“There's no way you and Julie got her pregnant in a single night!”
“It had to be more than once!”
Bartholomew's face flushed red in an instant, like some naive boy who'd only just stepped out into the world.
The moment they saw that look on him, every one of them sat up straight to listen.
“Way more than once.”
“Every time Sonia was out of the house, we'd do it in every corner of the place……”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!?”
“You're a goddamn legend!”
“I gotta ask you something. What the hell have you been taking to have that kind of stamina?”
“No wonder Julie's looking so well taken care of. Sonia really is the sucker here, kept completely in the dark!”
Bartholomew's friends were all sneering and mocking me in an instant, yet not one of them thought Bartholomew and Julie were the shameless ones.
Birds of a feather, exactly. Like attracts like.
Even without him spelling out every battle he'd fought with Julie, I already knew.
They'd been in my wedding suite, leaving traces of their little affair in every corner.
In front of everyone, Bartholomew would put on his guilty, self-reproaching face, but behind closed doors he'd already been drained dry by Julie and dropped straight off to sleep, without the slightest sign of wanting to apologize or make things right.
A dull ache rolled through my chest in wave after wave, almost enough to break me apart on the spot.
In the end I walked out on heavy feet, without tearing off the mask and having it out with him face to face.
Out of the bar, the cold wind outside cut right through me.
And it was right then that my partner called me.
“Sonia, you jerk, does Bartholomew get you the way I do? Is he as brilliant and good-looking as I am?”
“Is he even richer than me? Ugh, you have no heart. GC's cracked the Fortune 500, and you just dropped us and ran back home to marry him.”
Elijah Sanchez must have been drunk, because he was always the quiet, sparing type, cool and never good with words.
If he weren't hurting so badly, he'd never let himself sound like this.
“Elijah, wait for me to come back!”
“I'll cut Bartholomew off for good as soon as I can, and once I settle things with my family, I'll come back to you.”
The drunk man sobered up in a heartbeat.
After a few hurried words we hung up, and I walked along the side of the road.
A bright red Ferrari came tearing past me.
That was Julie's beloved car. From the look of it, she was on her way to Bartholomew.
I no longer cared about any of them. Whatever the two of them did from now on, it would never stir a single feeling in me again.
I'd just gotten home when I found my father waiting for me in the living room.
“Sonia, where were the two of you off to so late?”
I looked coldly at my father's kindly face, and thinking of what Bartholomew had said in that private room, the last scrap of family feeling I had for him turned to ash.
I was the one who was his own flesh and blood, yet he always favored Julie a little more.
The year our family was poorest, I wore old clothes stitched and patched over, while Julie always had something new.
On her birthday there was a cake. On mine there were only two boiled eggs.
I never imagined that even now, grown, he'd still take Julie's side and join with outsiders to deceive me.
Knowing all of this, there was no way I could keep my temper with him.
“Hurry up and drink it!”
“I thought Bartholomew would be home, so I made some chicken soup. Since he's not here, you can drink it in his place.”
I smashed the soup to pieces.
My father stared at me, stunned, unable to understand why I was so furious.
“What's gotten into you? Are you still upset about last time……”
“Did you already know Julie is carrying Bartholomew's child? Is that why you were so kind as to bring chicken soup over to help her recover, and when she wasn't home, you turned around and handed it to me as a leftover charity?”
I cut off her unfinished words.
