Substitute Wife for the Mafia King R18-Chapter 357: Raw Pain
Bradon was supposed to pick me up from the hospital, but I had to take my sister’s place at her magazine interview and photoshoot. Diana was supposed to be sick in bed. When Bradon arrived to pick me up, he should have met Diana, who was supposed to explain my absence. I wasn’t sure how things were supposed to turn out, but Bradon making out with my sister while I was away surely surpassed even my wildest imagination.
"Are you feeling alright, miss?" the driver asked as he glanced at me through the rearview mirror. I quickly turned away to hide my face because I feared that he might recognize me.
"I’m fine. Please just continue driving; I’ll pay you, that’s not a problem," I said to reassure him while hating just how broken and upset I sounded.
My voice was cracking, and it sounded like my throat was dry. I could feel the taxi driver staring at me through the rearview mirror for a moment before redirecting his attention back to the road. I could no longer ignore the tears streaming down my face, and I had to wipe them away. It took me far too long to realize that I had started crying, which I thought was strange because I wasn’t even sure what I was feeling. It was no wonder that the taxi driver looked so concerned. Sure enough, I was shocked, but there seemed to be a sense of sorrow that I couldn’t understand.
The pain in my chest just hurt so badly that it was impossible to describe in words. I had never felt that way before, even after all the heartbreak that I thought I had been through in my life. The stabbing pain that I felt was so raw and so real, like nothing that I had ever experienced before. Up until that moment, I had never thought that my emotions could hurt me that way. At the same time, I felt so lost and so empty inside, and all I wanted to do was go somewhere where I could be alone.
"They just announced on the radio that there’s going to be a storm later today. I think I should drop you home before it starts to rain," the taxi driver suggested.
The last thing I wanted to do was to go home. More accurately, I didn’t have a place that I could call home anymore. There was nowhere that I could go back to, and at that moment, it felt like there was no one that I could turn to. Although the weather forecast stated that it was going to rain later on in the day, it was sunny outside, and the sky was clear. Ironically, unlike the raging storm that had already started inside of me, it looked like the perfect day for a picnic outside, as if the world was intentionally ignoring all the pain that I felt. Suddenly, the scenery of buildings in the city turned into lush green trees. My eyes widened as I stared at the trees passing by outside the car’s window.
"Please drop me off here!" I told the driver as I quickly wiped away my tears with the back of my hand. 𝚏𝕣𝕖𝚎𝚠𝚎𝚋𝚗𝐨𝐯𝕖𝕝.𝕔𝐨𝕞
"Here? You mean you want me to drop you off here at the park?" the taxi driver asked with a clearly confused look on his face.
"Yes, just drop me off here," I affirmed my choice without any hesitation.
**Hours later**
The garden had not changed very much from the last time that I was there. The overall landscape was the same, and if there were any notable differences, then I did not recognize them. I sat alone on one of the wooden benches as I watched a few people walk by: a couple pushing their baby in a stroller, a man jogging in the middle of his exercise, a middle-aged lady walking her small fluffy dog, and a few students chatting as they walked by.
Everyone seemed happy as they went about living their life. In contrast, it felt like I was just watching my life slip past me. I would have been mad at myself had this happened before because I had always been eager to make some progress in life and move forward; however, at that moment, I didn’t mind just watching life pass me by, as if I was just a bystander and that everything that was happening wasn’t exactly happening to me. I was probably still in denial as I wished that what I had just witnessed wasn’t true.
As the hours dragged by, my feelings gradually settled, and I could dissect my emotions into various parts. At first, I was too shocked to feel or do anything when I first saw my sister straddling Bradon’s lap as they were kissing. My sense of shock then transformed into an anger that I did not understand. It felt so hot and so overbearing, as if it was about to tear itself out of my chest. It hurt so badly inside, but I was soon to find out that it wasn’t the deepest kind of pain. The more I kept trying to deny the truth, the more my brain began replaying that scene that I witnessed over and over again in my head until I felt like I was on the verge of losing my mind completely.
The anger seeped in even deeper, and then I was forced to realize that the source of the anger that I was feeling was from the betrayal of my most trusted sister and also from Bradon. The realization that they had both betrayed me together hurt more than I could have ever imagined. The pain in my chest didn’t threaten to tear me up inside like before; instead, it made me feel so hollow inside, as if I was about to lose my sense of self. I didn’t know who I could trust, while at the same time, I felt like it was unfair for me to be feeling so hurt and so betrayed. My anger turned into devastating sorrow, and then I began blaming myself for feeling that way because I felt like I didn’t have the right to own those feelings. In the end, there was no one to blame except for myself and my own expectations.
–To be continued...
