After silently observing Ashton for a while, I turned around and went upstairs.
I decided to let him have some space. Some things could be discussed civilly, but there were some other things that couldn’t.
In the bedroom, I stripped and entered the shower, the cold water chilled me to the bone.
Since when did Ashton and I start walking on eggshells caring for each other’s feelings?
I had yet to finish watching the content on the USB drive that Camelia had given me. I had been emotionally unstable and mentally weak during that one month, and had spent every day with Marcus. Developing a physically intimate relationship with him was unavoidable.
There were some scenes in the USB drive that looked unfamiliar even to me when I watched them, so I couldn’t imagine how they must have made Ashton felt. His suppressed anger for the past few days must have been because of the video.
Emery told me that, knowing Marcus, whatever he told Ashton at the wedding ceremony could not have been good news.
Deep in his heart, Ashton was harboring resentment towards me. Resentment that he didn’t want to discuss with me.
I was drained of all energy after my shower, leaning my weight against the wall as I made my way to the bed with much difficulty.
Maybe this would all go away with a good night’s rest.
Just as I’d expected, Ashton never returned to the bedroom. I guessed that he didn’t want to affect me with his negative emotions, and the last thing he wanted was to start another argument with me.
One argument was more than enough.
The next day.
I descended the staircase. Summer had been sent to school, so only Flora, the housekeeper, was at home.
Flora approached me as soon as I came downstairs. “Mrs. Fuller, Mr. Fuller left not too long ago. He told me to prepare soup for you because he said you like it. Come have a taste.”
She served me a bowl of soup, then smiled warmly as she gave me a note. “Mr. Fuller didn’t want to wake you, so he asked me to pass this to you.”
The note read: Make sure you eat your meals. Wait for me to get home tonight so we can eat dinner together.
As if everything was perfectly fine. Except we both knew the truth: we were lost, blindly stumbling around as we tried to figure out a solution to this situation.
I nodded and smiled politely back at Flora, thanking her for the food as I sat down to eat.
Unfortunately, I had no appetite for breakfast and was starting to feel nauseous after a few spoonfuls.
I forced the soup down, but ended up throwing up in a toilet half an hour later.
K City was always freezingly cold during this time of the year, and going out was not a viable option.
I headed for the study to take a proper look at the sandalwood box that Grandma had left me. If Emery said that it couldn’t be unlocked with a key, then what could it be unlocked with?
The working and design didn’t seem to be of modern work. It resembled closer to a woodworker’s handiwork from the sixties.
I grew impatient after fiddling with the box for a while but to no avail, resorting to picking up a random book in the study to read.
My gaze accidentally swept over some documents left out on Ashton’s desk. I had seen them a few times before; they were all acquisition contracts of White Corporation.
I drifted over to the table and picked the documents up, flipping through them. Mergers and takeovers were very common in the business world.
Regardless of how this case was going to end, I could not get myself involved in it.
Sighing slightly, I closed the file and was about to keep it in the drawer when an album in the drawer caught my eyes.
I was a little stunned. I’d thought that Ashton had kept all our pictures from the past in his villa in J City, but apparently, he’d brought some here with him.
Guess it wouldn’t hurt to take a look and walk down memory lane.
I lifted the photo album out of the drawer, noticing that there had been a few baby pictures hidden under the album.
The baby looked familiar to me. Even though I had never seen what he looked like right after birth, I had seen him in my dreams.
There was a purple bruise on his forehead, caused from his desperation to meet me.
The infant couldn’t open his eyes and his skin was red and wrinkly, but his features looked extremely similar to that of Ashton’s.
How does Ashton have these photos? When Marcus had asked me if I wanted to see the baby, I had refused. I was scared that if I saw him, I would never be able to forgive myself for the rest of my life.
The sudden sight of him made me feel like a knife had been stabbed through my chest, slowly twisting in the wound.
I put everything back where I’d found them. There was no way that these photos belonged to Ashton, which left only one other possibility—Marcus had given them to him.
Ashton was suddenly hellbent on wiping Marcus out of the market because he had said something to deliberately provoke him.
I returned to the bedroom, curling up under the covers as my mind wandered.
Marcus had asked me why I insisted on staying with Ashton. I didn’t know who else I could be with other than Ashton.
We were all ready to welcome love and happiness into our lives when we were born.
But then life made us go through so many twists and turns, and we forgot what we used to dream of, merely clinging on to dear life in order to survive.
After not getting much rest last night, I drifted off to sleep under the covers. When I woke up, it was already dark outside.
There was a knocking on the door. I got up to open it, and Flora greeted me. “Are you feeling hungry, Mrs. Fuller? Would you like to go downstairs for a snack?”
Reflexively shaking my head due to my lack of appetite, I suddenly recalled that Ashton mentioned that he wanted to eat dinner together. “I’ll wait for Mr. Ashton to come back and then eat with him.”
Flora cleared her throat uncomfortably. “Mr. Fuller is already home. He’s been waiting in the living room and smoking for a while now. Would you like to go and check on him?”
