Chapter 3
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Downstairs, Camilla took a quiet look around. Ophelia and the children were nowhere to be seen; they must have left ahead of time.
Charles wheeled Camilla over to the passenger side of the car, opened the door, and the first thing Camilla saw was a lipstick lying on the seat.
Charles glanced at Camilla, picked up the lipstick without a word, and slipped it into his pocket. Then he nonchalantly lifted Camilla into the passenger seat.
“Charles,” Camilla asked softly, “in the five years since I became a vegetable, has another woman sat in the passenger seat of this car?”
“Absolutely not,” Charles denied outright. He paused for a moment and said half–jokingly, “Everyone in Yerinton knows that my wife is notoriously fierce. She once stormed into a kidnapper’s den with a gun.”
‘Fierce?‘ Camilla wondered.
Yes, she remembered. Shortly after she and Charles got married, Charles was kidnapped. The police were making slow progress, and Camilla was nearly driven mad with worry. She used all her connections to investigate and finally found Charles’s whereabouts.
Camilla had gone to rescue him with a box of money and a gun, risking her own life. Charles had also sworn that he would never betray her.
The traffic light turned red, and the car stopped steadily behind the crosswalk. Charles suddenly glanced at her. “Camilla, how did you feel during the five years you were a vegetable?”
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Chapter 3
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Camilla, behind her sunglasses, looked indifferently at Charles’s hand reaching out to hold hers. “I just felt like I had a very long dream. It was pitch black in the dream, with no sound, no light. It was so terrifying.”
Charles heard the answer he wanted and relaxed. He patted her hand. “It’s all over, Camilla. We’re going home.”
Camilla forced a smile. “Yeah, it’s all over.
‘Charles, our marriage is over too,‘ she wondered, ‘Now it’s time to settle
the score.‘
The light turned green, and Charles stepped on the gas, propelling the car forward. As they passed, a black Maybach sped by. For a moment, Camilla’s face, framed by her sunglasses, flashed by the dark window of the Maybach’s back seat.
Inside the car, the man’s face, chiseled like a sculpture, was hidden in the shadows, exuding an air of cold detachment. But as Camilla’s face slipped from his vision, his pupils suddenly contracted sharply.
He rolled down the window and his gaze followed her out of the window.
“Mr. Norwood, what’s wrong?” Elias Grantham, the assistant in the passenger seat, turned around to ask. He had never seen the boss so flustered.
“Nothing,” Benedict Norwood replied.
entley had already driven far away, shrinking into an invisible dot.
Wedict slowly withdrew his gaze. In the distance, the sign of the
Uniteon Group loomed majestically under the night sky. He narrowed his eyes slightly, thinking of something.
“Camilla?” Benedict murmured hoarsely, savoring the name, and slowly said, “She’s back.”
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Chapter 3
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A black Bentley pulled up in front of a villa. Charles carried Camilla out of the car and gently placed her in a wheelchair, then began to push her forward.
Camilla, behind her dark sunglasses, surveyed the villa before her. This was the house she and Charles had shared as a married couple. After a five–year absence, it felt like a lifetime had passed.
“Camilla, we’re home,” Charles whispered softly into her ear, his voice, tender. “Can you smell it? The tulips you planted for me. I’ve taken good care of them over the years.”
Camilla gazed indifferently at the tulips in full bloom in the front garden, standing gracefully under the moonlight.
She had planted each one, all for Charles.
He had once said that tulips were his favorite flower. Back then, she had been completely devoted to him. If he liked something, she would do anything for him without question. She had planted hundreds, even thousands, of tulips, never once asking why.
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