Jason consoled me by saying that the necklace no longer suited my style and that I should just let it go.
I was so mad at him for not understanding how important the necklace was to me.
As I thought back about it, it truly was comical. It was just his tactic to steal from me, then pretend to comfort me.
Philippa Sanders subconsciously touched the necklace. Her eyes looked shifty and her lips quivered, yet she could not find a single word.
Just at that moment, someone called her name.
Relieved that rescue came just in time, she muttered a goodbye and quickly left.
Seeing her fleeing the scene in a panic, I smirked. I distractedly dried my hands before I left the restroom.
Then, I called my brother, Daniel Kidman.
Daniel was the head of the Eternal Group, who was also an important business partner of Jason's.
I calmly said, "Daniel, please call off your business with Jason. I'm about to get a divorce. Yes, that's right. He has a secret lover. A college student."
…
The legal department at the Eternal Group worked quickly. That night, I received a hard disk.
I connected it to my computer and saw the truth that Jason had been hiding from me.
Every single one of them.
On the tenth of October of the previous year, I was in Malersha on a business trip. We had agreed to check out the night lights at the Twin Towers.
Jason stood me up as I stood under the Twin Towers, waiting for him. I ended up having a high fever for the three days.
It turned out that he had accompanied Philippa to a luxury brand's limited-edition 'Lover's Workshop'.
On the fourth of November, one of the branches of my cafe caught on fire. I was slightly injured, but I still ended up with a miscarriage.
I sobbed my tears out in the hospital. I called Jason multiple times, but no one picked up.
It turned out that he was with Philippa at a beauty spa.
On the sixth of November after the miscarriage, I was recovering at home, all depressed. He gave me a vinyl collector's edition of The Lovers. He said that he had asked a favor from his friend and had taken a long time to find it.
We had a candlelight dinner, dining to the song 'As Seasons Go'.
Only at that moment did I find out that the vinyl was just a lucky draw prize that he and Philippa won from some event.
The date that he seemed to have prepared meticulously, from the playlist to the menu, was just a replica of the date he had with her the previous day.
The next day, he left on the excuse of a business trip, when in fact he took Philippa to a cruise party.
In the photos of the party, everyone was happy. Most of them were our mutual friends. Some of them were even on our main table at our wedding.
There they were, having fun with Jason and his lover. What good friends they were.
I went through the hard disk as my heart sank lower and lower.
Just when I was about to switch off the computer, a medical test report came into view.
I suddenly stopped breathing as a chill ran down my neck. With trembling fingers, I clicked the file open.
It was a medical report on a certain brand of birth control pills, yet the photo of the bottle was of the vitamin bottles that I had been faithfully taking every day.
At the bottom of the report, there was a cautionary warning clearly stated.
[This medication has a significant effect on early pregnancy. Use may result in spontaneous miscarriage.]
Continue scrolling down was a screenshot of Philippa's social media post.
She was showing off the same bottle of pills. She wrote a caption to go with it.
[My husband said that he only wants a baby with me.]
Someone in the comments teased her.
[Planning for a baby already?]
She replied with a blushing emoticon.
My ears buzzed. It turned out that my miscarriage was no accident.
Jason had replaced my vitamins with the drug with the excuse of conditioning my body.
To top it off, the reason I had not been able to conceive afterward was not, as the doctors claimed, because my body needed time to recover.
It was because the medication was never meant to be taken for more than three months.
How was that any different from poisoning?
Tears fell as I chuckled. All the details that I had deliberately brushed aside came flooding back to me once more.
The occasional foreign smell of perfume on him. The late-night whispered phone calls from the balcony.
The glass of water he so eagerly handed to me the night before my miscarriage…
I was an idiot. I was so drained that hatred felt pointless.
I wiped away my tears hard.
