Inside the room, beside the big rosewood bed carved all over with flowers, clothes were scattered every which way.
Under the dim yellow light, the woman’s long hair was spread in a messy tangle across the pillow, her two pale legs draped loosely together...
Just looking at the air in that room was enough to make a person blush.
After all that tossing around, the two of them finally settled down.
The man leaned halfway against the headboard, pulled out a cigarette, stuck it between his lips, and after a few drags suddenly said,
"I’m thinking I should just divorce Evelyn Hartwell."
Rosalind Hartwell propped her head up with one hand. Her voice came out lazy, tired, a little hoarse too.
"Divorce for what?"
"She hasn’t given you a child, sure, but doesn’t your own son already exist? He’s being raised right at home.
Let her keep helping you look after the kid, handle the housework, wait on your parents, while you stay out there earning money in peace. Isn’t that just fine~"
Arthur Langdon frowned. "But in my heart I’ve only ever treated her like a sister. The one I’ve truly loved all along is you.
Back then I didn’t have the means, so I had no choice. It’s different now. I can give you a good life!"
Rosalind Hartwell sneered to herself. There was no way she’d give up a whole pond for one fish.
And Arthur Langdon, in that pond of hers, was nothing more than a tiny, forgettable fry.
To her, he was just a tool she used to toy with Evelyn Hartwell.
Rosalind Hartwell got out of bed neatly, bent to pick up her clothes one by one, and slipped them back on as she said, "No. That won’t do."
Arthur Langdon grew anxious. "Before, Sterling Blackwood was still hanging on with half a life left in him, so if you wouldn’t leave me then, fine, I had nothing to say.
But now the man’s dead. Are you really planning to keep staying in the Blackwood family like some widow guard?"
Rosalind Hartwell’s sweet, syrupy voice was as soft as ever. "If we really got together, it would be far too unfair to my sister."
"For your sake, you made her lose three babies. You ruined her body so she’ll never have children in this life. We’ve already wronged her more than enough."
"Besides, I already took her whole family away from her. She doesn't even have a child. You're the only one left by her side.
"If I take you too... how pitiful would that make her?"
Arthur Langdon's voice carried that fake mix of blame and tenderness. "That's your problem. Your heart's too soft. You're always thinking about other people..."
Outside the door, Evelyn Hartwell stood there like she'd been sealed in ice, not moving an inch as the voices from inside drifted into her ears.
Her eyes were red and swollen. Both hands were clenched so tight her nails dug into her palms. Hatred and a pain too deep for words wound around her heart like a rope, pulling tighter and tighter until her whole body started shaking.
No wonder, after all these years, no matter how careful she was, the babies in her womb still slipped away one after another.
All this time, she had thought it was her own weak health, thought she simply wasn't blessed enough to carry a child to term.
She never, not even in her worst nightmare, imagined that the children's own father never wanted them to come into this world at all.
No wonder the Langdon family had raised those two children brought back from the orphanage as if they were their own flesh and blood.
She had always believed the Langdons were kindhearted people.
Who could have guessed those two adopted sons were Arthur Langdon's real children from the start?
No wonder, after so many years without giving birth to a son or daughter, the Langdon family might dislike her, but never truly forced her to divorce and step aside.
She had always thought it was because she and Arthur were husband and wife in name and feeling, because her years of dutiful care had finally softened the Langdon family.
She had never dreamed that Arthur had long wanted to cast her off. It was Rosalind Hartwell, the other woman, who had the nerve to "pity" her and refused to marry him, and that was the only reason he never brought up divorce.
Bang!
Evelyn shoved the door open with one violent push.
The sudden crash startled the two people inside so badly they both jumped.
Arthur Langdon's face changed at once. He yanked the quilt over himself in a panic, wrapping it around his body, his voice sharp with shock and guilt. "Evelyn Hartwell! Why are you back?"
The moment Rosalind Hartwell saw Evelyn's ashen, twisted face, she understood. Evelyn had heard everything. She knew everything. A vicious glint flashed straight through Rosalind's eyes.
Evelyn charged forward. Arthur, still clutching the quilt, had just rolled off the bed and was fumbling wildly for his clothes when she rushed up to him and, like a woman driven out of her mind, slapped him hard across the face over and over again—more than a dozen times.
"One is my husband!
One is the woman I treated like my own sister!
What gives you the right to do this to me?!"
She wanted nothing more than to kill the pair of them on the spot.
Filthy trash.
Whether Arthur Langdon was guilty and too ashamed to move, or whether he figured Evelyn Hartwell had already hit him and vented enough that she would not lay a hand on Rosalind Hartwell again, he just stood there frozen. His face went red, then pale, and he let Evelyn curse him and beat him without fighting back.
Evelyn did not stop until her palms were burning red and swollen, so painful they had gone numb.