Chapter 6

Grace Gardner's POV

That night, the scalding herbal pack ultimately failed to warm my ice-cold heart, and it also failed to ease the piercing pain in my knee.

Yet first thing the next morning, Mrs. Foster issued a new order of torment.

“Go to the chapel and recheck all the old ledgers and photocopies of promissory notes from the years of debt collection, one by one.”

Walter, the butler, stood in the doorway, delivering the message from above. “Mrs. Foster said that since you are the Foster family’s eldest daughter-in-law, you should set a good example of repaying debts before God.”

The chapel was bone-chillingly cold. There was only a low table, a cold cushion, and a table full of scattered account pages.

Walter locked the heavy wooden door from the outside with a backhand motion.

“You are not allowed to get up or drink water until you finish checking everything. Those are the rules.”

The instant I knelt down, my left knee made a teeth-grating click.

Agony swept through my entire body in an instant. I bit down hard on my lower lip, my face as pale as paper, yet I did not make a single sound. With trembling hands, I began checking the papers one by one.

Those old files had no numbering at all, and the dates were completely out of order.

The only thing that was perfectly clear was the record of Mrs. Foster’s humiliation of me over these seven years: public questioning, reprimands in the side hall, forced kneeling, compound interest...

Half an hour later, Walter pushed the door open a crack and asked with a sneer, “Mrs. Foster asks, how many years are left on your debt?”

My fingers turning the pages were already frozen stiff. Without raising my head, I said, “However many years she says are left.”

Walter snorted coldly and slammed the door shut again.

Time passed, minute by minute.

The ache in my knee bloomed into a throbbing swell, burrowing deep within my bone tissue. I broke out in cold sweats and my vision blurred repeatedly. I attempted to shift my weight to ease the strain, yet I crumpled back to my knees after barely ten seconds.

After that, my knee was not just in pain anymore. It had lost all feeling completely.

When Walter pushed the door open again two hours later, I was digging my fingers hard into the floor tiles with both hands, trying to stand.

But my left leg was like a useless piece of wood, dragging behind me without the slightest response.

Walter frowned, took out his phone, and called Zachary Foster. He even deliberately put it on speaker.

"Mr. Foster, Grace doesn't seem to be able to stand up."

The other end of the line was quiet for two seconds.

Then Zachary Foster's careless, faintly irritated voice rang out clearly in the empty chapel.

"Mother is just following the rules. It's not like she physically punished her. Once she's done checking the old files, it'll be over. Tell her not to overthink things just because of a little pain and make everyone look bad."

The call was cut off without mercy.

Half-sprawled on the cold floor tiles, I listened to that icy busy tone, and my tears finally fell silently onto the dust-covered floor.

I did not cry out in pain again. I only reached out with a trembling hand and silently pulled over the next loose sheet.

Two hours later, Walter half-dragged, half-pulled me into the hospital.

The ER doctor looked at the scans, his brows tightly furrowed. Pointing at the lower edge of the patella, he said sternly,

"What happened?! The old injury has worsened, and the cartilage wear is irreversible! From now on, this knee of yours can only be maintained through long-term rehabilitation. It will never fully return to normal!"

The cartilage damage was permanent; full recovery would never be possible.

I numbly took the medical record, my gaze fixed on the doctor's signature and the date.

After returning to the annex villa, I locked the door behind me and took out the real bank statement from the hidden compartment of my old leather suitcase.

In the blank space beside the final paid-off record, my hand trembling, I wrote stroke by stroke with such force that the pen nearly cut through the paper:

[March 7 of the sixth year, Debt Paid in Full. In the seventh year, I was forced to kneel until I was crippled.]

[And he knew all of it.]