The Tattoo That Started the End

Gareth's POV

The latest messages in the second group chat stopped last night.

[Seriously, Silas, you show up and don’t even warn us? Don’t you know Gareth was there?]

[Exactly. Don’t let him find out you and Marjorie are getting close again!]

[I don’t get it. What does their feud have to do with some outsider?]

Silas replied to the last message, [Some men are petty. Maybe he thinks if Marjorie and I make up, he has no place anymore.]

Through all of it, Marjorie never defended me. She didn’t say a single word to explain that I hated Silas because the guy had picked on me for three years.

On impulse, I scrolled further back and found that the group chat had been created on our wedding day.

That night, Marjorie told me she couldn’t be touched as she had a difficult client to handle. But instead of working, she’d been chatting all night in that group.

I wiped the tears from my face and called Derek. “I feel like going to the amusement park today. Are you free?”

After the call, I wrapped myself up tight and went.

As soon as we met at the park, he handed me the divorce agreement.

Knowing me well, he bluntly asked, “Are those two inside?”

I nodded.

He ground his teeth with anger. “That idiot Marjorie. She didn’t even care that her father was killed by that bastard. She also knew how badly Silas picked on you just because of her.”

He was right. It all started when I saved her and made our relationship public. After that, I was mysteriously locked in a bathroom and forced to drink disinfectant. If someone hadn’t found me in time, I wouldn’t be here.

Because of me, their feud only got worse.

Despite the size of the park, I found the two of them fast. Silas had his arm around her and was feeding her a double-scoop ice cream.

They were talking softly, but I could hear everything.

“We shouldn’t go out alone anymore,” Silas was saying. “Even if I don’t do anything, your husband will always be hostile. I’m a guy, too. I’ll feel slighted.”

He wiped his eyes and added, “That night three years ago, I was drunk. Let’s just act like nothing happened, and keep pretending to be enemies.”

So that was why, before our wedding night, she was unreachable. It turned out she was busy with him. No wonder she had time to get a beauty mark tattooed on her private part.

Even though I’d braced myself, his words hit me like a bucket of cold water.

But Derek's temper flared. He rolled up his sleeves and lunged forward.

I quickly grabbed him, but a kid holding an ice cream cone bumped into us, and the sticky mess splattered across my shirt.

When I looked up, Marjorie was using her finger to wipe the ice cream from Silas’s lip.

I felt ridiculous, covered in melted ice cream, fumbling to clean my chest but only making it worse.

Her voice then cut through as she said, “I stopped blaming you a long time ago. My dad used to yell at you. So, him getting hit by you was only his karma.” She shrugged. “As for Gareth, without him, maybe you and I could have been together already. I always thought that sometimes hate at its extreme is just another kind of love.”

Silas’s eyes lit up. “Then will you accept if I offer you a wedding?” he asked.

At that moment, my vision blurred, so I couldn’t tell if she nodded or not.

Shortly, Derek quickly covered my eyes, cursing under his breath. “That ungrateful bitch! If you hadn’t dragged her out of that car back then, grass would be six feet high on her grave by now! You helped her unconditionally, and now we'd learn she's been stabbing you in the back for years! Divorce isn’t enough! I’ll make sure she walks away with nothing!”