Chapter 3

"I forced her?" I looked Clive dead in the eye. "When her own parents and your family had driven her to the wall, I was the one who took her in!"

"If you wanted to keep her and the baby, you could have sent her abroad. Instead you'd rather burn down our wedding to marry her. What is it, Clive—is that your baby she's carrying?"

The slap landed hard across my face.

Clive's expression went black. "You knew perfectly well Mom and Dad couldn't stand Jade, and you took her in on purpose, just so they'd take it all out on her. That wasn't enough for you, and now you want to destroy her name too!"

A low murmur rippled through the crowd. A few of them, I realized, had been guests at the wedding today.

"Wait—so the wedding got called off because of this woman?"

"Tch. A mistress getting caught out in the open..."

Someone raised their voice on purpose. "Mr. Sanchez, what exactly is this lady to you?"

I pulled my mouth into something like a smile. "Yes, Clive. What is she to you?"

Jade pushed forward through all the pointing fingers. "Millicent, hit me, curse me, do whatever you want—just please don't make this hard for Clive in front of everyone..."

I dodged the hand she reached toward me. And then she clutched her stomach and hissed through her teeth.

Clive grabbed her, holding her steady, and at the sight of how pale she'd gone, his eyes went dark.

"Jade was my first love!"

He pushed her behind him and pulled a photo from his pocket. A picture of two people, a boy and a girl in school uniforms, standing side by side.

"I only found out recently—back then it was Millicent who hired thugs to harass her, who forced her to break up with me! This vicious woman is the real mistress, the one who tore us apart!"

My eyes went wide. My voice shook at the sheer madness of it.

"Clive, are you sure that's what this photo is?"

After his older brother died, Clive sank into a deep depression. Watching him like that, I hated that I couldn't carry the pain for him.

He said he wanted every photo of his brother, and I went person to person begging for them, doing whatever it took to give him what he wanted.

The one in his hand, I'd found after pulling all-nighters, digging through tens of thousands of pictures on his brother's old phone.

It had been a photo of three people.

Now Raymond, the one in the middle, had been cut out. Only Clive and Jade were left.

Staring at that carefully edited photo, something cold crawled across my whole body.

So he'd planned all along to pour every bit of filth onto me.

A flat, bitter grief filled my chest. I took out my phone and found the original image, and the moment I lifted my hand, Clive's face flashed with panic and he swatted the phone clean out of my grip.

"Millicent! What else are you trying to do to Jade?"

"You just want to take back the things I gave her, don't you? Fine—you can have it!"

He reached up and lifted the jade pendant from around Jade's neck, then hurled it down against the ground.

"Take it and get out! Don't ever come bother us again!"

I lunged on instinct, but I was still too late.

The jade hit the floor a half-second ahead of me, and a shard burst loose and cut a long line across my face.

Blood welled up. I couldn't feel the pain at all. I just looked at Clive with red, burning eyes.

He stepped back without meaning to, a flicker of unease crossing his face.

He had never once imagined that the way I looked at him could carry hatred.

"Millicent... I..."

Before he could finish, Jade cried out in pain. "My stomach! Clive, the baby..."

Clive snapped back to her and swept her up into his arms.

"Don't be afraid. I'll get you to the hospital right now!"

The leather shoes I had once polished spotless ground down hard over the back of my hand, and his stride didn't falter for an instant.

The pain blacked out my vision, but I forced my eyes to stay open, watching his back as he walked away.

The image in my mind slowly overlapped with another.

In that memory, when that rich boy had drugged me and dragged me off and I had no strength left to fight, Clive had come crashing in without a thought and knocked the man down with a single punch.

Back then, he had held me just like this, and left without a moment's hesitation.