He Left Me At Our Engagement

Chapter 4

The person who stepped out of the elevator wasn't me. It was a local courier wearing a yellow uniform.

"May I ask who Mr. Callum Roskell is?" The courier held a cardboard box and looked somewhat uneasy at the roses covering the floor.

The smile on Callum's face froze. "That's me."

"This is a same-day delivery from Ms. Vexley. Please sign for it." The courier handed him the delivery slip.

Breccan and the others were stunned, too. They quickly stood up and walked over.

Callum stared at the cardboard box, his expression darkening by the second. Without taking the pen, he tore the tape off the box with his bare hands.

Inside was a thick stack of printed papers.

The top sheet contained a list printed in bold black letters.

Mr. Callum Roskell's Living Expenses and Compensation Breakdown for the Past Three Years

Below it was a long list of expenses, with every amount carefully recorded.

The list included everything from the business entertainment expenses I'd paid on his behalf over the past three years to something as small as a roll of toilet paper for the house.

Even the labor cost for preparing his stomach medication every day had been calculated down to the last penny, using the going rate for a housekeeper.

The total came to $1,754,300.

At the very bottom of the box lay a black bank card.

It was the supplementary card he'd given me.

The final line of the list read: You originally gave me $2 million on this card. Everything I've spent over the past three years is listed here. We're even now, and neither of us owes the other anything. As for the years of my youth I wasted on you, consider them a gift to a dog.

Callum stared at those words, the veins in his forehead throbbing. "What does she mean by this?"

Breccan swallowed and spoke quietly, "Callum, I don't think Avenelle is throwing a tantrum this time."

"She's just making a scene!" Callum snatched up the stack of papers and slammed it onto the floor.

The pages scattered across the sea of roses, each one covered in numbers that seemed to glare back at him.

"How dare she settle accounts with me!" He pulled out his phone and jabbed at the screen, dialing my number from memory.

Once again, all he heard was the cold, unending busy tone.

Furious, he threw his phone onto the sofa. Just then, Breccan's phone suddenly vibrated. He glanced at the screen, and all the color drained from his face.

"Callum . . ." Breccan's voice trembled slightly.

"What is it now?" Callum snapped, turning toward him.

"You... You need to look at Kaiven's social media post." Breccan held out his phone.

Callum snatched it from him.

Kaiven had posted an update ten minutes earlier.

There was no caption, just a photograph.

The photo showed the red brick exterior of the county clerk's office, with two marriage certificates displayed side by side. In the lower-right corner, part of a woman's wrist was visible, marked by a faint burn scar.

It was the mark I'd been left with two years earlier, when I got up in the middle of the night to make porridge for Callum during one of his stomach attacks and burned myself in the hot pot.

Callum stared at the scar, his eyes widening little by little.