Chapter 11“Oh my darling, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to break the news in such an insensitive way”, Chloe was immediately horrified as Ashley started sobbing into her bent hand.“No No, it’s- it’s not how you- how you broke the news I’m just really weak emotionally right now”, Ashley stuttered through her tears. A knock sounded on the door of the room.Both Ashley and Chloe’s attention were zeroed in on it. Chloe furrowed her brows even more as she saw the full-view of the room in Ashley’s run to the door. Was Ashley with Rita? That was the only thing that would explain the grandeur of the room. “Who is it?”, Ashley said in a phony composed voice, trying desperately to make sure she didn’t look like she just had a mini-breakdown.“I’m ze butler madam”, a prim voice said in an accent that sounded heavily french. It would be the biggest cliche of all time if he happened to have a mustache and balding white head. She opened the door and lo and behold, he had balding white hair. Thankf

Chapter 13Three weeks laterIan and Ashley had settled into a very easy routine. It consisted of not seeing or speaking to each other in any capacity. Ashley didn’t know what she was hoping for when she was younger but she was sure this was not the kind of marriage. In her imaginations, the first three weeks of her marriage were not spent wondering if she could break free from the shackles. Even work had lost its flair.Even though he was a scoundrel that cheated without giving her any form of closure, Richard still had his positives. Generally at this time she would have received a nice check up text. It was already 12pm and it was so jarring for the first few days. If he wanted to hurt her, he was doing a damn good job with it. She received a call from Amelia about three days after the whole cheating debacle. The entire call was just Amelia using roundabout ways to say she had stolen yet another man from under her. Ashley nearsmashed her phone in. Rita had been hired for a Vegas j

Chapter 15Ashley closed the book and sighed wistfully. It was a book that definitely deserved at least ten rereads, as it clawed out emotions from her, emotions she hid deep down so she wouldn’t break into pieces.“Was it that good?”, Ian asked her from the hammock, raising an eyebrow.“Yes, it was”, She answered simply. She needed to stare at a wall and contemplate her existence after such a story.“Good enough to make you cry six times?”, Ian asked again, this time his words were laced with mockery. Ashley felt the bristling need to defend herself. “Yes it is. And what? I’m not allowed to cry anymore? You want to ban tears now?”, She asked acidically. Ian raised his hands in placation, he hated when people cried in front of him and she did that six times, he wasn’t in the wrong to tease a little. It was probably past midnight at this point. He should have been in bed to get at least two hours of sleep before work, but as it was, he would be sleep deprived yet again because of his

Chapter 17Ashley drove to work in her Chevrolet with a better mood than she had in three weeks. She bopped her head to an MKTO song as she drove over to her designated parking spot. There was a crumpled wad of paper in her passenger seat where Rita had forced her to write a list of pros and cons about staying married to Ian. “I'm in over my head, I’m out of my mind, thinking I was born in the wrong time!”, she belted out, turning into the university. Her new house being five minutes away was such a beautiful thing.The only pros about her marriage were the fact that she would be Rita’s sister-in-law, she could have all the luxury she wanted – live five minutes from work – and she could form connections with the rich to sponsor her important projects. However, the cons filled the page and overflowed to the back, all of which were just her nuances about Ian himself.She and Ian could only start working on it in three months time, so instead of a whole year, they could split in six mon

Chapter 19Yu Zhen stood beside Ian as the man drilled rules into the heads of the other members of the board. He owned the corporation at this point, so he was in line to make changes, many of which were tied to removing Mark from their list of partners. Yu Zhen never understood the old Hills man, how did it profit him to keep giving Mark resources when he used them to take investors and customers away from them?“The Agora villa is to be remodeled into a community park”, Ian said imperiously and closed the meeting. Yu Zhen would have snickered if he didn’t know how mad Ian was about the whole thing. Mava had taken to calling him an emotionless brute in a roundabout way in every interview, and Yu Zhen knew that Ian was only this way because he was emotionally constipated and he never learned how nor saw any reason to lay all his emotions on his sleeves. So needless to say, her words and the negative opinion of the public irked him gravely. Fortunately Ian had decided to wait for thei