The Good Girl's Revenge

Chapter 10

Serena's frantic laughter stung in the silence of the late night.

She looked at my expression, frozen in shock, her face a mixture of resentment and amusement, her whole being looking twisted and ugly.

"What, no more talking?" She took a step closer to me and flung the last photo in her hand into my face, "Look closely! This is the man you trusted! He's stalking you like a pervert and has a gift for you already!"

That photo was the very same side view of Lucien holding the design of the necklace.

"You stupid woman!" Serena's voice was so sharp that it almost pierced my eardrums, "You think you won? You just jumped from one fire pit into another deeper, more camouflaged one!"

She thought this evidence would break me down completely, make me crumble, despair, and cry out in pain.

I lowered my head and looked at those photos scattered around my feet. Lucien's deep gaze at me from afar, his sideways face concentrating as he held the design ... These images that should have made me feel angry and deceived were stirring up a completely different, unfamiliar emotion in my heart at the moment.

A strange warm current, mixed with a hint of sour throbbing, slowly flowed through my cold chest.

I slowly bent down and picked up the photos one by one as if they were rare treasures.

Then I looked up and met Serena's startled gaze.

I smiled.

It wasn't a fake, innocent smile, but one that came from the heart, bright and with a hint of compassion.

"Serena," my voice was soft, yet loud enough for her to hear every word, "finished?"

My calmness was clearly beyond her expectations. The maniacal smile on her face froze. "What do you mean by that?"

"I mean," I walked up to her and waved the photo in my hand in front of her eyes like a trophy, "Thank you. Thank you for giving me such a precious gift."

"Are you crazy?" Serena looked at me incredulously.

"Crazy?" I smiled even wider, a look of newness and surprise at everything that fit my amnesiac persona on my face, "No, I couldn't be happier! Look-"

I picked up a picture of Lucien looking at me, held it over my heart, and said in an almost dreamy, innocent tone, "So, Lucien liked me this much a long time ago! The way he looks at me is so gentle and affectionate."

I picked up the photo of the design again, "So, the 'Morning Heart' in my hand was the surprise he prepared for me so early on! Serena, thank you, if it wasn't for you, I wouldn't have known that my boyfriend turned out to love me so much!"

I hugged all the photos tightly in my arms, then raised my head and looked at Serena with an extremely naive yet with a hint of cruelty look, tilted my head, and asked in confusion, "But if Lucien loves me so much, why is it that my best friend, would take all these photos, and come to tell me all these things that make me happy? Are you trying to bless us?"

"Are you trying to bless us?"

This innocent rhetorical question was more damaging than any direct attack! It defines Serena's vicious dissociation directly into a silly, send-us-an-assist blessing, instantly transforming Serena from an attacker into a jumped-up clown!

All of Serena's viciousness and calculations became a complete joke in the face of my naivety!

"You ... me ..." Serena was completely flabbergasted by my reaction. She pointed at me, trembling with anger, unable to utter a single word. The heavy bomb she had carefully prepared, thinking it would put me to death, turned out to be the brilliant fireworks that ignited our love!

This last straw completely shattered Serena's defenses. She looked at the happy, innocent smile on my face, and all her sanity was consumed by humiliation and jealousy.

She screamed, turned around, and rushed into the deep darkness of the night and disappeared.

I looked in the direction she had disappeared in, the smile slowly falling from the corners of my mouth. There was no thrill of victory in my heart, only a complex calm.

I lowered my head, looked at the photo in my hand once again, and returned to my apartment with a complicated mood.

As soon as I entered, I saw Lucien standing in the center of the living room.

He had been waiting for me. There was only a floor lamp on in the apartment, and the dim light pulled his figure up. There was little expression on his face, but those deep eyes were darker than ever, like two bottomless whirlpools.

He saw the picture in my hand.

Our gazes met in the air, and the air seemed to freeze at that moment.

He didn't ask me what Serena had said or why I was holding the pictures.

He just stared at me, as if waiting for my judgment.

After a long time, he finally spoke, his voice husky with a hint of vulnerability I'd never heard before, "She told you everything?"

My heart snapped.

The biggest secret between Lucien and me had just been revealed, unexpectedly and in the most unpleasant way possible.

The unspoken, fragile balance between us, built on acting and exploiting, was completely shattered in this moment.

Now, it was my turn to make a choice.