Chapter 2 Emily want a divorce.
"No, I didn't," the other servant said.
"Neither did I," An eerie silence fell.
The two looked at each other.
After a long while, one of them spoke again, "Maybe we didn't hear it because we were in the back garden, far away."
"That must be it," the other servant said.
After all, it was Sophia who had claustrophobia, not Emily.
James stood at the villa's entrance, frowning deeply. Emily was injured? How did he not see that?
And what about Sophia accidentally kicking Emily down the elevator? That was impossible.
Sophia was so kind; she would never do such a thing.
It must have been Emily who deliberately jumped down and made a scene to frame Sophia.
Emily must have bribed the two servants talking inside to stand there and say those things for him to hear.
When Sophia was trapped in the elevator and not found for a long time, it must have been Emily who instructed the two servants to stay away.
He thought, 'Emily, I give you the title of Mrs. Smith, and you still bribe my servants to frame Sophia. How vicious!'
"What are you doing?!" James stepped inside. "I pay you to take care of Sophia, not to help others harm her and gossip here. You're fired. Leave and don't come back."
Without waiting for the two servants to react, James turned and left.
He needed to go to the house where they lived after getting married to find Emily and teach her a lesson, warning her not to do any more bad things. Otherwise, no matter what she did or who she got to persuade him, he would divorce her.
James drove as fast as he could to the villa.
"Emily! Emily, come out!" James kicked the door open and stormed inside. "Emily, you know what you've done. Get out here and admit your mistake!"
"Emily!" James called out several times, but there was no response.
"Emily, don't think hiding will save you. The punishment will be worse if you hide. Come out now, admit your mistake, and apologize to Sophia, and I might forgive you," James shouted angrily.
The villa was dead quiet; nobody answered him.
James's face got darker.
He got even angrier, his voice colder than ice. "Has anyone seen her? Where's Emily? Find her!"
Still, there was only silence.
Then it hit James—he hadn't hired any servants for the villa after they got married, just to mess with Emily and get back at her for using Ava to force him into marriage.
Emily had to do all the chores herself—mopping floors, cleaning stairs, wiping handrails, everything.
With no servants around, James had to look for her himself.
He searched everywhere—upstairs, downstairs, the bathroom, kitchen, bedroom, study, media room, even the rooftop pool, the garden out back, and the underground garage—but no sign of Emily.
Finally, he saw the signed divorce papers on his desk in the study and found their only photo together tossed in the trash.
When he married Emily, he didn't even want to go to City Hall for the certificate, let alone take any wedding photos with her.
That photo was taken on the fifteenth day of the first month after their marriage, when he took her to dinner with Ava. Emily leaned in to make him laugh, and Ava snapped the picture.
Emily had asked Ava for the photo, got it developed at a photo studio, framed it, and hung it above their bed as a wedding photo.
He still remembered the day she hung it up. Emily stood beside him, looking at him with adoring eyes, and said, "Compared to those grand wedding photos, I prefer ours, which is full of life."
Now, that "full of life" wedding photo lay discarded in the trash.
Cracks spiderwebbed across the glass covering the photo, distorting the image of his cold face and Emily's smiling one. Smeared across the broken glass was a red liquid that looked like blood flowing from their pictured faces.
For the second time today, James felt a giant hand tearing at his heart.
Emily really wanted a divorce.
She wasn't throwing a tantrum or playing mind games.
She truly wanted to leave him.
At the Johnson Manor, Emily's family huddled by her bedroom door, peeking through the crack at Emily, who was still asleep.
"Could Emily be feeling unwell? Why hasn't she woken up yet?" Aiden asked, his face full of concern.