章 3: Chapter 3
Kate gritted her teeth in silence.
She couldn't wait to tear these two fuckers apart for cheating on her, but simultaneously, she realized she was being gaslit here.
They acted as if this whole 'Open Relationship' thing was very common, and Kate was the crazy one for not accepting it. Unluckily for them, Kate wasn't fooled.
Kate glared at Matt and pointed her finger at him, "This is NOT over yet, you useless bastard! I will divorce you, just wait 'till I serve you the paper!"
Then Kate darted her eyes at her little sister. She felt terrible heartache as she was faced with her half-naked sister.
She truly cared for Erin.
She knew that Erin was the one who suffered the most when their family hit rock bottom. Erin was only eight years old, while Kate was already eighteen.
Erin cried every day and night when she realized that her family was ruined after their father cheated on her mother and they got divorced soon after. Kate was left feeling helpless and tremendously guilty that she couldn't do more for her young sister. Though Kate was already a young adult, she was still too young to know how to coax a child going through such a difficult phase. Hence when she began to earn more money, she was determined to give Erin a good life so she wouldn't cry again.
She told Erin to follow her to Los Angeles and find any university she liked.
Kate paid Erin's tuition upfront, so she was free from the unforgiving student loan debt after she graduated.
Kate also gave her a monthly allowance to give her a comfortable life in Los Angeles. Even after she graduated, Kate allowed Erin to live in the apartment room next to Kate and Matt's, so Erin could visit Kate's apartment to help with the laundry and cooking while Kate was away to work.
Which turned out to be a big mistake.
'Maybe I spoiled her too much,' Kate thought. 'Maybe everything I did to make her happy only ended up ruining her life.'
There was a moment of doubt in Kate's heart. She stared wordlessly at Erin, and Erin simply scoffed in response, "What? You're going to scold me now? Geez, sis, don't act like a crazy bitch, will you? This is no biggie!"
Kate choked up her own tears when she heard that. She steeled her heart and yelled at Erin, "You're going to regret this, you ungrateful bitch!"
Kate turned around and strutted confidently to the front door. She could feel the eyes of those fuckers staring at her back, probably waiting for her to fall and break down in tears.
But Kate pulled all of her courage and kept on walking. She grabbed her bag on the floor and opened the door.
Matt was silent until he saw her leaving, "Where are you going?"
Kate did not bother stopping to reply. "Anywhere but here. I feel sick just looking at you two."
BAM!
Kate walked out, slamming the door behind her. She continued strutting through the corridor with confidence. But once she was about to reach the elevator at the end of the corridor, her legs suddenly gave up, and she accidentally tripped on herself.
"Ah!" Kate fell to the cold floor face first. She grimaced in pain and tried to get up quickly before anyone saw her embarrassing state.
As she tried to use her hand to prop herself up, she realized there was a drop of tears wetting her floor.
"W—Why did I cry?" Kate asked herself. "Why do I have to shed tears for a useless bastard and my equally useless sister? They're not even worth it!"
She tried to wipe her tears repeatedly, but they kept falling. So she decided to ignore it, gather her strength, and get up.
She couldn't maintain her fearless, confident demeanor anymore. Her heart was too wounded to keep that persona.
Thus, she lumbered towards the elevator, and leaned on the wall several times as she walked to avoid falling again. She threw her heels away to make it easier for her to walk until she finally reached the elevator.
Kate entered the elevator that descended to the lobby. She didn't know where to go but wanted to get as far as possible from Matt and Erin.
Just imagining herself living with those two useless fuckers made her stomach turn.
Thankfully, the lobby was empty when she passed, maybe because it was a Friday night, and everyone had already gone somewhere for the night, to parties or their own engagements to have fun.
It was only her who never had any fun, not before she married Matt, and even more so after she married him.
She left the apartment and walked aimlessly through the streets of LA. She saw her reflection on a store's glass pane and almost laughed at herself.
Her eyes were red and puffy from crying non-stop and her eye bags were darker than ever before from all the late nights at work. Her hair was unkempt, her blazer had seen better days, and her shoes were nowhere near her feet. She was a miserable sight.
She scoffed, "Heh, I guess their gaslighting worked on me. Look at me now. I look like a crazy bitch."
As Kate kept on walking, she saw a taxi approaching her. She squinted her eyes and noticed the familiar plate, as the taxi drew near, she realized that it was the same taxi that had driven her back to her apartment before.
The taxi stopped in front of Kate, and the driver stuck his head out, "Miss, are you okay?" he asked concernedly. "I saw you walking alone. This place is not safe at night."
Kate blinked a few times as she processed what the concerned taxi driver had said before opening the back door and getting in.
She sat in the backseat and stayed silent for a while.
The taxi driver got nervous, but he didn't say a word, he just let her sit there for a bit. He was afraid he might be carrying a crazy lady who had a manic episode at night. After all, this lady looked so professional and well-maintained half an hour ago, and now all of a sudden she looked like a crazed woman, one you wouldn't want to mess with at night.
"M—Miss, where should I take you?"
…
"Just drive, take me as far from here as possible," Kate said coldly. "This place reeks of filth."
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章 4: Chapter 4
The taxi driver sensed the pain in her voice. She tried to sound cold, but her voice shook, proving that she was trying to mask her despair.
The taxi driver was naturally able to draw a few assumptions in his head, but the highest probability was… heartbreak.
'Something must've happened when she returned to her apartment,' he thought. But he dared not ask because when he glanced at her from his rearview mirror, he saw that the lady was staring straight with an empty expression on her face and her tears did not stop falling.
He drove the car in silence around downtown LA. He didn't dare speak to ask her questions nor stop anywhere. He just drove aimlessly avoiding the area they had come from.
The lady suddenly opened her mouth as they passed a liquor store, "Go back to that store. I want to buy a few things first."
"Y—Yes, Miss."
The driver parked the car and watched the lady enter the liquor store. She was in and out quickly, it didn't take her long to return with a bag full of alcohol, probably four or five bottles of booze.
She returned to the taxi and said, "Drive, I'll tell you where to go."
**
The taxi driver drove through downtown LA until they stopped in front of an office building. The building looked dark except for the lobby.
The driver frowned, "Are you sure you're going to stay here for the night, Miss?"
"Yeah," Kate said. With work being most of her life, she had nowhere to go but her office.
She opened the taxi door, bringing with her the bag of booze as she got out..
She gave the taxi driver two one-hundred bills, she noticed the taxi driver's hesitant expression,
"What's wrong with me staying here?"
"I'm just afraid that you will…" the taxi driver stopped before he could say something horrible.
"Kill myself?" Kate completed his sentence, and the driver nodded reluctantly.
He thought it was offensive to assume, but the lady looked like someone who would kill herself after heartbreak.
Kate scoffed, "Don't worry, I'm not an idiot who'll kill myself over a useless bastard like him," She turned around and stared at the office building. "My office is on the fifteenth floor, I'll stay there for the night."
Kate turned back, looked at the driver, and gave him a thin smile, "Thank you for helping me."
The driver watched the lady walk into the lobby. He sighed, 'What a pitiful woman. I can see that she is in a lot of pain.'
**
Kate used her card to enter the elevator and pressed the button to the fifteenth floor.
The whole floor was dark, it was late at night and no one would be working at this time. Kate used her employee card to unlock the door and enter her office. She turned on a few of the lights to guide her way.
Of course, Kate knew she could just stay in a hotel or one of her other apartments if she wanted to calm herself down.
But this office—Emperor Books Publishing company—was the place she felt truly at home.
This was the place where she started it all.
She started her career because Matt's acting career simply wouldn't take off and couldn't provide for them, so she worked here.
She thought she'd work like a normal person, coming in at nine and leaving at five. But as her relationship with Matt deteriorated, she started working crazy hours until the late CEO, Mr. James Grant, recognized her talent and promoted her repeatedly until she became a chief editor at the age of twenty-eight.
It was also around that time that she began to pay for her mother's expensive medications and her sister's university studies.
She also had to support Matt since acting barely gave him any money, so she became the sole breadwinner for three people all at once.
'Well, I thought that giving Matt a comfortable life would be enough to compensate for the fact that I can't give him a baby,' Kate thought.
'How could I be so stupid? Of course it's not enough for Matt. Nothing I did was good enough to him, meanwhile he is doing the bare minimum as a man.' She ridiculed herself in her own mind.
Kate walked through the empty hall, thinking about going to her office and staying the night there.
But her attention was suddenly diverted when she realized the lights were switched on in the CEO's office.
'Huh? I thought the CEO office has been locked since Mr. Grant's death.'
Kate frowned, immediately suspicious. Worried there might be a break-in, she took out a wine bottle from the bag as a weapon and sneakily walked towards the CEO's office, trying to catch the intruder.
The door wasn't completely closed, so Kate grew more suspicious. She peeked through the gap and saw a man's arm dangling at the end of the sofa. There was a striking black snake tattoo circling around the arm from his elbow down to his hand, and he was holding an almost-empty bottle of strong booze.
Kate doubted this man was a burglar, especially after seeing a limited edition Parker's Heritage bourbon in his hand.
He was someone with money, at least.
Thus, she felt braver, opening the door to learn more. Who was this man that dared to enter the office late at night?
There, she saw a blond young man roughly in his 20s, lounging leisurely on the sofa, surrounded by two more bottles of the same bourbon he had drank. He didn't react when the door opened, probably because he was half drunk at this point.
"W—Who are you? How did you enter this office?" Kate asked carefully, holding her wine bottle like a sword and the remaining bag of wine bottles in front of her like a shield. She was prepared to throw them at him and run if this young man suddenly pounced on her.
The man finally turned his head towards Kate, and Kate's heart skipped a beat when she saw the man's face.
She was taken aback by his handsome face that reminded her of a man she once admired, and eyes that could petrify anyone at sight.
He had a set of deep green eyes that glinted dangerously as he peered at Kate in silence. It gave off the illusion of a green-eyed snake ready to strike and bite once provoked.
Kate would be lying if she said she wasn't scared. But she did not intend to leave her office, and the man didn't seem hostile towards her either.
She felt a chill crawl up her spine as he observed her with his viper-like eyes, and when he finally spoke her heart beat faster.
"Which bastard dared to make you cry?"
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