3: 3
Everything was going exactly according to plan.
Edward was lost in the spectacle of two women fighting over him, and he never tired of it.
Right up until the week before the engagement.
Then he started to get anxious.
More than once during this stretch, he'd pushed me to send Yvette to see him, and never once got an answer.
The need to control everything ran too deep in him. He couldn't sit still.
When Vivien's message came through, I went straight to a private auction downtown.
My late husband had once been a respected name in business. The James family had fallen far, but I could still get my hands on an admission ticket to an auction.
I'd barely stepped inside when I caught sight of the lot on the big screen.
My blood pressure shot up and the room went dark at the edges of my vision.
Those were my daughter Yvette's favorite pieces of jewelry, and the wedding gown she had designed with her own hands.
Even some of her everyday things were there.
She had left them all behind when she moved into Edward's home, her heart full of hope, dreaming of the love she thought she'd found.
I couldn't hold it in anymore. I burst into the private room and rounded on him.
"Edward! What gives you the right to auction off Yvette's things?!"
Once, my daughter's love for this man had been so pure.
Even now I can't forget the way her eyes shone whenever she talked to me about him.
How could he use something like this to humiliate her?
Edward turned his head, leaned back into his chair, crossed his legs, perfectly at ease.
"Mom, what's the rush?"
"All I'm doing is giving Yvette a little push."
"She's made a scene for three years, hidden for three years. That's enough, isn't it?"
"Isn't this gown the thing she treasures most? Let's see whether she can really steel herself and watch it all fall into someone else's hands."
He swept a contemptuous glance over me, mockery all through his eyes.
"What? Mom, you want to buy them back for her? Does the James family still have that kind of spare cash?"
I was so furious I could barely breathe, my chest heaving.
He wasn't wrong. The James family was nothing like it used to be.
To get Edward the seat of power in the Gilbert family, we had long since emptied our coffers.
What was left of our fortune truly wasn't enough for me to bid on these lots, each one running into the tens of millions.
Edward, you ungrateful animal.
Just as I wanted nothing more than to lunge at him and tear that mouth off his face.
Vivien came sauntering over in a couture gown, every step swaying.
She gave me a taunting look, then settled beside Edward as naturally as anything.
She hooked her arm through his and gave it a little shake, cooing at him.
"Mr. Gilbert, I love all of these things."
"Buy them for me, would you? Please?"
She glanced at me on purpose.
"Yvette still won't come out. Surely she wouldn't mind me using her things?"
"After all, out with the old, in with the new."
Edward seemed to think that handing Yvette's belongings to a stand-in would sting the hiding Yvette even more.
He turned to Vivien and tapped the tip of her nose, doting.
"Fine. Anything you like, I'll buy it for you."
That same afternoon, Edward owned the headlines across every major outlet.
#Gilbert Group CEO in a Rage for Love, Drops Fifty Million on Ex-Fiancée's Belongings to Gift His New Flame#
The stories quietly speculated over which woman he would choose this time.
The stand-in who had been at his side for three years.
Or the fiancée he'd once had.
You didn't need to think hard to see it: Edward was building his own hype.
I sat in the dim room and picked up the phone my daughter had used while she was alive.
The screen lit up. On it was a text Edward had just sent.
【Yvette, this is the last chance I'm giving you.】
【If you still don't show, these things, and the place as Mrs. Gilbert, will really belong to someone else.】
【Don't test my patience.】
I let out a small, scornful laugh and shut off the screen.
A chance?
What chance do you want to give a dead woman?
The chance to drag you down to hell.
