All Chapters of Contract Over: You're Free to Go: Chapter 71 - Chapter 80

30 minutes later, Silas was in his studio at the Meliere Art District. The room was dim, with the only light coming from the lamp on his worktable.Silas sat at the desk, sketching lines across the paper with a pencil. It hadn't been long since his release from the hospital, and his body was still weak from the massive blood loss. If he sat at the table for too long, he would even start sweating from the exertion.There was a thermal flask on the desk, filled with the warm soup that William insisted he had every day.A little while ago, he'd gone downstairs to buy a pack of sketch paper from the store around the corner. On the way back, a woman in high heels had abruptly twisted her ankle and fallen in his direction.Silas had instinctively reached out to catch her, saving her from getting a cut on her face.The young woman kept apologizing as she grabbed his coat to help steady herself. Red in the face, she quickly thanked him before rushing off.It'd been the most unassuming in

Teresa's hand continued to hang in the air, like a paused frame from a video.The cold wintry wind was rushing into the studio through the still-open door, rustling everything on the desk—even the problematic photos that had been swept into the trash can. One of them even got blown out and landed on the floor beside the trash can.Teresa was still maintaining her aggressive stance, but her mind had shut down."W-What did you say?"Her voice was shaky with a faint tremor she didn't notice. The armor of the indomitable CEO seemed to have cracked as a result of Silas' short sentence.But Silas didn't repeat himself right away, nor did he back down. He stood quietly in front of her, his eyes still slightly sunken from his recent illness, but his gaze steady as he looked at her.There was no trace of mockery or provocation in his tone as he flatly repeated himself, "I said, let's get a divorce."He then said it a third time, this time adding a new word. It wasn't just an impulsive

Silas let out a sigh, as if finally making peace with his old self. "I spent three years trying to warm up a heart of stone, but I forgot that some people are just born heartless. Or rather, your heart only has room for fame and fortune, not for someone as ordinary as me."Teresa stared fixedly into Silas' eyes. For the first time in this entire conversation, she set aside her preconceptions and seriously looked at the man who had been her husband for three years.In these three years, she'd seen many different looks in his eyes.There was the tender affection on their wedding day, when he'd stood on stage and made his vows. There was the quiet tolerance and helplessness illuminated by the lamp beside the couch that he left on whenever she came home late at night.There was also the disappointment, anger, and grievance she'd seen during their arguments in the past two weeks. But not once had she ever seen the look he had now.At that moment, the way Silas was looking at her was st

Silas wasn't deliberately ignoring Teresa. He was just in a state of single-minded focus that people got into when they were buried in mind-numbing administrative paperwork. That sort of focus cut a thousand times deeper than if he'd just turned around and cursed her out."Do you have to be like this?"Teresa heard her own voice echo in the walk-in closet. It was hoarse, strained, and carrying a faint tremor that she herself didn't want to acknowledge.Silas' hand, which had been pulling up the zipper on his suitcase, faltered. He turned around and looked at her standing a few steps away.She was still wearing her custom-tailored suit, and her shoulders were lifted in tight tension. She was like a hedgehog whose spikes bristled so it could hide how scared it really was.Gone was the aggressive, domineering edge she'd had in the studio earlier. In this one question, there was a rare flash of something else—an almost pathetic, blustering plea for him to stay."I took what's mine. I

That night, Teresa never returned to the master bedroom. She just sat there on the floor until dawn, her back against the cold marble island.The winter sunlight pierced through the huge floor-to-ceiling windows and flooded the living room, harsh and glaring.Teresa rolled her stiff neck. A few dry pops came from her joints. She braced a hand on the island and stood up. Her legs, kept in the same position for too long, had gone numb. It felt as if thousands of tiny ants were gnawing at them.On the plush rug by her feet, the three thick cards in her hand had already been crushed and creased from her grip. She looked down at her own hand, then glanced at the set of access keys tossed by the entryway. Suddenly, her lips curled up, and she let out a cold, deeply contemptuous laugh.The breakdown and tears from last night felt unbearably dramatic and ridiculous now, under the absolute rationality brought on by the rising sun."Look at you, thinking the world will stop spinning with