Chapter 93 Not Here

After explaining the whole photo mess, Anna headed to the kitchen to whip up some pasta for Charles.

While she was busy cooking, Charles went upstairs to grab a shower.

By the time she set the pasta on the dining table, Charles still hadn't come down.

Thinking about that picture from earlier, Anna grabbed her phone and called Michael.

He picked up quickly. "Anna, you finally changed your mind?"

But Anna cut him off coldly. "Michael, do you think it's funny to pull such dirty tricks?"

Michael's words came to a screeching halt.

After a brief pause, he spoke again, but his voice had lost its warmth. "Anna, I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Don't know?" Anna scoffed. "You dare to say you didn't send that photo?"

Meanwhile, in the president's office of the Tudor Group, Michael sat in his swivel chair, looking icy. As he listened to Anna's accusations, his grip on the pen tightened.

Thalia stood in front of him, biting her lip in jealousy as she listened to his gentle tone with Anna.

Michael said, "Anna, you know I only have that one photo of you sleeping. I wouldn't even give it to you if you asked, let alone send it to someone else."

Anna didn't buy a word of it.

Standing by the floor-to-ceiling window on the first floor, Anna held her phone and stared out into the thick night.

She mocked, "Michael, you said it yourself. That photo was taken by you and stored on your phone. Without your consent, who could've sent that photo to Charles?"

There was a brief silence on the other end.

After a while, Michael spoke again, "Anna, are you mad because the photo got leaked or because it was sent to Charles, messing with your relationship?"

Anna coldly replied, "What's the difference?"

Hearing this, Michael gritted his teeth. 'Anna, don't you get it? The difference is that you’ve started to care about Charles. If the photo had been sent to a stranger with no impact, would you still be this mad?'

Michael didn't voice these thoughts because he already knew the answer.

It took him eight years to make her fall for him.

And Charles? Just a month.

Why was she so special to Charles?

"Anna," Michael's voice was tense. "I didn't send the photo. I only have that one photo of you sleeping, and I wouldn't send it to anyone."

With that, he hung up.

Listening to the busy tone, Anna's frown deepened.

At the corner of the stairs, Charles stood silently, his eyes dark as he watched Anna by the window.

A minute later, the emotion in his eyes vanished.

He walked down as usual and approached Anna. "Anya, is the pasta ready?"

Anna turned off her phone and walked over. "Yeah, it's on the dining table."

Charles took her hand and led her to the dining room. "Anya, have you eaten yet?"

"Yeah," she replied.

"What did you have?" Charles asked.

"Pasta," she said.

They exchanged questions and answers, and everything felt just like usual.

Michael hadn't changed a thing.

Charles held onto Anna's hand, not letting her leave, so she sat beside him while he ate.

While the atmosphere at Regal Retreat was cozy and affectionate, the tension in the president's office of the Tudor Group was suffocating.

Thalia stood in front of the desk, clutching her dress tightly, biting her lip without saying a word.

Michael lit a cigarette, the swirling smoke hiding his cold, frosty eyes.

Through the haze, he looked at Thalia.

His voice was sharp, like a knife. "You sent the photo, didn't you?"

Thalia denied it, looking pitifully at Michael. "Michael, what photo are you talking about? I don't understand."

"Thalia, you were the only one in the office all day. At noon, you spilled coffee on me on purpose, waiting for me to go to the lounge to change clothes so you could copy the photo from my computer, right?" Michael said.

Since Michael'd come to this point, even if Thalia didn't admit it, it was useless.

She bit her lip, hesitated for a moment, and then directly asked Michael, not feeling she had done anything wrong. "Michael, why do you still keep her photo?"

Michael didn't respond, so Thalia pressed on with jealousy. "Michael, have you forgotten? We're engaged. For the rest of your life, it should be me by your side, not Anna! But your phone and computer are full of photos of her from the past eight years, nearly a thousand of them! Does Anna know you took so many photos of her?"

Thalia had accidentally discovered a large number of Anna's photos in Michael's phone album a while ago.

At that moment, her jealousy and hatred had almost reached their peak.

She was supposed to be his fiancée.

Why did he have so many photos of Anna?

Wasn't Anna his enemy?

Wasn't he supposed to be taking revenge on her?

Why was he so secretly attentive to her?

There were nearly a thousand photos, and Thalia had scrolled for a long time to reach the end.

At that moment, she had wanted to delete all the photos impulsively.

But she didn't dare.

She couldn't afford the consequences of Michael's anger.

Many of the photos in Michael's album seemed to have been taken when Anna wasn't paying attention.

There were photos of her studying, cooking in the kitchen, smiling brightly on a tree-lined path, blowing out candles, and making wishes on her birthday.

There were so many that almost all their memories from the past eight years could be found in those thousand photos.

Michael always claimed he didn't love Anna, but if he didn't, why did he keep so many photos of her?

Why was he so attentive to her?

Why, even after she married Charles, was he still so obsessed and unwilling to let go?