Chapter 2

2.

Albert stumbled back a few steps, looking at me with irritation.

“Is this really necessary? It's a small thing. There's no reason to take it all the way to divorce.”

I said calmly “Right, over something this small. And you were the one who brought up divorce first. I'm only giving you what you asked for.”

Margot clutched the hem of her dress and murmured “Albert, I feel awful that the two of you are falling out because of me. The necklace and the car were never mine to begin with.”

Then she started to sob softly, and Albert rushed to comfort her, his heart clearly aching for her.

“Margot, all your accounts have been frozen by the bank. You can't go on with no money to fall back on. Plenty of people are dying to get their hands on that necklace, it'll sell for several times its price, and you'll be set for life.”

The moment he finished, he fixed a resentful stare on me.

“Layla, count it as me borrowing from you. I'll write you an IOU.”

“She lost both parents when she was little. When my mother found her, she was fighting a dog for scraps of food, so my mother brought her home. My brother and I treated her like our own sister, and my parents cherished her like a treasure.”

“My brother and I both swore that whatever she wanted, we'd do everything we could to give it to her.”

I stood frozen, watching this husband of eight years grant another woman's every wish, and felt nothing but a deep ache.

So this was the person he kept closest to his heart. Just not me.

He knew Margot had a hard childhood, so he was twice as good to her.

But apart from knowing I grew up in the countryside, he knew nothing about me.

My parents left to start their business when I was five, and left me in the countryside to depend on my grandmother.

Growing up there, I gradually stopped fitting in with the other kids my age, because I was pretty.

My looks drew the greedy eyes of the villagers, who leered at me.

My grandmother was blind, and some men went so far as to slide their hands into my clothes right in front of her, brazen about it.

I did think about fighting back, but it only brought worse treatment. One of them grabbed a fistful of my hair and threatened me “You think people will believe a little seductress like you, or a model husband like me?”

Compared to the physical torment, the torment to my mind was what really broke me.

In the ten years we'd known each other, I never once wore anything too revealing in front of him. Even in the hottest part of summer, I stayed in long sleeves and long pants.

But he never wondered about anything strange in me, because his heart was never on me at all.

In my years married into the Gilbert family, I waited on my in-laws with everything I had, yet they never once gave me a kind face, while they greeted sweet-tongued Margot with smiles.

Later I understood. It was because I grew up in the countryside. They looked down on me, but for the sake of appearances, they never showed it.

My parents felt they owed me, and made up for it with plenty of money.

I had money, but that was no reason for other people to bleed me dry.

“Albert, you keep saying you'll write me an IOU. But ask yourself honestly, if I hand the necklace over to Margot, are you ever going to pay me back?”

Albert had no answer. The living room went dead silent, and Margot shattered the silence in an instant.

“Without a comfortable life, I might as well be dead.”

Then she slammed her head into the corner of the table, the one with a protective guard on it.

Albert rushed to Margot in a panic, without the slightest thought for how I felt.

I glanced around, then walked out the front door without a shred of regret. Only when I stood in the sunlight did I feel like I'd come back to life.

Then I picked up my phone and dialed a number. “I want the most respected divorce lawyer your firm has.”