Melody Summers and Winnie Summers had stayed out late at the party last night. By the time they got home, the rest of the family was already fast asleep, and the entire house was steeped in tranquility.

They tiptoed into the bathroom, quickly washed up, and climbed into bed, drifting off to sleep soon after.

The chance encounter with Elaine Hughes didn’t affect Melody Summers’s mood. She slept soundly and peacefully.

For the first time in a long while, she dreamed she was back on Mount Anworth. 𝗳𝗿𝐞𝕖𝘄𝗲𝕓𝗻𝚘𝚟𝕖𝐥.𝚌𝕠𝕞

Heavy snow had fallen on Mount Anworth in the winter. She and Ian Summers, bundled in padded jackets, were rolling in the snow, having snowball fights, and building snowmen...

When she woke up, it was already light outside.

Melody Summers shook off the dream, rubbed her eyes, stretched, and climbed out of bed.

She walked to the window and pulled open the curtains, a gust of bone-chilling wind hitting her face. Melody Summers took a deep breath. The frigid air stung her lungs, a refreshing sensation she hadn’t felt in a long time.

The snow had started late last night, and by this morning, a layer had already accumulated outside, blanketing the entire world in white.

Flakes drifted down one after another. Unlike the black snow from before, these snowflakes were pure white, like swarms of white butterflies dancing in the air.

Melody Summers saw people on the floors of the opposite building placing bowls and basins on their balconies to catch the snow, likely to use as drinking water.

It was still early, and property management hadn’t started clearing the snow yet. Many residents were standing in the plaza with basins and buckets, collecting the snow from the ground.

After such a long drought, any source of water was incredibly precious.

During breakfast, Melody Summers took out her phone and saw that Lucy White had sent her a lot of messages.

She hurriedly opened the messages to read them. From what Lucy White wrote, she pieced together everything that had happened last night.

After she left yesterday, Zane Simmons had quickly investigated the whole affair based on the information on Joanne White’s phone and her "confession."

It was The Lancasters who had contacted Joanne White, asking her to help them connect with Bernard Simmons.

The rest was just as Melody Summers had guessed. Robert Lancaster and Bernard Simmons hit it off immediately. Robert made his wife, Elaine Hughes, sell her body in exchange for shelter and supplies from Bernard.

To ensure Elaine Hughes’s cooperation, Robert Lancaster and Bernard Simmons drugged her food. Once the drug took effect, Robert made an excuse about having something to do and left, leaving his own wife to another man.

Bernard Simmons took Elaine Hughes to the room and was just about to get down to business when Paige Walsh, who had rushed over, caught him in the act.

Paige Walsh was furious. She had someone take Elaine Hughes out and send her directly back to the Lancaster Family.

And that led to the scene Melody Summers had witnessed in front of the elevator.

Everything up to that point was within Melody Summers’s expectations, but what happened next was a complete surprise.

When the whole affair came to light, Joanne White was terrified. On top of that, this pregnancy came very soon after her last delivery, and her body hadn’t fully recovered yet.

Joanne White had a frail constitution to begin with, and her pregnancy had been unstable. Due to the combination of all these factors, she had an unexpected miscarriage last night.

Fortunately, The Nimbus Hotel had plenty of doctors and was well-stocked with medical supplies. Thanks to the doctors’ best efforts, although the baby was lost, Joanne White’s life was not in danger. She would recover after a period of rest.

Unfortunately, Joanne White’s miscarriage didn’t earn her any pity from Zane Simmons. He had investigated and found out that it was Joanne who had secretly added food that Paige Walsh was allergic to into her meals.

Furious, Zane Simmons had people send the bedridden Joanne White back to the White Family that very night.

He gave her no severance payment, cut off the monthly supply deliveries to the White Family, and recalled the bodyguards he had sent to protect Mr. and Mrs. White.

Lucy White said that Joanne White was completely unable to accept this outcome.

Joanne White had originally thought that Zane Simmons’s defense of her in front of Zara Walsh, and the fact that he brought her to The Nimbus Hotel for shelter, meant that he genuinely liked her. She believed she was different from the other women he kept on the side.

Joanne White had always felt she was just one step away from securing her position. She was about to go from being the Canary to the real Mrs. Simmons, marrying Zane Simmons.

But she never expected Zane Simmons to abandon her so decisively, leaving no room for recourse.

And then there was Bernard Simmons.

Bernard Simmons had always praised Joanne White for being a gentle and considerate girl. He had even told her that he, as a father, felt at ease knowing a girl like her was by Zane Simmons’s side.

Joanne White had once believed this meant she had earned Bernard Simmons’s admiration and approval, that she could rest easy and become the Simmons family’s daughter-in-law. But unexpectedly, after the incident came to light, Bernard shifted all the blame onto her.

He flatly denied that he was the one who told Joanne White to add the allergenic food to Paige Walsh’s meals, claiming Joanne had done it all behind his back and that he knew nothing about it.

He even said that a malicious woman like Joanne White was unworthy of remaining in the Simmons Family and told Zane Simmons to "deal with" her as soon as possible.

And so, Joanne White became the scapegoat for the entire incident. Silenced and sent away from The Nimbus Hotel in the middle of the night, she vanished completely from the world of the elite.

It was as if she had never existed.

Fortunately, although Zane Simmons had driven Joanne White away, he let Lucy White stay.

Zane Simmons told Lucy White she could stay at The Nimbus Hotel without worry, and that he would help her find a new place after the blizzard ended.

Seeing that Lucy White was safe, Melody Summers could finally relax.

Melody Summers thought for a moment and sent a message back to Lucy, asking if she could try to find out who it was that had contacted Joanne White, claiming to have dirt on her.

Melody Summers just couldn’t figure out which of The Lancasters would have had any dealings with Joanne White.

’Was it Robert Lancaster?’

’Or Simon Lancaster?’

The Lancasters shouldn’t have had any connection to Joanne White. Melody Summers couldn’t wrap her head around how they had contacted each other.

...

After breakfast, Melody Summers logged into The Arcadia Store again. She had sent Paige Walsh a message earlier and wanted to see if she had replied.

She hadn’t been worried, but one look gave her a shock.

Paige Walsh had sent her over sixty messages yesterday!

Seeing the red dot indicating a double-digit number of messages, Melody Summers quickly tapped it to see what was going on.

Frowning, Melody Summers scanned through all the messages and realized that Paige Walsh seemed to be using her as a sounding board...

First, Paige Walsh replied to Melody Summers’s message, telling her not to worry. She said that if Zara Walsh had really done such a thing, neither she nor the Simmons Family would cover for her, and they would definitely make her pay for her actions.

Reading this message, Melody Summers felt a little relieved.

However, Paige Walsh’s subsequent messages were rather bizarre.

Paige Walsh said that she had been resting in the medical room at The Nimbus Hotel last night due to her allergic reaction, but she had suddenly received the message from Melody Summers.

Her allergic reaction had made her feel very unwell, so she had silenced all her work-related notifications, but she had made a special exception for Melody Summers, setting up a unique alert for her messages.

So, when Melody Summers’s message came through, it startled Paige Walsh from her sleep.

After waking up, she casually replied to Melody Summers. She had planned to go back to sleep right after, but for some reason she couldn’t explain, she had a subconscious urge to go back to her room and check on things.

Perhaps it was a twist of fate. Paige Walsh left the hotel’s medical room and went back to the presidential suite.

And that’s when she walked in on the scene of her own husband having an affair with The Lover, in her own room...