Nathan looked at her in despair. He couldn''t remember what he had done back then.


    All he could remember was giving the best of everything to her and their two children for years, only to find out it was all a lie.


    Sophia sneered, seeing the despair on his face. Good, let him feel despair. This was all his own doing.


    "Nathan, we were about to get married when you suddenly met Wendy, the rich and powerful only daughter. You turned around and abandoned me, fawning all over her, chasing her every day. Do you have any idea how much that hurt me? We''re both women, but you two lived your morous lives while I had to hide in your shadow."


    "Do you know how much money you gave me that first time? Two hundred thousand dors. Do you know how tempting that was for a girl from the countryside like me?"


    "After that, you started giving me that much every month. You were the one who gave me a taste for the high life. You made me this way. But I had known Mr. Wilson even before I met you. He also gave me a lot of money every month. I''ve lived my whole life off of you two men, never enduring any hardship, but always living a life in the shadows."


    "I did what I did because I couldn''t ept it. If we had gotten married, I could have been your wife openly. Joanna and the others wouldn''t have had to be illegitimate children."


    "Joanna''s biggest dream in life was to be your legitimate daughter, to be a real Ms. Scott. But what did you do? You enjoyed your good fortune for over twenty years and didn''t want a divorce. If I hadn''t forced you, hadn''t ruined your four sons, would you have divorced Wendy to marry me?"


    Sophia burst into tears of anger. She regretted it now.


    She regretted marrying Nathan.


    Without Wendy, Nathan was nothing. He had nothing now, and her future had no guarantees.


    "Nathan, life goes by so fast. Maybe because my days were too easy. Looking back now, it all feels like it happened yesterday."


    She looked


    up at


    at Nathan, her eyes zing with fury, her fists clenched, and her body trembling with rage and resentment. "After you got. married, I thought I could marry Mr. Wilson. But he also looked down on me for having no family background, for being just a country girl with no good job and no proper upbringing. His parents didn''t approve of me, so our rtionship ended up going nowhere, and we could only see each other in secret."


    "I''ve tried so hard to climb up in this life, no matter which way I turned, I was always the one who got abandoned. Why am I always the one who gets abandoned? And why Wendy the one you all choosh and protect?"


    Sometimes, she felt shameless herself.


    But there was no turning back. After Nathan handed her that first two-hundred- thousand-dor windfall, she could never go back to the way things were.


    Wendy was so rich. Thepany could lose a hundred million dors, and she wouldn''t even bother to ask about it.


    She thought that everything Wendy had could be hers, but in the end, it all turned out to be an empty shell.


    She still had nothing, and she was consumed by resentment.


    Nathanughed, a bitter, angry sound. When a person reaches the peak of fury, all they can do isugh.


    He stared at her, his face devoid of


    expression "Sophia, I ved away every month to provide for you. Every year, you asked for more. To send our son abroad for a good education, I increased your allowance from three million t twenty million. That''s more than an ordinary family makes in a lifetime, and you got it in a single year. What more could you possibly want? Why did you have to cheat on me? And in the end, even the son isn''t mine. How could you do this to me?"