Chapter 2

When Adrian carried Cecelia and dashed out of the villa, I was still sitting limply on the ground with blood dripping from the back of my head to my neck. I watched him leave anxiously and with great urgency, without turning back to look at me. I was reminded of how he had once cared for me that way.

Back then, I had just arrived at Neopolis and was working as a part-time waitress at a café in the Upper East Side of Manor City while studying. I was cleaning up some broken glasses when Adrian first met me, and I accidentally cut my fingers.

Adrian saw my bleeding fingers when he entered the café to buy coffee, and he used his handkerchief to wrap up my wounds without hesitation. He was 30 minutes late because of me, and his subordinates had to call him on the phone three times to rush him. Since then, Adrian often appeared outside the café where I worked.

Once, when I was working late into the night, Adrian walked into the café and handed me a black card while saying, "Come with me, and you won't ever need to work so hard again."

I was taken aback, and I rejected the card. "It's fine, sir. It's my life I'm working hard for, and that's alright with me."

He looked at me for a long time before giving me his name card. "My name is Adrian Colombo, and I'll be back tomorrow."

Adrian returned as promised the next day in a black Maybach. When he saw how busy I was, he reserved the café for the entire day with just a wave of the hand, just so he could have dinner with me. The next three months saw Adrian courting me by doing many things out of his character.

When I rejected his roses, he had the freshest bouquets air-flown and delivered them to my workplace, filling up the entire café with flowers. When I rejected his offer of taking me home in his expensive car, he walked along my side through the dirty streets of Beyworth, where I lived, just to see me home to my little apartment.

I told Adrian that we did not belong to the same world, but he still waited for me every day at the café. He courted me for three months, and every time I rejected him, he would return for the second, third, and fourth time… I had feelings for him, but I also knew how different our lives were. I could not, and dare not, give in to my heart.

Everything changed during a car accident when Adrian broke his bones from being knocked down by a car while trying to save me. He broke out in cold sweat from the pain but still smiled at me while comforting me, "Don't be afraid, Ella. It doesn't hurt at all."

It pained me to see the wound on him, and my tears fell into his palms. When I finally agreed to be with him, Adrian showered me with so much love.

He got a private doctor to make a house call in the middle of the night whenever I accidentally cut my finger. When I told him how much I loved the dessert at a certain place, he bought the entire dessert store for me. Whenever I had period cramps, he stayed up the entire night to massage my belly.

One time, I fell and scraped my knee, and Adrian almost cried as it hurt him to see me injured in any way. His hands trembled all the way to the hospital when he carried me in his arms.

I was exasperated and chided him for making a big fuss out of nothing when it was just a minor injury, but Adrian said, "I love you, Ella. Even if your wound is just a scrape, no one really knows if you've gotten infected by bacteria, or if your bones have been hurt."

He insisted on getting me a CT scan back then and got the best private doctor in the Colombo family to treat my wound. Yet now… I lowered my head to look at the pool of blood, and suddenly laughed out miserably.

I called a cab on my own to take me to the hospital. When the doctor saw how serious my wound was, he quickly stitched it up for me and bandaged it. After he was done, I realized how dizzy I felt from losing too much blood, and I could hardly stand. I stumbled out of the room, and someone suddenly grabbed my wrist.

"Ella!" Adrian was trying his best to suppress the anger in his voice. "Why can't you give it up? Cecelia almost suffered a miscarriage, and you still want to chase after us all the way to the hospital to create trouble?" He frowned and gave me a look that chilled me to the bone.

I could still catch a scent of Cecelia's suffocating perfume on him.

"I didn't come to the hospital for her, Adrian." I pointed at my bandaged forehead. "I'm hurt too, and I'm here to seek treatment."

Adrian looked taken aback, and it was only then that he noticed the thick stench of blood on me, which had been covered by the smell of disinfectant. Blood was still seeping through my thick bandage.

"You told me you'd marry me after she gave birth to the baby, Adrian." I looked at him and felt like I was about to cry. "But do you still love me now?"

Adrian's brows furrowed deeper as he reached out to touch my wound worriedly. "What happened?"

"You did it by pushing me." I calmly avoided his touch. "You pushed me against the shelf, but that's not important to you anymore, is it?"

Adrian's eyes widened as he remembered how he had lost control when he pushed me away, which could have brought lethal consequences to a normal person. He pulled me into his arms guiltily. "I'm sorry, Ella. It wasn't on purpose. I was just worried something might happen to Cecelia because she's pregnant with a baby that belongs to the Gambino and Colombo families.

"If something happens to her, the committee won't let us get away with it, and it'll only delay us further from our plan to leave…"

I let him hug me as I stared at the white ceiling with empty looks in my eyes. I had heard this excuse too many times. I pushed him away. "I understand."

"You should go to her now." I turned to leave, but he grabbed my wrists again.