Chapter 2

Eric's hands stilled, and his voice sounded tight. "I'm sorry, Penelope. I've been so busy lately that I forgot it's that time of the month for you. Let's go back into the car, alright? There's a hot water bottle in there." Penelope silently followed him back into the car, letting Eric put a heating blanket over her and press a hot water bottle to her tummy. In the past, Eric had memorized her time of the month and knew it better than the back of his hand. However, over the past few months, everything had changed. The car still smelled heavily of the tangerine perfume, making Penelope recall that photo in his car she had just seen a while ago. That woman had been leaning heavily against the door, her clothes in disarray, while Eric looked at her with a lustful smile on his lips. The driver stopped at the door of a jewelry store. However, Eric didn't move. Penelope turned toward him and caught him mid-smile as he messaged someone with a cute cat as their profile picture. Seemingly realizing Penelope's eyes were on him, Eric quickly locked his phone screen and reached over to pat her on her head. Then, he gave her his black card and said, "Penelope, be a good girl and buy whatever you want in there, okay? Something just came up at the company, but I'll be back in a while to pick you up." Penelope quietly got down. Before she had even managed to find her balance on the curb, Eric had already signaled to his driver to turn around. The car disappeared out of sight within seconds. The staff from the jewelry shop immediately swarmed around Penelope when she entered. "Ms. Sanders, Mr. Fulmer arranged for you to choose from 34 ring designs! Take your time with them." Penelope looked away and shook her head at the staff, saying, "Don't bother. Just pick any one of them and it'll do." After all, she was planning to "kill herself" on her wedding day. And a dead bride would never have a chance to put the ring on her finger anyway. Penelope didn't heed Eric's instructions and went home right after picking out a random design. The first thing she did as soon as she got home was to grind some coffee beans to make herself a fresh cup of coffee. She had been unable to sleep for nearly two weeks. Coffee was the only thing keeping her awake at this point. Suddenly, she received a message notification on her phone. Her hand holding the coffee trembled when she looked at the screen. The coffee splashed out of the cup, causing scalding drops of brown liquid to land on her chest, but Penelope didn't even notice it. She just kept her eyes glued to the screen. Ingrid Hason had just sent her another message. Even worse, it was a video message this time. The video was mostly blurry, with only close-ups of flesh on flesh. However, the voices in the video could be very clearly heard. Ingrid was panting loudly as she caught her breath, only to say, "Ricky… Is my butt nicer than hers?" An inexplicably familiar voice then replied, "You're a lot sexier than her." Then, a familiar hand reached toward the woman's butt and pinched the flesh hard. On one of the fingers was even the rare diamond ring that Penelope had personally designed. Penelope shook all over. She used the last ounce of her energy to turn off the screen on her phone. She forced herself to think about other things to try to distract herself as she went through the documents from the company about to fake her death—Doornail Corporation—about her package, which included her new identity afterward. She never received a single message from Eric for the rest of the day. Just as she was about to go to sleep, her phone suddenly rang again with a message notification. Penelope lowered her gaze and saw that Ingrid had sent her tons of photos this time. The first photo was that of Eric's face. He was sleeping peacefully next to her. The next few photos were all Ingrid's selfies. Her body was littered with all sorts of bruises and love bites. "Ricky said that he wanted to cover every inch of my body with his marks before letting me go. Has he ever wanted you as badly as he wanted me, Penelope?" Penelope was unusually calm. However, she didn't do anything for the next seven hours but stare at the phone screen until daylight. When Eric finally came home, he saw Penelope sitting on the couch in a fetal position, her eyes bloodshot while she stared at her phone screen, her hands shaking. Eric was taken aback. He hurriedly went up to her and pulled her into his embrace. "Penelope, why are your eyes so red? Have you been crying?" Penelope turned off her phone screen and simply rubbed her eyes a little. She then looked at Eric, whose clothes were still messy and disheveled, and smiled very faintly. But anyone could tell it wasn't genuine. "It's nothing. I just had a nightmare."