“I checked thoroughly. Miss July’s mother has indeed passed away. Her ashes are enshrined in the monastery outside the city.”
“Impossible! How can this be?” Julian roared, his voice filled with unconcealed shock and grief. He couldn’t accept this reality, nor
could he accept that the once kind and gentle woman had simply left this world.
What exactly happened?” Julian asked, trembling, tears welling in his eyes.
“It was suicide…” The assistant’s voice was low, laced with sympathy: “Miss July’s mother was gravely ill. She didn’t want to spend
money on treatment, didn’t want to burden her daughter, so she…”
“So what?!” Julian’s emotions completely shattered. He couldn’t imagine a mother’s pain and despair in choosing suicide so as not
to burden her daughter. Even more, he couldn’t accept that he was the culprit behind it all. He remembered the thirty thousand
dollars I had gathered for him earlier, and he didn’t dare think about what state of mind I must have been in when I gave him that
money. If only there hadn’t been deceit, if only there hadn’t been tests.
Julian vaguely felt that he and I, perhaps, could never be again. He collapsed onto the floor in agony, unable to muster any strength:
“How could she be so foolish? How could she be so foolish?!”
Olivia stood by, watching Julian’s torment, her heart filled with jealousy and resentment. She didn’t know about my mother’s death, nor did she know what had happened between Julian and me. All she knew was that Julian’s heart still held me, and I had become
a thorn in her side, an obstacle that had to be removed.
“Julian Winthorpe, is she worth all this? Crying like this for an old woman who’s already dead?”
“Lila July took your money and ran. Can’t you see that?”
7
“She even caused her own mother to commit suicide. What do you even like about a woman like that?” Olivia taunted, attempting
to completely erase me from Julian’s memory.
“Olivia Reed!” Julian suddenly lifted his head, his eyes burning with fury and hatred: “Shut up! What do you know? You have no right
to even speak her name!”
“For you? She abandoned her own mother for you?” Olivia’s voice was sharp, every word like a knife, viciously stabbing at Julian’s
heart.
“Nonsense!” Julian retorted furiously.
