Chapter 4

Briar's young voice wasn't loud, but it hit Ophelia's chest like a sledgehammer.

The smile on Ophelia's face froze instantly, and her breathing stopped for a moment.

She tried hard to keep her voice calm, gently coaxing: "Briar must have remembered wrong, right? Wasn't it Katya's dad who picked her up yesterday?"

Briar tilted her head, thought carefully for a moment, then shook her head with certainty: "No, yesterday it was a man wearing gold-rimmed glasses who picked up Katya. He even brought her rainbow candy. Katya said he was her dad's employee."

Gold-rimmed glasses? Matthew's employee?

A face instantly flashed through Ophelia's mind—Matthew's personal assistant.

"Ophelia! The water's boiling, what are you standing there spacing out for?" Ainsley's loud voice came from the kitchen.

Ophelia snapped back to reality and stood up hastily, feeling her legs go weak.

"Coming." She responded, turning toward the kitchen, her fingertips already ice cold.

The entire evening, Ophelia didn't know how she got through it.

Ainsley went on and on at the dinner table about how hard Matthew worked. Matthew, as always, played the role of perfect husband and perfect father. He wiped Katya's mouth, served Ainsley soup, and didn't forget to put Ophelia's favorite cod fish in her bowl.

Looking at this gentle and caring Matthew in front of her, Ophelia just felt sick to her stomach.

He was lying.

From beginning to end, he had been lying.

The next morning, Harmony City's rainy season arrived as expected. The sky was gloomy, with fine drizzle falling.

After Matthew left, Ophelia immediately drove to Katya's kindergarten.

She didn't go directly to confront the teacher, but went straight to the office of the principal, Violet Cooper.

"Mrs. Moore, why are you here at this time? Is something wrong with Katya?" Violet was a bit surprised.

Ophelia took a deep breath, her eyes reddening at just the right moment, looking anxious: "Ms. Cooper, I'm so sorry to bother you. A custom platinum teddy bear charm on Katya's backpack is missing. It was left to her by her grandmother before she passed away. It means a lot to our family. Katya cried all night. I want to check yesterday's school gate surveillance to see if it fell at the entrance."

Hearing it was a precious keepsake, Violet's expression immediately became serious. Without much hesitation, she called security to pull up yesterday afternoon's pick-up time surveillance footage.

The surveillance footage played at a fast speed on the screen. Ophelia stared at it intently, cold sweat seeping from her palms.

"Stop, right here." 

The image was enlarged.

A black Mercedes G-Wagon stopped on the side road by the school gate. The car door opened, and a man in a suit stepped out, wearing gold-rimmed glasses, holding a black umbrella as he walked into the teacher's line of sight.

That was James Smith, Matthew's assistant.

A few minutes later, James walked out of the school gate holding Katya's hand. They got into the Mercedes together and drove away.

From start to finish, Matthew never appeared.

"Mrs. Moore, did you see where the charm fell?" Violet asked with concern.

Ophelia stared at James's face frozen on the screen, her nails nearly digging into her palms.

She forced out a smile that looked worse than crying: "Maybe it fell somewhere else. I'll go back and look again. Thank you, Ms. Cooper."

Walking out of the kindergarten, the cold wind mixed with rain hit her face, but Ophelia didn't notice.

She got in the car and collapsed weakly over the steering wheel.

If James picked up Katya, then Lucy's message saying "Katya's father has already apologized to me" made sense.

Matthew only needed to call Lucy or have James pass along the message to perfectly create the illusion that he had been to the school.

He went to such lengths to weave this huge lie, even dragging four-year-old Katya into deceiving her. What was he trying to hide?

Just as Ophelia's mind was in chaos, her phone on the passenger seat suddenly vibrated several times.

She picked up the phone. It was a WhatsApp message from Scarlett.

[Ophelia! Look at this photo!]

[This time I definitely didn't see wrong! I got a side profile!]

[He really is cheating! He even took his mistress to buy jewelry!]

Ophelia opened the image, her pupils contracting sharply.

The background was the famous Cartier jewelry store entrance in the city center.

This time, it wasn't a blurry back view. The man in the photo wore a well-tailored black trench coat, turning his head to talk to the woman beside him.

That distinct side profile, that high nose bridge, and jawline—Ophelia had been looking at it for five years and could trace it with her eyes closed. It was definitely Matthew.

Matthew's hand rested loosely on the woman's waist, the gesture intimate and protective.

However, due to the angle, the woman's face was completely blocked by Matthew's broad shoulders and the glass door's reflection. Only thick, wavy, long hair and a high-quality beige cashmere coat were visible.

Ophelia stared at the hand around the woman's waist in the photo—the hand that usually only embraced her and Katya.

A strong wave of nausea surged up. She pushed open the car door and leaned against it, dry heaving.

After a long while, she sat back in the car, face pale.

The phone screen was still lit. Scarlett's messages kept popping up, every word filled with righteous indignation.

[What are you going to do? Should I rush in and help you catch them in the act?]

[Ophelia, don't be scared. This kind of scumbag must leave with nothing!]

Looking at these messages, amid the intertwined anger and pain in her brain, a strangely jarring sense of wrongness suddenly flashed through.

Too coincidental.

Harmony City wasn't huge, but it definitely wasn't small either.

Yesterday afternoon, Scarlett happened to pass by Sapphire Sky Hotel and just happened to see Matthew with his arm around a woman going in. This morning, she went shopping and just happened to see Matthew taking a woman into a jewelry store.

Two days in a row, at two completely different locations, Scarlett managed to "run into" Matthew so precisely, and each time she captured photos at the most critical moment and sent them to her.

No matter how small Harmony City was, the probability of these encounters was way too low.

Did Scarlett have a radar installed? Or had she actually been following Matthew all along? But as a friend, why would she go to such lengths?

Ophelia's brow furrowed tightly. Her husband's betrayal had already plunged her into an abyss, and these one after another "coincidences" from her friend felt more like an invisible net, giving her a bone-chilling sense of suffocation.

She didn't reply to Scarlett's messages. She just turned off her phone and started the car.

At 7 PM, Matthew opened the front door right on time.

"Honey, I'm home."