Cancelled Engagement 6

‘Now she wants to claim that she is a good mother who is worried for her daughter,’ Jade Greeley’s eyes flashed with anger once again. Tears still rolling down her cheeks. Small sobs escaped her lips in muffled sounds.

After a few minutes, she calmed herself down. Then she breathed a deep breath before turning on the tap to wash her hands again. Afterwards, she cleaned her hands with a paper towel before trashing it. She glanced at herself in the mirror. Luckily her eyes were not red and her face was not so messy since she didn’t cry for long.

Fortunately, she did not wear any makeup. Else she would have wasted the efforts Meg Chu must have done to put it on her because of her disappointing family. Cleaning up the runny mascara would have also been too much of a hassle. Still she needed to wash her face.

She carefully removed her contact lenses and kept them. Lowering her head she turned on the tap. Taking a handful of water she rinsed her face paying attention to her eyes. After drying her face and putting her contacts back. Jade Greeley resolved that it was best to just leave the banquet.

There was no use staying. There was no way she was letting those people who never cared about her sell her off without a fight. She was not going to sit back and watch them treat her as they wished any longer. She had naively thought that they would come to accept her if they saw how much effort she put into her work. That was the only reason she chose to work in her father’s company, but no more of that. If they were never going to accept her then there was no need for her to be family with such people.

Everyone knew that such a marriage arrangement was only beneficial to both companies. No one would care about the persons in the marriage after selling them off. Never was she going to let them keep toying with her life. It was high time for her to make a clean break through from that toxic family of hers.

She wanted to leave as soon as possible but she recalled her purse and phone were with Meg Chu. Not that she was running away but she did not want to go back into the hall. She feared she would create a scene if she saw the faces of her sickening family.

“I will just get someone to call her,” she muttered, before walking to the door of the bathroom.

The minute her hand touched the door knob, she heard a distinct voice speak out.

“Mia, listen to me please. It’s not what you think,” a voice pleaded tenderly outside the bathroom.

Jade Greeley was never one to eavesdrop or listen to gossip, but if only she did not find the voice to be familiar. The familiarity of that voice brought her steps to a halt. She had a very good memory. All she needed was a simple glance at something and it would be etched in her memory. She had always had a knack for remembering people’s voices even if she heard them just once.

“Where did I hear this voice from?” she mumbled to herself. Then she opened the door and walked out of the bathroom.

In the corridor outside the bathroom, she saw a young couple talking. They seemed to be having some sort of argument. So much so that they did not even hear the door of the bathroom open and close. Though they were a little distant from the bathroom.

Jade Greeley did not know the reason as to why she felt the need to watch them. Still, she just continued observing them. The lady was putting on a simple blue floral print cocktail dress. Though the dress the young lady wore wasn’t so tight fitted, Jade Greeley was still able to notice the slight bulge of her stomach. She looked somewhat familiar to her.

The man on the other hand was in a black suit well fitted to his body. Though he had his back to her, jade Greeley could have vowed she knew him from somewhere.

“Will, H-how could you do this to me… to us,” the young lady cried out. Her hand moved to her stomach when she said, ‘to us.’ The young lady was at the brink of tears. Her eyelids were already soaked with tears that pooled at the corners of her eyes.

‘It seems she is pregnant. So that was a baby bump. Wait, Will… why does that sound familiar?’ Jade Greeley thought to herself. At that point, she quickly dismissed her previous thoughts, chiding herself for prying into others affairs. ‘Since when did I start eavesdropping on others,’ she mulled over her odd behaviour. So she wanted to leave but could not find the right moment to walk past them. The couple were arguing in the only path that she could use to exit the building.

Jade Greeley turned to the other end but that would only lead her back into the main hall and she didn’t want to go in that direction. Besides, there seemed to be a man exuding a business-like charisma receiving a phone call at that end. She felt if she went there, she would be engaged in a business conversation with him. She wasn’t really in the mood to talk to anyone. Not about business or anything else.

While she was lost in thought as to what to do in her situation, a phone chimed, drawing her attention back to the couple.

It was the man’s phone that chimed. He quickly glanced at the phone. He had received a message asking about his whereabouts. He had a conflicted look on his face after seeing the text. Did he really need to go on with the charade?

Jade Greeley glanced up at the couple. Seeing that they were still arguing, she thought about going back into the bathroom until they were done.

Seeing the man’s distracted look, the young lady, Mia gripped his arm as tightly as she could with her trembling body. Quaking out a few words in between sobs. “Then what about me? What am I to you? A plaything? A toy? I don’t care, you can’t go on with this even if I have to go in there and tell your parents about us, and that’s final,”

Her tears streaming down her eyelids like a waterfall as she continued to cry and pull at the man.

“Mia please believe me I don’t want to go on with this engagement! But I-I can’t refuse my parents, at least not now,” the man said with a gloomy tone.