Love's Change of Heart

Chapter 18

Seated in the back row, Aidan did not even bother to open his eyes as he exclaimed coldly, "Give it to the dogs, then."

Jonathan paused for a moment before reminding Aidan gingerly, "President Pearson, chocolates are poisonous to dogs."

Aidan was caught at a loss of words by that.

…

Leanna arrived at the Civil Bureau Affairs one hour before the meeting and patiently waited there. She had made an estimation of all the possible scenarios on the road, so she made her way here earlier to avoid being late for the appointment.

The Registration of Marriage counter by the side was filled with blissful and happy couples on their way to embark on their journey as husband and wife. In comparison, the counter for processing divorce procedures was significantly deserted with several couples with numb or angry expressions. Consequently, the staff manning the counter were also feeding off from their energy of misery.

Meanwhile, Leanna tried hard to come up with a stiff smile upon noticing the scene in front of her. There was no bitterness or hatred between her and Aidan, but the atmosphere during their registration of marriage had been quite unpleasant previously. As such, she decided that it was time for a change as it would be unnecessary to maintain a vengeful expression during their divorce.

At the thought of this, the smile on her face widened and she was determined to be the happiest person getting a divorce today.

Aidan arrived just then and he caught sight of that coincidentally. He paused in his tracks for a moment and directed an indifferent look at her silently.

After quite some time, the smile she tried hard to maintain gradually stiffened and disappeared. She lowered her head to check her watch for the time while complaining under her breath, "B*stard. How can you be late to sign the divorce papers? Even our country's President is not half as busy as you!"

Aidan felt a vein pulsating on his temple and he pursed his thin lips while striding forward on his long legs.

After hearing some footsteps, she quickly turned around and her eyes brightened as soon as she saw him. "President Pearson, there you are!"

He grunted coldly in response and asked, "Have you waited long?"

"No, I haven't. I'm quite touched that you would spare some time in your busy schedule to come over and sign the divorce papers. I don't mind waiting at all."

He noticed the sudden complete change in her character that happened so naturally and became scornful. It's such a waste of her talents to not pursue a career in acting.

They sat down in front of the divorce counter and Aidan shot a look at Leanna, who had swiftly signed her name on the papers without any hesitation. At that moment, he tightened his grip on the pen and suddenly voiced out, "Leanna, I'm going to give you one last chance. Is the pregnancy true?"

She paused in her movement and lifted her head to look at him with a smile. "I thought that you saw the pregnancy test report I showed you?"

Under the sun, her bright smile felt quite glaring.

For a moment there, Aidan could not seem to tell the extent of the sincerity of her smile.

His voice gradually turned cold. "Three years ago, you showed me the same thing too and I trusted you back then."

Suddenly, there was a slight change in Leanna’s expression. The smile on her face waned slightly and she did not even bother to rebuke his words. Instead, she merely said, "You've remembered to use protection every single time."

That was exactly the reason why he was unable to tolerate her repeated lies and exploitations.

If she had suddenly changed her words and admitted that she had lied to him about being pregnant, then he would easily find it within himself to forgive her once more. However, she was totally unrepentant and repeated the same mistake again. He retracted his gaze and scrawled his name with a flourish on the bottom of the page.

After Leanna walked out of the Civil Bureau Affairs, she carefully stored the divorce papers before interlacing her fingers together. With a smile, she mentioned, "Aidan, happy divorce day."

Aidan merely glanced at her expressionlessly.

She piped up again, "President Pearson, in order to show that we went through an amicable divorce, shouldn't you wish me a happy divorce as well right now?"

"You can enjoy it all by yourself then."

After he had said that, he strode off immediately and bent down to enter the Rolls-Royce parked in front.

She raised her eyebrows and took out the divorce papers from her bag before voicing out solemnly, "Leanna, I wish you a happy divorce."

Regardless of how badly Aidan misunderstood her and reckoned that she had plotted to gain this divorce, right now, she had finally completed the final process. Overtime, it would be proven that she simply wanted a divorce; that was all.

…

In the afternoon, Leanna arrived at Lux Magazine.

She had turned up this time to discuss with Harvey the subsequent products to be released in the 'First Love' series. The first three items released in this series were big hits. Lux had intended to make full use of the popularity from this series and come up with subsequent designs.

Halfway through their meeting, one of their staff suddenly walked in and spoke softly in Harvey's ears. His expression changed slightly before he got up to tell Leanna, "There's been an urgent situation, so I'll have to go out for a moment."

Leanna nodded. "Sure."

Harvey had just walked off and Leanna suddenly sensed a commotion outside the meeting room. The people out there had different expressions on their faces and some of them even glanced in her direction as they discussed amongst themselves. She could clearly sense their mocking and speculative looks through the glass walls.

Because of that, she immediately sent a text message to Zoe to ask what was going on.

Even after waiting for more than ten minutes, she did not get a response from Zoe at all.

At that point, Leanna had a niggling sense that something major must have occurred.

Half an hour ago, the number of preorders for the jewelry pieces in the 'First Love' series, which had been increasing steadily, suddenly halted. Subsequently, there was a sharp decline in the pre-orders. Furthermore, there were a huge number of people who requested a refund.

In order to ensure their production numbers to be maintained, Lux Jewelry had contacted several sub- contractors to operate all of their factories at the same time; the subcontracted factories had also started working overnight to come up with the final product after the press conference yesterday. If the influx in requests for refunds persisted at this stage, it would definitely be a huge financial loss to Lux Jewelry.

The main reason for this to be happening came from a post that appeared on the Internet one hour ago. Published by Nôv'elD/rama.Org.

This was different from everyone's selfish guesses last night and the post had listed out a detailed

description of the timing and occurrences of it. As such, the credibility of this post was well-proven.

The post pointed out that the reason for the sudden disappearance of the newly-appointed designer for Lux Jewelry, McK, three years ago was because—

'After she won the competition, she swiftly became entangled with a wealthy man. After she realized that the man was married, she didn't give up but schemed hard and ended up getting pregnant instead. Subsequently, she turned up at the person's house with a child in her womb and forced him to marry her. The wife of the wealthy man couldn't stand the humiliation, so she divorced the man. That's why McK succeeded in marrying him.'

'But then, not long after climbing up the social ladder, she somehow lost the child she was carrying out of the blue. The man sensed that he had been tricked, so he gave her the cold shoulder from then on and refused to acknowledge her presence. He started to seek the company of other women outside. The reason for her appearance this time is because the wealthy man has completely lost interest in her, therefore, he told her to pack her belongings and leave.'

At the end of the post, there was another statement issued stating that after Lux Jewelry officially appointed her and signed the employment contract with her, the first series that they came up with was a grave insult to the term 'first love'. In the post, it was stated that McK was a corrupted person lacking morality. She was a homewrecker for going after a married man, so she did not have the right to mention anything about first love nor did she have the right to be a jewelry designer.

Although Leanna was not part of the entertainment industry, Lux Jewelry remained widely known in the country for being a top magazine. They had collaborated with plenty of top celebrities in the country, hence the magazine was practically a part of the entertainment business.

Furthermore, they were currently in this informational age where even the most mundane topic could end up being viral. There were always plenty of nosy people widely interested in the affairs of others.

'I used to love the First Love series and I bought all three designs in their initial release. I can't believe that their designer is such a horrible person. I'm so disgusted by that! Luckily, I applied for a refund almost instantly after the news broke.'