Chapter 11
Eric hugged the corpse’s head tightly, not caring about how gory it looked or how much it stank. He rested his forehead against Penelope’s cheek as he bawled like a baby. He remained in that state till he finally collapsed.
When he regained consciousness once again, he found himself being surrounded by a crowd while lying on the bed of the hotel suite. Having mustered all his strength to sit. up, Eric rasped out, “Where’s Penelope? Where is she?”
Alarmed, Bert Staple, Eric’s assistant, approached Eric immediately. “For now, we’ve laid her corpse in the casket that’s placed in the hotel’s backyard…”
Before he could finish his sentence, he saw a glass being hurled his way. Thankfully, he was able to dodge it in time. The glass ended up shattering everywhere once it fell to the floor.
“You useless fucker! Get me the best mortician in the whole damn nation so that they can restore Penelope’s face flawlessly! Get her a new customized wedding gown while you’re at it! Also, place an order on a casket made of rose quartz! Penelope… Oh, my Penelope loved looking all pretty and dolled up…”
At first, Eric sounded furious. But when he uttered the last sentence, he was all choked up to
the point he could barely say anything else.
Since he turned 19, Eric had dreamed of marrying Penelope. He worked hard to establish
Fulmer Industries and develop it into the gargantuan titan it was today in order to become good enough for her.
All this time, Eric had been pampering and spoiling Penelope to no end. He couldn’t bear to watch her suffer from the slightest injury or setback. Yet she had chosen to take her own life in the goriest, messiest way possible on their wedding day.
Why? Why did this happen?
“Mr. Fulmer, these are the personal effects left behind by Ms. Sanders before she jumped off the cliff. Would you like to go through them?”
Bert carried a transparent bag as he gingerly approached Eric. There were multiple items inside the bag, such as the scissors Penelope had left behind on the cliff, torn pieces of her wedding dress, her wedding bouquet, and her phone.
Eric accepted the bag. He rifled past the scissors, the large pieces of torn fabric, and the wedding bouquet, which had already wilted. Eventually, his gaze fell onto Penelope’s phone.
He waved idly, motioning for everyone to leave. Then, he carefully keyed in the code “180203” into the phone, thus unlocking it.
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Tears began streaming down Eric’s cheeks, soon dripping onto the screen and blurring it. With a shaky hand, he used his sleeve to wipe the tears off the screen.
February 3rd, 2018… That was the day Eric first met Penelope. He didn’t think that she’d keep using the same passcode for her phone all this time.
After cleaning the screen, Eric finally got to see the content Penelope had laid her eyes on prior to her death. His heart trembled violently for two beats before finally going numb.
The screen still showed Ingrid’s private chat with Penelope. The last two messages had been sent in the wee hours of the morning the day the wedding would take place. It was also the time when Eric had been rushing back to the city in a hurry.
Ingrid: “Can’t you tell who he cares about more? Even if you two are set to marry the next day, he’ll still come over to my place and keep me company as long as I give him a call.”
Ingrid: “If I were you, I would’ve jumped off a building for being this pathetic.”
Penelope’s response was short and clipped. “As you wish.”
Eric kept staring at the three–word message. His knuckles went white because of how tightly he was clutching the phone. A while later, he finally took a deep breath. With trembling fingers, he scrolled all the way up to the start of the chat history.
September 21st.
Ingrid: “Eric proposed to you today, didn’t he? I was wondering why he was so excited the whole night… [Image] [Image]”
September 22nd.
Ingrid: “Eric’s smacks hurt a lot! [Crying emoji] [Image]”
September 24th.
Ingrid: “Seriously… I’m on my period, yet Eric still wanted to fool around with me in the car… [ Image]”
September 25th.
Ingrid: “He told me he wanted to leave his marks all over my body. [Video] [Image]”
The more Eric scrolled, the more his eyes stung. At the end of the chat history, his eyes had gone bloodshot.
It had been three months since Eric proposed to Penelope. Apparently, Ingrid had been texting Penelope every day without fail up till the wee hours of yesterday morning.
As Eric stared at the provocative messages as well as the saucy photos and videos that were
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mostly sent in the middle of the night, he couldn’t help but tremble violently. At one point, he almost let the phone slip out of his hands.
It turned out that his beloved Penelope had already known all about him and Ingrid since the day he proposed to her. To think that she’d find out about his affair in such a humiliating way
too…
Eric dared not imagine how Penelope had lost sleep countless nights and had desperately waited for the next morning to come after receiving those messages from Ingrid. He didn’t even want to imagine how Penelope had gradually lost her faith in him till the point she decided to completely give up on both him and herself.
“Eric, you don’t have to work yourself to the bone, you know. I don’t want a lot of money. I’m fine with it even if you only have enough money to buy me a few pretty dresses.”
That was when Eric vaguely recalled the time when he had just started dating Penelope as a penniless guy. There were moments when she had sat in the cramped office with him, with an arm wrapped around his shoulders while advising him to get some rest.
At the time, Penelope kept beaming at him. She was always smiling whenever she was with him. Back then, he felt like the king of the world whenever he saw Penelope in a beautiful dress.
His darling Penelope loved being dolled up the most. At the same time, she was terrified of pain. Just how desperate was she to resort to such a painful and ugly way of taking her own life?
More tears flowed down Eric’s cheeks as he sank down to his knees. He felt for the scissors on the bed before using them to slash his wrist repeatedly. Blood oozed out of the fresh wounds, yet Eric couldn’t feel anything at all. He just kept staring at the three–word message that said ” As you wish.”
Yes, Eric was the one at fault here. But Penelope wouldn’t have ended her own life like this if it weren’t for Ingrid’s repeated acts of provocation.
He’d atone for his sins his own way. Ingrid, on the other hand, deserved to face a fate worse than death.
Eric grabbed his car keys before dashing out of the suite right away.
