Worthy Of Love

03 : Betrayal.

That afternoon, Natalia sat in her car watching the company entrance. Her throat pain was getting worse, but she didn't give it priority at the moment. All her focus was on searching for William's face among the employees at the entrance. It was now lunchtime, which made her hope of seeing him even greater.

She tried to go in directly but the receptionist stopped her, and she couldn't even make an appointment to meet him later in person, but she had expected this from the beginning because she knew the company's strict rules, so she didn't insist too much on the employee and went out to wait for him in her car.

She also has a certain amount of dignity that prevents her from making a commotion that would humiliate her... a small amount; but it is there anyway, and she must take it into consideration.

She lay her head on the car seat and her eyes did not leave the door. The atmosphere inside the car was much warmer than the outside, but sitting for all this time was not comfortable at all. Even her feet went numb twice, but she continued to wait. In the end... she could not return empty-handed after all this.

She yawned involuntarily, and when she opened her eyes again, she saw a familiar face a few steps away from her; it was the face of William's secretary, walking and laughing with other employees.

Natalia quickly perked up as she got out of her car and walked quickly towards the secretary, Amy. Their relationship had been quite friendly over the past years, so she probably wouldn't mind helping her with a little information, right?

“Amy!” she called after the young secretary. The latter turned around, her eyes shining with joy as soon as she saw Natalia, and with a wide smile appearing on her lips; She informed her companions that she would quickly follow them before running towards Natalia and saying in greeting, “Mrs. Goldray! How are you? What are you doing here?”

Natalia noticed that Amy had called her by William's family name, which meant that she hadn't known about the breakup yet, and that relieved her a little. She smiled in return and said apologetically, "I'm fine Amy, what about you? I was about to come in but you know how strict the front desk staff are, so I decided to wait for William here."

Amy raised her eyebrows in surprise and said, “Mr. William isn’t even here! He hasn’t come to the company for days and all his work is sent to him via email, isn’t he at home?”

Natalia felt a bit nervous about this question, as if her secret had been discovered, so she quickly said, her stuttering becoming noticeable between her words, “Yes, I know that he went to his family’s house, but I thought he had already returned.”

Amy seemed to believe this lie to some extent because she said, "Oh that's it, okay then, I'll let you know when he gets back if you want ma'am. You can sit inside the company for now or join me and my friends for lunch, better than waiting here, right?"

Natalia felt grateful for Amy's kindness and said, "Thank you, I appreciate it, but I'll be back now since William isn't here, see you later." Amy nodded in understanding and quickly said goodbye before following her friends to their destination, leaving Natalia behind who didn't know what to do.

William wasn't at the company, and she had lied to Amy about him being at his family's house because it was very unlikely, so she had no choice now but to wait for him to call her voluntarily, and this made her feel a mixture of weakness and anger..

Whatever misunderstanding had brought them to this point, William's behavior was very childish. He had put her in front of a fait accompli and disappeared, and Natalia could not find a single logical explanation for this.

"Natalia, is that you?"

Natalia turned around when she heard that familiar female voice and saw the last person she wanted to meet in her current circumstances; Lily, who was standing a few steps away from her with a confused look on her face.

“Lily.” Natalia said without approaching her. It seemed that this was a mutual decision between them because neither of them approached the other, and they maintained the original distance between them.

Natalia's blood boiled at the sight of the beautiful woman in front of her, and she didn't try to figure out whether it was because of anger or jealousy, as she focused all her attention on controlling herself and saying, "What are you doing here? And what did you say to William when you got back?"

Her words were barely intelligible due to her stuttering, which was increased by tension, and this made her hate herself even more, but Lily, with her usual outward kindness and her detestable false calm, answered stoically, “I work here, William helped me get a job.”

Then she raised her head towards Natalia and continued confidently, “As for what I told him when I got back, I only told him the truth.”

"The truth? What truth? And why did you come back in the first place?" Natalia exclaimed, her emotions beginning to spiral out of control. She had always known that the gap between her and Lily was very deep, but she had never hated him as much as she hated him at this moment, especially since her world was beginning to collapse while Lily's world seemed more cohesive than ever.

"The fact that you helped me escape, I will never forget your help Natalia, and it's not fair that others don't know about it," Lily answered simply and intuitively, and as calm as her voice was, it made volcanoes of anger explode inside Natalia, so the latter advanced towards her and grabbed her arms tightly, exclaiming in a semi-screaming tone, "You turned the facts upside down, right?! Are you that ungrateful?"

At this moment, Natalia felt a hand pulling her forcefully from behind and throwing her to the ground. She quickly tried to protect her face with her arms, which resulted in some scratches and bruises. Amidst the burning pain from her arms and knees and her mind trying to comprehend what had happened, she heard a deep voice addressing her coldly, “Don’t you dare touch her again.”

She raised her head and there she saw the face of a handsome young man, he looked familiar somehow but she didn't recognize him, she didn't even try to remember him because she focused on the pain he caused and she said threateningly, "I will report your assault to the police!"

"Good luck justifying your attack on her then," he said sarcastically, his unjustified hatred for Natalia evident in every part of his body language, because she didn't even know him, which made her look at Lily and expect from everything that had happened that he was one of her close acquaintances, so why all this hostility if he wasn't?

She stood up from the ground, her pain increasing, and she said, pointing at Lily, "You will pay for all this." It was clear that she did not only mean her falling now.

The young man took a step forward and stood in front of Lily to protect her behind him, then said, “If you don’t want security to interfere, leave.”

Natalia looked at him with all the hatred inside her and said, "Shut up, who are you to even talk?"

Her stuttering and nervousness were obvious, but they did not prevent her from expressing her anger as she wished, even if her expression was pathetic.

Lily came forward and touched the young man's shoulder, saying, "Wait a minute, Ethan, let us talk in private."

But the guy named Ethan looked at her and refused to leave, he seemed like he was the one making the decisions here.

Lily grabbed her hands and said to Natalia who was looking at her with indescribable hatred, "I didn't lie to William. I told him everything that happened without adding or subtracting anything. If there was a misunderstanding between you, that's none of my business."

Natalia laughed angrily and said, "It's none of your business?! Really? Where do you get all this audacity from, Lily? After everything I've done for you?"

Her speech was incomprehensible at this point, she could barely pronounce a few words correctly, and with tears welling up in her eyes and her hands shaking; it was hard not to feel sorry for her.

So Ethan gently pushed Lily back and said to her in an unquestionable order, "Go back to the company now and we'll talk later." The latter did so without looking at Natalia again, and walked quickly as if she was escaping what was happening.

The pain Natalia felt now went beyond the scratches on her limbs, she felt a scratch on her dignity as a whole, Lily had betrayed her, but she knew that no one would believe her story.

She had always been jealous of William's love for Lily, but she had never hated her, because she knew that Lily had nothing to do with William's feelings for her, or Natalia's feelings for William. She was just a beautiful and lucky girl, and that was no fault of hers.

But what she did this time; what she said and how she destroyed Natalia's happiness: it was enough guilt to turn all the feelings of jealousy and envy into a deep, boundless hatred.. She doesn't know what the reasons are; but Natalia will not be able to forgive her, she stabbed her without the slightest mercy.

Natalia cried involuntarily, covering her face with her hands and her shoulders shaking as she shed tears like rivers from her eyes, she completely forgot about Ethan's presence in front of her, and she did not care that she was outside now and anyone could see her like this.

Ethan on the other hand looked at Natalia with contempt. He never cared about the feelings of others, and all he cared about was achieving his ultimate goals. Natalia, with her abundant tears, would not change that. He looked at her for a few seconds before saying:

“This is for your own good, I advise you to take the divorce compensation and return to your father’s house without much empty resistance, this place is not yours anymore.”

At that moment, Natalia remembered his presence and looked at him. What he had just said indicated that he was not just a nobody, but someone who knew very well what was happening. But she did not pay attention to him and did not wonder how he knew. She merely said, gritting her teeth, “Damn you.”

He smiled indifferently and left without wasting any more time with her. In the end, this was most likely their last meeting, and a person like her couldn't take up more space in his life then this.