Chapter 4
Anger and impatience flickered through Luca’s eyes.
He looked at me and spoke in a flat voice, “Divorce? Impossible.”
“Even if I don’t love you anymore, you’re still the most important person in my life. I won’t divorce you.”
Then he looked straight at me and said each word with deliberate force, ‘Rita Conti, I have never wronged
you.”
“If I owe anyone, it’s Vivian. I couldn’t give her a name. I made her spend the best years of her life by my side with nothing.”
“I was going to leave you some dignity, but you had to act like this and force things into something ugly.”
Then he turned away from me, dropped to one knee, and pulled out an enormous diamond ring.
His gaze toward Vivian was tender enough to make people sick. “Vivian, I met you too late.”
“I can’t give you an official title in this life, but I can give you the biggest wedding possible. I can let everyone
know the woman I love most is you.”
Vivian covered her mouth, her eyes reddening.
But she still turned her face away with a wounded look. “I can’t say yes. I love you, so I was willing to throw
away my pride and stay your mistress.”
‘But I’m not willing to let the whole world know I’m your mistress. Unless…”
She turned to look at me. “Unless Donna serves as our witness and says it in front of everyone. Says that the
unloved woman is the real mistress.”
‘That she’s the mistress in this relationship.”
I looked back at the malice in her eyes without a single expression on my face.
Seeing that I still wasn’t speaking, Luca’s tone turned icy.
‘Rita, don’t forget your parents’ ashes are buried in the cemetery I paid for. You wouldn’t want them to end up
like that house, would you?”
It felt like someone had carved out a fistful of flesh straight from my chest.
Even breathing started tasting like blood.
Slowly, I nodded. “Fine. I’ll go.”
Vivian smiled through her tears and threw herself into Luca’s arms.
He took her to pick out a wedding dress and book the hotel.
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Right before leaving, he paused.
For once, he gave me an explanation in a relatively calm voice, ‘Rita Conti, it’s just a wedding. It won’t shake
your place as Donna.”
I said evenly, “Okay.”
He looked at me for a long moment.
At last, a smile appeared on his face. “You won’t have to take care of Vivian for the time being. Stay in the
hospital and recover.”
‘Once the baby is born, the three of us can take the child on a trip. Consider it my compensation to you.”
I still answered the same way, “Okay.”
Only then did he leave, satisfied.
On the day of the wedding, Luca clearly didn’t trust me not to make trouble.
He had bodyguards bring me to the dressing room early and keep watch over me.
Vivian pouted and said her wedding gown was too heavy for her to put her shoes on by herself.
‘Donna, help me, please.”
Luca frowned and instinctively looked toward me.
I lowered my eyes, crouched down, lifted the hem of her dress, and slipped the shoes onto her feet.
A complicated look crossed Luca’s face, as if he wanted to say something.
But Vivian nudged him and smiled. “Don, I’m thirsty. Go get me a glass of orange juice.”
Luca smiled, rubbed her hair, and turned to leave.
The door had barely shut behind him before Vivian kicked me hard in the chest.
She looked down at me with naked contempt. “Rita, you didn’t honestly think I was just some gold digger
clinging to a rich man, did you?”
‘You probably have no idea Luca and I have been together for almost ten years.”
I looked at her in shock.
Her smile turned vicious. “He said I was too young. He said I shouldn’t have to suffer with him. So he dated
me and married you.”
‘He was so afraid of wronging me that when he made his first real money, the cash he told you got taken by
debt collectors actually went into buying me designer bags.”
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“And every time I felt slighted, he had those same men go to your place and put on a little debt-collection
show so he could use the money to buy me more.”
“In total, that came to 1.8 million. Oh, and one cheap bracelet. I threw it away.”
My whole body started shaking.
That money was what I had broken myself to earn so Luca could pay off his debts.
At my worst, I had collapsed right there on the factory floor.
I had nearly been pulled into a machine.
When Luca found out, he’d wrapped me in his arms and trembled harder than I had.
He’d kept saying it was his fault.
And I had actually patted his back and smiled and told him I didn’t blame him.
What a joke.
It had all been fake.
He had been lying to me all along.
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