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"Then there won't be a wedding! All of you, get out!"
I shouted for the security guards to come in and clear every last one of them out.
"What do you think you're doing? I'm the bride's mother-in-law! How dare you treat me like this! Just wait until she's married—I'll make her pay for this!"
My mother-in-law was beside herself, screeching curses out in the hallway.
Leslie rubbed the cut on his face, his expression dark as he stared at me.
"You'll regret this!"
Of course I wouldn't regret it. Leslie thought I was only throwing a tantrum, that like all the countless times before, I'd make a scene and then come crawling back in the end.
But he didn't know I'd already been making scenes for twenty years, and I was long since worn out.
"Luna, I need to go home for a bit."
The moment my brother heard I was going home to take back my inheritance, he nearly wept with joy.
He cared about nothing but his art shows and understood nothing about business, while I'd been groomed as the heir for more than twenty years, only to hand it all up over a man and go be a housewife.
In the end I made my parents so angry they cut off contact with me, my brother ran the company for a few years before it changed hands, and my in-laws looked down on me even more. Their family was only a small enterprise under the Butler umbrella, but once the person at the top changed—
then I was of no use to them at all.
After that, I became little more than a servant in Leslie's household. Everything had to be done by my own hands, always with the excuse that they couldn't trust anyone else to do it.
"But keep this quiet for now. Don't announce it."
I sighed. Just thinking about Leslie set my nerves on edge. Lately he'd been giving me the cold shoulder on purpose, even sending me several photos of himself with other girls to needle me.
I rolled my eyes. I couldn't be bothered to react at all.
This time I'd received another invitation to a dinner party. I'd meant to decline, until I saw a few familiar names on the guest list.
Leslie. Julia Finch. And her current husband.
How interesting.
I called my secretary back and confirmed that I'd attend.
When the dinner party began, the first person I saw as I walked in was Leslie, all smiles as he greeted Julia, the two of them unable to keep the grins off their faces.
As if terrified anyone might fail to notice there was something between them.
I walked over and said hello to Julia's husband. He froze, staring at me in bewilderment, then hurried to raise a glass back to me.
Leslie saw the whole thing, and his face went dark in an instant. He came over and grabbed my arm.
"Mercedes, did you come here just to greet other men?"
I looked at him with feigned surprise.
"Oh? And you, my husband—did you come to catch up with your first love?"
Leslie's expression stalled, as if he'd never imagined I'd know about Julia. He wasn't nearly as self-righteous as a moment ago.
Julia's husband, however, didn't like what he heard at all. His face changed, and he turned to look at his wife.
"You've misunderstood. We were only saying hello together, that's all."
Watching her play so meek and helpless, no wonder Leslie couldn't bear to let her lift a finger. Truly the picture of a delicate little thing to be pitied.
"Nothing? Nothing, when my husband lent you a few hundred thousand to pay off your loan? Nothing, when after all these years apart he still never misses your birthday?"
I found myself laughing as I spoke. Maybe it was the alcohol—the secrets I'd uncovered in my past life could finally come out of my mouth.
"Nothing, when he spent my birthday keeping you company!"
I roared out that last line, all the fury bursting out of me. I'd been kept in the dark like an idiot for more than twenty years, and in the end, when I was dying, I still had to endure Julia coming into my home to taunt me.
Watching the home I'd tended for twenty years get rearranged overnight, top to bottom, exactly the way Julia wanted it—
