"You disgust me."
"Couldn't hold it in, eh? Getting so angry just from saying that much – but do you think that's just it? No, it's just the beginning. If you want to keep listening, I'll keep talking. You can leave any time you want. I'm not the one who's going to mourn in the end!
"Even just thinking about the days Robert was getting tortured, I don't feel like it's so bad getting shut in here. After all, I can think of the pain he went through before, and I can imagine the pain you'll go through in the future. Isn't that pretty great?"
If Georgia was to pick someone whom she hated the most, she might have said there wasn't such a person before.
She hadn't cared about Emma Lane any longer. She'd grown strong enough to get over the people who'd hurt her, the people she'd beaten, strong enough not to let them linger in her mind and cause her pain.
Now, though, she couldn't do it.
Seeing Sierra's face, Georgia wanted to rip her to shreds.
"Keep speaking. Don't think I won't be able to bear it. He's my husband, and I'll listen to all the pain he's been through. I'll protect him and love him from now on. You think I can be defeated by something like this? No, I'll only cherish the days we spend together even more, and live the rest of our days in happiness, while you die without ever getting an ounce of satisfaction."
At Georgia's words, Sierra only sneered.
"Hold on to that confidence and listen to me, then. I want to see if it's still there when I finish."
Sierra recalled past events for a while, and started describing them again.
"We'd tried to get him hooked on new types of drugs, too, but his nerves had been damaged and the chemicals we'd injected had been too complex. Miraculously, he rejected those drugs and didn't develop any reliance. Until the end, his body seemed to develop a resistance to other toxins. He couldn't get addicted at all. So, through all that, we couldn't threaten him from this angle.
"Finally, we threw him into the lab for testing and thought about how to get his property. Know what kind of place it was? It was the sort of underground lab where illegal experiments went on inside every day. Every day, live humans from warzones are captured for experiments. They had children, teens, youths, the elderly. All sorts of people were taken for experiments. If someone died from a certain test, they'd be dissected. Every ounce of value was to be squeezed from their bodies.
"After all, they had to clear up the cause of death and where the drug went wrong. There's no dignity for the people kept in that lab. They're treated worse than lab rats. At least lab rats get taken care of before they suffer. Unless their bodies need to be healthy to gather data, the people kept shut there are either beaten or yelled at, with never enough food or clothing. They're kept slumbering on the regular with tranquilizers. They don't treat test subjects as people. So Robert was like those people, kept confined to be pumped full of all sorts of drugs every day.
"With his massive willpower and all the new-fangled drugs running through his system, he'd developed resistance, so aside from his nerves being experimented on, those mad scientists were also really interested in his body. They put him through every test imaginable. He struggled between all sorts of agony every day and was rarely sober. I often felt like he'd die in some drug study or lab dissection, but he made it through. I didn't know he was this hard to break.
"Of course, the strangest part was, after his leg wounds got surgically dissected and sewn back together, and a bunch of drug concentration tests and other chemical experiments I hadn't even heard of, his regained the use of his legs. At that moment, the people in the lab all developed an interest in him. This was the first example of nerve regeneration. Of course, I don't know how this sort of thing goes. You do drug studies and biology too, so you probably understand how strange and valuable such a body is to those mad scientists.
"Every part of his body was worthy of study. Finally, those mad scientists even suggested testing all their drugs on him and killing him off before dissecting him, cutting open every organ of his body to see what secrets it holds. After all, data from live humans can't be collected too violently. But if the person way dead, every unusual part of the body can be examined in detail."
Sierra said that much and grinned a ghastly grin at Georgia.
"Of course, Robert ended forgetting about all that, so he was probably comforting you all the while about how little he'd suffered. The memory of his pain is gone, after all. Later on, his brain was still getting subjected to all forms of hypnosis and drugs to stimulate nerve regrowth. With too many chemicals injected into him, one day he became a complete amnesiac. At that moment, Jayson and I hatched a plan to deceive him and convince him to trust us before transferring all of his property to us.
"But before the plan could even begin, they hit Jayson. All the secret companies he'd invested in and all the stocks he had in the shadows were taken down, and Brenton even returned to the company, having him chased out. His capital support crumbled, and he started to be hunted by Brenton and Sarah's men. His days were getting worse and worse, and he lived in hiding. But at that time, the lab hadn't been discovered yet. Jayson sought to force the lab to develop something important, having the wealthy people who'd been supporting him keep him alive that way.
"Still, no matter how well Jayson thought of the plan, Brenton and Sarah still found the lab and directly contacted all sorts of international organizations, capturing the researchers and finally blowing the whole lab up... by then, Jayson was at the end of his rope. He couldn't show himself or ask anyone for help, because he didn't have anything left up his sleeve. He could only take the remaining subordinates and money he had and flee. The only person we brought with us was Robert. By then, his body was run ragged, with wounds up and down his body, without a single intact piece left.
"I thought about it for a long time with Jayson, and felt like if we appeared as Robert's saviors, it would be hard to find an excuse for Jayson's presence at my side. Besides, it's harder for emotions to develop when it's a man, a woman, and another man. So in the end, Jayson directed it from behind the scenes, and I played up being gentle and kind before Robert, doing all sorts of charitable things. I even brought Wesley over and told him that this was our son. Having appeared before Robert as his savior and with his memory gone, he only saw me save him and heal his injuries, allowing him to slowly recover his identity.
"The time was right and the place was perfect. In such a scenario, Robert should have become reliant on me and fallen for me, or at least been grateful and trusted in me. But it was as if he was just born cold. After all this time taking care if him, he was still on guard against me, and only treated Wesley slightly better. I discussed it with Jayson for a long while, and felt that if this went on, Robert definitely wouldn't give me a share of the property. That didn't fit with our plan, of course, so we decided to pretend there were people after me and Robert.
"I started acting the part of the hunted alongside Robert. Whenever Robert was beaten up, I leapt in every time and got beat up as well. It's even as you said, I offered up my own body and had Robert watch me humiliated by those men. Maybe it was that that finally sparked guilt in him. He started to trust me, and show how grateful he was. I acted the same scene again several times and had him continue to be chased, and the two of us continued to run away. The two of us took Wesley with us and escaped ambush after ambush. Finally, Robert discovered his identity by accident. At the moment he trusted me the most and promised to marry me, I decided to bring him back to the country."