Betrayed by My Trash Husband, Surrender Myself to the Devil-Chapter 43: Wedding Rings (III)

Claudia POV

Miles let himself go after we got married, mostly eating junk food and drinking beer, so he lost all of his muscles and had a beer belly akin to a pregnant woman.

He was once such a hunk. While Ray had lean muscles and was taller than Miles, the latter went to the gym often and was quite muscular.

He was never bright academically, because he got admitted to the university through an athlete program. But that was what I liked about him.

Unlike Ray, who was meticulous, mysterious, and difficult to warm up to, Miles was simple, honest, and somewhat of a dork.

At first, I thought a handsome man like Ray would’ve melted me and made me want to marry him. Instead, the dorkiness of Miles in the past was the one that opened my heart.

He wasn’t conventionally handsome, but Miles surely knew how to make me smile.

So where did that Miles—my Miles—go?

Could someone truly change and become a bad guy after having some money in his pocket? Or had he always been that bad, and finally shed his mask once we got married?

If that was the case, then who should I trust if I couldn’t even trust my own judgment?

Now I was convinced that I must be terrible at judging someone’s personality. Because I actually married and gave birth to a daughter with a man who cheated and built a second family with my abusive stepsister, then planned to ruin my life with the same stepsister by almost killing two innocent girls.

Ray suddenly glanced back at me, and our eyes met for the second time this evening. He swallowed the food in his mouth before asking, "You can tell me if you have any trouble. As per our agreement, I can help with whatever you need as long as you’re staying in this penthouse."

"Oh, it’s nothing. I was just thinking about..." I lowered my gaze slightly, wondering if it was right to tell Ray about my true thoughts.

But it was him who completed my sentence.

"...Miles?"

"...." I nodded weakly. "I’m just wondering if there is a speck of regret in his heart for what he had done to Aurora and me."

"No, he doesn’t," Ray replied curtly, and I lifted my head to stare back at him.

I knew that Ray wasn’t the kindest person on earth, but was it necessary to rub salt into the wound?

However, true to his character, he scoffed back at me. "Stop thinking about that useless bastard. He doesn’t love you. He just loves how convenient you are, since you were such a martyr, sacrificing all of your money and time to support his business back then."

His words were like a knife stabbing me right in the chest. My breath hitched as my chest became heavy.

Deep down, I knew that he was right.

Miles always treated me lovingly, with kindness and respect as his wife, when we were still broke and I had to work in a few clinics at the same time just to make ends meet for us and support his stagnant business.

However, once he suddenly got a rich investor and his business shot up overnight, he gradually became colder and colder.

He forgot my birthday, our anniversary, and even missed Aurora’s birthday a few times.

He wasn’t the same daddy for our little girl anymore. He’d tell me to take care of Aurora full-time and refused to engage with her when he was home, all because he was "tired."

And when I told him that he should make time to spend with our daughter, he’d snap at me, telling me that I was ungrateful after everything he worked hard for.

In the end, he barely came home, to the point that I barely got his texts. His secretary always said that Miles was busy in the office, so I tried to suppress my suspicion.

But in the end, a woman’s instinct always came out true.

Because my instinct told me that he cheated on me, and he proved it by making it ten times worse than my imagination when I found out that he was dating my half-sister and had a daughter who was around Aurora’s age.

"You should forget about him," Ray said. "He doesn’t think about you anymore once you left the house. For him, you and your daughter are nothing but property that came with the new house he bought back then."

Now his words really stung, to the point that I couldn’t ignore him anymore. Even if he was correct, he had no business calling me property!

"And what do you know about him, Ray? I married him for ten years and know his bad and his... good," I forcefully swallowed my saliva when I said "good," because I wasn’t even sure if he was good in the first place.

"And you should know in ten years that he’s a piece of shit," Ray rebuked me. "Face it, Claudia. You’re just upset at me because I point out the obvious. Your husband is a piece of shit, has always been, and will always be."

"And what makes you think that you’re any better, Ray? You’re imprisoning me and treating me like a pet! You’re a monster!"

"What makes me any better? HAH!" Ray suddenly raised his voice. His eyes finally showed a hint of emotion, and it was none other than anger.

"I am much better than that asshole because I would never do this!" Ray fished something out of his pocket and slammed it onto the table. "You called me a monster, but even a monster would never throw this away!"

My heart stopped for a second when Ray lifted his hand, and my eyes caught a silver ring with a small engraving of "CLAUDIA" inside, showing that whoever owned it once had a Claudia in his heart. 𝐟𝕣𝕖𝐞𝐰𝕖𝚋𝐧𝗼𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝗰𝐨𝐦

It was none other than Miles’s wedding ring—the same ring that we exchanged when we said our vows, and the same ring that we paid for by saving our salaries together just to buy a pair.