Since young, everyone had treated him like a royalty. He was always well-protected and taken care of. No one had dared to comment on his behavior until then. He could hardly believe that such an eligible bachelor like him would be rejected! Besides, the other party was even willing to suffer a loss in reputation as well as huge financial losses just to escape from the marriage, causing Jory to feel utterly humiliated.
Even though everyone had accepted the fact that the marriage proposal failed, Jory refused to go along with it. In his opinion, it was impossible for any woman to refuse him. Very quickly, he guessed that there was probably someone else that the lady was interested in, otherwise, it didn’t make sense for her to reject him so resolutely.
Just like what he thought, after Jory insisted that he wouldn’t take no for an answer, the other party had no choice but to tell him that the lady had already fallen for another man.
After his suspicions were confirmed, Jory felt victorious and behaved smugly in front of his dad. Even though he felt appeased after knowing the real reason, his dad was obviously unhappy. Jabbing a finger at Jory’s face, his dad scolded, “Are you feeling very proud of yourself now? If you continue being a good-for-nothing who bums around, even if she didn’t have someone else in mind, there was still no way she would settle for you!”
Jory was rendered speechless and could not find any words to defend himself. However, his dad was unstoppable as fury overcame him. “You’re nothing without me! All you know is how to fool around. I just don’t understand how you can even be so full of yourself!”
Back then when he was eighteen, Jory never took responsibility for any of his poor behavior. After much thought, he still attributed the failure of his marriage proposal entirely to the lady.
Whenever Jory recalled how his dad reprimanded him, his hatred towards that lady would deepen even further. As such, for a few days after he was rejected, he took no action. However, the lady was unable to wait any further as she needed Jory’s cooperation in order to get together with her lover officially.
Being an intelligent woman, she sent Jory an anonymous email, which managed to pique Jory’s interest. He had interacted with all sorts of women but had yet come across such a petty one who even refused to reveal her identity to him.
She continued writing him numerous emails, all to which he replied. Even though it wasn’t a lot, but Jory felt that he had gained some valuable information through their brief interactions.
His most important takeaway was learning that he was actually just a joke to many. If he were not born into a rich family, he would literally be a nobody.
However, it was difficult for him to understand what she meant by reciprocal true love because he had never experienced it before. Even though he had been in many relationships, he had not truly loved any of those women. However, he accepted the fact that the woman would not be able to see any value in him in his current state. He was aware that perhaps, the reason that she rejected his marriage proposal wasn’t because of another man, but rather, it was because she saw nothing in him that was worthy of her affections.
In the end, Jory still conceded to her wishes and accepted the situation. At the same time, he started working on himself and had a complete change in attitude. He had changed a lot since then, but one thing remained unchanged and that was his hatred towards that woman.
He wanted her to know that rejecting him would be the worst decision as well as the greatest regret in her life. Apart from helping Dustin, he had another objective, which was to destroy the Barrymore Group.
Although he was focused on dealing with Larry at the moment, he was fully confident that he would be able to take down the Barrymores as well. Even though Nancy had remained anonymous and did not divulge any of her personal information to him at that time, Jory had still managed to find out her identity.
“Nancy Barrymore… Just wait and see. I’ll make you regret your decision,” Jory muttered as he leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes while tapping his fingers on the armrest rhythmically.
“Mr. Norton, another one of our branches got acquired by the Alpire Group this morning,” a male employee reported as he entered Larry’s office in a fluster.
