Lamplight flickered in a heavily guarded room in the rear courtyard of Hongmen Mountain Villa.
Luo Jiazhi sat alone by the window, clouds of sorrow shrouding her exquisite face.
She gently stroked the medicine bottle in her hand. This was the "antidote" Qin Hong had delivered today, but it was also the shackle keeping her imprisoned here.
Tomorrow, according to their agreement, her daughter would marry, and she herself would have to serve that despicable bastard Qin Hong.
Had she known, she would never have saved Qin Hong back then. Who could have imagined he was this sort of man?
Yet over the past few years, apart from drugging her, Qin Hong had never laid an improper hand on her. He had, in a sense, kept his promise, so she had remained torn over whether to resign herself to her fate.
She truly could not stomach accepting it. She already had a man, and he had said he would return someday.
But she had no way to resist her fate, either. Just then, brisk footsteps sounded outside the door.
"Mother!" Luo Xi pushed the door open, her face brimming with unconcealable joy.
Luo Jiazhi brightened at first, then her expression dimmed again. "Xi'er, how did you get mud all over yourself? Did you go to the ancestral ruins again?"
She tenderly stroked her daughter's beautiful hair. It was all her fault for being so useless-she could not even protect her own daughter.
"Yes, Mother. I met Eldest Aunt and Second Aunt at the Luo Family Ruins!" Luo Xi said, lowering her voice.
Luo Jiazhi sprang to her feet. "Where are they?"
A glimmer of hope flashed in her eyes.
If Luo Jiazhi remembered correctly, her eldest sister, Luo Qimeng, had disappeared when Luo Water Manor was destroyed.
Her second sister