Chapter 5

Jocelyn Reed’s POV

As soon as my high fever subsided, I forced myself to return to Theodore’s villa and began preparing Lily’s welcome-home banquet.

Three days later, inside the villa’s private fitting room,

Lily held a measuring tape and put on an act as she measured around my body.

“I’m tired of all those haute couture gowns from top luxury brands. This time, I want to personally design a suit for Theodore, and then make myself a matching gown.”

Lily smiled sweetly toward Theodore, who was sitting on the sofa not far away and handling documents. “Theodore, I just haven’t been able to find a draping model with the right measurements. Ms. Reed’s figure is rather similar to mine. Why not let her be my human fitting mannequin for a few days?”

Theodore did not even lift his head. His fingers flew across the laptop keyboard, his tone casual. “Do whatever makes you happy. As long as she doesn’t make you angry.”

I was told to take off my coat and stand ramrod straight on the round platform in the center of the fitting room wearing only a thin, fitted silk blouse.

Lily took a box of straight pins and began draping fabric on me.

“Hold perfectly still, Ms. Reed. Fabric draping demands flawless precision. The tiniest shift will ruin every fold I’ve laid out.”

A malicious light glittered in Lily’s eyes.

She drove the dress pin straight through the fabric and my thin silk top, sinking the sharp metal deep into my left shoulder.

“Hiss—”

The pain made me suck in a sharp breath, and my body instinctively shrank back.

“Oh my, why is Ms. Reed so delicate?”

Lily cried out in surprise. Not only did she fail to pull the pin out, she pressed it in even deeper. “I told you not to move. Look, the fabric is crooked now!”

For the next full three hours,

Lily deliberately stabbed straight pins into my shoulder, my waist, and my arm again and again.

My legs went numb from standing. Cold sweat poured from my entire body. On my white silk blouse, faint dots of crimson blood had already seeped through, like red plum blossoms blooming one after another.

I bit through my lip and forced myself not to move.

Because the bottom line of the system mission was this: before the wedding, I absolutely could not anger Theodore and cause the wedding to be canceled.

I looked coldly at Theodore on the sofa ahead of me.

He could clearly see the bloodstains on my blouse.

He could clearly hear the breaths I was swallowing back in pain.

But he merely turned a page of his document and spoke flatly.

“Bear with it. Lily has an artist’s temper. Once this gown is finished, for your wedding next month, I’ll order you that wedding dress brand you like the most.”

Finally, Lily seemed to grow tired of playing and clapped her hands. “That’s enough for today.”

I stepped down from the platform, ignored the bloody punctures on my body, and began expressionlessly cleaning up the scraps of fabric on the floor.

Lily Vance looked at my lifeless expression and suddenly seemed to lose interest. Then her eyes shifted, and another idea came to her.

“Theodore, I remember there’s a private kitchen in the southern suburbs whose truffle congee is amazing. I want that.”

The southern suburbs were a full forty kilometers from the hillside villa. A round trip would take at least two hours.

If it snowed heavily tonight, the roads would be extremely dangerous.

Theodore frowned. He looked at me, and I knew he thought it was going too far too.

But his need for control still won out.

“Jocelyn Reed,” Theodore ordered. “Go buy it. Lily wants it hot.”

I stopped what I was doing. The straight pins still stuck in my shoulder throbbed faintly.

I knew Lily was deliberately making things difficult for me, but I only nodded calmly. “Okay.”

I picked up the car keys and did not even change out of the bloodstained shirt before walking straight out of the villa.

Watching me leave, Lily leaned smugly into Theodore’s arms. “Theodore, look at her. She really is so obedient. If you told her to go eat snow, she wouldn’t even hesitate, would she?”

I looked back once. Theodore was not looking at me. He was staring at the darkening sky outside the door, his brows tightly furrowed, as if he felt irritated.

But in the end, he only gave a cold laugh. “She went to such lengths to become Mrs. Shaw. Of course she has to pay the price. She’ll get used to it.”

Two hours later, the wind howled, and the heavy snow arrived right on schedule.

I was driving across an empty suburban overpass when I heard a dull, abnormal sound from the engine.

The car broke down completely, stopping on a stretch of road with nothing in front of me and nothing behind me.

And at that moment, my phone had only 2% battery left.