Chapter 1
The day Howard Irwin came back, he brought with him a “silly girl.”
The girl, who looked to be in her early twenties, had a pair of white shoes with a bit of mud on them, but her skirt was clean to the point of being dazzling. She smiled and looked at her, saying. “This madam looks so beautiful!”
Victoria Blackwell laughed and the cigarette at her fingertips had burned down to the end, the heat crawling up her fingertips.
Actually, she was not much older than the girl, but Howard did not correct her, and the smile on his lips deepened.
For ten years, the only woman by Howard’s side was Victoria. When this girl appeared, she knew, “this man, she could not keep”
That night when he came back, he didn’t go to accompany that silly girl, but dragged her into the room they often used.
Afterwards, Howard reached out and stroked her face, his thumb rubbing heavily over her lower lip smudging the lipstick.
“You could follow me into degradation without a name or identity, but she couldn’t ”
Howard buttoned up his shirt, and Victoria could smell the mixture of tobacco and tequila on him. The familiar scent had intoxicated her countless times. “Yesterday when I saved Beatrice in the alley, she foolishly held my hand and said ‘good brother, good brother“.”
“No one had dared to come so close to me.”
His hand brushed over Victoria’s sweaty hair
“She was different from you.”
Victoria stared at the ceiling, “Because she’s clean?““”
“She didn’t even know what color blood was.”
And you
He lifted his head to look at her, his eyes calm to the point of being terrifying.
“The first time we met, your hands were still stained with the blood of that old man
The old man clearly wanted to violate her, who was only fifteen years old, so she had to do this.
She suddenly felt like laughing, her selflessness became the reason for being abandoned, while that “crazy” Innocence became the qualification to be cherished.
Thinking back to the fear of the first time helping Howard deliver goods, thinking back to the pain of stomach bleeding from blocking alcohol for him, thinking back to those pretend–to–not–care acts she put on.
The mirror on the dressing table reflected her current appearance, messy long hair, smudged makeup, and ambiguous traces on her body.
“I will get married, you can continue to be “Victoria‘, just like the past ten years.”
Victoria finally smiled, with a craziness in her laughter that she herself didn’t even realize. She could shield him from bullets and knives in the midst of gunfire, but she couldn’t write her own name on the marriage certificate.
“Howard, you’re a fucking asshole”
Howard raised his lips unconcernedly,
“You know, tomorrow Beatrice will move in, you move out tonight.”
The sound of the door closing was not loud, but it made Victoria shiver.
She slowly curled up her body, burying her face in the pillow that still retained Howard’s scent.
Strangely, she couldn’t cry. She thought she had already developed a heart of stone, but at this moment she discovered that the heart really can ache.
Victoria opened her phone and found her contacts, starting to create a fake identity for herself. “Howard wouldn’t let her leave, so she had to take her own death”
Always be prepared to withdraw at any time around this man.
Howard, you didn’t want me first,
