“I’m telling you, even after we’re married, Chloe will live with us. And after marriage, our assets will be divided with her—half.”
Seeing me freeze, Daniel softened his tone as if to comfort me.
“Emma, that wedding was nothing but a charade. I’d never let you marry anyone else. But you hurt Chloe, so this was just a lesson for you.”
“Now go prepare. Make the real wedding lively enough so Chloe won’t get bored.”
I looked at the man who once swore he’d love only me for life, and it felt like a thunderbolt splitting through me. My head rang hollow.
I had thought love was a story between two people. Turns out, not all love is.
I wanted to turn away with dignity, but my tears betrayed me, exposing my humiliation.
“Daniel, let’s call off the engagement.”
The man who was coaxing Chloe with cotton candy suddenly snapped his head up, staring at me in disbelief.
“What did you say?”
“Let’s end it.”
As those words left my lips, the suffocating pressure in my chest eased, and my expression steadied.
Daniel’s hand holding the candy stiffened for a moment, then relaxed. A mocking smile spread across his face.
“End the engagement? And what right do you have to say that? Does the Carter Group no longer want to survive?”
“And besides me, who else in the circle would dare marry you now? Emma, your reputation is already rotten beyond repair.”
“Or do you, the grand heiress of the Carter family, really intend to marry that crippled security guard?”
The calm I had found cracked into a stab of pain. So he knew—he knew everything his fiancée had suffered. Yet for the sake of venting Chloe’s anger, for the sake of forcing me and my family to accept his twisted bond with her, he had condoned it all.
Whatever affection we once shared evaporated into nothing.
The engagement ring on my finger suddenly felt unbearably heavy. In silence, I slid it off and held it out to him.
That diamond was one we had traveled to the source to choose together. Its design had come after a hundred failed sketches. We had even learned from a master jeweler for a year to set the stone ourselves.
He said a ring filled with such love would surely bind us until death, and he made me promise never to take it off.
But now, I no longer wanted it.
Daniel frowned, hesitating to accept it. When I didn’t withdraw my hand, irritation flashed in his eyes. He slapped the ring away.
I stared at him in shock, but he only sneered.