Chapter 140

How to Tame My Beastly Husband — Chapter 140. Raphael’s Mother (4)

“Uhhh…what’s wrong with me? My head hurts…”

Bella crawled on the floor, her hands trembling. The distant noise of little Raphael’s squalling tore at her eardrums and a terrible headache thumped inside her head. She managed to prop her body against a wall.

Unable to resist the rolls of nausea, she vomited. It was a common side effect as the drug wore off.

“Blech…blechh! Blech!!!”

As Bella vomited, Ben quickly slipped a bit more of the drug into a cup of water and handed it to her. Not long after she drank it, Bella’s eyes relaxed, and her limbs loosened helplessly as the effect of the drug spread. Saliva trailed from the corner of her mouth.

“Oh, poor Bella,” Ben whispered as he looked at her. “You’re sick now. Just rest here, and your brother will get you medicine.”

He pretended to be kind, but he knew she could not even hear the words. Walking past his helpless sister, he entered her bedroom and quickly found the bag with the money. Then he headed for the casino.

With Bella having become another kind of addict, everything was going according to his plan, Ben unscrupulously embezzled her money from the King. He was buying just enough drugs to keep her from dying of withdrawal.

Bella couldn’t stop him. She lived as a slave to the drug.

“Medicine, medicine…it hurts…”

After a few years of living like that, Bella had changed greatly. The simple, confident woman who loved her precious child was gone. She spent half the day stoned on her medicine, and the other half, she was a madwoman.

One moment, she would be spinning around and singing, showering Raphael with kisses and cooing over him because he was such a handsome boy. The next she would be sobbing because he had ruined her life, and she would scream that he was her disgrace. Of all the unpleasant symptoms of her addiction, the worst was right after the last of the drug wore off.

“Go get my medicine, dammit! You worthless thing! You’re a cockroach, all you do is eat! What good are you? Die, why don’t you die!”

Mercilessly, she flung things at her son, and one of them smashed directly into Raphael’s temple. Red blood streaked down his frightened face.

“No…if it scars, that man will find out…!”

The King’s counselor came regularly to check on Selgratis’s firstborn son, and the last few visits had been nervewracking. Hamilton had acted as if he knew everything, and she remembered how frightened she had been, the time the man had found a bruise on Raphael’s chin. Even though Raphael had lied and said he had bumped it himself because he was running, Hamilton had not looked convinced.

Raphael looked hopefully at his mother. Was she going to stop for the day? For a moment, the innocent wish was clear in the child’s face, and was immediately trampled on by the cruelty of his world.

Grabbing a bucket from the corner of the room, Bella turned it upside down and dropped it on his head, laughing.

“There, all better,” she sang, smiling madly.

Raphael’s heart sank. He wanted to disappear. Closing his eyes, he let the bucket hide him, his little body flinching as he waited for another bout of violence.

Gambling and drugs were expensive habits. They were like a deep well that could easily contain huge sums of money, and whole lives beside. With both siblings mired in their vices, no matter how much money they received, it would never have been enough.

“Bennnnn…brother, I need more medicine. Get me more medicine, I have money here…”

Bella had become severely addicted. The intervals between each dose were only a quarter as long as they had been in the beginning, and the amount of drugs she consumed had become alarming.

But Ben thought having money to gamble was more important. He didn’t care about his sister, much less her son. Ben promised he would take her money to go get medicine, and then squandered almost all of it in gambling. He only bought a tiny amount of her drug, and then gave it to her with the feeble excuse that the cost of medicine had risen so high, he could not afford to buy anymore.

With such low doses, Bella suffered terrible side effects. And since she believed her brother’s lies, the only solution was to sell herself, so she could buy more.