My Son Called Her Mom So I Named My Price Chapter 02

My Son Called Her Mom So I Named My Price Chapter 02

The moment Adrian caught sight of me standing in the doorway, the smile on his face froze.

He quickly walked over and reached out as if he wanted to put his arm around me.

“Clara, here’s the thing…”

“Vanessa’s mother doesn’t have much time left. Her biggest wish before she goes is to see Vanessa get married.”

“Vanessa still doesn’t have a boyfriend, so I was planning to stage a wedding with her first. The wedding I owe you will have to be pushed back a little.”

I stared steadily at Vanessa.

The wedding dress had originally been custom-made to my measurements, yet somehow, it fit Vanessa perfectly even though she was a full head shorter than me.

Vanessa spoke in a deliberately fragile voice.

“Adrian, maybe we should forget it. Clara has been waiting for this for five years. I don’t feel right about it.”

She made a show of trying to take off the dress, but Ryan stopped her.

He slammed into me like a little cannonball.

“Bad woman! You’re just jealous because Aunt Vanessa looks like a princess in a wedding dress!”

“Your belly is all wrinkly like old tree bark. Nothing would look good on you.”

He slammed me hard to the floor, and for a long moment, I was in too much pain to catch my breath.

Seeing the pain on my face, Ryan looked a little guilty.

Even so, he still stood there with his neck stiff and his chin raised.

Adrian hurried over to pull me up.

“Ryan! Why would you shove your mother?”

His gaze fell on my lower abdomen, and a trace of pity crossed his face.

“Clara, if it bothers you that much, I can ask someone else to play the groom with Vanessa.”

I shook off his hand and stood up on my own.

“I don’t mind.”

I opened the calculator app on my phone.

“Besides the wedding and the dress, we’ll also need to add the cost of you spending your wedding night with her.”

Before I could finish calculating, Adrian slapped my phone out of my hand.

“Clara, are you insane? Ryan is right here!”

“Nothing has ever happened between Vanessa and me. I honestly don’t understand how you became like this.”

I looked up at him.

“She wants to take everything I have. I can’t win against her, so is it wrong for me to ask for money as compensation?”

Adrian choked on his words.

His chest rose and fell violently, as if I had enraged him beyond measure.

“I’m not wasting my breath arguing with you.”

He took out his phone and jabbed at the screen as if he were taking his anger out on it.

The next second, a deposit alert popped up on my phone.

“I must have been blind when I chose you.”

Adrian dragged the two of them out with him and slammed the door so hard the whole house seemed to shake.

I looked at the long string of zeros on the screen and forced back the tears gathering in my eyes.

When Adrian and I first got together, he had nothing.

We split five-dollar takeout meals and lived in a dark, damp basement apartment.

Back then, he often felt guilty about what I had to endure with him. After getting off work, he would go drive for DoorDash just to earn a little extra money and buy me the cupcakes and lattes other girls loved.

Once, I casually mentioned that our clothes never dried properly, and he spent half a month’s pay on a compact dryer for me.

When I found him drinking cold water in the middle of the night to quiet his hunger, I cried from how much it hurt to see him like that.

He only held me tighter, choking up as he said I had suffered by staying with him. He swore that once he had money, he would make it all up to me.

But after he rebuilt his fortune, every single thing he used to compensate me was taken by Vanessa.

Now, all I had done was fight for some financial compensation for myself, yet in the end, all I got from him was, “I must have been blind when I chose you.”

I took several deep breaths and tried to distract myself by scrolling through my phone.

But my Instagram feed was full of Vanessa’s posts.

Adrian had taken her to discuss the wedding plans.

The venue rendering she posted was the exact version I had once refined little by little according to my own preferences.

I never imagined that the wedding I had waited so long for would end up becoming a celebration for my husband and another woman.

I tightened my grip on my phone and was just about to mute her.

Then my eyes accidentally landed on her wrist.

The moment I saw what she was wearing, I could not hold myself back anymore. I followed the location she had tagged and stormed straight over.