At the same time, in the study, Cole wasn’t in any meeting like he’d said. Instead, he quietly forwarded Adah’s photo into a private group chat.

That group had only four members—himself, Allan, Merlin, and Manley.

The second the image landed in the chat, everything went quiet. Neither Allan nor Merlin responded.

After a beat of silence, Manley finally typed. “Cole, is now really the time to be sending memes? You should be resting.”

Cole lifted a brow, his face showing a trace of resignation. Adah’s selfie was so unconventional that his friends had mistaken it for a humorous meme.

Cole tagged Allan. “This might feel like a nightmare, but it’s real. And you’ve got to face it.”

Allan replied immediately, “What are you even talking about?”

Manley sent a laughing emoji. “Cole, are you running a fever or just losing it?”

Merlin chimed in with nothing more than a line of ellipses.

Cole ignored Manley and tagged Allan once more. “Her name is Adah.”

Those four words dropped like a thunderclap. No one could tell what Allan was thinking, but Manley completely lost it, flooding the chat.

“Cole, you can’t be serious, right?”

“You mean this… This farm girl who looks like a piglet standing in a flower shop… That’s Adah?”

“Are we really talking about the Adah Allan’s supposed to marry?”

Cole typed just one word. “Yes.”

Then, he followed up. “This Adah has been best friends with my wife since they were kids. The photo was taken just now—straight from Apricot Blossom Village. No filters. No edits.”

: g?ν?

Because Cole carried himself with steady control and a solemn demeanor, the kind of man who barely slipped up and rarely joked around, nobody thought to doubt what he said.

The photo and the details that came with it were accepted without hesitation, treated as fact simply because they appeared to come straight from Cole. It never crossed anyone’s mind that even a man like him could have fallen under his wife’s spell, misled by the gentle allure of her lies.

Manley’s reaction was immediate. He sent a vomiting blood emoji without hesitation. Then, he tagged Allan and wrote teasingly, “Allan, you lucky bastard!”

A second message from Manley came right after, saying, “Go marry her now! Start a family! Have a dozen kids while you’re at it!”

Merlin answered with nothing more than a dry, “Cut it out!”

And then, a system notification popped up, showing Allan had left the group chat.

Despite Allan’s dramatic exit, Manley wasn’t finished. He kept going like a runaway train.

“This is pure cruelty! Did we all commit some great sin in a past life? Is this karma coming back to bite us?” First it’s genius Cole marrying someone ugly, now Allan’s headed down the same path?”

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