CHAPTER 488: RAID THE ABODE (3)

On one of the islands away from the T-Vino....

The sun shone bright on the land below, surrounded by vast amounts of seawater. The place was slightly uphill and overlooked the sea, but it was also positioned so strategically that no one could easily spot it from outside.

Hidden behind jagged cliffs, covered in early morning mist nearly all day, it was also surrounded by treacherous currents; the island was nearly invisible to passing ships, especially the part with the most activity. From above, it looked like a slice of paradise - lush, green, and quiet - but what lay beneath the canopy of beauty was anything but.

In the open fields, workers moved like shadows, bent low, harvesting with shaking hands. The crop was cannabis and some other crops. There were rows upon rows of them, thick and lush, stretching as far as the eye could see.

The sheer amount of it was overwhelming, and the thick scent hung heavy in the air, almost narcotic in its intensity. The heat pressed down on the workers’ backs, blending with the humidity until sweat drenched their clothes, but they seemed oblivious to this.

There were no breaks and absolutely no moments of rest. A pause brought punishment. Whips cracked with sharp, sickening rhythm; one, two, then silence. That was until someone else faltered again.

The overseers weren’t just guards; they were thugs, hardened and cruel. Scarred men with cold eyes and heavier weapons slung over their backs. They didn’t shout. They didn’t need to. The threat was always there, and it was enough.

The island wasn’t large, but it was dense. Beyond the fields, thick forests stood tall like walls, muffling sound and blocking any escape. Somewhere deeper inland, a white stone house rose.

It was like an anomaly in that part of the island, against the green, immaculate, untouched, and grotesquely beautiful. That was where the owners and guards stayed. These were the ones who never stepped foot into the field—the ones who never got their hands dirty. They only dealt with logistics and the merchandise itself.

The workers’ place of sleep was not far from this beautiful house. However, this was just a cluster of rundown shacks and huts.

Among the field workers, one girl lifted her head briefly. Her eyes flicked toward the trees, where the line between shadow and forest met. She was young and looked maybe seventeen, but her eyes held something older, hardened. A faded scar ran from the bridge of her nose to her cheekbone, and her hands were calloused and raw.

This was none other than Brianna ... and unlike the few who had been born there of the workers and the guards, she was like the majority- brought there to work off her debts... at least that was what her fellow workers thought. They would never have imagined that she had offended the only man who should not have been offended.

In fact, anyone who knew of Brianna’s case thought of her as a fool. She had been raised as a princess and the only child of her rich family. She also had the good luck to be friends with the girl who had ended up as Ian Thornston’s wife. With such a fate, Brianna and her family should have had it all, it not for her greedy and vile heart, she would have never found herself in this predicament.

No one who once knew Brianna would recognize her now; she had become a mere shadow of her former self. She was once a curvy and plump girl, well-endowed in every way - full cheeks, hips that swayed with confidence, and arms soft with youth and ease.

But now... now she was little more than bones wrapped in skin, her curves stolen by starvation and sleeplessness. Her collarbones jutted out sharply like wings that would never lift her, her eyes sunken into hollow sockets, and her once-rosy skin had turned the pallor of ash. Where she had once filled a room with presence, now she disappeared into corners, her frame barely casting a shadow.

"Hey, what are you doing? Why have you stopped working?"

Someone hissed in warning right next to Brianna, causing her to stumble back in surprise, but before she could do anything, a whip slashed across her back, and she winced. She was so used to these whips that they did not cause her to cry anymore.

Marvin, who had tried to prompt Brianna so that she would not be whipped, closed his eyes tightly and continued working.

Brainna did not linger on the ground, lest she get another whip. She got up swiftly, without complaint, nor even a glance at Marvin and then continued harvesting the flowers.

Once, Brianna had laughed without shame. She had ordered people around and treated them like shit, but who would have thought?

Her hair had been kept lush and shampooed every single day. It would catch the wind like sunlight woven into strands, and her cheeks had been round from joy and good food. Her fingers had danced over piano keys and exquisite stuff with the same ease, nurturing life, beauty, and dreams.

In another lifetime, she wore silk, ran through wildflower fields, and spoke of futures with stars in her eyes. She had longed for the wrong man, and that had been her mistake.

That girl was gone.

The Brianna now - this girl hunched among the rows of cannabis, burnt by the sun and bruised beneath layers of dirt and toil - was a ghost of that past. Her limbs were stick-thin, her skin had lost its glow, and her eyes... her eyes were hollow in a way that no one should ever have to understand.

The rich lustre of her gaze now looked almost grey, dulled and sunken, as if tears had eroded all its shine.

Truth be told, Brianna had no fighting spirit left when she’d first been brought to the island.

Ian had made sure that she was broken both emotionally and physically. One would say that Brianna herself was a contributing factor to this. She had offended too many people that it was quite easy for people to take on the job of doing this.

Her psyche had been pretty messed up to the point that, there was a doubt if she would ever get back to a semblance of normalcy ever again in her life. She had never been disobedient on the island, but for the first few months, she had been beaten senseless for no reason.

It was to the point that even some of the captive workers had asked if she had offended someone. That had been too light of a question, because Brianna had offended everyone, and even though she thought that Ian might be pulling strings, it had been none other than Doll, her previous maidservant.

Days on end, Brianna had been starved, chained and mistreated in ways that she thought that it would be the end of her. But the island knew how to break you, not by brute force alone, but by time.

By stripping you of the familiar, by making pain routine and survival a privilege. That was exactly what Brianna went through. Days of intense work for someone who had never lifted a finger, and nights plunged with dreams of falling over cliffs. Dread was what filled her.

Now, months later, she did not flinch at the crack of a whip. She no longer cried when the thorns cut her palms. She obeyed. Not because she wanted to—but because she had learned that sometimes, surviving meant letting the fire inside go cold just long enough to live through the smoke.

That was why even she knew that if anyone from her old life saw her now, they would never recognize her. She wouldn’t blame them. Brianna barely recognized herself.

She bent low again, plucking another leaf, her back aching and the welt from moments before. Even the ones from yesterday were still fresh. Somewhere far off, a guard barked orders in a language she no longer cared to understand. Brianna didn’t react. She simply moved - because movement meant invisibility. And invisibility kept you alive.

But even in her hollowed shell, something inside her still whispered.

Wait.

Watch.

Endure.

But wait for what? At the start, she had held some tiny hope that her parents’ influence would get her out, but after months, that hope had faded. The girl she had once been may have been buried, never to see the light of day again.

In all that had gone on with her, it was sleep that Brianna craved, but she was scared; she was scared of falling off a cliff as soon as she closed her eyes. Sleep had become a foreign thing to her. It was now a luxury that she no longer remembered.

A whistle pierced the heavy, humid air, shrill and final. It signalled the end of the workday, but no cheers followed.

No one sighed in relief or stretched their aching backs. Instead, the workers moved quietly, towards a central point where the workday points were counted and set down baskets heavy with the harvest—the fields, once full of frantic hands plucking tiny leaves and buds, stilled in eerie unison.

Brianna flinched at the sound, though her body moved out of sheer instinct, like a wound-up doll nearing its last turn. For a fleeting second, her eyes lifted toward the horizon, where the sun now dipped low, casting the island in a crimson glow. But it had no beauty - only the red reminder of another day survived. Not lived. Survived.

*********

Thank you so much to all for your votes and comments! I hope we can keep it up ^_^

Support the author by reading only on Webnovel :) ~Uploaded only on webnovel by Loctovia ~