Chapter 4 Staying Out All Night

The lights were blurred in the luxurious private room on the fourth floor. Everyone was talking and laughing heartily with smiles etched on their faces. The room was filled with champagne, cakes, flowers, and fruits which made the birthday celebration even more joyous.

Cherry was wearing her customized white dress as she stood like a fairy in the middle of the stage. She grabbed the microphone and said, "I want to dedicate this song to my love, Kevin." She blushed with shyness.

The audience clapped their hands in response and cheered her on.

She blushed even more as she saw that all eyes were on her. The prelude began to play slowly as she started to sing.

As she sang, everyone focused their attention on her. Kevin, who was sitting on the largest sofa, slowly narrowed his handsome eyes as he watched Cherry sing on stage.

However, Kevin's mind was somewhere else. 'Today is also Anne's birthday,' he thought. 'I wonder if she has someone to celebrate it with.' He smiled and picked up the glass of wine in front of him. Before he even got to take a sip, he was interrupted by Alan Sun. "Why did you go out just now?" he asked.

Kevin's eyes dimmed. "Dealing with a bitch," he said with a cunning smile.

Baffled, Alan looked at Eric He. Eric shrugged his shoulders in response. He too didn't know what Kevin was talking about.

After he drank his wine, Kevin put down the glass and headed straight to Cherry on the stage.

Cherry's eyes sparkled as she looked at him. He grabbed Cherry by the waist and kissed her lips passionately in front of everyone.

Seeing them kiss, the bachelors on the sofa reacted with jealousy. The sight of them kissing made them feel as though they were being stabbed by ten thousand knives.

Some places were lively as heaven and some places were cold as hell.

After staying in the box for only thirty minutes, Anne was picked up by Kevin's staff.

Ryan was always with different groups of people in the room. They were all raising a toast to his name. She wanted to talk to him but she didn't have the chance.

Seeing Ryan finally achieve what he had always wanted made her smile.

In the mansion, only Anne and the servants were there. Kevin hadn't returned yet. Although the light in the yard shone brightly, a hint of loneliness still crept in the dark.

Anne slowly closed the curtain and walked to her bed alone. She was scrolling through her phone when she saw that Kevin posted a picture in his WeChat moments. It was a picture of him sucking on Cherry's neck. The two of them looked and acted like love birds. She remembered taking that photo for Kevin.

The sight of the picture made her heart ache. It felt as though a knife ran through her heart and twisted as it bled even further.

'Cherry's celebrating her birthday with someone. What about me?' she thought to herself as the pain continued to spread across her chest. 'No one remembered my birthday.'

Her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of her phone ringing. She reached for her phone and saw a message notification from WeChat. She opened WeChat and saw a friend request along with a message.

She opened it and saw that it was from Ryan.

Taken aback, she accepted his friend request.

"Happy birthday," the message from Ryan read.

Upon reading, Anne smiled. She then replied, "Thank you."

"I have a gift prepared for you but unfortunately, I didn't have the chance to give it to you today."

"A gift?" she replied. Anne continued typing. "I'm very glad that you remembered my birthday. There's no need to give me a gift." She inserted a flattered emoji at the end and hit send.

Ryan no longer replied. She fell asleep holding her phone while she waited for his reply. Today, Kevin didn't even greet her a happy birthday.

He only remembered Cherry's birthday. He should have celebrated Anne's birthday too.

Kevin didn't come home the entire night. Although they were husband and wife, they had never spent a night together,

except for the times when they had to.

Even though Kevin didn't come home, Anne still felt victorious.

Regardless of how much Cherry and Kevin loved each other, there was nothing else that they could do. Until Anne decided to file a divorce against him, Kevin couldn't touch her or any other woman.

Even if Cherry kept winning over Anne on many things, she could never win in this regard.

The thought of it made Anne smile but at the same time she felt bitter deep in her heart. All she could have was his body but she could never have his heart.

Ryan knew that Kevin had rigid control of Anne. That was why he changed the gift that he had prepared for her.

Anne couldn't believe her eyes when she saw the lifelike cake in front of her. Ryan knew that she liked desserts yet he gave her a beautiful and elegant cake model.

It was so tempting that Anne started to salivate. But no matter how delicious it looked, it was only a model.

She hated this feeling and she would make Ryan regret it.

Ever since she and Kevin met in the Cloud and Heaven that night, Anne rarely saw him.

She would have never been involved with him if he never showed up in the company.

The spirits were high in the office when they had signed the KIA contract. This feeling of excitement lasted for several days.

When Anne arrived at the company this morning, she felt there was something off with the environment. She felt as though there was a dark cloud looming in the office and something bad was going to happen.

Emily, her assistant, called her. "Madam," she said, her voice trembling with fright. "Are you..." She struggled to finish what she was saying. "Are you already here?" she finally managed to say.

Anne's heart skipped a beat. The bad feeling she felt earlier worsened. "Here I am. What's wrong?" she asked with a cold expression on her face.

"Mr.... Fu..."

"Come to my office right now!" Kevin shouted angrily over the phone before Emily could even finish her words.

'Kevin must have snatched Emily's phone,' Anne thought.

She prepared for the worst and took a deep breath. Her heart sunk in pain as she stood at the doorway of his office. 'I should already be used to the way Kevin treats me,' she thought. 'Why do I still feel heartbroken every time?'

Anne knocked on the open door.

"Come in," Kevin said with his cold voice as he motioned her to enter.

Anne walked slowly inside the office. Before she could even reach the center, she felt a gush cold water being thrown directly to her face.

Kevin walked towards her and stood beside her. "How does it feel to be soaked in cold water?" he asked with gritted teeth.

Anne was completely drenched as beads of cold water fell from the tips of her hair. It was very cold in his office. A chilly gust of wind blew against her.

She stood there, shivering.

Although her body was freezing, it was her heart that felt the coldest.

She tried to keep a blank expression but the hatred in her eyes was apparent. She looked up at him and asked, "Mr. Fu, do you want me to write down how this feels?"

The cold stare down between the two of them seemed to have further lowered the temperature in the office. The tension between them was so volatile that it felt like gunpowder ready to explode.

Emily was shaking in fear. She wanted to give Anne a change of clothes but she was too afraid to even step forward.

The walls of the CEO's office were entirely made of glass. It also utilized the most advanced light sensor technology in the world. Just with a click of a remote, people outside couldn't see what was happening inside. When the switch was turned off, people could see the entirety of the office.

When Kevin splashed cold water directly to Anne's face, the employees outside saw everything. They saw Anne completely drenched and standing in the middle of the office.

Kevin's choice for his office location was unique. Unlike senior executives from other companies who preferred higher floors to show off their high positions, he chose the floor with the most employees.

There was some distance between his and Anne's offices, and they stood opposite each other.

With so many people on the floor, every time Anne was humiliated by Kevin, it was seen by all.

It was widely known in the company that the CEO didn't like his wife. The rumor going around the company was that Anne was adopted by the Ye Clan and she was a scheming woman. She tried every means to marry Kevin. As a result, Kevin and Cherry couldn't be together even though they loved each other very much.

"What a poor girl! She's being mistreated by the CEO again," one employee said.

"If it were me, I would just take the money and leave," another employee chimed in.

"Maybe she wants more money?"

The people outside were gossiping. Even though Anne was consistently bullied and humiliated by Kevin, in their story, she wasn't the victim.

Instead of sympathizing with her, they laughed at her misery as though she deserved it. "You think too much. I just want to let you know what it feels like," Kevin said with a heavy disdain forming in his eyes. "If you let Cherry get wet from the rain again, I will put you in a tub of cold water for a whole day," he threatened.

Anne went livid as he heard the false accusations coming from Kevin. "When did I ever let your baby get wet from the rain?!" she shouted at him.

'Was all of this punishment just because his lover got wet in the rain?' she thought to herself as she fumed with anger. 'Was it even my fault? I didn't even do anything!'

Steadily, Kevin walked two steps beside her as though he was a hunter and she was prey. He stared at her sharply like an arrow coated with poison. "No, you didn't. But your subordinate did!" he said with a tone as cold as a glacier. "She knew that I had exclusively designated the driver for Cherry. Why did she force the driver to drive her and tell him it was for business? Because of this, Cherry waited outside for three hours and got wet in the rain!" he spit the words with such vitriol and hate.

As the accusations went further, Anne's eyes started to burn with anger. "How can I assign her exclusive driver if it was designated by you?!" she lashed out at him with gritted teeth.

Cherry was so viscous and even the people around her became the birds of the same feather.

Two days ago, Anne's subordinate did take the car driven by Cherry's private driver. But the driver didn't tell her that Cherry was waiting which led Kevin to believe that they assigned the driver on other businesses.

'She is such a liar by shifting the blame to me!' Anne fumed inside.

"You are so mean and cruel. Do you think everyone is like you?!" Kevin's eyes dimmed. He stared at Anne with menace. "Cherry has a pure heart. How could she say that you made use of other businesses to give him pressure?" he said with rising intensity. "For God's sake, I sent someone to investigate and found out that you always put Cherry in danger! She is so kindhearted that she even asked me not to blame you when she caught a fever!"

'Good to know Cherry begged him not to blame me,' she thought to herself. 'Though if Cherry really didn't want Kevin to blame me, then she shouldn't have said anything in the first place. She was just pretending to be nice and pitiful by telling Kevin it wasn't my fault. Of course, Kevin would think it's my fault when she told him that.'

Anne pursed her lips and didn't say another word.

Kevin would never believe her anyway regardless of how much she explained.

It was best that she just stayed quiet.

"Apologize to her now," Kevin commanded angrily.

Anne clenched her fist as she stayed silent. This wasn't the first time something like this had happened. This was what their relationship had always been ever since she married Kevin.

In the beginning, she tried to resist. However, every time she resisted, Kevin would just torture and humiliate her even more.

'Is it such a big deal for me to apologize?' she asked herself. 'I won't lose anything if I apologize.' Yet despite how much she tried to convince herself that she didn't care, the sorrow in her eyes still swelled. A sour kind of sorrow burned through her eyes and forced her to tear up.

'Cherry, I'll make sure you get double whatever humiliation you gave me.' She clenched her fist in resolve.

In a villa by the mountains and rivers, Cherry was inside a large bedroom. She was lying down in a customized luxurious bed.

She looked pale and sickly.