Jacob didn’t object. He looked at her and said, “Okay. Anything else?”
“No.” Liesel shook her head. “If it bothers you, I can move out tomorrow.”
He seemed surprised by how accommodating she was. He cautioned her calmly, “Make sure you’ve thought this through, Liesel. I don’t want there to be anything between us after the divorce.”
“Don’t worry about that.” She smiled.
He seemed to want to say something else, but his phone rang. He answered it and hung up shortly after. Then, he said, “I have something else to do. I’ll get a lawyer to talk to you about the divorce.”
Soon after he left, Liesel saw a trending topic on him and Natalie showing up together somewhere. In hindsight, fate was such a twisted thing.
Back then, Heather could not tolerate even the slightest flaw in her marriage. After learning about Natalie’s existence, she forced her husband, Jeffrey Sharp, to send Natalie to the countryside so she could grow up there.
Less than two years after Heather’s death, Jeffrey had remarried, turning Liesel into a joke. Natalie had also been brought back from the countryside.
Fate loved playing jokes on everyone—no one would’ve expected Natalie to be the one who held Jacob’s heart.
…
Liesel only woke up the following noon. Her cold was much better now. A lawyer brought her the divorce agreement, making sure to go through the allocation of assets.
Jacob truly hadn’t shortchanged her. Aside from the house at Northview Garden, he’d also given her some other real estate. The lawyer said, “Sign here if you don’t have any objection to the clauses, Ms. Sharp.”
Liesel nodded and signed the agreement without hesitation. The divorce would take some more time to finalize, though.
Jacob was busy, so Liesel didn’t get to see him at all. She reminded the lawyer, “Please tell Mr. Ford to expedite the finalization of the divorce if he’s not too busy. Dragging this out won’t do any of us favors.”
After settling the divorce, Liesel moved out of her and Jacob’s marital home. Chelsea heard about this and invited her out for coffee.
“You know about Natalie, right? She studied hard in the countryside after being banished by your mother and later got into a good university. Jacob ran into her at Alden University when he went there to give a talk.” Chelsea snorted.
She continued, “I heard Natalie was really in awe of him; it helped that she was so hardworking and optimistic. Your father was desperate to matchmake them, you know. But here’s the question—why would someone as wonderful as her not realize what a bitch move it is to ruin someone’s marriage?”
Chelsea had always been defensive of people she counted as her own, and she scorned those who knowingly got involved with people who had significant others. The fact that Natalie was an illegitimate child only made Chelsea despise her more.
Liesel looked unfazed, though. “It’s all in the past now. Jacob and I are already divorced, so she’s not really ruining the marriage.”
She chuckled. She had mixed feelings about the whole thing. “Besides, it’s not like Jacob and I ever had feelings for each other.”
She lowered her gaze and suddenly remembered the first time she and Jacob had met. The year Heather had died, she’d caused one of Jeffrey’s business deals to fall through. She’d been overjoyed and had dragged Chelsea out for a celebration.
After the celebration, she’d refused to let go of a handsome man she’d latched onto. They’d both had too much to drink and had ended up in bed. It was only later that she’d learned he was Jacob Ford, her fiancé.
Rumor had it that he’d never wanted to marry her, but he’d looked at her the following morning and said, “I’m willing to take responsibility for this, Liesel. What about you?”
He’d proposed marriage. Liesel had looked at him, and a rare moment of rashness had taken over her. She’d said, “Let’s do it.”
To tell the truth, there wasn’t anything bad about Jacob. He didn’t love her but had never played the field or slept around with other women. He was also calm and level-headed, considerate and gentle. She didn’t even have any complaints about their adventures in bed.
But things had changed after he’d run into Natalie at Alden University two months ago.
Chelsea looked at Liesel while feeling bitter. The latter hadn’t said anything, but Chelsea knew how she felt. Judging from Liesel’s personality, there was no way she would’ve settled for Jacob for so long if she didn’t have feelings for him.
“Maybe you should go back to Shifter Corporation, Lili. Why continue suffering at Ford Corporation? I feel nauseous at the thought of those two pieces of trash being there.”
Liesel had always been prideful and stubborn. After Heather’s death, she’d used whatever she’d inherited to set up Shifter Corporation, wanting to compete with the Sharp family’s company.
However, she’d left it in the hands of Heather’s friend, Jonathan Shifter. The outside world only knew it as Jonathan’s company.
“Marriage is marriage, and work is work,” Liesel said. “I’m not going to give up on my career over a failed marriage.”
That was what she thought—it was also what Jacob had promised her. But when she headed to work the next day, she discovered she’d been transferred from her position as his secretary to the project department manager.
