Chapter 5

Taking revenge on the people who once humiliated me wasn't as satisfying as I'd imagined.

Because those wounds were already carved into my bones, and they wouldn't vanish just because the ones who'd inflicted them had fallen.

I leaned against the headboard and, for the first time, seriously asked myself whether there was any reason left to keep this marriage with Solomon Delgado alive.

I'd forced him to marry me. Was it really because I loved him?

Or was it just that I couldn't stand to lose?

Couldn't stand that all those years of chasing him, of looking up to him, had come to nothing.

It seemed I'd never truly known him.

Never truly stepped into his world.

Between us lay a gulf too wide to cross.

The name of that gulf was Meg Swanson.

And it was also simply this: he didn't love me.

My phone buzzed. A text from an unknown number.

【Miss Fox, Saturday at seven, top-floor ballroom at the Grand Hyatt. There's a charity gala, and Solomon will be there. I think it's time the two of us met and talked properly.——Meg Swanson】

I looked at that message for a long time.

Then I replied with one word: 【Fine.】

Maybe it was time to end this.

Saturday night, the Grand Hyatt.

The gala was a high-profile affair, drawing out half the upper crust of Ashford City.

Under the blazing lights of the ballroom, perfume and jewels glittered, and glasses clinked all around.

I wore a custom black mermaid gown, the hem scattered with tiny diamonds that caught the light and shimmered.

My hair was swept into an elegant knot, with only a few loose curls left to frame my cheeks. Paired with a bold red lip, the whole effect was cold, striking, and remote.

The moment I walked in, every eye turned to me.

Some awed, some probing, and some openly envious.

I crossed the crowd without looking left or right, picked up a glass of champagne, and made for a quieter corner.

I didn't go looking for Solomon, and I didn't go looking for Meg.

I only wanted, before I left, to take one more good look at this world I'd once fought so desperately to break into.

Everything I'd craved was here. Fame, status, respect.

And now that I had it all, I found it didn't make me happy in the slightest.

I saw Solomon.

He stood at the center of a cluster of business heavyweights, cool and untouchable as ever, as though no one could ever truly enter his world.

His gaze swept the room now and then, but it never rested on me, not even for a second.

Meg stood not far from his side, in a gown of pure white gauze, like a lily too fine for this earthly world. She was chatting with a woman she knew, a gentle smile on her face, though her eyes kept drifting toward Solomon with a faint, barely hidden infatuation.

I looked away and tipped my head back, draining the champagne in one swallow.

Then I turned to leave this suffocating place.

I'd draft the divorce papers the moment I got home.

Two years was long enough. I didn't want to wait another day.

The glass door to the terrace was pulled open from outside. I was about to step out for some air when I heard voices from within, deliberately lowered.

Meg's voice, edged with hurt and a coaxing lilt.

“Solomon, Dorothy came after me again this afternoon. The things she said were so cruel, and she humiliated me in front of all those people……I really can't take much more.”

I stopped without thinking, my body going rigid, and slipped behind the huge decorative plant beside me.

My heart slammed against my ribs, as if it might leap out of my throat.

I heard a very soft, impatient sigh.

Solomon's voice, cold as ice.

“Didn't I tell you to go provoke her?”

My mind went blank with a single roaring hum.

Then Solomon's voice, cold and without a trace of warmth, drove into my ears clear and word for word, like a poisoned blade slicing me straight down the middle.

He said: “Go provoke her one more time. I want her never to be able to leave me, not for the rest of her life.”

Meg seemed startled by the chill in his words, and argued in a small voice: “But……Solomon, the things you've had me do, I keep feeling……she looks like she's about to fall apart. What if she really……”

“That's her problem.” Solomon cut her off coldly. “Just remember one thing. Our arrangement is only an act.

Whatever ideas you shouldn't be having, put them away now. There is only ever going to be one woman who's my wife, from start to finish.”

A roar———

The world blew apart in my ears.

So that was it.

So all of it had been a setup.

Meg's taunts, his coldness, his indulgence of her……every bit of it had been staged by his own hand.

In the name of love, he'd woven a vast net, using those sharp, bone-deep wounds as the bait.

The whole point was to make me suffer, to make me jealous, to drive me mad, to make me go begging to him again and again like some pathetic clown, leaning on him, until I was pinned in place and could never break free.

What he wanted wasn't my love.

What he wanted was sole possession of me.

A tide of rage and cold surged up from my feet and flooded through me in an instant.

I was shaking with fury, my nails digging so deep into my palms they nearly drew blood.

I couldn't hold back anymore and lunged out from behind the plant.

“Crack——!”

A sharp, ringing slap landed hard across Solomon's face.

The whole terrace fell dead silent in an instant.

His head snapped aside from the force, and five clear finger marks bloomed at once across that handsome face.

He seemed to have had no idea I would appear like that. He froze for a few seconds before slowly turning his head back.

“You……heard all of it?”

“Dot!” Meg was the first to react. She cried out and rushed to plant herself in front of Solomon, shielding him with a stricken look on her face.

She turned and wailed at me, “How could you hit him! This is all my fault, it has nothing to do with Solomon. If you want to blame someone, blame me!”

Watching that phony, playacting face of hers, I was so furious I laughed, laughed until the tears came.

“Blame you? As if you're worth it.”

I wiped the tears from the corners of my eyes and looked at her coldly. “Meg, do you really still think you're some spotless little lily?

Everything you did behind his back, did you really think I knew nothing about it?”

Meg's face went white in a flash, and a flicker of barely hidden panic crossed her eyes, but she held herself together and kept up the wronged-victim act: :

“I……I don't know what you're talking about……”

“Don't know?”

I let out a cold laugh and pulled a neatly folded sheet of paper from my bag.

Under their startled, uncertain stares, I unfolded it, then flung it hard into Meg's face.

“Then take a good look at what this is!”