This time, Frank didn’t let her return to her room.
Instead, he locked her in the basement.
To tame her, he had studied psychology.
It was a completely soundproof, pitch-black environment.
There wasn’t a single noise.
It was terrifyingly quiet.
A normal person would go insane living like this.
On the first day Lillian was shoved in there, she started counting the days.
But as time went on, she couldn’t keep track. She lost track of which day it was, or whether it was day or night.
Frank was very punctual.
He’d come to check on her every so often.
As for the child in her belly, he didn’t care. As long as she didn’t die, that was fine.
The maid’s job was just to clean the room. For Lillian, she just slid the food through the iron door.
Lillian tried pretending to be sick, but after the maid made a phone call, she just left her alone.
As her belly grew bigger, when she hit five months, Frank came to see her.
But her response remained the same. He had plenty of patience and left soon after.
Being pregnant made it hard for Lillian to turn over in the stuffy room at night.
She kept up with regular exercise every day.
The first time she felt the baby move, Lillian thought it was a strange sensation.
She felt like time itself was blurred.
But the interaction with the baby made her realize that she now had another family member.
She started looking for ways to escape.
After smashing a bowl, she secretly hid the broken pieces.
When the maid came in, annoyed and distracted, Lillian pressed the shard to her throat.
She forced the maid to take her out.
The maid, desperate to save her own life, led Lillian out of the small, dark room.
Lillian tied her to a pillar and went to the fridge to grab some meat, which she fed to the guard dog outside.
Then she grabbed what she could and ran out.
Her large belly made it hard to move.
The village was full of elderly people with hardly any young people around.
When they saw her, a strange, pregnant woman, they stared at her warily.
Lillian tried to borrow a phone, and in the end, she traded the gold ring she had stolen from the maid for a chance to make a call.
She dialed Conrad’s number.
But the signal was terrible in the mountains.
She tried calling five or six times, but each time, there was no signal.
Lillian’s eyes welled up with tears.
In this remote valley, there were no other villages in sight.
Her only option was to try reaching him.
“Answer the phone… Conrad, please answer the phone…”
But just as the call finally connected, a pair of hands snatched the phone away.
Frank stood behind her, his tone calm. “Are you misbehaving again? What’s this, running out and causing trouble?”
Lillian glared at him like she had seen a ghost. “Give it back to me!”
Frank grabbed her and handed the phone back to the old man. “Sorry, my wife’s mind isn’t all there. She’s pregnant and keeps running around.”
“I’m not his wife!” Lillian yelled.
The elderly villager didn’t understand much, and seeing Lillian in that state, he found her a bit frightening.
It wasn’t until Frank dragged her back to the small cabin that she was slammed against the wall, and Frank pressed his body against hers.
“Look at you, did you have to provoke me? What do you think you’ll gain from this?”
Lillian felt him squeezing her throat, her large belly pushing against the pressure.
Frank caressed her stomach. “How about I break your legs? That way, you won’t be able to make me angry again.”
Lillian closed her eyes. “Next time you come back, you’ll find my corpse. You will never get me.”
“Why not? If you die, I can still defile your corpse. I have ways to preserve you forever. Lillian, you don’t seem to understand how much I love you.”
“You’re almost six months pregnant, right? You’re about to give birth. Actually, we could have sex now. But I’m concerned about your health. I respect you.”
“But once you’ve given birth and finished your confinement period, you’ll need to start thinking about how to take care of your future husband. You should focus on getting your body back in shape and looking like a young woman again. Honestly, this pregnant look isn’t exactly flattering.”
Lillian was thrown back into the basement.
Frank handed the maid a syringe, telling her to inject it into Lillian if she didn’t behave.
Lillian leaned hopelessly against the wall, her swollen belly making it hard to breathe.
Meanwhile, Conrad stared at his phone, looking at the missed call.
He called back.
“Hello?”
The voice on the other end babbled on and on, and Conrad’s initial hope turned to disappointment.
He hung up immediately.
How naive of him to think it might’ve been Lillian calling.
“Mr. Conrad, it’s time for your second surgery.”
His legs and arms still needed delicate surgical stitches before they could slowly recover.
The process was long.
Conrad’s face remained blank as they wheeled him into the operating room.
But after a moment, he couldn’t give up the last bit of hope. “Check the IP address from that last call.”
Ford nodded helplessly. Over the past few months, countless people had called with fake information, all trying to collect the reward. Every time they went, it was a dead end.
Ford wasn’t hopeful, but he still contacted the local team to investigate and see if there was any trace left.
Frank quickly changed locations. Lillian was shoved into a car and taken away from the cabin. As they drove off, the cabin she had just been in was completely demolished by a bulldozer, leaving the impression that the owner had sold the old house and was preparing to renovate it.
Even if someone came asking, no one would think to look there.
Frank stroked her hair, making sure she saw what happened before he whispered softly in her ear, “Looks like Conrad won’t be able to find you again.”
She was taken to another place, where they had prepared a small room. The environment was better this time, at least there was sunlight and windows.
But after all the travel, she started feeling unwell the moment she was locked in.
Her belly began to ache terribly.
After banging on the door with no response, she curled up on the floor.
It was a pain that felt like her soul was leaving her body.
She grabbed the bedsheet and bit it to stifle the shivering, nerve-wracking pain that made her scalp tingle.
“Ow!” When the maid came to bring her food, she found Lillian unconscious on the floor.
By the time Frank arrived, the maid was panicking.
“Go check on her!”
A doctor had been specially hired from a private clinic for Lillian’s delivery.
They hadn’t expected her to go into labor so soon.
Outside, the rain was coming down in torrents.
Lillian was in excruciating pain, feeling something slowly slide out of her body. She couldn’t tell how long the suffering lasted.
It wasn’t until something finally slipped out of her that she felt like she was alive again.
“Child… my child…”
Lillian sat up, feeling like she was swimming in water, but the doctor didn’t care about her at all. Instead, he grabbed the baby and handed it over to Frank.
“My child…” Lillian struggled to crawl over to them.
“Don’t touch her!” Frank looked at Lillian, her whole body slick with sweat. He glanced down at the tiny, red, swollen thing in his arms. He could hardly suppress his urge to throw it out the window and watch it die on the ground below.
“Boy or girl?”
“She’s a girl, but things don’t look too good. Did you have prenatal checks?”
Frank sneered.
Conrad’s daughter.
A little vampire that sucked the life out of people.
Did she deserve prenatal checks?
But she looked so much like Lillian.
What was he supposed to do about it?
Then again, with her condition, she probably wouldn’t last much longer.
Lillian clenched her fists.
“She’s a beautiful little girl, just as cute as you were when you were young. Too bad, though. She’s like a little kitten-breathing more out than in. Looks like she won’t make it through the night.”
Lillian snapped her head up.
“Let me think… Conrad must be wondering where you went. If he finds out you’re still alive, and on top of that, the baby’s dead, do you think he’ll go crazy?” Frank smiled at Lillian with an expression that could only be described as twisted. “I can’t wait to see that scene.”