Chapter 2

Chapter 2

I had just finished showering and was blow-drying my hair when more messages from Xiao Chen came in, one after another.

She said there had been an endorsement deal that was basically already settled, but Zhong Ni had swooped in and stolen it.

The drama I was joining tomorrow had also had Zhong Ni shoved into the cast.

They were calling her the second female lead, but her scenes were no fewer than mine.

To be fair, Liang Yan was a pretty decent sugar daddy.

When he was obsessed with someone, he was willing to lay every good thing he had at her feet.

I had enjoyed that kind of treatment once too.

Otherwise, I never could have gone from a complete nobody to an A-list starlet in just five short years.

Unfortunately, his sincerity never lasted long.

I had seen plenty of people fall for him for real, and none of them ended well.

Once, someone had cried as she asked me, “Bai Li, teach me. How do you put up with wave after wave of women by his side?”

I silently handed her a tissue. “Probably because I never expected him to love me sincerely in the first place.”

I had known since I was very young.

Sincerity was the least reliable thing in the world.

My mother had been tricked by so-called sincerity.

She spent her whole life as someone’s kept woman, yet still believed she was his true love.

She always told me that one day, my biological father would come pick her up in a Maybach.

That he would let us return to the family and acknowledge our ancestors.

When I was little, I was fooled by her too.

I waited wholeheartedly for my father to come get me.

Until I didn’t have enough money to pay my school fees, and my mother took me to kneel and beg my aunt for help.

Until I was too afraid to buy sanitary pads because I needed to save money, and could only steal toilet paper from the school bathrooms to use as padding.

Until someone accidentally knocked over the little Children’s Day cake the school had handed out to me, and I broke down sobbing.

Only then did I understand: sincerity couldn’t fill my stomach.

It couldn’t keep me alive either.

Sincerity was a joke.

But that wasn’t what I told Liang Yan.

I told him I had offered him my whole heart and loved him sincerely.

Because I loved him, I never asked him for anything and never made things difficult for him.

Because I loved him, as long as I could stay by his side, I was willing to tolerate all the pretty little things surrounding him.

Of course, that wasn’t exactly a lie.

I loved Liang Yan’s money. I loved his resources.

I loved the starlit road he paved for me, the way he let me rise straight to the top.

Mm. How was that not love?

Liang Yan thoroughly enjoyed the feeling of being adored by me so completely.

I thought he was a little pitiful.

If he had ever truly been loved by someone, or had ever truly loved someone himself,

he would have seen at a glance that this burning love of mine was an act.

When you truly love someone, how could you possibly tolerate a third person appearing between you?

Maybe it was because my acting was too good.

All these years, people came and went by his side, but he never replaced me.

But now, I wanted to replace him.