213 Cassandra 2

After delivering the sentence, Will filled up his glass and took another sip. To Liz, he almost looked like some victim of love failure that still wasn't over his sweetheart.

Of course, she knew that wasn't true. Sometimes, painful memories could also be reflected in this way, so she just waited for him to gather his bearings before speaking again.

"We practically grew up together. We weren't always living on that island, you know. A lot of times, our parents used to get both me and Keren to the mainland where we would be lodged in penthouses of various hotels. Of course, we were pretty excited, as this always meant that we would be able to interact with more people rather than the same ones whom we had gotten used to long ago.

"I think I must have been… Eight years old. We were right here, in New York, and we had moved into the penthouse of the Plaza for a two-month stay. I think that was when Happle had been established by dad, and he was busy setting up its foundations and making sure that it would be on the right track.

"I remember it clearly even now. The first time I saw her was when she knocked on our door holding a little pink shoe in her hands. She had apparently lost the other one, so she was searching for it throughout the hotel.

"During that time, and even now, Mama Dorota was a major influence on me. She always used to say that a lady in need was one that had to be helped no matter what, so I dropped everything I was doing and went with her on a hunt throughout the hotel."

By now, Will was completely lost in the story, gazing out at the night sky while his eyes reflected the stars. Liz could almost imagine it. A small, gallant kid and a pretty girl on a quest to find a precious shoe.

It was almost like a fairytale.

"We only became closer and closer after that, and I was pretty delighted when I found that she was part of our family circle. Whenever I got a chance, we would meet and spend time, and those were some of the happiest memories I had.

Eventually, our relationship…progressed to the next stage. We wanted to spend our entire life together. We made plans. So many plans. We were going to get married, have kids, grow old…"

As Liz heard up until here, her heart suddenly lurched.

There had been…this much?

She had been thinking that it might be just some relationship that went sour for some reason.

However, clearly, she was very wrong.

She couldn't even figure out what she was feeling right now. Was it…fear?

No, it couldn't be, right?

Unaware of the turmoil inside Liz's mind, Will continued.

But now, his tone took on an additional aspect of loss.

"Dreaming…is a dangerous thing. I never wanted to take this post up, Liz. I never wanted to be William Bradshaw-poster child of the Bradshaw family who is running the company my dad built. I wanted to make something of my own. Even if it was small, I wanted it to exist out of my own effort, unlike everything else in my life until that point."

This definitely came as a shock to Liz. Will had never wanted this job?

However, when she thought about it in her head, she felt that it was right.

Will had always struck her as the kind of individual person who was capable of creating things on his own. Yet, right now, he was shackled to his family name and company.

Now that she thought about it, she realized that she had seen that in many magazines, too. Whenever a magazine or newspaper wrote about him, there would always be a mention of his family, as if everything he had done couldn't have been possible if he wasn't from his background.

Wanting to make a name for oneself was a pretty common wish in the world, but everything was different when one wanted to leave billions of dollars of wealth to do that.

If those on the outside heard about it, they would call him foolish. Only he could ever fully know how it felt to be suffocated every day.

Liz got all these thoughts, and she understood that she was empathizing with him. She could tell exactly how he must have felt. But…how? How had she connected with him so much?

She didn't know, so she just waited for the tale to go on.

After taking another long swig, Will got to the last part of the short version of his story. She could tell that he was omitting many details, but she just wanted to know what happened.

"I told my parents I wanted to do that, and I was told to leave everything. The family name, the wealth, all of it. I was already prepared for that, but my father gave me an option so that I could do my own thing, but not be disowned. He gave me a goal to reach with my own company in a set amount of time. But…everything somehow went wrong, and I failed. Still, I was ready to leave, because I had Cass. That…was when she chose to leave. She said that I'm nothing without my family. She said that I can't give her the life she wanted. So…she just left like that, and left me as a broken, shattered shell of myself. To this day, I remember her expression, and that moment when she said she had to go. She…had just been with me for the money. And that's why I screamed at you and left when we first went to dinner. I thought you were going to do the same. Cass broke me so much that it took years for me to heal, but even after that, I am not the one I was. I…will definitely not be able to bear it again, Liz. Definitely."