“Tell Miss Moreau that I agree to marry her. The wedding is set for half a month from now!”
“By the way, I’ll also bring the hundred-billion-dollar deal to the Moreau Family as a betrothal gift.”
Talia rarely left the prayer hall, but today she came to my study.
I saw the obvious flush at the corners of her eyes after passion and felt a sharp pain in my heart.
She wore a plain linen dress, her hair tied up high and she was holding a string of prayer beads. She was bare-faced, stopping a few steps away from me.
At a glance, she looked like such a serene and ascetic woman, but who would have known that in the prayer hall, she was so vicious?
“Everett, didn’t you say I was the one you loved most in your life?”
“Didn’t you say you’d listen to me for the rest of your life?”
I had said that, but that was when I had been deceived by her.
She continued, “Then go get a vasectomy. I never want children in this life.”
Her words were so cold and heartless, they instantly pulled my memory back to three years ago.
Her first love, Malcolm Pierce, had been on the verge of bankruptcy. Gideon knew he was always fooling around and had even contracted a disease, so he was absolutely against letting Talia marry him.
But Malcolm shamelessly drugged Talia, trying to take advantage of the moment, to seize her and use the Westbrook Family’s power to revive the declining Pierce Family.
At the most critical moment, Gideon slipped something into my drink when I wasn’t paying attention, then pushed me straight into Talia’s room.
Talia ended up pregnant, while Malcolm went bankrupt.
He fled abroad to escape his debts. But Talia shifted all the blame onto me, claiming I was the one who drove Malcolm away, that I had shamelessly taken her body.
She secretly took abortion pills and coldly told me she never wanted children, that she planned to be childfree for life.
I loved her. I had loved her since we were young. So I gave in to everything she wanted.
She wanted to pursue God, so I built her a prayer hall.
She didn’t want children, so I agreed to a child-free life.
She didn’t want to touch the family business, so I took on everything alone, using my talent to build wealth, just to make sure she lived a life of peace and prosperity.
But now I knew, everything I had done was nothing but a joke to her.
A huge, cruel joke.
Her eyes, still glazed with the warmth of recent passion, stared at me without an ounce of shame. “What? You don’t agree? Didn’t you say you’d do anything for me? If you don’t get the vasectomy, I won’t attend the wedding in half a month. Everett, think carefully.”
“I…”
Before I could say anything, her phone rang. I saw her body tremble, struggling to stay composed.
“Really? You found him? Okay, send him to me immediately. I said, immediately!”
Clutching her phone, she turned sharply and didn’t glance back at me even once.
Outside the prayer hall stood a car I didn’t recognize. The main door was left ajar. She knew I would never set foot inside her sacred space, so she left it unguarded, wide open.
One glance and I nearly choked.
Beneath the kind gaze of the God statue, she was kissing someone with wild abandon and that someone was Malcolm. That phone call just now had been to say they’d found him.
All these years, she had never stopped searching for Malcolm.
Their kiss was breathless, desperate, as if they couldn’t bear to separate, entwined like they’d never let go.
At last, she reached for his waistband and he cupped her face with both hands.
“Aren’t you curious where I’ve been all these years? How did I survive? I missed you so much.”
She tugged at his belt, pulling him down on top of her.
“Malcolm, don’t rush. We have all the time and chances in the world to talk slowly. Right now, I just want you, I want you!”
“My first time wasn’t with you and that’s the pain of my life.”
At the feet of the God statue, candle smoke curled gently through the air.
