After Roland publicly shut down the tabloid rumor, the knot in Ethan’s chest didn’t loosen one bit.
If anything, it got worse, piling up heavier and heavier.
That blurry photo of Nina standing beside a foreign man had been deliberately shoved to the very bottom of the documents on his desk.
And yet, like he was punishing himself on purpose, he still couldn’t stop pulling it back out for another look every now and then.
Over and over, Ethan picked up his phone, opened Nina’s number in his contacts, and let his fingertip hover above the call button.
Then, every single time, he put it back down.
He was scared of hearing her cold voice, but at the same time, he couldn’t kill the urge to hear her at all.
Cabinet affairs were piled sky-high, every side was locked in constant pushing and pulling, and on top of that there was the mess in his heart, this impossible, tangled attachment to Nina that he just couldn’t cut off.
All of it pressed down together until his temples throbbed in sharp waves.
At last, his restraint snapped.
He dialed the number he knew by heart.
The phone rang for a long time, so long that Ethan started to think no one would answer.
Just when he was about to hang up and call again, the line connected.
“Hello?” It was a man’s voice.
Low, rough with the hoarseness of just waking up, and carrying a clear foreign accent.
Ethan’s heart dropped hard, like someone had smashed it with a hammer.
His grip on the phone tightened, and his voice turned ice-cold.
“Who are you?
Where’s Nina?
Put her on the phone.”
There was a brief silence on the other end.
Then came a mocking snort.
“Are you freaking kidding me?” the man snapped, suddenly cursing, his voice shooting up.
“Who the hell are you?
Do you even know what time it is?
Ruining people’s sleep at this hour is seriously messed up!”
The vein at Ethan’s temple bulged.
“I’m Ethan Blackwell.
Put Nina on the phone.
Now.”
“Ethan Blackwell?” The man sounded theatrically enlightened for half a second, then his tone turned dripping with sarcasm.
“Ohhh, so you’re that president who had my sister working herself to the bone for three years and now wants to cast her aside for another woman?”
The words “my sister” hit Ethan harder than they should have.
His pupils shrank sharply, and the knuckles around his phone went deathly white.
“What did you call her?” Ethan’s voice came out squeezed through clenched teeth, trembling on the edge of losing control.
“What is Nina to you?”
“What is she to me?” Jordan sounded like he’d just heard the funniest joke in the world.
He burst out laughing, and every bit of it was pure provocation.
“She’s my little sister—the most precious person in my family.
Ethan Blackwell, what the hell do you think you are?
You think you get to bark orders at her?”
“Who exactly are you?” Ethan forced down the pounding ache in his head and pressed again in a low voice, “What exactly is your relationship with Nina?”
“Ethan, I’ve put up with you for way too long!
My sister only went to work at your presidential residence; she didn’t sell herself to your family!
Where do you get off taking over her private time too?
Calling this late at night—do you even know she just fell asleep?
She hasn’t been eating right, hasn’t been sleeping right these past few days, she’s lost a ton of weight, and you’ve still got the nerve to harass her?”
“You—”
“What ‘you’?” Jordan didn’t give him even half a second to speak.
He snapped.
“Let me make this crystal clear.
That crap job of yours?
My sister doesn’t care about it one bit.
And that busted Platinum Palace of yours?
From now on, don’t you dare bother her again, or else—”
Jordan paused.
When he spoke again, his voice turned dark and vicious, every word sounding like it had been ground out between clenched teeth.
“Don’t blame me if I blow your Platinum Palace flat.
I mean every damn word.”
“How dare you!” Ethan exploded.
He shot to his feet so violently that the chair behind him crashed onto the floor with a bang.
“I’m the President!
You think you can threaten the head of a nation?”
“So what if you’re President?” Jordan let out a cold laugh, his tone dripping with contempt.
“Being President means you get to bully people however you want?
Ethan, maybe in Uppergate you’re the President, but in my eyes, you’re just a heartless piece of trash who forgot loyalty and abandoned his woman.
I’m warning you—if you dare set your sights on my sister again, I don’t care who you are.
I will make you pay.”
“Put Nina on the phone!” Ethan practically roared it, his voice so hoarse it barely sounded human.
“I want to hear her say it herself!
Let her answer the phone!”
“In your dreams!”
After throwing out that last curse, Jordan hung up clean and fast.
Ethan called again, but all that came from the receiver was the cold, mechanical message: “Sorry, the number you have dialed is temporarily unavailable…”
He’d been blocked.
Ethan stood in the wrecked study, phone clenched tight in his hand, his chest rising and falling hard.
That one phrase—”my sister”—kept looping in his head like a curse, blasting apart what little reason he had left.
In front of his eyes were image after image of Nina smiling at another man, living under another man’s roof.
She didn’t want him anymore.
She really, truly didn’t want him anymore.
That realization was the final straw.
It crushed every last bit of calm and self-control he had always been so proud of.