Chapter 1 She Was Set Up
So noisy!
On the large bed, Lucia Webb felt a dull pain all over her body and a tearing pain between her legs …
Suddenly, the door clicked open. People standing in the doorway swarmed in and focused their cameras on Lucia who was in a trance.
“Miss Webb, Mr. Taylor threw you a wedding anniversary party yesterday, but you were the only one absent from it. Why?”
“Miss Webb, may I ask what has happened to you over the last twenty hours since Mr. Taylor called the police?”
Call the police? Party? Wedding anniversary?
Lucia had a splitting headache and a series of questions from reporters brought back memories of last night…
She didn’t have time to think it twice. Her blurred vision gradually turned clear. As her gaze swept across the strangers surrounding the bed and settled on Jacob Taylor’s face, she got so nervous that she forgot to breathe.
It was their first wedding anniversary last night…
Lucia struggled to sit up, the quilt slipped from her body, and then the red marks on her pretty skin were shown, indicating she had sex last night…
The reporters in front of her came to boo. Lucia cast down her eyes, saw numerous red marks on her skin, and gasped.
She hurriedly gripped Jacob’s wrist, “It’s not like what you think!”
“Enough!” Jacob snapped, with his eyebrows knitted, and mixed emotions in his eyes. He took two steps forward and threw his jacket at Lucia’s face. “Go home!”
The farce ended, but the news that the son-in-law of Webbex Group got cuckolded soon spread through the town.
Lucia curled up on the sofa, distracted. The spacious home was empty, just like the huge hole in her heart that was gouged out by a knife.
“Click”. The door opened.
Not yet recovered from her stupefaction, she mechanically looked up at Jacob who wore the neat suit, and walked in.
Tears welled up in her eyes, and she ran to tug at his sleeve like crazy, “Jacob, trust me, OK? I … just want to give you a big surprise, really …”
Yesterday, Poppy made a suggestion, saying that she reserved a room for her and Jacob. Lucia did not doubt it but drank a glass of water prepared by Poppy in the room, and her memory after that was completely gone.
Jacob looked at her, his cold eyes dark with unfathomable emotions, “I’m too stupid! You cheated on me but I got no idea about it. Now I become the laughing stock of the town. Hehe–”
He motioned to the man beside him to walk over, and turned around impatiently, seemingly reluctant to talk with Lucia anymore.
Lucia felt a sense of foreboding when looking at the expressionless man who wore a formal suit with the briefcase under his arm.
“Miss Webb, I am Kane Fletcher. Here are the drafted divorce papers.”
Seeing that Lucia did not take them, Kane put the divorce papers on the corner of the coffee table and indifferently added, “Webbex Group’s former chairman made a will before his death, if one of you cheats, twenty percent of the company shares will be transferred to the injured party, as the divorce agreement has clearly stated.”
Jacob looked even colder, “Lucia, what’s the point of hanging on without any sense of shame? Sign the papers and we don’t owe each other anything!”
For a moment, Lucia only felt that the man standing upright in front of her was incomparably strange. She glanced at the divorce agreement. He had signed it, and it seemed that he couldn’t wait to have a clean break with her.
Lucia couldn’t feel more heartbroken, “Jacob! I was set up, Webbex Group is the property my father left me, and I’m not giving it to you! I don’t even know what happened. I will call the police and let them investigate!”
Jacob’s eyes were dark with an unfathomable emotion, and then he let out a snort of laughter, “Lucia, you even have the cheek to have the police investigate. Aren’t you ashamed of what you did? If you’re smart, sign the agreement, or else …”
He paused, a wisp of ruthlessness in his eyes, and then he calmly took out a palm-sized and flat wooden box.
He slowly opened it and bent down to place the small wooden box on the ground, his triumphant gaze gradually becoming clearer, “Didn’t you say this was a relic your mother left you?”
Smiling, he lifted his foot and was about to tread on it.
“No! No!” Lucia screamed like crazy, her pupils suddenly dilating in extreme fear.
Mr. Fletcher immediately stopped Lucia who got out of control, and Jacob already stepped on the box. If he exerted slight force, the antique ring would be in pieces, “Be a good girl and sign it!”
“All right. I’ll do it,” she responded hurriedly.
At this point, she felt like she had fallen into a trap set by Jacob.
However, she had no other choice.
Her hand holding the pen was shaking. He signed his name at the bottom of the page so neatly and carefully that she could even imagine how composed he was at that time.
Tears moistened her handwriting, as she numbly scrawled her name letter by letter.
As Jacob stared fixedly, an expression of ecstasy appeared on his face, but he soon concealed it. Then he jerked the divorce agreement away the moment she finished the signature.
“Pack up and get out right now!” Then he kicked the small wooden box away, impatiently walked towards the door, and took out the cell phone from his pocket. Lucia could vaguely hear his soft and gentle voice when he called, “It’s all taken care of. I’ll come to you right away.”
In no mood to care about anything else, Lucia hurriedly crawled over to pick up the small wooden box, the ring has been broken into pieces. She sunk down to the ground. It was so silent that she could hear nothing but the sound of her heart breaking into pieces.
Judging from the gentle look when Jacob answered the phone, Lucia guessed Jacob had been waiting for this day for a long time.
Lucia looked at the broken ring in the wooden box with a self-mocking smile. The past seemed to become a mist. After squatting for a long while, she stumbled upstairs. Next to the study was the wine storehouse, where her father had stored a lot of expensive brandy and whiskey.
She couldn’t stop tears from streaming down, and thus she filled the glass with the hard liquor and pushed it against her lips after shaking it.Contentt bel0ngs to N0ve/lDrâ/ma.O(r)g!
It burned her throat as it went down.
But she did not even frown. She drank glass after glass of wine like drinking water…
How much did she drink?
Lucia had no idea about it. When she woke up, she was sprawling on the floor. As she stretched her arms, she knocked over the empty bottle on the floor.
The room was shrouded in darkness in the shade of evening. She climbed up, stumbled over to the window, and pulled the curtain to let the brimming light in.
Outside the window was a river with lights like stars on its banks.
It was time to leave…
Holding back the soreness in her nose, she moved to unscrew the door handle, but a subdued moan came to her ears, “Jacob … hiss … ah …”
In a flash, the feeling of getting drunk was all gone. Lucia stiffened and followed the voice source. What came into her view was like a bolt from the blue.
It was Poppy Powell!