Chapter 6
Who?
I turned around, looking toward where the voice came from.
Zara stood outside the courtyard gate in a white dress with exquisite makeup, waving in our direction.
What was she doing here?
I instinctively turned to look at Luke, whose expression also showed surprise.
When we’d entered the courtyard earlier, I hadn’t bothered to close the gate, so Zara walked right in.
She stood beside me, looking at Luke with an innocent
expression.
“Mr. Watts, you rushed out of the hotel so quickly–turns out you saw Zoe!
“When you said Zoe was here that day, I didn’t believe it. So Zoe really was just throwing a tantrum.”
Then she turned to look at me, her face full of concern.
“Zoe, Mr. Watts has been looking for you for so long. You were really too willful this time. Mr. Watts has to search for you every
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day while handling work–it breaks my heart to see it.”
Listening to her ambiguous words, I frowned.
Luke’s face immediately darkened.
“Zara, you’re misleading Zoe.”
3
Her expression stiffened, and just as she was about to say something, a loud crash interrupted her.
Bang! Followed immediately by Lena’s furious shout.
18 min left
“Tyler, do you think I’m an idiot? That little girl looks exactly like you! You’re still trying to lie to me!”
The next second, Lena burst out, grabbed my hand, and started running toward the exit.
Her grip was so strong that I stumbled and had to run along with her.
Luke and Tyler tried to follow, but Lena glared at them fiercely
and declared:
“If you dare follow us, we’ll disappear again!”
The two men behind us stopped dead in their tracks, only able to watch helplessly as we left.
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18 min left
Lena dragged me along in a mad dash until we finally stopped –just before I ran out of breath–and sat down on a roadside bench.
Looking at the unfamiliar beautiful scenery before me, I was too breathless to appreciate it.
After Lena stopped, she pursed her lips and looked at me.
“Zoe, we’ve been caught.”
“Yeah, Lena, we’ve been caught.”
I didn’t know what she and Tyler had discussed that made her storm out like that. She looked really upset now.
Before I could ask, she told me everything that had just happened with Tyler.
It turned out that at the tavern, Tyler had pulled her all the way back to the courtyard.
Tyler couldn’t understand why she’d left without a word, especially using fake death to escape–he found it unacceptable.
Lena thought he was playing dumb.
We’d both seen the online news about him with that mistress and illegitimate daughter. Given Tyler’s personality, he would have immediately clarified such rumors to avoid any
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18 min left
misunderstanding.
But during the months we’d been gone, she could still see news about Tyler’s secret meetings with his mistress.
Tyler explained that he’d devoted almost all his energy to
searching for Lena, so he hadn’t had time to deal with the stories those gossip accounts made up.
Unfortunately, this didn’t convince Lena.
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Lena had even seen Tyler’s diary from eight years ago, where he’d written about being smitten with some unknown girl.
She angrily stormed out, dragged me along, and ran.
Thinking about Lena’s straightforward personality and how she tends to act impulsively when it comes to Tyler, I couldn’t shake the feeling there was some misunderstanding here.
“Lena, didn’t you ask who that mother and daughter actually were?”
She froze.
“No. Zoe, you’ve seen that little girl’s photos online too, right? She really does look a lot like Tyler.”
After a long silence, I thought about Luke again.
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Actually, I’d believed him earlier.
- f) 18 min left
Our decision to fake our deaths and escape had really been an impulsive act while drunk.
Looking back now, we didn’t have any concrete evidence that Luke and Tyler had cheated.
During these months when they’d been searching everywhere for us, I’d already started having doubts.
Luke’s explanation just now, and the look in his eyes–it was all enough to make me believe him.
Even what Zara had said was full of holes in my opinion.
So I began to question everything.
“Lena, we don’t actually have any concrete evidence, do we?”
Lena, who was still wiping away tears, suddenly looked up at me
in confusion.
“What?”
I continued, “Maybe we should trust them a little more. If they really did deceive us, then we’ll get divorced.”
B
