Escaped My Ex, Got Snatched by His Rival - Chapter 224

Chapter 224: Bird in golden cage
“What did you say?” Noah asked, his eyes flickering as he stared at the woman sitting in front of him.

“Do I need to take you to the otolaryngology department, Mister Nelson?” Ariana questioned spitefully. “If it was too difficult for you to hear what I said then I think it’s time for you to visit the specialists.”

“No,” Noah rubbed his hands on his face. He could not understand why Ariana was looking at him as if he were her sinner. Why was he the sinner when he had done nothing wrong?

He brought his hands to his lap and said in a light voice, “I have no idea what you are talking about——”

“You do.”

These two words were enough for Noah to raise his head. His eyes widened slowly when he saw the apathetic expression on Ariana’s face, as if she was tired of even breathing the same air as him or most likely something dreadful.

“Ariana, I——”

“Don’t,” Ariana raised her voice. Her head was lowered, and her eyes were covered by her bangs. With one of her fists trembling on top of the surface of the table, Ariana continued, “I have a lot of emotions that I never showed to you.” She slowly raised her head, with eyes filled with hatred, and shook her head slightly, “Don’t add disgust to them, Noah.”

Noah felt his breath hitch when he saw the hatred in Ariana’s eyes. He tried to regulate his breathing as he said, “I am not lying, Ariana. Not once did I think or know that you loved me … I always—-”

“The blatant disregard, the confidence to believe that I will return to you, no matter what you do to me. The sheer arrogance to believe that I will not go against you while you break me bit by bit…where did you think it came from?” Ariana questioned as she slowly rose from the chair on which she was sitting.

“That… That…” Noah stammered for a long time, but he couldn’t come up with a reason. It was only when Ariana questioned him did he questioned himself, why? Why was he so confident about her return?

“You see?” Ariana said in a voice which was barely above a whisper. “Somewhere in your heart you knew that I loved you, you knew that no matter what you do to me, I will still wait for you to return.”

“But for some reason, my love was nothing but a piece of baggage to you,” Ariana closed her eyes as she accepted the one fact that she had often refused. “Because of this reason…you pretended not to know anything when you knew it all along.”

She opened those shiny blues while looking at the man in front of her, who seemed unusually shaken.

“I will take my leave,” Ariana wanted to say something more, but she hesitated as this was neither the time nor place to do this.

However, just as she turned on her feet, Noah shot out of his chair. His heart shuddered with something that he quite did not understand and rushed towards Ari before catching her wrist in his hand.

“I admit that I might have wronged you in some ways, but you were in the wrong as well. Compared to the things that you have done, I have treated you with respect, Ariana,” Noah said to Ariana, whose heart clenched with annoyance.

She turned around and flung his hand off her as if his touch had burned her.

“Do you remember the little canary that your mother caught from one of her hunting trips?” Ariana turned to look at Noah with her fury neatly tucked within her heart.

“I do,” Noah was surprised by her sudden change of topic.

“The canary was beautiful,” Ariana stated with a reminiscent look in her eyes. “Your mother loved it a lot and placed it inside a golden cage, ignoring the cries of the little bird. Tell me what happened to that little canary?”

Noah clenched his fists on his sides as he looked at Ariana.

“It…died.”

“Yes,” Ariana curled her lips as she reached out and cupped Noah’s cheek on the side. “What I wanted was your love, Noah. I had no desire to have your wealth, have you forgotten when I married you…you were on the verge of bankruptcy.”

“I was like that canary… I had everything, but I did not have the freedom to fly high in the sky like how I wanted. Because I want to survive … I chose myself over the golden cage that you gave me.”

Her eyes narrowed with a hint of derision. “All I ever wanted was your last name behind my name…” she raised her eyes and looked at Noah, who could sense something was going out of control. “And yet now that I once had it… I believe it was nothing special.”

She pushed his face away and turned around to leave.

Ariana pulled the door open and walked out of the room without looking back, while Noah stood where he was.

Suddenly, the pawns on the chessboard that he had set for years came to his mind. However, the perfect balance that he had created after refining his victory move again and again, Noah found out that the pawn which should have been in his hands all along——-

Like a good general, it was missing.

The victory that he could almost taste was now lost.

******

On the other side at the De Luca mansion.

“You lost,” Aiden looked at Nicolai, who had come to bother him. He set down his queen on the block next to Nicolai’s king and announced, “Checkmate.”

He elegantly flipped the king off the board.

Nicolai continued staring at the board and after a while slumped down as he realized that there was not a single chance for him to recover his king.

“You could have let me win since I am in a bad mood,” Nicolai snorted as he looked up at the ceiling.

“Is that why you didn’t rush to the hospital even though Nelson went looking for Ariana?”