A few days later, my uncles called again, asking me to go to Thaddeus and beg him on their behalf.
"The company is really struggling now. The supply chain is small, and the Sinclairs have taken so much from us... Irene, please help me just this once, okay?"
I silently put the phone down, ran my fingers through my hair, feeling irritated. I wasn't planning to call Thaddeus.
I knew him well.
At this point, I wasn't going to show weakness.
If this whole mess really had anything to do with me, he would have come to me himself. Sure enough, that evening, as I returned with dinner in hand, I saw him waiting downstairs at my building.
Leaning against his luxury car, his gaze fixed on the roses in the yard, his fingers lightly tapping on the car's surface, lost in thought.
"Thaddeus."
I stood in front of him and asked, "What exactly do you want?"
He snapped out of his thoughts, extinguished the cigarette in his fingers, his voice calm but distant: "You don't seem to be in the mood to beg me."
I widened my eyes. "Beg you? Dream on." I turned to walk away.
Thaddeus grabbed my wrist.
Finally, he stopped pretending, his voice filled with helplessness:
"Irene, aren't you going to do anything about your uncle's situation?"
"I can't do anything. I have nothing now—no money, no company, not even a rich friend to turn to. How can I help?"
"You can."
He looked at me intently. "You have me."
---
He finally got to the point.
I turned to him, staring into his eyes. "So, after four years, you still haven't forgotten about me? Is that why you want to use my uncle's company to force me into submission?"
"I didn't mean to force you."
His fingers lingered on my wrist, his voice soft as he spoke, "I just want you back by my side."
"You..."
"Do you know how I've spent these four years?" He interrupted me:
"I think about you, day and night, thinking so much it hurts my body, so much that I can't sleep. I would pull out photos of us and look at them over and over again."
"I tried to tell myself you were just a woman, but they brought me women who looked like you, stripped them down, and placed them on my bed. I felt nothing, not even a flicker of desire, only disgust."
"At first, I thought time would make me forget you. But no, time only made me want you more."
"I miss the first time you called me 'honey,' the first date we had, the first birthday gift you gave me..." He gripped my wrist, turning to push me against the car, staring into my reddening eyes:
"Irene, you've moved on. You're living happily now, I know that."
"But what about me? Stuck in the past, unable to move on. Only I suffer from this. How can I accept that?"
His accusation sounded like a fragile butterfly, broken, out of control, helpless, and desperate, as if it was about to disappear. But...
What does that have to do with me?
