"I just praised you for being sensible, and now you're being difficult again."
I opened my mouth. The bitterness in my throat, as I stood, twisted into a smile. Then I slipped a diamond bracelet off my wrist and clasped it around Lily's.
"Sorry. I was impulsive. Consider the tea served. This is a welcome gift—every sister who enters this house gets one. When you deliver the baby, I'll give you a red envelope too."
I looked calmly at Alex. "Honey, may I go upstairs to change?"
He froze. Seeing me so agreeable, he smiled in satisfaction, bent down, and pressed a hard kiss to my injured forehead.
"That's my good wife."
The pain made my fingers curl and my scalp go numb, but I didn't pull away. I looked at him with a happy face and smiled.
Mid-conversation, Sophie Turner called. He finally released me to answer. I turned to head upstairs—and Lily, ignored off to the side, dropped her fragile act and blocked my path. She deliberately thrust out her barely-there belly, staring at me like a predator sizing up prey.
"Mrs. Fleming, what's with the generous act in front of my man? You already saw what I left for you, didn't you?"
"Once I have this baby, your position as wife won't be so secure."
I laughed, unbothered by her rudeness.
"You deliberately put it under my pillow. Of course I could see it."
That bikini with water stains on it, and the body-shaped outlines pressed out on the glass—there was no way to miss them.
The fresh red marks on Lily's neck were deliberately shown through the collar that was never properly buttoned.
She was coming to provoke me.
Compared to the previous seven mistresses, Lily was more high-profile. Pretty features, an innocent purity about her, plus the ambition in her eyes that she didn't bother to hide.
It looked very familiar.
Eight years ago when I first met Alex, I was just like this.
Fearless. Reckless. And in the end, like a moth flying into the flame.
Thinking of the past, my heart was full of sarcasm.
I reached out and patted the back of her hand, speaking earnestly: "For the sake of us both being women, and for the sake of you having a child, I'll give you one sincere piece of advice."
"If I were you, I wouldn't choose such sexy underwear."
"He likes you because he happens to be missing someone innocent by his side. If you want to show off sexiness, there are plenty of women sexier than you."