He Lost Me to His Best Friend novel Chapter 108

She looked back at Stellan, a wave of intense confusion washing over her.

Who was this man? Why had she never seen him before?

He had just referred to Scarlett as "Ms. Langley." Why the immense respect?

A million questions swirled in Corinne's head, but before she could voice a single one, a massive hand materialized out of nowhere, delivering a thunderous slap directly across her face.

The impact was deafening, the sheer force throwing her entire body sideways onto the ground.

She shrieked in shock, but the sound was immediately drowned out by the rapid, echoing cracks of slaps ringing out beside her.

Gwen and Sylvia had already been terrorized into submission, frantically slapping themselves across the face as hard as they could.

Corinne clutched her burning cheek, screaming hysterically.

"You... have you all lost your minds?! This is a hospital! Director! Director, get out here! They're trying to murder us!"

Suddenly, a brutal grip tangled into her immaculately styled hair, wrenching her head back so violently her scalp screamed in agony.

She looked up and found Stellan's pale, emotionless face inches from hers, his eyes cold enough to freeze hell over.

"Corinne, you clearly don't grasp the gravity of your situation."

"Every single man standing here is no stranger to getting blood on their hands. Two hundred and four slaps, or your life. Make your choice."

Stellan's murderous aura was suffocating. Under his terrifying gaze, Corinne's entire body went entirely limp, turning to jelly.

Desperately choking back her sobs, she finally accepted her fate, raising both hands and violently slapping her own cheeks in a rapid, self-punishing rhythm.

Heartbroken, Talia rushed forward and gently took Scarlett's arm, instinctively reaching up to check her face.

The moment Talia's finger made the lightest contact, Scarlett flinched sharply.

"Talia, don't touch it. It hurts."

Talia nodded frantically. "Okay, okay. Let's get you back inside right now. I need to put some ointment on that swelling, or your face is going to be permanently scarred."

So much degrading subservience, so much swallowed pride, so much silent agony... It made her physically nauseous to look back on it.

For the sake of love, burying herself in the dirt hadn't been enough; she had practically dug her own grave ten feet deep to bury her self-esteem right alongside it.

She used to believe that if she bowed low enough, if she endured enough pain, she would eventually earn the approval of Corinne and the entire Flynn family.

Only now did she realize she was wrong—catastrophically wrong.

With an arrogant, elitist snob like Corinne, the more you catered to her, the more inflated her ego became. The only way to make her realize she was nothing was to violently smash her down to the dirt.

"Corinne, Gwen, engrave this into your skulls. The humiliation you put my mother through is far from settled."

"This is only the beginning. Don't worry, we have plenty of time. I'm going to enjoy tearing your lives apart piece by piece."

Scarlett stared at the two women with absolute freezing contempt. After dropping the threat, her gaze shifted to Sylvia.

"And you, Sylvia—"