“Oh my God, yes,” someone said immediately. “Every single party. Every dinner. Every gathering. She always paid for everything.”
“It was honestly so annoying. Like… what was she trying to prove? That the rest of us were too poor to pay for things ourselves?”
“Didn’t she just offer because she was being nice?” one of the girls at the table asked hesitantly. “I mean… it feels kind of weird to complain about that—”
“I already told you, she made it weird,” the woman snapped defensively. “Before anyone could even take out their wallet, she had already paid for everything. Then she’d stand there acting all smug about it. ‘Oh, don’t worry, I already took care of it.’”
She mimicked Amara’s voice mockingly, making several people laugh again.
“She said it like she was doing charity for us.”
Amara stood outside the VIP room motionlessly.
Her fingers trembled slightly beside her body.
Inside, another woman sighed dramatically.
“And don’t even get me started on her mother,” another woman added with a scoff. “‘My Amara this, my daughter that.’ As if her daughter descended from heaven or something.”
“So fucking annoying,” someone muttered. “Every conversation was about how smart Amara was, how beautiful she was, how perfect she was.” The woman rolled her eyes hard. “Like, what the hell do I care?”
She smirked coldly before continuing.
“And look at them now. Staying quiet and keeping their heads down after practically forcing their daughter into Elias’s arms.”
“They emotionally blackmailed the poor guy,” someone muttered.
“I honestly feel bad for Elias.”
“Me too,” a woman sighed dramatically. “You can literally see the disappointment in his eyes. The sadness too. Everyone notices it, but he never says anything about it.”
A man burst out laughing loudly.
“Honestly, he looks like a man forced into a marriage he never wanted, all because a rich brat couldn’t take no for an answer.”
The entire table burst into loud laughter.
The sound shattered something inside Amara.
Every laugh felt like another knife twisting deeper into her chest.
Her fingers trembled violently around her purse as she stood frozen outside the VIP room. The color had completely drained from her face, and her throat burned painfully as she fought to swallow the suffocating lump rising inside it.
But what hurt the most…
Not once.
Not even once…
Had Elias ever defended her.
People talked about her like this openly in front of him, mocking her, humiliating her, turning her into a joke right in front of him. Yet he had never denied any of it. Never stopped them. Never told them they were wrong.
It was as if he simply didn’t care what they said about his wife.
Amara’s breathing became shaky. The realization crushed something inside her.
Her chest tightened so painfully she could barely breathe, the ache spreading through her entire body while humiliation and heartbreak clawed at her from the inside.
