Chapter 2

The moment Benjamin spotted me in the doorway, the smile froze on his face.

He hurried over and reached out to put an arm around me. "Edith, let me explain… Hailey's mother is on her deathbed, and her greatest wish is to see her daughter get married before she passes away.

"Hailey doesn't even have a boyfriend yet, so I've decided to stage a wedding with her for now. We'll have to postpone the wedding I promised you a little longer..."

I stared steadily at Hailey.

The wedding dress had originally been custom-made to my measurements, yet it fit her perfectly, even though she was a whole head shorter than me.

Hailey put on a pitiful expression and spoke softly. "Benjamin, maybe we should just forget it. Edith's been looking forward to this wedding for five years. I don't feel right about doing this."

She pretended to take off the wedding dress, but Owen stopped her and charged at me like a cannonball. "You wicked woman! You're just jealous because she looks like a fairy in her wedding dress!

"Your belly looks like the bark of an old tree. Nothing you wear could ever look good on you!"

He slammed into me so hard that I fell to the floor. The pain was so intense that I couldn't recover for a long time.

When Owen saw the pain on my face, he looked a little guilty. Still, he stood his ground, his chin raised stubbornly.

Benjamin hurried over to help me up. "Owen! How could you push your mother?"

His gaze fell on my lower abdomen, and his expression softened with a trace of concern. "Edith, if this really bothers you, I'll find someone else to pretend to marry Hailey..."

I pulled my hand away from his and got to my feet on my own.

"I don't mind." I opened the calculator on my phone. "Besides the wedding and the dress, we'll have to include the cost of your wedding night with her—"

Before I could finish calculating, Benjamin slapped my phone out of my hand. "Edith Dawson, are you out of your mind? Owen's right here!

"Hailey and I have always been completely innocent. I honestly don't understand how you've become this kind of person!"

I looked up at him. "She wants to take everything I have. I can't beat her, so what's wrong with asking for financial compensation?"

Benjamin was speechless. His chest heaved violently, as though I'd infuriated him beyond words.

"I can't be bothered to argue with you." He pulled out his phone and jabbed furiously at the screen, as if he could vent all his anger through his fingertips.

A second later, a deposit notification appeared on my phone.

"I guess I was wrong about you from the very beginning!" With that, Benjamin ushered Hailey and Owen out of the house and slammed the door so hard that the walls shook.

I stared at the string of zeros on my screen, desperately fighting back tears.

When Benjamin and I first got together, he had nothing.

We shared a single 5-dollar meal and lived in a dark, damp basement apartment.

Back then, he often felt guilty about making me suffer. After work, he'd even deliver takeout orders to earn extra money, just so he could buy me the cakes and drinks that other girls enjoyed.

When I casually mentioned how difficult it was to dry my clothes, he spent half a month's wages on a small clothes dryer for me.

One night, I caught him eating ice cubes to stave off his hunger, and I cried because my heart ached for him.

He only held me tighter and choked back tears as he apologized for making me suffer alongside him. He swore that once he had money, he'd make it all up to me.

But after he finally made it big, Hailey took away every single thing he'd bought to make up for those years.

Now, all I'd done was ask for some financial compensation for myself, yet all I got in return was his accusation that he'd been wrong about me from the start.

I took a few deep breaths and scrolled through my phone to distract myself. Instead, I found my entire social media feed filled with Hailey's posts.

Benjamin had taken her to discuss the wedding arrangements.

The mock-up images she'd posted of the wedding venue were based on the very design I'd painstakingly refined, piece by piece, to suit my own tastes.

I'd never imagined that the wedding I'd spent years dreaming of would end up being a celebration of my own husband's marriage to another woman.

I gripped my phone tightly and was just about to block her when my eyes fell on her wrist.

The moment I recognized what she was wearing, I could no longer contain myself. I grabbed my things and rushed straight to the location she'd shared!