Madeline’s POV

In the dimly lit room, he leaned in close, his body carrying the damp chill of rain, yet his skin burned hot against mine.

I couldn't see his face clearly. All I remembered was his firm, broad chest, his scorching palms, and the way he drove into me again and again--so deep, so relentless--while I clutched the sheets beneath me, trapped in a haze I couldn't wake from.

The drug burned through my mind until my reason fell apart, but my body still responded to his heat on instinct.

He didn’t seem sober either. His breathing was uneven, as if he was fighting hard to hold something back.

After that, my memory went completely blank.

When I woke up, I was alone in the room. The sheets were a mess, my body ached, and the air still held the scent of a strange man.

Georgina was the first one to find me.

She rushed in with red eyes. “Kate, I’m sorry. This is all my fault. I should have taken better care of you.”

She wrapped a coat around my shoulders, then took a pill from her bag.

“Take this first.”

“What is it?” My voice was tight.

“Emergency contraception.” She held my hand. “There’s still time. Trust me. I would never hurt you.”

Back then, I believed her.

One month later.

At four o’clock on Friday morning, only a few scattered headlights remained outside the window in River City.

I sat by the window, awake all night.

The gynecologist’s words from earlier that day kept echoing in my head over and over.

I was pregnant.

But I was only eighteen.

I didn’t even know who the father was.

And one month ago, Georgina had personally handed me that so-called emergency contraceptive pill.

If that pill had been real, I shouldn’t have been pregnant.

But my test results didn’t lie.

I closed my eyes and forced myself to think back to how that night had started.

It had been my eighteenth birthday party.

The Nelson family had thrown a grand celebration for me—champagne, crystal lights, flowers, guests. Everyone had been smiling at me.

My last clear memory was Georgina handing me a glass of mocktail.

“Don’t worry. There’s no alcohol in it,” she said with a smile.

I took it and had a sip. It was sickeningly sweet.

“Did you put syrup in this?” I asked with a frown.

“Kate, it’s your birthday. Of course you should have something sweet.” She smiled and tapped the rim of her glass against mine.

After that, the lights and voices twisted into a blur.

The next time I was even a little aware, I was already in that room with rain pounding outside.

And now, a month later, I was pregnant.

I still had no idea how to face any of it.

“Madeline, open the door!”

A loud bang suddenly came from outside.

“Are you trying to completely disgrace the Nelson family? How dare you do something like this!”

Before I could react, the door was kicked open from the outside.

Lyndon Nelson, my father, stood in the doorway, his eyes full of rage.

The report in his hand crumpled noisily in his grip.

My gaze fell on that paper, and my whole body went stiff.

After I came back from the hospital yesterday, I had clearly stuffed it into the deepest part of my bag.

I hadn’t told anyone.

But now, it was in my father’s hand.

Someone had gone through my bag.

“Lyndon, Kate is still young. Talk to her calmly. Don’t be so angry. Look, you’re scaring her.” Georgina Nelson followed behind him, gently trying to comfort him.

Seeing the two people I hated most standing side by side, I felt nothing but disgust.

“Get out.”

“You still have the nerve to kick me out?” Dad’s face flushed with anger. “Do you know what will happen if this gets out? Do you know how people in River City will talk about the Nelson family?”

I stared at him blankly, my chest growing colder inch by inch.

He never asked what had happened to me, or whether I’d been hurt. All he cared about was saving the Nelson family’s reputation.

Looking at the man in front of me, a man who had changed beyond recognition, I forced down the bitterness and anger in my heart and said coldly, “What about you? Mom hadn’t even been dead for a month before you couldn’t wait to marry my best friend and make her my stepmother. I have a twenty-year-old stepmother. If that gets out, I wonder how many people will laugh at us.”

“You little bitch!”

A heavy slap landed hard across my face.

My head snapped to the side. My ears rang, and the taste of blood spread through my mouth.

Slowly, I raised my head. I didn’t shed a single tear.

“If you touch me again, I’ll call the police. Don’t dress up violence as a father’s discipline.”

I hated the man in front of me.

He was the one who had destroyed this family, yet he wanted to dump all the shame and dignity onto me.

Hearing my words, he raised his hand again, but Georgina stopped him.

“Lyndon, Kate is pregnant. You can’t hit her.”

My head shot up, and I stared at Georgina in shock.

I had only gone to the hospital yesterday for the exam, yet Georgina already knew I was pregnant.

She said it so naturally, as if she had been waiting for this moment all along.

“You really are your mother’s daughter!” he snapped, furious, and threw the report at me before turning to leave.

The door slammed so hard it shook.

Only Georgina and I were left in the room.

“Kate, what on earth happened? Who is the father?” She took a few steps closer.

I looked at her pretty, gentle face and suddenly found the whole thing absurd.

Once, I told Georgina everything.

What I liked, what I hated, what I was afraid of, where I hid and cried after fighting with my dad—she knew it all.

Only later did I understand that the person who knew you best also knew exactly where to drive the knife.

“My dad is gone. You don’t have to keep acting in front of me, pretending you care.” I looked at her coldly, my voice empty of warmth.

“Why do you always think of me that way? I really do care about you. We used to be best friends.” Georgina’s eyes reddened.

As she spoke, she reached out to take my hand. I slapped her hand away.

“Best friends?” I let out a cold laugh. “From beginning to end, you treated me like a complete idiot.”

Her expression froze for a split second.

“That mocktail you gave me that night—why was it so sweet? And the pill you gave me afterward, was it really emergency contraception?”

“Kate, you’re emotionally unstable right now. You shouldn’t make wild accusations.” She lowered her eyes and sighed softly.

If it had been before, maybe I really would have been fooled by that wounded look.

But now, I only felt sick.

“Because you became my stepmother, I became the biggest joke at school and in everyone’s eyes!”

I would never forget that day.

After my mother died, Georgina came over every day to keep me company. She said she felt sorry for me because I was lonely and grieving. She stayed with me through my lowest days.

I had stupidly believed she would always be my best friend.

Until one late night, when I went downstairs for water and accidentally heard her voice coming from my father’s master bedroom.

The door wasn’t fully closed.

I clearly saw her dress lying by the door. I saw her arms wrapped around my father’s neck, the two of them so intimate it made me want to throw up.

After that, every time she called me Kate, I felt sick.

I turned to stare at her and asked, word by word, “Did you go through my bag?”

“Kate, this isn’t the time to talk about that.”

She didn’t deny it.

That was enough.

She was the one who had given the report to Dad. And that sickeningly sweet mocktail from that night hadn’t been my imagination.

I still didn’t know why she had done all this.

But there was one thing I was sure of—

Georgina had never come to save me.