Chapter 4: The Price of Love

Lillian’s lashes trembled, but her smile held, the curve of her lips perfect.

She smiled softly: “I’m really sorry, Carter,” her voice gentle, almost too calm, “but no matter how much you hate this face, you’ll have to look at it for the rest of your life.”

After Carter left, her smile didn’t budge.

Until I sighed and spoke inside her: “Lillian, you can stop smiling now.”

She paused, and her smile slowly froze.

No one knows how long she sat there before she smiled again, and I saw tears shining in her eyes.

She smiled, her tone light as a sigh, like fourteen years had never passed.

She called me, “Quinn.”

I smiled and replied, “I’m here.”

Twenty-five-year-old Lillian wasn’t the girl I remembered.

She used to cry easily, was timid, afraid of the dark, too soft-hearted and often bullied.

Now she liked to smile, her smile like a mask—flawless, every gesture exuding an effortless grace.

She started to talk. Fourteen years is a long time.

She said she’d learned a hundred ways to survive in that predatory, twisted family.

She learned to smile—gentle, harmless—to get what she wanted.

For example, when she was eighteen and her stepmother got pregnant, she messed with the brakes just enough that her stepmother almost died in a wreck. Then she brushed a thin layer of olive oil on the grand spiral staircase at home, and stood at the top, coldly watching her stepmother slip and tumble down, step by step.

She smiled and told me, her tone gentle: “Quinn, you should’ve seen the blood. It was... beautiful.”

Or when she was nineteen, she seduced her drunken, muddle-headed stepbrother in the living room. When he lost control and tried to assault her, her busy father ‘just happened’ to come home, saw the scene, and flew into a rage. She cried in fright, hid behind him fixing her torn clothes, and no one saw the smile hidden at the corner of her lips.

“After that creep was sent away, he never appeared before me again. Quinn, your methods were too gentle. This is the only way to end things once and for all, isn’t it?”

Or when she was twenty-one, she brought home her beautiful but indecisive roommate, who always wanted shortcuts, and just happened to run into her father. After that, her stepmother lost favor completely, and her roommate clung to her arm, smiling sweetly: “Lillian, your father said he’ll divorce and marry me. Don’t worry, I’ll always listen to you.”

She kept her word, at least. After graduation, I got into the company and started taking over.

She told me a thousand things, and I stayed silent.

When I didn’t answer, her voice went flat, her face empty: “Quinn, do you, like Carter, think I’m a scheming, venomous woman?”

She sat quietly in front of the mirror, reached out to touch her reflection, and asked me, “Quinn, do you think I’m scary too?”

I sighed, my voice calm. “Lillian, you must have suffered a lot, being alone all these years, right?”

I’m not usually sentimental, but I couldn’t help it—I felt sorry for her. I smiled at her in the mirror. “I’m proud of you, Lillian. Really, I’m glad you learned how to protect yourself.”

She was stunned.

“So, tell me—who made you so sad?” I changed the subject, my tone turning cold.

Yeah, twenty-five-year-old Lillian had grown into someone I admired, but I hadn’t forgotten—every time I showed up, it meant she was in pain.

Extreme, desperate, unbearable pain.

I thought of Carter’s cold, indifferent look, and the words: “Your face makes me sick.”

I couldn’t help but sneer and ask her, “Do you like him?”

*Only when you love someone do you give them the power to hurt you.*

Even the now iron-hearted Lillian was troubled by love.

She had no need to pretend in front of me. I watched her let down her guard, her face showing a confused, sad, childlike bewilderment, and she asked me, “Quinn, I’ve been so good to him. Why doesn’t he like me?”

Carter was her fiancé. Three years engaged, but it was always business.

Three years ago, Carter’s father died suddenly in a car accident, leaving him with the family business.

He came back to the U.S., called the board together, and took over.

At the time, Lillian sometimes attended board meetings for her father.

Before she went, her father told her, “The Ellison family’s assets are ours for sure. I’ve had my eye on Ellison Group’s international division for a long time. If Carter’s dad hadn’t died in that accident, I’d never have had a shot. He’s just a twenty-three-year-old kid—what’s he gonna do, mess up the books?”