Chapter 3

It was freezing inside the chapel. Elise was still recovering from her injuries, and after three hours, she lost consciousness.

She ended up catching a severe fever by midnight.

While she was in a blurred state, she found herself transported to a time when she was only thirteen years old.

After her parents passed away in a car accident, the relatives who once doted on her saw her as nothing more than a burden. None of them were willing to raise her, though they were very eager to claim the inheritance her parents left behind.

That was, until Gerald, who was twenty-three years old at the time, appeared.

At the cemetery, he approached Elise with a glacial expression and assured her gently, "Don't be afraid. I'll always protect you. As long as I'm here, no one will ever hurt you again."

...

"You're lying…"

Two streaks of tears trickled from Elise’s eyes. Her pale cheeks were flushed with fever.

She found herself murmuring in her sleep, "You'll never... protect me again…"

As soon as she said that, the man who was in the middle of reaching out to wipe her tears stopped mid-gesture. He emitted a long, tired sigh. After a while, he turned to leave.

Two days later, Elise woke up.

Her wound had been stitched again. She'd been changed into fresh pajamas and carefully cleaned up.

The commenters were ecstatic.

[He's really stepped up these past two days. Not only did he manage to find the best doctor to stitch up her wound, but he also stayed by her bedside to wipe her sweat and keep her body temperature stable.]

[Did you see how his eyes turned red when he looked at her wound? Is she not going to forgive him at all?]

[He even canceled a meeting for a multimillion-dollar project so he could rush home as soon as he heard that she had woken up!]

Elise's heart skipped a beat when she heard the sound of a car engine. Her first thought was to get out of bed to head downstairs.

When she hurried downstairs with a hand pressed over her waist, the front door opened.

She instinctively smiled to greet Gerald. "Gerald, you're back."

Her greeting was met with dark, stormy eyes. It sent a chill down her spine and made her stop abruptly in her tracks.

When she tried to get away, Gerald would not allow it. He grabbed her arm and hissed between clenched teeth, "Elise, you used my name to pressure Helfast News to fire Alexandra. Thanks to you, she suffered a nervous breakdown and was hit by a car while crossing the street. And you still have the nerve to say my name?"

Elise’s face drained of color. She shook her head repeatedly. "I didn’t…"

Gerald immediately sneered, anticipating that she would deny the accusations.

"Sure, keep denying it! Her colleagues told me they heard you threatening the editor-in-chief on the phone! You are the only one in Helfast who hates Alexandra so much because you are jealous of her!

"Who else could be behind this if not you? Do you expect me to believe that Alexandra would snitch on herself so she would lose her dream job?"

Elise felt as if she'd been struck over the head when she heard Gerald’s baseless accusations.

This was not the first time he had thrown such accusations at her for Alexandra’s sake. At last, all the pent-up resentment and anger had come to a boiling point.

With that, she looked up to confront his gaze and retorted stoutly, "If I really was going to do something like that, I would have broken Alexandra’s leg and had her kicked out of the city the very first time she tried to latch onto you!

"I said I didn’t do it, and that’s the end of it!"

She was shaking with rage. Her fists were clenched so tightly that her nails were close to drawing blood from her palms.

Gerald eyed her suspiciously for several seconds before receiving a voice message from Alexandra.

Her voice was very weak. "Gerald, I’m not going to hold it against Eli for being insecure and lashing out… I'm partly to blame too.

"If I had done as she said and resigned the first time she asked me in private, she wouldn't have resorted to extreme measures. Anyway, it’s just a broken leg. It’s not the end of the world."

Though her tone was demure and innocent, it only served to ignite Gerald’s rage.

His face darkened yet another shade, and his tone was cold as frost. "Even after you hurt Alexandra so many times, she still insists on defending you out of kindness. And yet, you still haven’t learnt to reflect on your actions and apologize. I'm disappointed in you.

"Because of your selfishness, Alexandra lost her dream job. It’s time you got a taste of loss as well."

With that, he signaled his bodyguard, who headed straight for Elise's room.

Elise felt her heart plummet into an abyss when she saw the bodyguards emerging from her room with boxes containing her parents' belongings.

She was floored.

"Burn them."

That single sentence was enough to shatter Elise to pieces.