The bouquet landed heavily among the discarded refuse, the bright crimson petals instantly stained and mangled. Right then, a maintenance worker passing by caught sight of the expensive arrangement and pulled the flowers from the bin, calling out after Clara's retreating figure, "This is an incredibly beautiful arrangement, miss. Are you entirely certain you want to discard it?"

Clara paused, turning her chin slightly to offer the worker a brief, hollow look, a thin, polite smile mapping across her face as she spoke in a flat murmur. "Yes. I have absolutely no use for them."

The flowers were gone.

And Ethan, she no longer wanted him either.

Chapter 7

Clara returned to the interior of the penthouse, the absolute silence within the expansive rooms pressing heavily against her ears.

She sank slowly onto the fabric of the sofa, her fingers clamping tightly around the cold plastic of the recovered recording pen.

Inhaling deeply to steady her lungs, she pressed the playback switch.

Instantly, Ethan's familiar, smooth voice flooded the quiet room, echoing with terrifying clarity against the walls.

"Meet me by the entrance of your complex immediately."

His tone carried a frantic, breathless urgency that left no room for delay.

"Oh my god! You actually abandoned everything to come to me tonight?" Immediately following his words, the girl's high-pitched, ecstatic shriek erupted from the speaker.

Ethan had placed the call on speakerphone inside the cabin, allowing the microphone to capture every single syllable of their exchange with perfect definition.

Ethan let out a soft, low chuckle, his voice dripping with an intense, familiar warmth. "Yes. I’m already tearing through the streets toward you."

"Didn't you claim that tonight was a sacred anniversary you had to spend at home with your wife? What changed your mind?" The girl questioned, her tone laced with a fragile trace of doubt that was instantly swallowed by her excitement.

"I missed you."

The single phrase pierced through Clara's chest like a jagged shard of glass.

Their wedding anniversary—a date that was supposed to belong exclusively to the history they had built together—had been casually discarded so he could sprint into the arms of another girl.

Sasha’s voice escalated into an ecstatic, breathless chirp. "Drive as fast as you can! I'm jumping out of bed to put my makeup on right now!"

"Good. I purchased that luxury lingerie set for you; ensure you are wearing the purple one tonight."

He delivered the instructions with the same attentive, thoughtful tone he used to shield Clara from the world, rendering the display entirely grotesque.

A few minutes later, the audio captured the distinct, rhythmic thud of knuckles rapping against the tinted glass of the vehicle, followed by Ethan's muffled command: "Climb into the back."

The girl complied, though an audible pout lingered in her voice. "Fine. I suppose I still lack the status required to occupy the front passenger seat."

Her words carried a thin veneer of resentment, desperate for a deeper validation.

Ethan merely brushed it off with a careless note. "Clara has close friends within the traffic enforcement division; we need to operate with absolute discretion if we want to avoid a disaster."

"Ugh, Clara, Clara, Clara!"

Sasha dragged out the syllables of her name, her tone dripping with a theatrical, mocking malice.

"Sasha." Ethan barked her name, cutting through her performance as his tone dropped into a freezing, dangerous register that carried an absolute warning.

"Master, I was wrong... I shouldn't have allowed my bratty attitude to bleed into our time. Please punish me."

Realizing she had pushed past his boundaries, Sasha immediately retreated into a submissive, pathetic whimper, acting entirely like an innocent victim who had been deeply wronged.

"Strip your garments off completely, then," Ethan commanded carelessly, the distinct click of a designer lighter echoing as he drew a breath of smoke.

"What... what did you say?" Sasha stammered, her voice fracturing with a sudden, breathless panic.

"Did your ears fail to process your own request? You were the one begging for a punishment."

His tone remained perfectly smooth and indifferent, carrying the cold assurance of a predator.

"You are incredibly wicked, Master," Sasha whispered suggestively.

A sharp, metallic click unspooled through the speaker as the heavy buckle of his designer belt was undone.

The audio dissolved into a chaotic blur of ragged, explicit breathing and low, breathless murmurs as their bodies collided in the dark.

At the absolute height of their encounter, Sasha lifted her chin, her voice trembling with a fragile, desperate need for security.

She whispered into the dark, "Do you love me, Ethan?"

Ethan let out a soft, smooth laugh, his fingers tracing through the strands of her hair with a practiced, custom tenderness as he murmured his response. "If my heart didn't belong to you, why on earth would I abandon my own home in the dead of night solely to hold you?"

Sasha broke into a frantic, weeping sob of complete validation. "I love you too, Ethan. I love you so much."

Chapter 8

Clara sat alone on the somewhat cold sofa in the living room, the surrounding quiet broken only by the sound of her own breathing. Expressionless, she listened to the audio unspooling from the recording pen over and over again.

Every single word felt like a sharp needle driving mercilessly into her heart, stab after stab, tearing her already deeply scarred heart into even smaller, broken pieces.

The recording pen had actually ceased playing hours ago after its battery finally drained to zero, yet Clara seemed entirely oblivious to it, her fingers mechanically clicking the device's power switch.

Click, clack, click, clack...

The monotonous sound echoed continuously through the silent living room, a perfect reflection of her shattered, entirely numb state of mind. Her eyes were hollow and vacant as she stared blankly ahead, looking as though her soul had departed, leaving only a hollow shell repeating the motion over and over.

In this manner, time flowed past in an endless blur of agony and numbness until the sun finally dipped below the horizon.

The dim, fading twilight filtered through the window panes and draped over Clara, enveloping her in a layer of profound isolation and melancholy, while she remained utterly submerged in the agony of the recording, unable to break free.

Exhausted to her very bones and drowning in pain, Clara could no longer bear to remain in that penthouse suffocating with lies and betrayal, so she booked a flight and headed straight back to her hometown.

Throughout the entire journey, she watched the scenery blur past the train window, but her thoughts remained a chaotic, tangled mess, her mind continuously echoing with the graphic, devastating dialogue between Ethan and Sasha.

She had no idea how to face the life waiting ahead of her, nor did she know where this marriage was ultimately going to end, feeling nothing but a profound sense of bitterness and disorientation.

When she finally arrived back at her childhood home, the familiar little courtyard and everything she grew up with failed to bring even a shred of warmth to her chest.

The moment she stepped through the door, before she could even finish uttering the word "divorce," her mother suddenly erupted into a shrill screech.

"Divorce? What on earth are you thinking?" Clara's mother stared at her, her eyes wide with absolute disbelief, her voice climbing several octaves.

Clara looked at her mother, her heart heavy with absolute helplessness, and asked softly, "Didn't you fiercely oppose my marriage to Ethan from the very beginning?"

In her memory, when she had first insisted on marrying Ethan, her mother had thrown up endless roadblocks to stop them.

"That was then!"

Clara's mother furrowed her brows, waving her hand with an impatient flick. "Ethan is a completely different man today. Your younger sister's upcoming marriage into the wealthiest family in the county depends entirely on his backing. Don't you dare stir up trouble at a critical moment like this!"

Her tone carried an absolute, unyielding authority, making it perfectly clear that in her eyes, Clara's marriage was nothing more than a convenient asset to be exploited for the family's financial gain.

As for Clara’s personal happiness, it wasn't even worth her consideration.

Hearing her mother's words, Clara felt a deep, freezing chill settle over her heart. She took a slow, heavy breath, forcing her voice into a flat calm, though a slight tremor still betrayed her. "Mom, he’s having an affair. He took his female secretary as a mistress."

She had foolishly assumed that upon hearing this, her mother would at least flare up in righteous fury on her behalf and stand firmly by her side.

Instead, Clara's mother merely curled her lip with total indifference, speaking as though it were the most natural thing in the world: "Men are all like that. Ethan operates under an immense amount of corporate pressure; he needs a little outlet to blow off steam."

The words crashed over Clara like a bucket of freezing water, mercilessly extinguishing the absolute last ember of hope in her chest, forcing her to see her mother's true nature with devastating clarity.