Chapter 2: Dianna's Visit

Dianna’s Visit.

“You can keep the house.”

“You can keep working here as the Director for Clinical Research.”

Serena stared blankly at the divorce papers in her hands while Nathaniel explained the agreement.

“You can keep the money in our joint account.”

Nathaniel calmly resumed, “My mother did not want to leave you any alimony, but I have prepared a separate check for the sake of our six-year relationship. My mother doesn’t have to know.”

“Don’t contest the divorce. I don’t have time to deal with it,” he firmly warned. “I will have my lawyers file them tomorrow, and after the cooling-off period, we can get our certificates together.”

She did not say a word, but reached out for the check, her hands shaking. She looked down at it, thinking, ‘So all those lies, the six years we had built together, the deception, were worth nothing more than five million dollars.’

The Thornes were now worth twenty billion dollars. Kline BioSolutions was worth ten billion dollars, but she was only worth five million dollars in Nathaniel’s eyes.

Serena couldn’t stop herself from looking at Nathaniel again.

He sat there, calm and distant, his strong jaw clenched, and the faint stubble on his face made him look even colder. His gray-blue eyes, once warm and gentle, now looked sharp and unfeeling. Even his perfectly shaped features, the straight nose, the firm lips, felt unfamiliar, like he had become someone else entirely.

She still couldn’t believe this was the same man she fell in love with, the same one who had doted on her for six long years. Every bit of love she once saw in him was gone, replaced by an emptiness that made her chest hurt.

Her heart broke, but anger began to rise with it. How could he look at her like that, as if she meant nothing at all?

“Sign it,” he said. “And you can leave after. I will give you another week of bereavement leave, but no more than that. You have been out of work much longer than you were supposed to.”

Serena, “???”

Still, she said nothing, but inside, she was burning with rage.

She signed every page of the divorce papers, her hands cold and sweating. After that, she stood up, took her copy of the agreement, and glanced at the man she had loved for so long.

He didn’t look at her. He was simply unbothered.

Serena turned on her heel with the check in hand. But just as she made it halfway through his office, the control she’d been clinging to finally broke.

Her hands clenched on the check. She walked back to Nathaniel, tore the check into pieces, and threw them into his face! She said, “You can keep your mother’s pity!”

She saw him startled, stunned by her sudden courage, but she did not give him a chance to speak. Instead, she slapped him hard!

“I hate you!” she shouted. “If I’d known you’d only use me, I would have wished I was never born!”

Finally, she walked away.

“Serena?”

“Serena! Get back here!”

She heard him, but there was nothing else left to say.

What for?

***

“That asshole! That scumbag! That jerk!” Alice screamed. “How could he be so heartless?”

Instead of heading home, Serena went straight to see her best friend at her office. There, she cried out all her pain.

“But I don’t get it,” Alice said, slamming her back against the chair. “I could have sworn he was so much in love with you.”

At that point, even her friend cried with her. “He can’t be such a perfect actor. Can he?”

“Apparently, it was all a lie,” Serena said, wiping her tears.

“Maybe something changed. It has to be,” Alice tried to find a logical reason for everything. “What if it’s really that actress, Vanessa Holt? Haven’t they been spending time together?”

“I don’t know,” Serena clenched her jaw. “Even my parents used to take Vanessa out for dinners, right after she became the ambassador of the company.”

“Nathan’s attack on my father was real,” Serena said. “You should’ve seen the hate in his eyes when they arrested Victor. I guess, he hates me just as much.”

Serena remembered it vividly. Her father was announcing his retirement to the board when the police entered the room with a warrant. In an instant, his pride at trusting the company to his son-in-law vanished, replaced by sheer horror.

That was when the layers of Nathaniel’s motives began to unravel. Serena couldn’t accept it at first. She was still in denial up to earlier that day. But now, everything was clear.

It was like what he said.

He never loved her.

“Serena, have you ever confessed to Nathan how Victor treated you, especially when you were a child?” Alice asked, sniffing her tears away. “Maybe he will see things differently.”

“And what will I get, Alice? Pity from him?” Serena shook her head. “That’s not what I want. I want the old Nathaniel, the one who seemed to love me, but since all of that was a lie, then there’s no point telling him.”

“But…” Alice frowned. Among Serena’s friends, Alice was the only one who knew every detail of her hardship as a daughter of the Klines.

“No. There is no point anymore,” Serena insisted.

***

The next day, Serena and Alice went to her marital home.

Serena needed to pack. She couldn’t live in a house filled with memories between her and Nathaniel. Just as she and Alice arrived, she spotted her mother’s loyal assistant, Dianna.

She was waiting outside the gates of the villa.

After rolling down the window of her car, Serena asked, “Dianna?”

Dianna was a woman in her late forties. The last time they met was at her mother’s funeral.

“Serena, can I have a moment with you?” Dianna asked.

Later, the two spoke outside the house. Dianna did not bother to go inside.

“I remember your friend. I’m glad you have her to talk to,” Dianna glanced at Alice, who was standing by the door.

“Serena, I know I never treated you well,” Dianna began. “But what Nathan did was terrible. He never should have included you in his revenge.”

“But this is the least that I can do for you,” Dianna said, hesitating. “I have a suspicion.”

“What suspicion?” Serena asked.

Instead of saying it out loud, Diana whispered into Serena’s ear.

Instantly, her skin crawled.

What Serena learned broke her heart again, but… it also made sense.