Chapter 322 - 322: The Answer I’ve Been Seeking for Three Years(2)
Serenity was having mixed emotions when Selena started to recount what happened.
John wasn’t doing well in the Grant family back then. He had fallen out with Chris Grant and was often repressed by Shia Grant after entering Grant Group.
How could he think of giving Serenity a good life as his wife when he hadn’t sorted his out yet?
At the same time, Selena received 10% of Rivers Group from Benjamin for her birthday. It was no mystery to anyone by then that Selena would be the one to inherit Rivers Group.
Marrying Selena would mean that he would also have the backing of the Rivers group to strengthen his position in Grant Group. With that in mind, John proposed a fake marriage to Selena.
It took Selena three days of careful thought before agreeing.
She had two reasons for doing so. The first was that she had always been envious of John and Serenity’s beautiful love that lasted for more than ten years. The second was due to her love life.
In university, she had liked a boy named lan Aspers who came from an ordinary family. Afraid of hurting his self-esteem and putting pressure on him, she hid the fact that she was Benjamin Rivers’s daughter.
Unfortunately, the truth couldn’t be hidden forever. Ian found out and broke up with her. Not long after, he got with another girl from a normal family. After graduation, the two got married.
By the time John proposed the fake marriage idea to Selena, a week had passed since lan got married. With a heart that was still broken and the conviction that nothing could ever heal her, Selena agreed to John’s proposition.
After John and Selena got ‘married’, lan and his wife got into a car accident a year later, leaving behind Eva, who had just turned one month old.
The child was supposed to be sent to the orphanage, but Selena pitied her and took her in instead.
Back then, the child was Eva Aspers.
To avoid arousing the suspicion of the Grant and Rivers families, Selena pretended to be pregnant. Attributing her fiat stomach to being in the early stages of pregnancy, she went abroad to ‘access facilities that would bring greater benefit to her pregnancy and the baby’.
And to keep up the facade, John would claim his business trips as visits to Selena and ‘their child’.
A few months later, John brought Selena and Eva back. By then, the child’s surname had been changed to Grant.
John had been working hard the entire time to establish his position in the business world, believing that he needed to make sure everything was in place before he saved Serenity from the abyss of suffering in the Rivers family.
When Serenity agreed to Benjamin’s proposal for her to study abroad, John was devastated.
Every night after she left, he would stay up late at social gatherings, drink until his stomach bled, and shout Serenity’s name over and over again until he passed out.
As Serenity listened to Selena recount the backstory, the former turned as pale as a sheet of paper. With difficulty, she said, “So, you guys teamed up to deceive me…”
Selena took a sip of water to moisten her throat before looking back at the pale-faced Serenity. “Do you still think that he has given up on you and doesn’t love you anymore?”
Selena had witnessed how hard it had been for John to love Serenity from afar in secret. He loved her so passionately only for her to end up with someone else.
That man had suffered too much, so this was the last thing she wanted to do for John.
She remembered the night of their wedding – she had asked him if he regretted anything. He grabbed his hair in pain. “I can endure all the suffering and torture, but Serene is so innocent. She shouldn’t have to endure all this.”
Hearing the words coming out of Selena’s mouth made Serenity’s eyes fill with white mist. For a moment, she felt like tears were about to burst out of her eyes, but she bit her lip and tried her best to suppress her emotions.
No longer able to continue listening, Serenity grabbed her handbag and rushed out of the restaurant as Selena’s gentle yet poisonous voice rang in her mind, assaulting her nerves over and over again..