"Hello?"
The phone rang for a long time before Liam finally picked up. His cold voice carried a hint of impatience. Through the receiver, Emma could hear the TV and Amelia's clear laughter in the background. She knew he had gone back to Sunrise Manor alone.
She couldn't understand why Liam's attitude toward her had changed so completely after she'd only been to Milan. He treated her worse than a stranger now.
Emma suppressed the bitterness and grievance in her heart, then told Liam about the destruction of the clothes that afternoon.
"It's my responsibility. I'll do my best to push the designer to remake everything in the remaining time."
She gave him her assurance.
"Emma, are you a child? Don't you understand how important those clothes are to the press conference? Every single piece in those shows costs over a hundred thousand. You didn't even think to arrange security guards to watch them. You made it so easy for someone to sneak in and destroy hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of garments."
Liam's voice was icy. He criticized her with the tone of a boss scolding a subordinate. What could Emma say? It really was her negligence. She had already called the police, but since there were no cameras, the authorities had no way of identifying who had destroyed the clothes.
"Remember, this can't happen again. That's all."
He hung up without another word. He didn't even tell her whether he would come back today. But Emma knew he wouldn't.
Eventually, her stomach began to growl with hunger. Emma told herself she couldn't stop eating just because she was in a bad mood. But she really didn't feel like cooking. So she had to go to the supermarket and buy a few packs of instant noodles. She came back, boiled them with an egg, and called it dinner.
After that, she took out the medicine box and began removing the gauze from her arm.
When she applied the liquid medicine, Emma almost cried out several times. That hateful man she'd met in Italy—she still didn't understand why he had to leave such a wound. The broken skin would take a while to heal completely.
Once the wound was fully scabbed over, she thought she might ask Mia which doctor had performed the skin graft surgery on her back. She was probably going to need a visit to the dermatology department too. Otherwise, her arm would be scarred, and she wouldn't be able to wear short sleeves in the summer.
After finishing with her wound, Emma looked at the messy gauze she had bandaged. She figured it would be hidden under her sleeve anyway, so no one would see it.
Instead of going straight to bed, she spread all the process documents for the press conference across the table and carefully reviewed them one by one. She was terrified of missing something. By the time she looked up, it was almost one in the morning. Emma turned her sore neck and stretched her waist. Then she got up, turned off the lights, and went back to her room to sleep.
Maybe she stood up too quickly. Suddenly, she felt dizzy. If she hadn't grabbed the table with both hands in time, she would have collapsed onto the floor.
Emma closed her eyes and stood there for a long time. Only when the dizziness faded did she finally go back to her bedroom to rest.
"Brother, what's going on between you and your sister-in-law? Why have you been coming home alone these past two days? Did you two have a fight?"
When Amelia went upstairs temporarily, leaving Liam and Benjamin alone in the living room, Benjamin couldn't help asking. He wasn't really one to meddle. Even if Liam quarreled with Emma, that was their business. But he really didn't like seeing his older brother come back alone. It meant that Amelia would cling to Liam's side whenever she had the chance. And when Liam wasn't at Sunrise Manor, she would occasionally make a fuss to Benjamin.
So after two days, he finally asked.
"That's my business. You don't need to worry about it."
Liam's meaning was very clear. He had always hated others meddling in his affairs since he was a child. Benjamin didn't want to, but who made Liam keep coming back these past two days? If it weren't necessary, he would never have asked.
But after pressing for a long time, Liam still didn't want to answer. That left Benjamin unable to find a breakthrough. It almost gave him an ulcer from frustration.
He was so annoyed.
After a night of pleading, the designer finally agreed that Emma could rush to remake the dresses for the winter press conference.
That solved a huge problem weighing on Emma's heart.
At the company, the relationship between Emma and Liam was increasingly like that between a superior and a subordinate. The cold air between them even affected the people around them. The employees in the company watched Emma eating dinner alone in the company cafeteria every day. Some of them had already started whispering in secret. Was this the rhythm of the president's wife falling out of favor? Had the president finally taken a stance on the previous scandal? Had all that public affection before just been for the sake of the company's stock?
They speculated that the president's wife was working so desperately just to make some achievements for the president. No one knew how the president would react in the end.
Emma heard these words from Emilia. At first, she was angry. By the end, she was numb. Every day when she went to the cafeteria to eat, she gradually got used to the strange looks everyone gave her.
Anyway, she and Liam weren't really husband and wife. It was fine if everyone thought that way. She never expected to get any privileges from Liam. From the way the people in the Strategic Planning Department had started raising objections to her these past few days, it was clear that the rumors about her falling out of favor were getting more intense.
Emma found it funny. She had never been in favor, so how could she fall out of favor?
After work, Liam left first. Emma knew he would never go home, so she didn't ask him anything. She didn't want to look pathetic. After finishing her work, she picked up her car keys and planned to go see her parents this evening.
Of course, it was also because she had had enough instant noodles these past two days. She planned to go to her mother's place for a proper meal. A reward for her tired body.
But just as she got off the elevator, she received a call from Olivia.
"Emma, do you have time to go sing at a KTV with me?"
Emma heard the tone in Olivia's voice and guessed that she must have run into something unhappy and needed to vent. She had always been like this. When she was upset, she loved to sing while drinking beer. She wouldn't stop until she had almost exhausted her singing voice.