He Threw Me a Check to Buy Out Our Love,Now He's Begging on His Knees

Before my mother died, she made me swear an oath: that I would marry and have a child before I turned thirty, and that the child would take my surname.

I reminded my fiancé of it again. He rolled his eyes.

"Do me a favor and wake up. It's a new century."

"Besides, we agreed to get married this year. Why do you keep pushing me about this, over and over?"

He called his secretary in to bring a check, wrote in the figure of five hundred thousand, and handed it to me.

"This is the five hundred thousand you put in when you started the company. I'm giving it back to you now."

"I think you need to take some time off. Go travel, go shopping, whatever you like."

"When you've worked it out in your head, call me."

I stood where I was and didn't move. Toby flicked his hand and walked out.

The secretary called people in to clear out my office, then pushed me out the door.

"The boss is young and rich. Why would he ever tie himself down to a tree like you?"

"Oh, I forgot to tell you. The boss is coming to my place tonight..."

I slapped her across the face and tore the check to shreds.

"He doesn't even dare to talk to me like that. Who do you think you are?"

...

Back home, I called a courier company.

The courier was halfway through packing when Toby Gilbert came back.

"What is this?"

He frowned and told the courier to stop. "Alison Lambert, I didn't think you were this petty."

"So I said a few things at the office. Was that really worth all this?"

Somewhere along the way, Toby had grown more and more self-absorbed.

He saw everything around him only from his own angle, including the seven years between us.

I used to love him, so I went along with him.

But today I finally understood. It was time to wake up from the dream.

"Do you even know what your secretary did?"

Toby took a deep breath, pulled out some cash, and sent the courier away.

"Do you have any idea the company is at a critical stage going public? If these people start spreading talk..."

"Does that have anything to do with me?"

I cut him off and threw it back at him. "Seven years together, seven years of everything I gave, and you buy it all out for a measly five hundred thousand. Did you ever once think about how I feel?"

"And coming home at this hour. You've already been to your secretary's place, haven't you?"

"She's from your hometown! You hired her in yourself! How can you think that way?" Toby lost his temper.

He was like a cat with its fur on end, shouting at me in a blind fury.

"What did I say when Marianne Whitney joined the company? Her credentials weren't enough, her ability wasn't there, and she was a fresh graduate! You're the one who said she was from your hometown, that we should give her a chance!"

"You picked her. And now you're the one throwing around wild suspicions. What exactly do you want?"

Toby wasn't wrong. Marianne was the one I'd hired, and she really was from my hometown.

Our two villages were separated by just one river.

But there was one thing he left out. Back then, Marianne's résumé listed a very significant piece of project experience.

I'd checked it with HR, and they told me it was real.

Thinking about it now, Toby had probably already had a word with HR ahead of time.

After Marianne joined, she didn't show any of that ability. If anything, she made mistake after mistake.

And when I was ready to let her go, it was Toby who brought it up himself, saying we should give a young person a chance.

Because Marianne was also a junior from our same school.

He even went so far as to vouch for her hard at the board meeting when she made a major blunder.

"Everyone has to come up through this stage. Without weathering the storm, how do you ever see the rainbow?"

"And she's the chairman's secretary. Whether she's capable or not, wouldn't I, as chairman, know best?"