Ficorpio
Chapter 1
Chapter 1
I was chosen to be Julian Sterling’s future wife when I was still a child.
At twenty, I married him—a man with autism.
Five years later, Julian still hated me.
He wouldn’t let me touch him, let alone share his bed.
Then he met another woman.
In front of her, he kept all his temper in check. He even tried, awkwardly, to be good.
He wrote songs for her. Bought her gifts.
Even the study he had never once allowed me to enter was opened to her without hesitation.
That was when I understood: Julian had fallen for someone.
And I didn’t want to keep taking care of him anymore.
So I went to Old Mr. Sterling.
I told him I wanted a divorce.
Before I ever met Julian, my life had never been easy.
My mother had terrible taste in men—if by taste you meant a weakness for a handsome face. She fell hard for my father, headfirst and without thinking. She never bothered to find out who he really was before she slept with him.
That was how she got pregnant with me.
It wasn’t until after I was born that she discovered my father belonged to an old-money dynasty—the kind of family where one careless flick of the hand could fund someone else’s entire life.
The bad news was that my father hadn’t been born into that world. He had married into it. He was the ambitious outsider who had clawed his way into high society through a woman.
And my mother?
She was the homewrecker.
When Mrs. Quinn, the lawful wife, came to catch her husband cheating, she found my mother.
My father liked to act important in front of my mother, but in front of Mrs. Quinn, he was meek as a whipped dog.
He cut my mother off immediately.
He disowned me too.
My mother raised me alone, and we lived hard.
She pedaled a delivery trike. Ran a street stall. Got chased off by city inspectors so many times she once lost a shoe while running and still didn’t dare stop to pick it up.
Eventually, she got tired of that kind of life.
She said she was going to find me a better future.
I still don’t know how she managed it, but somehow she got hold of a paternity test proving I was my father’s daughter.
Then she went to the Quinn family estate and made a scene at the gates, demanding that he support me.
The Quinns didn’t want a scandal.
So they agreed.
That was how my mother and I were separated.
The day I was sent into the Quinn family, she smiled so hard tears spilled down her face.
“Chloe,” she said, “you’ll never go hungry again.”
She was far too naive.
My father treated me like a stain he couldn’t scrub out, and Mrs. Quinn hated me on sight.
Chapter 2
Chapter 2
The staff knew exactly which way the wind blew, so of course none of them showed me any kindness.
As for my half sisters, they came up with new ways to torment me almost every day.
But my mother never knew any of that.
The day she left me at the Quinn family gates was the last time I ever saw her.
She had late-stage cancer. She couldn’t afford treatment.
After handing me over to my father, she threw herself into the river.
And so I grew up in the Quinn family as something less than a real daughter, living cautiously, carefully, trying to take up as little space as possible.
When I was fifteen, I met a boy at the Quinn estate.
A rose thorn had sliced his arm open, and blood was still slipping down his skin.
But he seemed not to notice at all. He was sitting quietly in the garden with headphones on, listening to music.
After hesitating for a moment, I brought him iodine, cleaned the cut, and put a Band-Aid over it.
Later, I learned his name was Julian Sterling.
His grandfather had brought him to the Quinn estate as a guest.
For reasons I never understood, Old Mr. Sterling took a liking to me that day and decided I should become his granddaughter-in-law.
The Sterling family was older, wealthier, and far more powerful than the Quinns. My father agreed so quickly he might as well have tripped over himself.
When my sisters heard the news, they only laughed.
“You think you’ve lucked into some fairy-tale marriage?”
“If it were really such a good match, why would it ever fall to you?”
“That Julian Sterling has had autism and bipolar disorder since he was a kid. He’s not normal.”
But because of that engagement, Mrs. Quinn finally started treating me a little better.
Life at the Quinn estate became easier after that. At the very least, they stopped bullying me so openly.
Sometimes I would think back to the first time I saw him—that thin, quiet boy in the garden, listening to music like the rest of the world couldn’t reach him.
He never knew it, but just by existing, he had already helped me so much.
I was deeply grateful to him.
So I started learning about his condition. I started teaching myself how to get along with him, how to care for him, how to be the wife everyone expected me to become.
And then, at twenty, under arrangements made by both families, I married Julian Sterling.
I hadn’t realized Julian would hate the idea of marrying me this much.
After I married into the Sterling family, he never gave me so much as a kind look.
He wouldn’t let me touch him, let alone share a bed with him.
On our wedding night, he lost his temper with me in our bedroom.
“Go away.”
“Don’t stay in my room.”
“Get out. Get out of here.”
I lowered my head in humiliation, every inch of me burning with shame.
That day, Old Mr. Sterling came to see me.
Chapter 3
Chapter 3
He told me Julian had always been withdrawn, that he’d never liked being around people. The woman who had been caring for him had just passed away, and Julian had been in especially bad shape ever since.
He told me to be patient with him. To give him time.
I nodded and agreed.
From then on, taking care of Julian became my responsibility.
I ran back and forth between school and the Sterling estate.
I had to remind him to take his medication on time, bring him in for follow-up appointments, make sure his meals were arranged properly, and lay out the clothes he would wear.
Thankfully, Julian wasn’t made of stone. Little by little, he began to respond to me.
For example, he stopped saying only two words to me: get out.
If he found me asleep on the couch, he would awkwardly drape a blanket over me.
And when I had cramps, he would make me a cup of brown sugar water.
But he still never slept with me.
The Sterling family had only one male heir in this generation, and Julian was the last of the line.
Old Mr. Sterling had always been desperate for a great-grandchild. He pressed me about it again and again.
But if Julian didn’t want it, there was nothing I could do.
Finally, in the fifth year of our marriage, Old Mr. Sterling ran out of patience.
Without my knowledge, he drugged Julian.
Then he had him brought to my bed.
He locked the bedroom door from the outside and trapped us inside.
I still remember that night with brutal clarity.
It hurt.
It hurt so much.
His eyes were unfocused under the effect of the drug, his body moving on instinct alone.
But he had no experience, and his movements were rough.
All I could feel was a tearing pain so sharp it made my whole body shake. Tears streamed down my face without stopping.
By the time dawn began to break, I couldn’t endure it anymore.
I blacked out.
The next day, around noon, I was jolted awake by the sound of something smashing.
Julian had one of his worst episodes.
He smashed my phone. Tore the wall-mounted TV down and broke it. The table and chairs went over in a clatter, one after another.
When he saw I was awake, he walked over to me with a mirror in his hand.
He held it up in front of me.
My reflection stared back at me.
At the time, I hadn’t even managed to get dressed. My skin was covered in red marks and bruises.
He pointed at the woman in the mirror—at me—with naked disgust in his eyes.
“You’re filthy.”
“You make me sick.”
“I hate you.”
“I don’t want to see you again.”
I was in awful shape that day. I could barely walk straight.
But whenever Julian had an episode, he disappeared.
So I had no choice but to go look for him.
I didn’t even stop to eat. I searched from noon until after midnight.
I went to every place he usually visited. By the end, my calves were trembling so badly I could hardly stay on my feet.
And I still couldn’t find him.