The Devil's Secretary

Chapter 142: No longer a part of her memory

Alice was rescued by the elite guards the next morning but due to the mechanisms installed inside the small house, the four perpetrators escaped.

As for Alice, she was no longer the same. She seemed like a lifeless puppet and the guards did not dare to take her away recklessly.

"Call the ambulance,’’ the man in the lead sucked in a deep breathe.

They waited for her to sleep so that they could take her to the hospital but even in her sleep, she would shiver and be startled awake when somebody approached her.

They could not imagine the kind of torment that the little girl had gone through. It has just been a day when she had talked about seeing flowers.

But now she was lying on the floor, her pristine white dress stained with blood. It was not appropriate for them to approach her in such a delicate condition but they did not if she could make it alive out of the situation she was in.

They had already informed her family of the circumstances but they were yet to arrive. Left with no other choice, the team of men could only come up with an alternate solution. There were more people of the Chen Family stationed in US so they asked for some female members of the team who rushed over to the site of incident.

With their help, Alice was moved out from the clifftop house and taken out of the flowering fields.

She was hospitalized for a whole month in the same hospital as Helian Chen. When the boy woke up, he rushed to see her without listening to the guards’ explanation but on his way, he encountered the doctor who was talking to Alice’s adopted parents and his father was also there.

Helian Chen stopped near the wall and listened to the words that clenched his heart to the extent that he could not breathe anymore.

’’....She needs to be hospitalized for an extended amount of time. It would take us some time to find traces of STDs in her body, if she has contracted any. Her physical injuries are bad but I am afraid that’s not the worse thing...’’ the doctor shook her head as he spoke, ’’For a young child like her, this might become a shadow in her heart forever if she does not overcome this.

Her physical body will heal in a few months but it might become a hurdle for her psychologically along the way. That has always been the case for rape victims, let alone this little girl...’’ freeweɓnøvel.com

Helian Chen could not hear anything further.

He just stood there, his vision blurring as warm tears trickled down his cheeks.

’Rape victim’

’Rape victim’

The words reverberated in his mind till the sounds of them became defeaning in his head.

He turned around and ran away.

’’Ah Lian...’’ Old Master Chen who spotted his son quickly rushed after him.

After two days, Alice finally regained consciousness. She met her parents, although still in a daze, she still responded to them in a few words.

’’Alice...’’

When the gentle voice called out her name from the door, she looked over.

Helian Chen walked inside while holding a small crystal rabbit in his hands. In the rabbit hands, there were two apples. It was the same one that he had gifted her, ’’I was afraid that you would miss it...’’ his voice seemed to be filled with ripples.

Alice looked at him quietly.

He waited patiently. He expected her to be angry at him, he expected her to cry or even say that she hated him.

’’Who... Who are you?" she stuttered, her grip tightening on the sheets.

His face blanched.

Out of all the things he had assumed she would say or do, the last thing he had thought was that she would fail to recognize him.

’’Alice...’’ he stepped closer to her.

But she shrunk back into the hospital bed as she cried, ’’No... go away... No...’’

He was stunned.

Following her relapse, the doctor diagnosed her with dissociative amnesia due to her traumatic experiences. After a few interactions with Alice, it turned out that other than her adoptive parents, whom she thought to be her biological parents, she had forgotten most part of her younger years. She no longer remembered her days in orphanage, the incident that happened or Helian Chen.

On one particular day, Old Master Chen found his son standing in the VIP ward of a hospital room as he glanced at the sky.

Hearing the sounds of approaching footsteps, the boy did not tun back but said, ’’Father, let’s go back.’’

’’Don’t you want to stay by the girl’s side?" Old Master Chen questioned, the situation had also rendered him feeling helpless and terrible.

’’I am no longer a part of her memory, and no longer a part of her happiness,’’ the boy turned around as he spoke calmly.

But that calm voice pierced through the man’s heart.

If she remembered him, she will resent me and drown in the memories of everything she went through. ’’It’s good that she doesn’t remember,’’ the boy said.

’’Those people have been sentenced to prison,’’ Old Master Chen had never kept things from his son, despite his young age.

When he heard of the people who had reduced Alice to this condition, Helian Chen lowered his eyes. One could not say what he was thinking.

Following that incident, Helian Chen extricated himself completely from Alice life as if he had never been a part of it before. According to what the doctor said, although Alice’s amnesia was not a thing to be optimistic about but it was not entirely a bad situation either.

Had she retained the memories of that traumatic encounter then she might never have been able to overcome it. However, the doctor also mentioned that if her old memories are triggered by any unforeseen circumstances then it might not be a good thing for her as well.

Back in present, the hospital room had gone entirely quiet. Helian Chen had buried his face in his hands as he spoke, ’’I stayed away from her for as long as I could. But there were times I could not control myself and I went to look for her, just to catch a glimpse of her again. She seemed happy and it made me more determined to stay away from her.’’

One year after that incident, her adoptive parents had their first child. And many times, when he had gone back to visit her, he would see her playing with her younger sister.

Helian Chen thought she was very happy until one day, they received an invite to her engagement ceremony. His father could not turn his friends down.

The news left a blank in Helian Chen’s heart but he could not figure out what it was. He could not understand why he felt the way he did.

She did not even know him yet she was affecting his world in a way in nobody else did.

And somehow, he ended up tagging along with his father to the event.

But who could have known he would find her crying in the back garden... It reminded him of the first time he had met her in the garden of the orphanage.

’’Her adoptive mother came and treated her harshly. That was he first time I realized that she might not have been happy all this time and when I looked into the matter, I discovered that the couple’s attitude had changed towards her after they had their own child and... after that incident as well. In their eyes, she was not as good....’’ Helian Chen closed his eyes, ’’...as before. They had abused her emotionally over the years and even the man she was getting engaged to was in his late 40s.’’

That was the end of his thread of patience.

Only then did he realize that if he wanted Alice to be happy, then he had to keep her with him and make her happy. There was no other way that he wanted to opt for her.

He dealt with that situation efficiently without hampering the relationships between the two families so that Alice would not be affected in any way. Alice’s adoptive parents didn’t really care much about her marriage prospects or her future. They were willing to exchanged her for anything that secured them even the smallest profit because to them, her existence was a stain of some sort.