Thinking about the awful things that happened before, I shivered.
God had given me another chance, and I was going to make things right.
I did not pay attention to Sophie, who looked sad, or to Jeffrey, who was yelling at me. I just calmly picked up the suitcase and started packing again.
When Jeffrey saw how calm I was, he got really mad and pushed me.
“You think you’re so great, Ella, pretending you don’t care. But acting like that won’t make me do what you want,” he said.
“Let me tell you, even if we end up getting married, I won’t stop seeing Sophie. She’ll even have her own room in our house. If you can’t handle that, then we shouldn’t get married at all.”
I had heard that kind of talk so many times. Before, I would have fought with Jeffrey and even used the unborn kid to threaten him. However, now, I did not want to get married at all.
“Alright, then let’s not get married.”
Everything went quiet.
I looked at Jeffrey’s shocked expression and said calmly, “That’s fine by me. I don’t want to get married either.”
Jeffrey and I had known each other since we were kids. Our families decided we would get married 20 years ago. It should have been easy, but two years ago, Sophie, a new assistant, came into Jeffrey’s life.
The first time I saw her, she was in Jeffrey’s office. I had brought him some snacks and walked in just as he was yelling at her.
She was new and looked scared, like a little rabbit. Her eyes were red, and she was about to cry. People tried to calm Jeffrey down, but he would not listen. Finally, I could not watch anymore and stepped in to help.
Jeffrey stopped yelling at her when he saw me.
Back then, he warned me that a person like her would not last through the probationary period and would have to leave.
However, she did not leave. Instead, she captured Jeffrey’s heart so much that he wished he could hold her close and treasure her all the time. He even went so far as to end his own child’s life for that assistant.
Jeffrey looked into my eyes, searching for signs of jealousy, but when he saw only resolve, he suddenly felt a flicker of fear. He reached out, trying to touch my face.
At that moment, Sophie covered her mouth and sobbed. “Mr. Graham, Ella, please don’t argue because of me. I’ll go away—I’ll go far away and never trouble you again.”
After she ran off in tears, Jeffrey looked at me with the same disgust that had become all too familiar over the last two years.
“Ella, must you spoil my mood at the end of the year? If you want to marry me, don’t make Sophie unhappy, or I’ll never take you as my wife. I’d like to see how you’ll explain your pregnancy to your family when the time comes.”
With a dark look and icy eyes, Jeffrey said his piece and then hurried after Sophie.
However, it seemed he forgot that a child less than three months along could still be terminated.
As for marriage, the alliance between the Blakes and the Grahams might be easy to form but hard to dissolve, yet the Graham family had more than one son.
The vibration of my phone snapped me back to the present.
It was Sophie.
[Ella, even with the Blake family behind you, Jeffrey will always take my side.
[You’ll just have to get through New Year’s with your pregnancy alone. Next year, when the baby is born, you’ll have a little one to keep you company, so you won’t be alone.]
Her words were dripping with challenge.
I had gotten a bunch of messages that upset me, and I had shown them all to Jeffrey.
However, he always said she was just acting like a kid and told me not to worry about it, to just let her be.
