So when we met, he was already engaged. These six months of sweetness, six months of passion—it had all been a joke. I finally understood. My nightmare from last night had come true. I felt my soul being ripped from my body.
And the cart in my hands careened out of control.
"CRASH!"
Champagne bottles tumbled from the cart, shattering against the marble floor. Golden liquid and glass shards scattered everywhere.
The entire world seemed to freeze. Conversations stopped. A hundred pairs of eyes stabbed toward me, the clumsy intruder. Including Igor's. His gaze cut through the crowd and landed on me. Those eyes that had once been full of tenderness now held only panicked surprise and a hint of... annoyance.
My tears finally broke free. I turned and ran.
"Elena!"
I heard him call my name behind me, the sound coming from another world. I didn't care about anything anymore. I just had to escape. Escape this gilded cage, this cruel, brutal lie.
In the hotel's snowy garden, Igor caught up with me.
"What the fuck are you doing here?" He grabbed my wrist, his grip almost crushing my bones.
"What am I doing?" I wrenched free and screamed at him. "I should be asking you that, Igor! Or should I call you Mr. Igor Vorontsov? What the hell is going on!"
My heart was shredded, and he didn't even offer an explanation or apology—just his condescending interrogation.
"You shouldn't be here." He looked at me, brows furrowed, like I was some huge problem.
"I shouldn't be here?" I laughed bitterly, my lungs feeling like they'd explode. "I called you so many times, sent so many messages!I waited like an idiot for your reply, and you? You're here having your engagement party!"
"It's not what you think." His voice was full of frustration.
"Then what is it? The man I've loved for six months, the man I gave everything to, is here having an engagement party with another woman, and you're telling me it's not what I think?"
He glanced nervously toward the ballroom, lowering his voice. "It's complicated."
"Complicated? I don't see anything complicated about it!" I choked through the agony in my chest. "You have a perfect fiancée from the right family, and me? What am I to you? Just your entertainment when you're bored? Just some mistress you keep in the slums, someone you're ashamed of?"
"Don't talk about yourself like that, Elena." His tone held a pleading note.
I wiped roughly at my endless tears, staring at him in silence.
"Listen, Elena." He gripped my shoulders. "I'll take care of you. I've got an apartment ready for you on the Upper East Side, plus a trust fund. Enough to keep you comfortable for life. We... we can keep seeing each other like before."
His words were poison. I stopped crying from pure shock. I stared up at him in disbelief. Money? An apartment? What did he think he was doing? Paying off some gold-digging mistress having a tantrum?
"You asshole! I don't want any of that shit." My voice was shaking. "So this is how you solve problems?"
"It's the most practical solution." He looked at me like I was an unreasonable child.
"Yeah, practical for you!" I laughed through my tears. "You get to marry your rich princess and still come to me for variety on the side, right?"
"Elena, don't push me." Igor's eyes went cold.
"Push you?" I stared at this handsome but cruelly unfamiliar face, my heart dead. "No. I won't push you anymore. I won't be in your way anymore."
I reached up and tore the diamond necklace from my throat. The diamond's edges scraped my skin, leaving a burning pain.
"Take it back!" I hurled the necklace at his chest. "We're done."
He caught it reflexively.
