Chapter 4. Your Dark Past

Sophie’s hand froze halfway to her mouth.

“What did you say?”

Charlotte looked between them, confused.

“Cassidy Belgenza. He’s been dating Angelica for years.”

“How do you know Cassidy?” Maddy leaned forward, asking the question before Sophie could.

Sophie shifted her gaze to Charlotte. Charlotte sighed, as if she regretted opening Pandora’s box.

“I’m sorry. I—”

Charlotte looked at Sophie again. The pity in her eyes was unmistakable. Sophie knew how she must look right now, like a complete fool. But she needed to know.

“Tell me… please tell me everything,” Sophie said, her voice desperate. She couldn’t pretend to be strong anymore. She needed answers.

“We are all friends. Jewel, Cassidy, Angelica, and I. We grew up in Crawford and graduated from the same schools and college.” Charlotte paused a moment. She slightly lowered her eyes. A guilty feeling slowly piled up in her mind.

“Everybody knows that Cassidy always adored her. He didn’t even hide it all.”

She closed her eyes repeatedly, trying to process everything. It was hard to believe that the person hurting her the most was her own husband. She couldn’t find a single reasonable explanation for his actions. The same question kept echoing in her mind, over and over again.

The bitterness was overwhelming. Her thoughts felt tangled, her breathing uneven. Everything had happened in just one day, yet it felt like her entire world had collapsed.

“Soph?”

Maddy touched her hand, and Sophie flinched slightly. She turned to look at her, confusion filling her eyes. Sophie tried to speak, but no words came out. Slowly, her gaze shifted back to Charlotte. Her mind still tried to deny everything.

“B-But… he said that he—” The words got stuck in her throat. She couldn’t continue.

Charlotte looked increasingly guilty. She let out a long breath and lowered her head slightly. Sophie kept shaking her head. She couldn’t accept it. She couldn’t believe she had been trapped like this.

“If you don’t believe me,” Charlotte said carefully, “You can ask Jewel. She knows everything about her. She’s his sister.”

Her words landed heavily. The truth, whether Sophie wanted it or not, was already beginning to take shape. And it was far worse than she had imagined. The more Charlotte explained, the harder it became for her to breathe.

Maddy, who was also shocked, began looking at Charlotte suspiciously. This girl came suddenly and said that she knew about Cassidy’s affair, which seemed suspicious.

“Why did you suddenly tell us about this?” she couldn’t help but ask.

Charlotte swallowed hard nervously. Maddy must look suspicious about her. She only shook her head slowly, then sighed.

“I think he was just playing with you. Maybe he cheated behind you.” Charlotte’s voice got lower. She shifted her eyes to Sophie, who had already shed her tears.

“What about you two?”

Maddy glanced at Sophie, who still couldn’t say anything. Sophie looked completely stunned, her face pale.

“We don’t know about Angelica,” Maddy replied quietly. “Sophie married Cassidy without knowing about his background.”

“Oh…” Charlotte murmured.

“M-Maybe they already broke up,” she added quickly.

“I don’t know, I haven't met him in years. So, I might get it wrong,” she added.

Suddenly, Sophie shook her head as tears began to fall again.

“This morning, a woman called Cassidy,” Sophie said with a trembling voice that was almost too soft to hear. “She called him ‘love’ and said she loved him. Maybe… maybe that was her.”

Sophie confessed, but she couldn’t even mention Angelica’s name. It was too hard to believe.

Charlotte took a deep breath. “I once heard that Angelica was already married. I thought she married Cassidy, but apparently…”

She stopped again.

“Do you know her social media or her address?” Maddy asked. “Maybe we’ve met her before.”

Charlotte nodded immediately and took out her phone.

“I know her social media, but I… I never followed her.”

She showed it to Maddy, while Sophie could only watch quietly. Maddy began searching on her own phone. After a moment, she discovered something that shocked her.

“This…” Maddy showed the screen to Sophie.

Sophie gasped and covered her mouth in shock.

After meeting Charlotte and even exchanging phone numbers with her, Sophie left with Madison. Throughout the drive, Sophie could only cry.

“Soph, let’s go to my place, okay? Please calm down,” Maddy said anxiously.

But Sophie kept crying and didn’t answer. Her head felt heavy, and her hands kept holding her stomach.

There was something Sophie couldn’t explain right now. She felt like someone who had lost the most important thing in her life. Like a mother who had lost her unborn child, even though that child had never existed.

Tears kept falling as she sobbed quietly. Her heart was shattered into pieces. She had never felt this broken before. The pain grew worse until she could no longer hold it back.

When they arrived at Maddy’s loft, Kayla finally broke down completely.

Maddy immediately hugged her best friend and began crying as well. She never imagined that the suspicion she once had would turn out to be true. She had never thought Cassidy could go so far as to hurt Sophie, who had done nothing wrong.

“He lied to me…” Sophie whispered painfully.

With trembling hands, she handed her the clinic's test results. Maddy took the paper and read it. Her eyes widened when she saw the result.

“Oh God… oh God!”

Maddy quickly hugged Sophie again, who looked like she might collapse at any moment. Maddy cried as she felt the deep pain Sophie was going through.

Just yesterday, Sophie had come to her with a bright face, happily in love. After suffering for so long because her ex-boyfriend had left her to marry another woman, she had finally found someone who seemed to heal her broken heart. But now it turned out that this man was even worse than she had imagined.

You’re gonna be fine, Soph…” Maddy didn’t know what else to say.

She was even more shocked when she discovered that Angelica was now actually Collin Hawthorn’s wife—Sophie’s ex-boyfriend.

Collin had left Sophie to marry a woman he had gotten pregnant. And that woman was Angelica, who was now having an affair with Sophie’s husband, Cassidy.

At that same moment, Sophie’s phone started vibrating. Both of them looked at her bag. Sophie quickly grabbed her phone. It was Cassidy. He had called her dozens of times.

“You liar!” Sophie shouted angrily as she threw the phone against the wall. It hit the wall and shattered into pieces.