He Does Not Deserve My Devotion-Chapter 38: A Thaw in the Relationship

The unexpected kiss jolted Nina Walsh to her senses.

’What am I doing with Aiden Sinclair? Are we on a date? Are we falling in love?’

Nina Walsh pushed Aiden Sinclair away, lowered her head, and bolted outside.

She didn’t know where she was going, only that a voice inside her kept screaming: ’Run! Get away from Aiden Sinclair! He’ll only make your tragic life even more miserable.’

Aiden Sinclair paid the bill and rushed out after her, but Nina was already gone.

She hadn’t brought her phone and wasn’t familiar with the area.

Aiden frantically searched for her, circling the entire food street before finally finding Nina in a small nearby park.

Nina was squatting on the ground, her body trembling. Curled into a tiny ball, she looked like an abandoned kitten.

"Nina?"

As Aiden drew closer, Nina pointed forward.

Aiden followed her gaze to a flower trellis in the distance.

Red roses bathed in the moonlight, swaying gently in the night breeze.

He ran over, plucked one, and offered it to her.

Nina glanced at him, her hand reaching past the rose to grip his wrist. She used his arm for support as she stood up.

"I sprained my ankle."

In the end, Nina gave in. Aiden carried her on his back to his luxury apartment, where he tended to her carefully, helped her take a bath, and carried her to bed.

The tumultuous night passed. The next morning, Aiden woke up first. He opened his eyes to see the woman sleeping peacefully in his arms, her lashes long and curled, her nose small and delicate. He couldn’t resist leaning down to kiss her.

"I’m heading to the office," he whispered in her ear. "Your foot is injured, so don’t go out today. If you need anything, I’ll have someone bring it over."

Aiden quietly went about his morning routine. As he was getting a glass of water, he glanced at the vase in the dining room. The roses he’d bought were gone, replaced by a single red climbing rose.

A smile touched his lips. He glanced toward the bedroom one last time before heading out.

Long after the door clicked shut, once she was certain Aiden’s presence was gone from the apartment, Nina sat up in bed.

Her expression turned cold and distant. She got out of bed, slipped on her shoes, and strolled casually to the dining room. She took out her phone and snapped a photo of the vase.

She opened her phone, selected a recording and the photo, and hit send.

...

「On a film set」

Clara Jacobs had been called back to the set. While everyone else had already wrapped their parts, Clara was still struggling to get a few of her scenes right.

The director had her doing reshoots all night, forcing her to repeat a single shot dozens of times.

"I’m exhausted," Clara complained to her assistant. "Did the director eat gunpowder or something? He’s so aggressive! And such a perfectionist. Next time, he should just get a body double to do it."

"Just hang in there, Clara," her assistant soothed. "These are some of the most pivotal scenes in the movie. It’ll be much better if you’re the one on camera."

Just then, Clara’s phone buzzed with two new messages: a voice recording and a photo of a climbing rose.

She tapped on the recording, and within seconds of listening, her expression turned thunderous.

’So Aiden really has been with Nina this whole time! That bitch. How dare she flaunt it in my face.’

Without even removing her makeup, Clara stormed off the set and rushed to Sophia Sawyer’s residence to bewail her troubles.

"Mom, listen to this! Aiden’s been keeping that woman, Nina, all these years! She was even pregnant with his child!"

Clara played the recording for Sophia, who listened to the entire thing with a deep frown.

Tears streamed down Clara’s face. "Mom, you have to do something! I’m Aiden’s fiancée! How can he be with that woman, Nina?"

The whining made Sophia’s temples throb, and her tone grew stern. "If you had just listened to me five years ago and solidified your relationship with Aiden, would he have ever given another woman the chance to slip in?"

Clara stopped crying. "Mom, I regret it now. I’ve met plenty of men over the years, but none of them compare to Aiden. I have to marry him. Mom, please, just help me one more time."

Sophia sighed. "Don’t panic. I promised he would marry you, and as long as I’m here, Aiden won’t marry anyone else. Based on what I know of him, he may seem cold, but he cares deeply about blood ties. The fact that he’s still entangled with that woman is almost certainly because of the child."

Sophia thought for a moment, then asked, "He still won’t touch you?"

The question only made Clara angrier. No matter how forward she was, no matter how she threw herself at him, Aiden simply wouldn’t touch her. Even the time she’d gotten him drunk, she hadn’t succeeded.

The closest they had ever come was that one night. Aiden had told her she smelled wonderful and carried her to bed. For a moment, she thought she was finally going to succeed. But after she’d taken off her clothes, he simply lay beside her for three hours, did nothing, and then left.

For Clara, who had always prided herself on her unparalleled face and figure, it was the ultimate humiliation.

As if she had anticipated this, Sophia scrounged up a packet of Chloe powder from who-knows-where and pressed it into Clara’s palm.

"Find an opportunity and put this in Aiden’s drink..."

...

「The luxury apartment in the city center—」

Nina, bored out of her mind, was holed up in her room, casually scrolling through the headlines on her phone.

The top story everywhere online was the Breyven project bribery case. As the saying goes, when you pull a radish, the mud comes with it. A project this big naturally implicated many people, but Brian Sherman was taking the brunt of the fallout.

The Sheridan Group’s assets had been frozen, and its stock had hit the daily downward limit for a week straight.

Brian Sherman might find a scapegoat and narrowly avoid prison, but the Sherman Group couldn’t escape bankruptcy. Not unless someone could inject at least two billion to take over the company.

’Serves them right!’ Nina mentally applauded.

Just then, a call came in from an unknown number. Nina assumed it was Clara.

"Nina!" a harsh man’s voice barked from the other end of the line.

’Brian Sherman!’

"Nina, you little demon! It was you, wasn’t it? You opened my safe and secretly gave the evidence to Aiden Sinclair! You’re the one who had him come after me, right? Say something, you bitch!" Brian Sherman roared through the phone.

Nina’s tone was flat. "That’s right. It was me."

The day after she’d gotten the documents, she had mailed them to Aiden anonymously.

"You fucking mutt, where are you? Show your face! I’ll beat you to death! I’m your father! How dare you do this to your own father? Have you no conscience?" Brian Sherman was practically rabid, sounding like a mad dog on the phone.

Nina sneered. "When have you ever treated me like a daughter? When I was sick in the hospital as a child, did you visit me even once? You threw Mom and me out, cut us off completely, and seized everything for yourself. You didn’t seem to think I was your daughter then. Brian Sherman, your daughter is Wendy Sherman. You still have her, don’t you? Go marry her off to some rich family. If you can get a few hundred million for her, you might just save yourself."

"How can you say something so inhuman? That’s your sister!" Brian shouted.

"You didn’t seem too human yourself when you were pushing me into the abyss!"

Nina hung up. The shouting match with Brian Sherman had, to some extent, eased the hatred festering in her heart.

She had just ended the call with Brian Sherman when, a moment later, her phone rang again. It was Leo Lloyd. Nina’s heart sank.

’Did Brian go and cause trouble for Maelie?’