Chapter 2 BROKEN

I watched in disbelief as they dressed up lazily as if they were giving me enough time to process everything. But how could I? How was I supposed to believe that I had walked in on my boyfriend knacking my best and only friend?

"Care to explain what you are doing here? And why didn't you knock before coming in?" Vincent asked when he was done, leaking something from his finger.

I stared at the man in confusion. Was he seriously addressing me? With such a raw tone, as if I were nothing?

A pang of rage coursed through me. "Seriously, Vincent?" I flared up, anger and pain taking my tone of voice to a higher notch than I had intended. "I just walked in on you the night before our residency fucking my best friend, and this is all you can say? How could you two do this to me?"

Marylyn snickered in mockery behind Vincent, while Vincent shook his head, a dark smirk tugging at the corner of his lips. "You and I know that you won't make it past day one, Leylla."

My face dropped, and a sharp dagger pierced through my heart once again.

"You can never be a surgeon, Leylla. This is not a call for nobodies and weaklings like you," Vincent continued, disdain written all over his face. "Take the advice that I have always given you while there is time-quit!"

Tears welled up in my eyes, blurring my vision. I wept bitterly, and for a long moment, I just let him see how much he had hurt me. How much he was breaking me.

If there was one thing Vincent was so good at during our three years of relationship, it was downgrading me, putting a question mark on everything I believed in, and demeaning me. He never believed in my dreams and capabilities. Never saw my efforts. Never supported me in anything. He always made me feel so small, weak, and not fit for any task.

"You never saw me any better... never believed in me... never even tried sharing my dreams or supporting me even a little." I sobbed bitterly, his words and the silence that followed cutting deeper into my shuttered heart.

I took a long blink, cutting the streams of tears that ran down my chubby cheeks as I swallowed the bitter pill.

I then opened my eyes, full of pain and wrath. "Even if that is how you think of me, Vincent," I neared with a clear vision of him as I continued, "was all this necessary, really? Did you have to stoop as low as fucking this cheap thing just to make me realize that I was not deserving of you?"

"You are not good enough for me," he scoffed, flaring his hands in the air. "You never were."

Wow! "When were you going to tell me, huh? After you have wasted all my time here on earth?"

He smirked, shaking his head, his expression as cold as ice. "At least you found out. I no longer have to worry about telling you."

Again, he didn't seem apologetic. He didn't look like he felt the need to explain himself. It was like I didn't deserve any explanations at all.

I stepped back. The pain was sucking all the energy out of me, but I pretended to be strong. "Why?" I asked.

"What did you expect?" His eyes were filled with disgust and hate as he looked at me up and down. "You won't make it to that dream of yours, and I needed someone who can match my class. Someone who does not only share my dreams but who is able to achieve her dreams alongside me."

Really now? Then why the fuck did you have to lead me on for three fucking years?

"Unfortunately," he continued, his tone devoid of any warmth. "You are not that person. Your dream is so invalid, and you have decided to make a mockery of yourself by turning a blind eye and a deaf ear to the reality."

The reality was that I would become a surgeon. I had gone too far to drop that dream and passion.

He then leaned in, just when tears started streaming down my cheeks again. "You are chasing something you can never reach, Leylla. But I commend your guts to have dared to dream and to come this far! Go become a veterinarian if you must be in this field."

That cut me so deep that it tore my heart into pieces.

"And what right do you have to dream for me?" I sobbed, my pain making my voice almost inaudible.

I dried my tears and pushed the bitter chunk down my throat. "Who the fuck do you think you are, Doctor Vincent De'Lucca, to tell me what I should dream of and what I shouldn't? What gives you that fucking right?" My voice had turned so cold that it made Vincent step back.

"Someone who knows you well, Leylla. I know you can't do this." He sounded so certain.

That is how he always saw me-so incapable of nothing but loving him with his flaws and strengths.

Another silence rang in the room. Vincent averted his gaze to the side, avoiding my eyes for a moment. Marylyn, on the other side, still hid behind Vincent, her eyes rolling childishly from time to time.

I turned my eyes to Vincent again, and I smiled faintly, bitterly. "I never paid any lecturer for any grades in my exams, unlike someone I know. Is that what disqualifies me?" Leylla shot back, and Vincent bowed low with shame.

"That is how the rich roll," he snapped. "I can afford to pay even the senior surgeon to make me pass a surgery. But poor and naive people like you have to work your brains and asses off just to prove yourselves. Unfortunately, there is no guarantee to your success even after all that."

So confident, huh!

"Well, I would rather do something else rather than be decorated with big titles and suits and still have zero knowledge of what the titles stand for. That is how true we poor and naive people are. We don't cheat our way up, but rather, we work it up!"

His eyes then softened as he stared back at me sympathetically. "Listen, Leylla..."

"Enough!" I hissed, raising my hand to stop Vincent, who fell silent under my cold command.

Sympathy? That was not what I needed.

I took a step closer, my gaze cold against his. "My dreams are solely mine, and I know my capabilities. I pity people like you who think that just because you have had it all handed to you on a silver platter, you have better chances than us who strive through the ladder. You and I know that I am more qualified than both of you combined together."

I let that bittersweet truth sink into them before I continued, "I will be a surgeon, not to prove anybody wrong, but because I believe in myself and nobody is worthy to tell me otherwise. Not even you, Doctor Vincent De'Luka, because you don't matter to me at all from this moment on. I wish you had opened my eyes earlier. Adios!!!"

Vincent was about to say something, his hand reaching out to me, but I stormed out, slamming the door shut behind me. I didn't want them to see more of how they had wrecked me.

But the truth is, he had broken me into pieces.

My heart was shattered to a point that I doubted it could ever be mended.