Mr. Radit staggered backward in shock. His body swayed until he collided with the sofa behind him. His breathing quickened, cold sweat suddenly pouring down and soaking the pajamas he wore because he... couldn't believe what he had heard from Mely.
"But Dad already paid off that debt. What exactly did they mean by interest? Bastards!" Mr. Radit muttered angrily.
Five years ago. The shadow of that dark night came crashing back into his memory. When bankruptcy had loomed right before his eyes, his only option for keeping his company afloat had been to take out a loan. But unfortunately, every bank rejected his application.
Mr. Radit had been trapped in despair. Forced to take the quickest route, he signed an agreement with a devil disguised as a loan shark—an international syndicate. He thought he could pay off the interest as time went by. He forgot that syndicates like that never released their prey easily. They waited as the loan accumulated interest, until finally they came to collect the most valuable price in the world: his own flesh and blood. Unmarried—in other words, a beautiful virgin—Mely was now twenty-three years old, making her perfectly suited for the black market or the forced-prostitution industry. A virgin's status was often valued far more highly by buyers, bringing in enormous profits from the victim's first transaction.
*How inhuman,* Mely thought with a shudder.
"Dad... What should I do?" Mely asked anxiously. It wasn't as if she could stay locked inside the house forever. Mely couldn't imagine living that way. Her extroverted nature would rebel; she was active, loved interacting with people, and especially loved exploring the world outside and experiencing new places and atmospheres.
"Mely..." Raditya knelt on the floor, trying to reach for his daughter's hand with fingers that had suddenly begun to tremble. The crushing guilt in his chest was sharper than a knife piercing his heart. The anger he had just unleashed at his daughter turned around and struck him instead.
"I almost died, Dad... I'm scared they'll come after me again," Mely whispered softly. She gently brushed his hand away, then looked at the man with the last remnants of her deep disappointment.
"The scariest thing in this world isn't that I came home late... it's realizing that my guardian angel is now the person secretly selling my body just for his own success."
"But, Dad..."
"I want to sleep, Dad... I'm so tired," Mely cut in. She rose slowly and walked toward her room, leaving her father sitting there in silence with his head bowed and his emotions in turmoil—angry, frustrated—because the wealth, power, and grandeur he had built with so much effort suddenly felt utterly worthless in the face of his daughter's tears, after she had nearly become the victim of an unforeseen mistake from the past. . Meanwhile, behind the doorway connecting to the living room, the slender silhouette of a woman stood frozen in the darkness of the hallway. Sintia... Mely's stepmother.
The woman's heart pounded. Not because she was shocked by the horror that had just befallen Mely, but because she was overwhelmed by panic at the thought that her filthy secret might be exposed.
*So they really are hunting Mely after all this time? What if they mention my name? Damn it,* Mrs. Sintia thought, her breath caught in her throat.
"Forgive me, sweetheart... Your dad is an idiot..." Radit's voice, murmuring to himself, still reached Sintia's ears.
For the past five years, Mr. Radit had been certain that the loan agreement from five years ago had been nothing more than a reckless decision he had made alone in a moment of desperation. He had never known the real truth.
On the exact night bankruptcy destroyed the company and drove Mr. Radit nearly insane with frustration, Sintia had been the architect behind the disaster. That calculating woman couldn't imagine living amid the ruins of luxury without designer handbags, diamond jewelry, a luxury car, and the social status of a tycoon's wife.
She was the one who had secretly slipped the dark syndicate's business card into Radit's work jacket. She was the one who had kept pressuring her husband to take out a loan, no matter how large, under the excuse that it was "for the family's future." And when the payment deadline arrived, just as Mr. Radit had begun desperately searching for another loan to cover the principal, Sintia deliberately leaked Mely's schedule for returning home from college, giving the debt collectors posing as thugs the addresses of places her stepdaughter often visited. For Sintia, Mely was only a stepdaughter—an obstacle and the perfect sacrifice. If Mely had to lose her life or be sold to pay off the debt to the syndicate, Sintia didn't care. The only thing that mattered was... Radit's wealth staying intact in her grasp, and never becoming poor.
Unfortunately, it seemed the time had now come for those criminal syndicate members to claim Mely. Mr. Radit remained seated alone, lamenting his regret and bewildered about what to do. Meanwhile, Sintia watched from the shadows, biting her lower lip.
Her eyes narrowed, filled with a cunning plan in the darkness of the hallway. She knew she had to act quickly, before her guilt-ridden husband decided to report everything to the police. If he did, the police would inevitably uncover the syndicate—something that could lead them straight to the truth about her involvement. As quietly as possible, the woman in the satin dress pulled away from the doorway, devising a new strategy in her deceitful mind.
*I can't let Radit give in to his guilt, especially not to the point of involving the authorities and dragging my name into this. Damn it...*