Page 3 of King of Pride

His face hardened again as he looked at her.

"Why would you break something important to me? I had told you a hundred times not to get closer to the shelf and not to touch my things. But you just have to move around my apartment like—"

He looked at Rose with anger burning in his eyes, but at the same time, there was a look of startled disbelief in them, as if he himself were shocked by what he had done.

At the same time, he looked at her.

"You shouldn't have touched my things without my permission."

He said it while looking at Rose with a hard, displeased expression.

Rose didn't say anything.

She kept staring at her fingers.

Her hands had fallen back to her sides, but her fingers were slightly curled, her body still unnaturally rigid from the shock.

Ivan's fingers tightened.

Rose still didn't say anything.

She simply turned around, grabbed her purse from the couch, her movements quick and stiff as she swung the purse onto her shoulder, and headed toward the door without giving him another look.

But just as she took one step forward, Ivan shot after her and grabbed her.

Rose immediately stopped and turned around to look at him.

Ivan looked at her, his jaw tight, his expression still hard.

“You know this was your fault. You shouldn’t have done something that deserved getting slapped for.”

In that moment, the rage that filled Rose was so intense that she feared she would grab a knife and stab Ivan with it.

But she didn’t want to go to jail for murder at such a young age, so she thought better of it and roughly freed herself from his grasp, jerking her arm out of his hand.

“We are over,” she said in a deathly low voice.

Then she stormed out of the apartment.

Every step she took suddenly flashed her entire history with him through her mind—the memories of everything she had been doing in his life for the past one year.

It was true that she had liked him first. The crush she had on him had initially been because he was good-looking, but then she had found out he was hardworking. She saw that he had a business. He was doing well. He had his goals.

She had seen the man that everyone else didn’t see except for the power of money that he spread for his friends. She had seen him for the man he was.

And that was what had made her attracted to him in the first place.

Rose wiped away the tear that had filled her eyes with the back of her hand, quickly blinking to stop more from falling. But even though she tried to suppress them, it was difficult. Her throat tightened as she stepped into the elevator, and she pressed the button for the lobby with a trembling finger.

Just then, her phone started ringing.

She pulled it from her purse and picked up the call, the name flashing across the screen.

Zoe.

Rose placed the phone to her ear.

“Rose, where are you?” Zoe Bishop’s enthusiastic, loud voice came through at once, accompanied by the background noise of the party. “I thought you were going to be here already. The party has already started, and I’m getting bored. I thought you were really going to skip it just because Ivan wants to stay home. Come on, the party is hosted by my family. At least help me, okay? I’m getting bored. Please come over. Can you?”