Chapter 5

[Olivia's POV]

I didn't want to go back to the house Jordan and I shared, so I went to Dad's old house.

Just then, my phone buzzed. Jordan sent me his first text message in three years. "Come back and make Camille some soup as an apology."

I stared at it for a long time and suddenly wanted to laugh.

Then I finally answered Jordan's call. He impatiently asked, "Did you see my message? Camille said she really wants to try your—"

I cut him off, my voice soft. "Jordan, if I died, would you be sad?"

I finally had the chance to ask the question that had been on my mind for months.

Jordan went quiet for a few seconds, then he suddenly raised his voice. "What's gotten into you lately? Who taught you to keep saying such ominous things? Just tell me how much money you want. It's not like I won't give it to you!

"Where are you right now? I'm coming over immediately."

In the end, he still didn't answer me. But it no longer mattered.

I hung up the phone.

I lay on the wooden plank bed I used to share with Dad when I was a child, then took an old phone out of a rusty tin box. Inside were the chat records between Jordan and me from our early 20s.

"I just saw a rainbow. Will my confession have a better chance of succeeding today?" Jordan had texted.

"Who are you confessing to?" I asked.

"A young woman named Olivia Sterling, whose reaction time is slower than a snail's," he replied.

The unbearable pain had already spread from my leg throughout my whole body. It felt like countless hands were tearing at my organs.

I wanted to laugh, cry, and scream, but no sound came out. Only a few tears welled up at the corners of my eyes.

I finished reading more than eight thousand messages in silence, then deleted them all in a single click.

I used the last bit of strength I had to swallow the sleeping pills and painkillers. My mind started growing heavy, and the pain in my body began to fade. For the first time in months, a genuine smile finally appeared on my face, and I closed my eyes.

"Jordan, I'm free now. I don't hate you. I hope this time, you can marry the woman you truly love," I thought.

…

[Third-Person POV]

Jordan stared at the phone after the call cut off, his mind in turmoil.

Without thinking, he opened the location tracker on Olivia's phone. Back when they were dating, he coaxed her into installing it. He used to check it once in a while, but after he learned that Olivia was a fraud, he had never opened it again.

The red dot was sitting in an old, run-down neighborhood. He frowned and stood to grab his car keys.

Camille grabbed his arm, her eyes still red. "Jordan, you promised to come with me to the company dinner tonight. My hand still hurts."

He paused, glanced at her bandaged finger, and sat back down. "Got it."

Throughout the whole dinner, Jordan was distracted. Olivia's weak voice kept echoing in his head. Irritated, he loosened his tie and told his assistant, Adrian Whitmore, to find out who Olivia had been in contact with lately.

He wanted to know who had taught her to pull a stunt like this. Yet at the same time, he dismissed it as none of his concern. To him, Olivia was nothing more than a fraud—a woman who would even sell her body for money.

Jordan massaged his temple as he listened to Adrian's report. "Other than going to the hospital, Mrs. Parker hasn't been in contact with anyone. Her social circle is also very simple. Her only family was her dad, who passed away three years ago," Adrian said.

Jordan tightened his grip on the wine glass and abruptly stood up. Everyone turned to look at him, but he didn't care at all. He asked in a low voice, "She had a dad?"

He remembered that Camille had looked into Olivia's background and found that she was an orphan who made a living by tricking men out of their money.

Adrian replied, "Yes. Three years ago, her dad died from bone cancer."

Jordan's mind went blank for a moment, and he almost collapsed. So there was a small chance that Olivia hadn't been lying.

He felt certain he had seen the words bone cancer somewhere before. As he racked his brain trying to remember where, a memory suddenly surfaced—the message Olivia had sent him months earlier.