Chapter 3

Bradley had made five calls in a row, but no one picked up. When he tried a sixth time, the call was automatically cut off. It seemed that Sierra had blocked his number.

Bradley's fingertips turned white from gripping the phone.

Right at that moment, Harvey also pulled out his phone and called Sierra. The phone had only rung once before Sierra quickly answered, as if she couldn't bear to make him wait even a second longer.

Her voice was full of concern as she asked, "Harvey, is something wrong?"

Bradley forced down the metallic taste of blood rising in his mouth and demanded sharply, "Sierra Perkins! What gives you the right to put my project and my bonus under Harvey's name?"

The moment she heard Bradley's voice, Sierra's tone turned ice-cold. "Bradley, how long are you going to keep making a scene? Harvey is an intern, so he needs projects to build his résumé. Yet, you're fighting with an intern over credit? Don't you feel ashamed of being so petty?"

It felt as though a sharp blade had torn a bloody wound through Bradley's heart. Still, he swallowed all his bitterness and stubbornly retorted, "I was the one who did the work, so the bonus should belong to me!

"If you don't give it to me right now, I'll make this public! And then we'll see who's still willing to work with Harvey, someone who only got ahead through connections!"

Sierra's icy voice cut straight through him. "Bradley, since when are you this pathetic? Does picking on an intern make you feel superior? It's only 500,000 dollars, and you're being this greedy over it."

After a short pause, she lowered her voice and instructed David, "Give Bradley a bonus too."

Even over the phone, Bradley could hear the impatience in her voice. She was acting as if she were doing him the biggest favor in the world. His eyes began to sting, but Bradley quickly blinked the tears away before they could fall.

The bonus soon landed in his account, so Bradley immediately headed to the funeral home. On the way, he also bought a plane ticket out of town. He booked a flight for ten days later, allowing himself time to settle his mother's funeral arrangements before leaving.

When he received confirmation that his ticket had been booked, Bradley was still relieved to think that he had some luck left. At least he had managed to make the deadline and could give Kristey a proper, dignified farewell.

However, the moment he pushed open the door to the room where Kristey was being held, his eyes widened in horror. A thick, sickening stench of rot filled the air, and her body, which had been perfectly intact before, was now swollen and bloated. Countless maggots were crawling all over her, and she was no longer recognizable as the woman she had been.

The sight hit him like a punch to the gut. Bradley's eyes went wide, and he couldn't believe what he was seeing.

Yet the staff member looked completely unbothered. "Mr. Jaeger, we called you three days ago to ask whether you wanted the body refrigerated, because it would decompose in this hot weather. But you said she was already dead anyway, so there was no point wasting money..."

However, Bradley did not recall receiving any call from the funeral home. As he thought back carefully, he vaguely remembered Harvey holding his phone and fiddling with something three days earlier, when Bradley had been so busy that he could barely think straight. When Bradley had asked him about it, Harvey had simply smiled and said he had picked up the wrong phone by mistake.

With Kristey's body already decomposing, cremation was the only option left. Bradley couldn't even give his mother a proper funeral or a viewing. Her final goodbye to this world had been ugly and stripped of all dignity.

During the cremation, Bradley cried so hard that he nearly passed out. The urn was small enough to fit inside his backpack, so he decided to take it home and find a place to keep it safe for the time being.

However, the moment he stepped through the door, he saw Harvey. There were even signs of Harvey all over the house.

Bradley's suits had been thrown on the closet floor and replaced with Harvey's warm-toned shirts. His mug had been tossed into the trash, and Harvey's laptop now sat in its place on the table.

When Harvey saw him, he smiled brightly. "Bradley, I'm going to be staying here for a while, so sorry for the inconvenience. Sierra was worried that renting an apartment on my own wasn't safe, so she told me to move in here. She said it was basically an employee housing benefit."

Bradley's fingertips trembled slightly. It was simply ridiculous. After all, this was the home he and Sierra were supposed to live in after the wedding, yet she had casually turned it into employee housing.

But after only a brief moment of disbelief, Bradley strode forward and fixed Harvey with a sharp gaze. "Harvey, were you the one who answered the call from the funeral home?"

Harvey pretended to be surprised. He frowned and thought about it for a while before suddenly acting as though he had remembered.

He blinked innocently, saying, "Bradley, you're not mad at me for not telling you, are you? You were so busy back then, so I was just trying to help and didn't want to slow you down. Besides, you're so broke, and she was just some dead old hag. You could've dumped her in the woods for the coyotes to eat and saved yourself the cremation fee!"

As he spoke, Harvey's lips curled into a smug smile. "Bradley, you should actually thank me for saving you money."

"Harvey, shut your mouth!" An overwhelming surge of rage, guilt, and grief exploded in Bradley's chest. His whole body shook, and he slammed his fist right into Harvey's face.

At that very moment, Sierra appeared in the doorway, her voice dripping with icy fury. "Bradley, what the hell are you doing?"