Chapter 2 A Shadow Of A Dead Woman

Before Madison could say anything, one of the men asked, "Lorenzo, I didn't expect your secretary to be this pretty. She's gorgeous. Doesn't your wife get jealous knowing that you have such a hot secretary at your beck and call?"

Lorenzo looked at Madison with a faint smile and said, word by word, "I don't have a wife."

Madison's heart sank to the pit of her stomach.

She had been Lorenzo's secretary for three years, but in those three years, she had also been his wife.

On paper, she was Mrs. Edwards, but in reality, she was just his secretary who followed his every order. She wasn't even qualified to question him why another woman was sitting on his lap.

After all, she and Lorenzo didn't get married out of love.

They got married because the woman he loved was dead, and she happened to look like that woman.

Lorenzo hired her to be his secretary at first, but because his grandfather kept urging him to get married, he decided to marry her.

Why did he choose her?

First of all, she always obeyed him and was good at her job. But the most important reason was because of her looks.

After marrying him, she had been determined to be a good wife. She had tried her best to cooperate with him at work, help him with every decision he made, and meet each and every one of his strict requests, including one in particular—that no matter the time or place, as long as he needed her, she must appear in front of him in thirty minutes.

Throughout their three years of marriage, she had never complained about it—not once.

But in those three years, she didn't live like herself at all. It was like she was but a shadow of that dead woman.

And now, Lorenzo found someone who looked even more like the girl he loved; the woman who was in his arms right now.

"Wait. You're not married? Your grandpa mentioned something about your wife the other day..."

Lorenzo's expression darkened and his eyes turned ice-cold. "I said, I don't have a wife."

The two men sitting opposite him sensed that he didn't want to talk about this, so they immediately changed the subject.

"Since he says he doesn't have a wife, then he doesn't. This secretary is really hot. If I had a secretary like her, I wouldn't even want to leave work!"

"You wouldn't want to leave work? You don't even go to work!"

"If I had such a beautiful secretary, I'd go to work every day!"

"Are you even competent enough to do it every day?"

"What do you mean? I am a perfectly healthy man!"

Listening to the two men's brazen words and seeing them look at her up and down, Madison felt disgusted.

Lorenzo didn't move. Holding the wine glass in his hand, he looked both noble and nonchalant, with a mocking smile on his face. He didn't say a word even as the two men insulted his wife.

Madison could only clench her fists and take two steps back to hide herself in the dimness of the bar, separating herself from the two annoying idiots.

Lorenzo frowned and looked back at her. "Anything else?"

She shook her head. "No."

"Then why are you still standing here?"

"Then... I'll leave now."

Lorenzo grunted indifferently.

He didn't even glance at her since he asked her to leave; he just proceeded to swirl the red wine in his glass.

With a heavy sigh, Madison turned around and left.

Just as she had for the past three years, Madison listened to his orders. At times, she even wondered if she was a robot.

Behind her, she could still hear their obscene conversation. "Zoe, Lorenzo always surrounds himself with pretty women, but he has never taken any of them to meet his friends. You're the first. Don't forget about us when you marry him, okay?"

Blushing, Zoe suddenly sat up straight and said shyly, "I'm not married to Lorenzo just yet."

The two men laughed and one even said, "He isn't saying anything, which means he has acquiesced in it. You'll be his wife sooner or later."

The other man chimed in, "You're so considerate. How are you able to accept that there's such a beautiful woman who sees Lorenzo every day? Why don't you have her fired so that she could work for me?"

"Come on, you don't even work. Why do you need a secretary?"

"Well... We're all men here. You know why." The man whispered a few words, then burst into laughter.

"It all depends on whether Lorenzo is willing to dismiss her or not."

When Madison heard this, she suddenly stopped in her tracks.

The world seemed to stop moving, and everything around her turned into a blur. She could only hear Lorenzo's magnetic voice saying, "If you like her, take her. I don't mind."