Learning Love From Goodbye

The next morning, Aster and Carina still went to the office at different times as usual.

Carina caught sight of Aster helping Stella down from the same car just as she arrived at the office.

He was the kind who would over-explain his actions with Carina at the office, reiterating that they were nothing more than colleagues. However, he never refrained from acting intimately with Stella.

In his words, he and Stella had nothing to hide because they had absolutely nothing to do with each other. With Carina, however, their relationship was kept under wraps because it was like a dirty little secret.

When Stella caught sight of Carina, she jogged over and handed her a breakfast burrito, neatly wrapped up in a paper bag.

"What a coincidence, Carina! This breakfast burrito is for you. Think of it as a form of gratitude for liking my story yesterday."

Aster had been right behind Stella when he heard her say that. He was curious. "Liking what story?"

Stella took out her phone and showed him last night's post.

Aster's pupils narrowed at once. He seemingly recalled the lie he'd told Carina last night and anxiously turned to look at her.

However, he sighed in relief when he saw Carina taking the burrito from Stella with a calm look on her face. He told himself that Carina probably never put two and two together after all.

Carina took the breakfast burrito from Stella and thanked her with a smile. Then, she turned and went into the elevator with the other employees.

Aster frowned slightly as he watched Carina leave. He thought that something was amiss about her, but he just couldn't put his finger on it.

When he got into his office, he summoned people from the finance department to ask about Carina's situation at work.

"I saw Ms. Sherwood going to Chastain Solicitors last night. Maybe something happened in her family, and that's why she needed some legal advice."

That was enough to send Aster's heart to his throat. He was Carina's family, so he knew that there was nothing going on at home that would require her seeking legal advice.

He started getting suspicious.

He recalled the address Carina gave her last night. It happened to be close to the lawyer's office.

Just as he was about to summon Carina to ask her about it, Carina knocked on his office door and said, "Mr. Ducant, here's the documentation for last month's payday. I need you to sign some papers."

She then took out a black file folder from her bag and handed it to Aster. She had put a mark on every signature line.

"The pages that you need to sign are right here…"

"I know. Let me go through them first."

Carina didn't know what went wrong. Aster rarely ever paid much attention to the documents he was signing, but he was carefully scrutinizing every line this time.

"I heard that you went to the lawyer's office last night," he suddenly said, catching Carina off guard. She panicked internally.

Would Aster still sign the documents if he knew that it was a divorce agreement?

Carina didn't dare to risk it. She wanted to leave him as quickly as possible.

"You know that we're preparing for a massive upcoming project. I just went there to have the lawyers go through the contract and make sure there weren't any loopholes."

Carina's calm attitude quickly got rid of Aster's suspicion. He flipped to the end of the documents and suddenly frowned again.

"What contract is this? Why is there only the final page included?"

There wasn't much information on the sheet of paper, just a whole bunch of disclaimers in legal jargon. However, Carina was prepared.

She remained calm even though she sounded like she was in a hurry. "I just realized that there was a mistake in the contract this morning, so I took it back to have it changed. But you need to sign it first because it's rather urgent."

Aster looked up at Carina. He believed that Carina wouldn't lie to him. However, he still thought that something didn't add up.

Carina felt herself panicking again when she realized that Aster was hesitating. There wasn't much on the paper, but if he looked a little more closely, he would notice the tiny words that said "Divorce Agreement" in the top left corner.

"Aster, I think Stella tripped and fell outside," Carina suddenly said, using Stella to divert Aster's attention.

True enough, there was a muffled thud outside his door, and Aster suddenly got anxious and flustered. He didn't scrutinize the final page before signing his name on the signature line in a hurry.

Finally, Carina sighed in relief and left the office feeling victorious. Just before she left, however, she saw Aster carefully checking Stella's body to see if she was hurt anywhere.

Stella had actually only dropped her mug, but he looked at her like she'd gotten hurt as well.

This time, Carina was utterly calm as she watched them.

She'd already gotten over Aster the moment she decided to divorce him.