His voice was ice.
"Wilfred's our buddy. You ever lay a hand on him again, we'll bury you."
I wasn't stupid. This whole thing had Alberta written all over it.
The punch I'd thrown at Wilfred had earned me this, and she'd sent these men to do it.
The second they shoved me out of the car, Alberta came rolling back with her people.
She looked at my face, raw and bloody, and for once in her life she squeezed out two tears for me.
"Nathan, I'm taking you to the hospital right now."
"Don't worry. I will find whoever did this to you and put them behind bars."
The pain had me drifting in and out, so I had no choice but to let her do as she pleased.
And then she actually put me in the same VIP room as Wilfred.
Wilfred took one look at the wounds on my face and sneered.
"Mr. James, wouldn't you call this karma? One punch at me, and look at you now. Beaten to a pulp."
Alberta gave him a playful little smack of mock reproach.
"Wilfred, did you dip your mouth in poison or something?"
Wilfred pushed his luck.
"What can I say? One kiss from you, Alberta, and you'd cry yourself to death from how sweet it is."
Her face shifted at that, and she shot me a slightly panicked glance.
But when she saw me sitting there, paying the two of them no mind at all, her expression darkened instead.
Once the doctor had finished cleaning the wounds on my face, Alberta turned to me.
"Nathan, not only did you frame Wilfred today, you hit him. You owe him an apology."
I didn't waste a look on Wilfred and his smug face. I just stared straight at Alberta.
"Haven't you already settled the score for him?"
"He handed me fifty thousand in arcade tokens for my mother's surgery. That's a fact. Why would I apologize?"
"Or is it that you love Wilfred so much you can't tell right from wrong anymore?"
"What are you talking about? Shut up!" Alberta was furious.
She lunged at me and slapped me across the face, palm cracking against the wound.
The bandage they'd just wrapped came undone.
The pain was unbearable.
But I would not let this woman see me flinch.
My voice came out cold.
"One hundred slaps. Perfect. A nice round number."
"Alberta, I want a divorce."
This time I saw it. She really did panic, just for a moment.
But she pulled herself together fast.
"What hundred slaps? You're not making any sense."
"Nathan, I married you. I'm not divorcing you. So you can relax."
Wilfred had been watching the whole show with a hidden grin.
At Alberta's words, his face stiffened, and when his eyes came back to me, they were full of calculation.
That night, through the first half, Alberta tended to me without stopping. She fed me sips of water and even trimmed my nails.
She told me that whether or not my mother was truly paralyzed, she would hire two caregivers to look after her properly.
What was she doing?
She didn't want the divorce, so now she was putting on a performance?
I didn't have the energy for her. I closed my eyes and pretended to sleep.
Who could have guessed that within minutes Alberta had drifted over to Wilfred's side.
The two of them murmured and flirted, growing more and more intimate, looking for all the world like a couple.
The next day.
After I woke, I went to the ICU to see my mother.
There was no avoiding it. She saw the wounds on my face.
She looked at me, aching with worry.
"Nathan... who did this to you? Was it Alberta...?"
I gripped my mother's hand and forced out a smile.
"Mom, it's just a few scratches. It's nothing."
"Tonight I'm taking you away, to the States for treatment. Trust me, it won't be long before you're fully better."
The words had barely left my mouth when the door flew open with a kick. Alberta walked in, Wilfred and two bodyguards at her back.
I was about to throw them out when Wilfred pointed at me and said,
"Nathan, did you steal Alberta's project proposal? Do you have any idea how important that project is to us?"
