Gloria, on the other hand, was sitting quietly in the car, and in a daze as the car continued to move on the road.
She only knew the city where she was going, but where exactly, she knew nothing. She was going to be alone without anyone familiar with her there.
She didn't know how they were going to welcome her or treat her.
Considering how they were so daring to request another clan's matriarch to come and tend flowers, he had a bad feeling that it wouldn't be going well when she got there.
As a result, to calm her nerves and prepare herself for the worst, she began to think about what led her to this point.
Talking about her familiarity and affinity with flowers could be traced back to when she was young.
She was always an ordinary child, and when at school, her grades were ordinary. Thankfully, Simon, Sia and her parents had never looked down on her despite all that. Everyone treated her well and with respect. She had never felt out of place in the years that she had lived in the clan or when she was the Willow clan's matriarch.
However, there was a secret that everyone didn't know about her. Honestly, she was always afraid of being caught and treated as a monster. So, she never told anyone, including her parents and friends. That secret had been buried. However, some things were hard to always hide. Thankfully, it didn't get exposed in the way she thought.
Gloria looked at the butterfly birthmark on her left forefinger and had mixed emotions looking at it.
It was because of this thing that she was at this stage and moving away from her family without any knowledge of what might happen in the future.
She was just eight years old when she felt the birthmark itchy. She simply scratched it and drew blood. It was just a normal act and yet that's when her childhood trauma, which later turned into her deepest secret, started.
From that moment, Gloria started noticing that the animals and flowers were very close to her in some sense.
She could feel their emotions, could communicate with them in some sense, and the butterfly birthmark at some stage began to manifest in real life. The butterfly was very small and beautiful. The thought of having it living in her it made her shudder and tremble with fear.
Would she be operated on and experimented on when other people know about it? She was very scared and didn't let anyone know about the truth.
As she grew up, she learnt how to control her strange abilities, and that worked to a greater extent. She didn't need to fear these animals rushing towards her when she least expected it since she could turn the ability on and off when needed.
If it wasn't for that, she might have been exposed. She would rather be ordinary than let everyone know about these strange abilities.
However, those abilities made her have a great liking to gardens, especially tending to flowers and making scented flowers and so forth.
As long as she couldn't expose herself, she was fine being called a garden lover. Besides, with Simon being omnipotent, she didn't have to worry about a lot. Moreover, Simon didn't like her working but taking care of the house. She didn't find it repelling, so she agreed.
When staying at home, doing gardening wouldn't be that bad, right?
Who would have known that her small passion would cause some clan leader to target her? If she had exposed her abilities, it would have made sense why they would forgo any other conditions to have her. However, it still didn't make sense since she had never exposed herself, even during her sleep.
If the man she had loved for over two decades knew nothing about that, then what about a stranger?
If she wasn't being brought there to be humiliated like Simon inferred. then what did the clan leader want from her truly?
That was what she wanted to know, and Simon was eager to know about that as well.
That's why when divorce came up, she didn't hesitate to agree. After all, maintaining the reputation of not just her, but Simon and the clan mattered to her.
She wasn't just going to be a hostage there, but do her best to spy on that other clan. To make the divorce believable, she could only be cruel and cold to others. Although that would make others misunderstand her, Simon promised to explain everything in the future.
He wasn't sure if there were any spies in the clan. Otherwise, how would the Frost clan leader know about her abilities?
So being cold-hearted like that would convince even the spies, and she felt that it made sense.
Anyway, in the future, she would still return to her husband and live happily together as he had always promised. But before that day came, she was going to do her best to persevere, gather as much information as she could, and work her best to get released. After all, she didn't hear Simon talking about any release date.
Lost in such thoughts, Gloria found herself sometime later at the airport, where a private plane was already waiting and ready for takeoff.
'We are not leaving by road but by plane!'
Upon seeing the plane, her jaws nearly dropped to the ground.
When she saw the cars previously, she thought that they were going to drive. After all, to Doncaster City from Millstone town, it was around three hours or so. That kind of trip could still be done by road.
However, seeing herself being politely brought to the plane, Gloria didn't know whether to love or hate the capitalists.
The life of the rich was truly hard to guess.
She had never taken a plane before, to be honest. There weren't many places that she liked going. She preferred staying at home. At best the farthest place she went to was the nearby city. Just an hour away from the town, where she studied for university.
After her studies, she became a full-time housewife who helped in some matters in the clan. So how could she have traveled anywhere? Moreover, she had never wanted to be a burden to Simon and followed him everywhere.
As for the annual galas, she was too conscious to go there. So, every year, she had never attended. Thankfully, it was just three years into her marriage, so her absence was never missed.
To think that after twenty-eight years, she was finally going to board a plane and all because someone wanted her to tend to the garden, she found herself pitiful.
She couldn't help but want to mock herself, but the sheer luxury of the plane made her halt on such thoughts.
She couldn't just hate a plane that didn't do any harm to her, right?
She didn't avoid the plane crew and admired the plane openly, thinking to herself that one day in the future, when the clan had money, Simon would buy a plane as well.
After she settled down, the plane took off after a while and she was nervous as she sat there. However, Iris, who was sitting opposite her, was so calm it made Gloria unwilling to lose face. So, she raced her fears and overcame her own fears.
After overcoming the fear, the flight no longer was scary but very entertaining. Although it was dark, considering that these people came to pick her late, looking at the beautiful lights she was seeing through the plane window made her excited, like a little kid.
What Gloria didn't know was that all her reactions were being faithfully recorded, and she looked like a little child. She was very cute to look at.
The flight was just short. In an hour, they were already at the private airport. She didn't dare call it a public one. She might not have been on a public plane before, but she had seen photos of airports and they looked bigger than the one she was currently in.
So, she surmised that she was at a private one. Once again, her image of rich people was refreshed. And she became resolute and determined to see her clan prosper.
The comparison was so heart wrenching, it made her sigh and lament at how people's fates were so different when they were all living in the same heaven.