The Memory of the Alps

After arrogantly hanging up and turning off the phone, I turned around to find Sebastian still staring at me with a strange look in his eyes.

“What are you looking at, what’s wrong?”

He suddenly pulled me deep into his warm chest, burying his chin into the bouncy hair on the top of my head.

“It’s nothing serious. Just reflecting, it feels a bit surreal and unbelievable.”

“Hmm, what’s unbelievable?”

“Everything beautiful happening right now is so romantic, it feels like an unreal dream.”

His arms wrapping tightly around my waist tightened even more. That action carried the extreme joy mixed with the emotion of losing a precious gem and luckily finding it again, mingled with the nervous unease fearing that this was just a hallucinatory dream.

Looking up at his sensitive profile, my mind somehow automatically recalled his haggard, sleepless appearance, standing dazedly opening the door waiting last night. When I just popped my head out of the room, he was startled and immediately interrogated where I was going.

And connecting it back to the night he took me back to the hotel after eating escargot, when I had the stomachache incident in the middle of the night, he was also the first person to appear as if falling from the sky. Perhaps he hadn’t gone home that whole night, always standing guard outside the hallway door.

That action was exactly like the day at the private hospital; he coldly announced he wanted to leave, but in reality, he secretly stood waiting in the hallway smoking like a bodyguard.

Recalling his heartbroken expression at that time, he looked so lonely and pitifully insecure…

I wrapped my arms around his firm waist: “Sebastian Silva.”

“I’m listening.”

“Sebastian Silva.”

“You keep calling, what is it, dear?”

I looked up, smiling radiantly: “Nothing really, I just suddenly wanted to call your name.”

This magical name made me, even when my brain had forgotten everything and lost my memory, immediately feel an incredibly special flutter when I accidentally saw the print on the magazine. I deduced that in the past, I must have loved this man named Sebastian very much, sacrificed a lot.

Without that foundation, there wouldn’t be this absurd situation where after meeting again in real life for just a few short days, I fell head over heels, madly in love with him again like a moth to a flame.

“…”

During the lunch break, Sebastian received an urgent business phone call saying he had to drive out to meet a partner.

But just as the sound of his car engine faded away, the guest doorbell rang piercingly.

I didn’t think much or stay vigilant, assuming he had forgotten some documents and rushed back to get them.

Unexpectedly, as soon as I unlocked and opened the door, my eyes were met with the madman Luke, his face bruised and miserable from the aftermath of my brother’s beating.

“You bastard, what are you doing here?” I frowned in disgust, stepping back. “Didn’t I make it clear at the hospital that we’re finished? There is no more relationship or entanglement between you and me from now on.”

Luke roughly pushed the door hard and barged in, looking at me with malicious, ferocious eyes: “What a despicable slut. You’ve only reunited with that old flame for a few short days and you couldn’t even maintain your modesty, couldn’t wait to pack your bags straight to his house to sleep with him.”

I always knew for a long time that Luke was an educated but uncultured person who cursed very viciously and harshly, but this was the first time I was cursed at so profusely to my face. I truly felt nauseated and disgusted by this person.

“A clinging toad like you dares to open your mouth to judge someone’s character? Does your moral standing deserve it?”

His bloodshot eyes darkened and twisted. He suddenly lunged forward, violently shoving me backward onto the sofa cushions: “Serving you for seven years, playing hard to get, not even letting me touch you. I hallucinated that you preserved your purity and high value, turns out your nature is just an easy, promiscuous girl. Since that’s the case, I’ll do you a favor today and satisfy you by fucking you right here. Having sex rolling around in Sebastian’s house must be really stimulating and thrilling, right?”

“You pervert, get away! If you dare to act recklessly and touch me, I’ll call the cops to lock you up!”

“If you’re so tough, pick up the phone and call. In name, you’re still my legal fiancée. Which law forbids me from claiming my rights to do this? I also really want to see the look on that coward Sebastian’s face if he finds out you and I are making love in his bed here… I wonder if he’ll have a heart attack and die of anger when he comes back to see that scene? Hahahahaha… Ugh!”

Before he could even finish tilting his head back in a smug laugh, he was struck by a dark figure—Sebastian—who suddenly appeared like the grim reaper from behind, delivering a thunderous punch that sent him rolling onto the floor.

“I thought your luxurious outward appearance meant you were at least human on the inside. Turns out your behavior is worse than an animal.”

Sebastian looked at him with cold eyes like looking at trash, then hurriedly ran over to support my shoulders: “Baby, are you hurt, are you okay?”

I was truly scared to death by Luke’s animalistic behavior. After a long while of sheer terror, I tremblingly shook my head and said I was fine.

Sebastian hugged me and comforted me, looking guilty and self-blaming: “I’m so incredibly sorry, it’s my fault I shouldn’t have been careless and left you alone in the house. If my intuition on the road hadn’t realized that the call to meet the partner was suspicious and I hadn’t turned the car around in time…”

Thinking of something terrible, he let go of me, looking with a cold, murderous gaze at the bastard Luke who was scrambling, trying to crawl away. The next second, without hesitation, he lunged forward, swinging his fists, beating him half to death.

If it weren’t for me, at the last minute, fearing a murder case, screaming, crying, and hugging his back to pull him away, I have a feeling the scumbag Luke might have been beaten until his face was deformed and killed right on the spot.

“Calm down, spare him, it’s better to hand him over to the police to handle.”

I fumbled for my phone, trembling as I dialed the French police.

“…”

Luke, with a bloodied face, was finally escorted away in handcuffs by the police.

Rumor had it that the Shaw family intended to use their power and money to bribe and secure their precious son’s smooth release on bail, but Sebastian secretly used some political maneuvers to intervene.

He had to taste the experience of sharing a jail cell and endure all sorts of mental torture in a notorious prison. It’s said that by the time he appeared in court, he was a wreck, visibly emaciated.

From then on, I didn’t see him again for a long time. It wasn’t until much later, coincidentally during a gathering when I heard my brother William tell me the news: bitter about losing the lawsuit, he provoked a death-defying car race challenge with Sebastian on a cliffside road. Before entering the race, he even signed a life-and-death agreement waiving all legal liabilities, with the malicious intention of using the accident to drive Sebastian to his death. But man proposes, God disposes; unexpectedly, it backfired. He lost control, suffered a tragic traffic accident, fell off the cliff, and the consequence was becoming a disabled vegetative person.

“This racing accident, did you not have a hand in arranging to harm him?”

When I read the news, I suspiciously looked up and asked Sebastian.

The handsome, profound man maintained a calm expression without a ripple, sipping his wine and pulling me into his arms: “I am a law-abiding citizen, what shady things could I do? It was his own arrogance wanting to sign the paper to court death with me.”

“Karma, he deserved it.”

“Yes, he reaped what he sowed, he deserved it. So to celebrate, from now on we absolutely won’t mention his unlucky name anymore, okay?”

“Are you jealous?”

“If it were you, my seven years of living lonely and pining away, callously and selfishly traded by someone for days of fake sweetness with another.”

A resentful tone reeking of fermented vinegar.

I held my stomach to hold back a laugh. Outwardly, my sweet-talking mouth said I didn’t want to know about the minor details of those seven years, but it seemed deep down he still cared and held a deep grudge.

“If I swear a solemn oath now that the truth is during those seven years of living together, because of my disgust I never let him hug me even once, would you feel better and more relieved hearing that?”

“That sounds decent. But empty words aren’t enough compensation.”

“Hmm, then what should I do?”

His masculine breath suddenly became heavy and hurried. A passionate, craving kiss fell without warning. At first, it was just a gentle caress like a dragonfly skimming the surface of a lake. Who knows how long passed before someone’s moans and gasps of arousal rang out; he immediately lost control like a wild beast and pinned me down on the bed…