Chapter 372 We’ll Bring This to Court, Then
After what seemed like forever, Courtney finally calmed down and slowly raised her head to meet Alexander’s intense gaze.
“Yes.” She clenched her fist and frowned. “Since you know it all now, then I don’t see the need to hide it from you any more.”
She was honest.
She knew very well that what happened 6 years ago was not her fault but Alexander’s. And now, they had fallen in love, so she chose to forgive and see it as a surprise—it wasn’t the case in the start, but it was now.
Seeing her calm appearance, Alexander grew even angrier, and the flames in his cold eyes gradually burned even more vigorously as he continued to ask, “You found out about this soon after you returned?”
“Yes.”
When she saw his angered face, Courtney frowned and explained, “If you want to blame me for not telling you. I’ll have you know that I was just worried that you’d try to take custody over Tina. I mean, we weren’t getting married at the time, after all. Maybe it was because I didn’t trust you enough then, but I was also worried—I had to look out for myself too…”
“Oh, really?” Alexander raised the corners of his lips mockingly. “Well, if that’s the case, since we have already set a date to get married, why did you still go to see a lawyer?”
When Courtney heard that, her expression froze immediately. “H-How did you know?”
“If I hadn’t found out, when were you planning to tell me all these?”
Alexander looked at her with extremely cold eyes.
“On one hand, you want to marry me so that you can be Jordan’s mother and at the same time not lose your daughter, while on the other hand, you left a way out for yourself. If things go south, what reason are you going to use to fabricate evidence of my abuse of Jordan and to compete with me for his custody?”
Courtney’s face gradually turned pale. “I didn’t plan on doing that.”
“Do you dare to swear on your children’s wellbeing?” Alexander’s eyes were full of contempt. He grabbed Courtney’s arm and forced her to look into his eyes. “Swear that you have never thought of this—that you have never thought about snatching Jordan away from me.”
“Alexander Duncan!” Courtney was in pain, and her facial features were almost twisted together from the pain on her wrist. “Let me go!”
“Let you go?”
Alexander’s eyes were full of contempt and disappointment, and he roared, “Courtney Hunter, you approached me from the very beginning all for the child’s custody. You were meticulously planning it every step of the way, from the beginning to the end. You’ve obviously never had me in your heart—not even for a moment!”
It was only now that he figured out why she would always be submissive every time Jordan was mentioned in a quarrel, but she would always only treat him coldly. It was because she had never put him in her heart from the beginning.
As for their marriage, she only chose the next best option. To her, it was just a price she had to pay temporarily for the custody of her children!
Such a woman was sleeping in the same bed beside him everyday, yet he couldn’t see it clearly until today.
“You really think I’m such a person?” Courtney looked at him in disbelief. “Someone who planned things out from the start—from approaching you to even marrying you—just for custody over my children?”
“Are you not?” Alexander asked with a frown. “If you didn’t have these two children in the first place, would you have still married me?”
The air became stagnant and heavy. Courtney looked at him blankly with a deep self-deprecating look in her eyes. “Assumptions about the past are pointless—you’re just being unreasonable right now.”
The assumption of what ifs was meaningless. Life was a straight path, and no one could turn back, so Courtney would never make such assumptions.
However, Alexander misinterpreted the meaning of her words. He then pushed her to the sink and continued interrogating her. “Fine. That question was meaningless, so what about this: If from today onward, you would never see Jordan again, would you still marry me?”
His aggressiveness was full of icy thorns in Courtney’s eyes. One by one, they were stabbing into her heart, rebutting all the stories of the past that she wanted to tell him.
The man who had said that he would always trust and understand her still chose to stand on the opposite side when push came to shove.
After a long time, she felt disheartened and spit out a sentence with determination. “I wouldn’t.”
Surprised, Alexander never thought that she would be so decisive. The fire in his eyes faded a little, and he was filled with shock. Looking at her in a daze, he actually felt a little flustered and anxious.
Courtney broke free from his hand and said coldly, “Since you don’t want to get married, then don’t. That’s fine. According to my original idea, we’ll take this to court and compete fairly for Jordan’s custodian rights. No matter what the court decides, after everything ends, I will take my child back to America and never come back.”
After saying this, she tried to walk toward the door.
“Over my dead body.” The moment these words rang out, Courtney was pulled back by a strong force.
Alexander clasped her two wrists and nailed them to the door with monstrous anger in his eyes. “After you get custody, you will take your two children to America to continue your life with Elijah, right? Courtney Hunter, let me make it clear to you: Don’t even think about it!”
Her back slammed against the door panel, and there was a sharp pain spreading from her back. Seeing him being unreasonable, she also roared in anger, “That’s my business, and it has nothing to do with you!”
This sentence ignited all the anger in Alexander’s heart. He really thought that Courtney’s plans all these while were all for the children. As soon as she got custody, she would take the children back to America to be with Elijah.
Elijah had always been a thorn in his heart, but this thorn had finally pierced his last line of defense, and his anger flooded out like a broken dam, destroying everything in his path.
He looked down at Courtney condescendingly. With a cold tone that she had never heard before, he said, “Are children what you want? I’ll give them to you, and I’ll give you however many you want! But Jordan? Don’t even think about it.”
Before Courtney could react, his large hand reached under her skirt, and he violently tore off the stockings and panties inside. In the next second, Courtney felt a cool breeze on her lower body.
Courtney’s pupils shrank while her whole body trembled. Her eyes were instantly filled with horror, and she screamed, “What are you doing?!”
Alexander was already consumed by anger and had completely lost his mind. Even in Courtney’s struggle and screaming, his mind was flooded with images of her going away to live happily with her children and Elijah.
He pushed Courtney down onto the sink and lifted the hem of her black dress. The crisp sound of his belt buckle being unfastened rang in Courtney’s ears and left a buzzing sound in her ears.
“Alexander, no, don’t! Let me go! Let me go!” Courtney screamed. Her voice was hoarse, and there was only a broken cry for mercy. She was afraid of Alexander’s impulse—afraid of what he would do next that would push their relationship past the point of no return.
“I will hate you!” Her shrill voice echoed in the bathroom. She was shouting over and over again, “Alexander Duncan! I will hate you!”
“Then hate me. Hate me fiercely for the rest of your life.”
Alexander’s red eyes were like stares from the abyss; he lifted her waist with his big hand and penetrated her fiercely.
The screams converged into one syllable at this moment, which echoed for a long time.
At that point, Courtney had only one thought left in her mind—that she and Alexander were really over.
