and his smile deepened ominously.

"Actually, from the moment you laid down in this bed, I've had my eye on you."

Boom— Something in my mind collapsed completely, crumbling into ruins.

From then on, I kept a heavy metal flashlight under my pillow. Before going to sleep, I checked the reinforced locks on my doors and windows a dozen times.

Most importantly, I covered the smoke detector with clothes until it was completely blocked.

Finally, I barricaded the door with my dresser and desk.

One night, Tommy managed to break the window lock and crawled into my room.

I screamed, swinging the heavy metal flashlight wildly. I struck him hard, right in the groin.

He collapsed into the mess on the floor, crying and laughing with that bizarre, chilling grin.

He really was a complete psychopath.

It was Rowan who helped me escape that house completely.

Due to the severe psychological toll of those terrifying nights, my grades plummeted a month before the college entrance exams.

Amidst the sighs of my teachers, I failed to get into the Ivy League school I wanted and went to a second-tier local university instead.

That was where I met my classmate, Rowan.

He had money, and he had his own demons. When he lost control, he cared about absolutely nothing.

For ten million dollars, he paid off my father's mounting debts and had my father and stepmother practically pack me up and deliver me to his private estate.

When I turned eighteen, Rowan officially brought me out into the world—under the title of his fiancée.

I thought I had escaped the devil's grasp, but I had only fallen into another, gilded cage.

Rowan was deeply unwell.

He was paranoid, dark, and every cell in his body radiated an intense, suffocating possessiveness.