1 Immediately, all eyes fell on me. Ever since the previous department manager resigned, I had been in charge of all department affairs. Everyone had assumed my appointment as the new manager was a done deal, practically etched in stone. Then, right in front of everyone, Damien Voss pulled Cici Brooks into the company’s main chat group. They each posted a message, one after the other. Anyone with eyes could see their profile pictures were a matching set, clearly for a couple. The entire morning, the whole office was abuzz with gossip, completely engrossed in the drama unfolding. As for me, I was already planning to resign, so I didn’t much care about losing the position that should have been mine. After sending my resignation letter via email to HR, I took a rare moment of leisure and went to the breakroom to brew myself a cup of honey-ginger tea. I hadn’t even taken two sips when Cici walked in. She brewed a coffee and sat beside me, wearing the smug air of a victor. “Skylar Vance,” she began, her voice dripping with condescension, “I know you’ve been Damien’s little secret for five years, but I’m his real girlfriend. Now that I’m back, it’s time for you, the other woman, to know your place and quietly disappear. As long as you keep your mouth shut, just like before, I won’t cause you any more trouble.” As she spoke, she played a voice message. It was a little boy, Leo, buttering her up from yesterday: “Auntie Cici, wasn’t I awesome? You won’t forget the Transformers you promised me, right?” I knew it. I’d wondered why things had aligned so conveniently. Watching her malicious gaze, my gut screamed at me to leave immediately. But she snatched the tea cup from my hand and poured it over her own face. Then, she violently smashed the cup at my feet, shattering it into a thousand pieces. The already lukewarm ginger tea dripped from her face, soaking her clothes and disheveled hair, making her look utterly pitiful. This woman was truly ruthless in her schemes against me. She blocked my exit, then shrieked, her voice shrill and ear-piercing: “Skylar, what are you doing? Why are you doing this to me?!” Her screams drew a crowd of colleagues, eager for the drama. She didn’t forget to splash coffee on her chest, too, then, with practiced ease, rubbed her neck raw. I couldn’t take it anymore. I slapped her hard. Damien Voss, hearing the commotion, rushed over and saw me, perfectly fine, striking a disheveled Cici. Without a second thought, he raised his hand and slapped me back. “Skylar Vance! If you don’t want this job anymore, then get out!” Still seething, he shoved me violently, then scooped Cici up in a bridal carry and carried her to his office. I stumbled backward, my lower back slamming into the edge of the table. The pain made tears stream down my face. The HR Manager, who had been hesitating whether to approve my resignation, immediately waved a hand and signed it. Damien, still coddling Cici, didn’t even glance at the content, directly approving my departure. The Finance Department, quick to switch allegiances and curry favor with Cici, the future boss’s lady, immediately processed my final paycheck. I still had a substantial amount of client data to hand over, so I bundled all the files, preparing to send them to Damien. To my shock, my company email account had already been deleted. The only person with the authority to delete a departing employee’s account was Damien Voss. I sent him a breakup message on his phone, only to discover he had blocked my calls and messages there too. With a bitter understanding, I left the company. After going home to erase all traces of myself, I headed straight for the airport. 2 The plane taxied slowly down the runway. I forced myself to close my eyes and rest. My mind kept replaying the moment I opened Damien Voss’s safe while clearing out my last belongings. After we became official, I had personally crafted a pair of matching rings for us. Damien had refused to wear his, instead hiding them in his safe, protected by a password I didn’t know. He said they would be our wedding rings when we finally married. I had often ached with the desire to secretly open that safe, but no matter what combinations I tried, I couldn’t guess the password. Until I used the date of the concert—Cici Brooks’s birthday—and the safe clicked open. Inside, there were no matching rings I wanted to reclaim. Only carefully preserved photographs and a diary. The photos were of an eighteen-year-old Damien and Cici, smiling at each other. Even slightly faded with age, their deep affection for one another was palpable. The diary was filled with the mundane details of their passionate, youthful romance. After Cici’s sudden, unexplained departure, the diary entries had turned into endless yearning. No wonder, after being reunited, they had burned with such intense passion for each other. As for the rings I had made, they were likely long gone, tossed away by Damien just like all the other tokens of our relationship. If I had known he’d already discarded them, I wouldn’t have bothered to open the safe and pry into his sweet past with Cici. And I wouldn’t have had to see that, even while he was with me, his heart was still consumed by longing for his first love. They truly were a perfect match, a pair of absolute scoundrels. Cici hadn’t even broken up with him, just vanished. Damien hadn’t even broken up with me, just rekindled things with Cici. I had poured my heart and soul into loving him for five years, only to be nothing more than a passing amusement. Sleep began to claim me, a hazy fog creeping into my thoughts. For a moment, I found it hard to discern if the Damien Voss who once cherished me was real or merely a figment of my imagination. If he didn’t love me, why would he take on all the household chores, terrified I might suffer the slightest inconvenience? If he didn’t love me, why would he break into a sweat of anxiety when my Uncle George called, urging me to return to Northwood City, begging me not to leave him? If he didn’t love me, why would he plan with me to have two children and adopt a cat and a dog after marriage, even picking out their names? …But if he truly loved me, how could he turn around and be with Cici without even a decent breakup? If he truly loved me, he wouldn’t have denied me the most basic trust, letting me be gossiped about by colleagues as a conniving homewrecker trying to climb the corporate ladder. Dwelling on these things was utterly pointless now. From the moment I agreed to my Uncle George’s arranged match, Damien and I stopped belonging to the same world. The plane landed. Uncle George and my Mom had been waiting for what felt like an eternity. “Skylar, my dear, Mom finally has you back! What was so great about that Southern city anyway? All that rain, so much dampness. You’ve always been prone to illness since you were little, yet you insisted on staying there all these years!” “Sister, you shouldn’t have let Skylar go to college down South in the first place. If my old friend hadn’t been looking out for her, who knows how much hardship Skylar would’ve endured.” At the mention of Damien Voss, Uncle George quickly asked me, “You’re back to get married this time, did Damien say anything? He used to praise you to me constantly, saying you were a rare talent…” “He was just being polite, Uncle George, because of your connection. How could you take it seriously?” But my uncle disagreed. “I know him better than you do. He’s not one to easily praise anyone, his eye is incredibly discerning! Who knows who will ever catch his attention again? Back in the day…” It seemed everyone knew Cici Brooks was Damien Voss’s unforgettable, fiery first love. Only I, like a fool, had carried on a secret relationship with him for five years, wounding myself to the point of utter devastation.
? Continue the story here ?? ? Download the "MotoNovel" app ? search for "392926", and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel