As if everything was perfectly fine. Except we both knew the truth: we were lost, blindly stumbling around as we tried to figure out a solution to this situation.
I nodded and smiled politely back at Flora, thanking her for the food as I sat down to eat.
Unfortunately, I had no appetite for breakfast and was starting to feel nauseous after a few spoonfuls.
I forced the soup down, but ended up throwing up in a toilet half an hour later.
K City was always freezingly cold during this time of the year, and going out was not a viable option.
I headed for the study to take a proper look at the sandalwood box that Grandma had left me. If Emery said that it couldn’t be unlocked with a key, then what could it be unlocked with?
The working and design didn’t seem to be of modern work. It resembled closer to a woodworker’s handiwork from the sixties.
I grew impatient after fiddling with the box for a while but to no avail, resorting to picking up a random book in the study to read.
My gaze accidentally swept over some documents left out on Anthony’s desk. I had seen them a few times before; they were all acquisition contracts of White Corporation.
I drifted over to the table and picked the documents up, flipping through them. Mergers and takeovers were very common in the business world.
Regardless of how this case was going to end, I could not get myself involved in it.
Sighing slightly, I closed the file and was about to keep it in the drawer when an album in the drawer caught my eyes.
I was a little stunned. I’d thought that Anthony had kept all our pictures from the past in his villa in J City, but apparently, he’d brought some here with him.
Guess it wouldn’t hurt to take a look and walk down memory lane.
I lifted the photo album out of the drawer, noticing that there had been a few baby pictures hidden under the album.
The baby looked familiar to me. Even though I had never seen what he looked like right after birth, I had seen him in my dreams.
There was a purple bruise on his forehead, caused from his desperation to meet me.
The infant couldn’t open his eyes and his skin was red and wrinkly, but his features looked extremely similar to that of Anthony’s.
How does Anthony have these photos? When Marcus had asked me if I wanted to see the baby, I had refused. I was scared that if I saw him, I would never be able to forgive myself for the rest of my life.
The sudden sight of him made me feel like a knife had been stabbed through my chest, slowly twisting in the wound.
I put everything back where I’d found them. There was no way that these photos belonged to Anthony, which left only one other possibility—Marcus had given them to him.
Anthony was suddenly hellbent on wiping Marcus out of the market because he had said something to deliberately provoke him.
I returned to the bedroom, curling up under the covers as my mind wandered.
Marcus had asked me why I insisted on staying with Anthony. I didn’t know who else I could be with other than Anthony.
We were all ready to welcome love and happiness into our lives when we were born.
But then life made us go through so many twists and turns, and we forgot what we used to dream of, merely clinging on to dear life in order to survive.
After not getting much rest last night, I drifted off to sleep under the covers. When I woke up, it was already dark outside.
There was a knocking on the door. I got up to open it, and Flora greeted me. “Are you feeling hungry, Mrs. Featherstone? Would you like to go downstairs for a snack?”
Reflexively shaking my head due to my lack of appetite, I suddenly recalled that Anthony mentioned that he wanted to eat dinner together. “I’ll wait for Mr. Anthony to come back and then eat with him.”
Flora cleared her throat uncomfortably. “Mr. Featherstone is already home. He’s been waiting in the living room and smoking for a while now. Would you like to go and check on him?”
He’s back?
“When did he get back?”
“Around five o’clock.”
I wasn’t sure whether to cry or to laugh from the sheer absurdity.
If he had come back so early, it meant that he was anxious to have dinner with me, as was written on the note. If he had never once come upstairs to the bedroom, it meant that he still felt resentful.
Forget it.
I smiled weakly at Flora. “You guys go ahead. I’m not hungry.”
Maybe it would be easier on both of us if we didn’t see each other.
Flora opened her mouth as if to say something, but kept quiet and went back downstairs.
I went back to the bed and stared at the ceiling, trying to fall asleep but to no avail.
The room gradually grew darker and darker as I stared blankly into space.
The bedroom door swung open, and I instantly shut my eyes closed. I heard heavy footsteps and breathing, and I knew it was him.
There was the sound of water coming from the bathroom as I kept my eyes shut, knowing that he had just exited the bathroom.
He sat down on his side of the bed. I assumed that he was going to sleep in the study tonight.
But soon after, I felt the weight of the mattress shift below me and heard the sound of the bedside lamp being switched off.
His even, shallow breathing slowly filled the bedroom.
Time slowly ticked by. I couldn’t fall asleep, but by the sound of Anthony’s soft breathing, I guessed that he was deep asleep.
I turned over and opened my eyes, freezing in place when my gaze met his.
I barely got a word out of my mouth when he reached forward and wrapped me in his embrace. “Flora said that you threw up your breakfast this morning, and that you didn’t eat anything for the rest of the day,” he stated, concerned.
“I wasn’t hungry,” I argued, my body stiff in his arms.
His dark eyes looked like they were staring into my soul. “Sienna, I’m a man. You can’t blame me for losing my temper when I saw him kissing you.”
He was talking about last night.
I nodded silently.
He inched closer to me, pressing his face into the crook of my neck as he sighed painfully.
His fingers massaged the small of my back, slowly but surely working the stiffness out of my body. “What did Marcus tell you at Emery’s wedding?” I asked.
When I felt his breathing stop, I went on, “If it was about the baby, then you can ask me. No matter what it is.”
New Book: Back Home to Marry Off Myself
Loredana’s father left the family for his mistress, leaving them to fend for themselves abroad. When life was at its toughest, her father showed up with “good news” after 8 years of absence: To marry off Loredana to a paralyzed son of the wealthy Mendelsohn family.
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