Chapter 2

“Sir, could you please send one more cable car? I’ll pay double the fare.”

The man kept his head down and played his game. He barely gave me a glance.

“You could pay ten times the fare, and it still wouldn’t happen.

“Mr. Smith has booked the entire Cloudtop Mountain from this morning until sunrise tomorrow. He wants to make his girlfriend happy. What good is your money going to do?”

I hurried to explain.

“I’m Mr. Smith’s girlfriend. He booked the whole place for my birthday—”

“You? His girlfriend?”

I froze as he opened a notification in the staff group chat.

[Connor Smith, CEO of Smith Corp, has booked the entire venue for 24 hours to celebrate Ms. Quilla Langford’s successful acquisition of the island development project. All staff must remain on standby and provide their full support to Mr. Smith and Ms. Langford!]

The screenshot showed that Connor had booked the entire mountain, along with the whole tourist cable car route.

The booking fee was three million.

He had done it all for Quilla.

The island development project that Connor had spent a month away negotiating had also been credited to Quilla.

The staff member gave me a scornful look and went back to his game.

“I saw who was in that cable car just now. It was Ms. Langford. How dare you claim to be his girlfriend?”

He slid the glass window shut in my face.

Cold sweat had soaked through the back of my shirt.

It was my birthday, yet Connor had booked the entire mountain for Quilla.

What was I, then?

…

The temperature kept dropping.

I sneezed and hunched my shoulders as I called Connor.

When he answered, Quilla was chattering excitedly.

“I can see the stars! Is that the Big Dipper?”

Connor laughed. “If you say it is, then it is.”

Then, his tone changed.

“What is it?”

I gripped my phone tightly.

“Connor, I’ve caught a cold. Could you ask them to send another cable car to take me down the mountain?”

There was a brief silence on the other end.

Then, I heard Quilla sigh.

“Ms. Westbrook, Cloudtop Mountain is already closed for the night.

“Mr. Smith even asked the patrol team to stay an extra hour until 9 p.m. just for you. It doesn’t seem fair to ask them to run another cable car at this hour.”

Cold sweat trickled down my back as I shivered.

“There’s still someone on duty at the ticket booth.”

“Zara, don’t push it.”

Connor cut me off coldly.

“Either walk down by yourself or wait for the patrol team to take you down. Stop being so dramatic. You can’t expect the staff to work overtime for you.”

I explained, “They told me you booked the entire place. I’m too weak to walk all the way down—”

“So, you think booking the place gives you the right to bully ordinary people?”

Quilla spoke up in a gentle voice.

“Mr. Smith, please don’t be so harsh on Ms. Westbrook. She just doesn’t understand how hard ordinary workers have to work.”

Connor snorted.

“That’s exactly why I can’t keep indulging her.

“If she marries into the Smith family someday, who knows how she’ll throw her weight around and bring shame on our family?”

Then, he hung up.

My throat grew itchier by the second. I bent forward and coughed more than a dozen times in a row. I could not stop.

The final cough was so violent that my belly suddenly clenched.

Panicking, I grabbed the ticket booth for support and tried to reach a bench so I could sit down for a while.

But my feet were so swollen that I stumbled before I could sit. I nearly fell face-first onto the ground.

Once I managed to steady myself on the bench, the cold wind hit my arm. Only then did I notice a cut on it.

As I used my jacket to wipe away the blood, one thought crossed my mind.

At least I had not hit my belly.

The moment I thought that, tears spilled from my eyes.

When I first learned that I was pregnant, Connor was nothing like that.

He felt terrible that I could not keep any food down, so he tried all kinds of recipes to find something I could eat.

When he learned that pregnancy could cause stretch marks, he even asked someone to buy unscented coconut oil for me. Every night, he personally rubbed it onto my skin.

Back then, he used to tell me, “Even if you get stretch marks, you’ll still be the most beautiful and wonderful woman in the world, Zara.”

But when I was three months pregnant, he hired an assistant.

Quilla was young and energetic. The smell of cooking oil never made her gag, and even plain water did not make her feel sick.