Chapter 3
Valerie looked at the meat in the trash.
For a second, she froze. Then, her tears fell.
“Sienna, I ordered this entirely for you,” she choked out. “Are you still blaming me?”
She pulled the diamond ring off her finger and held it out to me.
“I’ll give the ring back to you. Please don’t be angry anymore, okay?”
Before I could speak, Christian cut in, his face cold.
“Stop playing the victim, Sienna,” he said. “If Valerie hadn’t asked me to stay by your side, I never would have approached you in the first place.”
Julian frowned as well.
“Valerie has always been thinking of you,” he said. “Two years ago, she was the one who told me not to push you and to let you calm down on your own. She considers your feelings in everything. Don’t push your luck.”
Once again, I was the unreasonable one.
I didn’t argue. I turned and reached for my suitcase to leave.
Valerie suddenly lunged forward and grabbed at me.
“Sienna, I’m giving the ring back to you.”
She tried to force the ring onto my finger. I pulled my hand away.
Using the momentum, she threw herself backward and crashed into the dining table.
The entire table tipped over.
Most of the boiling oil and melted cheese poured directly over my body.
Blinding pain tore through me. All the color drained from my face.
A single drop splashed onto the back of Valerie’s hand. She screamed immediately.
“Ah! It hurts!”
Julian and Christian rushed to her side without hesitation.
When they looked back at me, their faces were filled with anger.
“Sienna, do you hate Valerie that much?”
I clenched my jaw against the pain.
“I didn’t push her.”
“We saw it with our own eyes, and you’re still making excuses?” Julian snapped. “I’ll settle this score with you later.”
With that, the two of them hurried Valerie out the door to the hospital. Neither of them looked at me once.
My vision darkened from the pain. I forced myself up and went to the hospital alone.
The doctor told me the burns covered a large area. If I had arrived any later, I might have gone into shock.
By the time my wounds were dressed and I walked out of the treatment room, my face was as pale as paper. I had no strength left in my body.
As I passed the VIP ward, I stopped.
Through the glass, I saw Valerie leaning against the pillows on the bed.
A small layer of ointment rested on the back of her hand.
Julian was standing beside her, feeding her water. Christian was carefully tucking the corner of the blanket around her.
I looked at the two men and felt nothing but a bone-deep chill.
I had once believed they both truly loved me.
In the end, one of them took me for granted because he was certain I would never leave him.
The other had been acting from the very beginning, trampling my sincerity into the dirt.
After leaving the hospital, I went to Julian’s company.
It wasn’t until I was going through the departure paperwork that I learned the truth.
The fifty-five percent of the shares under my name had already been transferred to Valerie.
A bitter laugh escaped me. I had poured my family’s shadow resources into building his company for years.
In the end, my own shares had been given away without my knowledge.
Since that was what they wanted, we owed each other nothing now.
I turned and stepped into the elevator, planning to take a car straight to the airport once I reached the ground floor.
As the elevator descended, it jolted violently beneath my feet.
The next second, all the lights went out.
My chest tightened. My phone had no signal, and no one answered the emergency bell.
Then, the ventilation unit overhead roared to life, blasting freezing air into the car.
A thin layer of frost quickly formed across the metal walls.
I wrapped my arms around myself, pinching my thighs over and over just to stay conscious.
Two hours later, the lights finally came back on.
The elevator reached the first floor, and the doors slowly slid open.
Frost clung to my eyelashes. Pale and exhausted, I lay collapsed on the floor.
Julian, Christian, and Valerie were standing just outside the doors.
All three of them were looking down at me from above.
