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Chapter 3
"Nicole, you're welcome to hate me, but don't resort to these underhanded tricks to frame me," I said, my voice steady and firm. I wasn't someone who tolerated mistreatment endlessly, nor was I naive enough to back down anymore.
"Enough! That's outrageous," Sonny's cold voice cut through the air, stopping me in my tracks. There wasn't a trace of warmth in his eyes when he looked at me. "Nicole came here today on her own to apologize and make peace, and this is how you treat her?"
He turned to Nicole and softened instantly. "It's just a cake. Nicole, I'll buy you another one." He took his sweater from the coat rack and draped it over her shoulders. "You'll get cold wearing so little."
My breath hitched. A dull, twisting pain coiled in my chest. The armor I had carefully built around myself shattered in an instant.
Sonny had always refused to lend me his clothes, claiming he hated the lingering scent of perfume on his belongings. Even though we were about to get married, he had never made an exception for me. I used to joke about his preference, even laughed it off, but I respected his boundaries and never touched his things again.
Yet now, even from a distance, I could smell the floral perfume radiating from Nicole.
So, it wasn't that he disliked perfume. He just didn't like mine.
Sonny didn't spare me another glance as he led Nicole back to the living room, leaving me alone to clean up the mess on the floor.
Even now, when I think back to that moment, the same pain tears through my heart.
Nicole had been living with the Simmons family since childhood. After her parents passed away, they took her in as their own. Though there was no blood relation, twenty years of shared life meant something. The Simmons had always treated her like their own daughter.
I had heard Sonny talk about his sweet, innocent sister countless times. She was the Simmons family's little princess.
Back then, I was so in love with Sonny that I tried my best to win Nicole over. I bought her gifts, hoping she would accept me, the woman her brother loved.
But from the very first time we met, she made it clear that she despised me. I brushed it off as a young girl's attachment to her brother.
Then I found out there was no blood relation between them. And that's when my instincts told me there was something more.
When I tried to talk to Sonny about it, he frowned, visibly annoyed. "Don't think that way about Nicole, okay? She's always been innocent and pure. She's just used to being cared for, and it's normal for her to be afraid of losing her brother's love."
His words stuck with me. That moment, his stern expression, his unwavering defense of Nicole, was burned into my mind.
I finally understood. Nicole was his bottom line, his most cherished person.
Between Nicole and me, Sonny would always choose her. Without hesitation. Without doubt.
He indulged her like it was second nature. And I would always be the one left behind.
He put her feelings first, always. And when it was all over, he'd turn to me with half-hearted reassurances, insisting he was being fair. But the scales had never been balanced. The weight of love had always tipped in Nicole's favor.
If that was the case, then it was time for me to let go.
By now, my heart had grown numb. And when I finally made up my mind, there wasn't the inner struggle I had imagined. Instead, I felt a strange sense of liberation, like a heavy weight had been lifted from my soul.
"I won't be needing the wedding dress," I told the attendant, a faint smile still lingering on my lips. "I'm not getting married."
I stepped out of the dress and apologized to the staff before walking out the door, each step lighter than the last, like I was running toward freedom, toward a new beginning.
After leaving the bridal shop, I headed straight to the apartment Sonny and I had prepared for our married life. Without hesitation, I pulled out my phone and started making calls, to friends, to family, to everyone who mattered.