Matthew must have found out what Avery did, hence her dismissal.
As for how he got to know of it, Clarissa reckoned that Mandy was probably behind it.
Although Clarissa felt helpless, she nevertheless felt thankful toward Mandy for being indignant on her behalf.
Matthew reacted lightheartedly to Clarissa’s answer, merely smiling placidly with his arms folded on the table.
“Clare, what do you mean that you guess? Are you unsure of how much I love you?”
Clarissa giggled. She walked across that wide expanse of a table. Bending over, she planted a passionate kiss on Matthew’s lips.
“All right, you’ve proved your point,” Matthew said with a laugh.
“I saw Avery when I was coming upstairs. She looked as if she got fired.”
“Who’s that?” Matthew asked curiously.
The moment the words left his mouth, however, it quickly dawned on him that the woman in question, Avery, was the employee who he had intended to fire that morning.
Even up to that point, he could not remember the name of the person he had fired.
Of course, Matthew was too clever to be forgetful with names. It was simply because Clarissa had shown signs of jealousy that he had pretended to have forgotten Avery’s name in order to appease Clarissa.
He had selectively chosen not to retain Avery’s name in his memory, to the delight of Clarissa.
“You know, the woman under your employ,” Clarissa reminded him with a smile. “Anyway, that doesn’t matter now. You don’t need to know her name.”
With that, she turned away and called Catherine to inform her about Mimi.
When the call got through, Clarissa heard Gloria’s voice on the other end and wondered if she was constantly by Catherine’s side.
She knew her Aunt Gloria well enough to know that she wouldn’t give up so easily.
Getting straight to the point, Clarissa said, “Mimi isn’t exactly innocent. She has taken her fair share of drugs, amongst other things. It is unreasonable for me to intervene to save someone who is guilty. Besides, I obviously do not have the authority to do so. It’d be for the best if you could stop pestering Grandma about this. If you keep bothering her, I’m afraid that even if I don’t have the power to save Mimi, I would do something to actually extend her stay in prison. And don’t try to guilt-trip me by saying that we’re family either. We are not related.”
Gloria was sobbing on the other end. However, Clarissa was firm in her belief that her warning would be heeded for a long time.
After the phone call, Clarissa lounged back against the couch, feeling rather tired.
“Bad news seems to come knocking one after another recently,” Clarissa complained to Matthew. “I have never been as busy as I am now dealing with nonsense like these.”
It was true. Clarissa had faced all sorts of unfortunate incidents upon her return to D City, especially as the festive season was fast approaching. All she had wanted to do was to have a good rest. Instead, she was plagued by an incessant torrent of problems.
Matthew sat next to Clarissa, pulling her close to him.
“Perhaps this isn’t all bad,” Matthew mused.
“What’s not all bad?” Clarissa glared at him fiercely.
“The fact that you are dealing with all of this before the festive season. After that, there would be nothing left to spoil your mood.”
“Good point,” Clarissa concurred. “It’s a good thing that these fiascos are happening before the festive season. I would strangle the troublemakers if anything else happens after that.”
With her head snuggled against Matthew’s chest as she ranted, Clarissa felt much better.
“During the festive season, besides going to Grandma’s place, all of our remaining time will be devoted to taking Damian out. I’m shutting off my phone as I’m sick of these people interrupting our vacation,” Clarissa said gloomily.
“You do that.” Matthew smiled warmly down at her.
Clarissa had received many invitations from various companies and media that she was affiliated with when the festive season was approaching.
Seated on the carpet with Damian who was quietly occupied with completing a jigsaw puzzle, Clarissa browsed through her stack of invitations.
She was unable to decide which event to attend. Finally, she resorted to asking for Yael’s advice.
Yael had picked out several which were compulsory for Clarissa to attend. As for the rest, her presence was not mandatory.
“I don’t want to attend even one. Is that possible?” Clarissa asked in despair.
Yael grinned, looking somewhat like a shark baring its teeth. “You could try if you’d like your new show to go up in flames. Of course, you could get your husband’s investment which will grant you the freedom of not having to attend anything or to curry the favor of any investors.”
Yael knew that that was something Clarissa wouldn’t be able to do. Hence, she couldn’t resist teasing the latter.
If Clarissa had to pick, she would rather attend the literary festival or the television drama award show. It would be easier for her to find an investor interested in her project as there would likely be more people she knew in those events.
But what would Matthew say if I attended?
Clarissa was trying on clothes while Matthew, who was sitting aside, kept finding faults with her dresses, using excuses ranging from them being too revealing to not being warm enough.
“Matthew, there would be air conditioning there, all right? It wouldn’t be cold.”
He did not respond. Rather, his eyes showed signs of displeasure at the long dress which exposed her shoulders suggestively.
He walked over to Clarissa and stroked her collarbone with a slender finger. “Clarissa, my darling. You were very fond of dresses like this, weren’t you?” he asked quietly.
Matthew recalled the period he was courting Clarissa. She frequently wore dresses that displayed her shoulders.
At that time, he was deeply enamored by how attractive she looked in them. However, he was reluctant to allow her to wear such a dress out in public because he did not want others to ogle at her bare shoulders.
Clarissa giggled. “You still remember? You used to criticize my taste in dresses.”
Matthew chuckled. “Dresses? It’s hardly considered a dress if I could get it off of you with one tug.”
As he said that, he grabbed Clarissa by the waist. With just a tiny yank, the dress would come off easily as it did not even have a strap around her neck.
He tugged at her dress threateningly to Clarissa’s alarm.
What a childish man! Clarissa thought to herself as she met Matthew’s eyes. Neither was willing to give in to the other.
Just as the dress was about to slip off Clarissa’s smooth shoulders, she caved and hastily tugged on her dress to prevent it from falling off of her.
“Could you not be so childish? Besides, only my neck is exposed in this dress! Other women would flaunt their thighs or breasts or back. Do you think their husbands or boyfriends would ban them from wearing dresses like that? If you insist upon this, I might as well wrap myself up and stay home.”
Men are such dense creatures! Clarissa thought angrily, though she did not dare voice it out.
Matthew’s cold smile remained unchanged in the face of her indignation. “I don’t care what anyone else thinks. You are my wife. I care.”
“It doesn’t matter that you care. I’m wearing this dress as I like the way it looks.”
“Then, I’m afraid you’re not going anywhere.”
“Matthew!” Clarissa lost her temper.
Matthew stood firm on his decision. With the tense atmosphere between the couple, the retail assistant did not dare approach them.
They had more conservative designs at the store, though they were few in number. After all, it was a fashion trend to expose some areas as dresses that fully covered a woman was deemed old-fashioned.
From Clarissa’s point of view, her dressing was already very conservative since nothing below her neck was exposed.
It seemed that Matthew was as controlling as the rumors on the Internet claimed. Clarissa wondered if having a passionate and domineering CEO as a husband was really as poetically romantic as they claimed.
Nonetheless, she had enough.
Ordinarily, she would have accommodated Matthew. But for some reason, she decided to be firm with her decision this time. As long as she had set her sights on an outfit of her choosing, nothing he said could dissuade her.
Turning around in a huff to face away from Matthew, Clarissa returned to the changing room to change back into the clothes she came in.
“I’m taking this dress,” she said tartly without even hesitating over the price tag, doing so to prove a point to her husband.
The storekeeper glanced timidly at Matthew’s thunderous face. However, her intuition led her to side with Clarissa. “Yes, Mrs. Tyson,” she said with a smile that betrayed the slightest hint of a tremor.
Aside from the dress, Clarissa had picked out matching heels and accessories for her hair.
After arranging for all of her shopping to be delivered to Zen Highlands, Clarissa exited the store with Matthew following closely behind. He remained doggedly behind her the entire time she wandered about in a temper, refusing to return home.
Clarissa ignored him, even going as far as to enter a lingerie store with the hopes of shaking him off. To her dismay and his complete lack of shame, Matthew strolled in calmly behind her, looking haughty and cold.
He was not about to be scared off that easily. However, the retail assistant was quite ready to stay as far away as she could from his disagreeable scowl.
Thus, the striking couple walked around the mall in a single file. Their presence must have exuded a commanding aura as they attracted curious looks from the other shoppers.
Many of them knew Matthew personally. As such, it did not take much effort to deduce the identity of the woman with him. At the strange sight of Matthew walking behind his wife, it seemed to the bystanders that the couple was more akin to a princess and her servant rather than wife and husband.
Some of them were amused by the obvious fact that there had been a spat between the couple and Clarissa was obviously not happy about something.
The tales on the Internet about Matthew being a passionate and domineering CEO seemed to contrast greatly with the fact that he was having a fight with his wife, which the bystanders thought was rare and amusing. Soon, by the power of word of mouth, the entire mall was aware of the couple’s fight.
By some miracle, they had even managed to deduce the reason for their disagreement.
Soon, almost everybody knew that Matthew was not happy with his wife’s choice of dressing. It was obvious that Matthew loved his wife, or else he would not be this upset over something as arbitrary as that. He even walked sulkily behind his wife without attempting to coax her into reconciliation. His predicament would have evoked a sense of pity if it were not for the scowl on his face.
