Chapter 3

Gavin led Nadia into the hotel.

“Mrs. Zeller, Mr. Zeller said you’ve been working hard lately, so he arranged this especially for you. He wants you to get some proper rest and relax.”

Nadia glanced around the hotel lobby.

A few people looked like tourists at first glance, but when she looked more closely at the phones in their hands, they all seemed to be filming.

They were probably reporters.

Nadia looked away and raised a faint smile.

“I just remembered I left something in the car. Give me the room number, and I’ll go find him myself in a moment.”

Gavin didn’t suspect anything.

“Mr. Zeller is in the presidential suite on the top floor. You can go straight up.”

“Okay.”

Nadia answered with a smile, then turned and walked back toward the hotel entrance.

The moment she turned away, only coldness remained on her face.

Xena was no longer in the room. Even if the reporters were waiting in the hotel now, they wouldn’t capture anything useful.

Snow began to fall again.

Steam rose from the hot springs, blurring the resort’s glittering lights until they looked like cheap frosting. It looked sweet enough to make her sick.

She took a deep breath. The icy air stabbed into her lungs like tiny needles, but the pain sharpened her mind.

From the moment she found out Quinton had cheated, she had never thought about staying in this marriage.

At first, she had planned to use the video on her phone as evidence and leverage when she negotiated the divorce with Quinton.

But now that Quinton had sent Xena away first, she had no choice but to take one desperate gamble.

Nadia sent the video from her phone, then turned the device off.

Cheers drifted over from the distance.

She looked toward the frozen lake not far away. A bonfire party was being held there, and several influencers were livestreaming to promote the resort.

She watched the bonfire burning in the crowd, its flames rising high enough to warp the air around it.

Perhaps because there were so many people there, and because of the bonfire, only a thin layer of ice covered the lake.

Nadia walked to the lakeside and stared at the sheet of ice in a daze.

Then, while she was still lost in thought, she felt someone shove her.

Before she could see who it was, she pitched forward onto the ice.

The instant the ice broke beneath her, a brutal chill swallowed her whole.

It felt as if thousands of needles had stabbed into her at once. The cold stripped the warmth from her body in a single breath, cutting through her skin and sinking deep into her bones.

She had nearly drowned once as a child and had feared water ever since. Even after her father hired a swimming coach for her, she had never been able to get past that fear.

And this was an icy lake.

She felt the air in her lungs being forced out little by little. Her heavy coat dragged at her like a weight, pulling her deeper beneath the surface.

At that moment, someone broke through the ice and swam toward her without hesitation.

The splash blurred Nadia’s vision. Then a hand caught her before she could sink any deeper.

Under the lake’s strange, shifting light, Nadia couldn’t make out the person’s face. But that hand held her firmly, shielding her with everything it had.

She stared into those vaguely familiar eyes, and for a moment, a memory from long ago seemed to overlap with the present.

Soon, she was pulled out of the water.

She heard someone calling her name, urgent and full of worry.

Only then did the tension in her chest ease.

Then she slipped into a long darkness.

*

When Nadia woke up, she was lying in bed.

She slowly opened her eyes and saw a ceiling she knew all too well.

It was the bedroom she shared with Quinton at the Zeller family estate.

She shifted slightly, and a sharp pain shot through her temple. The room spun before her eyes.

The bedroom door was shoved open with a loud bang.

Susan Jenkins walked in with two maids. The moment she entered, she started yelling at Nadia.

“This is all your fault!

“You threw yourself into the lake at the resort. Not only did you make the scandal look real, but you dragged Quin down with you too. His grandfather punished him, and now his chance of getting on the board is gone!

“You’re his wife. Instead of helping him cover this up, all you know how to do is threaten people with this kind of stunt.

“If you wanted to make a scene, you should have picked somewhere private, not a place crawling with reporters.

“You thought this would force the old man to step in for you, didn’t you? Don’t think I can’t see exactly what you were trying to do!”

Nadia was running a high fever, and her mind was a fog.

Facing her mother-in-law’s harsh, cutting accusations, she could only barely make sense of some of it.

It seemed the video she had sent out had already achieved the effect she wanted. Quinton and Xena’s affair was now known to everyone.

But her fall into the lake had somehow turned into a story that she had been unable to accept her husband’s cheating and had tried to take her own life.

She hadn’t expected an accident to reach the outcome she wanted by pure coincidence.

She had only suffered a little for it.

She lifted her head and looked at Susan.

If this had been before, she would never have talked back. She had never wanted to put Quinton in a difficult position.

But now, she was going to divorce Quinton. Naturally, she had no reason to tolerate anyone from the Zeller family anymore.

“The one who cheated was Quinton. What does that have to do with me? Did I force him to cheat? Did I force him to do something so shameful with another woman? He made a mistake. Grandpa punished him for it. He deserved every bit of it.”

Slap.

A sharp slap cut off the rest of Nadia’s words.

“What do you mean, deserved?”

Susan’s face twisted with fury. The way she looked at Nadia was full of contempt and disgust.

“Well, well. So a man cheating is a mistake now?”

She narrowed her eyes and looked down at Nadia on the floor.

That look of contempt made Nadia’s heart tighten sharply.

Sure enough, in the next moment, Susan’s words nailed Nadia to a pillar of shame.

“If men didn’t cheat, do you think that mother of yours would have become Mrs. Zimmer? And how else do you think you got to marry into the Zeller family?

“You still think you’re the mayor’s precious daughter, don’t you?

“After what your father did, after he killed so many people, there are still people in Harbor City cursing his name!

“Your mother was a mistress. She drove the man’s wife to her death!

“And the most shameless one of all is you!

“I always wondered why the two of you never had children despite being so young. Today I finally found out. It’s because you’re sick!

“You were ruined by someone, and now you can’t even let a man touch you!

“And Quin still kept covering it up for you all this time!

“If Quin went out looking for another woman, it was because you drove him to it!

“Think about how good Quin has been to you. Don’t you feel any guilt at all?

“Instead of helping Quin cover it up, you pulled this pathetic suicide stunt.

“You’re nothing but an ungrateful snake!”

Something exploded in Nadia’s head.

The past that had once left her in unbearable pain was ripped open by Susan, bloody and raw.

She didn’t know where the strength came from, but she forced herself up, grabbed the glass of water on the table, and hurled it at Susan.

She could endure Susan insulting her.

But she would never allow her parents to be humiliated like that.

For the first time in her life, Nadia rushed at Susan like a madwoman. Like a cornered animal pushed too far, she charged forward with everything she had, desperate to tear that vicious mouth apart.

That was when Quinton walked in.

The moment he entered, he saw his mother, usually so polished and elegant, with wet hair plastered to her face and her perfect makeup ruined.

And his wife, who had always been gentle and obedient, stood there with red eyes, looking as if she wanted to tear someone apart.