Chapter 3

The photo had only been up for five minutes before Conan suddenly called me up. He sounded a little hesitant. "Don't get the wrong idea, Ingrid. It was a work day when Ian got married, so…" I didn't understand where he was coming from. "What's there to get the wrong idea about?" "You're not mad?" "Why should I be mad?" Conan fell silent for a while. Then, he said, "Wait for me at your company after work. I'm taking you to the dinner gathering." Before I could reject him, he'd already hung up on me. Mindy was sitting in the front passenger seat when Conan came to pick me up. "Hi, Ingrid… So, you're tagging along for dinner too?" Despite her passive-aggressive tone, I just smiled faintly at her and went straight to the backseat door. Conan kept glancing at me through the rearview mirror throughout the journey, bringing up all sorts of random topics trying to talk to me. However, I just kept looking down at my phone and answered perfunctorily for a while before going absolutely silent. When we reached the restaurant, Conan's friend, Ian Panera, immediately came up to me and said it was a huge pity that I couldn't attend his wedding earlier. He even said that it was his loss that I wasn't able to come. I knew that Ian was only saying this because he was trying to defend Conan and placate me. The thing was that I wasn't even angry in the first place. "Don't say it like that," I said. "I'm the one who still hasn't wished you a happy wedding." Ian was so shocked when he saw that I wasn't holding a grudge against him and instead was more focused on the food being served that his jaw dropped open. This wasn't the first time Ian covered up for Conan. He'd also done the same thing a few times over the past year, covering for Conan as he jetted around the world on vacation with Mindy. In fact, there was a time when I found Ian still in town when he told me that he and Conan were both overseas on a business trip. That was when I realized he'd been lying. But Ian hadn't even felt as shocked back then as he did now. Halfway through the meal, the restaurant manager brought in a few bottles of wine and asked Conan, "Mr. Grande, these are the bottles of wine that you and Ms. Campbell stored with us the last time. Would you like us to open them now?" Seeing that everyone froze and said nothing, I decided to break the tension for the clueless manager. "Sure. Go ahead. Let's not waste them." When he saw me walking out of the private dining room, Conan got up and hurried after me. He sounded a little panicky as he explained himself. "Ingrid, I only bought the wine last time to celebrate the company securing a new, huge client." I just waved my hand dismissively at him and went into the women's restroom. When I got back to the private room, I saw Conan helping Mindy block all the toasts from the other people and drinking on her behalf. Going back two years ago, it was a similar dinner gathering with people making toasts all around the room with alcoholic drinks. I was immensely allergic to alcohol, but the people around us wouldn't stop coercing me to drink. Back then, Conan never helped me block their coercion to drink. In fact, he narrowed his eyes and helped them hold me down, forcefully pulling my mouth open for them. He'd told me that it was just alcohol and that it wasn't a big deal. He also said if I had any reaction afterward, he'd just send me to the hospital to get my stomach pumped. After that dinner gathering ended, I began having a high fever. Two days later, I experienced excruciating pain in my abdomen and was sent to the hospital. The doctor then told me that I had been pregnant for one month, and the fetus had already started to form, but I'd lost it. And when Conan heard that I'd miscarried, he flew to the hospital and screamed at me. "I told you not to go, and yet you insisted on going! You fucking dumbass! See what happens when you insist on showing yourself off to men for fun?" The flashback stopped right there, and I snapped back to the present. I went over to my seat, grabbed my bag, and left. Conan came home after me, and he was completely furious. "Are you out of your fucking mind, Ingrid Zinger? How could you leave without a word? Are you happy now that you've made everyone there miserable?" Seeing that I didn't reply to him, he tugged at his collar as a cold smirk appeared on his lips. "Since you don't know how to behave yourself in public, maybe we should just get divorced." This was the second time Conan threatened divorce against me. The last time he suggested it, he'd thought I had been snooping through his phone. Back then, I'd fallen to my knees at his feet, crying and sobbing so hard, swearing to the heavens that I would never dare to make him unhappy with me again. However, this time, I just met his gaze and said, "Okay."