Chapter 7

Adele's icy gaze pierced my heart like a blade.

My face went white, and I shook my head almost immediately. "No way."

Her gaze turned vicious. "Kenneth, you don't get to make the calls here."

With a sweep of her hand, the bodyguards beside her charged forward and forced me down onto my knees.

My knees slammed into the cold floor, and searing pain shot through them. The color drained from my face in an instant.

Adele did not seem to notice my pain at all. She simply gave her orders with cold indifference. "Kenneth, if I don't teach you a proper lesson, you'll never see what you did wrong. Press your forehead to the floor until you admit it."

A bodyguard grabbed me by the hair and shoved my head toward the ground.

At that moment, Cyrus gave Matilda a gentle nudge. She ran over, threw open the closed door of the hospital room, and shouted into the hallway.

"Come look, everybody! The homewrecker is on his knees saying sorry! This man broke up my Papa's family. He's a super big bad guy!"

The empty hallway quickly filled with people. Their eager, prying stares landed on me like one blade after another, stabbing me full of holes until I was bloody and torn.

They all began whispering among themselves.

"Isn't that the gold digger everyone's posting about online?"

"I heard he sleeps around, breaks up other people's marriages, and chases after rich women everywhere he goes. He has absolutely no shame!"

"Haven't you seen what's trending? His disgusting videos are all over the internet!"

Countless phone cameras were aimed at my battered face.

I tried to turn away, but the bodyguard held the back of my head and drove it hard into the floor.

My forehead hit the floor with a dull thud, then again, and again. After a while, I could not even keep count of how many times it had struck.

All I knew was that my forehead hurt terribly, as if it had been beaten to a bloody pulp. Something warm slid down my cheek and dripped onto the floor.

The pain knocked me out, but a bucket of ice water woke me back up.

When I opened my eyes, Adele was still staring at me coldly. "You still won't admit you were wrong?"

I knew that once Adele made up her mind, nothing could change it. I knew just how stubborn she was. If I did not admit it today, there was no way I would leave this place.

I could not win against her.

At last, I squeezed my eyes shut and forced the words out in a hoarse, utterly humiliated voice. "I'm sorry, Mr. Wakefield. I'm sorry. It's all my fault. I'm a homewrecker. I shouldn't have broken up your family."

Matilda kept running circles around me, laughing and cheering. "You stinky homewrecker, you finally admitted it!"

The onlookers pushed their phones even closer to my face, as if they wanted to capture every last detail.

Cyrus smiled in satisfaction. "That's more like it."

Adele did not look at me. She slipped her arm through Cyrus' and squeezed through the narrow path the crowd had opened for them until they disappeared from sight.

I finally blacked out again amid the gleeful frenzy of the crowd.

The buzzing of my phone jolted me awake. I opened my unread messages and found two.

The first was a reminder from my lawyer.

[Mr. Linwood, your divorce certificate has been issued. Please pick it up at the courthouse when you have time.]

The second was from Adele, and every word was ice-cold.

[Kenneth, meet me in front of the courthouse tomorrow at 3:00 pm. Since you love throwing tantrums so much, let's see if you actually have the guts to go through with the divorce. It works out anyway. Cyrus has been very upset about all this.

[Whenever you come to your senses and you're willing to accept Cyrus, we can get remarried.]

I could not help laughing. Adele still had no idea the divorce was already final.

She even thought I was just throwing a tantrum. She thought that once she said all this, I would get scared and beg for forgiveness, then stop making trouble for her for good.

I no longer cared.

I calmly turned off my phone and took a cab to the courthouse.

After I picked up the divorce certificate, I used the money I had earned from delivering food to buy a last-minute plane ticket out of Marlow Bay.

I did not know where I should go, so I chose a destination at random.

Wherever I went for the rest of my life, I thought, it had to be better than staying by Adele's side.