Guinevere hurriedly covered the boy’s mouth and demanded he stop crying. “Stop crying!“Why are you so naughty?” Guinevere frowned.Zack wailed and bawled and kicked and stomped, giving Guinevere no choice but to take him to the room upstairs. She didn’t want to disturb the other guests, nor did she want them to catch her in an embarrassing situation.Just as she reached the top of the stairs, she saw Chris Ford approaching.“Gwen!”Chris had always been kind and gentle towards Guinevere, but now that he saw her holding hands with Zack, his heart grew even more affectionate for her.“Zack!” Chris walked up to the little boy and teased, “Who’s with you right now, Zack?”Zack was pouting with a long face and ignored everybody. He seemed to be in a rotten mood.“What’s wrong?” Chris asked. “Who made you unhappy, Zack?”“He’s probably met too many people today,” replied Guinevere, “and he’s likely overwhelmed by it all.”Hearing this, Chris glanced at Guinevere and sighed befor
Guinevere originally intended to prevent Stella from getting closer to Zack by building a stronger bond with him. But if she were perfectly honest, she had to admit that she never nearly had the patience to deal with Zack herself.Thus, the best solution was to let Wendy take Zack.Hearing Guinevere’s suggestion, Wendy frowned, looked at her derisively, and jeered, “Didn’t you tell Father that you wanted to spend more time with Zack so you two could bond? So what happened? Don’t you want to get closer to your son now that Stella is not here?”Guinevere turned deathly pale. She hung her head low and said nothing, not knowing how to explain herself.Seeing that, Chris turned to Wendy with some discontent and scolded, “Why do you keep embarrassing her like that? You’re not young anymore, you know…”He’d been bringing up her age a lot lately. “Fine!” Wendy glowered at him. “Just think of me as a nosy old woman! Just continue with whatever you were doing, and don’t mind me!”As she
Things had come to a point where Chris completely neglected her health problems. For instance, the last time Wendy went for a medical checkup, he didn’t even ask her any questions about it at all.The realization made Chris feel a little guilty.“I’ve been busy lately,” he told Wendy, “so I didn’t have much time to take care of you. I promise things will be different from now.”“What exactly have you been busy doing?” Wendy sneered. “Weston has been in charge of the company all this time. In fact, I can’t think of a time when you’ve been busy lately!”Chris was left flustered with his lies so mercilessly exposed.“When did you become so mean?!” he snapped.The fact that he could never be as talented as Weston had always been his sore spot, and Wendy had so bluntly set it on fire.“I was only concerned about your health,” he said, still feeling a little humiliated, “yet here you are, always so eager to put me down!”“Why don’t you just go back to Guinevere and take care of her?”
Stella appeared calm and composed, but her back was soaked with cold sweat.“Mom?” she asked while resolutely putting on a calm facade, perhaps because she was hiding something. “What’s wrong?”“Nothing…” answered Wendy with a shake of her head. Stella’s voice brought her senses back.Sure that Stella must’ve not known about how poisonous the oleanders were, she tried to warn her. “That plant over there…”Crash!Before she could finish, a loud noise coming from the window interrupted her.The two women jumped in fright. They hurried to where the noise came from and saw a black figure crashing into the room from outside. The window had been broken in, and the floor was littered with shards of shattered glass—“Careful!”Stella’s split-second response managed to stop Wendy from getting hit by the flying glass.Wendy was so spooked that her face turned white as a sheet. She stood motionless and stared at the figure lying on the floor. “What… What on earth is going on here…?” sh
Just then, the bodyguards and the housekeeper rushed into the room—“What’s the matter, Mrs. Ford?”“What happened here?!”The housekeeper had worked at the Ford Mansion for many years, and the second he saw Wendy collapse on the sofa, he hurriedly rushed over. “Madam! Did you have another heart attack?”This revelation surprised Stella. She asked Wendy, “So you have… heart disease?”Wendy nodded. By now, she had calmed down significantly.“I’ve had it for many years now,” she explained.She then turned to the housekeeper. “Don’t worry, I’m fine. Stella has given me my medicine.”“Thank goodness…” The housekeeper breathed a sigh of relief. His gaze turned towards the stranger in the room, then frowned and asked sternly, “What’s going on here?”That plump man had been stunned because of Wendy’s sudden heart attack, but he came back to his senses upon hearing the housekeeper’s sharp voice.“I’m sorry, boss. I slipped and fell just now…”The housekeeper looked around to evaluat
Weston made Stella stand up. She glanced at her potted plants destroyed by the man who fell in earlier and became somewhat distressed.“The soil is full of broken glass…” she grumbled.“Let others deal with it.”Weston’s eyebrows twitched when he saw that she was about to clean up the soil with her bare hands. With a much sterner voice, he told her, “Stop. You’ll hurt your hands.”He forbade her from doing anything else and pulled her away.“Did you get hurt just now?”“No,” she shook her head. “I didn’t.”She then paused to think before asking, “Does your mom have a heart disease?”“Yeah,” he answered briefly, casting his eyes down at her. “She’s had it for many years.“We’ll move to another room,” he told her as he led her to the bathroom. “Someone will come and move our stuff later. Right now, you should wash all the dirt off your paws.”Weston was a notorious neat freak. In fact, he was almost at his limit when he had to suppress his revulsion while holding her dirty ha
Weston said nothing. He leaned against her face, and kissed her a few times before murmuring, “Once we get to the new room, you can rest for a little longer before the dinner happens, okay?”The tone of voice that he used suggested tender intimacy, as if they were a loving married couple. They both had something in common—they were both excellent pretenders. Even though their relationship was so damaged that it was like a ship riddled with holes, as long as Weston was willing, they could easily put up an act and pretend that they were deeply in love with each other.Stella nodded and replied, “Okay.”… The staff who were supposed to help them move their stuff had been waiting outside. Stella frowned as she watched them move her potted plants from the balcony.“Let me handle that one,” she told them.She looked at her oleander plant worryingly, fearing that they might damage it somehow. “It looks like you care a lot about that plant,” Weston stated as he held her waist. H
Once the staff had moved everything upstairs, Stella immediately closed the door. Within a quarter of an hour, the extremely efficient crew had cleared up the old room and moved everything to the new room upstairs.The Ford Mansion was so massive that it contained hundreds of rooms. Because of Weston’s obsession with cleanliness, he would never stay in a room that had been used before. Luckily, very few had ever been to the upper floors of the Ford Mansion. The suites there were also brighter and more spacious than the ones below. The potted plants were arranged on the balcony of the new room just as they were previously. Stella walked over to the oleander plant, kneeled down, and carefully observed it. Some promising flower buds had already shown themselves. After tonight, they would all be in full bloom.With that in mind, she plucked one, careful not to touch the moist sap on it, and calculated how many she would need to have enough poison to kill an adult.How many she w
Stella had rarely ever woken up before him.He had always been terrifyingly strong, but their lovemaking last night must have consumed a lot of his energy, leaving him so tired that he was still sound asleep.She stared at him and suddenly felt like doing something naughty. She pinched his nose and held her fingers there, trying to suffocate him. Unsurprisingly, he soon knitted his handsome brows and quickly woke up.He was surprised to see her mesmerizing eyes as soon as he woke up, which made him pause. He then took her hand into his and kissed it again and again.“Are you okay?” he asked with concern, remembering how wildly he ravaged her last night.She had only been willing to be intimate with him because she was under the influence of a drug, yet he had taken advantage of her and had his way with her over and over again last night.Stella did not speak. Seeing her like that made his expressions turn a little colder. He fell silent for a long time before he got up and sl
The moment Stella saw him, she flew into his arms and clambered onto his body. She kissed him again and again, trying to search for his breath so she could explore his body even deeper. All she wanted was to let him extinguish the fire burning inside her.Half an hour had passed, and the effect of the drug on her body was its strongest now.Weston swallowed his saliva. Without any hesitation, he pinned her against the bathroom mirror and kissed her vehemently on her face, her shoulders, then her neck.Stella could not stop herself from letting out loud moans. The sounds she produced only drove Weston wilder. Even the corners of his eyes began to turn red now.Luckily, there was still a thread of reason in his mind. He pushed her away and, while panting heavily, asked her, “Who am I, Stella?”But Stella’s mind was occupied with her primal urges. She ignored his question and grabbed his shirt collar, saying, “Let’s do it…” The sight of her filled Weston with a desire to just give
Weston paused, then simply replied, “Okay.”When he saw her changing into a pair of high heels, he followed her around and asked, “Where are you going?”“Oh, to a private concert.”Then she added, “If you’re going to spend the night here tonight, then please take care of Elias and Emma. But if you have to leave, I’ll ask Roger to come over instead.”“Don’t worry,” he said. “Just go out and enjoy yourself. I’ll be at home and take good care of the kids.”Stella paused suddenly, feeling inexplicably weird about what Weston had just said. It sounded like she was forcing him to stay at home and take care of the kids while she went out to have fun without a care in the world. She turned around to look at Weston, feeling like he was acting like a poor neglected housewife.She shook her head and tried to shake this terrifying thought out of her mind.When they arrived at the concert, Hayden offered his arm to her like a gentleman. They then walked into the private concert together, w
Stella’s words rendered Weston speechless. She was right. He had been the one to agree to let Stella date other people, so he must seem like a fool saying all those things to her.He withdrew his hands and forced himself to calm down a little. “I have no intention to stand in your way,” he told Stella. “I was only worried about Elias and Emma. Since they’re also here, I think you need to take their feelings into consideration.”The children could sense the strained atmosphere between the adults, so they just waited patiently on the couch with Roger, occasionally poking their heads out to look at their parents.Seeing his kids like that, Weston slowly added, “I’m only here to see the kids, so both of you can go ahead with your date.”Stella said nothing and just took Hayden’s hand and left.When they got downstairs, Hayden glanced at her and asked, “Are you sure you want to just leave him like that?”“I don’t know,” Stella massaged the point between her brows. “I’m not sure wh
Hayden Quirk arrived half an hour earlier than Stella did on their first date.“You’re much earlier than I expected,” he joked as Stella walked in.Stella was actually on time, but she still felt a little guilty when she saw him already waiting for her when she arrived.“The traffic is terrible today,” she said.“Don’t worry about it,” Hayden said, handing her the menu. “Mr. Ford expected me to wait for you for at least an hour.”“I seriously don’t know what you guys are up to,” she grumbled, exasperated, “but I hope it will at least be over soon. Just don’t drag it out and cause me any trouble.”She ordered a few dishes, then handed the menu back to him. Hayden took it from her, ordered a few more signature dishes that the restaurant was popular for, then looked at Stella with a faint smile.“Did you think this is all just a joke?” he asked.“What else could it be?”“I am serious about this,” he told her, his voice suddenly turning grave. “Since even Mr. Ford agreed that we s
Weston raised his eyebrows at Ben’s words. “But he’s divorced. He has an ex-wife.”“What’s wrong with having an ex-wife?”Ben found Weston’s comment strange. “This man has good qualities. Upon investigation, he has a very good personality too. He was an active member during college. He also has an amazingly beautiful resume. It’s normal that a man like him has been married before… Besides, hasn’t Ms. Sealey been married before herself? She even has two children.”Weston’s expression turned cold at once. “Are you discriminating against her?”“I’m not.”Weston said, “Or do you think she can only find a divorced man for her second marriage?”Ben panicked. “I wouldn’t dare!”With Weston’s ridiculous amount of nitpicking, they could find no one that would match Stella.Hayden sat beside and quietly reviewed Weston’s latest psychological health report. As he turned the page, he suddenly said, “I’m actually a little interested in Ms. Sealey.”Hayden laughed a little and turned to Wes
Stella opened her eyes and shot Weston a cold look. Then, she turned her head the other way.Weston did not touch her again. He knew she was probably angry with him, so he stayed silent.A few moments later, he reminded her, “Don’t be angry. That man is unreliable.”Stella propped her chin in her palm. “And what does that have to do with you?”Weston pursed his lips, setting his jaw in a tight line. He said, “I’ve promised to stop pestering you. It’ll be a promise. I’m fine with seeing you with another man, but at least find someone who makes me feel at ease.”“Why do I need your approval when I’m just looking for a date?” Stella found his words funny. “You’re just my ex-husband. Don’t you think you care too much?”Weston rubbed his brow, and his voice suddenly went cold. “If you don’t want me to keep pestering you like I just did, maybe you should listen to me.”Stella questioned, “Are you threatening me?”“No. I’m suggesting.”Stella was lost for words. Then, she suddenly
Stella froze for a moment when she heard the voice. When she turned around, she saw that Weston had appeared behind her at some point.Weston stared at the man behind Stella with a cold gaze and an icy aura around him. Weston had always emitted a strong aura around him. Anyone who saw him would immediately be terrified because of his intimidating aura.The man froze for a moment at Weston’s sudden appearance. He took a step back and quickly steadied himself before greeting Weston, “Mr. Ford.”He still had the same calm and gentle look. “I’m sending Miss Cicily back.”“I know. Don’t ever show up in front of her again,” Weston told him. “You don’t have to send her back. Stay away from her.”It would be a little inappropriate for the man to act a fool at Weston’s straightforwardness, so he tugged at his collar and asked Weston with a polite smile, “Mr. Ford, you should give me a reason, shouldn’t you? I’m having a good time with Miss Cicily.”“You’re the one who thinks she’s having
Stella smiled. It seemed like he had come prepared.Stella enjoyed chatting with the man. He was sincere and introduced himself properly as soon as they started chatting.The man was also a pianist and came from a scholarly family. Although not super wealthy, he was doing considerably well in the middle class. Stella would not need to worry about the quality of life with him, but that was about it. She certainly could not live a luxurious life.Stella had a good impression of him. She also talked to him a little more about piano music.Stella twirled her hair and smiled. She told him with a nice voice, “I’m sure Roger has already told you about my situation.”“I know.”The man looked at her gently and set the coffee in front of her. He said to her, “I’m very interested in you. I think we’re very suitable for each other. Our living standards nowadays have improved quite a bit. Not many look for a partner purely because of material qualities. People with emotional needs will search