The Abandoned Wife Dumped Him First (Victoria and Elias) novel Chapter 183

Suddenly, Cerys’s eyes lit up.

“I know! I’ll stay up for a few days, pull up a chair, and stake out the door. I’ll see what this neighbor looks like once and for all. I don’t have much going on right now anyway, so I’ve got all the time in the world.”

Victoria rubbed her temples. The fact that Cerys came up with this idea didn’t surprise her in the slightest.

“Well, Victoria? Isn’t my idea brilliant?” Cerys asked eagerly when she didn’t get a response.

“It’s not,” Victoria said flatly. She gathered the medicine boxes and walked into the kitchen.

Cerys followed close behind, not ready to give up. “But it’s the most direct method. Victoria—Wow, that smells amazing. What are you making?”

The rich aroma hit Cerys the moment she entered the kitchen, making her mouth water. Her eyes followed the scent to Victoria, who was taking a tray of steaming hot cookies out of the oven.

She immediately reached for one.

Smack.

Victoria lightly slapped the back of her hand. “Careful, it’s hot!”

Cerys sheepishly withdrew her hand. “Victoria, how long has it been since you’ve baked? I thought you’d given it up for good. What made you suddenly decide to bake now?”

Victoria took some packaging bags she’d bought on her way home from a drawer and carefully placed the cookies inside.

At Cerys’s words, Victoria’s hand paused. For a moment, her mind was pulled back two years, back to the memory of excitedly bringing freshly baked cookies to Elias Shawn’s company, only to have her hopes crushed under his heel once again.

Looking back, she had been relentlessly persistent then.

No matter how many times Elias humiliated her, she never seemed to back down. Like a moth to a flame, she just kept going until she was burned to ashes.

“They’re for our neighbor,” Victoria said, finishing the packaging. She placed a still-warm cookie in Cerys’s palm and explained gently, “Weren’t you just saying how you never see them, and not knowing if they’re a person or a ghost is unsettling? I figured if we can’t meet face-to-face, I could leave some food as a thank you for all the cold medicine.”

“Once there’s some communication, you’ll feel more at ease.”

Cerys blinked. “That’s actually a good idea!”

Victoria nodded. She wrote a thank-you note on a sticky tab, attached it to the bag of cookies, and then, with Cerys in tow, went out and hung it on the doorknob of the apartment across the hall.

***

The next morning, as Victoria left her apartment, she instinctively glanced at the door across the hall.

The bag of cookies was gone.

A small smile touched her lips. Just as she was about to close her door, her phone rang. It was Saul Flint.

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