Lisa felt like the ground beneath her feet had turned into an endless pit as she looked at her best friend and stepsister. Correction, her step sister and former best friend.
Her legs felt like straps of boiled noodles and she had to lean against the wall for support before she fell to the ground and completely gave away her shaken state.
"Ivy?" Lisa chocked out in disbelief as her chest hurt intensely from the pain caused by the betrayal that she could have never seen coming. It felt like a thousand wasps had stung her heart as she looked at two of the people who were supposed to be closest to her.
Lisa couldn't even cry.
She just stood there, with her lips slightly ajar and her mind still trying to fully process the scene before her for nearly a minute.
The pain in her dark hazel eyes was then replaced with anger as she glared at both of them. Johnathan was clearly still shocked but Ivy had shamelessly made her way towards Lisa with a bed sheet wrapped around her body in an attempt to hide her indecency.
"Lisa…I... can explain." She stuttered as she reached out to hold Lisa's hand but a hot slap met her cheek instead.
Lisa had never seen anyone act so pathetic and shameless. Ivy had totally deserved that slap.
"There…is NOTHING to explain." Lisa said through gritted teeth, her voice devoid of emotion as she wiped her hand and turned her back, walking away from them.
Everything between her and Johnathan had been perfect or so she had thought and it was a huge blow to her ego to realize that she had been fooled or worse, used as a pawn in her sister and fiancé's game. Whatever game that was.
Lisa hurried away and drove her car as fast as she could so that she could reach her place before the tears that blurred her vision rolled down her cheeks. She felt immensely vulnerable and betrayed once she had settled in a corner within the safe confines of her room and let herself cry her heart out.
Being strong and confident was the way everyone saw her but as she shed her tears, away from the prying eyes of the world, Lisa hated to admit that she was much more human than people knew. She felt and hurt as much as everyone else even though no one ever got to see that part of her maybe because it came from a deep-rooted fear that no one could ever understand if she showed them the emotionally vulnerable part of herself.
Trusting had clearly not worked and now Lisa was determined never to get her hopes up so that if and when she was eventually disappointed by others, it could hurt so much less than it did at that moment. She knew crying and slacking in her room for the entire evening was not going to make her feel any better so Lisa cleaned up, got dressed and went to her family mansion to pay her father a visit. He was the only person that she could bring herself to talk to.
Her middle aged lively dad had welcomed her with a big hug and just like she had planned, nothing seemed wrong about her demeanor because the last thing she wanted was to trouble her dad with all her emotional problems. He was already working so hard to finalize his term in service as the CEO of the company before he passed on his role to her, right after her wedding that was supposed to take place with Jonathon as the groom! She knew she had to eventually tell him the truth but she could not bring herself to. At least not yet because she could spiral into an ocean of tears if she told him too soon. The wound was still very fresh.
Lisa felt much better after having dinner with her dad and she went to bed that night, quite determined to deal with Johnathan and Ivy's betrayal the next day but as luck could have it, she did not get to confront the duo. The very next morning just as she arrived for work, Lisa had her heart broken all over again when she received news that her father had died in an accident at one of the construction sites of the company.
Torn by grief and unable to truly focus on anything else, Lisa mourned her father's untimely death for an entire month as she carried out an in-depth investigation on his alleged accident. She was no fool to believe that it had just coincidentally happened right after her breakup with Jonathan. Her primal gut feeling told her that her ex fiancé and Ivy were somehow connected to the case. She just needed to prove it and have them jailed in prison forever!
Taking longer than everyone else to recover from her loss had Lisa in for another twist. Johnathan's father who was the vice president had staged a takeover and declared himself president in her absence and in addition to that, he had charged her with negligence of her position and had her thrown off the executive committee that run the company.
Her stepmom and Ivy had then made claims that she was only a fake heiress and that Ivy, her stepsister was indeed the true heiress to the Yang imperial group of hotels.
Life afterwards had been much harder for Lisa. All her bank accounts had been frozen, and she had no one but herself to depend on.
With her educational documents, she had managed to easily find work as an accountant as she secretly planned a way on how to take her revenge on all the people that had wronged her and taken away everything that was rightfully hers.
A month into her new job, Lisa had then been kidnapped by henchmen she realized had been sent by her stepmom to have her killed so that she did not pose any threat to Ivy's position as the heiress of the company. She had been tied up on a small wooden chair and barely fed for an entire fortnight before she had fortunately managed to make her escape on a cold, dewy morning.
Lisa hadn't expected to be saved by one of the people she hated most in the world and yet, here she was, riding in a car with him.
Her eyes closed as she acknowledged the fact that she did not hate Lian Que as much as she hated Ivy, Jonathan and her evil stepmom. He wasn't necessarily such pleasant company but he could do for the moment, at least until she recovered and got to confront him.
She had to know why he had decided to leave her.