Chapter 2

The cozy, warm home that I had personally decorated three years ago had become completely unrecognizable. The pale yellow curtains were now a dark blue. I couldn't find a single one of the ornaments that I had painstakingly hand-picked. Even the large LCD television that I had seen as an essential part of a cozy home life had been replaced with a projector and a screen. Before I could step into my now-unfamiliar home, Anderson's mother, Julia, called me. "Julia!" I said with a bright smile as I answered the call. "Julia, I was planning on visiting you tomorrow." Before I left the country, Julia treated me better than anyone, apart from my own parents. However, she said coldly to me, "Yvonne, you should break up with Anderson." My smile froze on my face as my expression changed to one of disbelief. "W-What?" "The Graham family can't afford to have a daughter-in-law who could drop dead at any moment." At my silence, Julia simply continued, "Plenty of people are clambering over themselves to marry you. Why not let Andy go?" My smile was still stuck on my face, but my eyes were already filled with tears. Her words stabbed through my chest like sharp knives. I wanted to know if Julia was simply saying what Anderson already had on his mind. Before I could call him, I got a text from an unsaved number. I clicked on it to see a screenshot of Sophie's Instagram story. The caption read, "This punk is trying to beg for my forgiveness." The story itself was a picture of Anderson on one knee in front of Sophie. He was carefully slipping a ten-carat pink diamond ring onto her finger. Next to them, a set of jewelry worth billions of dollars was on full display. My blood ran cold. At that very moment, I felt like nothing was worth it anymore. I forwarded the message to Anderson along with a voice message. "Is this your way of settling things?" After a long bout of silence, I wiped away the tears that had already cooled down on my cheeks. Anderson's voice suddenly rang out from the doorway. He rushed toward me with a panicked expression. He reached out and pulled me into his embrace. "Yvonne, hear me out. It was just a joke. It was a punishment for losing a game. Sophie will move out tomorrow, okay? As for my mom… Well, she's just worried about your health. I'll talk to her." He then lifted my hand up with his lips pressed into a thin line. He took an aluminium can ring out of his pocket and sincerely slipped it onto my ring finger. "Yvonne, remember our ring pull promise? I'm not a man who'll go back on my word. I said I'll marry you, and that was a promise." Back then, the Graham family was nothing in Jeanton. They were barely even considered tycoons at the time. Anderson had always been self-conscious in front of me. He always said that his only goal was to reach the top of the ladder so he could finally be a proper match for me. At the time, I had chuckled and snuggled further into his embrace. "As long as you're sincere, I'll marry you even if you propose with a ring pull." However, he had said to me, "Yvonne, you deserve only the best. I'll buy the most expensive ring and give you the world's most extravagant proposal." I couldn't stop thinking of Sophie's Instagram story. I looked down at the ring pull on my finger and couldn't hold back the scoff that slipped out. "Is the Sherman family really only worth this much in your eyes? Or has your promise always been worth only a single ring pull?" Now, Anderson was powerful enough that no one dared to humiliate or insult him. My words made his expression darken. He had clearly lost his patience. He massaged his brow in annoyance. "Yvonne, when did you become so materialistic?" I tossed the ring pull into the trash can along with any remaining feelings I still had for Anderson. "Anderson…" "Andy, I'm here! Time to kiss my feet!" My voice rang out at the same time as Sophie's did.