Callie stayed in the master bedroom, under constant watch, or rather, surveillance. She could barely sit up and occasionally stared at the ceiling, overwhelmed by a long-lost fear. Lately, she had been dreaming frequently, often about Nelson and Marilyn embracing in that abandoned factory.
Ben crushed some oral medication into water and fed it to Callie, curiously asking, “Aren’t you bored not talking? Why don’t you tell me, do you like Nelson?”
Callie glanced at him. Ben pulled a candy out of his pocket, a clear temptation. Callie looked at the unfamiliar face and, for once, felt interested. “You might not believe it, but I am his ex-wife.”
Ben was very surprised. “Ex-wife?”
Callie sighed. “When I met him at sixteen, he had nothing. I followed him without hesitation and endured hardships for years. Who knew that men change when they get rich? He kept a mistress outside, and when she had a hemorrhage during childbirth, he actually asked me to donate blood for her…”
Ben’s eyebrows nearly shot up to the sky. Normally, he wouldn’t believe such a story. Nelson didn’t seem like that kind of person, but Callie’s tearful yet stubborn and aggrieved expression added some credibility.
He comforted her, “Alright, alright, don’t cry, or your wounds will hurt. It’s all in the past…”
“Nelson is an ungrateful bastard!” Callie sobbed and asked, “Ben, have you not been with him for long?”
“We’ve had some dealings. I don’t know much about many things. I wondered why I hadn’t seen you before.”
Callie quickly nodded. “Listen to me, he’s not a good person. Why don’t you let me go? I’ve finally escaped his control. I don’t want to go back. Just take pity on me…”
Ben hesitated. He just wanted some gossip and ended up uncovering such a shocking secret. Nelson had been married before? As abstinent as he seemed, he had such a scandalous past.
Seizing his hesitation, Callie pressed on, “Put yourself in my shoes. If it were you, could you endure such humiliation, Dr. Ben?”
Ben apologized, “Without Mr. Oconnor’s permission, I don’t have the right to let you go.”
Callie immediately shut her mouth, not wanting to say another word. She closed her eyes and pretended to be dead.
Meanwhile, upstairs in the same building, the man sitting at the main seat had heard everything Callie said through the monitor and observed her shift from pitiful to impatient.
Nelson’s cold eyes fixed on the woman lying in bed, his brows slightly furrowed, his whole demeanor covered in frost.
The secretary standing behind him was sweating profusely, never expecting Callie to have the audacity to fabricate such stories.
There was a knock on the door; it was Ben, who felt just as the secretary did.
Nelson opened the drawer in front of him and took out a phone, scrolling through it nonchalantly.
“I say, hey, there’s no need to treat your… first wife like that.”
Nelson ignored him and placed the phone on the table without even looking at them. He stood up and tapped his fingers on the table before walking straight out.
“She is my wife; we never divorced.”
Ben and the secretary exchanged glances and then moved closer to look at the phone screen. On it were hundreds of similar melodramatic stories to the one Callie had just tearfully recounted.