登入My boyfriend's childhood friend had set her sights on the one keepsake my mother left me. She wheedled and needled at me for weeks, but I never gave in. A few months later, my boyfriend came to me again, saying his business had failed and left him buried in loan-shark debt. He said that if he couldn't pay it back, the collectors would cut off his limbs. To help him settle it, I handed over every cent I'd saved, even my mother's bracelet. That same night, while I was working at the club, I overheard a conversation in one of the private booths. "Eric, if it weren't for Donna's idea to have the rest of us play loan sharks and put on this whole act with you, there's no way your girlfriend would've handed over that bracelet she'd been hiding away." Eric laughed, pleased with himself, and downed the wine in his glass. "It's just a busted old bracelet. Donna wants it, so of course I'll find a way to get it for her. "Now help me think of something else. What's the next test for Liv?" So this was it. Everything I'd given up for him over five years of loving him had just been one long test. His so-called loan-shark debt had only ever been a scheme he'd written and directed himself. I turned and walked out of the club, and called the wealthiest man in the country, the father I'd been too stubborn to speak to for years. "Dad, I lost. I'll marry the man you picked out for me."
查看更多"Liv!"Eric stumbled toward me and grabbed my hand. "I've spent this entire month trying everything I could to see you again. I never thought the next time I saw you, it would be at your wedding."Just a month apart, and seeing Eric again barely stirred anything in me at all. I pulled my hand free, my face calm. "Why are you here?"Eric's face was tight with urgency. "Liv, you can't marry Jett! Don't you love me? Liv, don't you love me anymore?"I gave a cold laugh. "That's right. I don't."From the moment I found out he'd lied to me, from the moment I learned just how deliberately he'd schemed to swindle every cent I had, every single one of his little games, every "test," had done nothing but hold me over the fire. How was I supposed to love someone like that? I had someone now who loved me far more than he ever had, and I'd gone back to the life that had always been mine. As for the pocket change Eric had hoarded away, always guarding it from me, it wasn't even worth a second
My father, who'd claimed over the phone to still be overseas, was sitting in the living room waiting for me. Five years apart, and my perpetually blunt, awkward father seemed to have aged quite a bit. He'd always been like this, putting on the air of an elder in front of me, acting like everything he did was for my own good.I'd expected him to sit me down and lecture me with all his usual hard-won wisdom. Instead, the first thing out of his mouth was, "So, any regrets?"It came out flat, almost offhand, but it still made my nose sting."Sir, the two of you haven't seen each other in five years. You must have a lot to catch up on. Maybe I should..." Jett clearly wanted to give my father and me a chance to reconcile.He'd always known that after my mother passed, my father had poured every ounce of love he had left into me. My father just wasn't good at showing it. In his heart, though, my mother and I had always come first. He'd never once been able to say the right thing when
Being played for a fool for five years hadn't left me with any regrets. I'd been young and reckless, and I always knew I'd have to pay for my own mistakes eventually. Five years of suffering had taught me my lesson.The one thing I truly regretted was never letting my father finish telling me who he'd picked out for me.Eric, hit with two shocks at once, had no idea how to react anymore. First, that I'd landed a fiance the second I said we were over. Second, Donna. He'd genuinely believed she was the pampered heiress of the Gibbs family, and now the head of that family had just flatly denied it in front of everyone. "Liv, are you really the daughter of the wealthiest family in the country? Then why did you pretend to be poor and lie to me?"His question left me speechless for a second. Pretending to be poor? Who exactly had been doing that? When I ran away from home, my father had frozen every one of my bank cards to force me back. I hadn't been able to scrape together a sin
A deep, urgent male voice rang out, and the hand gripping my hair let go at once.Donna stumbled back two steps, looking almost afraid of the man now standing there. Even Eric's face went slack with alarm. "J-Jett..."I looked at the man. His face struck me as both familiar and strange all at once. I didn't even have to try hard to place him, and a rough outline of memory rose up in my mind: the boy who used to bring me dolls when I was little, who'd once dropped a giant grasshopper on my head just to see me scream, the same person who'd vanished from my life one day without a word."B-Big brother, I..." Donna started, her fear plain in her hands. Still stained with wine, they trembled as she wiped them on her skirt without seeming to notice, as if trying to scrub away the evidence of what she'd done to me.The man strode over, shrugged off his suit jacket, and draped it over my shoulders as he helped me up. I stared at the small, dark mole beside the bridge of his straight nose,
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