Back in college, he aggressively pursued my roommate, Chloe Evans. He used every trick in the book. Luxury gifts arrived one after another, and he even made a massive scene by delivering nine thousand roses to the courtyard of our sorority house. Everyone in our house benefited; we were carrying armfuls of roses back inside like we were clearing out a florist. Chloe was the only one who remained completely stone-faced. She even warned Liam Carter never to come looking for her again. "He’s loaded, and he's not bad looking. Do you seriously not want him?" I asked her, a sheet mask plastered to my face. It was a question that had been baffling me for a while. She had such a gorgeous face, yet she spent every day hanging around that sketchy older guy who bounced between dead-end jobs. "I don't. That kind of stiff, boring guy... if you want him, go ahead and chase him," Chloe sneered dismissively. I rested my chin in my hand, thought about it for a brief moment, and nodded. "Okay. "I will." 01 Chloe's expression faltered, but she didn't say anything else. After my mask was done, I washed my face and went downstairs. "She has a boyfriend." Holding an umbrella, I looked at Liam, who was standing outside our house in the rain, staring up at our windows like a sad, devoted golden retriever. I couldn't help but interject. He froze, pushed his gold-rimmed glasses up his nose, and said apologetically: "I'm sorry, I didn't know." Chloe seriously hadn't told him? He lowered his head, looking completely crushed, and turned to throw the bouquet of black roses in his hand into the trash can. Standing under my umbrella, I watched the rain soak the flowers and felt it was a damn shame. Black roses. I liked them. "Wait, don't throw them away. Give them to me." He looked at the rain-soaked roses, let out a self-deprecating laugh, and handed them over. "Okay." At that moment, his white dress shirt was soaked through from the rain, clinging tightly to his torso and revealing a faint outline of his abs. Clean-cut, gentlemanly, has abs, tall, and obedient. But the most important thing was: he was rich. Honestly, he was exactly my type. "Hey," I called out to him. He turned around, looking confused. "I don't have a boyfriend. Chase me instead." I reached out and held my umbrella over his head, shielding him from the rain. I wasn't bad looking either. I went to bed early, woke up early, and lived a very healthy lifestyle. I jogged four miles every morning, ate a clean dinner every night, and did my skincare routine religiously. I had far more guys chasing me than Chloe did, but I had shot them all down. He took off his gold-rimmed glasses and stared at me quietly. It felt like a long time passed. Long enough for his assistant to rush over with an umbrella, long enough for his black SUV to pull up to the curb. "Okay." 02 He took down my number and left. I turned around and went back upstairs. I had looked into Liam's background. The moment he graduated, he started his own tech company, and it was scaling rapidly. Once he eventually went back to inherit the Carter Group, he was going to be obscenely wealthy. That was why I could never understand Chloe. Maybe it was because my parents fought constantly over money and eventually divorced, but the absolute number one requirement on my dating checklist was: he has to be rich. If you have money, you don't have to scream at each other over the electric bill or the cost of groceries. When I walked back into our room, Chloe looked at the flowers in my hands, her face turning ugly. "You don't have to worry anymore. He won't bother you again," I told her as I set the flowers down and started towel-drying my hair. I thought she would breathe a sigh of relief or look like a weight had been lifted off her shoulders. Instead, her expression grew even darker. "You're a slut." ... ? She actually cursed at me. Chloe's voice wasn't loud, but it was clear enough to make the entire room drop into dead silence. I stopped drying my hair. The towel slipped from my hands, hitting the floor with a wet smack. I'm not the type to get physical, but in that moment, I still walked over and slapped her across the face. Neither of us were the type to lose control of our emotions, but that day, there was some deeply suppressed, intense emotion brewing in her eyes. I couldn't read it, and I didn't care to try. Our housemates were terrified. Some tried to mediate, some held me back, some said I went too far, and others said she was being a massive hypocrite. But I genuinely didn't understand. She clearly said she didn't want him. She clearly said his attention was a nuisance. So why, when I took him off her hands, did it suddenly become "stealing"? 03 From that day on, she moved out of the house, and we practically never spoke again. I didn't let it bother me much. Some people said I was morally bankrupt; others said the same about Chloe. I still didn't get it. She said Liam's pursuit was annoying her. She said she didn't want him. So when I said I wanted him, why was she so pissed off? Fine, be pissed off. But cursing at me? I wasn't going to tolerate that. Occasionally, I'd hear about her and her boyfriend. Some people said they were a perfect match, the smart girl and the bad boy. People on the campus forums even shipped them. As for me, my interactions with Liam only grew more frequent. He wasn't great at expressing his emotions, but his manners were impeccable, his behavior completely restrained, and he quickly became the hottest topic on the university gossip boards. I became the girl by his side, and the rumors spread like wildfire. But I didn't care. I knew exactly what I wanted from the very beginning. On the day of our wedding, Liam was busy until the very last minute, finally rushing in wearing a perfectly tailored Tom Ford suit to stand before me. He looked like a freshly calibrated, highly precise piece of machinery. The wedding was incredibly lavish. I didn't even recognize a third of the names on the guest list. I smiled appropriately, my posture elegant. In every single photo taken that day, I was flawless. I still have no idea how he convinced his parents to let him marry me. It wasn't a marriage of convenience between two elite families. We weren't of equal social standing. But his parents were incredibly cultured and polite. The disdain and snobbery I had imagined never happened. They gave us their most sincere blessing: "We hope the two of you support each other and build a wonderful marriage and life together." After the wedding, my life was incredibly comfortable. Liam was truly, insanely rich. How rich? He had companies operating globally. We flew exclusively on his private jet, and he routinely signed contracts worth hundreds of millions. Marrying him was the smartest decision I ever made. He didn't understand romance, and he didn't understand me. He never wrote me love letters, never called me in the middle of the night just to say he missed me. Even on Valentine's Day, he just had his assistant send flowers. He was the textbook "corporate husband"—calm, disciplined, and boring. Perhaps all his passionate, heart-pounding romantic energy had been entirely spent on Chloe. Being with him felt like I had married a money-making machine. "Is your husband away again? What's the point of having all that money if he never comes home? Aren't you lonely?" Sophia, my childhood best friend, asked me one day. We had lost touch a bit after I got married. When she came over, she immediately started complaining on my behalf, feeling that my husband spent way too little time with me. I didn't agree. I took her on the private jet. How could I be lonely? The world is so massive. I should be thanking my husband for working himself to the bone to make so much money, giving me the chance to go see it all. Anywhere in the world, as long as I wanted to go, I could enjoy the absolute pinnacle of luxury. Lonely? How could I be? 04 My best friend's expression darkened, and she finally just shook her head: "I still think this isn't how a marriage should be. Being together is the most important thing. I'd rather struggle through poverty together than live like this." ... I didn't understand. I was even a little shocked. There was actually someone else who thought exactly like Chloe. But I still felt a little down. Maybe, in their eyes, I was the freak? "I think you've changed. You're not the Harper I grew up with anymore..." She flushed under my gaze, threw down that sentence, and stormed off in a huff. She was right. I had changed. In the beginning, I would take her on trips, cover all the expenses, and give her an authorized user card for whatever spa treatments she wanted. But she always felt humiliated. Everywhere we went, she insisted I calculate exactly how much she owed me, refusing to take advantage of me. Even though I repeatedly told her it wasn't necessary, and Liam even explicitly told her to keep me company and that he would expense everything, she still refused. When my assistant would give her the heavily discounted receipts for her share of the trips, she would look at the exorbitant numbers, her face turning ugly, and demand the original itemized invoices from the assistant. She cynically suspected my assistant was trying to scam her out of money. Over time, I stopped inviting her out as much. After marriage, the circles I moved in were completely different. I was incredibly busy. Aside from traveling to relax, I enrolled in countless classes, ranging from floral design to French to financial management. I studied relentlessly. Not out of interest, but to prepare for the "what ifs." I refused to leave this marriage empty-handed. I had heard that Chloe broke up with her sketchy boyfriend, and she had even gotten a job at one of Liam's subsidiary companies. If the day ever came when Liam suddenly remembered his passionate, unforgettable first love and demanded a divorce, I wasn't going to fight an unprepared battle. While taking half his assets in a divorce might be unrealistic, I intended to take as much as I legally could. And once I had the money, I needed to know how to manage it. So, I was very busy. 05 When I returned from my trip to Paris, Sophia came over. "Harper, his 'first love' is back! The one that got away! And she's super rich now." You married Liam for his money, but now you can totally divorce him and marry Julian! "He hasn't looked for anyone else all these years. He's still in love with you!" Coincidentally, Liam came home the exact same day I got back. He heard every single word she said. He stood in the foyer, wearing a perfectly pressed suit, his expression mild, betraying no emotion in his eyes. Sophia turned around and instantly went pale. She scrambled to her feet, laughing nervously: "Mr. Carter, you're home... I was just joking around, Harper wouldn't actually..." "I didn't take it seriously." His tone was calm. He walked in, not even unbuttoning his jacket, holding a gift box he had brought back from his business trip. "I didn't take it to heart either." He lowered his eyes and placed the exquisite box in front of me. "You mentioned last time that you wanted the Mille Crepe cake from Hokkaido. I brought it." My eyes flickered, but my fingers didn't move. My schedule was managed by my assistant, who reported directly to him. He knew I was coming back today and came home specifically to see me. I knew how incredibly tight his schedule was; making the time to fly back wasn't easy. "...Thank you." I heard him give a soft "Mhm" before he turned and headed upstairs. I sat on the couch, staring at the flawless, pristine crepe cake in front of me, and suddenly felt like it would taste like cardboard. 06 Sophia had bolted. She hadn't expected Liam to come home early. She also hadn't expected him to be the complete opposite of a "clueless, emotionless robot husband." Actually, I knew that too. I knew he treated me well. It was just a very specific kind of well. It wasn't romantic, it wasn't passionate, it wasn't "heart-fluttering." It was just overwhelmingly steady. He and I were alike. We were both extremely disciplined people, and two people that similar rarely sparked fireworks. Our only true point of compatibility was... well, underneath the suits, he was built like a fitness model, and in bed, he was shockingly intense. Yet even in our most intimate moments, he strictly controlled the pace, disciplined to the point of rigidity, yet flawlessly satisfying. Thinking about the fact that we might separate one day, a strange sliver of disappointment actually pierced my chest. I hadn't taken Sophia's words to heart. Who could possibly be richer than Liam? The "first love" she was talking about, Julian Vance, was just a guy who pursued me back in college. He chased me, I told him I wasn't interested, but he went around telling everyone I had said yes. When he kept harassing me, I bluntly told him I would only marry a rich man. Rumors are hard to kill, and somehow, the narrative twisted into him being my tragic first love. It was laughable. But the very next day, Julian actually contacted me. The text was cautious and restrained: "Harper, it's Julian. Can we meet? I have something I need to tell you." That disgusting familiarity... I didn't reply. But it definitely caused a ripple of anxiety in my mind. Not because of love, but because he felt like a ticking time bomb. If I didn't handle this carefully, it could become a hidden fuse in my marriage, blowing up my life the day it was triggered. I knew how lethal a media scandal about an "unforgettable old flame" could be. I wasn't some hopeless romantic; I was entirely clear-headed. If I wanted to maintain the life I had, I couldn't make a single mistake. Before Liam ever brought up divorce, I definitely wasn't planning on initiating one. 07 When I showed up to the meeting, Sophia was there too. She ordered drinks, and Julian only had a few glasses. I hesitated for a moment before taking a sip. Honestly, the wine was trash. It couldn't hold a candle to the cheapest bottle Liam kept in his cellar. I took one sip and pushed it away. Cheap liquor really is dangerous. Just that tiny sip made me dizzy, and the faces of the two people across from me started to blur into double vision. I slumped onto the table, groggily hearing them talk. "Baby, you are absolutely not allowed to touch her. We agreed, we just take the photos! Otherwise I'll get jealous, and I won't forgive you!" It was Sophia's voice, pitched artificially high and nasally, like she had a cold. Who was she calling 'baby'? Why was she using that disgusting voice? "Don't worry babe, we're just taking photos and recording a video. With this leverage, we'll easily force the Carter Group into a partnership." Julian? My foggy, heavy brain nearly short-circuited. Sophia and Julian? I blindly pressed the emergency shortcut on my phone. Just as Julian's filthy hands were about to touch me, the bodyguards Liam had assigned to me burst into the room. "Mrs. Carter, are you alright?" The two people in front of me were immediately surrounded by security, and the restaurant was locked down. "What are you doing?! I'm Harper's best friend! We grew up together! What are you trying to do?!" Sophia panicked. She had been to my house a few times and seen the staff, but she clearly didn't know I traveled with a private security detail. Maybe I just never imagined that my so-called best friend would conspire with an outsider to drug and frame me. What did she even want? I didn't understand. If she truly just wanted a business partnership, all she had to do was ask, and I would have helped her. Why go through this massive, convoluted plot to set me up?
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