: First Meeting

After kneeling for a few minutes, my vision blurred, and I recalled my first meeting with Julian Rhodes.

I had just collected my twenty million dollar lottery winnings and was sitting alone in a booth at a bar, downing glass after glass of the strongest liquor.

The doctor's words that I only had three months left to live kept replaying in my mind.

Just as I was half-drunk, I noticed Julian Rhodes in the distance.

He was surrounded by several men who looked like trouble.

"You got a lot of nerve, kid. Either drink to apologize, or pay up!"

The leader, a man I'll call Blondie, was holding a bottle of whiskey and patting Julian's face condescendingly.

Julian Rhodes kept his head down, not saying a word. His eyes were defiant, and there was even a hint of a smirk on his lips.

"Not talking, huh? Fine!" Blondie sneered and dumped the entire bottle over his head.

The liquor trickled down his black hair, soaking his thin T-shirt and outlining the lean but powerful contours of his young body.

In that moment, I don't know what came over me.

I staggered to my feet, walked over, and slammed a stack of cash directly onto the table.

"Is this enough to pay for your drinks?"

After exchanging a look, Blondie and his guys did a complete one-eighty. They grabbed the money with shit-eating grins and left.

In the entire booth, only the drenched Julian Rhodes and I were left.

He looked up at me, the ferocity in his eyes fading, replaced by wariness.

My memory of what happened later that night is hazy.

I only remember that I seemed to have clung to him and wailed all night, letting out all my emotions.

He seemed to be trying impatiently to shake me off the whole time, but I held on tight and wouldn't let go.

When I woke up again, we were already lying in a large hotel bed.

Morning light streamed in through a gap in the curtains, falling on his handsome, clean-cut face as he slept. His long eyelashes were like two little brushes.

I looked at him, and a ridiculous idea suddenly popped into my head.

My life was on a countdown. Rather than die in loneliness and fear, I decided I might as well seize this vibrant splash of color before me and indulge myself one last time.

'I thought that as long as I framed our relationship as a monetary transaction, there would be no emotional entanglement.'

'That way, when the day came for me to leave, neither of us would be heartbroken over the other.'

So, after he woke up, I proposed to become his sugar mama.

After a moment of stunned silence, he chuckled and agreed.

Thinking back now, from the very beginning, I was the clown being played for a fool.

I don't know how long I knelt at the door.

I only knew that my legs had gone completely numb, almost to the point of having no feeling at all.

Just as I was starting to drift off, the door to the private room was pulled open again.

Julian Rhodes walked out. He reeked of alcohol, and his hand was simply bandaged.

He seemed surprised to find that I was actually still there, and his steps faltered for a moment.

"Get up."

I used the wall to support myself and shakily got to my feet. The numbness in my legs almost made me fall again.

He subconsciously reached out to steady me, but the moment before his hand touched my arm, he snatched it back as if he'd touched something filthy.

I steadied myself and looked at him, my face devoid of expression.

"Young Master Rhodes, are there any other orders?"

He stared at me for a long time, his expression too complex for me to decipher.

After a long moment, he pulled his car keys from his pocket and tossed them to me, his tone hard and cold. "Go get the car. Take Moira home."

Moira Vance linked her arm intimately through his and shot me a provocative glance before holding a delicate handbag out to me.

"Hold this for me. My hands are busy holding onto Jules."

I nodded, took the handbag, and walked to the elevator without a word.

In the rearview mirror, I could see the two of them whispering intimately in the back seat.

Moira Vance's laughter was like silver bells. She would occasionally lean on Julian Rhodes's shoulder, and he never pushed her away.

He just stared at me unblinkingly through the mirror, his gaze once again unreadable.

I kept my eyes on the road and focused on driving.

The car pulled to a smooth stop in front of the Vance family's villa.

After Moira Vance got out, Julian Rhodes didn't move.

He just said, "Go to the trunk and get the blue gift box."

I did as he said.

It was the birthday present I had given him yesterday—a bottle of perfume I had blended myself.

"Give it to Miss Vance," he said flatly.

My heart felt as if it had been viciously stabbed by a needle, but my face remained expressionless.

I turned and handed the gift box to Moira Vance. "Miss Vance, this is a gift from Young Master Rhodes."

Moira Vance opened it with a look of pleasant surprise, covering her mouth as she exclaimed, "Wow! Jules, thank you!"

She stood on her tiptoes and planted a kiss on Julian Rhodes's cheek.

Julian Rhodes's body stiffened for a moment, but his gaze was locked on me, as if trying to pierce right through me.

But I just stood there quietly, like an emotionless puppet.

'I just feel like my time is running out. I don't want to waste it on such meaningless emotions.'

But Julian Rhodes seemed to have completely lost patience with my unresponsive attitude.

He took me to a party with his friends, then left me alone in a corner to watch him and Moira Vance dance intimately in the center of the dance floor.

Everyone looked at me as if I were a joke.

"See her? That's the gold digger Young Master Rhodes keeps around. I heard she begged him on her knees not to kick her out."

"Tsk, tsk. She's just average-looking. How can she compare to Miss Vance?"

"She's not in it for love, she's in it for the money."

"Look at her, stiff as a board. She's probably calculating how to squeeze more money out of him."

I sat on a sofa in the corner, sipping the lemonade in my cup as my stomach churned.

The side effects of the chemotherapy were getting worse. My body was deteriorating at a visible rate.

Dizziness, nausea, weakness in my limbs.

I forced myself to hold on, not wanting to collapse here and give them more reason to laugh.

Julian Rhodes came off the dance floor with his arm around Moira Vance and walked straight over to me.

He handed me a glass of red wine, a cruel smile playing on his lips.

"Go on. Apologize to Miss Vance."

Moira Vance feigned surprise. "Jules, how can I accept this? It's not like Miss Xia did anything wrong."

"Her biggest mistake was showing up in front of me." Julian Rhodes seemed very displeased.

"If she makes me unhappy, she's the one who has to apologize."