Chapter 2

I pulled out my phone and dialed my mother.

"Mom, I've decided to come back and take over the family business. And the wedding is off. Don't bother preparing anything on your end."

My mom had originally planned to throw a grand reception abroad after my ceremony here. She had lived overseas for years and constantly urged me to return and inherit the estate.

For Lauren, I chose to stay behind in this city. I genuinely thought I had found true love, never realizing I was just playing the fool in her twisted game.

"I'm glad you finally see clearly. That girl was never right for you," my mom said before hanging up. "I'll be waiting for you in a month."

I stood in the living room and smoked an entire cigarette. At some point, Lauren came walking down the stairs.

She pinched her nose, looking at me with pure disgust. "Didn't we agree there'd be no smoking in the house? Luke, that smells revolting."

Her very first words were full of blame. She didn't even attempt to offer an excuse for leaving me stranded at the altar.

"And what the hell is wrong with you? Why did you buzz all your hair off?"

She marched over, her voice shrill and grating. She gave me a rough shove, visibly agitated.

I shot up from the couch, brushed her hand away, and glared straight into her eyes.

"What's wrong? Don't look enough like him without the hair?"

A mocking sneer crept onto my face. "Lauren, aren't you going to explain the random guy in our bedroom?"

"Don't you dare talk about Mason like that!" Lauren snapped defensively, demanding I apologize to him. "Mason got into a car accident! I only ran off because I was worried sick about him. Keep your voice down; he finally just fell asleep."

She went on about how Mason was a light sleeper with severe anxiety, and how he needed rest after such an exhausting flight.

I laughed out of sheer disbelief.

The woman in front of me felt like a complete stranger. She used to be so gentle and thoughtful. Whenever I worked late, she would leave out warm soup for me, and she’d drop by my office with home-cooked lunches because she worried takeout would upset my stomach.

She even hand-stitched details onto my casual shirts and designed matching couple accessories for us to wear.

For seven years, she had showered me with what looked like pure devotion. She claimed she understood the trauma from my broken childhood home and swore she would never let me down.

"Why him?"

My voice was dead calm. Seven years of commitment, reduced to ashes in a single night. The ache in my chest was unbearable. I had loved Lauren with everything I had; I would have ripped out my own heart if she asked for it.

Why did it have to be Mason? The very man who had shattered her into pieces in the first place?

"Mason had his reasons back then! When he stayed with his ex, it wasn't because he still loved her—it was out of obligation and guilt! Can't you understand that?"

When I first met Lauren, she had just broken up with Mason.

She told me she had unknowingly been "the other woman," discovering too late that Mason had kept a steady girlfriend back in the States.

Back then, Lauren was pregnant with his baby, only for Mason to abandon her callously at the train station. Desperate to catch up to him, she tripped and fell, losing the pregnancy. I was just the good Samaritan who rushed her to the hospital.

That night, she wept in my arms, saying she knew being the side piece was shameful and that she never meant for it to happen, but Mason had insisted he had no feelings left for his girlfriend.

She told me that the unloved person was the only one who truly didn't belong.

Still, Mason left her behind and went abroad. For a long time after that, Lauren kept bringing up that scumbag. Eventually, she seemed to recover, even moving into my apartment under the pretense of paying me back for saving her life, insisting on taking care of all my meals and daily routines.

I turned her down at first. I was used to living alone. But Lauren was relentlessly attentive.

She would drive across town just to pick up a specific shirt she thought would suit me, or pull countless strings to hunt down niche accessories.

I was deeply moved back then. No woman had ever gone to such lengths for me; no one had ever treated me like I was the center of their universe.

Looking back now, that whole transformation was just a calculated effort to mold me into Mason's spitting image.