Chapter 2

After noticing how I hadn't touched my food, Wales signed at me, "Joey, why aren't you eating?"

I looked at his face that was filled with concern and forced a stiff smile. "What are all of you talking about? You look like you're having fun."

Wales patted my head fondly. He signed, "I'm telling them about us. They're very envious of our love."

He lifted my hand and pressed a kiss to the back of it. Everyone at the party saw the kiss and exchanged sly looks with each other. My heart felt like it had been thrown into a pit of fire, left to be burned until there was nothing but ashes remaining.

Wales had clearly been telling them about how he messed around with another woman while we were only separated by a single wall. He chose to lie to me, pretending he was telling them about our love. The way he had done it so easily led me to believe that he had also lied to me in the past.

"I'm tired. I want to go home."

I wanted to leave this dreadful place as soon as possible. I wanted to escape from these people who treated me as a laughingstock. I didn't care about Wales' response. I turned and left the party, sending a message to the driver to pick me up.

The driver brought me to Middleton Street, slowing the car to a stop in front of two shopping malls. When I raised my head, my vision was filled with the words being projected on the electronic billboards, which were affixed onto the two buildings.

"Marry me, Joey!"

Passersby stopped to snap pictures of the billboards while letting out envious sighs.

"As expected of Wales! Joey is so lucky to be loved by him. I wonder how much this cost him."

"I heard that Joey is deaf, which is why Mr. Price used this way to propose to her. I also heard he didn't just rent out these two billboards, but he even rented out all the billboards in Anaxia for this month to broadcast their proposal video at a specific time every night for everyone to see.

"It's so romantic!"

While everyone turned green with envy at how Wales treated me, I could only smile to myself in a self-deprecating manner. I quietly rolled up the window and told the driver to keep driving.

A week ago, I would have shared the passersby's excitement. I asked the driver to bring me here every day at this specific time to watch the proposal video Wales prepared for me.

Wales and I grew up together, and he had declared his intentions to marry me since we were children. After we grew up, he left the country to boost his career. When he returned, he was already the CEO of Price Corporation.

Meanwhile, I was still an ordinary woman with a complicated family background.

My father was a violent man who hit my mother until she couldn't take it anymore and ran away. My stepmother didn't like me, and after my younger sister was born, I practically became the maid of the family.

I used to think of myself as a damsel in distress while Wales was my knight in shining armor.

After Wales returned, he rescued me from my miserable living conditions. He also gave a large sum of money to my father to gain his blessings for our marriage.

It was why when we were caught in the car accident, I had willingly shoved Wales out of the way of danger. I took his place and was crushed under the wheels of the car before I lost consciousness.

The accident left me with broken legs and ruptured eardrums that led to my hearing loss. Wales had searched high and low for doctors to treat me, and I had followed their orders to the best of my ability. But nothing had worked.

A month ago, my best friend returned to Anaxia. She brought me to a doctor who was famous overseas.

The doctor told me that my eardrums were only damaged and could be healed with proper treatment. As for my legs, the bones had not been realigned properly during my first surgery. I just had to go through another operation, and the bones could be fixed into the right place.

The joy I felt was mixed with surprise. What the doctor told me was completely different from what Wales told me in the past. At the time, I still believed that he truly loved me. But now, I knew that it was his intention all along to keep me paralyzed.

Three weeks after my latest surgery, I regained my hearing. I could also stand up and walk around, albeit slowly. I had planned to surprise him at the wedding by walking down the aisle to him, walking toward the source of my happiness on my own two feet.

I had dreamed more times than I can count of hearing Wales say, "Good morning, sweetheart!" to me with my own two ears. It would be such a sweet and wonderful feeling.

But the first thing I heard when I woke up the next morning after regaining my hearing was the unmistakable sounds of Wales and Anna as they moaned sweet nothings to each other from the room next to mine.

Anna was Wales' assistant, and they had gotten together a long time ago. In the years when I was suffering from deafness, they flirted in front of me so many times while I remained clueless.

Pain radiated from my heart, forcing me to hunch over as I hugged myself tightly. Wales' earlier answer echoed in my mind.

Even after we got married, he would continue his clandestine relationship with Anna. To keep everything under wraps, he was willing to sacrifice my well-being and keep me as an invalid forever.

Although the winter gales were biting and burrowed deep down into my bones, the stinging cold also kept my mind clear.

I had loved Wales so deeply once that I had been willing to die for him. However, my love for him had shriveled up. I was going to prove to him through my actions that his web of lies would eventually be exposed.

I was going to show him that I would never tolerate being lied to.