Chapter 119 Unbearable Consequences
Michael did not even spare Erin a look as he walked away, and the latter stood in place awkwardly. She couldn’t chase after him, but she felt compelled to. In the end, she did not move at all, and she looked like she had swallowed a fly as she watched him leave.
Meanwhile, Nicholas was standing in the living room with a blank look on his face. It was as if he had been hollowed out, and he no longer registered all that was going on around him.
Morgan and his eldest son, Jack, saw Michael and the others out the door. Upon reaching the threshold, Morgan said apologetically and uneasily, “Michael, I’m sorry…”
Michael turned to look at him before he sighed and clapped a hand on Morgan’s shoulder. Without another word, he led his kids home.
Morgan felt like his heart had been emptied as he stood rooted to the doorway. He suddenly realized how his life had been meaningless. While Crystal was hospitalized and Erin was healthy and perfectly fine at home, he couldn’t help finding that Michael was far happier than he could ever be.
Needless to say, he was envious of Michael. If he were to go on like this, he would be living in vain, and he was just wasting away his own existence.
Presently, he seemed to have frozen at the doorway. He was so still that even Jack had to call out for him. “Dad?”
When he did not respond, Jack called him several more times. “Dad. Dad?”
Finally, he snapped out of his reverie and turned to look at Jack blearily before he sighed. “Come on.”
In the living room, Erin was trying to comfort Nicholas. Rather, she was putting down Alina to make him feel better. She did not spare the girl from all the insults she could think of, making her out to be some vicious creature that Nicholas should be glad to have gotten rid of, even if said vicious creature was the one who broke up with him.
There was no telling if Nicholas heard everything Erin said. He was still staring blankly into space as he stood tall and straight, and he made no response whatsoever.
Erin, on the other hand, hated Alina with fresh fury. She couldn’t believe that the girl had pointed out her deepest, darkest secret in front of everyone. Everyone in the main family will have something against me from now on. I don’t even know if I can fix this! If I can’t, then my sons will be the ones bearing the brunt! Damn it, Alina!
All the anxiousness and anger in her translated into a torrent of abuse aimed at Alina, and she was growing more savage by the second.
Her pretty features were all colored by wickedness and spite, and they were twisting her face into a menacing grimace.
Unbeknownst to her, Morgan took in her shift in demeanor from where he stood at the living room doorway. At last, he couldn’t take it anymore and went up to her. “Erin, let’s… let’s file for divorce,” he said.
Erin thought she must have heard him wrong. She turned to eye him incredulously as she demanded, “What did you just say, Morgan? Could you repeat that?”
Morgan gazed at her steadily. “I said, let’s file for divorce.”
Shock ripped through her. “Are you out of your mind, Morgan? Divorce? Why would we do that? Our sons are all grown up, so why would you want to file for divorce now? We could be grandparents in a couple of years! Divorce isn’t a possibility right now!”
“I put up with you all these years because I wanted what was in our sons’ best interests,” Morgan replied with forced patience. “However, I don’t want to carry on like this anymore. I’ve already wasted over twenty years of my life, and I don’t want to waste another twenty more.”
All the color drained from Erin’s face, and her voice trembled as she asked, “Morgan, what are you saying? You’ve been putting up with me? For over twenty years?”
He was silent for a while before he said, “Maybe that was an exaggeration. We had our sweet moments when we first started seeing each other, but I don’t know when it all changed…” He looked as if he was searching for his memories. “I think it was during the time of your family’s downfall. You were kind and gentle when we first got married, but after your family’s business went bankrupt, you became different. It was a gradual change, but you started being selfish, jealous, and contemptuous toward those less fortunate than you. You lost grip of reason and you failed to learn your place, and your shame knew no bounds.”
“No, that’s not true,” Erin countered weakly as she shook her head, looking ashen-faced after hearing his description of her.
Every woman would want to be seen as wonderful and compassionate by their own husband, but now, her husband of over twenty years was calling her selfish, petty, and shameless. She couldn’t accept this, for she didn’t think it was true. I’m not like that!
She had always taken care of her looks. She kept a rigorous skincare routine; she exercised to maintain her figure; and she wore flattering clothes. She simply couldn’t stand letting time mold her into something ugly and undesirable. That was why she still looked so good in her forties.
She believed that her husband loved and admired her, but now, he was using horrible words to describe her. He had reduced her into something worthless, but that couldn’t be her. It simply couldn’t be!
Morgan, however, merely shook his head and did not argue with her. There was little point in doing that, so he repeated with more emphasis this time, “Erin, I want a divorce. I’ll have my lawyer draw up the agreement right now.”
“No, I don’t want a divorce! Even if I die, I will not agree to it!” Erin shook her head frantically.
When her family business went bankrupt back then, they had lost the company and ended up with crushing debt. If they couldn’t fork out the money to pay off the debts, her father and brother would have gone to jail.
Her parents had cried and begged her for help, hoping she could settle their debts for them.
It was an astronomical sum of money that she did not have, and as far as she knew, Morgan had no cash in his bank either. However, he had immovable assets.
If she could sell off those immovable assets, she could save her father and her brother from having to go to jail. With that in mind, she pleaded with Morgan to sell off those properties.
However, those immovable assets were a gift from Robert to his three sons, and if Morgan wanted to sell his share, he needed the old man’s approval. As such, he went to seek Robert’s permission to sell off those properties so that he could save his father- and brother-in-law.
At first, Robert disapproved. He claimed that the immovable assets were deemed as such because they would be passed down from one generation to the next, so selling them off was not an option.
It was only after Erin got down on her knees and begged for him to let them sell off the assets that Robert finally agreed to it, but on one condition—should she and Morgan ever get a divorce one day, she would not get a single dime from the settlement. She would leave the marriage with only the clothes on her back and nothing more.
Erin couldn’t understand why Robert would even come up with such a condition in the first place. She thought it hilarious, for she had been so confident that she and Morgan would never divorce. After all, she was no longer young at the time, and she couldn’t do better if she left Morgan. Besides, she and Morgan had two sons to care for, and a divorce would be in nobody’s interests, so she never considered the idea of it.
She remembered thinking how ridiculous Robert’s condition had been. As such, she signed the agreement undertaking that, in the event of a divorce, she would not take a single dime from Morgan. She had put pen to paper without flinching, and she managed to have the assets sold off for a large sum of money after that. She paid off her family’s debts and used the remainder to set up a company for her brother.
The company was only a small one, but it gave her brother a job that paid well enough for him to live comfortably.
As for the agreement she had signed, she completely forgot about it.
