The day the cruise ship sank, raging fire and thick smoke billowed. Everyone fought frantically for the last lifeboat spot. I clung to the railing, my knuckles white, but Seraphina, right beside me, acted as if I wasn’t even there. She frantically searched through the crowd for my younger brother, Caleb Stone. Finally, she shielded him in her arms and pushed him onto the lifeboat. When she looked back at me, the tenderness in her eyes vanished. “Caleb isn’t mentally stable; he can’t handle this.” “But I’m your therapist. I know your willpower—it’s incredibly strong.” She promised, “Once he’s settled, I’ll be right back for you.” But even as the ship exploded, and I was dragged into the icy waves, my mind fading, before I completely sank, her figure never appeared. Years later, we met again. Seraphina looked at the child I was holding, her eyes blazing red as she gripped my wrist. “I told you to wait for me! How dare you have a child with another woman?!” Seven years later, I stepped onto the ferry heading for that very ocean again. The sea air tasted salty and raw, whipping up waves that crashed against the hull with a dull thud, an echo of that sinking ship’s final wail seven years ago. I stood on the deck, my son Leo’s hand in mine. This time, it wasn’t for sightseeing, but for a formal farewell to the past. I was back, a new man. “Daddy, the ocean is so big!” Leo looked up, his small face beaming with excitement, pointing at the distant seagulls. I ruffled his hair, smiling, the gloom in my heart lifting a little with his cheerful laughter. But that calm was shattered by a disbelieving female voice. “Liam Stone?” My body froze. The voice seemed to come from a century away, blurry and distant. I hadn’t seen Seraphina in seven years. Instinctively, I pulled Leo closer, turning to duck into the cabin. But Seraphina was faster. She lunged forward, gripping my wrist in an iron vice. I looked up, meeting those familiar eyes. Once, they held so much tenderness. Now, only raw fury burned there. Her gaze dropped to Leo beside me, her pupils instantly shrinking. “A child?” Her voice trembled. “I told you to wait for me. Is this how you waited?” “How dare you have a child with another woman?!” She shrieked, drawing the stares of curious passengers around us. Leo, terrified by her distorted face, went pale. He clung to my leg, whimpering, “Daddy, I’m scared…” My heart ached. I pulled my son protectively into my arms and coldly yanked my wrist free. “Ms. Blackwood, please show some respect. We’re long past having any relationship.” “No relationship?” Her bloodshot eyes were filled with mockery. “Liam Stone, is your heart made of stone? I searched for you for seven years! Seven years! You hid away, had a kid with some other woman, and now you’re telling me we have no relationship?” Before she could finish, a tall, slender figure rushed forward and tightly hooked an arm around hers. It was my dear brother, Caleb Stone. He looked at me, a flicker of venom flashing in his eyes. “Bro, it’s really you! We all thought you…” He choked up mid-sentence, his eyes welling with tears at just the right moment. “It’s so wonderful you’re alive!” “We took this ferry because Sera wanted to come mourn you. We searched for you for seven years, we thought you were already…” He put on a performance of genuine emotion, then his tone shifted. His gaze lingered on me ambiguously, and he spoke with clear insinuation: “Bro, where have you been all these years? When the ship went down, did you get stranded on some deserted island all alone, with some wild woman…?” He didn’t finish, but his scornful look said everything he left unsaid. Seraphina’s face darkened further at his words. She looked at me as if I were something vile. “I kept myself pure for you for seven years, and you debased yourself like this!” She pointed at the ocean, her face contorted in anguish. “I came here every year, hoping to find a trace of you! But where were you? Living it up somewhere else!”
Her twisted version of events made me laugh, a bitter, angry sound. She was the one who pushed me into the abyss, and now she dared to question me, playing the victim. How dare she? Seeing my cold silence, her emotions flared even more. She reached out, ready to grab me. “Tell me, who is that woman?!” I dodged her, wanting nothing more than to get my son away from this toxic scene. Just then, her gaze locked onto the red string on my wrist. Instantly, her expression softened, a triumphant smile touching her lips. She smiled, a smile of absolute certainty. “I knew it,” her voice softened. “You still care for me. You kept this red string.” A wave of pure disgust welled up inside me. She thought I’d spent seven years, wearing her love token, yearning for her return. But she didn’t know the one she gave me had snapped and vanished the moment I plunged into the freezing depths, just like my dying heart. This red string on my wrist was given to me by someone else. A woman who reached out to me when I was lost in the depths of despair. Seeing my silence, Seraphina’s smile widened. She confidently reached out to touch the red string, but I sidestepped, avoiding her hand. Her hand froze in mid-air, her face coloring slightly, but she quickly plastered on that facade of deep affection. “Liam, I know you’re still angry with me. But I had no choice back then.” She glanced at Caleb, who looked somewhat helpless beside her. “Caleb… you know, he can’t be without me.” Caleb immediately lowered his head, trembling slightly, playing his part. “Bro, don’t blame Sera. It’s all my fault… If it wasn’t to save me, you wouldn’t have…” I was too tired to argue with them. I just wanted to leave with my son. “Leo’s feeling a bit seasick. I need to take him to rest.” My voice was ice cold. “Bro, now that we’ve found you, how can you not come home with us? Mom and Dad have missed you for seven years, they’ve cried their eyes out, practically blind from weeping!” Caleb immediately grabbed me, putting on a show of being a dutiful son. “Can you really bear to let them keep grieving?” He brought up our parents, and I couldn’t refuse. After all, they were my parents. Even if they’d caused me endless pain, the ties of blood were still impossible to sever. I hesitated for a moment, then nodded. Seeing this, Seraphina immediately tried to eagerly help with my luggage, but I coldly refused her. Her expression faltered. Caleb seized the moment, hooking his arm through hers, and mouthed silently to me: *See? She’s still mine.* I just found it pathetic. What he wanted, I had long since stopped caring about. The plane landed in Coast City. Back in that familiar yet strange home, my parents were overjoyed to see me, tears streaming down their faces. They hugged me, repeatedly checking if I was truly safe and sound. “It’s good you’re back, so good you’re back, my son…” My mother sobbed, breathless. This long-lost warmth made me waver for a moment, as if all those neglected years were just a nightmare. However, a single sentence from Caleb instantly slammed me back to reality. “Mom, Dad, look, big brother didn’t just come back himself, he brought a kid too.” He pushed Leo forward with a beaming smile, his tone innocent yet utterly venomous: “Big brother is really something, surviving alone overseas, must’ve been tough, huh? I hear things are pretty open over there… easy to accidentally become a dad, with such a big kid at such a young age.” The air instantly froze. The surprise and affection on my parents’ faces froze, replaced by pure disgust in their eyes when they looked at me. They believed him. Just like before. They didn’t hesitate to believe Caleb’s most vicious slander against me. Leo couldn’t understand the adults’ complicated expressions. He only knew these were the grandparents he’d learned about in his books. He looked up with his innocent little face, opening his arms and babbling sweetly, “Grandpa, Grandma, hug.” The child’s pure smile seemed to melt the ice in my parents’ hearts. They hesitated for a moment, then bent down and picked up Leo. Caleb saw this and shot me a venomous glare.
That evening, after I settled Leo to sleep, Caleb pushed open the door and walked in. The facade he wore during the day was gone, replaced by raw, naked jealousy. “Liam Stone, why didn’t you just die out there? Why did you have to come back?!” He hissed, his face twisted in a snarl. “To steal Sera from me, to steal Mom and Dad’s affection?!” I watched him calmly, like he was nothing more than a petulant clown. “I didn’t come back to fight you for anything. This home, too, take it all if you want. I don’t care.” “You don’t care?” He cackled shrilly, “If you don’t care, then why is Sera still obsessed with you? If you don’t care, what’s with that red string on your wrist? Don’t think I don’t know, Sera knitted that for you herself!” I said calmly, “The old me would have fought you. Because I thought those were the only life rafts I had.” “But now I understand. Something that’s already rotten, no matter how tightly you cling to it, will only drag you down with it.” My calmness completely enraged him. “Don’t act so high and mighty! Liam Stone, don’t forget, everything you have today, I gave you! If it weren’t for me, you’d have died in the hands of traffickers!” His words were like a sharp knife, brutally tearing open my already scarred wound. Bleeding profusely. When I was seven, he and I were both kidnapped. On the run, the traffickers caught up to us. I desperately clung to the trafficker’s leg, biting off a chunk of flesh with all my might, screaming for him to run, to go find Mom and Dad to save me. I thought he was going for help. In that dark, foul-smelling cellar, I was tortured beyond recognition, praying day and night for someone to save me. I waited for a long, long time. It wasn’t until the traffickers snatched another little girl in a pretty dress, and her family used immense power to track them down, that I was incidentally rescued. Only when I got home did I realize Caleb hadn’t gone for help at all. He told Mom and Dad that I’d wandered off by myself, being too playful. When I confronted him, he cried, saying he was too scared, too scared to speak. And my parents just held their trembling son, then turned around and blamed me: “Your brother is scared stiff. You’re back safe and sound, isn’t that enough? Why are you still holding this against him? Ultimately, wasn’t it your own fault for running off that you got kidnapped in the first place!” From that day on, nightmares plagued me every night—the traffickers’ gruesome faces, my helpless screams. I developed severe PTSD. Mom and Dad finally felt a flicker of guilt towards me. But just then, Caleb claimed he was also sick, that he had nightmares every night too. And so, all their care and affection were once again poured onto him. While I became the gloomy, paranoid, unlikable son. Until Seraphina appeared. She was my therapist. She patiently listened to all my pain, gently guiding me out of the darkness. I clung to her like a drowning man to a straw, falling in love with her. But that salvation soured the day Caleb started seeing her for therapy too. She started calling me paranoid and suspicious, saying I was jealous of my brother, claiming I was just seeking sympathy. Later, we had a huge fight because Caleb deliberately harmed my pet dog, and we got into a car accident. I instinctively shielded her, but ended up with a leg injury, walking with a slight limp. She embraced me, full of guilt, promising she would treat me well from then on. I believed her. It wasn’t until that burning cruise ship, when she chose Caleb without hesitation, leaving me alone in a despairing inferno, that I truly woke up. A person rotten to the core could never bloom into a flower facing the sun. I looked at the hysterical Caleb before me, my eyes ice cold. “You’re right. Everything I am, everything I’ve become, is thanks to you.” I said, every word dripping with ice, “So, what you owe me? I’ll collect it all back. Every single cent, with interest!” He was stunned by the cold in my eyes, frozen in place. Finally, with a bravado that quickly faded into fear, he spat, “You just wait,” and stormed out.
The next morning, I woke up to an empty bed beside me. Leo was gone. My heart clenched. A wave of immense panic instantly seized me. I burst out of the room, searching frantically through the house. “Leo! Leo, where are you?!” In the living room, Caleb was leisurely sipping coffee. Seeing my distraught appearance, a triumphant, cold smirk played on his lips. “Bro, what are you looking for so early? Did your little bastard son go missing?” I lunged forward, grabbing his collar, my eyes blazing red. “Where did you take Leo?!” “I don’t know.” He blinked innocently, but the defiance in his eyes was crystal clear. “Maybe he missed his wild woman mom and ran off to find her? After all, a bastard child is always starved for love.” “Caleb!” I shrieked hysterically. “I’ll kill you!” Just then, the front door swung open, and Seraphina walked in. What she saw was me, tearing at Caleb like a madman. While Caleb wore a look of utter grievance, his eyes rimmed red. “Liam Stone! What madness are you on about now?!” Seraphina rushed over, shoving me away forcefully, pulling Caleb protectively into her arms, her face filled with concern. “Why do you always have to target Caleb like this? What has he ever done to deserve this from you?!” I stumbled backward from her shove, hitting the wall. A searing pain shot through my leg. But at that moment, I couldn’t care less. My hands shaking, I pulled out my phone and dialed the number I knew by heart. The call was answered almost instantly. A calm female voice came through. “Liam, what’s wrong?” “Anya…” My voice choked, I could barely speak. “Leo… Leo’s gone!” “Don’t be afraid.” The voice on the other end instantly turned utterly calm. “Stay right where you are. I’m on my way. Tell me the address.” I hung up, feeling as if all my strength had drained away, collapsing to the floor. Seraphina looked at me, her eyes filled with contempt and disdain. “Keep acting. Go on, keep it up.” She sneered, “Liam Stone, your tactics are still so pathetic. To provoke me, you not only got a child, but now you’ve got a woman pretending to be your wife?” “What, did you rent that kid? Is the lease up today, so now you’re claiming he’s missing?” Caleb burst into an exaggerated laugh, echoing, “Yeah, bro, your acting is totally fake. Sera, don’t fall for it. He just wants to make you jealous, he wants you back.” Seeing the nauseating faces of the couple before me, pure rage consumed me. “If anything happens to Leo,” I lifted my head, glaring at both of them with burning hatred, “I’ll make your lives a living hell!” Seraphina scoffed, about to launch another taunt, when the front door burst open with a loud bang. A group of bodyguards in black suits streamed in, quickly securing the entire living room. Immediately after, a figure walked in, silhouetted against the light. She walked straight to me, took off her coat and draped it over me, then gently helped me up from the cold floor and pulled me into her embrace. Then, she lifted her eyes, her sharp gaze sweeping over Seraphina and Caleb, who stood frozen. Her thin lips parted, her voice chilling. “When my husband wants to make someone’s life a living hell, does he need to put on an act?” The entire living room fell into a deathly silence. The mockery on Seraphina’s face instantly froze, her whole body rigid with shock.
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