But I still remembered that he was once the boy who made a vow to me. On the night my mother swallowed pills and ended her life, he pulled me out of my stepfather's house and swore to protect me.
He said he was just a low-level thug struggling to survive in a dangerous game, forcing us to live in an unheated apartment, saving every penny in pursuit of a clean future.
And I actually believed his lies without reservation.
A small folded piece of paper floated to the surface. I fished it out, wiped away the suds, and read the printed words on it.
It was a receipt for a custom engagement ring from a private jeweler. Total price: sixty-eight thousand dollars.
In that moment, a brief surge of hope swelled in my chest, as if our years of penny-pinching had finally paid off.
But soon, my eyes fell on the client information section.
The delivery address was a luxury apartment in Manhattan. The recipient: Mia Vance.
My hope shattered instantly. I tossed the suit back into the water and walked straight into the bedroom.
Preston had left his spare laptop on the desk-the one he claimed was only used for running low-level accounts.
My job restoring antiques at the city art museum had taught me not only the techniques of restoring oil paintings but also how to trace digital footprints.
In less than ten minutes, I cracked the password and opened his secret ledger.
The screen displayed a transfer of forty-eight thousand dollars; meanwhile, in the kitchen, there was a half-eaten bowl of watery porridge.
The juxtaposition of these two images was absurd and undeniably real.
Preston wasn't a bottom-tier thug making five thousand dollars a month at all. From the illegal deals he managed for his boss, he skimmed forty-eight thousand dollars every month.
I clicked open his offshore bank records, revealing his three-year-long betrayal: forty thousand dollars was transferred to an account under Mia's name every month, leaving me with a mere two thousand dollars just to survive.
He had put a price tag on my youth, loyalty, and silence, and it was nothing more than the cold scraps falling from a rich man's dining table.
At eleven o'clock at night, the door lock clicked, and I sat at the small, dark dining table.
Preston's silhouette blocked the light from the hallway, carrying the scent of stale cigarettes mixed with expensive cologne.
He reached out his large, rough hand and casually brushed the hair from my forehead.
"Why are you sitting in the dark like a ghost?" his deep, familiar voice sounded.
"To save on the electricity bill to pay rent," I answered emotionlessly.
Preston let out a low chuckle, walked into the kitchen, heated up the watery porridge I had made earlier, and brought it over.
"Eat something, baby, and stop worrying about money."
I stared at the thin porridge, feeling it hard to breathe.
"I found a receipt for custom jewelry in your suit pocket."
His hand froze on the back of the chair for a fraction of a second, but he quickly regained his composure: "That was an errand I ran for the boss. Why were you going through my pockets?"
"It fell out when I was scrubbing the bloodstains off your suit," I stared at him without blinking. "Sixty-eight thousand dollars is not a small sum. Your boss is really generous to his woman."
Preston let out a deep, mellow laugh and pushed the bowl of porridge a little closer to me.
"The higher-ups make a lot," he explained calmly. "Just be patient a little longer, and one day we'll be able to live that kind of life too."
I didn't say a word. His voice turned into a meaningless hum, drowned out by the number echoing constantly in my mind: forty-eight thousand dollars.
Preston picked up the burner phone on the table and replied to a message. The pale light from the screen reflected on his face.
A new text notification popped up on the lock screen. The sender was marked only with a red heart emoji and one word: "Wife."
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