Chapter 8

Caden

These past two days, I've been completely drained by work. I haven't even gone home.

That night when Camille went to the club to get her things, who would have known that just after grabbing the car keys and watch, Camille's face suddenly turned deathly pale and she collapsed in the entryway with a fever.

That moment of chaos forced me to push down the thought of finding Vivian again and stay there to call the family doctor. When the doctor finished giving her the fever-reducing injection and all the turmoil finally settled, the sky outside had turned gray and it was already the dead silence of dawn.

I sat alone on the living room sofa, exhausted, rubbing my aching temples, and finally couldn't help but take out my phone. I unconsciously scrolled to Vivian's profile picture, clicked open that empty chat box, and my fingers hovered over the keyboard for a long time before I finally pulled the corner of my mouth in self-mockery.

Vivian, do you even care about me?

I didn't dare think about the answer to this question. In three years of marriage, she's always had that lofty, aloof appearance. Even when she saw me with other women, she could calmly ask me to check the surveillance footage instead of crying and making a scene like a normal wife would.

I took a deep breath, and a surge of nameless anger mixed with the frustration of being ignored instantly rose in my chest. I violently threw my phone back onto the cold table surface, the sharp sound resembling the sound of my heart breaking.

I looked at the time and still decided to go home, wanting to explain clearly to Vivian what had happened today. However, just as I stepped out the door, my phone rang urgently—it was an emergency situation from Washington.

After hanging up, I took one last look at the chat window with Vivian, then turned the car around and left.

The next afternoon, after handling affairs in Manhattan, I began preparing for the next day's business trip. As I was leaving, I happened to run into Camille walking into the office with a somewhat weak expression.

"Why did you come over? I already approved two days of leave for you." I frowned.

She approached me and lowered her head to tug at my sleeve. "I want to go on this business trip too. I've mostly recovered."

"But there's no project for you to handle on this trip."

"But Jenny is in Washington... you know, we used to get along well, and I haven't seen her in a long time. I could also help you handle miscellaneous tasks."

Looking at the bruises on her forehead that hadn't yet faded, I ultimately couldn't bring myself to refuse and agreed.

Just as the car was about to start, I opened my phone, hesitating whether to call Vivian.

Camille beside me seemed to notice my struggle and leaned over to look at me with a smile. "Oh, Caden, I went to see Vivian today."

"What did you go see her for?" I suddenly looked up, my voice involuntarily getting louder.

Camille bit her lower lip, seeming startled by my reaction. "I just gave her Grandpa's schedule for this weekend and told her about returning to the old mansion."

I breathed a sigh of relief and nodded. After a pause, I cleared my throat lightly. "Did she... say anything?"

"She said to let us go without worry, that she's been quite busy these days too."

She's busy? Busy going to that little dance troupe?

I didn't want to talk anymore, just nodded and leaned back in my chair with my eyes closed.

The moment we arrived in Washington, I pulled myself together and got busy.

Those shrewd guys on Wall Street were each more difficult to deal with than the last. Round-the-clock international negotiations, complex contract detail confirmations, plus late-night business entertainment that couldn't be declined filled almost every minute of my time. I'm Wall Street's acknowledged workaholic iron man, and I used to be able to cut off all outside connections once I entered the negotiation room.

But this time, I was like a young man with obsessive-compulsive disorder, unconsciously reaching for my phone every hour, unlocking it with my fingerprint, and opening the chat window with Vivian.

The message list was filled with reports from various executives and flattering greetings, but the pinned profile picture belonging to Vivian never lit up with any red notification dot.

She didn't send even one message asking when I would return home.

She just left me stranded in another city, as if whether I lived or died had nothing to do with her.

The next evening, after the business entertainment ended, my college friend Lucas, who was also developing in New York, insisted on dragging me to a private bar we frequented for drinks.

After a few glasses of harsh pure malt whisky, the alcohol churned and burned in my stomach, but it couldn't suppress the melancholy that had been building in my chest for two days.

Lucas swirled his glass and patted my shoulder, suddenly asking somewhat sentimentally about my married life with Vivian. He was a bit drunk and spoke rather carelessly.

"Caden, I really didn't expect you would end up marrying Vivian. Back at the alumni association, everyone was spreading rumors about how hard it was to pursue that white swan who danced ballet, how many wealthy young masters couldn't even get a ticket to see her."

I clinked glasses with him, suppressing the dense bitterness in my heart. "I didn't know her back then." If I had met her earlier, would the outcome have been different?

Lucas opened his eyes wide in exaggeration. "I thought you had been planning this all along. Does she still dance? How's your relationship?"

I deflected with a few sentences. Listening to Lucas's words, my heart felt like it was being tightly gripped by an invisible hand, and waves of dense bitterness arose within me.

So what if I married her? This marriage that appeared so well-matched to outsiders was actually nothing more than a transaction existing in name only.

I looked up self-mockingly and drained the last sip of liquor from the bottom of my glass, then prepared to leave.

I had indeed drunk too much tonight, and my steps were somewhat unsteady.

Camille appeared at the bar entrance at some point. When she saw me, she quickly ran over, extending both hands to help support my swaying body.

"Caden, you've had too much to drink. Let me help you..."

"No need."

I frowned, and before her fingertips could touch my suit jacket, I coldly and resistantly stepped aside, avoiding her touch and staggered alone to open the car door and get in. After getting in the car, my mind was filled with that composed figure until my consciousness became blurred.

The next morning, I returned to being that cold, highly efficient Caden Lux.

This project was originally planned to last five full days, just extending to the weekend before returning directly to the estate.

But on the last night, I lay on the luxurious executive bed of the five-star hotel, tossing and turning, unable to sleep.

Outside the floor-to-ceiling windows was the bustling nightscape, but my mind was filled entirely with Vivian. I hadn't received any messages from her for five days.

That damned woman.

She had already been so cold to me, too lazy to even send a caring WeChat message, so why was I still fucking thinking about her? Thinking about her proud neck when she danced, thinking about those cold yet clear eyes when she looked at me in the parking garage.

Eventually, this uncontrollable crazy longing completely destroyed my self-control. I suddenly sat up from the bed, grabbed the phone from the bedside table, and without even waiting for dawn, directly used my privileges to book the earliest morning flight back to New York in a few hours.

At exactly nine o'clock in the evening, the international flight landed on time at Kennedy Airport.

I walked out of the VIP channel and didn't have the driver take me back to the apartment Vivian and I shared, because I knew that empty home definitely wouldn't have her in it.

My assistant had helped me investigate before—their dance troupe was recently preparing for an extremely important quarterly performance. According to her habits, at this time she should be staying at the dance troupe for teaching and rehearsals.

Half an hour later, I stopped in front of her dance troupe's rehearsal studio.

It wasn't raining tonight, and the night breeze was a bit cool. I rolled down the car window and was about to take out a cigarette from the pack to light it when the tightly closed vintage door of the dance troupe suddenly opened from inside.

Vivian walked out. My heart jumped rapidly, but then froze.

Standing beside her was a tall, handsome man with brilliant golden hair. That man was thoughtfully helping her carry her heavy practice bag, slightly lowering his head, saying something to her, his eyes overflowing with tenderness and affection that seemed to spill out from the night.

And Vivian...

She was actually smiling. She slightly raised her cool face, her eyes curved like crescents, her lips filled with an unguarded, brilliant smile.

Such a smile, pure and passionate—I had never seen it on her face before.

My action of lighting the cigarette completely froze in mid-air, my fingers holding the lighter first tightened, then trembled violently. In that instant, my blood almost flowed backward.

That golden-haired man—I knew him.

Owen Hall.

Vivian's senior, and also the legendary first love that the media had gone crazy reporting about two years ago.

Sparks burned fiercely in the darkness until that burning sensation severely burned into the flesh of my fingers, and only then did I suddenly wake up.

I clenched my fists tightly, my nails almost digging into my flesh, staring with bloodshot eyes at that glaring pair of figures across the street.