Mrs. Carraway had not expected her daughter to refute her like that, and it made her profoundly wistful and helpless. When Mrs. Carraway finally spoke after a long silence, she sounded defeated. “Of course. You’ve grown up from being a little girl and are now an adult of your own right. We can no longer tell you what to do, and neither should we. I’ll leave the issue between yourself and Liam up to you. I just want you to know that the last thing your mother wants to see from you is regret.”Viv
Now that Vivian was looming closer, Edward discovered that her face was even paler than he remembered. At the same time, her vermillion lips appeared as a drier, shriveled imitation of their once luscious, well-hydrated form. Then, he moved his gaze upward and noted the faintly red puffiness around her eyes underneath dashes of makeup.She must have been bawling before their date—a realization that pissed him off immediately.Edward pushed his chair back a little before pulling Vivian by her wai
The bespectacled man snuck a glance at him and Vivian before stepping into the fray to de-escalate the situation. “Alright, Buzz, cut it out,” he admonished. “Why bother shouting at a call girl? Just tell her to scram if she’s become an eyesore.”Buzz took his suggestion to heart and bellowed at the girl, “Well? F*** off!”The young model wiped her tears away as she left. Meanwhile, Jake and the bespectacled man quickly launched into a performance of humorous back-and-forths. They successfully r
From then onward, Vivian had no doubt that Edward had not received the phone from Baldie. Nonetheless, she kept her eyes downcast and her expression remained unchanged as she eventually sank into silence.By this point, even Buzz, who was the least capable of reading the room, could sense a taut, belligerent tension between Edward and Vivian. Confounded, he turned to the bespectacled man who responded by winking at him before yanking him out of the house. “Oh, look at the time! Gotta jet! I have
Vivian’s eyes reddened and her lips trembled slightly. “Edward Levin, do you think I’m playing hard to get? You hit me in the face. It’s swollen because of you! Do you think my injury is automatically hunky-dory just because you caressed it a bit afterward?” she fumed. “As for you putting up with me?! Well, excuse me for not thanking you for that immense sacrifice!”Her outburst confounded Edward even more. With furrowed eyebrows, he took the tablet and eyed it. Painkillers.His expression softe
Frankly, had Edward not explicitly drawn the lines, Vivian would have moved on with her plan to chop off Baldie’s finger. It was never intended to be a show of dominance, but a distraction from the issue about her phone. The human mind clung to memories associated with intense emotions, and Vivian was banking on this inherent human nature to erase Baldie’s memory of her asking about the keys and the phone prior to slicing off his finger.Unfortunately, since Edward had mentioned it, Vivian was e
Vivian could not belie her discouragement. “It’s no use. Edward will either physically alter his fingerprints through some unknown means, or he will swap his prints in the authorities’ database to someone else’s so that the results will never match.”A soft chuckle escaped Joan. “Oh, the records in the database have been tampered with. That much is true, but their handiwork is a tad bit sloppy. They left one out somewhere they thought is unimportant, but a very persistent old lady has found it.”
Jake came to a sudden halt. He turned around and gazed at Baldie as disbelief radiated from his eyes. Baldie looked at him back in a hoity-toity manner. He refuted, “This is the shining example of what people would call a fire at the city gates bringing disaster to the fish pond. Anyway, everyone only goes for the low-hanging fruit. It’s Mr. Levin who ordered me to cut his finger off. Miss Carraway doesn’t dare to find fault with him, so she comes to me. Mr. Levin is also the same. How could h