1 The miscarriage taught me how to behave. I stopped asking when Nathan would be home. I didn’t question his vacations with my best friend. I didn’t even mind when he started playing dad to her son. Even now, as I found a handful of used condoms on the floor of his car, my expression didn’t change. I simply swept them into a trash bag. But that’s when Nathan slammed on the brakes, the screech of tires echoing the tension in his voice, which was stretched taut like a wire about to snap. “Sophia and I were together… in this car. And that’s all the reaction I get?” I nodded, my voice a calm, placid lake. “Passion is a hard thing to control. I get it.” I had finally become the reasonable wife Nathan always wanted. He just didn’t know that in the years I was unreasonable… I was also the one who truly loved him. … “Aria, you’ve changed,” Nathan’s voice trembled slightly. “The old you would never have been this… detached.” I watched the city lights blur past the window. “That was before I knew better.” “I don’t need you to know better!” he insisted. “You can fight with me, Aria. Like you used to.” A bitter smile touched my lips, and my gaze drifted to my own hand, to the little finger that never quite straightened out. A souvenir from the last time I’d slapped Sophia, when he’d thrown me to the ground and stomped on my hand. Seeing my silence, Nathan made a promise that felt both monumental and completely hollow. “Aria, after the holidays, I’ll end things with Sophia for good. We can start over.” A year ago, those words would have brought me to tears of relief. Now, they were just laughable. The car pulled into the driveway of the Hawthorne family estate. The moment I stepped inside, I saw Sophia in an apron, arranging platters on the dining table, playing the perfect lady of the house. Panic flashed in Nathan’s eyes. “I didn’t know she would be here…” “I invited her.” Nathan’s mother shot me a look sharp enough to cut glass. “It’s Christmas Eve. Try not to make a scene and embarrass everyone again.” It was a perfect echo of last year. Sophia, clinging to Nathan’s mother with one arm and Nathan with the other. At the dinner table, I had emptied my glass of red wine over her head. In response to Sophia’s sobs, Nathan hadn’t hesitated to throw a tureen of hot soup in my face. I subconsciously traced the faint scar on my temple and managed a small smile. “Then we should thank Sophia for her help.” If someone else wanted to play the part of the virtuous wife, I was more than happy to relax. I turned to grab a handful of nuts from a bowl, but Nathan grabbed my arm, his voice laced with disbelief. “Aria, you’re just going to let an outsider celebrate Christmas with our family?” I smiled and nodded, repeating the words he’d used last year. “Sophia’s a single mom. It’s tough. We can’t let them be all alone on Christmas, can we?” “She’s my best friend,” I added. “I don’t have a problem with it.” Just then, Sophia’s son, Max, came charging at me, ramming his head into my stomach. “You’re the bad lady! You can’t take my mommy’s place!” Sophia quickly covered his mouth. “He’s been watching too many cartoons. Don’t mind him.” But there wasn’t a shred of apology in her eyes. I stood perfectly still, a dull ache lingering where he’d hit me. There was nothing left in this world that could truly hurt me anymore. Except for the child I never got the chance to meet. Nathan and I had been the couple everyone envied in college. He knew my class schedule by heart, and my thermos was always full of hot coffee on cold mornings. I knew he’d forget to eat when he was absorbed in his lab work, so I always brought him his favorite barbecue ribs from the cafeteria. We talked about literature and macroeconomics; we were lovers and soulmates. The year we were meant to graduate, the Hawthorne Group was targeted by a rival and driven into bankruptcy. Nathan’s father, overwhelmed by creditors, jumped from his office window. Overnight, Nathan was forced to drop out of college and inherit a mountain of debt. When I found him, he was curled in the corner of a grimy apartment, with jagged cuts on his wrists, blood pooling on the floor. His father was gone, his mother was sick, and the debt had crushed him into a severe depression. I tried to get close, but he brandished a shard of glass, screaming at me to get out. The moment the glass bit into my shoulder, clarity seemed to return to his eyes. He dropped it and collapsed into my arms, sobbing like a lost child. If you’re not afraid of death, what is there to fear about living? I dropped out of college without telling my parents and stood by his side. For seven years, I pieced his shattered soul back together. We worked street stalls, delivered food, took any odd job we could find, and counted every penny together in the dead of night. The night we paid off the last of the debt, he proposed with a ring he’d fashioned from sea glass, polished for half a year. The band was rough, but it was the most precious thing I’d ever worn. At our wedding, he wept in front of everyone. “Aria, I swear I will never let you down.” Our marriage was blissful, with only one lingering sorrow: we couldn’t have a child. The years of hardship had taken a toll on our bodies, and getting pregnant was a difficult journey. The injections, the egg retrievals, the failures… the cold, aching hollowness in my belly after every trip to the clinic. That’s when Sophia showed up with her son. We’d known each other since childhood. Her father was a gambling addict, and her mother had run off when she was young. My parents took pity on her, bringing her into our home. We were raised like sisters, sharing everything, until we went our separate ways for college. I smiled and slipped the boy a fifty-dollar bill, teasing her, “When did you get married? You should have told me so I could get you a proper wedding gift.” Her eyes darted away. “Do you remember when I came to visit you in your junior year? When you and Nathan were renting that little place.” I nodded apologetically. “I’m so sorry about that. I know you were stuck in the apartment by yourself. The lab was so demanding, I never even got to show you around the city.” “One night,” she interrupted, her voice barely a whisper, “you didn’t come home.” “He thought I was you.” She pushed her son forward. “This is Nathan’s son.” I stood frozen, a roaring in my ears drowning out everything else. When Nathan found out, his first reaction was to slap Sophia across the face. Then he spent the entire night on the balcony, chain-smoking. The next morning, he held me, his eyes bloodshot. “Aria, I was drunk. I don’t remember a thing. I will never acknowledge that child.” The day the paternity test results came back, his mother was overjoyed, cuddling Max and beaming. Nathan, however, remained stone-faced. “The only children who will be part of the Hawthorne family are the ones Aria gives me.” Sophia wept, telling us how hard it had been raising a child alone, how she never would have come to us if she hadn’t been completely desperate. Nathan impatiently tossed a check at her and told her to disappear forever. Sophia took the check and left. Life seemed to return to normal. Nathan continued to accompany me to my fertility appointments, holding my hand during injections and wiping my tears after each failure. I slowly let my guard down. After all, Nathan hadn’t known what he was doing, and Sophia hadn’t pushed the issue. Three months later, the IVF treatment was finally a success. I was holding the positive report, my hands trembling as I dialed Nathan’s number, when I saw him across the bustling street. He was holding Max’s hand with one hand and had the other wrapped tightly around Sophia’s waist. He leaned down and kissed her, a gentle, lingering kiss. I stood rooted to the spot, the paper in my hand crinkling into a tight ball. I struggled to keep my voice steady. “Nathan, where are you?” His voice on the other end was rushed. “I’m in a meeting at the office. I’ll be home late to be with you.” “How did the test go? Was it successful?” It was. But I wished it wasn’t. My silence must have given him the wrong impression. He thought it had failed again. “It’s okay, Aria,” he soothed. “If it doesn’t happen, it doesn’t happen. We can be child-free. I’ll never blame you.” Across the street, Nathan ruffled Max’s hair while Sophia snuggled into his side. They looked like the perfect, happy family. A single tear hit the back of my hand. The pain was so sharp I couldn’t speak. I just watched them walk away until they disappeared from sight. When I got home, dazed, an expense report from the company’s finance department was waiting. A hundred thousand dollars was missing. When I pressed for an explanation, the accountant reluctantly admitted, “Mr. Hawthorne dropped sixty grand on a diamond ring at a charity auction for the new secretary, Ms. Cole, not to mention the new condo and car.” I sat in the study, staring at the report until late into the night. Finally, the lock clicked. Nathan came in, bringing a chill with him. “Why are you still up?” He tried to wrap his arms around me from behind, but I subtly moved away. “Are you angry?” He smiled, offering me a bouquet of roses. “The meeting ran late. I’m sorry.” But he’d forgotten to trim the thorns, and he’d forgotten I didn’t like roses. They were Sophia’s favorite. I turned the laptop screen toward him. His smile froze, but he tried to maintain his composure. “The company is investing in a new project. We needed some liquid assets.” “What kind of project requires dropping sixty grand on a ring at an auction?” Nathan’s Adam’s apple bobbed. “Sometimes in business, you have to grease a few wheels…” “A condo and a car, too? All for greasing wheels? I had no idea Sophia was so well-connected.” “So you know.” The room fell into a dead silence. After a long moment, Nathan sighed. “Sophia and Max were living in a terrible little apartment. She had no job, no support. Max is still my son, Aria. I couldn’t just let him suffer. I’m doing this for the boy.” My face was a cold mask. “So you’re using company money to support them?” His expression darkened. “This company is mine. Hawthorne assets. I built it from the ground up, and I have the right to decide how its money is spent!” I looked at him, a complete stranger. “Nathan, do you remember who provided the initial capital when we first registered this company?” He froze. “I sold all the jewelry my parents gave me and added it to the money I’d saved from working three jobs.” “The company’s first major contract? I landed that by drinking with a client until my stomach bled.” “When we were on the verge of collapse, I mortgaged the house my grandfather left me to get us through.” “And now you say you built this company all by yourself?” Nathan’s face shifted through a spectrum of emotions before settling on a frustrated anger. “Yes, you contributed! But I gave you the title of Mrs. Hawthorne. Isn’t that enough? Sophia will never have that title. What’s wrong with me compensating her for that?” “Besides,” he added, his voice dripping with cruelty, “you can’t even get pregnant. Are you going to let the Hawthorne family line die with me?” The bruises from the hormone injections still ached. I laughed until tears streamed down my face. A sperm morphology rate of over 98% abnormal was the real reason we couldn’t conceive. I pulled off the sea glass ring he had made and smashed it on the floor. I sued Sophia, demanding she return every penny. I bought trending spots on social media, exposing her and ruining her reputation. Her few days of luxury were over before they began. She was fired and became a social pariah. She came to me with a knife to her throat, kneeling on the floor. “Aria, I’ll never try to take your place. Please, just leave my son and me alone.” She was sobbing hysterically, and the moment Nathan walked in, she dragged the blade across her neck. It wasn’t deep, but it looked terrifying. Nathan rushed over, slapped me hard across the face, and scooped her into his arms, racing to the hospital. When he returned, his eyes were full of weariness. “Let’s get a divorce, Aria. Not for Sophia. For Max. You’ve backed them into a corner. I have to give them a name.” I coldly tossed the ultrasound report at him. The law here states that a husband cannot divorce a pregnant wife. Why should my legitimate child be born without a father, while a mistress’s illegitimate son dances on my grave? Nathan stared at the grainy image, a flicker of joy crossing his face. He didn’t mention divorce again. He seemed to transform back into the caring husband I once knew. Until Sophia’s son was pushed from a third-story window. The first thing Max did when he woke up was point at me in front of the police. “It was Auntie Aria. She pushed me. She said if I was gone, Daddy would belong only to her.” The security camera on that floor had been tampered with. I was the only suspect. The police investigated but eventually dropped the case due to a lack of evidence. I hired the best lawyer to find the truth. But Nathan was convinced it was me. The day I was released from the station, he grabbed me by the throat, his eyes filled with icy hatred. “How could you hurt a child? You’re not even human!” I choked, struggling to breathe until I finally broke free. From that day on, Nathan stopped coming home at night. He said he was atoning for my sins. If I so much as touched Sophia, he would twist my arm. If I tried to tell my side of the story online, he held a press conference to spin his own narrative, painting me as the vindictive third wheel. Public opinion turned against me. Strangers online ripped me to shreds. My parents tried to defend me and were doxxed, then physically assaulted. After one of Sophia’s live streams, the brake lines on my parents’ car were cut. They were in a serious accident. At the hospital, I discovered Nathan had frozen all of my accounts. I found him at Sophia’s condo. The air was still thick with the heat of their lovemaking. “Max wants a little sister,” he said, as casually as if he were discussing the weather. A chill ran through me. “My parents are in the hospital. I need money.” “Apologize.” He was buttoning his shirt, not even looking at me. “Apologize to Sophia. Admit you pushed Max, and the money will be in your account immediately.” “Nathan, those are the people you called Mom and Dad for three years!” “Mom and Dad?” he scoffed. “They didn’t act like elders when they were feeding Sophia leftovers and treating her like a servant. If they hadn’t been so cruel to her, would she have been desperate enough to come to us in the first place?” He had swallowed every lie Sophia had told on her live stream. I thought of the countless bowls of soup my mother had simmered for him, the savings my father had secretly slipped him when he was starting his business. I remembered when we were children and my mother gave the new winter coat to Sophia, while I wore her hand-me-downs. As I gritted my teeth, preparing to bow my head to them, the hospital called with the worst possible news. The world spun. Sophia blocked the doorway. “You haven’t apologized. Don’t you want the money to save them?” I slapped her with all the strength I had left. Nathan retaliated for her, shoving me violently. My abdomen slammed into the corner of a cabinet. A searing pain, followed by a sudden, warm gush spreading down my legs. Nathan saw the blood pooling on the floor. His face went white. He scooped me up like a madman and raced to the hospital. The baby didn’t make it. When the light in the operating room went out, Nathan knelt by my bed, slapping his own face over and over. I stared at the blank white ceiling, as empty as the space that had suddenly opened up inside me. At the funeral, the grief was so immense I could barely stand, but I couldn’t shed a single tear. Nathan stayed by my side for a long time after that, avoiding Sophia completely. He tried to talk to me like we used to, but I would just sit in silence, saying nothing. Eventually, he started provoking me, flaunting his relationship with Sophia, but all I felt was a profound numbness. I think I had stopped loving Nathan. That’s when my lawyer handed me the investigation report. I read through the file, my fingertips growing cold. The truth was more shocking than I could have ever imagined. The largest sum of money that disappeared from the Hawthorne Group right before its collapse had been traced to an offshore account. The owner of that account was Sophia’s father. Tucked inside the file was another paternity test. Nathan’s ringing phone pulled me from my thoughts. He put it on speaker. A voice cut through the silent room. “Mr. Hawthorne, we managed to restore the security footage from the third floor. We have the entire incident with Max on video.” “Send it to me. And don’t call the police.” Nathan’s eyes were fixed on me as he spoke, completely missing the way the color drained from Sophia’s face. “Aria, it’s Christmas. I won’t hold this against you. Let’s just put the past behind us.” I could only find it pathetic. Even now, he was certain I had pushed Max. Sophia forced a smile. “Nathan, maybe we should just delete the video. There’s no need to dredge up the past and embarrass Aria.” Nathan actually hesitated, considering it. I placed my hand over his on the phone. “Nathan, I’d like to see the truth, too.” He looked at me, surprised, as if the thought of another possibility had never occurred to him. Sophia tried to stop us, but I silenced her with a single glare. “Don’t you want to know who really pushed your son?” His mother snorted and snatched the phone, pressing play. “My son may protect you, but I won’t!” On the screen, Max cowered in Sophia’s arms. “No, Mommy, I’m scared.” Sophia’s voice was a soft coo. “Don’t be afraid, sweetie. Just be brave this one time, and you’ll have a daddy forever.” When Max still refused, her face hardened. “You can have Uncle Nathan as your daddy, or I can send you to live with your grandfather. You choose.” Max started to cry. “I want Daddy Nathan! I don’t want to go to Grandpa’s!” He climbed onto the balcony railing, trembling, and then squeezed his eyes shut as Sophia pushed him off. She didn’t call for an ambulance. Instead, she picked up a nearby brick and smashed the camera. The phone slipped from his mother’s hand, thudding onto the carpet. “No…” Sophia’s voice was strangled. “That’s not real… it’s a deepfake…” Nathan’s voice was hoarse. “You pushed him.” “I’m his mother! How could I!” “Precisely because you are his mother,” I interjected softly. “You knew exactly how to push him so it wouldn’t be fatal. You knew how to make it look like an attack.” Sophia whipped her head toward me, her eyes filled with venom. “It was you! You paid someone to fake this video!” I laughed. “The only person who could commission the Hawthorne tech team to restore that footage is Nathan himself.” It was his handpicked team; they answered to no one else. Sophia’s lips began to tremble. She had no argument left. Nathan bent down, picked up the phone, and watched the video again, slowly, as if burning every frame into his memory. “Why?” he asked, the sound of something shattering in his voice. Sophia collapsed into a chair, curling into a small ball. After a moment, she looked up, a wretched smile on her face. “Because I was tired of it, Nathan! I was tired of hiding in the shadows, tired of my son calling you ‘uncle,’ tired of you always checking the clock, rushing to leave…” “So you gambled with your son’s life?” Nathan’s voice shook. “I never meant to hurt him!” she shrieked. “I knew there was grass below! I just wanted you to hate her, to finally be done with her! Everything I did was for us!” “Us?” Nathan cut her off, his expression turning to disgust for the first time. “There is no ‘us.’ There never was.” The words hit her like a physical blow, and the last of the color drained from her face. But we were just getting started. I pulled out the paternity test. “Sophia, is Max really Nathan’s son?” “What are you talking about! I had a paternity test done with Max. It proved he’s his father!” Nathan’s desire for a child was his greatest weakness. “What if the hair sample you submitted wasn’t Max’s? What if it was yours?” “What? That’s impossible! How could she have gotten my hair?” “She could,” I said, tossing a document onto the table. It was an employment record. For one month, just before she came to us, Sophia had worked as a shampoo girl at the salon Nathan frequented. Nathan’s fingers froze on the paper, the edges trembling. “March, two years ago… I did get my hair cut there. I even complained the new girl was too rough…” His eyes, red-rimmed, snapped to Sophia. “Max… he’s not my son?” I handed him the real DNA report. The probability of him being the father was 0.1%. His mother instinctively let go of Max’s shoulder. Nathan lunged forward, grabbing Sophia’s wrist with a force that made her cry out in pain. “You dared to lie to me? You told me he was my son… you made me raise another man’s child!” “I just wanted him to have a father! Is that so wrong?” she screamed, hysterical. “Do you have any idea what I’ve been through alone? Aria had everything—parents, love, a career! All I had was Max! I just wanted to give him a proper family!” “So you stole my hair, forged a report, and taught him to call me ‘Dad’?” Nathan’s voice was ice. “And to seal the deal, you pushed him off a three-story balcony?” He finally lost control, smashing the phone on the ground. “Sophia, how many other lies are there?!” Shards flew across the room. Max burst into terrified sobs. For the first time, his grandmother didn’t comfort him. Sophia scrambled to Nathan, grabbing at his pant leg. “But he calls you Daddy! He truly thinks of you as his father!” “Shut up!” Nathan kicked her hand away and turned to me. His eyes were wild with regret, shame, and a near-suicidal despair. “Aria…” He opened his mouth, but no more words came out. I watched him, my face a placid mask. “You wanted a child, so she gave you a ‘son.’ You needed to feel guilty, so she gave you a reason to atone. You wanted a tender escape from your marriage, so she played the part for you.” “Everything you protected, everything you cherished, everything you were willing to hurt me for…” I pulled the final, most devastating truth from my lawyer’s file. “From the very beginning, it was all just an elaborate scam.” The largest sum of money that disappeared from the Hawthorne Group right before its bankruptcy was traced to an account owned by Robert Cole. Nathan stared blankly at the document. “Robert Cole,” I explained, “is Sophia’s father.” His gaze locked on the name, as if trying to burn a hole through the paper. “Robert Cole…” he repeated, his voice raspy. “Sophia’s deadbeat, gambling-addict father?” “Yes.” I flipped to the next page, a copy of a bank transfer from a decade ago. “Three months before the collapse, the last major payment your father approved was an eighty-thousand-dollar contract for ‘Cole Construction Materials.’ The legal representative was Robert Cole.” “But those materials never arrived at the construction site,” I continued. “Here are the warehouse logs and the testimony from the project supervisor. And within twenty-four hours of receiving the payment, the money was wired to an overseas account.” Nathan was incredulous. “And my dad… he didn’t report it? Why wouldn’t he try to get the money back?” “Because he thought you had slept with an underage girl. Robert Cole used that to blackmail him. Of course, Sophia’s age was faked, but your father didn’t know that. To keep you out of jail, he absorbed the eighty-thousand-dollar loss. That, combined with the rival’s attack, was enough to break the company’s capital chain.” My voice was steady, but I had felt the same shock when I first learned the truth. Nathan staggered back into a chair. His mother was speechless. “Sophia,” Nathan said, slowly raising his head. “You climbed into my bed on purpose. You and your father conspired to destroy my family.” “Your father stole the money that could have saved my family, driving my dad to his death. And then you… you used that money to raise your own son, only to bring him back to me and try to bleed my family dry all over again.” He rose and walked toward her, grabbing her chin and forcing her to look at him. “Tell me, when you were lying next to me, did you ever, for one second, picture my father falling from that building?” Sophia was trembling so hard she could barely speak. “I was forced to! My father never gave me a cent of that money! I didn’t get into college, I got a boyfriend at the factory, I got pregnant… My father threatened me! He said if I didn’t help him frame you, he’d make me get an abortion and kill my boyfriend! I had no choice!” “My boyfriend died in an accident later, and my dad still wouldn’t help me. I couldn’t support Max on my own, so I thought of you.” Outside, New Year’s fireworks bloomed in the sky, casting flickering shadows across the living room. Amidst the hollow celebration, Nathan slowly turned to face me. “When did you find out?” he asked. “Three months ago,” I answered truthfully. “While tracing Sophia’s finances, I noticed a regular monthly transfer to an overseas account. Following that trail led me to Robert Cole.” All this time, her father had still been blackmailing her, forcing her to drain Nathan’s resources for his gambling debts. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” “Would you have believed me?” I met his gaze. “Back when there was no proof, you wouldn’t even believe I didn’t push Max. How could you have believed a truth that implicated your own father’s death?” He had no answer. I took out the last document, my expression serene. “Nathan, I want a divorce.”
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