Chapter 2

My Future Self Begged Me to Walk Away Chapter 02

5 min read

The moment I arrived home, I opened my laptop and submitted a request for a job transfer.

My destination was a branch office in the interior, over twelve hundred miles away, and I was to report for duty in five days.

After finalizing everything, I took a hot shower, turned off the lights, and went to bed.

For the first time in five years, I didn’t spend the entire night tossing and turning because of Ulysses Vanderbilt.

But the next morning, before I had even fully woken up, the front door slammed open with a loud bang that jolted me awake.

Throwing a coat over my shoulders, I walked into the living room only to find Ulysses marching in with Melody trailing closely behind him.

When his eyes landed on me, his expression was completely detached, as if he were giving orders to a maid. “Melody wants your homemade seafood congee. Go make it.”

I opened my mouth to refuse, but the woman hovering by my side shrank back overcome with overwhelming panic, desperately pleading with me.

“Don’t cross him. Just be a good girl and do what he says…”

Recalling the decades of torment she had endured, I gave her a reassuring look, silently telling her not to be afraid.

Then, I looked up directly at Ulysses. “No.”

Instead of losing his temper, the man calmly uttered two words. “Fifty thousand.”

I froze for a split second.

Catching the blatant mockery in his eyes, it suddenly dawned on me.

Melody didn’t actually want any congee.

Ulysses was simply sour about me taking his money last night, and this was his twisted way of using cash to humiliate me.

“Deal,” I replied crisply.

The moment the Venmo alert dinged on my phone to confirm the transfer, I turned on my heel and walked straight into the kitchen.

Yet half an hour later, when I actually emerged carrying a steaming bowl of congee, Ulysses’ face looked even more grim than when he had first walked through the door.

In the next instant, his hand whipped out.

He swung his arm hard, sending the porcelain bowl crashing down at my feet.

“Claire, have you no shame at all?”

I could not step away fast enough, and the boiling liquid covered my forearm.

My skin immediately burned bright red, and the intense ache made my fingers shake uncontrollably

Seeing my injury, Ulysses’ expression shifted slightly. He instinctively rose from the sofa, taking a step toward me. “You…”

But I cut him off before he could say another word. “Medical expenses. One hundred thousand.”

The air in the room turned dead silent.

Every trace of the fleeting panic in Ulysses’ eyes vanished into thin air.

He sat right back down on the sofa, looking at me with a gaze so cold it was as if he were looking at me with unmasked disgust.

“You really are cheap to the bone, aren’t you? Throwing away your dignity just for money.”

Enduring the throbbing pain, I let out a small smile.

“Yeah, I am. So, Mr. Vanderbilt, hurry up and wire the funds.”

Only after my phone chimed with the confirmation text did I turn toward the sink, casually rinsing the burn under cold water.

The apparition floated beside me, weeping so hard her entire body shook. “Claire, go to the hospital. Please, go to the hospital right now…”

Without a word, I grabbed my purse and walked out the door.

By the time the hospital finished treating my arm, two hours had already passed.

But the moment I stepped out of the lobby, I sensed that something was deeply wrong.

Passersby kept turning their heads to stare at me.

Some whispered under their breath in small huddles, while others raised their phones to snap pictures of me.

I knit my brows, trying to convince myself I was just being paranoid.

That was until a breaking news notification popped up on my phone screen.

[Port City’s Once Most Devoted Fiancée Completely Exposed! Demands Ten Million in Late-Night Confrontation, Works for small sums to cook porridge for her fiancé’s personal assistant]

With a trembling hand, I tapped on the article.

There were only two accompanying photographs.

One was a shot of me from last night, bending over to pick up the black bank card.

The angle was calculated perfectly to catch the exact moment my head was lowered, making me look utterly submissive and desperate.

The other was a photo from this morning, capturing me walking out of the kitchen with the bowl of seafood congee in hand.

Below the headline, the comment section had already exploded.

[I thought Port City’s number one lovesick fool wanted love, not money?]

[Lmao, turns out the price just wasn’t high enough before.]

[Willingly cooking for the side chick? Wow, that’s incredibly pathetic.]

My grip on the phone tightened inch by inch.

There was only one person in the world who could have obtained those two specific photographs. Aside from Ulysses, there was no one else.

Sure enough, my phone began to ring a second later. It was Ulysses.