Ficorpio
Chapter 1
Only three days after you separated, Adrian Mercer posted a photo of China’s red marriage certificate on WeChat Moments.
The bride wasn’t you.
You and Adrian had been together for five years, struggling to make a life in Harbor City. You didn’t have much money, but squeezing into a rented apartment together and saving for a down payment had once made you feel secure and settled.
He was from the outskirts of Harbor City. Your family lived in a small city in the north.
Before the holiday break, he had asked you again and again, “Evelyn, are you really not coming home with me this year?”
You remembered what had happened four months earlier and shook your head without hesitation. “No. I miss my parents too.”
With an indulgent smile, he flicked your nose. “You’ll be twenty-six after the holiday, and you’re still this attached to your parents. Once we’re married, you can cling to me every day.”
“Mm-hmm.” You smiled and agreed.
At the airport, the two of you went your separate ways.
After you landed, you messaged him, asking, “How far have you gotten?”
He replied with a dog tilting its head. “I’m home. Just talking with my parents.”
That was the last time you ever heard from him.
You told yourself that with so many relatives visiting during Lunar New Year, it was perfectly normal for him to get busy and forget to reply.
You never imagined that the silence would last three days.
On the afternoon of the second day of the holiday, Maya Brooks’s phone call jolted you awake from a deep sleep.
“Evelyn Bennett! Get up and look at the link I sent you!” Her voice was so agitated it cracked.
You rubbed your eyes and asked hoarsely, “What could possibly be so urgent?”
“Adrian got married! Today!”
Adrian? Married?
You came fully awake in an instant and shot upright. “Who did you say?”
“Who else? Your boyfriend of five years!” Maya rattled off the words at top speed. “I sent you the video. Watch it yourself. Come meet me. I’ve already booked a place.”
After hanging up, you opened the video with trembling hands.
It showed a wedding taking place at a modest country house. The decorations were crude, the crowd loud and chaotic. The camera shook badly, but the groom’s face was unmistakably clear.
It was Adrian.
And he was wearing the dark-gray suit you’d given him as a holiday gift.
So in the end, your gift had become the wedding clothes he wore to marry someone else.
You had imagined countless ways the two of you might break up.
Maybe you would part peacefully. Maybe a fight would lead to a cold war between you.
But you had never imagined an ending this absurd.
Chapter 2
Five years of love couldn’t simply vanish because someone decided it was over. You sat dazed on the edge of the bed, your mind completely blank. You couldn’t even process the pain yet.
You and Adrian had been college classmates.
Before him, you had never really been in a serious relationship. The men in your social circle were either careless and frivolous or obsessed with building their careers. Adrian’s steadiness and thoughtfulness had burst into your heart like a shaft of light.
He never gave you expensive presents, but in winter, he would tuck roasted sweet potatoes inside his coat to keep them warm, peel them, and feed them to you.
He had a clear plan for his life. He saved money with you and gave you a sense of direction when you had been drifting without a goal.
You thought the two of you would keep walking that road together.
Then the red marriage certificate in the video smashed every one of your hopes to pieces.
The private room Maya had reserved had several enormous words painted across the outer wall:
LOVE IS BULLSHIT!
It felt painfully appropriate.
By the time you arrived, the table was already covered with bottles of red wine.
“Well, look at you, Miss Brooks. Switching careers and becoming a wine merchant?” you said, forcing yourself to sound lighthearted.
Maya leaned against the sofa, watching you with undisguised sympathy. “We’re drinking until we can’t drink anymore. I’ll help you get through this, girl.”
You shrugged. “It’s not that big a deal. So my boyfriend got married. It’s not like the sky fell.”
Half an hour later, you were clutching a wine bottle and sobbing so hard you could barely catch your breath.
“What gives him the right? Four months ago, I went to his house, and the way his parents treated me… I still didn’t break up with him! How could he marry someone else behind my back? He didn’t even say a word to me!”
Maya slammed her hand on the table. “You must have been too stupid to notice! Three days from meeting her to getting married?”
“He was a shooting star!”
“I really loved the years we spent saving money together…” You wiped at your tears. “We promised we’d buy a little house in Harbor City. He even said he’d build me a window seat…”
“Stop thinking about it!” Maya hauled you to your feet. “Call him and ask him outright! Even if he wants to break up, you deserve to know why. I’ll stay right here while you call.”
You stared at her for a moment, then swallowed a large mouthful of liquor and dialed Adrian’s number.
You needed to know what, exactly, you had been lacking.
The phone rang once. Then again. And again.
No one answered.
It was already past nine.
Then you remembered when the wedding video had been posted.
Today.
While you had been drowning in heartbreak, Adrian had been celebrating his wedding night.
Rage shot straight to your head. You began calling him over and over.
You had no idea how many times you tried before he finally answered.
Chapter 3
The name “Adrian Mercer” flashed across the screen. Strangely, the sight of it calmed you a little. It even made you inexplicably nervous.
“Hello.” You kept your voice as steady as you could.
“Evelyn… you know, don’t you?” His voice was hesitant.
At least he was being direct.
You let out a cold laugh. “Congratulations on your wedding.”
Silence filled the other end of the line.
After a long moment, he said, “Thank you.”
Thank you?
You exploded. “Thank you? You don’t have anything to explain? Forget it. There’s no need to explain—I saw everything with my own eyes. Since you’re married, this is over between us. I’ll come back for my things from the apartment once we’re back at work. And at the office, we’ll pretend we don’t know each other.”
You hung up.
All the strength seemed to drain out of you at once, and you collapsed onto the sofa.
Five years together had ended just like that, in one brief phone call.
It had happened so quickly, so abruptly, that the breakup didn’t feel real.
Maya poured you another drink and tried to console you. “There’s an old saying: it’s better to break up sooner rather than later. You should be grateful he only got married behind your back. Imagine if he’d gotten rich behind your back too. Wouldn’t that have been even more unfair?”
You tipped your head back and finished the glass.
As much as you hated to admit it, she had a point.
Sometime after midnight, you stumbled out of the private lounge with Maya, the two of you holding each other up.
Across the street, the lights of a Lottery Retailer were still on.
Ever since you’d started dating Adrian, he had constantly accused you of wasting money. He wouldn’t let you buy any of those “useless things.”
You grabbed Maya and dragged her inside. Together, you bought a pile of Lottery Tickets and Scratch-Off Tickets.
The next day, you woke around noon with a pounding hangover.
You fumbled for your smartphone and nearly threw it across the room.
You had called Adrian dozens of times the night before.
And somehow, you had spent twenty-eight minutes on the phone with your boss, Julian Ashford.
What on earth had you said to him?
Julian was the owner of Ashford Enterprises. At twenty-eight, he had the textbook looks of a polished business executive, yet he loved meddling in every petty detail of office life.
Most outrageous of all, he had strictly forbidden Workplace Romance.
You and Adrian had worked at the company for two years, keeping your relationship completely secret. You had never even dared to leave work together. None of your coworkers knew you were dating.
You used to curse Julian in your head for being so controlling.
Now, though, his rule felt like a lifeline.
If your relationship had been public, you would have had to endure the pitying looks of the entire company. Just imagining it made you want to die of embarrassment.
How had Julian developed such astonishing foresight?
A few days later, Maya’s phone call came crashing through your morning.
“Evelyn Bennett! We won!”