She had him now.
But she still needed to flaunt it in front of me, time and time again.
As if their love needed my involvement to have an anchor.
He began to tire of her moods.
She began to be unable to stand his indifference.
More and more, they resembled me and Ashton back then.
When the passion fades, they would face the same problems I did.
Vera, in love with a man like Ashton, naively thought she could be the exception.
But she wasn’t.
She realized this.
That’s why, so long ago, on the show, in reality, countless times, she could only put me down.
Like that first attack on me, completely unprepared, on the plane.
And then, again and again, she would derive a sense of superiority from my hurt expression.
To prove that her choice was not wrong.
But now, sitting in front of me, her emotions spent, all that was left were cold eyes and slightly trembling hands.
“Why why aren’t you angry anymore?”
20 19
Chapter 2
“Why… why aren’t you angry anymore?”
I didn’t answer her. I stood up to leave.
She laughed out loud.
“Let me tell you a secret,” she said.
20 19
Her marriage to Cole was a sham she had orchestrated. She thought she could eventually win him over. After all, her family had done so much for
him. If not for her father, who had pulled him out of that eight–hundred–a–month rental, he would still be dregs at the bottom of society.
She thought he would at least be infatuated with her.
Because Cole had spent his life striving to get to Rome, and Vera was born in Rome.
But he wasn’t.
“I thought a man like him couldn’t love anyone,” she said. “But do you know what I found out after we got married? All his passwords are ‘207.‘ At first, I thought it was someone’s birthday. Then I realized it was the room number of that rundown rental. How laughable. The person he was thin- king about all along was the one he loved during the lowest point of his life.”
Thad some time off.
I got my visa, took my luggage to the airport, and was watching a drama in the lounge when someone sat down next to me.
Ashton, in full disguise.
“We need to talk.”
The airport, with its vast glass windows, reflected the blue sky. He was dressed all in black, noticeably thinner. A faint scar remained on his foreh-
ead, not fully healed.
“What was the real reason you went on the show?” he asked, then answered his own question. “It wasn’t to win me back. It was to see him, right?
And you even married me just because I look like him, didn’t you?”
I didn’t say anything, just calculated the boarding time.
“Chloe, is it fun to lie? Is it fun to play with my feelings?”
I cut him off. “What feelings? You were the one who cheated. You were the one who said you were madly in love with Vera. You were the one who tricked me into doing the show to throw dirt on me. I was just giving you a taste of your own medicine. Why are you playing the victim now? If 1 were just the Chloe who loved you, and I questioned you like this, would you have listened patiently? Ashton, you said it yourself.”
I returned his words to him, one by one.
“Some people deserve to be betrayed.”
It was time. I turned to board the plane.
As my phone was shutting down, I received a text from Ashton.
【I will destroy you both.)!
