As Evelyn stood there lost in such a foolish thought, Merilyn suddenly scowled.

“Ivan, why is Evelyn still coming to this house?”

It was a small village. Although Evelyn and Ivan weren’t officially engaged, everyone knew they were going to marry.

Evelyn simply stared at Ivan. His face steadily drained of colour as he shook his head at her, silently begging her to stay silent.

Just three days ago, he had sworn he loved her, smiling sweetly as he did so.

“Ah…”

Evelyn straightened her posture with a sigh of realisation after standing frozen at the threshold.

Then, she stepped into the room.

“It seems I came at the wrong time.”

“Evelyn.”

Ivan called her name sternly, as if scolding her. But Evelyn continued speaking, as though she hadn’t heard his plea.

“Lady Merilyn, I only came to gather my belongings. Please don’t misunderstand.”

“Belongings?”

At Merilyn’s sharp question, Evelyn slowly turned to Ivan and met his eyes. Their gazes trembled, and silence fell for a moment.

“Yes. Since the two of you are to be married, naturally I should leave this house. Isn’t that right?”

Ivan said nothing.

“Isn’t it?”

When she pressed him with a slightly louder voice, he finally gave a nod.

“Yeah.”

Hearing this, Evelyn could only smile bitterly. She bowed politely and left the drawing room.

By the time she reached the stairs on the second floor, she could hear people laughing behind her.

‘So… I guess he smoothed things over.’

Evelyn continued walking steadily. The room she stayed in at weekends was at the end of the third-floor attic hallway.

Had the hallway always felt this long?

With her mind hazy and detached from reality, she stepped into the room.

She paused to catch her breath, then surveyed the space that was no longer hers.

‘Ha…’

At last, a short, bitter laugh escaped her lips.

More than two years had passed since they first promised to marry each other.

Ivan was eager to propose to Evelyn.

After an argument with his mother, who insisted that he could not marry an orphan, he went three whole days without drinking, earning her reluctant approval through sheer willpower — a hard-won victory.

Ivan had patiently waited for Evelyn to come of age.

All that remained was the formal engagement.

Evelyn, who had initially intended to pack lightly, changed her mind and took out the large suitcase she had brought with her when she first arrived at the house.

Each time her belongings fell haphazardly into the suitcase with a dull thud, her heart sank lower.

It was only after taking a deep, painful breath that she realised she hadn’t been breathing properly since entering the room.

Once she had done so, the sharp, unpleasant emotions that had been tearing at her began to swirl fiercely inside her chest.

The most powerful of these was betrayal.

Of all the emotions she had ever felt, betrayal was the strongest, like icy needles stabbing relentlessly into her heart.

How could he do this to her?

How?

He had sworn that he loved her and could not live without her. As he unbuttoned her dress under the moonlight, Ivan whispered persistently and tenderly. He kissed her and reverently touched every inch of her bare skin.

Then—bang!—the door to her room burst open.

Ivan stood there, staring at her and the suitcase in her hand, before striding towards her.

“What are you doing?”

“I told you earlier—I came to pack.”

“What are you talking about?”

Normally, Evelyn would have calmly explained everything that had happened that day. That would’ve been just like her—always gentle and kind.

“You should go back. It’s rude to keep your fiancée and her parents waiting, isn’t it?”

“Wait. Don’t go anywhere.”

“No. I’m leaving. We’re finished.”

“Who gave you the right to say it’s over?”

Evelyn didn’t even have the strength to laugh at that. When she ignored him and continued packing, Ivan came closer and snatched the suitcase from her hands.

“Just stop and wait, damn it!”

He shouted—then seemed to realize what he had done and quickly lowered his voice, gripping her arm tightly.

“Don’t ignore my orders!

‘Disgusting.’

Evelyn had thought the word only existed in books. But, confronted with Ivan’s truly repugnant behaviour, she let out a hollow laugh — the sound of a woman who had lost her mind.

“I’m leaving. I absolutely won’t stay in this house any longer.”

Evelyn studied his face intently, and in his eyes was an emotion she couldn’t quite place—one she had never seen in him before.
Only later would she recognize it for what it was: the quiet, aching desperation of a coward.

“Then me go.”

Ivan sneered.

“Ha! Just because you’re of age now, does that mean you don’t need the Morgan family’s money anymore? Have you forgotten who put food on your table?”

But his words weren’t true. While it was true that she wouldn’t have been able to enrol at Hangderhood Academy without a noble family’s sponsorship, and that she had received help from the Morgans, Evelyn had paid her admission fee with money sent by Henrietta, as well as money she had earned herself.

Besides, she had helped out around the house like a maid at weekends.

“You’re right, Baron. Just as you said, I don’t need you anymore. So don’t lay a hand on me again.”

“Evelyn!”

“Let me go!”

Overcome with emotion, Evelyn shook him off. That was the last thing she could remember clearly.

She had tried to push Ivan away and leave, but he grabbed her and spun her back around.

Smack!

The sound reached her ears before the pain registered.

Only after she was thrown to the ground by the force of the blow did she realise that Ivan had slapped her.

“I treated you so well, and this is how you repay me?”

She thought she heard him say something like that.

While he hadn’t always been kind to her, Ivan was generally gentle.

That man had hit her. Even after experiencing it herself, it was hard to believe.

Her body was being tossed around by brute force, completely against her will.

She crawled across the floor, trying to escape his indiscriminate blows.

But the nightmare didn’t end there.

Ivan seized a handful of her hair and dragged her out into the hallway.

Instead of taking the stairs, he took the goods lift, leading her towards the storage room.

Even as she was being dragged there, Evelyn couldn’t quite believe that this was really happening to her.

Her life hadn’t always been peaceful, but since meeting Henrietta, she had felt safe.

Henrietta regularly sent her some of her hard-earned money.

Thanks to that, Evelyn no longer had to live in poverty.

What on earth was happening to her now?

The storage room door swung open and, once again, Evelyn was blinded by white light.

Evelyn grabbed the doorframe instinctively, but was ultimately dragged inside.

The door slammed shut, plunging the room into darkness. Evelyn lost consciousness at that very moment.

When she came to, it was the middle of the night.

Moonlight crept faintly through the cracks in the haphazardly placed wooden planks covering the window.

The sharpness of the light made her reach up and touch her head.

Even the slightest movement caused her entire body to scream in pain, as if something inside her had broken.

Biting down hard on her lower lip to stop herself from crying, she slowly pushed herself into a sitting position.

All she could think about was escaping, getting out of there somehow.

At that moment, a chilling click rang out and the storage room door opened again.

A long shadow stretched into the room and Evelyn curled up in fear, reflexively.

“It’s me. You don’t need to hide.”

Fortunately, it wasn’t Ivan. It was Georgiana, his younger sister, who had always thought Evelyn was ugly.

“How pathetic.”

Georgiana clicked her tongue as she looked Evelyn up and down.

The contempt in her eyes stirred up a storm of bitter emotions inside Evelyn.

“I warned you more times than I can count.”

Georgiana said tossing a bag at Evelyn’s feet. She spoke in that classic villainess tone, sounding both condescending and cold.

“This is yours.”

Evelyn kept her guard up as she looked at the bag. It was her old bag, just as Georgiana had said.

But she didn’t dare reach for it carelessly.

Georgiana sighed and looked at her.

“Are you marrying my brother? Can you hear how ridiculous that sounds? A baron’s wife? You’re just a nobody orphan!”

“Just get to the point.”

“My brother’s drunk and passed out right now.

“So?”

“Pack your things and leave this house. Now.”

Evelyn stared at her in silence.

Georgiana had never helped her before.

It was only natural, then, for Evelyn to be suspicious.

Seeing the look in Evelyn’s eyes, Georgiana sighed again.

“I hated you, that’s true, but I never wanted my brother to beat you half to death. He’s my brother, of course, but he looked like a total lunatic today. One minute he was raving about how he wanted to marry you, and the next he was blinded by money.”

There was no trace of a lie on her face as she clicked her tongue in disapproval.

“They say men change as they get older. I don’t really care about that. What I do know is that the only way this wedding can go ahead without any problems is if you leave this house. So, for now, I’m helping you.”

Georgiana strode towards Evelyn.

“If I hadn’t run after you to the storage room and stopped him, he might actually have killed you.”

“Ugh, it gives me the chills.”

She then glanced at Evelyn, who still hadn’t moved.

“Don’t tell me… you don’t want to run? Ivan is not in his right mind. He said he’d break your legs just to keep you here. He even ordered the servants not to open the door for anyone.”

As she spoke, she began prying off the wooden boards covering the window with a metal rod that she had dragged in from somewhere.

The sound of the iron scraping against the wall sent a fresh jolt of pain through Evelyn’s injuries.

“Merilyn already left, looking really suspicious. She might barge in first thing in the morning and come after me instead.”

With a loud crack, the plank gave way, and the thin moonlight that had been filtering through suddenly flooded the storage room.

‘Let’s say you escaped through here on your own. If Ivan finds out that I helped you, he won’t let me off either. He’s completely lost it; he’s totally gone mad.”

Shaking her head, Georgiana dragged a large box under the window with some effort.

Evelyn, watching her, quickly grabbed her bag. It could have been a trap, but the door to freedom had opened. The opportunity was clear as day.

“Hurry up!”

At those words, Evelyn didn’t hesitate. She tossed her bag out of the window, clung to the frame, and pulled herself up with difficulty.

Georgiana came up behind her and pushed her up from below, helping her escape.