Filed To Story: The Broken-Hearted She and The Icy He Book PDF Free
Marilyn couldn’t hold her fury back any longer. She stormed to the front of the stage, shrieking at the top of her lungs.
“James, you can’t keep protecting her! Lily cheated on you-she did something so filthy, she has to pay! Don’t let some streetwalker fool you! You deserve someone better. And you can’t raise her bastard child on Luke family money! Break up with this slut and make her pay for her filth!”
James’s gaze cut into her like a blade, cold and merciless. The chill of it made Marilyn’s shoulders jerk.
But she told herself it was for his good, and stiffened her spine with false righteousness.
Before James could speak, Ivan shot to his feet, voice booming. “Marilyn, did you forget to brush your teeth the day you were born? Your mouth stinks worse than a sewer! Lily and James are destined for each other. My sister-in-law is a thousand times better than you-no, ten thousand! You’re not even worthy to touch her shoes!”
Adeline rarely argued, but Lily was her bottom line. Hearing Marilyn spit such filth, she couldn’t stay silent.
Her brows knit as she snapped, “Marilyn, your mouth truly reeks worse than a cesspit. You call Lily cheap and dirty-what are you then, some paragon of purity and nobility?”
Her voice cut sharper. “Your scheming, your gossiping, your eagerness to fan the flames-that’s what’s truly disgusting!”
Adeline’s nature was usually cool, her presence like frost in the corner of a wall-quiet, distant.
But now, anger burned in her peach-fox eyes, setting her whole being alight with brilliance. She looked vivid, arresting, unmatched.
Victor froze, staring at her, forgetting even to rebuke Marilyn.
Marilyn never expected the adopted daughter to dare confront her publicly.
Her chest heaved, her rage boiling over. She wanted Victor to strike out, to put Adeline in her place.
But when she turned, she caught Victor staring-staring only at Adeline, as if his very soul had been stolen.
Slut!
The word screamed inside her head.
He was hers, already promised to her. And that woman had the gall to seduce him before her very eyes? How shameless could she be?
She would never forgive her.
Unable to endure his dazed gaze, Marilyn rushed to his side, clinging pitifully to his arm.
Victor’s body stiffened.
A wave of nausea churned in his stomach, sharp and sickening.
He eased his arm away, his tone flat as cold steel. “Our engagement next month is canceled.”
“What?”
The breath punched out of her lungs.
She had longed to marry him quickly, to secure her place. And now-not only was he refusing, but canceling their engagement outright?
Her vision blurred with tears. “Victor, you don’t want to take responsibility for me anymore?”
“I’ll take responsibility,” he said evenly. “But I’m busy next month. We’ll talk about the engagement later.”
Relief came first-at least he still said he would take responsibility.
But it was clear. He was postponing.
The longer the delay, the greater the danger.
Her heart clawed with panic. But he was colder than ice, unyielding. If she pressed harder, he might delay further-or end it for good.
So she bit her tongue.
But she swore-she would marry into the Luke family.
Next month, she would fake a pregnancy. That would force their hands, push the engagement and marriage forward.
From her seat, Adeline couldn’t hear what Victor told Marilyn.
But she saw Marilyn draping herself on his arm.
She wrenched her gaze away, her face burning.
For a moment, she had thought he was looking at her.
But she was a fool. He was about to be married.
She could not-must not-become the very thing she despised most.
She could not be a mistress.
“Mr. James, we also think you should break up with Lily!”
Elsa’s planted trolls, hearing the crowd’s doubts rising, grew desperate.
They shouted over the murmurs, trying to whip the audience back into a frenzy.
“Lily is filthy-she’s not worthy of Mr. James!”
“You can’t raise another man’s bastard child!”
“Cheating once means cheating forever. If she cheated on you once, she’ll cheat again!”
“Mr. James, touching something so spoiled and filthy-aren’t you disgusted?”
Nancy quietly instructed Ivan to pull the venue’s surveillance footage.
Anyone who dared smear and slander Lily here tonight-she would not spare a single one of them.
James’s eyes, cold as steel, locked onto the hired trolls in the crowd.
These people had lived too comfortably. They were begging for hardship.
And he would oblige.
“The woman in the video is not me.”
Now certain of the differences between herself and the woman in the clip, Lily calmly took the microphone.
“The man in the video may have his own… qualities, but he is not my type. The man I like is my boyfriend, James. How could I possibly settle for someone like him? And if you paid attention, you would have noticed-the woman in the video has a mole on the left side of her neck.”
With that, she swept her hair aside, baring her slender, flawless neck for all to see. “I do not.”
Every gaze in the hall immediately fell on her.
Indeed-clear as day, the woman in the video had a large mole on her neck, and another on her arm.
But Lily’s fans had long noticed her skin was smooth and pale as jade. She had no such marks. And standing there now, under the lights, her neck was unblemished.
There was no way she was the woman in the video.
“The woman really isn’t Lily!”
“I knew it-our Lily would never do that!”
“Exactly! With a man like our brother-in-law looking that good, why would she look twice at some greasy creep?”
Cheers erupted, loud as fireworks.
Elsa and Marilyn’s faces turned the color of ash.
They had focused only on finding a woman with a similar profile. Neither had noticed the glaring difference in the body-those telltale moles.
Elsa refused to accept defeat. Catching the eyes of her paid trolls, she gestured sharply.
Keep pressing. Keep screaming that the woman was Lily.
New Book: Returned To Make Them Pay
On her wedding anniversary, Alicia is drugged and stumbles into the wrong room—straight into the arms of the powerful Caden Ward, a man rumored never to touch women. Their night of passion shocks even him, especially when he discovers she’s still a virgin after two years of marriage to Joshua Yates.