Divorce Him, Then Dazzle novel Chapter 229

The city at night was always exceptionally vibrant and loud.

Camilla sat numbly by the window, staring out as the neon lights below bled into a chaotic smear of color.

The artificial glare was so blinding it completely drowned out the stars.

She remembered being a little girl, standing in the quiet alleyway near Susan's atelier, where the night sky used to be crystal clear.

As the city expanded into a sprawling metropolis, the stars had seemingly retreated, hiding themselves away.

The day her college admissions exams results came out, she had initially been overjoyed. But a vicious argument with Lean Green and Adah Henley over her choice of major had shattered everything.

With her eyes puffy from crying and nowhere else to go, she had wandered blindly into the dark alleyway.

The city's infrastructure hadn't been modernized back then, and the streetlights in the alley were dim and flickering.

It had just poured rain. Sobbing and completely unobservant, she slipped on the wet pavement and landed hard in a muddy puddle.

Her emotional state was already in tatters, and that ridiculous fall flipped the switch on a total breakdown.

She sat in the mud and burst into ugly, racking tears.

Those were the years when Barbara's manipulation was at its absolute peak.

Barbara had systematically stolen every friend Camilla made and poisoned her relatives against her.

Camilla's daily life was a tightrope walk of anxiety and quiet depression.

If she couldn't even study the major she desperately wanted, she felt all the hope drain out of her future.

She had scored flawlessly. She could have easily funded her own education with scholarships.

But she couldn't fathom why the people she treated as family entirely disregarded her feelings.

She was naive back then, her only focus being her studies, completely oblivious to the toxic psychological warfare happening in her own home.

All she felt was an agonizing sense of betrayal and a terrifying panic about her future.

It was that very night an older boy had passed by, crouched down, helped her up, and offered a few comforting words.

That tiny shred of kindness had pulled her back from the absolute edge of despair.

That boy had a build remarkably similar to Daniel's, but he had been wearing a mask, and under the dismal lighting, Camilla never saw his face.

Whenever she tried to convince herself she loved Daniel, her mind would actually flash back to the lean silhouette of the boy in the alleyway.

And the warm, steady hands that had reached out to pull her from the mud.

Daniel had felt so similar to that boy in her memory.

Now, five years had slipped by.

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