chapter 3

“Are you determined to disgust me this thoroughly, Xie Chen?”

After years in business, I had survived sarcasm, insults, covert attacks, and open hostility. I could smile through any of it and settle the matter with ease.

I considered both my temper and my manners excellent.

But seeing my husband and his mistress approach me in matching outfits, I still needed every ounce of restraint not to scream.

Only then did Xie Chen notice that Lin Yue had followed him outside.

He turned to her. “Lin Yue, go.”

She refused. Instead, she put on an innocent act.

“You’re Ji Mo, aren’t you? Mr. Xie was just talking about you. Please don’t misunderstand. He and I happened to run into each other here.”

I would have preferred a misunderstanding, but she had come outside clutching a petal from the red roses, as if she were desperate to proclaim her claim on him.

Was she afraid I might miss the affair otherwise?

I closed my eyes for a moment. I did not want to speak to a mistress so devoid of morals, in case she dragged me down to her level.

I looked at Xie Chen. “You have one minute to get this wretched thing out of my sight.”

Lin Yue kept up her performance. “How can you behave like this, Ji Mo? You have no manners at all. You won’t even hear an explanation before condemning us.”

To hell with manners.

I laughed from sheer fury. “True. I could never compare to a leftover specimen who hid while the rest of humanity was evolving.”

Lin Yue fell silent.

“If your mouth is that idle, go lick a toilet. Stop yapping in front of me.”

Her face turned greener than the imaginary hat of betrayal on my head, but at last she left.

Once she was gone, Xie Chen and I went back into the restaurant.

I was hungry and had no interest in searching for somewhere else.

The score with a cheating bastard could wait. My stomach could not.

Years of drinking for the company had left me with chronic gastritis. If I went too long without food, the pain was immediate.

Xie Chen wanted to find another restaurant, probably because even he found this one awkward. I refused.

The restaurant gave every couple a red rose. By marvelous coincidence, the same waitress who had brought one to Xie Chen before now brought him another.

Her eyes went wide, her face openly asking, How is this even possible?

I watched him take the rose, put a bite of food into my mouth, and asked, “Do we still have any use for that?”

He said nothing.

After a long silence, he began, “Momo…”

I cut him off. “Don’t talk about anything disgusting while I’m eating. I might throw up. Have some consideration for the stomach I ruined by working myself to death for our company.”

Guilt flashed across his face.

The meal lasted two hours.

For those two hours, my mind raced through the practicalities of divorce.

I was neither sick in the head nor stupid. Forgive him once, and there would be a next time. We had no children, so this was my chance to make a clean break.

Our only serious financial entanglement was the company.

I had no stake in the parent company, but I was a shareholder in the branch.

We had signed no prenuptial agreement before registering our marriage, but modern marriage law was not going to hand me half his assets merely because I possessed one largely useless certificate.

While I considered the divorce, however, Xie Chen was thinking only of protecting the wedding seven days away.

“Momo, I don’t want a divorce.”

I stared at him. “Then what? The three of us live together? At the wedding, you hold my hand with your left and Lin Yue’s with your right?”

I paused. “I swear, having even a shred of morality makes me feel completely out of place among people like you.”

Again, he had no answer.

At last I asked, “When did you two start again? Before we registered our marriage, or afterward?”

It took him a long time to reply. “We didn’t start again.”

“Then what is this? Are you adding a little greenery to our marriage so we can have fresher air?”

Xie Chen had a temper. My words angered him, but he forced it down.

“Momo, you’re furious right now. Can we both take two days to calm down before we discuss this?”

I agreed.

Two days of calm might be useful. In my current state, anger could make me forget something that belonged to me and leave it to him by mistake.