All these years, my status had been kept hidden on purpose.
Because I was my parents’ only child, before completing the inheritance of the family wealth, showing myself too early in public would’ve been very risky.
A few days earlier, my father had come to visit me.
He was old now, and his body had started getting weaker. This time, he’d come only to speak with me about the family inheritance.
That day, he bought flowers and gave them to me. It was just a clumsy way for a father to comfort his daughter.
But unexpectedly, someone with bad intent secretly took photos of that moment, edited it, and showed it as ‘cheating during marriage!’
I slowly lowered the hand that had covered my face, my fingertips still a little numb.
“Russell,” I lifted the corner of my lips, my voice rough but clear, “was this your decision?”
Russell looked down at me from above, his eyes cold like he was looking at a stranger.
“What kind of tricks are you still trying to play now?”
His voice dropped very low, but every word sounded sarcastic.
“You, a loose and filthy woman, what reason do you still have to stand beside me? What reason do you have to sit at the same level as me in the company?”
“To the people in the company who work honestly, this is unfair.”
He spoke as if he were standing up for justice for the company.
But I understood clearly.
Russell did not want me to keep my shares, did not want me to keep joining company decisions, and did not want me to threaten his power as the President.
I stared up at him and suddenly felt it was laughable.
In the past, it had clearly been him who chased after me again and again.
It had been him who dropped to his knees in front of me on a rainy evening and promised that all the money he made would belong to me, that he would follow my words his whole life, that he was ready to marry into my family, only asking me to give him one chance.
He said he would live as my dog for his whole life.
I trusted him. During those three years, whatever support he wanted, I gave it to him. I personally helped him reach that position.
But now only three years had gone by, and he could not even keep the most basic faithfulness of a dog.
I breathed in deeply and did not want to keep arguing with them anymore.
“The man in the picture is my father.”
Russell frowned slightly. Before he could say anything, Camille had already stepped forward in her high heels.
She came close to us, the edge of her mouth showing a mocking smile, yet her voice spread through the microphone across the whole hall.
“Father?” She laughed loudly. “Wouldn’t it be a sugar daddy?”
Soft laughter spread among the crowd.
“Miss Gardner, how many sugar daddies do you keep outside?”
She tilted her head toward me, sounding sweet yet cruel. “Back then, when you forced President Holmes to marry into your family and hand you company shares, did you also use your sugar daddy’s money to pressure him?”
“No wonder you always acted like a rich heiress but never mentioned your parents. So it was all just an act.”
I saw Russell’s expression freeze for a moment.
Once Camille finished speaking, suspicion showed in his eyes.
“Artemis, is it because you have several sugar daddies that you never introduced me to your parents?”
His words sounded unbelievable to me.
I had hidden my true background to avoid putting pressure on him, and also because my parents had not fully accepted him.
I did not want him to think he had married someone above him, did not want him to feel small and believe he was lower than me.
I carefully protected his pride, and now everything I did had turned into proof of my guilty mind!
Russell seized my arm and dropped his voice in a cold tone, “At first, we could have handled it as if nothing happened.”
“You go into old men’s beds, I keep a lover, we do not disturb each other.”
“But you insisted on blocking Camille and made her upset.”
“Artemis, bringing things to this stage is your own decision.”
My nails pressed hard into my palm, nearly breaking the skin.
Not disturb each other?
He actually believed that keeping Camille was normal and reasonable?
And my so-called cheating could really become a condition for negotiation?
I stared at the man in front of me with disbelief, as though I was looking at him for the first time.
Camille raised the microphone and interrupted our conflict.
“Actually, proving that Miss Gardner never went into beds is very easy.”
She smiled sweetly, yet her eyes looked dark.
“I heard that a few days earlier, Miss Gardner did not go back home the entire night. Since you say you are innocent, then prove it right here.”
“Take off your clothes and let everyone see whether other men left marks on your body, and then everything will be clear.”
