During study hall, the school’s most popular girl grabbed my childhood best friend, Liam Vance, and demanded:
“What do you even like about Chloe? Do you just like those massive cow tits of hers?”
“Can you please not be so utterly vulgar?”
Countless pairs of eyes landed on me. Some were watching for the drama, some were gloating, and others were purely malicious.
Liam gave a helpless sigh and explained, “Our relationship isn’t what you think it is, Summer. I just take care of her like a little sister.”
It really wasn’t what Summer Hayes thought. The only reason Liam hovered around me every day, showering me with care and attention, was because his mother was my estate manager.
I am the sole heiress of the Vance corporate empire. From the time Liam was a little boy, the only education he received from his mother was how to serve me, please me, and eventually marry into the Vance family to secure her a golden ticket.
01
“First she’s just a friend, then she’s a ‘sister,’ and next thing I know, she’ll be your girlfriend! Liam, it’s her or me. You have to choose!”
The veins on Liam’s neck bulged. He weighed his options in agonizing silence, but ultimately gave her no response.
Overwhelmingly disappointed, Summer burst into tears and ran out of the classroom.
Liam cast a quick, sideways glance at me, gritted his teeth, and chased after her.
For a moment, I couldn’t tell if this scene was a flashback before death or reality.
Because I was already dead.
The day after Liam successfully seized total control of my father’s conglomerate and publicly announced his engagement to Summer, I was pushed into the artificial lake at my family’s estate and drowned.
By that point, I had been paralyzed from the waist down and plagued by chronic illness, locked inside the house by Liam. Every single maid and nurse had been replaced; not a single person on the payroll was loyal to me.
When I saw their engagement announcement on the news, I expended every ounce of my remaining energy to force Liam to come home.
Stripping away his usual gentle, considerate mask, his face twisted into a demonic sneer as his hands clamped around my throat.
“I’ve had enough of you, Chloe.”
“For years, I threw away my dignity as a man and followed you around like a dog. I couldn’t even go to the college I wanted, and I gave up the chance to study abroad with Summer. I sacrificed everything for you, and that stubborn old bastard of a father still refused to hand the company over to me. He played me for an absolute fool.”
“You think just because you have money, you can do whatever you want? You’re just as hypocritical as your father. Today, you’re going to find out exactly what it feels like to struggle at the bottom of the water!”
After my father died, Liam’s attitude toward me had slowly turned cold. Once he leveraged my name to fully hijack the Vance empire, his true colors were finally revealed.
My father’s drunken drowning in that same lake wasn’t an accident. Liam had orchestrated the whole thing.
I looked into his dark, bottomless eyes and saw pure, unadulterated murderous intent. His wings were fully formed; he no longer needed me to act as his good-luck charm to legitimize his reign.
His wedding to Summer was approaching. It was time for his hidden, disabled wife to disappear.
At the edge of the lake, right as he violently shoved me toward the water, my hands locked onto his collar in a death grip, dragging him straight into the freezing depths with me.
A hurricane of pure hatred consumed me. Every single time he thrashed and clawed to reach the surface, I used the very last of my fading strength to drag him back down into the abyss.
He murdered my father. If I had to die, I was dragging him straight to hell with me!
To ensure my death looked like an accident, Liam had given all the estate staff the day off. In that massive, empty estate, no one was there to hear my cries for help.
And now, no one was there to hear his.
Right as I confirmed he had completely lost consciousness, I blacked out entirely.
When I woke up, I was staring at the current scene.
The two of them had just run out the door, and the study hall erupted into chaotic gossip.
“Liam is just too nice. Who else would let their maid’s daughter ride to school in his Maybach every day?”
“She constantly third-wheels the couple in their own car. No wonder Summer finally snapped…”
Then, the crude, mocking laughter of the boys reached my ears.
“Hey Tyler, your dad owns Brooks Dairy Farms, right? Tell us, who has bigger udders? Your prize-winning Holsteins, or Chloe?”
“Bro, you can’t compare them. Our cows are purebreds and properly mated. They aren’t loose and easy like she is…”
“Hahahaha!”
They fed off each other’s vile energy, laughing like a pack of hyenas.
While I was still processing my shock, a heavy, aluminum can of iced coffee flew across the room and smashed directly into my chest, before clattering onto my desk.
Pain.
A sharp, piercing pain blossomed in my chest.
This wasn’t a dream. This wasn’t a dying hallucination. This was absolute, undeniable reality.
I had been reborn into the nightmare that was my high school years.
It was today. The day Summer Hayes finally exploded. She had given Liam a final ultimatum: if I rode in the same car with them to school one more time, she would cut ties with him forever.
Before study hall even ended, Liam took Summer and left in my chauffeured car.
I had to take a cab home in the pouring rain. We got into a horrific crash, leaving me permanently paralyzed from the waist down.
I missed over half a semester before returning to school in a wheelchair. By then, Summer and Liam were publicly dating, and because of my disability, the bullying escalated into pure malice.
I violently threw my head down and wiggled my toes.
Thank God. My legs were perfectly fine.
02
The instigator, Tyler Brooks, laughed hysterically, seeking praise from his cronies.
“Did you guys see that? Maximum elasticity!”
The group of delinquent boys stared at my chest with blatant, disgusting entitlement.
I heard one of them mutter crudely, “Fucking slut.”
Smack!
The class president slammed a textbook onto his desk.
“We’re all classmates here. Don’t cross the line.”
Tyler smirked shamelessly. “The Cow Girl doesn’t even mind, why are you playing white knight?”
The nickname “Cow Girl” started with Summer.
At first, nobody in class treated me like this. Until Summer transferred in.
She set her sights on the perfect, wealthy “heir,” Liam Vance, and pursued him relentlessly.
After Liam rejected her a few times to keep his facade up, she shifted her crosshairs onto me—the girl who arrived and left with him every single day.
In front of all the boys in our class, she announced that I looked like a dairy cow.
She claimed that girls with chests that large were promiscuous from a young age, and that they only got that big because men had been groping them.
Those filthy, slanderous words acted like Pandora’s box. The moment they were spoken, a demon of pure misogyny was unleashed.
Alongside my real name, I was permanently branded “Cow Girl.”
At first, they were slightly hesitant, knowing I was dropped off in luxury cars and wore expensive clothes.
But thanks to Liam’s deliberate, manipulative blurring of the lines, the entire school began to believe that I was the maid’s daughter, and that Liam—the son of my estate manager—was the true prince of the Vance corporate empire.
Under Summer’s passionate pursuit, Liam’s resistance slowly melted.
As the two became the school’s golden couple, a horde of Summer’s simps and Liam’s lackeys started targeting me to win their favor. They catcalled me, made sexually explicit jokes, and ruthlessly mocked my “low-class” background.
Initially, the “Cow Girl” nickname was contained to our classroom. But one day, my estate manager attended a parent-teacher conference on my behalf. That completely solidified the rumor that I was the maid’s daughter. Soon, the “Cow Girl” moniker echoed through the entire school.
Goaded by Summer, the boys even organized a “Brainless Bimbo” poll for the entire high school.
Unsurprisingly, I won by a landslide.
Ignoring the class president’s warning, Tyler kept throwing insults.
“Do you have the nerve to wreck someone else’s relationship, but not the nerve to show your face, Cow Girl?”
I took a slow, deep breath.
I picked up the heavy aluminum can from my desk and walked straight toward Tyler.
“Since you have the audacity to call me ‘Girl’, it’s my responsibility as your superior to teach you how to act like a human being.”
Under his utterly bewildered gaze, I smashed the metal can squarely into the center of his forehead.
He howled in agony.
Taking advantage of his momentary blackout, I grabbed him by the collar, ripped him out of his chair, threw him to the floor, mounted his chest, and started raining slaps across his face left and right.
“This is for being a degenerate!
“This is for the nicknames!
“And this is for barking like a pathetic, rabid dog for a girl who doesn’t even want you!”
03
In the principal’s office.
Seeing the bloody scratch marks covering her son’s face, Tyler’s mother raised her hand and lunged forward to slap me.
I swiftly ducked to the side.
Ms. Parker, my homeroom teacher who was standing right behind me, took the full, ringing force of the slap directly to her face.
Ms. Parker had never been a good person. Whenever conflicts arose in her classroom, she always sided with the students who had wealthy, powerful parents.
I had reported to her countless times that Tyler and his friends were leading the bullying, catcalling me, and throwing things at my head.
Ms. Parker had just looked at me coldly and said: “Where there is smoke, there’s fire. If you behaved like a proper, decent girl, no one would bother you.”
God as my witness, what kind of disgusting logic was that? If a fly lands on you, does that mean you’re a piece of rotting garbage?
Not only did she refuse to do her job and protect me, but she actually victim-blamed me.
Smack!
Tyler’s mother gasped in horror, covering her mouth with her hands, her eyes wide.
Ms. Parker’s face turned ash gray. “Chloe Vance! Look what you’ve done!”
Tyler’s mother had swung with everything she had. A bright red handprint was rapidly blooming across Ms. Parker’s left cheek.
“Ms. Parker, Tyler’s mom is the one who slapped you. Why on earth are you blaming me?”
Tyler’s mom quickly began apologizing profusely to the teacher, while simultaneously cursing me out.
“You little bitch! I was aiming for you! If you hadn’t dodged, I wouldn’t have hit Ms. Parker!”
“So I’m just supposed to stand there and let you hit me? The apple truly doesn’t fall far from the tree. No wonder Tyler has absolutely zero class.”
Furious, Tyler’s mom raised her hand to strike me again.
“Stop right there.”
A familiar female voice echoed from the doorway.
It was Liam’s mother, my estate manager, Evelyn Thorne.
She was dressed in a sharp, tailored business suit, her shoulder-length hair styled in elegant waves. She didn’t look like a housekeeper; she looked like a high-powered corporate executive.
“Mrs. Vance! What a surprise to see you here!”
Seeing who it was, Ms. Parker instantly flipped her attitude, stepping forward with a fawning, desperate smile.
My father was overseas on a business trip and couldn’t make it back. As my dedicated estate manager, it was perfectly normal for Evelyn to come to the school to handle emergencies.
Evelyn offered a graceful, weary smile. “Chloe’s parents are so busy with work. We’re all family, so I came in their place. It’s the same thing.”
“Of course a maid is busy serving her masters,” Tyler muttered under his breath.
Acting as if she hadn’t heard a thing, Evelyn began exchanging pleasantries with Ms. Parker.
I lowered my eyes, unable to hold back a cold sneer.
This duo, Liam and his mother, were absolute masters at dropping vague, misleading statements that confirmed everyone’s false assumptions.
Anyone looking at them would assume Evelyn was the wealthy matriarch, and Liam was the heir, simply letting a poor charity case live with them.
When people called me the maid’s daughter, my denials were treated like delusional lies, because Liam and Evelyn never once stepped up to correct the record.
Instead, they would pull me aside and lecture me. They’d say, “Don’t stoop to their level. People are just jealous of wealth. Keeping a low profile protects your dad’s company from unwanted attention.”
Ms. Parker glanced at me, then gave Evelyn a brief rundown of today’s incident.
“Arguments between students are normal, but resorting to physical violence crosses the line. Tyler is injured. In my opinion, you should cover his medical bills, and Chloe needs to give Tyler a formal apology.”
“Absolutely not! My Tyler took a beating for no reason. This is not going away that easily!”
“What do you propose, Mrs. Brooks?”
Tyler’s mom held up five fingers. “This much. And she has to apologize to my Tyler in front of the entire school assembly.”
“$50,000?”
Evelyn smoothly pulled out a designer checkbook. She turned to me. “Chloe, the car is parked downstairs. Go wait for me in the back.”
I walked out, but I didn’t go downstairs.
Tyler’s furious complaints drifted through the open door.
“Aunt Evelyn, Chloe is just a maid’s daughter! Why are you treating her so well?!”
Evelyn’s voice was soft and maternal. “Don’t speak about her like that. She and my Liam grew up together, and I’ve watched over her since she was a little girl. If she makes a mistake, how could I not look after her?”
Ms. Parker gushed, “You are simply too kind, Mrs. Vance.”
04
By the time they escorted Evelyn downstairs, I was already sitting in the car.
Tyler yanked the car door open and started yelling.
“Aunt Evelyn is nice enough to come pick you up, and you’re sitting in the back seat acting like you’re the boss?! Do you have any manners at all?”
“You’re talking to me about manners? The guy who makes up degrading nicknames for girls?”
Tyler was about to snap back, but Evelyn grabbed his arm.
“Let it go. This child has always had a difficult temper. As adults, we just have to be a little more forgiving.”
Ms. Parker shook her head in disapproval, and Evelyn offered a tragic, long-suffering sigh.
The car pulled away from the school and merged into traffic.
“Chloe, we are ladies. We cannot go around getting into physical altercations. It’s inappropriate.”
“No boy is ever going to like a girl who is that aggressive and abrasive.”
“Besides, you’re all classmates. You have to see each other every single day. There’s no need to make enemies.”
“I’ve already smoothed things over with them. You don’t have to apologize in front of the whole school anymore. Just give Tyler a sincere apology in front of the class, and this whole thing will blow over.”
She still thought I was the same brainwashed, naive child she had PUA’d for the last decade, assuming she could just pay people off and force me to apologize without even asking what happened.
Her “solution” blatantly cemented the narrative that I was the one entirely at fault.
“Why didn’t you ask me why I hit him?”
In the rearview mirror, Evelyn’s face stiffened for a fraction of a second, before she offered a silent, patronizing smile.
“Regardless of the reason, resorting to violence is always wrong.”
“Fine. If you think I’m wrong, you go apologize to him. I am not covering a single cent of that check. You can pay it out of your own pocket. And if you can’t handle a minor issue like this properly, I’ll ask my dad to replace you with a competent estate manager.”
I had my own independent bank accounts. The massive budget required to run the estate, covering the salaries and expenses of dozens of staff members, was entirely under my control.
My dad had assigned a dedicated corporate accountant to manage my books.
I pulled out my phone and dialed Mr. Reed. “The estate manager just wrote a check for $50,000. Void it immediately. Do not let the bank clear it.”
Hanging up the phone, I looked at the familiar city streets outside the window and ordered Evelyn to take a different route home.
Even though the driver today wasn’t Arthur—who in my past life had taken cold medicine before driving—taking a different route gave me peace of mind to avoid the crash entirely.
Before I closed my eyes to rest, I caught a glimpse of Evelyn in the rearview mirror. Her face was absolutely livid.
Evelyn Thorne arrived at the Vance estate when I was five years old.
My mother had just passed away, and my dad was drowning in corporate expansion.
Originally hired as a nanny, Evelyn slowly morphed into a mother figure in my life.
Her promotion to head estate manager was largely because of me.
My dependence on her eventually surpassed my reliance on my constantly traveling father.
Who could have guessed she harbored the ambition of a starving wolf? From the time I was a child, she began systematically gaslighting me. She subtly brainwashed me with toxic, outdated ideals: Men conquer the world, women manage the home. Girls should be submissive, quiet, and excessively forgiving.
She deliberately manufactured endless opportunities for me to be alone with her son, paving the way for Liam to secure my heart—and by extension, the entire Vance empire—before we even graduated.
Evelyn and Liam’s current behavior made them look more like the masters of the house than I did.
When we got home, my chauffeured Maybach still hadn’t returned.
Because of the voided check, Evelyn was in a foul mood, her tone sharp and snappy.
“The young master still isn’t back yet?”
Martha, our loyal maid, took my backpack and blazer, shaking her head. “No, ma’am.”
“Arthur is so incredibly reckless! Keeping Liam out wandering the streets this late! Do you have any idea what time it is? Are you too stupid to call him and tell him to hurry up?!”
Arthur was my dedicated driver. He was also Evelyn’s younger brother, and Liam’s uncle.
After Evelyn secured her iron grip on the Vance household, it didn’t take long for Arthur to be appointed as my personal chauffeur.
In my past life, when I was abandoned at school, I called Arthur to come back and get me. He casually told me that Liam had an urgent matter to attend to and couldn’t be interrupted, telling me to just hail a cab.
I was so blinded by heartbreak over Liam leaving with Summer that I didn’t even think to call my dad.
And then the crash happened.
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1
In the middle of the most important day of my life, our wedding officiant was working the crowd with his overly sentimental routine.
He suddenly turned the spotlight on me and Silas, flashing a charismatic smile as he asked what we were each best at after seven years of being in love.
The eyes of every single guest in the ballroom zeroed in on us, brimming with warmth and curiosity.
My cheeks burned. Deep down, I was secretly hoping Silas would say something incredibly sweet, like “She is best at loving me.”
Instead, Silas casually twisted the platinum wedding band on his finger. A mocking smirk curled the corners of his lips as he spoke into the microphone with terrifying nonchalance.
He said he was not particularly good at anything. But then his gaze shifted to me. He told the crowd that I was an absolute pro at being a hooker.
The grand ballroom instantly plunged into a dead, horrifying silence. The only sound was the sleazy, muffled snickering coming from his frat boy friends in the front row.
The officiant began sweating bullets. He desperately tried to smooth things over, laughing awkwardly and saying the groom was quite the joker, adding that I must be an amazing cook.
Silas brutally cut the officiant off, emphasizing every single syllable as he clarified that he was not talking about cooking.
Right there, in front of five hundred people, he used the absolute filthiest language to describe what a working girl was. He told the entire room that I was a cheap escort who had slept with countless men, entirely used up and worn out.
…
Five hundred guests. Not a single person breathed.
I stood beside him in the custom gown that took three months to make, a deafening ringing echoing in my ears.
In the third row, my mother sat frozen in her chair. Her lips were trembling violently. The private nurse beside her had to hold her down with both hands to keep her from collapsing.
Meanwhile, Silas’s mother, Eleanor, sat perfectly upright. She gracefully lifted her crystal champagne flute and took a delicate sip.
She knew.
She knew exactly what he was going to say.
I gripped my bridal bouquet so tightly that my manicured nails dug right into my palms, sending sharp spikes of pain up my arms.
The whispers began rippling through the banquet hall like a plague.
“The new bride used to be a working girl?”
“No wonder Eleanor refused to give her blessing and dragged this out for seven years.”
“With a face like that, I am honestly not surprised.”
The officiant looked helplessly at the wedding planner, who was shaking her head frantically.
I finally managed to find my voice. My throat felt like it was lined with sandpaper. “Silas, what the hell are you talking about?”
He slowly turned his head to look at me. Raising his hand, he gently wiped away a single tear that had slipped down my cheek.
The gesture was so light, so incredibly tender.
It was like the monster who just spoke those vile words was an entirely different person.
“Nora,” he murmured my name, his thumb tracing my jawline. “Do you really think I would stand at my own wedding and spout nonsense?”
One of his groomsmen whistled loudly from the floor.
My entire body started to shake.
Seven years.
I had been with Silas for seven years.
From our college days to entering the workforce, from squeezing into a tiny rented apartment to moving into his massive estate.
For seven years, he took the drinks meant for me at parties. He sat with me in emergency waiting rooms. He gave me every ounce of romance a girl could ever dream of.
I genuinely thought he loved me.
Now, I was second guessing everything.
It took every ounce of willpower I had just to keep my feet planted on the stage and avoid passing out.
The wedding abruptly ended in absolute chaos.
Guests scurried toward the exits, whispering furiously. I saw dozens of phones raised in the air, recording the fallout.
I could not even begin to fathom the digital bloodbath and harassment waiting for me online.
Silas grabbed my wrist in a vice grip and dragged me all the way to the hotel’s penthouse bridal suite.
The second the heavy doors clicked shut, he let go. He walked straight to the minibar and poured himself a heavy glass of bourbon.
I stood frozen in the entryway, the long train of my white gown pooling on the carpet around me.
“Why?” I asked him. “If you didn’t want to marry me, you could have just walked away. No one forced you to stand there. Why did you publicly ruin me with lies?”
He threw the bourbon back in one gulp.
Turning to look at me, a sudden smile broke across his face.
“Who said I didn’t want to marry you?”
He closed the distance between us step by agonizing step, stopping only when he was mere inches away.
He lowered his head and pressed a bruising kiss against my lips.
“Listen to me very carefully, Nora.”
“Your past, every single guy who ever put his hands on you, every time you opened your legs for cash, I know all of it.”
“But I still put a ring on your finger.”
“Do you know what that means?”
His voice dropped to a dark, obsessive whisper.
“It means I love you, Nora. I love you so damn much that I am willing to claim even the filthiest parts of you.”
My tears spilled over, splashing hotly against the back of his hand.
He seemed incredibly satisfied with my reaction. He pulled me into a suffocating embrace, resting his chin heavily on the top of my head.
“Be a good girl. Stop crying. Now that you are my wife, absolutely no one will ever dare bring up your dirty little secrets again.”
He held me so tight I could barely breathe. The steady thumping of his heartbeat vibrated against my chest.
I closed my eyes in his arms, only one thought screaming through my mind.
Not a single thing he just said was true.
2
I was never a hooker.
But I had stepped foot into that kind of world.
Seven years ago, when I was eighteen, I spent forty seven nights sleeping on the cold linoleum floor of the hematology ward at Harbor City General.
My mother, Helen, had acute leukemia.
The day her diagnosis came in, the lead oncologist pulled me into his office and told me the bone marrow transplant and post op care would cost roughly eight hundred thousand dollars.
Eight hundred thousand.
My father died when I was six. He left behind a leaky roof over our heads and a measly three thousand dollars in a savings account.
I barely scraped through high school on financial aid. My entire life savings consisted of four thousand dollars I earned pulling double shifts at a local coffee shop.
I got down on my knees and begged the local welfare office. I begged the charities. I begged the reviewers on medical crowdfunding websites.
I only managed to raise sixty thousand dollars. A drop in the ocean.
Eventually, someone handed me a business card with an address.
88 Golden Crest Avenue. A high end private club called The Velvet Lounge.
I went.
The madam running the floor took one look at me and asked how old I was.
I told her eighteen.
She tossed me a form fitting dress and dragged me to the door of a VIP room on the third floor.
“Go in there, pour their drinks, smile, and make small talk.” She leaned against the doorframe and lit a cigarette. “You don’t need to do anything else. You are too skinny anyway, none of these guys want a stick figure in their bed. Two thousand bucks a night. Do you want the job or not?”
I took the job.
I was not a hooker. I was a bottle girl.
I poured whiskey, lit cigars, swallowed insults, got forced to drink until I threw up, dodged wandering hands, and endured endless sleazy remarks.
But I never sold my body.
During those forty seven days, I worked thirty nine night shifts at The Velvet Lounge.
There was one night a heavily intoxicated client pinned me against a leather sofa.
I slammed my knee directly into his groin. The floor manager docked my pay for three days.
The manager looked at me with absolute disgust. “If you don’t want to play the game, get out. There is a line of pretty girls around the block begging for this job.”
I did not get out.
Because my mother’s surgery bills had to be paid.
Every night, I clocked out at 2 AM. I walked forty minutes through the sketchy part of town back to the hospital, slept for exactly three hours on a waiting room bench, and woke up at 6 AM to make my mother oatmeal.
I saved up eighty thousand dollars. Combined with the crowdfunding money, it was barely enough to cover the initial surgical deposit.
The day we got the news of a successful bone marrow match, I locked myself in the hospital stairwell and cried hysterically for twenty minutes.
Then I splashed cold water on my face, walked into my mother’s room, and told her the university had granted me a massive scholarship.
Silas met me in that very same hospital corridor.
He was visiting his sick grandfather in the VIP wing. He walked past the hematology ward and saw me curled up into a tight ball, fast asleep on a plastic bench.
He told me later that he stood there and watched me for five whole minutes.
“You were smiling in your sleep,” he had said. “I really wanted to know what you were dreaming about.”
Those were the very first words he ever spoke to me.
Throughout our seven years together, I buried my time at The Velvet Lounge deep in the darkest corner of my mind.
It was not out of guilt. It was because I knew exactly how the real world worked.
If you try to explain that you were just pouring drinks, society will simply nod and say, ‘Sure, so you were a hooker.’
I really thought I had buried it deep enough.
Until last night, the eve of our wedding.
Silas took a call in his study. His voice was hushed, but I was standing right outside the door and heard every word perfectly.
“You saw the files? The ones Daphne sent over?”
“…It is just a few photos. I already knew she used to work in a place like that. I don’t need you reminding me.”
He hung up, pulled open the heavy oak door, and froze when he saw me standing there.
He didn’t explain. He didn’t ask. He just reached out and ruffled my hair.
“Go to bed early.”
In that exact moment, every survival instinct in my body screamed that the wedding tomorrow was going to be a disaster.
But I was too terrified to ask.
For seven years, I was too terrified to breathe a word about The Velvet Lounge.
I was so scared that if I pulled at that loose thread, everything we built would unravel.
And in the end, it unraveled anyway.
It shattered into a million unfixable pieces in front of five hundred people.
3
Even the next morning, my brain was still lost in a dense fog.
Silas practically dragged me to his family’s sprawling estate to perform the post wedding formalities.
His mother, Eleanor, was sitting perfectly poised on a velvet armchair. Standing right beside her was a gorgeous, elegant woman.
I recognized her from photos. Her name was Daphne.
When I knelt on the rug to offer Eleanor her morning coffee as a traditional sign of submission, she completely ignored the cup.
“Stay on your knees.” She slowly twisted the diamond ring on her finger. “If Silas absolutely insists on marrying you, I cannot stop him. But we are setting ground rules right now.”
“First, now that you are in my house, your dirty past is buried. You will not breathe a word of it to anyone. If you cannot keep your own mouth shut, I will shut it for you.”
“Second, Daphne is a girl I watched grow up. She has been Silas’s best friend since childhood. You might be the wife, but do not ever get in her way.”
Get in her way?
The fine china cup in my hands rattled.
Daphne let out a delicate little scoff. “Oh, Eleanor, what are you saying? She is my pure, innocent new friend.”
She dragged out the word ‘pure’, her eyes practically glowing with undisguised malice.
Eleanor patted the back of Daphne’s hand, looking at her with nothing but absolute adoration.
I held that scalding cup of coffee in the air for a full hour. My arms were trembling so violently I thought my shoulders would snap. Finally, Eleanor reached out to take it.
I let out a breath, thinking she was finally going to drink it.
The next second.
A sharp splash.
She threw the burning hot coffee directly into my face.
“Formalities are done. Get out of my sight.”
Walking out of the estate, I sat in the back of Silas’s luxury SUV without uttering a single syllable.
Silas drove with one hand draped casually over the steering wheel, glancing at me through the rearview mirror every few minutes.
“Cat got your tongue?”
I shook my head.
“Are you throwing a tantrum over a little coffee? Honestly, you should be…”
I cut him off softly. “I’m not.”
I was simply processing the realization that it was finally time to pull the plug on this relationship.
That night, I sat wide awake on the edge of the mattress until the sun came up.
Just as the sky began to turn a bruised purple, a violent chill wracked my body, followed instantly by a tidal wave of nausea.
I scrambled off the bed and practically crawled into the master bathroom, gripping the edges of the marble sink as I dry heaved until tears blurred my vision.
After a brutal wave of stomach cramps, I stared blankly into the mirror, a horrifying realization slamming into my brain.
My period was exactly two weeks late.
With shaking hands, I yanked open the bottom drawer of the vanity and dug out an old pregnancy test I had stored away months ago.
Those agonizing minutes of waiting felt like standing on the gallows with a noose around my neck.
The pink dye slowly crept across the window.
One line.
Two lines.
I was pregnant.
But out of all the moments in my life, why did it have to be right now?
Silas suddenly pushed the bathroom door open. His eyes instantly locked onto my right hand before I could hide the plastic stick behind my back.
“You’re pregnant?”
I dug my fingernails into my palms and gave a stiff, mechanical nod. “Yes.”
He slowly crouched down to my level, looking me directly in the eyes for the first time in two days.
“Whose kid is it?”
My entire body flinched. I genuinely thought it was a sick joke. “Yours, obviously. Our baby.”
He stared at me in complete, suffocating silence.
“We are getting a paternity test anyway.”
My heart felt like it completely stopped beating.
“What?”
“We are doing a paternity test. Once there is medical proof it belongs to me, I will claim it.”
I locked myself inside that bathroom and threw up for another hour.
It was not morning sickness.
It was pure, unadulterated disgust.
Three days later, someone violently shoved me from behind while I was walking back from the grocery store. I fell hard against the concrete.
I lost the baby.
The ER doctor told me my body was already incredibly weak, and the massive spike in cortisol from my emotional distress turned the fall into a threatened miscarriage that could not be stopped.
I lay alone in the sterile hospital bed, calling his cell phone.
I dialed twelve times. He ignored every single one.
On the thirteenth attempt, his executive assistant finally answered.
“Mrs. Kensington, the CEO is currently in a high level board meeting. Would you like me to pass along a message?”
Two hours later, the assistant appeared at my hospital room door.
She set a plastic bag on the bedside table. Inside was a generic thermal food container.
“Mr. Kensington asked me to drop this off. He said you need to get plenty of rest.”
I popped the lid off the container. It was cheap takeout, and it was completely cold.
He did not show up to the hospital until 11 PM that night.
He walked through the door, immediately crinkled his nose at the smell of antiseptic, and looked at me.
“It’s gone?”
I nodded.
He sat on the edge of the mattress and stayed silent for a few agonizing seconds.
“Probably for the best. With everything going on right now, it is really not a good time to bring a kid into this.”
He pulled out his phone, scrolled through a few business emails, and then gave my hand a dismissive pat.
“Go to sleep early.”
He walked out.
My phone vibrated on the sheets.
It was a text from my mother.
“Is Silas treating you right? Because if he is hurting you, just…”
I stared at the screen for a long time before typing out a reply.
“Mom, I am doing great. Don’t worry about me.”
Then I shut off my phone and buried my face into the hospital pillow.
4
The day I was discharged.
Silas had booked a private dining room at an upscale hotel, claiming he had to host a dinner for crucial business partners and could not come to pick me up.
I nodded.
It was probably for the best.
I honestly had no idea what kind of mask I was supposed to wear around him anymore.
But the moment I stepped into the empty estate, his assistant called in a panic.
“Mrs. Kensington, Silas had way too much to drink and his cough is acting up horribly. Could you please come check on him?”
Ever since winter started, his bronchitis had been severe, so I always kept a special honey and loquat syrup brewed in the fridge.
I hesitated for a few seconds, but my muscle memory took over. I heated it up, poured it into a thermos, and took a cab to the hotel.
Third floor.
I could hear the raucous laughter echoing down the carpeted hallway before I even reached the door.
Pushing it open, I immediately recognized the faces around the table. Preston, Blake, and Connor.
They were Silas’s closest business associates, and the exact same men who had laughed the loudest from the front row at our wedding.
The second I walked in.
Preston raised his whiskey glass at me. “Look who it is! The missus finally graces us with her presence.”
Blake chimed in with a sleazy grin. “Silas keeps his toys locked up tight. Didn’t want to share his gorgeous wife with the boys.”
The atmosphere seemed casually toxic, exactly what I expected from them.
But I immediately noticed Silas’s expression.
He had a smirk painted on his lips, but his eyes were completely dead and devoid of warmth.
I cleared my throat.
“I just came to drop off Silas’s medicine. I will head out now.”
Connor quickly slid out of his chair and blocked the door.
“Don’t be like that, Nora. You’re already here, you have to stay for a drink.”
“I really can’t. I have things to handle at home.”
I subconsciously gripped the thermos tighter, turning to look pleadingly at Silas sitting at the head of the table.
He finally opened his mouth.
“Sit down. We will go home together when I’m done.”
Trapped, I had no choice but to take a seat at the far end of the table.
After a few more rounds of drinks, Blake pulled out his phone and loudly cleared his throat.
“Silas, I’m in a great mood tonight. I want to show the boys something really special.”
He mirrored his phone screen onto the massive flat screen TV mounted on the wall.
The screen lit up.
It was a video, heavily blurred and pixelated, but it was unmistakably a man and a woman in a hotel bed.
The woman in the footage was pinned down, her muffled but provocative noises filling the room.
Blake pointed an accusing finger at the screen, a vicious smile on his face. “Do any of you recognize the star of the show?”
Preston squinted at the screen. “Too blurry, man. Who is it?”
Blake cut his eyes directly to me, his smirk widening into a predatory grin. “It’s Silas’s wife.”
All the blood in my body violently rushed to my head.
“That is not me.” I shot up from my chair, my voice trembling with rage.
Blake leaned back, draping his arm over his chair. “Oh, come on, Nora. Stop playing innocent. Three years ago at The Velvet Lounge, I was the very first guy to get a taste of you.”
My brain short circuited.
The woman in that video was absolutely not me.
The voice was wrong, the body type was wrong.
But the deepfake blur was so thick you could not prove a damn thing.
Connor practically jumped out of his seat, pulling his own phone out and waving it in the air. “I’ve got a clip too! I bought a night with her a month after you did. Honestly, she was a screamer.”
Preston scoffed loudly. “Give me a break, she was way louder when I had her. That night we—”
“It is not me.” I spoke again, my whole body shaking uncontrollably now.
“The woman in those videos is not me!”
All three men turned to look at me simultaneously, before bursting into a chorus of obnoxious, booming laughter.
Blake slammed his hand on the table. “Nora, you are already married to the guy! What is the point of acting like a virgin now?”
I snapped my head toward Silas.
He was leaning casually against the back of his chair, swirling the amber liquid in his glass, completely silent.
I threw myself across the table, desperately grabbing his forearm. “Silas, look at the videos! Look closely, that is not me! I swear that is not—”
Connor took a swig of his beer and raised an eyebrow. “Hey, let’s settle this right now. Who made the missus scream the loudest?”
The three of them erupted into another fit of disgusting laughter.
The next second, Silas slammed his glass down.
He pulled his own smartphone from his pocket, unlocked it, and pulled up a video file.
No deepfake blur. No pixels.
The footage was sickeningly clear.
It was me.
It was me and him.
A video taken inside our own marriage bed, inside the sanctuary I foolishly believed held the last remaining shreds of his love.
He tossed the phone into the center of the table and leaned back.
“Stop arguing,” he slurred, his voice dripping with arrogant, drunken pride. “She’s loudest with me.”
Preston leaned over the table, his eyes glued to Silas’s screen, and let out a low whistle.
“Damn, Silas wins. That is definitely the loudest.”
Blake raised his glass in a toast. “The undisputed champion. Hats off to you, brother.”
My mind completely blanked out.
I lunged across the wood, frantically clawing at the table to grab his phone.
Silas’s brow furrowed in annoyance. He backhanded me right across the face.
The sheer force sent me crashing over the glass coffee table. Empty liquor bottles shattered in every direction. Jagged shards of glass sliced deep into the palms of my hands.
The private room went dead silent for a split second.
“Are you insane?” He stared down at me with pure disgust.
Blood was steadily dripping from my palms onto the carpet, but the physical pain didn’t even register.
“Delete the video.” I dropped to my knees amidst the broken glass, my voice entirely broken.
“Silas, please. I am begging you. Delete it.”
He leaned down, grabbing my jaw with a grip so tight I felt my cheekbones bruising under his fingers.
“Nora, when you were hooking at The Velvet Lounge, did you beg your clients to delete their videos too?”
He violently twisted my face toward the three men sitting at the table.
“You let them look at you all they want, but suddenly I’m the bad guy? Or is it that you just love showing off for other men, but your own husband isn’t allowed to watch?”
Tears completely blinded my vision.
He let go of my face, picked up his bourbon glass, and went right back to drinking with his friends.
I stayed on my knees on the floor, bleeding from both hands.
The four men in the room carried on laughing and talking business.
Not a single one of them looked down at me.
I honestly have no memory of how I managed to stand up.
I only remember that the hallway outside that room felt like it stretched on for miles.
I walked for what felt like an eternity, finally pushing open the heavy glass doors of the hotel lobby. It was pouring rain outside.
The bitter November rain chilled me down to the marrow of my bones.
I stood completely still in the torrential downpour, digging my phone out of my soaked coat pocket.
The screen lit up, illuminating Silas’s profile picture. The very last message in our chat history was from the night before the wedding.
“What are you doing? I miss you.”
Staring at those words, a hollow, bitter laugh escaped my lips. It was all just so utterly pathetic.
I powered down the phone. I tilted my head up, letting the freezing rain wash the blood and tears completely off my face.
Seven years. That was more than enough.
It was time for Nora to leave.
🌟 Continue the story here
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The female lead came to confront me: “Using a baby to trap Carter is truly shameless!”
The next second, catching a glimpse of Carter appearing in the doorway, I rolled my eyes and fainted on the spot.
01
I transmigrated into a book.
The female lead of this romance novel is Serena Brooks, and the male lead is Ethan Vance.
The main antagonist, the second male lead, is Carter Hayes, Serena’s childhood friend.
Serena and Carter both grew up in difficult circumstances and supported each other through their tough childhoods.
Carter always kept that warmth close to his heart.
Later, Carter went out of state to make his fortune and achieved great success.
When he returned, Serena had already been swept off her feet by a domineering billionaire CEO.
Consumed by jealousy, Carter began stirring up trouble for the constantly tearful female lead.
Simply put, it’s a classic “childhood friend loses to the newly arrived billionaire” trope.
I was pretty annoyed when I read it. I mean, you’re the female lead, you’ve already chosen the billionaire, so why do you keep crying to the second male lead?
Even if you don’t have other friends to confide in, you know he’s in love with you, right?
How do you think the male lead feels seeing you resting your head on Carter’s shoulder?
And Carter, that idiot, actually strokes her hair affectionately!
It’s like they’re trying to give the male lead an aneurysm.
Alright, somehow, inexplicably, I’ve transmigrated into this mess.
And of all people, I’m the plot device wedged between Carter and Serena.
Well, since I’m here and have no intention of going back, I might as well cause some chaos.
I checked myself out in the mirror.
I have to admit, it’s pretty impressive.
My character, Chloe Sterling, is hot. Like, seriously gorgeous!
“Carter, this is my boyfriend, Ethan.”
The delicate and charming Serena hooked her arm through the male lead’s, smiling sweetly like a summer peach.
Seeing Carter’s face turn as dark as the bottom of a scorched pan, I smoothly sidled up next to him.
According to the plot, this is where he’s supposed to pull me close.
And declare that I’m his girlfriend.
Sure enough, a strong arm wrapped around my waist. I looked up shyly.
Holy crap!
He’s so handsome.
“Yes, I’m his girlfriend.”
Whoops, spoke too soon…
02
Thankfully, Carter was a bit tipsy and just spaced out for a second without minding my eagerness.
Serena’s expression instantly fell.
Look at her, this is exactly what she does!
If you don’t want to be with someone else, then you should be smiling!
Wearing that disappointed look right in front of Carter makes him think you still have feelings for him!
I quickly blocked Carter’s view and grabbed his hand.
“Honey, look at them holding hands so tightly. They’re so in love.”
Carter’s gaze drifted down, and his face grew even darker.
Darker than a stormy night.
“You’ve had too much to drink. Let me help you back so we can get to bed early… er, get some rest.”
I half-dragged, half-pulled Carter away, completely ignoring Serena’s scrutinizing stare.
A big bed, a handsome guy, and a drunk handsome guy at that.
Just as the mood was getting perfect, Carter’s phone rang.
Knowing the plot, I knew exactly who it was: Serena calling to ruin my night.
He groggily reached for his phone.
Yoink. I grabbed it, turned it off, and tossed it on the floor.
What a wonderful night~
03
The moment I opened my eyes the next morning, I saw Carter looking like he had been severely wronged.
“You…”
“Waaaahhh.”
I beat him to the punch and started fake-crying.
Because I knew he couldn’t stand seeing a woman cry.
He looked intimidating on the outside, but was a total softie on the inside.
Otherwise, how could he keep falling for Serena’s tears over and over again?
A tissue was thrust in front of my face.
“I can take responsibility for what happened, but I need to be clear with you.”
“I already have someone I love in my heart.”
Duh, tell me something I don’t know.
And just like that, I officially became Carter’s shadow.
At first, he was very annoyed and always told me to go do my own thing.
Nonsense. I transmigrated here for entertainment.
I had zero interest in that iceberg male lead who blew hot and cold.
“I’m already yours.”
“I’ll miss you today, miss you tomorrow, and miss you the day after tomorrow.”
“I don’t care what you do, as long as I can be with you, that’s enough.”
“I’m willing to wait for you forever, even if you’re waiting for someone else.”
“Also, my family is super rich, so I don’t even need to go to work.”
After that barrage of sweet talk, Carter went silent.
Silence = consent.
Yep, I deliberately ignored the way he looked at me like I was an alien.
Slowly, Carter got used to having me around.
Even though he rarely spoke to me.
Even though he often stared blankly at pictures of Serena on his phone.
Even though he often got furious looking at pictures of Ethan.
But the end result was always the same: getting drunk and getting pushed down by me.
“Serena, what’s wrong?!”
A ringing phone in the middle of the night woke me up.
My bad, I forgot to turn his phone off this time.
04
“Stay put at Mirror Lake, I’m coming right now.”
Carter swiftly rolled out of bed and vanished out the door.
Even Usain Bolt would applaud that speed.
I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little disappointed.
I dialed Ethan’s number.
“Who is this?”
“Ethan Vance, are you even a man?”
“Why are you bullying my bestie, Serena?”
“The first person Serena looks for when she’s heartbroken is Carter.”
“Do you know how dangerous it is for a girl to be alone at Mirror Lake in the middle of the night?”
“In her heart, the way you treat her doesn’t even compare to Carter.”
“Reflect on your actions!”
I let out a long breath.
A while later, I heard arguing at the front door.
I threw on Carter’s jacket and walked out barefoot.
“Serena! Didn’t I tell you I don’t want you seeing Carter alone?”
“What gives you the right to yell at Serena! You only ever hurt her!”
“Do you know how hard Serena was crying?”
Serena stood between them, her eyes red.
“Ethan, hearts aren’t made of stone.”
“You keep hurting Serena, are you sure she’ll keep loving you?”
I stood up for her with a serious face of righteous indignation.
Serena’s expression changed instantly.
Furious, Ethan grabbed Serena and planted a passionate kiss on her.
Serena went weak in the knees.
She obediently let him lead her to his car by the hand.
“Serena, Serena…”
“Didn’t you say he treats you badly?”
“Didn’t you say… I’m the only one who makes you feel safe?”
Ethan’s footsteps paused for a second.
He threw her hand off and got into the car.
Serena threw back one last sentence:
“I was just too heartbroken. I… I love Ethan.”
“I’m sorry.”
And hurriedly got into the car.
Wow~
Crash~
Whose heart just shattered?
05
Carter locked himself in his room for two days without coming out.
I get it, heartbreak doesn’t heal overnight.
I lay on the couch, hugging a bag of potato chips, with a boba tea in my other hand.
Gotta be full and energized to heal his wounds, right?
On the third day, I made my move.
If he starved himself any longer, his nice body would waste away.
I rolled up my sleeves and got to work in the kitchen.
A huge plate of fragrant sweet and sour ribs, glossy and aromatic.
I also scooped a bowl of white rice.
I knew sweet and sour ribs were the second male lead’s favorite.
It was the only dish the female lead ever made for him when they were kids.
I pushed open the door and saw someone who wasn’t wearing any clothes.
“Blegh—”
06
The sadness that had been plastered on Carter’s face for days finally cracked.
“Chloe Sterling, what is your problem! You—”
His yelling stopped abruptly when he saw the food in my hands.
I blinked my innocent, big eyes.
“Carter, take me to the hospital, please.”
Once I saw the positive pregnancy test, my heart settled.
Man, I’m good.
I’m very pragmatic; no time to lose, things change too fast.
Having a baby makes everything much more secure.
I knew Carter loved kids.
In the original plot, his biggest wish was to build a warm family with Serena.
To have children that belonged to both of them.
After confirming my pregnancy, Carter changed.
He changed in a way that scared me a little.
Sometimes I’d wake up in the middle of the night to find him sitting in the living room, wide awake.
Looking weighed down by heavy thoughts.
Sometimes I’d catch him staring at my belly, careful but lost.
I don’t know if it was the pregnancy hormones, but I suddenly started feeling a little insecure.
Well, just a little bit.
A few days later, Carter brought a strange older woman home.
07
The woman’s name was Mary, and she seemed very warm and friendly.
Carter just briefly explained that she was his godmother, here to take care of me.
He told me to call her godmother too, saying we were all family now.
When Carter said we were all family, my heart suddenly fluttered.
Family.
When Carter went to work, Godmother managed all the cooking and cleaning around the house.
Well, mostly she supervised the hired help to make sure they did a good job.
She also often chatted with me about everyday things.
To be honest, I was very curious about her.
Because I didn’t remember this character existing in the original novel.
Or maybe her appearances were too brief for me to remember.
It seems my meddling since arriving here has caused a butterfly effect.
Could I change the ending?
“Chloe, I just love girls who are as decisive and straightforward as you.”
Godmother looked at me, smiling like a sunflower.
“When Carter came to see me, I guessed right away there was good news.”
“He hasn’t smiled like that in ten years.”
Uhh—
Isn’t that a line usually reserved for the female lead?
08
Lately, because of morning sickness, my temper has been a bit volatile.
My cravings got weird, and my mood swung wildly.
Godmother kept treating me like a spoiled child, indulging me in everything.
Whenever I nagged Carter, she always took my side.
Seeing his helpless expression, too afraid to provoke me, I felt an inexplicable sense of joy.
What if it’s not that he didn’t dare, but that he couldn’t bear to?
Just as I was throwing another tantrum at Carter, he finally lost his patience.
“Chloe, don’t push it!”
I felt a wave of grievance and burst into loud sobs.
Godmother rushed over in a panic.
“Oh my, Carter, why are you upsetting our Chloe again?”
“Our Chloe is beautiful, obedient, and devoted to you.”
“You couldn’t find someone like her if you searched the whole world with a lantern.”
“Look how haggard Chloe has gotten lately, all for your baby.”
“Whatever she wants, just give it to her. If she scolds you, just take it—”
I curled up in Godmother’s arms, making a lot of noise but shedding very few tears.
Carter frustratingly punched a throw pillow.
He interrupted Godmother’s scolding.
“Godmother!”
“She insists on eating an airplane meal in the middle of the night! Where am I supposed to find that for her?!”
His voice trembled with a hint of grievance.
09
The room went silent for a moment.
I also sniffled, feeling a little embarrassed.
Godmother looked at me.
“Chloe, do you really want to eat it? Think carefully, think very carefully.”
I thought seriously for a whole minute.
“Godmother, I really want it. I crave it so much.”
Godmother and I locked eyes on Carter.
An hour later, a still-warm airline meal was placed in front of me.
Carter stood before me, his awkward expression resembling a child craving praise.
So cute.
“Carter, you’re amazing, love you!”
I didn’t hold back on the praise.
I’ve got a basket full of free sweet talk.
A blush crept onto his cheeks, and he gave a feigned impatient “Mhm.”
I scooped a spoonful and put it in my mouth.
Carter watched my reaction with hopeful eyes.
“Blegh—”
“It’s gross. Take it away, I want to sleep.”
The air fell silent once again.
“Chloe Sterling!”
I thought life would just continue peacefully like this.
Until the frantic ringing of the doorbell shattered the quiet.
10
The ghost that wouldn’t leave, Serena, had arrived.
With tears brimming in her eyes.
“Carter, I—”
Mid-sentence, Serena looked at me awkwardly.
Oh, so there are secrets I’m not allowed to hear.
Well, I’m not leaving. Carry me out if you can.
I pretended not to see Carter signaling me to leave, stuffing my mouth with the healthy snacks Godmother made.
“Cough, Serena, it’s fine, go ahead. Are you in some kind of trouble?”
Duh, obviously. What other use is the second male lead for?
“Carter, I’m doomed this time…”
It turned out she volunteered to take charge of a very important project at Ethan’s company.
Lacking professional competence, she even publicly insulted the clients for being arrogant and overly demanding.
As a result, she blew it.
Serena didn’t want Ethan to find out, so she hinted that Carter should hand over a major project from his own company to her to cover her mistake.
Wow, so shameless.
Is this the independent, strong female lead?
“This—”
Even Carter hesitated.
Thank goodness he still had a brain; this wasn’t a small favor.
Such a major project, and with a long-term, important client.
If he transferred it to a rival company like it was child’s play, not only would his company suffer a massive financial blow, but he would also lose all respect in the business world and among his partners.
In the original plot, Carter agreed to this favor, which later led him to walk down a dark path out of desperation to rebuild his empire.
“Carter, it’s okay. It’s my fault anyway.”
“But in my heart, you’re the only person in this world I can truly rely on.”
“It was true when we were kids, and it’s true now.”
After that, Serena’s tears began to fall.
It was truly a pitiful sight.
Sure enough, someone couldn’t hold back.
“Serena, don’t cry, I’ll just—”
“Hold on!”
This idiot!
They both looked at me simultaneously.
Serena’s eyes were full of resentment.
“Carter, even if you don’t think about yourself, shouldn’t you consider our baby?”
11
“What?”
Serena looked at my belly in shock.
Then frantically turned to Carter.
“Carter, you, you two already have a child?”
Carter’s expression softened.
“Yeah, Godmother said it’s better to wait until the pregnancy is more stable before telling others, so…”
“Others… Carter, have I become ‘others’ to you?”
“Serena, that’s not what I meant. I was just worried—”
“Exactly, he was just too worried about me. Please don’t blame him, Serena.”
I smiled radiantly.
“Uh, congratulations, Carter. So, when are you transferring that project to me?”
She’s still not giving up!
I stared at Carter, feeling a sense of defeat.
If he insisted on agreeing, there wasn’t really much I could do.
“You were so good to me in the past, actually, I don’t really care about this company.”
A smile appeared in Serena’s eyes.
“But now that I have my own child, I think I need to be responsible for them.”
“I don’t want them to have an irresponsible father like mine was.”
Carter’s voice grew dim.
A slight pang hit my heart.
“So, I might need to think about it.”
“I’m sorry, Serena. Let me try to find another way to help you, okay?”
12
Serena’s face looked terrible.
This was probably the first time Carter had ever refused to help her.
I could even sense panic in her.
Panic that she was no longer this man’s sole emotional anchor.
He had a child, a blood connection, a family now.
“Serena, how about I have my driver take you home first?”
“Carter has to take me to my prenatal checkup soon, we’re almost late.”
Perhaps my overly joyful smile stung her, but Serena ignored my enthusiasm, grabbed her bag, and walked out.
Oh, she’s mad. Giving the silent treatment.
“Hey, Serena—”
I blocked Carter, who was about to chase after her, feeling frustrated by his weakness.
“Are you stupid? What good does chasing after her do now?”
“Do you want to ruin the company? Do you want our child to suffer in poverty?”
“If you’re not ready to be a father, I’ll go right now and… get an abortion!”
“Chloe Sterling, don’t you dare! Do you believe I’ll—”
Carter raised his arm in exasperation.
I stuck my belly out, looking utterly defiant.
He eventually gave up and rolled his eyes at me.
“If I still had my old temper, I would have—”
Carter muttered as he got into the car.
“What did you say, you jerk?”
“Get in the car!”
Hmph, thought I couldn’t handle you.
Seeing Carter’s company project finally secured, my heart felt a bit more at ease.
Hopefully, nothing else will…
“Chloe, let’s go out for afternoon tea.”
The woman’s voice on the other end of the phone sounded very gentle.
🌟 Continue the story here
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🔍 search for “440336”, and watch the full series ✨!
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A severely depressed student sent me a suicide note late at night. I rushed to the school rooftop and pulled him back from the gates of hell.
The very next day, his mother reported me to the school district, accusing me of psychological manipulation and grooming her son.
I did not argue with her. I silently accepted the school’s decision to suspend me pending an investigation.
Turning around, she brought a reporter to the school gates, holding up a massive banner: “Give My Child Back His Mental Health! Severely Punish the Corrupt Teacher Valerie Pierce!”
On Thanksgiving Eve, her son stood on that same rooftop once again. He specifically asked to see me.
She called my phone frantically, her voice bordering on madness. I replied with absolute calm.
“My suspension is specifically to prevent me from causing him further harm. Therefore, I cannot be there. Going would be a violation of district orders. You will just have to wait for the fire department to rescue him.”
…
Late Friday night, I had just finished grading the last batch of weekly journals and was getting ready for bed.
My phone buzzed. It was a message from my student, Noah.
“Ms. Pierce, I finally figured it out. Thank you for everything.”
Beneath the text was a photo.
It showed the very edge of the high school’s rooftop. Two feet dangled over the abyss, framed by the glittering city lights far below.
A spike of pure ice shot up my spine, freezing the blood in my veins.
I dialed his number instantly. The receiver only fed me a cold, mechanical busy signal.
Without a second of hesitation, I grabbed my car keys off the sofa and sprinted downstairs.
Throwing myself into the driver’s seat, I started the engine and used the car’s Bluetooth to dial 911.
“Crestview High School, the main building rooftop. A seventeen year old student named Noah Collins is attempting to jump.”
My voice sounded terrifyingly calm. There was not a single tremor in it.
The car shot forward like an arrow released from a bow. I blew through red lights, completely ignoring the traffic signals.
My foot was practically glued to the gas pedal while my brain rapidly cycled through every psychological intervention technique I knew.
Do not agitate him. Do not shout. Show empathy. Make him feel profoundly understood.
A fifteen minute drive took me exactly seven.
I sprinted up the stairwell and pushed open the heavy iron door leading to the roof.
Noah was sitting on the ledge, his back to the entrance. His thin school uniform billowed in the night wind, making him look like a fragile kite about to snap off its string.
I stopped walking. I did not call out his name.
About thirty feet behind him, I quietly sat down on the concrete.
“When birds grow weary of the sky, do they long to plunge into the deep sea to see the coral and the whales?”
I spoke softly, reciting a line of poetry from the journal entry he had submitted the week prior.
His shoulders gave a violent, almost imperceptible flinch.
I kept my voice steady. “The feedback I wrote on your paper was that your words are like frost on a windowpane. They can bite and sting the heart. But when that frost melts, it becomes the water that nourishes the earth.”
“Noah, your words hold immense power. It is a power that can heal others, but more importantly, it can heal you.”
“You are a born writer. Your story is only in its opening chapters. You should not put a period here.”
I did not mention his parents. I did not lecture him. I simply sat there in the quiet night, talking about his writing and the beautiful imagery in his poetry.
The wind was biting, making my teeth chatter, but I kept my posture perfectly straight.
An hour later, shivering uncontrollably, he slowly climbed back over the railing. His legs gave out, and he collapsed onto the safety of the concrete floor.
Just as I was about to let out a breath of relief, the heavy roof door burst open with a deafening crash.
His mother, Brenda, rushed in alongside several police officers.
“Noah! My baby!”
Brenda threw herself at the trembling boy, her wails echoing across the rooftop.
She held him and cried for a few minutes before suddenly turning around. She practically threw herself at my feet, ready to drop to her knees.
I reacted quickly, catching her arms to hold her up.
“Ms. Pierce! You are a literal angel sent from heaven to save my boy!”
She gripped my hands with a vice like strength, her face a mess of tears and snot.
“If it were not for you, my son would be gone! You saved his life. You have been giving him free tutoring since his freshman year! You have poured so much of your heart into him!”
The police officers and school security guards watched the exchange in silence.
“Ms. Pierce, I have two thousand dollars right here. You have to take it! You deserve this!”
She pulled a thick envelope of cash from her designer purse and tried to shove it into my coat pocket.
I firmly pushed her hand back.
“Brenda, please, there is no need for this. I am his teacher. This is my job.”
I looked her in the eyes, my tone turning serious. “Money will not fix the root of the problem. Noah’s mental state requires far more attention from you as his parents.”
I helped her steady herself. Later that night, I compiled a comprehensive list of adolescent psychological intervention resources and the contact information for several professional counseling centers, sending them directly to her phone.
2
On Monday, I was giving a masterclass in the grand lecture hall.
The tiered seats were packed with students and faculty members observing my teaching methods.
I was dissecting a classic piece of Victorian literature, reading a famous line about a tree planted in memory of a deceased wife. I was so immersed in the emotional weight of the text that my own voice grew slightly thick.
The heavy oak doors at the back of the hall suddenly swung open. The principal walked in, accompanied by two men in sharp, official looking suits.
Every single pair of eyes in the room darted toward them.
My heart instantly sank.
One of the men, possessing a stern, square jawline, walked straight down the aisle to my podium. He completely interrupted my lesson in front of hundreds of students and dozens of my peers.
“Are you Ms. Valerie Pierce?”
I offered a slow nod.
“We are from the District Board of Education’s Disciplinary Committee. We have received a formal, named complaint against you. We need you to halt your teaching duties immediately and accompany us to the office for an investigation.”
He did not shout, but in the dead silence of that lecture hall, his words hit like a bomb.
A tidal wave of whispers erupted among the students.
The other teachers exchanged shocked, suspicious glances, their eyes scanning me with deep scrutiny.
I was escorted out of the room with a man on either side of me. A suffocating wave of humiliation washed over me.
When they pushed open the door to the principal’s office, I froze. Brenda was sitting on the leather sofa.
Seeing me, her eyes darted away, entirely avoiding my gaze.
Sitting next to her was a scruffy man with a DSLR camera around his neck. He introduced himself as a reporter for the City Chronicle.
Before I could even speak, Brenda stood up. Right in front of the district officials, she pressed play on her phone.
An audio recording filled the room.
It was my voice, sounding incredibly harsh. “Noah! If you keep giving up on yourself like this, your entire life is going to be ruined!”
That was the entirety of the clip. Stripped of all context, heavily spliced, it sounded suffocatingly aggressive.
Brenda instantly snapped into her role as a heartbroken, devastated mother. She sobbed directly at the district officials.
“Do you hear that? This is how she has been verbally abusing my son for months!”
“She tells everyone my boy is a genius, but behind closed doors, she tears him down! She is grooming him! She is completely gaslighting my child!”
“How old is my son? She is a woman in her twenties, spending hours alone with him every day, talking about literature, talking about life, calling him her soulmate! It is blatantly obvious she is fostering an inappropriate, romantic teacher student attachment!”
“She wants to isolate him so he becomes completely dependent on her. All so she can eventually extort us for astronomical private tutoring fees!”
The fake reporter’s camera flashed aggressively in my face, the harsh light blinding me.
Brenda slammed a stack of printed bank statements onto the coffee table, followed by a highly questionable psychiatric diagnosis report.
“Here are the wire transfers she forced me to send for her ‘tutoring’! And here is the medical proof! My son has been diagnosed with severe clinical depression because of her psychological abuse!”
“I am demanding that the school and the district compensate us for his medical bills and emotional distress. I want fifty thousand dollars!”
The blood rushed to my head, leaving my vision speckled with black spots.
Those bank transfers were just reimbursements. I had asked her to send me money so I could buy Noah specific study guides. She had deliberately photoshopped out the transaction memos.
And the accusation of fostering a romantic attachment was an absolutely sickening, baseless lie.
Standing in front of all of them, I was so furious my vocal cords locked up. My body swayed slightly.
The principal let out a heavy sigh and delivered the verdict. “Ms. Pierce, per district protocol, you are suspended pending further review. Please hand over your office keys and your ID badge, and head home.”
I walked out of the building feeling like an empty shell.
But a far more explosive scene was waiting for me at the front gates.
Brenda had taken her hired reporter to the main entrance. They had strung up a massive, blindingly white banner across the wrought iron gates.
Bold black letters screamed out: “Give My Child Back His Mental Health! Severely Punish the Corrupt Teacher Valerie Pierce!”
She was performing for the camera, weeping hysterically as she listed my supposed crimes.
My phone vibrated violently. Richard Blackwood, the president of the Parent Teacher Association, had already posted photos and videos of the scene in the massive parent group chat.
“Look at this, everyone! This woman is a ticking time bomb around our kids! A teacher with zero moral compass needs to be blacklisted from the industry forever!”
“I propose we draft a joint petition demanding the school board give us a formal explanation!”
“Exactly! This is terrifying. To think we actually respected her before this.”
“You really can never know a person’s true colors. Who knows what sick agenda she actually had. It makes my skin crawl.”
I stood on the opposite side of the street, staring at that blinding banner and Brenda’s theatrical, disgusting performance.
My phone completely froze under the sheer volume of abusive text messages pouring in.
With a totally blank expression, I raised my phone, aimed the lens at the absurd circus in front of me, and pressed the shutter.
3
I was officially suspended.
The first thing I did when I got home was unplug my router and shut off my cellular data, but the harassment found ways to seep through.
Richard Blackwood had leaked my home address and personal cell phone number to a group chat filled with hundreds of angry parents.
“This is where the witch lives. If anyone has grievances to air out, feel free to drop by and have a chat with her.”
From that day on, my phone rang non stop with unknown numbers. Every time I answered, I was met with vile, explosive curses.
“Why don’t you do the world a favor and drop dead? You call yourself an educator? You are trash!”
“I heard you groom little boys. You are absolutely disgusting!”
My front porch became a dumping ground for rotting vegetables and foul smelling garbage.
The final straw was the morning I tried to leave my apartment, only to find the keyhole of my front door completely filled with industrial superglue.
I did not shed a single tear. I did not call the police.
Calling the cops would only attract a crowd and give them another opportunity to humiliate me.
I quietly called a locksmith to replace the hardware. Then, I went online and ordered several discreet pinhole cameras, installing them above my door frame and inside the peephole.
I was going to capture every single one of their ugly faces on high definition video, frame by frame.
I forced myself to eat three meals a day. I forced myself to sleep on a strict schedule.
Then, I sat down at my laptop and began systematically organizing the arsenal of evidence that would burn their lies to the ground.
That heavily edited audio clip was the linchpin.
I contacted an old friend of mine, an absolute wizard in cyber security, who had helped set up the camera system in my tutoring classroom years ago.
Under immense pressure and taking a massive personal risk, he stayed up all night pulling the raw, unedited cache data from the deepest layers of the cloud servers. He managed to recover the original, untouched two hour recording of that tutoring session.
Once I had the raw file, I did not hand it off to anyone else.
I taught myself how to use professional audio forensic software. Wearing noise canceling headphones, I listened to the track on a loop, manually generating crystal clear soundwave spectrograms.
Using bright red digital markers, I pinpointed the exact timestamps where Brenda had spliced, cut, and stitched the audio together to change the context.
I spent sleepless nights reading through legal precedents and civil codes. I interviewed three different attorneys before hiring Arthur Kingsley, a man infamous in legal circles for his ruthless, surgical precision in the courtroom.
Next was Brenda’s forged psychiatric report. It was stamped by a so called Mental Wellness Center I had never heard of.
I drove over two hundred miles to find the dilapidated, sketchy clinic hidden in a rundown suburban strip mall.
Posing as a highly anxious mother, I engaged the staff. Through careful questioning and hidden audio recordings, I obtained hard proof that the man who signed Noah’s diagnosis, a certain Dr. Higgins, did not even hold a valid medical license.
The night before my scheduled hearing with the district board’s investigative committee, I did not sleep.
I stood in front of my bathroom mirror, endlessly rehearsing my statement.
I needed to ensure every single word I used was precise, icy, and entirely stripped of personal emotion.
The next morning, facing a panel consisting of the principal and high ranking district officials, I did not cry. I did not beg for my job back.
I simply placed a silver USB drive in the center of the polished conference table.
“Ladies and gentlemen, everything I need to say is on this drive.”
The flash drive contained four meticulously organized folders.
Folder One held the unedited, two hour audio recording alongside my forensic soundwave analysis.
Folder Two contained two weeks’ worth of high definition security footage showing the vandalism, the harassment, and the superglue being injected into my locks.
Folder Three contained the undercover recordings from the fake clinic and a comprehensive background check on the unlicensed doctor.
Folder Four contained every single text message Brenda and I had exchanged over the past two years, including her constant begging for extra tutoring sessions and her endless paragraphs praising my dedication.
My presentation did not sound like a victim pleading for justice. It sounded like a brilliant academic defending a flawless thesis.
This time, I was going to make sure they paid the absolute maximum price for their cruelty.
4
It was Thanksgiving Eve, a night meant for family and warmth.
I was sitting alone in my apartment, running through the legal strategies Arthur Kingsley had outlined for me.
In the parent group chat, Brenda was currently showing off. She proudly announced she had hired a gold medal tutor with a Harvard degree for Noah, costing nearly three hundred dollars an hour.
She posted a photo of a very expensive looking contract, the caption dripping with smug arrogance.
“This is what real professionals look like. So much better than those lazy public school teachers who just coast by!”
Richard Blackwood immediately chimed in to stroke her ego. “Brilliant move, Brenda! You can never put a price tag on a child’s education. It is best to cut out the cancer early and keep certain toxic influences away from him!”
I stared at the screen with absolute apathy and hit the button to leave the group chat forever.
Suddenly, an unknown local number lit up my phone screen.
My pulse spiked. I swiped to answer and simultaneously hit the screen record button.
Brenda’s ear piercing scream echoed through the speaker.
“Valerie! You vicious bitch! You have completely ruined my son!”
“Noah is back on the roof! He says he does not trust anyone else in the world, he only trusts you! You need to get over here right now!”
In the background, I could hear the howling wind and the distorted, booming voices of police officers using bullhorns.
I could even clearly hear Richard Blackwood standing right next to her, spewing his toxic advice.
“Make her come! Tell her to get her ass over here right now! When she gets here, make her kneel down and apologize to the kid! Maybe if he sees her beg, he will soften up and come down!”
Brenda’s tone instantly shifted from rabid cursing to demanding, desperate pleas.
“Ms. Pierce. No, Saint Pierce! I am begging you, please come here!”
“If you come right now, I will drop the complaint with the district tomorrow morning! I won’t even ask for the fifty thousand dollars! I will drop it all!”
My heart was physically aching in my chest.
The image of Noah’s pale, hopeless face violently clashed with the grotesque, twisted expressions of Brenda and Richard in my mind. The conflict was tearing me apart.
The raw, human instinct to save a life was at war with my dignity, which they had trampled into the mud. I could barely breathe.
I walked over to the window and pulled back the curtains.
In the distance, atop the tallest high rise in the downtown skyline, I could see the frantic, flashing red and blue lights of police cruisers.
That was where he was.
I took a deep, shuddering breath. When I finally spoke, my voice was so calm it bordered on absolute cruelty.
I articulated every single word with lethal precision.
“Hello, Mrs. Collins.”
“First of all, according to the joint petition drafted by you and PTA President Richard Blackwood, signed by dozens of parents and submitted to the school board… I, Valerie Pierce, am a dangerous individual with severe moral failings, actively engaged in the psychological manipulation and grooming of your son.”
“My current suspension is a direct mandate from my superiors designed specifically to ‘protect the student’ and prevent me from causing any further harm to Noah.”
“Therefore, I cannot be there.”
“If I show up, I am defying an official district order. I am breaking the rules. And I am placing the child you claim I have ‘severely damaged’ into an even more dangerous situation.”
“That would be irresponsible to the boy, and incredibly irresponsible to you and the rest of the concerned parents.”
“You will just have to wait for the fire department to rescue him.”
🌟 Continue the story here
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On the day we broke up, I deliberately poked right at his deepest wound.
“Every time I look at those hands, it makes me sick to my stomach.”
Years later, he became my father’s attending physician.
Before discussing the medical chart, he looked at me with chilling indifference and asked:
“Ms. Davis, my hands won’t cause you any physiological discomfort, will they?”
01
Yesterday, a friend called and told me there might be hope for my dad’s condition.
Their hospital had just hired a Dr. Sterling, who recently returned from studying abroad. His exact area of research was my dad’s rare disease.
But I never in a million years expected Dr. Sterling to be Liam Sterling.
“Dr. Sterling is so handsome! If his hands hadn’t been burned, he’d be absolutely perfect.”
“I heard from Dr. Miller that his ex-girlfriend caused it. And the worst part? She dumped him because of the scars.”
“Ew, seriously? That’s so disgusting.”
Passing by the nurse’s station, I overheard several nurses gossiping while prepping IV bags.
My footsteps faltered for a second, but I kept walking down the hall.
With every step closer to that office door, my heart beat faster and faster. Thump, thump, thump.
When my hand finally rested on the doorknob, I couldn’t stop trembling.
But the moment I saw that familiar silhouette, everything went completely quiet.
The man in the white coat heard the door open, stopped writing, and looked up.
When our eyes met, my heart stopped.
My entire body went rigid.
Honestly, I had already mentally prepared myself for Liam’s mockery and scorn.
Because—
I was that disgusting, vile ex-girlfriend.
02
But as long as he could give my dad a fighting chance, I was willing to endure anything.
In a fraction of a second, the man withdrew his gaze.
“You must be Robert Davis’s family member. Have a seat.”
His voice was freezing cold and completely detached.
I remembered when I first had a crush on him, he always wore this same unapproachable, distant expression.
He tipped his chin toward the chair across from him, and then…
He looked back down and continued writing his notes.
Was he—
Pretending not to recognize me?
The thought flashed through my mind, but I instantly dismissed it.
How could he pretend to be so calm facing someone he despised?
He was a proud, arrogant guy. Back when I was relentlessly pursuing him, if he got annoyed, he would just turn and walk away without sparing me a single word.
But thinking about it logically, it made sense.
I was wearing a surgical mask and had bangs now.
And so many years had passed.
—He probably genuinely didn’t recognize me.
The heavy stone hanging in my chest finally dropped.
Sitting across from him, my eyes involuntarily drifted to those shocking, disfigured hands.
The raised, hypertrophic burn scars stood out violently against his otherwise pale skin.
My heart squeezed.
The agonizing pain I had buried deep inside me flared up again.
Years ago, a girl in our chemistry lab group made a reckless operational error that triggered a flash fire. Instantly, flames shot across the bench.
Liam happened to be standing right next to me.
With terrifyingly fast reflexes, he shielded my face with his hands.
In the fraction of a second his hands caught the fire, massive patches of skin blistered into horrifying, raw red flesh. It was gruesome.
Crying, I asked him why he did it.
He looked down, gently wiping my tears away, his eyes completely sincere.
“Because it was you. I’d do it a thousand times.”
Those scars made me absolutely certain Liam was the one.
Which is exactly why, on the day I broke up with him, I used those very scars to end it.
The vicious words were still ringing in my ears.
“Do you know… every time I look at those hands, it makes me sick to my stomach.”
“I can’t stand looking at them for another second.”
He probably hated my guts.
The scars he took for me were rewarded with that vile, ungrateful face.
…
“Ms. Davis?”
I didn’t realize when Liam had looked up, but his gaze was now locked firmly onto my face.
“Yes, I’m here.”
He raised an eyebrow thoughtfully, noticing exactly where my eyes had been glued.
“My hands won’t cause you any physiological discomfort, will they?”
03
I shook my head awkwardly.
“No.”
How could they?
They only looked like that because he saved me.
I loved them and ached for them. How could they ever make me feel sick?
His lips curled up slightly, and he patiently explained:
“That’s good.
“Everyone’s physical tolerance is different, so I had to ask beforehand.
“Have the complete blood count and bone marrow biopsies been done?”
“Yes, they’re done.”
“When was his last blood transfusion?”
“Two months ago.”
“What is your relationship with Jackson Smith?”
Jackson was the mutual friend who had referred me to Liam.
But what did that have to do with my dad’s medical condition?
The answer died on my lips. I couldn’t help but look at him suspiciously.
“Is that… medically relevant?”
He gave me a calm, flat look.
“Of course. It’s hospital policy.”
He was the doctor. I was the patient’s family.
Naturally, whatever he asked, I had to answer.
“We went to college together.”
Those pitch-black eyes suddenly locked onto me, scrutinizing, analyzing, as if trying to decipher something hidden.
Before I could say anything else, he pulled out the medical files, instantly switching back to a strictly professional demeanor, and began explaining the treatment plan.
A few minutes later, the office door suddenly opened.
“Liam, what do you want for lunch?”
04
Behind that sweet, soft voice was an incredibly agreeable, soft-featured face.
I barely even had to process it. I recognized her instantly.
It was Emily Miller!
She was the exact girl who caused the lab explosion.
Luckily for her, she had been standing slightly further back and wasn’t badly hurt.
What a ridiculously small world.
She stared at me, too.
Slowly, the smile on her face began to slip.
A deep, magnetic voice instantly interrupted before Emily could blurt out my name.
“Whatever you want.
“Or we could just grab Thai food downstairs again.
“Go ahead and book a table. I’ll be done here in a minute.”
They spoke right over me.
From this angle, I could clearly see the sharp line of Liam’s jaw, and…
The soft, unguarded tenderness in his eyes.
A tenderness that used to belong exclusively to me.
In high school, Emily was in our class, but she wasn’t particularly close to me or Liam.
During breaks, whenever I went to find Liam, Emily would be sitting in the row right behind him.
I would always see her sitting quietly at her desk, entirely alone.
Maybe she felt awkward and couldn’t figure out how to join our conversations.
Sometimes, when we accidentally made eye contact, she would immediately look away.
But now, the roles were completely reversed. I was the outsider.
Before closing the door, Emily gave me one last look. Her expression had already returned to normal, and she gave a polite, detached nod.
Once again, it was just me and Liam in the office.
He naturally possessed an incredibly dominant, intimidating aura. The air in the room instantly felt suffocating.
I lowered my eyes, resting my elbows nervously on the edge of the desk.
Suddenly, a large shadow fell over me, blocking the overhead light.
His broad chest leaned forward, closing the distance between us.
Almost completely by reflex, I jerked backward in my chair, scrambling to put space between us.
His outstretched hand froze in midair. His face turned to absolute ice.
“What are you dodging?”
05
The contempt in his eyes was barely concealed.
“Didn’t you just say you weren’t disgusted by my hands?”
Saying that, he reached past me and picked up a pen that had rolled near my arm.
I never expected Liam to have become this incredibly sensitive.
Actually, after we broke up, I begged my dad to use his connections to find a specialist hospital for burn victims, hoping they could repair Liam’s hands.
But by then, Liam already despised me. The mocking sneer he gave me that day is permanently burned into my memory.
“I’m just a broken toy to you, aren’t I? Tossed in the trash the second I got damaged.”
“Let me make this clear: I don’t give a damn about these hands.”
“Stop trying to play the saint. It makes me sick.”
I didn’t know if it was just my imagination.
But for a split second, I felt absolutely certain that he had recognized me.
…
Once the consultation ended, Emily was already waiting by the door, having changed into her street clothes.
She was wearing a tight knit dress that hugged her curves perfectly.
Liam didn’t look at me again. He naturally reached out and took Emily’s purse for her.
Walking down the hallway, they looked like a perfect match, standing shoulder-to-shoulder, looking incredibly intimate.
Honestly, seeing him like this made me feel a profound sense of relief about the choice I made back then.
If I hadn’t let him go, I might have completely ruined his life.
“Hey! Spacing out over here?”
“Come on, I’ll drive you home.”
Jackson appeared out of nowhere, snapping his fingers right in front of my face and making me jump.
His loud, booming voice echoed down the entire hospital corridor.
Up ahead, that tall silhouette stopped walking and slowly turned his head to look at me.
Under the harsh fluorescent lights of the hallway, his eyes were impossibly dark and unreadable.
Before I could decipher whatever emotion was hiding in his gaze, a heavy hand dropped onto my shoulder, forcefully spinning me around.
“Let’s go.”
I was half-shoved toward the elevators at the opposite end of the hall.
06
In the car, Jackson broke the silence.
“So, how did it go regarding your dad’s case?”
I didn’t answer. I just stared out the window into the dark night, watching the blurry shadows of trees speeding past.
Liam’s words kept echoing in my head.
“Given the extremely limited number of viable case studies, there is only one surgical option, and it carries massive risks.”
“If it succeeds, it’s obviously a miracle. But if it fails, the condition will accelerate exponentially. He wouldn’t last a month.”
A terrifying, high-stakes gamble with my father’s life.
I simply couldn’t make that choice right now.
“Hey! What are you doing?!”
While I was drowning in misery, a heavy pair of hands suddenly landed on my head, violently messing up my hair.
It was Jackson.
Seeing me glaring and swatting at him like an angry cat, he grinned widely.
“Just trying to boost your fighting spirit.”
“You look like a wilted vegetable lately. When we get to my place to grab the supplements for your dad, make sure you take some for yourself too.”
The only reason Jackson and I were such close friends was that we had both pulled each other out of total rock bottom.
Our history started back in college, right after he went through a brutal breakup.
His ex-girlfriend had started an internship and started attending high-end corporate galas with her boss. She was picked up in luxury cars every day. Suddenly, Jackson—who practically lived in loud Hawaiian shirts—wasn’t good enough for her anymore. She called him “immature.”
Since he had genuinely loved her, it completely destroyed him to watch the girl he loved turn into someone unrecognizable.
He got blackout drunk every single day. One night, he almost fell backward off the top of the stadium bleachers.
Thankfully, I was right next to him. I grabbed his shirt, hauled him back, and slapped him as hard as I could across the face.
“She’s already moved on with her life! Why the hell are you still standing here playing the tragic victim?!”
Honestly, I was screaming those words at him… but I was also screaming them at myself.
…
After picking up the supplements, Jackson dragged me to a hot pot restaurant.
He loved extremely spicy food, and by the end of the meal, my lips were completely swollen and burning.
My apartment complex didn’t allow non-resident cars inside. Jackson was going to pull over at the main gate, but I told him not to bother.
Just as I opened the passenger door, halfway out of the car, he grabbed me by the back of my collar and yanked me back.
“It’s pouring rain out there and I don’t have an umbrella. Just put this over your head so you don’t get completely soaked.”
I turned and looked at the Hawaiian shirt he was holding out. Right on the collar was a bright red lipstick stain.
Who knows what girl left it there—he probably didn’t even know himself.
I immediately waved my hands in disgust. “No thanks, I’ll just sprint. It’s fine.”
He ignored me, threw the shirt over my head, and physically shoved me out of the car.
“Stop being so picky. I’m throwing it away anyway. Take it home and tailor it into a raincoat or something.”
Once I got out, I was actually secretly grateful.
Thank God I had the shirt to cover me.
The rain was much heavier than it sounded from inside the car. By the time I sprinted to my apartment lobby, the bottom half of my jeans was completely soaked.
Even so, my footsteps slowed to a dead stop when I saw the completely drenched figure standing by the door.
Those eyes, looking even darker and sharper in the shadows, were staring dead at me. He just stood there, motionless, letting the massive, freezing raindrops slide down his face.
“Lia… Dr. Sterling? What are you doing here?”
When I left the hospital, Liam’s eyes had already confirmed it: he absolutely knew who I was.
Treating me like a complete stranger, letting go of the past, and moving on with our lives.
That was probably the best possible outcome for both of us.
The freezing rain did nothing to extinguish the furious fire in his eyes. His gaze swept over my messy hair, my swollen lips, and finally settled on my face with pure, absolute disgust and mockery.
“Your father’s surgery isn’t even scheduled yet, and you’re already out screwing around.”
“You really are something else, Chloe.”
“What the hell did I do?”
He completely ignored my question and continued speaking in a dangerously low voice.
“Did you know the city blood bank is completely tapped out?”
“Did you know about the hospital’s new policy? Before they authorize a transfusion, you have to provide proof of blood donation from five different people. Otherwise, they won’t release the blood. Did you know that?”
“Even though your father is admitted to the hospital, if the blood bank supervisor doesn’t sign off, there is absolutely nothing I can do. Did you know that?!”
I was completely stunned.
Blood transfusions had never been this complicated before. Usually, the hospital just handled it internally.
When did the policy change?
He let out a bitter, mocking laugh that mixed with the sound of the pouring rain.
“No, you didn’t know.”
“Because you never take anything seriously.”
In that moment, I couldn’t tell if he was condemning the person I was now, or the person I used to be.
Maybe because he had been standing in the freezing rain for so long, his lips were completely pale. He looked utterly exhausted, incredibly weak.
“Are you okay?”
“Do you want to come upstairs and rest for a minute?”
His face darkened instantly, his expression practically screaming: I’m not as easy and cheap as you are.
He raised a hand, wiped the rain off his face, and violently threw a stack of small red booklets directly into my chest.
Then he turned and walked away.
I opened them. It was five certificates of blood donation. One of them had his name on it.
So the reason he looked so pale and weak… was because…
“Liam!”
The man stumbled, swaying heavily to the side, and collapsed onto the wet concrete.
07
After dragging Liam upstairs and changing him into dry clothes, I rested my chin on my hands and watched him sleep.
He had pale skin and incredibly striking, sharp features.
He looked like an untouchable god, the kind of person everyone naturally favored.
In high school, practically the entire student body knew…
I was head over heels in love with Liam Sterling.
His mother had a severe, chronic illness and required constant hospital treatments.
The financial and emotional burden on him was crushing.
So every single weekend, I would go to the hospital and help take care of her.
Until Marcus appeared.
He was a local street thug. First, he aggressively and publicly declared his love for me, then started stalking and verbally harassing me.
When that didn’t work, he started targeting Liam. He even went to the hospital to harass Liam’s sick mother.
I tried calling the police.
But the most they could do was hold him for a few days. The second he got out, he went right back to terrorizing us.
Marcus was a jobless delinquent with endless free time, and he took immense pleasure in making Liam’s life a living hell.
Because of Marcus’s relentless harassment, Liam was constantly exhausted and distracted.
His class ranking plummeted again and again.
He started skipping classes. Before his old bruises could heal, he’d show up with new ones.
Eventually, the school administration slapped Liam with a severe disciplinary mark for “engaging in violent street brawls.”
By the time the news of the disciplinary action reached Liam’s mother, she was already incredibly frail, her eyes deeply sunken into her skull.
Yet she still forced a warm smile and gently held my hand.
“Liam hasn’t been focusing on his studies lately, has he?”
“I don’t have much time left. If I could just see him get accepted into a top-tier university, I could die in peace.”
“Chloe… you understand what I’m asking you, don’t you?”
I gripped the hem of my school uniform so tightly my knuckles turned white. Slowly, I let go.
Truthfully, she wasn’t the only one who had said things like that to me.
My classmates whispered that I was a slut who lured in gang members, and that my drama was destroying Liam’s chances of getting a full-ride scholarship.
Even our homeroom teacher pulled me aside for a “talk.”
He told me that Liam had a brilliant future ahead of him, and begged me not to be the reason he ruined his life.
Every single person around me was telling me exactly one thing: Stay away from Liam Sterling.
The most paralyzing, suffocating part was… I couldn’t even argue back.
Because on the surface, it really did look like I was the one who dragged Marcus into our lives. And because Marcus was jealous, he ripped Liam’s previously quiet, focused life to shreds.
But back then, my teenage brain couldn’t comprehend it. I was a victim too. So why, in everyone else’s eyes, was I suddenly the villain?
The crushing injustice and overwhelming pressure slowly ate away at my sanity.
So, I chose the most extreme, cruel method to escape the rumors.
…
I was still drowning in my memories when a sharp clack snapped me back to reality. Something had rolled off the nightstand and hit the hardwood floor.
I turned and saw that Liam’s car keys had slipped out of his pocket.
And tucked underneath the keys was something else—
A pair of matching promise rings.
The rings that belonged to him and Emily.
08
When I woke up the next morning, Liam was already gone.
The blanket on the bed had been folded into a perfect, crisp square.
If it weren’t for the blood donation certificates still sitting on the counter, I would have convinced myself last night was just a hallucination.
A few days later, I scheduled the blood transfusion with the hospital.
Just as Liam had warned me, the bureaucratic process was an absolute nightmare.
Even the nurse setting up my dad’s IV couldn’t help but complain.
“Lately, the families of patients needing transfusions have been running themselves ragged trying to get approved. You’re the smoothest approval I’ve seen all month.”
The image of Liam’s ghostly pale, exhausted face flashed in my mind again.
When I went to his office to find him, he was resting his head on his desk, trying to take a nap.
His brows were furrowed tightly, and a thin layer of cold sweat covered his forehead.
Without thinking, I reached my hand out, wanting to smooth the crease between his brows.
But remembering that he already had Emily, my hand froze in midair.
Just as I was about to pull away, a vice-like grip violently clamped down on my wrist.
Liam opened his eyes, staring at me with a dark, heavy intensity.
“Do you need something?”
He was gripping my wrist so hard it felt like he was trying to crush my bones.
But a second later, as if he had just touched something disgusting, he violently threw my hand away and sat up straight.
“Thank you for helping me last night.”
He glanced at me, a cold, mocking smirk twisting his lips.
“Help you?”
“You seem to be confused.”
“If any other patient had collapsed in front of me, I would have done the exact same thing.”
…
“Liam. I’m sorry.”
A flash of absolute shock crossed his eyes. His dark pupils locked onto me as he spoke slowly. “Sorry for what?”
“When we broke up… I never should have said those vicious things to you.”
He didn’t speak. He just kept scrutinizing me, clearly waiting for me to finish.
I hesitated for a second, then continued. “Your hands were burned because of me. I have always, always been grateful to you.”
“I have never, ever felt disgusted or grossed out by them.”
When I finished, dead silence filled the room.
The air was so thick it was hard to breathe.
“Are you done?”
I thought about it carefully, then gave a firm nod.
His face instantly turned completely black. With profound impatience, he looked away.
“Get out.”
I bit my lip and walked to the door. But right as I grabbed the handle, a surge of defiant frustration made me turn back.
“Then tell me, what do I have to do for you to forgive me?”
I watched as he looked up. In those dark eyes, a chaotic storm of emotions I couldn’t decipher violently swirled.
“I want you to disappear from my life. Completely.”
“Okay.”
I answered cleanly and decisively.
“Once my dad finishes his treatments, I’ll disappear.”
He didn’t say another word, but his face somehow looked even more furious than before.
The second I closed the door, I heard the violent, crashing sound of something heavy being hurled against the wall inside the office, shattering into pieces.
🌟 Continue the story here
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I secretly loved Ethan for ten years. For five years, I was his substitute wife.
In that fire, I lost hearing in my left ear and covered my back with scars to save his life.
But he believed Cherry saved him. He said I stole someone else’s credit. He said I disgusted him.
Then he brought her to our bed. Told me to buy the condoms.
Inside the bedroom, Ethan’s stifled, wild groans mixed with Cherry’s shaking moans.
Outside, I clutched the condoms, my knuckles white, the wounds on my back reopening.
Can’t I just give up?
The day I signed the divorce papers, I booked a one-way ticket to an island.
My left ear is deaf. I’ll listen to the waves with my right.
He doesn’t love me. Fine.
I just want to be Summer Lynn again.
Summer Lynn POV
“Miss Lynn, you have severe hearing loss in your left ear.”
The doctor handed me a report, his tone heavy.
“Five years ago, you inhaled toxic smoke in the fire. It damaged your auditory nerve. Over the years, you’ve also had severe chronic depression. Your immune system has collapsed. Now even your right ear is starting to fail.”
I sat in the chair without a sound.
The doctor thought I didn’t understand, so he repeated himself. “If you don’t adjust your emotional state, your right ear will be affected too.”
I looked at the diagnosis report. After a few seconds, I folded the thin sheet of paper neatly and placed it in my bag.
“I understand. Thank you, doctor.”
I stood up and left the consultation room. Outside in the corridor, a rainstorm had begun.
I couldn’t help but think of that fire from five years ago.
Ethan’s villa had caught fire. His leg was crushed, and he was trapped in the second-floor bedroom.
I was the one who rushed in through the high heat. When the beam collapsed, I threw myself over Ethan and shielded him with everything I had.
My back was severely injured, and my left ear was damaged by the toxic smoke. It kept bleeding.
I dragged the unconscious Ethan out of the fire, then fell into a severe coma myself.
But after I spent three days and nights being resuscitated in the ICU and finally woke up, everything had changed.
That hospital was a private facility the Harrington family had invested in.
Ethan’s mother, who had always despised me, suppressed my true medical report.
Sitting by Ethan’s hospital bed was Cherry Collins.
In Cherry’s hand, she clutched a watch she’d brought out from the fire.
Cherry Collins was Ethan’s first love, the one who held his heart.
Five years ago, Cherry, as Ethan’s girlfriend, had secretly left to study abroad on the night of their engagement, turning the Harrington family into a laughingstock.
The Harrington family urgently needed a replacement to complete the engagement.
I, who had secretly loved Ethan for ten years, stepped forward and willingly became the substitute for this marriage.
That day, Ethan expressionlessly slid the diamond ring originally custom-made for Cherry onto my ring finger.
From that moment on, I was nothing but a substitute.
And when that fire happened, Cherry had just returned to the country.
Ethan’s mother told Ethan that Cherry had rushed into the fire to save him, while I had only run in afterward to steal the credit.
Ethan believed her. He was convinced that Cherry had risked her life to rush into the fire and save him.
I dragged my still-bleeding back to explain, but all I got in return was Ethan’s extremely disgusted look and one cold sentence:
“Summer, to make me love you, you’d even steal a life-saving deed? You truly disgust me.”
After that, I never brought it up again.
I took out my phone to call a car. A sedan suddenly screeched to a stop in front of me.
The window rolled down.
Ethan sat in the driver’s seat.
He frowned slightly, his gaze resting on my rain-soaked shoulders, his tone cold.
“Get in.” Ethan spoke. “Stop making a scene. If you get sick, I’ll have to arrange for someone to take care of you.”
My hand holding the phone paused.
I raised my head and looked past Ethan to see Cherry sitting in the passenger seat.
Cherry didn’t turn around. She just leaned slightly to the side.
If this were before, I would have stared hard at the passenger seat position, yanked open the car door, and demanded an explanation from Ethan about why he said he’d be at a company meeting but drove the car here instead.
I would have asked, red-eyed and stubborn, for an explanation.
Ethan was used to my questioning.
But this time, I just glanced once, then calmly withdrew my gaze.
“No need.” I stood on the steps, my tone devoid of emotion. “The hospital is full of germs. I’m afraid of infecting you both.”
Ethan’s hand on the steering wheel paused slightly.
“Ethan.” Cherry spoke softly. “Is Summer upset because I’m sitting here? Maybe I should get out. I can just take a cab back.”
“Stay seated.” Ethan interrupted Cherry, his gaze still on me.
“Summer, don’t test my patience. Are you sure you want to stand here in the rain?”
“I called a car. It’ll be here soon,” I replied.
Ethan looked at me, then finally let out a cold laugh.
“Fine.”
The window rolled up. The sedan merged back into traffic and quickly disappeared into the curtain of rain.
I hadn’t called a car. I opened the umbrella in my bag and walked into the rain.
I returned to the villa. It was already seven in the evening.
I closed my dripping umbrella and walked straight into the kitchen.
I walked to the counter and pulled open the bottom drawer. Inside was a very thick notebook.
Opening the cover, it was filled with my notes.
Five years ago, Ethan was admitted to the ICU because of a stomach hemorrhage.
After that, I visited every hospital in the city and wrote down these precautions.
For the past five years, I’d followed this notebook and made nutritious meals for Ethan every day.
My hands still bore two permanent scars from burns.
And Ethan’s evaluation of the nutritious meals was usually just a cold “just leave it on the table,” or he simply wouldn’t come home.
I flipped through two pages. The paper made a dry rustling sound.
Then I closed the notebook and threw it into the nearby trash can.
I looked at my left ring finger.
This ring was personally designed by Ethan for Cherry back then. The ring size was also made to Cherry’s measurements.
So the ring was a bit tight on my finger.
Every time I accidentally bumped it, the band would dig hard into my knuckle.
But I never complained of pain. I insisted on wearing this ring for five years.
Summer Lynn POV
The knuckle of my ring finger had long since developed a ring of stubborn dead skin from being squeezed.
I squeezed out a large blob of hand soap and spread it on my ring finger. I gripped the wedding ring with my right hand and pulled hard outward.
The stinging pain of broken skin came. The metal scraped against my knuckle. The ring gradually left my finger.
The moment the ring came off my finger, I stood by the sink for a long time.
I dried my hands, then walked out of the bathroom.
I lifted the covers and lay down.
I closed my eyes. My right ear listened to the sound of rain outside the window. My left ear existed in absolute, dead silence.
I should have gone to the living room to turn on a dim lamp, then stayed up all night waiting for Ethan to come home.
But tonight.
I didn’t turn on a light for him. I didn’t wait anymore either.
The next morning when I came downstairs, Ethan and Cherry were already sitting in the dining room.
Cherry picked up a bowl of hot milk and walked over.
“Summer, you got caught in the rain last night. Drink some hot milk while it’s warm.”
I didn’t speak. I pulled out a chair and sat down.
I hadn’t slept all night. My stomach sent a wave of pain through me.
I picked up the hot milk and took a sip.
After just a few seconds, my face instantly changed.
There was peanut powder in the milk.
I had an extremely severe peanut allergy. Ethan knew this.
If I touched even a little bit, I would have an allergic reaction, triggering acute asthma or even shock.
My airway felt like it was being squeezed shut by an invisible hand.
I covered my throat, desperately gasping for air, but couldn’t draw in a single breath.
I fell from the chair in agony, my face quickly turning purple.
“Ah!”
At the same moment, a cry rang out from the kitchen.
“Ethan, it hurts… I cut my finger.”
Cherry held up her finger with a small trace of blood, her eyes red.
Ethan, who had been watching the morning news, heard the sound and immediately stood up, striding toward the kitchen.
I collapsed on the floor, my vision starting to blur.
I used every ounce of strength to crawl toward the table. In the drawer there was my epinephrine emergency pen.
My fingertips finally touched the edge of the table.
Just as I was about to pull open the drawer, Ethan rushed past.
Bang!
To get to Cherry faster, he kicked the trash can beside the table.
It knocked away the emergency kit I’d barely managed to reach.
The medicine vial rolled to the deepest part under the sofa.
I desperately reached out my hand and grabbed Ethan’s pant leg, making agonized sounds in my throat.
Ethan looked down.
He looked at me but didn’t stop. Instead, he shook off my hand.
“Summer, can you stop making a scene?”
Ethan’s tone was filled with undisguised disgust. “Cherry cut her finger. She faints at the sight of blood. I have to take her to the hospital right away!”
He walked straight over, picked up Cherry, and strode quickly toward the door.
At the doorway, he coldly threw out a sentence:
“Call yourself a car to the hospital!”
The door closed.
I lay on the cold floor. My vision was already going black from lack of oxygen.
I bit down hard and dragged my heavy body inch by inch toward the sofa.
My nails scraped across the floor with a harsh sound, drawing out threads of blood.
Finally, I touched the emergency pen.
With trembling hands, I removed the safety cap, aimed it at the outside of my thigh, and stabbed it hard into my muscle!
Along with the intense pain of the thick, long needle piercing in, the medication was rapidly pushed into my body.
Ten minutes later, my airway slowly opened.
I lay on the floor, gulping in air.
I had almost died here just now.
I’d always thought that the person I’d saved with my life all those years ago would also save me when I was in danger.
But only at this moment did I finally understand.
In Ethan’s eyes, my life wasn’t worth even a bit of broken skin on Cherry.
I should give up.
Summer Lynn POV
I lay on the cold floor for an entire night.
Until dawn broke, Ethan hadn’t returned. He hadn’t called even once.
I propped up my numb body and slowly climbed up from the floor.
I opened my computer, printed out a divorce agreement, and dialed a number I’d never actively called in five years.
“If you’re calling to say that Ethan is with Cherry again, don’t bother. I told you long ago. You’re just a substitute.”
“Now that Cherry is back, Ethan doesn’t need a wife with no social standing like you.”
Over these five years, Ethan’s mother had never hidden her disgust for me.
Every time Ethan brought Cherry to public events, she either permitted it or even supported it, trying to force me to leave on my own.
My voice was calm. “I agree to the divorce, and I’ll leave here forever, but I need you to help me with something.”
The person on the other end was clearly stunned, then said, “As long as you’re willing to leave Ethan, I’ll agree to any condition you want. How much money do you want?”
“I don’t want a single penny.” I looked at the agreement I’d just signed beside me.
“I just need you to use the Harrington family’s connections to quietly finalize the divorce within a month. And… erase all my information. Ethan can’t find out.”
Ethan’s mother laughed. “Fine. In thirty days, I’ll have someone deliver your new identity to you.”
After doing all this, I found a number in my contacts.
This number belonged to a gallery director.
Five years ago, I’d had the chance to have my own art exhibition. But to take care of Ethan, I put down my paintbrush and picked up cooking instead.
“Marcus, that beach house you mentioned. Is it still available?”
“Of course! Finally ready to paint again?”
“Yes.” I replied. “I want to rent that house.”
I wasn’t going to be Mrs. Harrington anymore.
After hanging up, I booked a one-way ticket for thirty days from now.
I was going to that island where no one knew me, to become Summer Lynn again.
That evening, Ethan came back alone.
He walked into the living room and saw me sitting quietly on the sofa reading.
I didn’t rush up to him with hot milk like before. I didn’t even lift my head.
Ethan asked coldly, “Did the family doctor come treat you this morning? Stop eating random things from now on.”
I turned a page in my book, my tone calm. “It’s fine. I won’t die.”
“There’s a charity auction gala tomorrow. Come with me. Don’t you always want me to introduce you to the public?”
My gaze moved from the book.
I was about to refuse when Ethan’s phone suddenly rang.
Cherry’s delicate crying voice came from the other end. “Ethan, can you take me to tomorrow’s auction? I just got back to the country. I don’t know anyone. I’m so scared to go alone…”
Ethan glanced at me.
I remained sitting quietly, as if I hadn’t heard the phone conversation at all.
He suddenly blurted out, “Okay, I’ll pick you up tomorrow.”
After hanging up, Ethan looked at me.
“You don’t need to go to tomorrow’s gala. Rest at home. I’ll take you to another gala in a few days.”
If this were before, I would have demanded through red eyes why he was going back on his word.
But today, I looked at him and gently closed the book in my hands.
“Okay.” I nodded, no unwillingness in my tone. “I understand.”
Ethan looked at me. He suddenly yanked off his tie, turned around, and strode upstairs.
What he didn’t know was that the moment he turned to go upstairs, I took out my phone.
On the phone screen was a ticketing message from the airline.
“You have successfully booked a one-way ticket to Hawaii departing in thirty days.”
Ethan’s mother had also sent a message:
“The divorce has entered the process. It will take thirty days. In thirty days, I hope you keep your promise.”
I replied, “Thank you.”
Then I opened my calendar and silently began counting down.
Summer Lynn POV
The next day, Ethan took Cherry to the charity gala as expected.
When he returned, he even tossed me a gift box.
“Auction item from last night’s gala. For you.”
I sat on the sofa, my gaze falling on that gift box.
I didn’t take it. I didn’t open it either.
“Do you need me to open it for you?” Ethan’s brow furrowed slightly. He walked over and opened the gift box clasp with one hand.
Inside lay a dazzling diamond necklace.
“I saw Cherry really liked the main piece from this collection, so I bought it for her. This starry one is the secondary piece. It happens to suit you.”
My fingertips curled slightly under my sleeves.
What he gave Cherry was the main necklace worth tens of millions. What he gave me, his wife, was just a secondary gift piece.
If this were before, I would have asked him through red eyes, “Ethan, in your heart, will I always only get the things she doesn’t want?”
I would have been too upset to sleep, while he would only think I was making a fuss and habitually use money to wipe away my tears.
But tonight, I just felt like my heart had been injected with anesthesia. Even the pain had become dull.
I looked at the necklace reflecting cold light and pulled at the corners of my dry lips slightly.
“Thank you.” My voice was as light as a feather landing on the ground. “The necklace is beautiful. I really like it.”
Ethan’s movements paused.
I didn’t look at the necklace anymore. My gaze returned to the book in my hands.
“Summer, stop making a scene.” His voice deepened, carrying suppressed displeasure. “I’m very tired today. I don’t have time to humor you.”
“I’m not making a scene.” I turned a page in my book, my tone as calm as stagnant water.
Ethan stared at me for a while, then let out a cold laugh, turned around, and strode toward the second-floor study.
Bang!
The study door slammed shut.
I didn’t try to keep him.
I looked at the glittering necklace on the table. What flashed through my mind was a scene from ten years ago.
That year I was only sixteen, hiding in a corner of the Harrington family villa, watching that handsome young man.
I’d secretly loved him for a full ten years. When his fiancée ran away from the wedding, I was willing to wear an ill-fitting wedding dress and shield him from all the embarrassment.
On our wedding day, I naively thought that as long as I was obedient enough and understanding enough, someday I could make him love me.
Even though he put a ring that didn’t fit my finger onto my hand, even though he wouldn’t spare me a glance, I still felt that at least I was standing beside him.
But that fire not only took away my hearing. It also completely burned away my love for him.
For Cherry’s sake, he didn’t even care about my life.
Once a person wakes up, they understand everything.
For the next two weeks, I silently erased all traces of myself.
I listed designer bags and clothes on secondhand websites at low prices, keeping only a few of the most ordinary clothes.
In the huge master bedroom, the traces of my presence grew fainter and fainter.
That afternoon, the villa’s doorbell suddenly rang.
Cherry walked in.
I walked out of the storage room holding a wooden paint box covered in thick dust.
I looked up and saw Cherry.
Around Cherry’s neck, she was conspicuously wearing that dazzling main diamond necklace.
That huge central diamond rested perfectly on her delicate collarbone, so bright it hurt the eyes.
“Summer, you’re home.”
Cherry walked into the living room, deliberately tucking her hair behind her ear to fully expose the necklace to my view.
“A few days ago at the auction, Ethan insisted on buying me this jewelry set. I said it was too expensive and I couldn’t accept it, but he wouldn’t listen. He even put it on me himself.”
Cherry smiled happily. “He said this necklace had a secondary gift piece that he brought home for you. Did you see it?”
My fingers holding the paint box tightened slightly.
I listened to Cherry’s boastful words and looked at that necklace, but my eyes didn’t show even a ripple of emotion.
I pointed at the box. “If you like it, take that along with you.”
Summer Lynn POV
Cherry froze in place.
After all, my reaction carried an uncomfortable sense of dismissal.
Cherry bit her lip unwillingly.
Her gaze shifted and landed on the old paint box I was holding.
“Summer, what are you packing up?”
Cherry walked forward, pretending to be curious as she reached out to touch the box.
“Don’t touch it.” My voice turned slightly cold. I instinctively stepped back.
This was the last memento my mother left me before she died.
It was also what I planned to take to the island. My hope for starting a new life.
Cherry didn’t pull her hand back. Instead, she twisted her wrist hard, using my own backward movement as cover.
Crash!
A dull, heavy sound.
The heavy wooden box slipped from my hands and fell hard onto the marble floor.
The wooden box shattered instantly.
The paint tubes I’d treasured for years broke into pieces, paint splashing out everywhere, staining the expensive carpet and splattering onto my clean pant legs.
I stood frozen, staring at the broken wooden box, my brain blank for a moment.
“Oh no!”
But Cherry cried out first. She quickly stepped back two paces, her eyes instantly reddening like a startled deer.
At the same moment, the second-floor study door was pushed open forcefully.
Hearing the commotion, Ethan quickly came downstairs.
“What happened?” He glanced at the paint all over the floor, his brow knitting tightly.
Cherry immediately grabbed Ethan’s sleeve with red eyes, her voice choking with tears. “Ethan, I just wanted to help Summer with something… Summer might still be mad at me. She threw the box down and almost hit my foot…”
Ethan’s gaze followed Cherry’s pointing finger and landed on me.
He looked at the mess on the floor, then at my face.
“Summer, what exactly are you trying to do?”
Ethan’s tone was ice-cold, with undisguised disgust. “They’re just some paint tubes. Do you really need to make such a scene?”
These paints were my mother’s favorites when she was alive.
Five years ago, to take care of Ethan who had a stomach hemorrhage from inhaling smoke, I gave up my own art exhibition.
Now, the items I treasured most from my mother had been smashed to pieces by Cherry’s own hands, yet he directly pinned all the blame on me.
I slowly raised my head and looked at Ethan.
“You think this is just some paint?” My voice was very light, but carried a kind of deathly stillness that made people’s hearts skip.
“What else?” Ethan looked at me coldly, pulling out a checkbook from his suit pocket. “How much money do you need? A hundred thousand or two hundred thousand? I’ll write you a check.”
I looked at him for a few seconds.
Looking at this man whose life I’d saved with my own, even at the cost of my left ear’s hearing.
I suddenly found it absurd.
I nodded.
I didn’t reach for that check.
I turned around and looked at the servant standing timidly to the side.
“Sweep all this garbage into the trash.”
Ethan’s hand holding the check froze in midair.
“Summer…” Ethan frowned. He seemed like he wanted to say something to make me stay.
I had already turned and gone upstairs.
In this house, there was nothing left worth looking at even once more.
Back in the bedroom, I closed the door and leaned weakly against it.
I closed my eyes and bit down hard on my lower lip until I tasted a hint of sweet, bloody iron, finally forcing down the sourness in my throat that nearly tore me apart.
I took out my phone and opened the calendar.
Only seven days left until my flight departed.
After heavily crossing off today’s date, I took a deep breath.
Very soon, I could be completely free.
Summer Lynn POV
I moved out of the master bedroom and into a guest room.
I no longer asked Ethan what time he’d be home.
Even when Cherry occasionally walked around the living room wearing Ethan’s shirt, I just ignored it.
This complete indifference seemed to provoke Ethan.
One evening, Ethan pushed open the guest room door.
I was sitting by the window reading.
Hearing the sound, I didn’t even lift an eyelid.
Ethan walked over and placed an invitation on the small table in front of me.
His tone was cold. “My friends are having a party tonight to celebrate Cherry’s gallery securing a location. Come with me.”
My gaze finally moved from the book pages and landed on that invitation.
For five years, Ethan had never brought me to meet his friends.
His friends looked down on me as a substitute, and he never felt it necessary to have me attend.
But today, he wanted to bring me along.
“I’m not going.” My voice held no emotion.
Ethan’s brow furrowed almost imperceptibly.
He looked at me, his eyes gradually growing cold.
“Summer, stop making a scene.” His voice was heavy. “You need to attend the party tonight.”
He still wanted to control me like before.
Over these five years, whenever he used this tone, no matter how wronged I felt, I would immediately comply, afraid of making him unhappy.
I looked at him for a few seconds.
I didn’t have the energy to endure his cold violence anymore.
“Fine.”
I stood up.
I casually grabbed a high-necked long-sleeved shirt and put it on, covering the hideous burn scars on my back.
Half an hour later, I arrived at the private room.
Ethan pushed open the door and led me inside.
The lively conversation in the room instantly went quiet for a moment.
In the center of the sofa, Cherry wore a beautiful white dress, surrounded by several friends chatting.
Seeing me, Cherry’s smile stiffened for a moment, then she happily came forward.
“Summer, you came.” A flash of mockery crossed Cherry’s eyes as she deliberately stood at Ethan’s side.
I paid no attention and walked straight to the most secluded corner of the room to sit down.
Ethan was pulled to sit in the center of the crowd.
Cherry naturally sat close beside him.
During the meal, everyone gathered around Cherry.
A few deliberately lowered mocking remarks occasionally drifted over from the sofa area, carrying undisguised malice.
“Cherry and Ethan really look like the perfect married couple. Some people use dirty tricks to become substitutes, but they still can’t compare to Cherry.”
I sat quietly in the corner, as if all of this had nothing to do with me.
The music in the room was very loud. I was sitting on his left side.
My left ear had complete nerve death from that fire five years ago. I couldn’t hear anything from it.
In such a noisy environment, sounds coming from my left were, to me, an area of complete dead silence.
In the corner, I kept my head down looking at my phone, motionless.
For some reason, the people in the room gradually stopped talking. The atmosphere became awkward.
Suddenly, Ethan strode over and pulled me up from the sofa.
“I’m talking to you. Can’t you hear me?”
Ethan looked at me, his tone carrying displeasure and coldness.
I was caught off guard and stumbled from being pulled.
I was forced to raise my head and meet Ethan’s ice-cold eyes.
If this were before, I would have desperately explained. I would have told him through red eyes that I really couldn’t hear.
But now, I looked at him and calmly spoke.
“Yes.”
I looked into his eyes, my voice devoid of any emotion.
“I can’t hear.”
Ethan froze for an instant.
Then his eyes turned completely cold.
“Stop acting in front of me.”
He released my hand.
I rubbed my aching wrist where he’d gripped it, turned around without hesitation, and walked straight out of the private room.
I didn’t want to stay in this place anymore.
Summer Lynn POV
I walked out of the private room. The air in the corridor was cold and cutting.
I rubbed my painfully squeezed wrist and didn’t wait for Ethan. I walked straight toward the club’s exclusive elevator.
I had just pressed the down button when the elevator doors opened.
Just as I was about to step in, urgent footsteps sounded behind me.
Ethan strode over with a dark expression, Cherry following closely beside him with reddened eyes.
The three of us, one after another, walked into the narrow elevator car.
The elevator doors slowly closed and began descending smoothly.
Cherry seemed like she wanted to say something to break the awkward silence, but after glancing at Ethan’s grim profile, she swallowed her words.
Just as the elevator numbers hit the twentieth floor, a violent explosion shook the building.
BOOM.
The entire structure shuddered.
The lights in the car instantly went out completely. The overhead ventilation fan made a piercing shriek before stopping entirely.
Immediately after came a terrifying sensation of extreme weightlessness that made hearts leap into throats.
The elevator was out of control.
The entire car, in complete darkness, plummeted downward at a horrifying speed!
“AH”
Cherry let out a piercing scream.
I was thrown against the elevator wall by the sudden jolt. The pain made my vision go black.
In the darkness, weightless and disoriented, survival instinct took over. I reached out, trying to grab anything to steady myself.
I grabbed the nearest thing. The hem of Ethan’s suit jacket.
After dropping for more than ten floors, the elevator’s emergency safety clamps finally locked onto the tracks with a death grip.
The car was like it had hit an invisible wall, abruptly suspended in midair.
The massive recoil force threw us all heavily to the floor.
In the pitch darkness, I could only hear heavy breathing.
Above our heads came the sound of metal scraping as steel cables snapped. The car swayed precariously in midair.”Ethan…” Cherry curled up in Ethan’s arms, crying uncontrollably.
I leaned against the cold metal corner of the elevator car.
My right ear was filled with Cherry’s crying and the terrifying sound of steel cables about to snap.
My left ear existed in absolute, dead silence.
This extreme sense of being torn between half noise and half silence instantly pulled me back to that fire from five years ago.
In the old villa five years ago, after the flames died down, it was this same suffocating darkness.
The collapsed beam pressed on my back. I had shielded Ethan beneath me. I waited for rescue in that narrow, scorching, suffocating rubble.
Since then, I’d developed severe claustrophobia.
Whenever night fell, whenever I was in an enclosed space, I would uncontrollably tremble all over, break into cold sweats, even have difficulty breathing.
So for these five years, in the villa’s living room, a lamp was always left on for me.
At this moment, the claustrophobia was completely triggered in the darkness.
My whole body began trembling. Cold sweat instantly soaked through my back.
I opened my mouth, desperately trying to draw in the thin oxygen in the elevator car.
I don’t know how much time passed.
Suddenly, the roar of an electric saw cutting through metal came from the elevator ceiling.
The top panel was forcibly pried open, creating an extremely narrow gap.
A beam of blinding flashlight pierced down through the gap, cutting through the darkness inside the car.
A rough rescue rope was thrown in.
“Listen!”
The rescue personnel shouted with all their might from above. “All the load-bearing cables have snapped! The opening is too narrow. We can only pull one person up at a time! Quickly put the safety harness on yourselves!”
Suddenly, the elevator dropped sharply downward.
Ethan didn’t hesitate at all.
He grabbed the rope and without a second thought secured it around Cherry, locking the safety clasp tight.
Then he forcefully lifted Cherry upward.
“Pull her up! Hurry!” Ethan roared toward the opening at the top.
The people above began pulling. Cherry’s body was gradually hauled out of the car bit by bit.
Ethan kept his head tilted back, his hands constantly supporting Cherry’s waist until he confirmed she was completely safe. Only then did he turn his head.
In the faint remaining light of the flashlight, he looked toward me curled up in the corner.
“Summer, wait another ten minutes. They’ll lower a second rope right away.”
Ethan showed not a trace of guilt toward me.
“Cherry developed severe claustrophobia from the fire scene years ago. She can’t stay in the dark. I have to send her up first.”
I leaned against the cold elevator wall.
The flashlight’s beam shone on my face, illuminating the absurdity and desolation in my heart.
The person who risked her life to shield him in that burning villa back then. It was clearly me.
The one who truly developed claustrophobia. It was me!
But Ethan had believed Cherry’s lies.
I lowered my head.
In the residual light of the flashlight, I looked at my own hand.
From extreme fear and the instinct to survive, from the moment we started falling, I had been desperately clutching the hem of Ethan’s suit jacket.
My knuckles had turned white from excessive force. Even my fingernails had drawn blood.
I looked at that wrinkled corner of fabric I’d been gripping, and suddenly felt that my persistence over these five years was nothing but a joke.
What exactly was I clinging to?
Why did I love a man who didn’t even care about my life?
Why did I continue to maintain a marriage built on lies and humiliation?
The elevator shook violently again.
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.
Then I gradually loosened my fingers.
I released that corner of fabric I’d been desperately clutching.
Summer Lynn POV
“Summer?” Ethan spoke in the darkness, a trace of panic in his voice. “Say something.”
No response came from the corner.
“Summer! Don’t play dead on me right now!”
He took a step toward me, undisguised irritation in his tone. “Cherry has claustrophobia. What’s wrong with me letting her go up first? Your turn is coming right away. Why do you still have to make me angry?”
“I’m not playing dead.”
Finally, my voice came from the darkness.
Calm, weak, yet carrying a frightening emptiness.
“I just think,” I leaned against the cold iron wall, slowly closing my eyes, “if this steel cable snaps right now, at least I’ll have given you back the life I owe you.”
Ethan fell silent for a moment.
“What are you talking about?!” He suddenly reached out his hand and grabbed my shoulder hard in the darkness. “Are you insane?!”
My entire body was trembling violently. My clothes were completely soaked with cold sweat. My body temperature had dropped to a terrifying level.
Ethan must have noticed my abnormality.
After all, he’d never seen me like this before.
Even five years ago after that fire, when I woke up in the ICU and he accused me, I’d only bitten my lip hard, my face pale. I’d never been like this. As if I were an empty shell that could shatter at any moment.
“We’re pulling you up right now!”
The rescue personnel’s shout came from above again. Immediately after, a second rope was thrown down.
When I left the elevator, the lights outside were so bright I couldn’t open my eyes.
I was pulled out of the elevator shaft. My legs went weak and I sat directly on the corridor floor.
Medical personnel immediately surrounded me.
On the other side of the corridor, Cherry was throwing herself into Ethan’s arms, crying pitifully, clutching his clothes and refusing to let go.
“Ethan, I thought I’d never see you again…”
Medical personnel were taking my blood pressure.
My face was deathly pale, but I didn’t glance at Ethan even once.
“Sir, this lady has an extremely rapid heart rate with mild shock symptoms. She needs to be taken to the hospital for observation immediately.” The emergency doctor turned to shout at Ethan.
Ethan’s brow furrowed. He was about to push Cherry away and come over.
But Cherry suddenly hugged his waist tightly, her body trembling violently.
“Ethan, I feel so dizzy… I can’t breathe…” Cherry closed her eyes and fainted directly in Ethan’s arms.
“Cherry!”
Ethan’s face changed dramatically. He scooped up the pretending Cherry, turned around, and rushed toward another ambulance parked outside the club entrance.
I sat on the ground, watching Ethan’s back as he ran wildly holding Cherry.
When facing danger, he chose someone else.
After the danger passed, he still chose someone else without hesitation.
The doctor beside me urged anxiously, “Miss, where is your family? Have him accompany you in this ambulance!”
“I don’t have any family.” I withdrew my gaze, my voice calm.
“I’ll go by myself.”
I pushed away the nurse’s outstretched hand, supported myself against the wall, slowly stood up, and walked onto the ambulance alone.
In the emergency room at the hospital.
After finishing my IV drip, it was already late at night.
I didn’t notify anyone. I removed the needle myself, took a cab, and returned to the villa.
The villa was still pitch dark.
Ethan would definitely spend tonight at the hospital watching over his Cherry.
I didn’t turn on the lights.
I opened my computer and logged into my personal bank account.
I returned all the money Ethan had transferred to me over these five years.
A full five million dollars was transferred back to Ethan’s private account.
In the refund note, there was only one simple sentence: “We have no relationship from now on.”
After finishing all this, I closed the computer and walked to the bed.
I took out my phone. The screen lit up, reflecting my pale face.
I opened my calendar and glanced at the date.
I calmly turned off my phone, lay down on the cold bed, and closed my eyes.
I didn’t suffer from insomnia.
The next day, as soon as dawn broke, I got up to pack my luggage.
After packing, I placed the already-printed divorce agreement on the table.
I removed my wedding ring and gently pressed it on the signature line of the agreement.
I dragged my suitcase and walked out of the villa.
The cold early autumn wind hit my face, blowing away the last trace of the oppressive atmosphere from this house that clung to me.
A taxi I’d reserved was already waiting outside the door.
The driver got out and helped me put my suitcase in the trunk.
The car slowly started up, heading toward the airport.
I turned off my phone and wearily closed my eyes.
“Please drive faster.”
🌟 Continue the story here
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The moment I won the championship, I instinctively looked for Payton.
But the VIP section was empty.
On my phone, news flashed. He’d spent millions to rent every billboard in the city. All to celebrate his first love Sophia’s birthday.
Meanwhile, the trending topic was my scandal. “Extreme skydiving champion Lily is the mistress of the Payton heir.”
But I was supposed to be his fiancée.
I rushed to his office to confront him. Instead, I walked in on an intimate moment.
He calmly lifted Sophia off his lap and looked at me coldly.
“Sophia’s back. You can get lost now.”
Seven years of being by his side meant nothing.
I looked at his smug face and laughed.
I turned and walked into the elevator, dialing his half-brother and bitter rival.
“Jace, that collaboration you mentioned before. I’m in. Let’s make Payton lose everything.”
Lily’s POV
As I leaped from four thousand meters high, the wind roared in my ears.
I calmly pulled the ripcord. The massive main parachute exploded open above my head, violently yanking my rapidly falling body upward.
Landing, detaching the chute, unfastening the safety buckle.
My movements were fluid.
Enthusiastic cheers erupted around me.
This was my third extreme skydiving world championship this year, and also the highest-level commercial endorsement I’d secured for Payton Corporation.
After removing my goggles, I instinctively looked toward the VIP viewing area.
I scanned all around but never found the figure I’d been expecting.
Payton hadn’t come after all.
My assistant Shay approached hesitantly, holding out my phone. “Lily, Payton, he…”
On the screen was a news article.
“Payton heir makes grand romantic gesture, spending millions to rent citywide billboards for Sophia’s birthday!”
In the video, the usually cold and taciturn Payton was gently fastening a diamond necklace around a girl’s neck.
The girl shyly nestled into his embrace like a startled fawn. Below this news article hung another glaring headline.
#Extreme skydiving champion Lily is the Payton heir’s mistress#.
The netizens’ mockery flooded in.
“She flies around in the sky every day and actually thinks she’s a socialite?”
“Who doesn’t know Lily signed with Payton Corporation for money back then? She’s just a money-making tool.”
“Our Sophia is afraid of heights. Mr. Payton won’t even let her near the second-floor terrace. Lily skydives every day and Mr. Payton never cares about her. That’s the difference between true love and a mistress!”
I calmly turned off the screen, concealing all emotion in my eyes.
“Miss Lily, are you okay?” Shay looked at me with concern.
“I’m fine. Pack up the equipment. We’re going home.”
During the thirteen-hour flight, I didn’t sleep once. My mind was filled with the look in Payton’s eyes as he fastened the necklace around Sophia’s neck.
That careful, protective gaze. He used to look at me like that too.
Seven years ago, my mother was dying. I knelt in the rain outside the Payton estate, begging for money.
It was Payton who walked up to me with an umbrella and pulled me to my feet.
He paid for her treatment. He sent me to the best skydiving school.
He said, “Lily, you belong to the sky. You shouldn’t be held back by this mud.”
I thought it was love. But I was wrong. He was just seeing someone else in me. Someone too afraid of heights to ever fly herself.
Now, that woman had returned.
As soon as I got off the plane, I called Payton.
The phone rang for a long time before he answered. In the background was soft piano music.
“What is it?” The man’s voice carried cold indifference.
“I saw the news.” I gripped my phone tightly, my knuckles turning white. “Payton, we’re legally married.”
A slight snort came from the other end. “Lily, don’t try to control me with that piece of paper. Whatever compensation you want, contact my secretary directly.”
“I just won the championship.” I didn’t know why I said this. Perhaps I still held onto a laughable shred of hope.
“Mm, congratulations.” His tone was perfunctory. “Sophia has a bit of a cold. I don’t have time to listen to you report your achievements. If there’s nothing important, I’m hanging up.”
Beep.
The sound of the call ending pierced my eardrum. Standing in the airport, I suddenly felt that the cold at four thousand meters was nothing compared to this moment.
When I returned to the villa, it was already late at night. I opened the door and froze.
The originally minimalist living room was now filled with pink throw pillows and stuffed animals.
My favorite skydiving oil painting of the snowy mountains had been taken down and carelessly tossed in a corner, replaced by an enormous solo portrait of Sophia.
Payton sat on the sofa, playing with an exquisite music box. Hearing the noise, he looked up, his brow furrowing slightly.
“Why did you come back so suddenly?”
“This is my home. Can’t I come back?” My voice was hoarse.
Payton stood up and walked over to me, looking down at me from above.
“Sophia likes this place. She doesn’t sleep well and needs quiet. Your skydiving equipment takes up too much space. I’ve already had it moved to the apartment in East City.”
His tone was flat, as if he were discussing the most ordinary matter.
“You’re kicking me out?” I looked up, staring hard into his eyes.
“Just having you change where you live.” Payton was somewhat impatient. “Lily, you’ve always been independent and strong. Sophia is timid. Don’t scare her.”
Looking at this man I’d loved for seven years, I suddenly felt he was completely unfamiliar.
I was independent and strong, so I deserved to be kicked out?
She was timid, so she could rightfully take over everything that belonged to someone else?
I didn’t make a scene. I didn’t cry.
I simply turned around calmly, dragging the suitcase I hadn’t even opened yet, and walked into the night.
He didn’t try to keep me.
Behind me, only the crisp music of the music box played on, as if mocking my pathetic state.
Lily’s POV
The apartment in East City was tiny, not even big enough to store my parachute pack.
I spent the entire night packing up the equipment I’d once treasured like precious possessions, stuffing them one by one into the cramped storage room.
At dawn, Payton’s secretary called.
“Mrs. Payton, Mr. Payton has instructed that for next month’s extreme sports reality show, he hopes you can help Miss Sophia.”
The hand wiping my helmet paused. “Sophia? Isn’t she afraid of heights?”
The secretary gave an awkward laugh. “Miss Sophia says… she wants to challenge herself. After all, Mr. Payton feels this show has very high viewership, which would help Miss Sophia’s career…”
“And Mr. Payton’s intention is for you to serve as her dedicated safety instructor, protecting her throughout.”
Have a world champion serve as a safety instructor for a delicate female celebrity?
And watch my own husband dote on another woman in front of a national audience?
“I refuse.” I coldly uttered those words.
“Mrs. Payton…” The secretary’s voice lowered. “Mr. Payton said if you refuse, Payton Corporation will withdraw all sponsorship of your skydiving team for the second half of the year.”
I shut my eyes tightly. My heart felt like it was being squeezed by an invisible hand.
Payton, you’re so cruel to me.
My team had over a dozen colleagues who’d been with me for a long time. They desperately needed this sponsorship to maintain the high training costs.
“Fine.” After hanging up, I looked at myself in the mirror with reddened eyes and forced out a smile more painful than crying.
The debt I owed Payton. I was close to finally paying it off.
On the day of filming, the weather was hot.
Sophia wore a custom pink skydiving suit and was surrounded by a cluster of assistants as she approached.
She wore delicate makeup and had her hair carefully styled. She didn’t look like someone here to skydive. More like she was walking a red carpet.
Payton followed beside her, holding a parasol, carefully shading her from the sun.
“Hello, Lily.” Sophia walked up to me with a sweet smile. “I’m really afraid of heights. Payton insisted I try skydiving. You must protect me, okay?”
I handed her a set of basic protective gear with an expressionless face. “Put it on. Check the buckles.”
Sophia suddenly cried out, looking at Payton with grievance. “Payton, this buckle is so hard. It hurt my hand.”
Payton immediately dropped the umbrella, took her hand with concern and blew on it gently, then turned to look at me coldly. “Lily, can’t you help her? What am I paying you for?”
The surrounding crew members all turned to look, their eyes full of curiosity.
I took a deep breath, stepped forward, and efficiently fastened Sophia’s safety buckles, tightening the straps.
“It hurts! Be gentler!” Sophia’s eyes immediately reddened.
Payton shoved me aside and shielded Sophia behind him.
“Lily, you did that on purpose, didn’t you?” His eyes were icy, as if I were a criminal.
The push made me stumble backward, my back hitting the hard cabin door.
“Skydiving isn’t acting. If the straps aren’t tight, there could be an accident.” I looked straight into his eyes, my voice completely flat. “If Mr. Payton is worried about her, you can take her and leave right now.”
Payton’s expression was terrible. He was about to speak when Sophia tugged at his sleeve. “Payton, Miss Lily is just looking out for me. I’m fine. I can handle it.”
He glanced at me coldly. “If anything happens to Sophia, even one hair on her head, I’ll make you pay.”
The plane took off. As altitude increased, the cabin pressure began to change. Sophia’s face turned pale. She clutched Payton’s arm tightly, trembling all over.
“Payton, I’m scared… I don’t want to jump anymore…” Her voice took on a tearful quality.
Payton held her tightly, constantly comforting her, then turned and roared at the pilot. “Turn back! Can’t you see she’s uncomfortable!”
The pilot looked at me somewhat helplessly. “Miss Lily, this…”
“We can’t turn back.” I looked calmly at the instrument panel. “The air currents are unstable right now. Forcing a landing is too risky. We must either jump at the designated altitude or circle to burn fuel.”
“I told you to turn back, don’t you understand!” Payton suddenly stood up, rushed over to me, and grabbed my collar. “Lily, do you want to make Sophia uncomfortable? You crazy woman!”
Looking at him, I suddenly felt utterly absurd.
I was a professional skydiving athlete using my professional knowledge to protect everyone’s safety, yet in his eyes, I’d become a vicious woman jealous of someone else.
“Payton, let go.” I said coldly.
Just then, the plane suddenly encountered strong turbulence. The fuselage shook violently. Sophia screamed and fainted.
Chaos erupted in the cabin. I quickly steadied myself and checked Sophia’s vital signs. She’d only fainted from extreme fright. Nothing serious.
But Payton had completely lost his rationality. He shoved me away, held Sophia tightly in his arms, and glared at me with bloodshot eyes. “Get away! Don’t touch her!”
I sat on the cold metal floor, watching him hold another woman while trembling, and my heart felt like it was being pierced by millions of needles simultaneously. The pain made even breathing taste of blood.
Lily’s POV
The plane ultimately landed safely.
Sophia was rushed to the hospital. Payton stayed close by her side. Meanwhile, I, as the “instigator” of this “farce,” was kept at the tarmac, subjected to questioning by the production team and Payton Corporation’s PR department.
“Miss Lily, why did you refuse to turn back? Was this decision mixed with personal emotions?”
“There are rumors that you hold a grudge against Miss Sophia and deliberately tampered with the equipment. Are these accusations true?”
Countless microphones thrust toward me, camera flashes blinding. I repeated that same sentence expressionlessly. “Weather conditions didn’t permit it. I only made the most professional judgment.”
No one believed me.
With Payton’s tacit permission, public opinion completely turned toward Sophia. She became the innocent victim. Someone bravely challenging herself but persecuted by a vicious instructor.
And I became the jealous lunatic.
My social media accounts were flooded with hate. Countless vicious private messages poured in.
People even mailed dead rats and razor blades to my apartment.
I ignored it all, just locked myself in my room, reviewing the meteorological data from that day over and over.
I wasn’t wrong. But I knew that in Payton’s eyes, even my breathing was wrong.
Three days later, Payton’s mother, Claire, personally came to this small apartment.
She wore a haute couture suit. Looking around, a flash of disgust crossed her eyes. “Lily, look at yourself now.” Claire sat in the only clean chair, her tone condescending.
I brought her a glass of water. “Why are you here?”
“Don’t call me Mom.” Claire coldly interrupted me. “If Payton hadn’t insisted on marrying you back then, do you think you could have entered the Payton family? Think about what your status is.”
I lowered my eyes and didn’t refute her.
“I’m here today to inform you of something.” Claire took out a document from her bag and tossed it on the table. “You must win the World Championship next month. Payton Corporation just acquired an overseas sports brand. We need this championship to expand brand awareness.”
I looked at the document, sorrow welling up in my heart. “What if I can’t win?”
“What did you say?” Claire sneered. “Lily, don’t forget that your mother’s medical bills back then, and your training expenses over these years, were all paid by the Payton family. The contract states it clearly. If you lose, not only do you have to pay ten times the penalty, your team will have to disband too.”
She stood up, looking down at me from above. “Win the championship, fulfill the responsibilities in the contract, and then voluntarily divorce Payton. Sophia is the one I approve of. You’ve occupied this position long enough. It’s time to give it up.”
The door slammed shut heavily. I collapsed to the floor, looking at that cold contract, and finally couldn’t hold back my tears. So in their eyes, I was never Payton’s wife. I was just an employee who’d signed an unequal treaty.
For the next month, I practically lived at the training facility. The high-intensity training aggravated my old injuries. My shoulder and knee hurt so much I couldn’t sleep. I could only get by on painkillers.
I dragged my exhausted body back to the apartment, only to see Payton’s car downstairs.
He leaned against the car door, a cigarette between his fingers. Seeing me, he stubbed out the cigarette and strode over. “Where were you? Why do you look so haggard?”
“Training.” I flatly uttered that word and walked past him, preparing to go upstairs.
He grabbed my wrist.
I gasped, the severe pain in my shoulder instantly draining the color from my face.
Payton froze for a moment and instinctively released his grip. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing.” I stepped back, creating distance. “Mr. Payton, is there something you need?”
Irritation flashed in his eyes. “Sophia has a very important red carpet event tomorrow. She needs a beautiful necklace. I remember you have one called Heart of the Sun. Lend it to her for a day.”
I jerked my head up, looking at him in disbelief.
That “Heart of the Sun” necklace. The ring he’d proposed with had been remade into it. Later, he’d personally fastened it around my neck, saying he wanted that necklace to stay against my heartbeat forever.
Now he wanted me to lend this necklace to another woman?
“No.” I said stubbornly through gritted teeth.
“Lily, can you stop being so selfish?” Payton’s voice turned cold. “It’s just a necklace. It’s not like you wear it.”
“That’s a memento from my mother!” I blurted out, randomly making up a lie. I didn’t want to tell him I’d been wearing that necklace all along.
Payton sneered. “Your mother left it to you? Lily, when you lie, don’t you think first? I bought that for you back then. Since I bought it, I have the right to use it now.”
He reached out and directly pulled open my collar. The silver chain glinted coldly in the moonlight, and that blue diamond rested quietly at my collarbone.
Payton froze. He clearly hadn’t expected that I’d been wearing it all along.
Looking at his shocked expression, my heart no longer held a ripple of emotion. I reached up without hesitation and yanked hard.
Snap.
The chain broke, its sharp edge cutting a bloody line across my neck.
I hurled the necklace, still warm with my body heat and blood, hard against his chest. “Take it! Now get the hell out!”
Lily’s POV
The necklace struck Payton’s chest, then fell to the ground with a crisp sound.
Payton looked down at the necklace on the ground, then at the blood seeping from my neck, an extremely complex emotion flashing in his eyes.
He instinctively reached out, wanting to touch my wound. “Lily, you’re insane…”
I violently slapped his hand away, my gaze cold as ice. “Payton, take your things and get out of my sight.”
I didn’t look at him again. I turned and walked into the dim stairwell. Only after closing the door did I slide powerlessly to the floor, covering my neck, letting tears flow.
That necklace wasn’t just his proposal token to me. It was the only thing that could give me strength during countless high-altitude descents.
Now, even this last bit of warmth had been personally stripped away by him.
The next day, photos of Sophia wearing that “Heart of the Sun” on the red carpet dominated all entertainment news headlines. The caption read: “Limited edition blue diamond gifted to beauty, Payton heir and Sophia’s relationship going strong.”
I turned off my phone, forcing myself to focus on the tactical board in front of me. The World Championship was about to begin. I had no time to heal my wounds.
“Miss Lily, your shoulder…” Shay looked at my trembling hand with concern written all over her face.
“Give me a nerve block injection.” I instructed the team doctor expressionlessly.
The doctor frowned tightly. “Lily, are you insane? If you get another nerve block with this injury, you might never be able to lift your arm again!”
“It’s fine.” I raised my head, my eyes resolute. “I must win this competition.” If I won, I could completely repay my debt to the Payton family. If I won, I could completely leave Payton.
The moment the nerve block entered the joint cavity, the pain nearly made me bite through my teeth.
The World Championship was held in Switzerland. The snow winds of the Alps were bone-chillingly cold. I stood at the helicopter cabin door, looking down at the continuous snow peaks below, and took a deep breath. I leaped, like a bird, diving into the vast whiteness.
Wind roared in my ears. I endured the severe pain in my shoulder, precisely controlling my posture, completing one high-difficulty maneuver after another. Opening the chute, gliding, precision landing. When both my feet landed steadily on the bullseye, thunderous applause erupted throughout the venue.
I won. I’d won this gold medal with the highest value, and also completed the task Claire had assigned.
On the day I returned home, the airport was filled with my fans and media. Wearing sunglasses, I struggled to make my way out under security escort.
Suddenly, a commotion erupted in the crowd. “It’s Mr. Payton! Mr. Payton came to pick her up!”
Payton wore a black haute couture suit, holding a large bouquet of bright red roses, striding toward me. Media camera flashes went crazy, trying to capture this touching scene.
Payton walked up to me, handed me the roses, his eyes so tender they seemed to drip water. “Darling, congratulations. I knew you could do it.”
He called me “darling.” He hadn’t used that term in three years.
I didn’t take the flowers. I just looked at him coldly. “Mr. Payton, don’t put on an act here. I just finished competing. I’m very tired.”
The smile on Payton’s face froze. He stepped forward, trying to put his arm around my shoulder. “Stop making a scene. So many media are watching. I’ve already made reservations at a restaurant to celebrate for you.”
I dodged his touch, my voice not loud but clear enough for the surrounding media to hear. “Mr. Payton, your fiancée Miss Sophia is still waiting for you. You’ve given the flowers to the wrong person.”
As soon as I said this, the entire venue erupted in shock. Payton’s expression instantly darkened. He said angrily, “Lily, do you have to make a scene at a time like this?”
“What did you say?” I laughed coldly. “Payton, you’re using the championship I risked my life for to advertise your company, then you turn around and act affectionate toward me. Don’t you find that disgusting?”
I didn’t acknowledge his ugly expression again. I walked straight through the crowd and got in the car. The moment the car door closed, I saw Payton violently hurl that bouquet of roses to the ground.
When I returned to the apartment, the first thing I did was print out divorce papers. I signed my name on them, then put them in an envelope and mailed them to Payton. I wanted nothing. I only wanted freedom.
Lily’s POV
Three days after I mailed the divorce papers, Payton didn’t respond.
Instead, Sophia posted a photo of herself trying on wedding dresses on social media. The caption: “Seven years of feelings, not as good as one grand wedding. Looking forward to next month’s wedding.”
Looking at that post, I had no reaction.
Seven years. The length of my marriage to Payton was also exactly seven years.
Today was our seventh wedding anniversary.
In previous years on this day, no matter how busy he was, he would cancel all social engagements to spend time with me.
But today, he was accompanying another woman trying on wedding dresses.
In the evening, someone knocked on the apartment door.
I opened it to find a drunk Payton. His tie was loosened, his eyes reddened, staring hard at me. “Lily, how dare you?” He shoved me aside, stumbled into the room, and threw the crumpled divorce agreement on the table.
“Giving up all marital assets? Do you think that makes you noble?”
I closed the door, coldly watching him lose control. “I’ve fulfilled my contract obligations. I don’t want Payton Corporation’s sponsorship anymore either. Payton, I don’t owe you anything.”
“What did you say?” He whirled around, grabbed my chin in a vice grip, the force almost crushing my bones. “Lily, you owe me a life! I saved your mother’s life! You think you can leave me?”
I was forced to look up at this face I’d once been so infatuated with. “Oh? Do you want me to give my life back to you?”
Payton seemed stung by the deathly stillness in my eyes. He suddenly released me, irritably loosening his tie.
“Take back the agreement. I can pretend this never happened.” His tone softened somewhat, carrying arrogance.
“Sophia’s wedding is just for show. She needs a wedding to solidify her status in the entertainment industry. You’re still my wife.”
I could hardly believe my ears. “Payton, are you insane? You want me to watch you hold a wedding with another woman, and then I’m still supposed to continue being Mrs. Payton?”
“What do you want? Money? Resources? I can give you anything!” He shouted loudly. “Lily, don’t be too greedy! You’re flying around in the sky every day. How would you have time to take care of home? Sophia can provide me happiness that you can’t!”
“Happiness?” I chewed on this word, feeling utterly desolate.
“When I was getting nerve block injections to skydive for your company, nearly dying on that snowy mountain, you were helping her pick out necklaces. When I was being cyberbullied across the internet because of your coercion, you were helping her try on wedding dresses.”
“Payton, you don’t want happiness. You just need an obedient pet and a good employee who can make money for you!”
Slap!
The crisp sound of the slap echoed in the small apartment. Payton’s hand hung in mid-air, trembling slightly.
I turned my head to the side. My cheek hurt badly. I tasted blood at the corner of my mouth. This was the first time he’d hit me.
The air was deathly silent.
“Lily… I…” Payton seemed to realize what he’d done. Panic flashed in his eyes as he tried to reach for me.
I stepped back, avoiding his touch. “Payton, consider this slap the last bit of gratitude I’m repaying you.” I pointed at the door, my voice utterly devoid of warmth. “Please leave my home immediately.”
Payton stood in place, his chest heaving violently. He looked at me. Ultimately saying nothing, he turned and slammed the door as he left.
The next day, I contacted a lawyer and formally filed for divorce with the court. Since he wasn’t willing to divorce by agreement, we’d go through legal procedures.
Just as I was preparing to go to the law firm, I received a call from my coach. “Lily, something’s happened! The training facility’s property rights were transferred by Payton Corporation. The new owner is demanding we all move out within three days!”
My head buzzed. That facility stood on the last piece of land my mother had left me. Later, to raise training funds, I’d mortgaged this land to Payton Corporation.
Payton had once promised me that as long as I won the World Championship, he’d return the facility’s property rights to me. He’d broken his promise.
“Who’s the new owner?” I asked, suppressing my fury.
“It’s… it’s Sebastian.”
All the blood in my body instantly froze. Sebastian, Sophia’s father.
He was also the man who’d scammed my mother out of all her money years ago, causing her heart attack and ultimately her death! Payton had actually given my mother’s memento to my enemy!
Lily’s POV
I don’t know how I rushed to Payton Corporation’s building.
Security tried to stop me. I shoved them aside. Eyes red, like a cornered beast, I kicked open Payton’s office door.
Inside the office, Payton sat on the wide leather sofa. Sophia leaned against him, holding a document, laughing happily. That document was the property rights transfer for the facility.
Seeing me burst in, Sophia cried out in alarm and shrank into Payton’s embrace. “Miss Lily, why are you here…” She looked at me timidly, like a frightened little rabbit.
Payton’s expression darkened. He shielded Sophia behind him, looking at me coldly. “Lily, what are you doing? This is the office!”
I stared hard at the document in his hands, my voice trembling with extreme anger. “Payton, you gave the facility to Sebastian?”
Payton frowned, his tone very impatient. “It’s just a broken-down facility. Sophia’s father wants to invest in extreme sports. I saw that land was sitting empty, so I transferred it to him. If you want one, I’ll buy you ten better ones.”
“Broken-down facility?” I laughed miserably, tears finally bursting forth. “Payton, that’s what you promised to return to me! That’s the only thing my mother left me!”
“Lily, stop making a scene.” Payton stood up, looking down at me from above.
“Your mother’s been dead for so many years. What’s the use of keeping a piece of land? Sophia’s father is a businessman. That land can only achieve maximum value in his hands.”
“Businessman?” I pointed at Sophia, questioning him. “Do you know what kind of person Sebastian is? He scammed my mother out of all her money years ago! He’s the murderer who killed my mother!”
Sophia’s face paled. She immediately burst into tears. “Miss Lily, you can’t slander my father just because you’re jealous of me! My father has always done honest business. How could he possibly scam anyone…”
“Shut up!” I roared.
“Stop!” Payton suddenly slammed a document on the desk, making a huge noise. He walked up to me, his eyes utterly devoid of warmth.
“Lily, you’re becoming more and more disgusting. I know better than you what kind of person Sophia’s father is.You could fabricate such lies just to take over that land?”
He looked at me with eyes full of disappointment and disgust. “You used to be jealous of Sophia, but at least you were honest. Now? You’re like a lunatic spouting lies!”
Looking at him, my heart shattered completely into dust. He didn’t believe me. He’d rather believe a con artist’s daughter than his wife of seven years.
“Payton, I’m asking you one last time.” I took a deep breath, forcing myself to stay calm. “Give me back the facility, and we’ll have nothing to do with each other ever again.”
“Impossible.” He refused without hesitation. “I already promised Sophia. It’s a gift for her father.”
A gift. He was giving my mother’s memento to the enemy who killed her.
“Fine.” I nodded, wiped away my tears, and straightened my spine. “Payton, you’re going to regret this.”
I turned and walked out of the office without looking back.
I didn’t return to the apartment. Instead, I went straight to the law firm. “Mr. Zhang, help me investigate all of Sebastian’s financial transactions over the years, and find evidence of the fraud he committed against my mother back then.” I slammed a bank card on the table. “This is all my money.”
As I left the law firm, I got a call from Old Lee. “Lily, the facility… Sebastian brought people to demolish the buildings!”
I rushed to the facility like a madwoman. Bulldozers were roaring. The row of trees my mother had planted with her own hands had already been uprooted. Sebastian stood to the side, smoking a cigar, looking smug.
“Stop! Everyone stop!” I rushed forward, trying to block the bulldozers.
“Well, well, if it isn’t Miss Lily?” Sebastian exhaled a puff of smoke, looking at me with a smug grin. “What’s wrong? Didn’t Mr. Payton tell you this land is mine now?”
“Sebastian, you bastard! Give me back the land!” My eyes were bloodshot as I lunged at him, trying to attack him.
Several security guards immediately stepped forward and pinned me to the ground. The rough gravel scraped my cheeks. I struggled desperately, but it was useless.
“Demolish it!” Sebastian waved his hand.
I watched as the bulldozers knocked down the training tower, watched as those buildings that held countless hours of my sweat and memories turned to rubble.
My heart died along with those ruins.
Lily’s POV
Through the clouds of dust, the security guards tossed me to the roadside like garbage.
My knees and elbows were scraped raw, blood mixed with dirt running down. I watched Sebastian drive away in his luxury car, laughing, watched the bulldozers crush the last traces of my mother.
I didn’t cry. I’d run out of tears yesterday.
I dragged my stiff body back to that cramped apartment, step by step. I opened my laptop and began organizing all the commercial endorsements and competition prize money I’d earned for Payton Corporation over the years.
Payton thought I was just an athlete who could only skydive, but he forgot that over these seven years, to help him solidify Payton Corporation’s market share in the sports industry, I’d been exposed to many core confidential matters.
If Sebastian dared to take over the facility, he would definitely use Payton Corporation’s resources for money laundering and illegal financing.
I dialed an encrypted number. “Help me check Sebastian’s recent fund flows, especially any connections with Payton Corporation’s overseas accounts.”
A low male voice came from the other end. “Lily, you’re finally willing to contact me.”
That person was Jace Payton. Payton’s half-brother, the child of the Payton family who’d always been exiled abroad. He was also the one who, years ago in that rainstorm, had actually paid the first installment of my mother’s surgery fees. But later Payton appeared, forcefully took over everything, drove Jace out of the country, and became my “benefactor.”
“Jace, help me.” My voice was hoarse.
“Alright. Three days.” Jace didn’t ask a single question and hung up directly.
For those three days, I didn’t leave the apartment. Payton didn’t look for me either. My phone was filled with news about Sophia and Payton preparing their wedding of the century.
On the third night, Jace sent me an encrypted email. Inside was not only evidence of Sebastian using the facility for money laundering, but also evidence of Sophia’s early involvement in illegal gambling. Most damning of all, Sebastian’s money laundering channel used Payton’s private overseas accounts.
Looking at the evidence on the screen, I smirked coldly. Payton, for the sake of a con artist, you personally handed me the knife.
I packaged all this evidence and set it to send on a timer. Target: the police department and all major mainstream media outlets.
After finishing this, I received a call from Payton. “Tomorrow is Sophia’s wedding. You must attend.” His voice still carried that commanding tone.
“In what capacity should I attend?” I asked flatly. “Ex-wife, or the stray dog you kicked out?”
Payton was silent for two seconds, his tone tinged with displeasure.
“Lily, stop making a scene. There will be a lot of media tomorrow. You attending as Payton Corporation’s spokesperson will dispel rumors that we’re on bad terms. As long as you cooperate, I’ll compensate you double for the facility’s loss.”
“Compensation?” I laughed lightly. “Payton, some things once broken can never be fixed.”
“Lily! What exactly do you want!” He finally lost his patience. “I’m warning you, if you dare not show up tomorrow, or if you dare cause trouble at the wedding, I guarantee you’ll never be able to stay in the skydiving world!”
“Fine, I’ll go.” I calmly hung up. I would give them a wedding gift they’d never forget.
The next day, the weather was terribly gloomy, strong winds rolling with dark clouds. The wedding of the century was held at an outdoor estate owned by Payton Corporation.
I wore a black trench coat with no makeup, my face pale as a ghost. Payton wore a white custom suit. Seeing me, he frowned deeply and strode over. “Why are you wearing this? Didn’t I have someone send you a dress?”
“The dress was too dirty. I found it disgusting.” I looked straight into his eyes.
Just then, Sophia approached in a trailing wedding dress, supported by Sebastian. “Miss Lily, you came.” Sophia smiled happily, showing off as she touched the blue diamond necklace around her neck.
I looked at this revolting father and daughter, then at Payton standing beside them, his eyes fixed on Sophia. “Yes, past matters should be completely resolved today.”
I raised my wrist and checked the time. Ten o’clock sharp. The time the scheduled email was set to go out.
Almost simultaneously, piercing sirens suddenly sounded outside the estate. Over a dozen police cars roared up, directly breaking through the estate gates.
Several police officers strode up to them. “Sebastian, you’re suspected of massive fraud and illegal money laundering. Please come with us. Mr. Payton, your private accounts are suspected of involvement in international money laundering. Please cooperate with our investigation.”
Cold handcuffs were directly clamped onto Sebastian’s and Payton’s wrists. Sophia screamed and collapsed to the ground in fright.
Payton looked at the handcuffs on his wrists in shock, then suddenly turned to look at me. “Lily… was this you?” His voice was trembling.
I stood in place, looking at his pathetic state, not a ripple of emotion in my heart. “Happy wedding, Mr. Payton.” I smiled slightly and turned to walk into the strong wind.
Lily’s POV
The police cars roared away. The originally lavish wedding of the century instantly became a farce.
I didn’t look back once. I walked straight out of the estate. The wind grew stronger and dense raindrops began to fall from the sky. I drove to the wilderness skydiving facility in the suburbs. Today would be my last jump. I wanted to leave all the Payton family’s taint from these seven years in the wind.
When I reached the facility, heavy rain had already fallen. The meteorological station issued a thunderstorm warning. Skydiving in this weather was tantamount to suicide. But I didn’t care. I put on that pure black skydiving suit without any sponsor logos and shouldered my original old parachute pack.
The helicopter pilot gripped the cabin door tightly. “Lily, you’re crazy! In this weather, if you encounter strong wind shear, the chute won’t open at all!”
“Let me fly once.” I looked at him, my eyes as hollow as a dry well. “Just this once. If I don’t jump, I’ll suffocate.”
The helicopter climbed with difficulty through the wind and rain. I sat by the cabin door, looking down at the city shrouded in dark clouds and rainstorm. My phone vibrated frantically in its waterproof bag. It was Payton’s number. He must have been released on bail.
I pressed the answer button.
“Lily! Where are you!” On the other end, Payton’s roar almost pierced through the wind and rain. “You dared to give that evidence to the police! Do you know how much Payton Corporation’s stock price dropped today!”
“Isn’t this what you wanted?” Facing the violent wind pouring into the cabin, my voice was oddly calm. “You broke the law for Sophia’s sake. I just helped you wake up.”
“Come back right now! Tell the media that evidence was forged by you! Otherwise, I’ll make sure you never touch a parachute again in your life!”
“Payton.” I interrupted his ranting. “Do you remember what you said to me seven years ago? You said I belonged to the sky, that I shouldn’t be held back by mud. But these seven years, you personally dragged me into the filthiest swamp.”
“What do you mean? Lily, don’t change the subject!”
“Payton, let’s divorce. I’ve already signed the agreement and mailed it to your lawyer.”
“No way! You can’t just leave me, Lily. You owe me…”
“I owe you nothing!” I screamed into the phone. “I paid for my mother’s life with seven years of my youth. With all my championships. I even got revenge for the facility. Payton, after today, we’re done. Forever.”
I violently threw my phone out of the cabin, watching it tumble through the air, finally disappearing into the rainstorm. “Open the door!”
The cabin door opened. The violent wind instantly enveloped me. Without a moment’s hesitation, I leaped into that pitch-black thunderstorm.
The moment the weightlessness hit, I closed my eyes. My body tumbled violently in the strong air currents, completely losing control. I didn’t pull the main chute. Memories of these seven years flashed through my mind.
The altimeter was frantically alarming: 1000 meters… 800 meters… 500 meters…
Just as I was about to give up struggling and let myself fall, a dark shadow suddenly swept down from above at high speed, breaking through the rain curtain, precisely grabbing my reserve chute ripcord.
“Bang!” The reserve chute was forcibly deployed. The massive pull made my vision go black, my shoulder sending tearing pain. Two bodies collided violently in the strong wind.
I barely opened my eyes. Through my blurred goggles, I saw a pair of deep, anxious eyes. It was Jace. He’d actually jumped down after me.
“Lily! Do you have a death wish!” He roared at me through the wind and rain, holding me tightly, using his own body to shield me from the raging wind.
We glided with difficulty through the strong wind, ultimately deviating from the landing point and crashing heavily into a muddy forest. The massive impact made me completely lose consciousness.
When I woke up again, I was lying in a hospital bed. My right shoulder was in a thick cast.
The hospital room door opened. Jace wore a black shirt, his face somewhat pale, his left arm also wrapped in bandages. Seeing me awake, joy flashed in his eyes. He quickly walked to the bedside. “Lily, you’re finally awake.”
I looked at him, my voice hoarse. “Why… did you jump after me?”
“Because I can’t lose you again.” Jace gripped my uninjured left hand tightly, his gaze intense and stubborn. “Seven years ago, I was one step too late and let Payton take you away. You suffered for seven years. This time, I absolutely won’t let go.”
I was stunned, my eyes gradually reddening.
Just then, the hospital room door was violently kicked open. Payton charged in, his eyes bloodshot like a crazed beast. When he saw Jace holding my hand, his rationality seemed to completely snap.
“Jace! Let go of her!” Payton rushed over and grabbed Jace’s collar. “You dare touch my woman!”
Jace sneered and pushed him away.
“Your woman? Payton, do you deserve that?”
He pulled out a stamped document from his pocket and threw it in Payton’s face.
“Look carefully. The court has officially accepted the divorce lawsuit. From now on, Lily has nothing to do with you.”
Payton stared at the document, his face deathly pale.
He turned to look at me, his voice trembling with a hint of panic.
“Lily… is this true?”
I looked at him, my gaze as calm as if looking at a stranger.
“Mr. Payton, please leave now. I need to rest.”
🌟 Continue the story here
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My husband is Bren, the Alpha of the Dubois pack.
He’s also the CEO of a Fortune 500 company.
Outsiders always assume I must be incredibly wealthy after marrying Bren.
Whenever I hear that, I can only smile bitterly.
Later, while organizing files in Bren’s study, I accidentally discovered a yellowed gift agreement hidden in the bottom drawer.
It was a breakup settlement Bren had given his ex-girlfriend Vivian for free:
30 million in cash, 2% of the company’s equity, and ownership of two commercial buildings in the pack’s business district.
I’ve been married to Bren for seven years, but before our wedding, he had me sign a cold, impersonal prenuptial agreement.
I don’t have any assets under my name, let alone any involvement in his business.
Even the villa we currently live in has nothing to do with me.
Just as I’m feeling angry, Bren appears in the doorway and scolds me:
“I told you not to go into my study. You broke the rules again.”
I hand him the gift agreement he gave his ex-girlfriend and say calmly:
“Bren, let’s get divorced. I want to break our mate bond with you.”
He frowns and tears the document in my hands to shreds:
“Just because of this agreement?! I can do whatever I want with my own property. Do I need your approval? Besides, this is all in the past.”
With that, he doesn’t spare me another glance and leaves the study.
And I simply call my lawyer calmly.
When the divorce lawyer sent over the divorce agreement, she was still trying to convince me:
“Luna Una, are you sure you want to give up all assets? Although you signed a prenuptial agreement, Alpha Bren has always been generous. You can fight for your legal rights.”
Hearing the lawyer’s words, a bitter smile appeared on my lips.
Legal rights? I actually have nothing.
After marriage, Bren only takes a $1 salary from the company each month.
The company’s equity distribution was made very clear before I married him.
All core assets belong to him personally and have nothing to do with me.
On our wedding day, he had a professional lawyer present as a witness, while I faced a thick stack of prenuptial agreements.
Actually, I didn’t think there was anything wrong with it before.
Bren is a natural Alpha leader and businessman, skilled at planning and very rational.
At that time, I loved him as a person, not his wealth, so I didn’t care at all.
But it wasn’t until I saw how generous he was with his ex-girlfriend that I realized how much of a fool I’d been.
My chest tightened painfully, but I still replied calmly,
“No need. Just proceed with this agreement.”
After hanging up with the lawyer, I removed my ring:
Inside the ring was an English inscription: B&V.
Only at this moment did I suddenly realize this was actually an abbreviation for “Bren and Vivian.”
This reminded me of three years ago when I accidentally left my ring at an art exhibition.
When Bren saw I wasn’t wearing my ring, he immediately lost his temper.
He dragged me to the door. “Why aren’t you wearing your ring? Where did you put it?”
The coldness on his face made me panic. I quickly explained:
“I went to see an art exhibition during the day and accidentally left it in the restroom. The staff said they’d bring it tomorrow.”
After hearing my explanation, although Bren didn’t say much more that night, he had his assistant retrieve the ring from the exhibition staff overnight.
Even this villa we live in was purchased because he had planned to marry Vivian.
Vivian left him but took away assets I could never obtain in my lifetime.
What I’m jealous of isn’t just the unfair distribution of assets, but his favoritism toward his ex-girlfriend all these years.
For the next seven full days, he barely spoke a word to me.
He didn’t touch any of the breakfasts I prepared.
He didn’t even come home two nights.
Thinking of all these past events, numbness and sourness surged through my heart again.
Afraid tears would burst forth, I removed the ring and placed it on the table.
After the lawyer delivered the agreement, I decisively signed my name on the divorce papers and left the villa without looking back.
With a friend’s help, I quickly found a suitable apartment.
I’ve never been picky about living conditions, so that same afternoon I finalized the lease with the landlord.
By the time I finished cleaning thoroughly, it was already nine o’clock at night.
I decided to return to the villa to talk to Bren face-to-face about the divorce and breaking our mate bond.
But I waited until eleven o’clock at night, and Bren still hadn’t returned.
I sat blankly in the living room waiting for him.
At one in the morning, Bren pushed open the door, reeking of alcohol.
Seeing me sitting there, he immediately showed signs of impatience.
He took off his suit jacket and casually threw it over the back of a chair, saying coldly to me, “Going to fight again? I don’t have time for that.”
With that, he rolled up his shirt sleeves and was about to head straight to his room.
The whole time, he didn’t glance once at the divorce agreement I’d placed on the table, nor did he say an extra word to me.
My throat tightened slightly, but I still called out to him, “Bren, this is the divorce agreement. Please sign it. Let’s get divorced and break our mate bond.”
Bren’s steps paused slightly. He turned back irritably to look at me.
“Still angry about the breakup agreement with my ex? You’re my wife now. Don’t you even have that much grace?”
Hearing these words, I suddenly wanted to laugh.
So in Bren’s view, the only reason I wanted a divorce was because he gave his ex a breakup settlement?
But if it were really just about money, I wouldn’t have chosen to marry him in the first place.
Maybe Bren will never know that I’ve silently loved him for many years.
I once wrote him 99 love letters but never dared to deliver them personally.
Like a humble observer, I quietly watched everything about him from the sidelines.
I watched Bren fall in love with Vivian, watched Vivian break up with Bren and leave for another pack, watched Bren look utterly devastated.
Not long after, I discovered Bren and I were fated mates.
At that time, Bren took the initiative to ask me to date him. I was beyond thrilled—I thought he’d let go of Vivian.
Even if he didn’t love me that much, I wasn’t afraid. I thought people can change, that my sincerity would eventually move him.
After we started dating, although he rarely took initiative with me, he always maintained a certain politeness.
He spent very little time with me, but he was willing to accompany me to a movie on Valentine’s Day.
He’d give me gifts on my birthday, though the gifts were only chosen by his secretary.
But even these small bits of sweetness made me feel very content.
After dating for a year, we got married smoothly.
There was no touching marriage proposal, no romantic wedding.
It was simply because his parents urged him to get married, so he agreed to marry me.
Four years of secret love, one year of dating, seven years of marriage.
Now it’s enough. I don’t want to continue anymore.
Suppressing the stabbing pain in my chest, I took a deep breath,
“Bren, I really want a divorce.”
With that, I stood up first, repeating calmly and firmly, “So, I hope by tomorrow morning, this agreement will already be signed. After that, we’ll find a day to break our mate bond.”
After saying this, I imitated his usual cold manner, walked past him toward the guest bedroom, and locked the door.
Bren suddenly shouted angrily behind me, “Fine, Una! You want a divorce, right? Okay, I’ll sign it right now. Even if you come crawling back begging me later, I won’t take you back!”
Soon, the sound of a door slamming came from the next room.
Listening to the commotion outside, even though I was mentally prepared, I still felt a dense, stabbing pain in my heart.
Perhaps Bren had long forgotten that during these seven years of marriage, I had begged him in a low voice countless times.
On the first anniversary after our marriage, I pleaded with him to celebrate at the beach.
He agreed readily, but when the appointed time came, he sent me a last-minute message saying he had an emergency meeting that evening.
After that, he never explained again and just hung up the phone directly.
Seven years have passed, and every year I ask if he has time, saying I want to travel somewhere with him.
But every year, he says his schedule is too tight and he has no time.
Just like that, the trips he owes me have been postponed again and again.
Actually, I never understood before why even after years of marriage to Bren, there always seemed to be an invisible wall between us.
Not until that gift agreement surfaced.
Only then did I understand—it’s all simply because he doesn’t care about me at all.
I have to admit one thing:
Where a man spends his money is where his love is.
The next morning, Bren was already gone.
Only the living room remained, littered with shredded pieces of the torn divorce agreement.
Looking at the mess, for a brief moment, I felt somewhat dazed.
Perhaps… Bren isn’t really that heartless toward me?
Did he tear up the divorce agreement because he couldn’t bear to let me go?
It wasn’t until my phone buzzed with a new message that I snapped back to reality.
The message was from a strange girl.
A week ago, she suddenly wanted to add me as a friend on my Ins account.
Her verification message read, “Third wheel, I’m back. Time to return Bren to me, don’t you think?”
Out of curiosity, I accepted her request.
Since then, she’s been frequently sending me various photos and documents.
Photos of Bren accompanying her to concerts; Video screenshots of the two of them watching fireworks together at the beach;
Even photos of them kissing in a parking lot late at night.
Even that agreement in Bren’s study—she was the one who tipped me off about it.
This time, she sent a photo of Bren sleeping peacefully on a hotel bed, captured from the side.
“I heard you went through Bren’s study and saw that agreement. So, have you given up yet?”
“By the way, the jewelry Bren left for you—I hope you’ll send it for cleaning and disinfection soon.”
“I have a cleanliness obsession. I don’t like things that other people have touched.”
“Making Bren marry you was only because I thought you were clean enough. Men have physical needs, you know. Better he relieves himself with you than goes looking for prostitutes outside.”
“Also, you only have three days to get divorced, or I’ll go public with our relationship.”
“Don’t think Bren can’t bear to lose you. You have no idea how proactive he is.”
“Ever since I returned to Dubois pack, he’s been coming to find me almost every day. Alright, enough talking. Bren’s about to wake up. We’re going to take a bath together.”
The messages stopped abruptly there.
And my tears fell one by one onto the keyboard.
Through blurred vision, I forced myself to reply:
“You said you don’t like things other people have touched, but over these years, Bren and I have had sex a thousand times already.”
After I sent the message, there was no further response from her.
My chest felt suffocated, like being punched into cotton.
That sharp, piercing pain surged up instantly.
No wonder he stormed out in the middle of the night.
At the time, I thought it was because my mention of divorce had upset Bren.
Turns out he was just rushing off to relive old times with his ex-girlfriend.
The last thread in my heart snapped. With trembling fingertips, I sent him a message,
“Bren, are you free today? I want to break our mate bond with you. We can go to City Hall and handle the procedures.”
I sent my message a full half hour ago, and Bren still hasn’t responded. Calling him goes unanswered too.
Instead, Vivian sent me a voice message.
“Are you annoying or what? Why do you keep calling Bren? Don’t you know? Bren and I hate being disturbed when we’re alone together.”
I suppressed the anger in my heart and replied to her:
“I’ve already told him I want to reject him. If you don’t want to remain nameless forever, have him come back and break the mate bond with me.”
Vivian stopped responding.
I really had no patience to wait for Bren’s message anymore.
I directly contacted a moving company and started packing all my belongings.
Including all the various gifts I’d given him over the years.
Oil paintings I’d made for him, ties and cufflinks I’d bought him…
He’d thrown all these things in the storage room like garbage.
Since he doesn’t want them, I’ll throw them all away—along with the heart that once loved him.
Although I’d lived in this house for seven years, it took only three hours to load all my things onto the moving truck.
As I was leaving, I ultimately couldn’t hold back and burst into tears again.
I had just moved to my new apartment and was simply organizing my things.
That’s when I received another message from Vivian:
“Come over. Bren is at my hotel suite. He’s agreed to break the mate bond.”
Looking at this message, my fingers tightened unconsciously around my phone.
In the end, I only replied: “Okay.”
Before leaving, I’d already formed a revenge plan in my mind.
I changed into a quick-dry outfit and grabbed a camera with a telephoto lens.
Then I took a taxi straight to the hotel Vivian had sent me.
I’d been humiliated by Vivian for a whole month.
It was time to let her experience what being humiliated feels like.
Even though I knew Bren would be furious and we’d both lose in the end.
🌟 Continue the story here
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In the fourth year of our arranged marriage, Nathaniel still loved that fragile human, Sophia, his fated mate.
Even though I was his wife now, it didn’t matter.
After Sophia got injured, he even wanted to drain half his blood for her.
Alpha blood had strong healing powers. It could prevent scars from forming on her wounds.
Sophia shattered the keepsake my grandmother left me.
Yet he grabbed me by the throat and forced me to apologize to Sophia.
To make him happy, I chose to break the mate bond and leave on my own.
Two months later, he found me in Paris and begged me to come back to him.
But he didn’t know. I had found my fated mate.
Amelia Johnson POV
On the phone, Moore, my father’s beta, had a calm and professional voice.
“Amelia, Alpha Silas has carefully considered your proposal. He admits that Nathaniel has done far too much for that human, things a qualified alpha heir shouldn’t do. Therefore, the cooperation with Moonclaw Pack can be terminated. You can leave Moonclaw Pack after that ridiculous marriage contract expires and go anywhere you want.”
His voice paused, taking on a hint of amusement.
“If the money isn’t enough, you’ll have to talk to your father yourself.”
“Thank you for your help, Moore.”
I hung up and looked at the enormous photo hanging in the center of the living room wall.
In the picture, I wore a formal dress, standing beside Nathaniel.
That was the only time in my life I dared to stand so brazenly close to Nathaniel.
Yet his expression was so cold.
Love or the lack of it needed no words. It hung there, naked and obvious.
“It’s finally going to end.”
I sighed.
Four years ago, my father sent me to Moonclaw Pack for an arranged marriage when I was twenty-two and still hadn’t found my fated mate.
After arriving, I learned that Nathaniel had already found his fated mate.
It’s just that his fated mate was human, a human that Nathaniel’s father, Alpha William, refused to accept.
So Alpha William ordered him to give up that human and be with me.
On my wedding night, there was no tenderness, only Nathaniel’s cold, cutting words and a ridiculous marriage contract.
“Amelia, remember your place. This is just an arranged marriage between us. And this arrangement only lasts four years. During these four years, do what you’re supposed to do and don’t fantasize about anything that doesn’t belong to you. After four years, give up your position to its rightful owner.”
Back then, I naively thought that four years would be enough to warm a block of ice.
I thought we could become mates who loved each other.
But four years passed, and I finally understood: some ice would never melt for me.
A soft sound at the door interrupted my thoughts.
Nathaniel was home.
His tall figure brought a sharp chill as he stepped inside. I took a deep breath and went to meet him.
I took his coat and hung it up.
I knelt down in front of him, opened the shoe cabinet, and took out a pair of soft house slippers.
I had practiced this routine for four years.
Nathaniel had long grown accustomed to it all. He loosened his tie and tossed it carelessly on the shoe cabinet:
“Next month is the pack’s full moon festival. Don’t forget to attend.”
My movements as I changed his shoes froze for a moment.
I shook my head gently:
“I’ll probably be busy that day. I won’t go.”
After that day, I would no longer be Nathaniel’s mate.
But I couldn’t bring myself to say those words.
Hearing this, Nathaniel’s brows furrowed immediately.
“What are you throwing a tantrum about now?”
His voice was full of impatience.
“Because I’ve been spending more time with Sophia lately? Amelia, I warned you on the first day of our marriage. Don’t fantasize about things that don’t belong to you. And put away that pathetic victim act. It only disgusts me.”
I was simply preparing to disappear completely from his world after the contract expired, to never be an eyesore again.
Yet he thought I was protesting his kindness toward Sophia in this way.
I opened my mouth but ultimately said nothing.
Nathaniel’s phone rang.
He glanced at the caller ID, and his expression instantly softened. A tenderness he had never shown me.
Sophia’s crying came through the receiver. Nathaniel asked nervously and gently:
“Sophia? What’s wrong? Don’t cry, take your time.”
Sophia on the other end seemed to be saying something intermittently.
Nathaniel kept comforting her:
“Don’t be afraid, I’m here. Where are you now? Okay, I’ll be right there!”
He hung up and didn’t even glance at me still kneeling on the floor. He grabbed his car keys and rushed outside.
He moved so urgently that his shoulder slammed hard into me.
I was already off-balance, and this powerful impact sent my body stumbling backward uncontrollably.
My forehead struck hard against the sharp corner of the door frame. Searing pain exploded from my temple, and stars burst before my eyes.
But Nathaniel’s figure had already disappeared outside the door. He rushed into the cold night without even a backward glance.
The huge house instantly fell silent.
I supported myself against the wall and slowly stood up. The pain at my temple made me dizzy.
I walked to the mirror in the entryway and looked at the pale-faced woman in the reflection.
I wore a blue floral dress, looking docile and harmless.
But I wasn’t always like this.
I was my father’s favorite child, inheriting his combat talents. I could shift at sixteen and beat down those guys who drooled after me.
I never imagined becoming someone’s mate, bearing his children, managing a household.
For four years, I had disguised myself as a weak, unthreatening woman.
All to win Nathaniel’s love.
It was laughable, but I had to do it to maintain the alliance between our packs.
I was an alpha’s daughter. This was my duty.
At least it would all end soon.
It wasn’t until late at night that my phone rang.
It was Nathaniel.
I answered.
His voice came through, completely flat:
“Come to the hospital.”
I instinctively asked:
“What happened? Are you hurt?”
“Come and you’ll see.”
The call was mercilessly disconnected, leaving only the cold dial tone.
Without thinking, I grabbed a coat and rushed out.
The night wind was freezing. I drove at top speed all the way.
What could have happened?
Was it an accident with Sophia? Or was it him?
I arrived at the hospital as fast as I could.
From a distance, I immediately saw Nathaniel in the hospital room, holding the crying Sophia and comforting her.
They were embracing tightly. The scene felt so ironic, as if I, who had rushed here, was the third party.
Amelia Johnson POV
The air in the corridor felt especially cold because of the disinfectant smell.
I stood there, feeling like all the blood in my body had been frozen by this chill.
I watched the two people embracing tightly in the distance.
Nathaniel lowered his head, softly comforting Sophia who was crying in his arms. The lines of his profile were as gentle as if he were a different person.
That was the tenderness I hadn’t earned even after four years.
I could barely breathe.
It took me a long time to move my stiffened legs again, walking toward them step by step.
Nathaniel heard the sound and looked up.
The moment he saw me, the tenderness that flashed in his eyes quickly faded, replaced again by that familiar coldness.
“What happened?”
I forced myself to speak.
Nathaniel looked at me with those terrifyingly calm eyes and spoke slowly:
“Sophia had an accident. The wound is long, and she’s lost a lot of blood.”
I instinctively asked:
“What?”
“She needs a blood transfusion.”
Nathaniel looked at me as if stating a fact as mundane as the weather, completely unrelated to her:
“My blood can not only save her but also prevent the wound from scarring.”
“You want to give her your blood?!”
Alpha blood did indeed have powerful healing abilities.
But that didn’t mean it should be used at times like this, especially not for the reason of preventing a human from having scars.
This was absurd.
He would go this far for Sophia?
“I didn’t call you here for your opinion.”
Nathaniel coldly interrupted me.
“Just to inform you.”
“Nathaniel, you can’t do this!” I stepped forward, my voice trembling with urgency. “Losing a large amount of blood is dangerous even for you. This is too risky!”
“Dangerous?” A mocking smile curved Nathaniel’s lips. “That’s none of your concern. My decisions aren’t for you to question.”
“I’m your mate!” The words burst out, carrying a desperation I hadn’t even noticed in myself.
“Mate?” The mockery in his eyes deepened. “Remember your place, Amelia. You’re just a conveniently suitable arranged marriage partner when I needed one. Now, move aside.”
I see.
So my only value as his mate was to be a silent background prop when told he’d decided to risk himself for another woman.
How ironic.
“Fine.”
I stepped back, feeling all the strength drain from my body.
Nathaniel released Sophia and helped her sit in a nearby chair.
He comforted her with gentle words, then turned and strode toward the treatment room.
Just as the door was about to close, I called out:
“Nathaniel!”
He stopped and turned to look at me without emotion.
For a moment, I wanted to ask him:
In these four years, did you ever care for me, even for a second?
But meeting those cold eyes, I knew the answer would only disappoint me more.
In the end, I only said:
“Be safe.”
His gaze seemed to flicker slightly, but he said nothing in the end.
He turned and went to give blood without hesitation.
I finally understood completely.
His love for Sophia was profound enough that he would give his precious blood for her.
And my four years of devotion and waiting were nothing but a joke.
In the corridor, I sat on the cold bench.
Sophia walked out of the hospital room, wiped away her tears, sat down beside me, and spoke in a gentle tone:
“I’m sorry for troubling Nathaniel again because of me. You know, when I first learned about you, I was really angry. But he said you were just a tool he used to deal with Alpha William. With you around, Alpha William wouldn’t make things difficult for me, and I could have more freedom.”
I knew what this meant.
Alpha William was an extremely strict werewolf alpha.
He didn’t allow any female werewolves to leave the pack, or even go to bars alone.
He was even stricter with Nathaniel’s mate.
He forbade me from leaving the pack, required me to wait at home when Nathaniel returned, demanded I personally take care of all of Nathaniel’s needs.
So Nathaniel knew this life was restrictive, but he didn’t care about me, so he couldn’t see my pain.
“You know what? One year, he secretly flew to Paris just because I casually mentioned I liked a certain vintage pendant that was about to be released.”
Sophia smiled and continued to provoke me.
“But I was still angry at the time, so I threw the jewelry box right back at him.”
I remembered that pendant.
When Nathaniel returned from Paris that time, he casually tossed an exquisite velvet box to me, his tone indifferent:
“Someone gave it to me. I don’t like it. You deal with it.”
I was so happy when I opened it and saw the necklace.
I thought it was the first and only gift he’d ever given me.
I treasured it at the bottom of my jewelry box, never daring to wear it, often taking it out and looking at it for hours.
It turned out that what I treasured was just the garbage Sophia had disdainfully thrown away.
“And another time,”
Sophia’s voice drifted over leisurely,
“I was in a bad mood late at night and posted something really sad on social media. Guess what? He actually flew to New York overnight to be with me. Even though I didn’t want to see him, he stood in the rain all night.”
I remembered that time. When Nathaniel came back from his business trip, he was soaking wet and pressed me hard beneath him, taking me fiercely.
I naively thought at the time that it was proof of his longing for me after our separation, a breakthrough in our relationship.
It turned out that wasn’t love at all, much less genuine feeling.
It was just him venting all his unfulfilled desire for another woman on me, a substitute he could use whenever he wanted.
“These four years,”
Sophia’s voice was full of pride,
“I ignored him, wanted him to give up, but Nathaniel pursued relentlessly. Every day he had someone send me a bouquet of lisianthus.”
The flower language of lisianthus is unchanging love, eternal waiting.
I felt dizzy and disoriented.
He didn’t like having any plants in the house. He said he was allergic, so I, who had always loved fresh flowers, hadn’t bought a single one in four years.
Yet he easily ordered flowers for someone else for four entire years.
I was a complete fool.
Four years of arranged marriage, an elaborately planned deception.
“I’m leaving.”
I didn’t want to hear her continue.
I stood up and pushed through the hospital doors, finally breaking into a run.
I was afraid that one second later, I would completely drown in this four-year-long fantasy.
Amelia Johnson POV
After escaping from the hospital, I locked myself in the villa for three whole days.
So the pendant I had carefully treasured was someone else’s discarded garbage.
So what I thought was passion was just a tool for venting.
So my joyful late-night companionship was just witnessing a prolonged confession.
Four years, one thousand four hundred and sixty days: I had become a complete substitute, a shadow.
Not even a shadow, just an insignificant background prop in his love story.
On the fourth day, Beta Henry knocked on my door:
“Amelia, Alpha William wants you and sir to remember to attend the gathering tonight.”
I didn’t refuse.
This was Moonclaw Pack’s rule: a monthly banquet, rain or shine.
I spent a long time using thick concealer to hide the exhaustion and pallor on my face.
I changed into a proper long dress and played the role of Nathaniel’s gentle and virtuous mate once again.
This would be the last time.
In the evening, Nathaniel came home, his face slightly paler than usual but still upright.
Seeing me, he only nodded faintly as a greeting, then went straight upstairs to change.
From beginning to end, he didn’t ask why I had suddenly left that day or how I’d been these past few days.
As if I were just a prop needed to attend the banquet together.
The pack’s council hall was built large and usually served the function of hosting banquets as well.
The huge dining table was filled with pack members, but the atmosphere was as oppressive as always.
No one dared to make noise around the stern and rigid Alpha William.
Nathaniel’s father, Alpha William, sat at the head of the table.
Halfway through the meal, an elder spoke up with concern:
“Nathaniel, you and Amelia have been together for four years. Why hasn’t she gotten pregnant yet?”
At these words, everyone’s gaze focused on my flat abdomen.
Oh no.
Nathaniel put down his utensils and wiped the corner of his mouth with a napkin, his tone indifferent:
“No rush.”
These three casual words instantly ignited Alpha William’s fury. He slammed his fork heavily on the table.
“No rush?!”
William glared at him.
“You’re already thirty years old. How much longer do you want to wait? Amelia, as Nathaniel’s mate, don’t you have any sense of responsibility?!”
The attack instantly turned toward me.
I put down my fork, stood up, and bowed my head slightly:
“Dad, it’s my fault.”
“Of course it’s your fault!”
William’s voice grew even harsher. His sharp gaze cut into me like a knife.
“I heard that a few days ago, Nathaniel gave a lot of blood for that human woman! Alpha blood is so precious and powerful. How can it be casually given to others, especially to a fragile human?! You’re his mate and you were there. Why didn’t you stop him from doing something so dangerous and reckless?!”
“Dad, this was my own decision.”
Nathaniel frowned and spoke up.
“You shut up!”
William scolded.
“You don’t get to speak here! Amelia, you’ve been married to Nathaniel for four years without bearing an heir for the pack. Now you can’t even take care of Nathaniel’s health, letting him deplete himself for some damned human! You’re failing completely as a mate!”
Yes, this was another reason I decided not to continue the marriage arrangement.
This Alpha William was even more domineering and tyrannical than a king.
Especially, he hated all women.
That included me, of course.
He believed women should stay obediently at home, locked up in chains, only needed to bear children.
So his mate, that brave Luna, tried to resist and ultimately chose suicide.
The death of his fated mate only intensified this tyrant’s obsession.
In these four years, I had endured too many such insults. I hadn’t planned to respond.
But William gestured to a nearby servant.
The servant immediately brought over a bowl of dark, bitter-smelling medicine.
“This is medicine I specially had the healer prepare for you. It will help you get pregnant. Drink it!”
William commanded.
I looked at the bowl of medicine, my stomach churning.
For the first time, I chose to resist.
“Dad, I’m sorry. I won’t drink this medicine.”
Everyone was shocked, including Nathaniel, who looked at me with surprise.
William’s face turned ashen. He pointed at my nose and roared:
“You dare defy me! Are you challenging Moonclaw Pack’s rules? Guards!”
Two tall guards immediately stepped forward.
“Take her to the yard! Give her ten lashes with the silver whip!”
I didn’t resist, letting the guards drag me out.
From beginning to end, Nathaniel just sat there, watching coldly.
He didn’t even say a word in my defense, only looking away the moment I was taken out.
As if what was about to happen in the yard had nothing to do with him.
The late autumn night was bitterly cold.
William was always strict. He had established many rules.
This wasn’t my first time being punished, but it would be my last.
Wounds left by silver weapons were difficult to heal. The cold penetrated through the wounds into my bones, making me shiver all over, yet I also felt a burning pain spreading.
Through the study window, I could clearly see Nathaniel’s silhouette.
He didn’t come out. He sat on the study sofa, holding his phone and making a call.
I couldn’t see his expression, but I could imagine that the person on the other end must be Sophia.
Time passed minute by minute. The intense pain and cold from my back gradually blurred my consciousness.
After the whipping ended, I felt my body growing colder and heavier, and the scene before my eyes began to spin.
In the second before I completely lost consciousness, I saw Nathaniel in the study finally hang up the phone, stand up, and draw the curtains.
He completely shut out my last shred of hope.
So he simply didn’t care.
Everything went black.
Then nothing.
🌟 Continue the story here
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On our wedding anniversary trip, my wife Russell’s sponsored student Leonardo insisted on catching a ride home in my car.
My car was small, the distance was far, and I had a lot of luggage—there was no way I could take him, so I politely declined.
That evening when my wife came home, she was silent for a long time.
“He ended up walking home along the highway. His feet were torn to shreds.”
I was confused.
“Couldn’t he have just called a cab?”
She nodded gently and poured me a glass of water as usual. I drank it and fell into a deep sleep.
When I woke up again, I was standing on the highway under the scorching sun. Russell was intimately leaning on Leonardo’s shoulder, holding up her phone to livestream with a cold laugh.
“Didn’t you say transportation was convenient? Try walking back yourself.”
The livestream was on, and viewers were all betting on how far I could walk.
I faced the camera and licked my cracked lips.
“Had enough? If you’ve had enough, come back and pick me up.”
Heat waves shimmered off the asphalt road.
Russell and Leonardo, sitting in the back seat of the Rolls-Royce, were doubled over with laughter.
She held up her phone with the camera pointed at me. Comments flew densely across the livestream.
“Look at Mr. James, so stubborn,” Russell’s voice was full of amusement. “Even now he still expects someone to come pick him up.”
Leonardo cooperatively stuck his head out with a sympathetic expression.
“Russell, maybe we should let James get in the car. In this heat, walking back could kill someone.”
“Don’t rush.” Russell put her arm around his shoulder and turned to glare at me viciously.
“James, I’m giving you two choices. Either apologize to Leonardo, or walk the full fifty miles.”
“The highway is straight. Just follow it and you’ll get there.”
The comments went even more insane.
“Serves him right! When he refused to let him catch a ride, why didn’t he think about how hard it would be for him?”
“Just because he’s Miss Russell’s husband, does that make him so great? Bullying people because he has some money?”
“This kind of gold digger needs to be taught a lesson. I support Miss Russell!”
“Look at how pathetic he looks. So satisfying.”
“Walk fifty miles? He won’t make it. He’ll collapse after two.”
I stood under the scorching sun. My clothes were already soaked through, and my lips had cracked in several places.
Leonardo looked at me, his eyes slightly reddening as he put on a sympathetic expression.
He grabbed Russell’s arm, deliberately lowering his voice.
“Russell, forget it. My family was never well-off to begin with. My life is cheap—not precious like James’s. Walking a few miles is no big deal.”
“James must have his reasons for not letting me catch a ride. Don’t make things difficult for him.”
As he spoke, he shot me a triumphant glance from the corner of his eye.
My head buzzed.
Before our anniversary, Leonardo had asked to catch a ride home with me.
My car was packed full of luggage—there really wasn’t room for another adult.
I politely told him that calling a cab would be very convenient. I even felt a bit bad about it and specially transferred him money for the ride.
Now it had turned into me bullying him, looking down on him and refusing to let him ride.
“Leonardo, you’re just too kind-hearted.”
Russell’s voice was ice cold. She tightened her grip on Leonardo’s arm, her gaze piercing straight at me.
“You’re too easy to bully. When he used his position as my husband to make things difficult for you, he should have known this day would come.”
I stared at her. This was the woman I’d loved for six years.
To marry her, I’d given up SUN, the company I’d founded myself. I thought it was worth it.
The first year of our marriage, our relationship was good.
The second year, she started sponsoring Leonardo.
The third year, after Leonardo graduated from college, she let him join the company and work as her assistant.
I didn’t think much of it. Just a student from a poor background who was grateful and wanted to repay the favor by working at the company—perfectly reasonable.
But gradually, things changed.
Once during a company basketball game, he deliberately stepped under me while defending. When I landed, I twisted my ankle. The pain made me push him.
He fell to the ground on purpose, scraping his elbow slightly.
In front of hundreds of company employees, Russell sternly berated me for not knowing my own strength.
That night when we got home, she didn’t speak to me for three days.
Later, this kind of thing happened more and more often.
Leonardo took credit for my proposal at a project meeting, presenting it as his own work. When I called him out on the spot, he just lowered his head without saying anything, putting on a fake wounded act.
Russell said I was petty and couldn’t tolerate others.
When Leonardo worked late, she said I, as the president and her husband, didn’t know how to be considerate of subordinates and dumped all the work on him.
On Leonardo’s birthday, when I transferred him money, she said I was being perfunctory and insincere toward subordinates.
Once he deliberately spilled coffee on a contract I’d just signed. I cursed at him, and he kept silent.
Without even asking what happened, Russell immediately decided I had a bad temper and was bullying an honest person.
At first I thought I wasn’t doing well enough, so I was careful about everything.
But no matter what I did, she could always find fault.
Until today, standing on the highway in hundred-and-forty-degree heat, watching my own wife lean intimately on Leonardo’s shoulder while livestreaming my misery—only then did I finally see clearly.
It wasn’t that I wasn’t doing well enough. I was just in the way.
I pulled my gaze away from Russell, licked my cracked lips, and spoke to the phone camera pointed at me. My voice was hoarse but steady.
“Had enough? If you’ve had enough, come back and pick me up.”
The comments paused for a second, then exploded.
“Is he crazy?”
“Still talking tough in this condition?”
Russell laughed out loud, her laughter filled with contempt and impatience.
She let go of Leonardo and leaned out of the car, looking me up and down.
“Still talking tough?”
“I’d like to see how long you can keep that up.”
She looked back at the bodyguard.
“Let the hunting dogs out of the car. Mr. James is walking too slowly. Let the dogs help speed him up.”
Leonardo frowned in the car, putting on a worried expression.
“Russell, don’t do this. You’ll scare James.”
Russell patted his hand, her tone gentle.
“Don’t worry, they’re on leashes. They won’t kill him.”
The car door opened, and two hunting dogs lunged at me.
All my blood froze in an instant.
Even though I’m a man, I’ve been afraid of dogs since childhood.
Russell actually liked dogs, but after marrying me, she never kept any. She even took detours around people walking dogs, afraid I’d see them.
Now she was personally releasing dogs to chase me.
The two hunting dogs rushed to my feet. Without time to think, I took off running.
The asphalt had been baked by the sun until it was like a red-hot iron plate.
After running about fifty feet, my shoes came off, and my soles immediately blistered.
Behind me, the excited barking of the two dogs grew closer and closer.
“Holy shit, he’s running so fast!”
“At that speed, he could medal at the Olympics, right?”
“Mr. James has been hiding his skills. Usually looks so refined, but when he runs he’s faster than the dogs.”
“Dying laughing, even the dogs can’t catch him.”
“Well, he is Miss Russell’s husband. He works out every day—of course he’s in good shape.”
The comments flew by so fast I couldn’t read them clearly, but I could imagine Russell’s expression seeing them.
She leaned out of the car, the smile on her face frozen.
Leonardo leaned close to Russell’s ear, his tone carrying just the right amount of concern.
“Russell, James is running so fast. Even I can’t keep up with him.”
Russell said nothing, squinting her eyes at me.
I’d already run nearly half a mile. The blisters on my feet had all burst, and each step felt like stepping on knife blades.
The dogs behind me were still chasing, but their speed had clearly slowed. The bodyguard was pulling on the chains to control the distance.
Leonardo leaned halfway out the car window and shouted at me.
“James, just apologize! Russell won’t make things difficult for you!”
I clenched my teeth and ignored him.
His tone darkened, then switched back to that aggrieved tone.
“James, I’m just a kid from a poor family. My life is cheap—I deserve to walk those roads. But don’t do this to yourself.”
As Leonardo said this, his voice trembled and his eyes reddened, looking like he was thinking of me.
Russell pulled him back into his seat and patted his shoulder, her tone impossibly gentle.
“Leonardo, you’re just too kind, taking all the blame on yourself.”
At some point, the road surface had become covered with sharp-edged gravel.
The moment I stepped on it, blood seeped from the soles of my feet. The dogs behind me grew even more excited smelling the blood, barking wildly as they lunged forward. The bodyguard could barely hold the chains.
I stumbled forward. The gravel embedded in my wounds, each step like walking on broken glass.
The blood flowed more and more, my footprints growing deeper and deeper.
The livestream comments became even more frenzied.
“Place your bets! I bet he can run another mile.”
“I bet a quarter mile. Look at him—he’s about to collapse any second.”
“Half a mile, no more than that.”
“Two miles. I bet he can hold out for two more miles.”
The comments started displaying odds as someone opened a betting pool on how far I could run.
The numbers grew larger and larger as more and more people watched.
Russell looked at the betting amounts on her phone screen, the corners of her mouth curling up slightly.
She was very satisfied with this effect. She turned to glance at me, her gaze devoid of any warmth.
“I want you to know in front of the entire country what happens when you cross Leonardo.”
Leonardo stuck his head out the car window, staring at me, his tone still feigning concern.
“James, stop being stubborn. It’s just an apology, isn’t it?”
“My life is cheap—I can handle you kneeling to me.”
“I won’t kneel!”
Leonardo’s smile froze for a moment, then he put on that innocent expression again.
He turned to look at Russell, his eyes reddening again.
“Russell, look at James. He still won’t forgive me.”
My vision grew more and more blurred. My body had reached its limit from blood loss.
When I collapsed, I heard exclamations in the comment section.
“He’s down!”
“Not even two miles. I won!”
Leonardo stuck his head out the car window, looked at me for a second, then his tone suddenly took on a deliberately panicked quality.
“Russell, I think James passed out from heatstroke!”
Russell frowned, her tone indifferent.
“Really passed out?”
“Really!”
Leonardo’s voice was urgent.
“Russell, I heard that people with heatstroke need to be doused with cold water immediately, or it could be life-threatening!”
Russell looked at him, her gaze so tender it could drip water.
“Leonardo, you’re just too kind. After how he treated you, you’re still thinking about him.”
Leonardo frowned, his voice deliberately low.
“No matter what, he’s still James. I can’t just watch him die.”
Russell patted his shoulder and turned to the bodyguard.
“Go get the high-pressure water gun from the trunk.”
The high-pressure water gun was connected to the vehicle’s water tank.
Russell personally gripped the water gun. Leonardo stood beside her, and together they aimed at me.
“Ready?”
Russell’s tone was relaxed, like she was playing some kind of game.
Leonardo nodded lightly.
“Russell, don’t turn the pressure up too high. I’m afraid James won’t be able to take it.”
“You’re too soft-hearted.” Russell shook her head with a smile. “For heatstroke you need cold water. Low pressure won’t work.”
The moment the water jet shot out, my whole body bounced up from the ground.
This wasn’t cooling down—this was being hit by a truck.
The high-pressure water jet slammed into my body, hitting my wounds directly. The pain was so intense I couldn’t even scream, could only open my mouth in silent convulsions.
Water rushed into my nostrils and mouth, choking me until my lungs felt like they would explode.
I was sent rolling across the ground by the force. The back of my head hit the asphalt, and everything went black.
The water jet chased me, sweeping back and forth. Russell was laughing. Leonardo beside her was shouting, “James, don’t move around, the more you move the more it hurts.”
His voice was still so considerate.
The comments went even more insane. Some cheered, some said it was too much, but most were just watching the spectacle.
“This is way more exciting than just apologizing.”
“Miss Russell really knows how to have fun.”
“That water pressure has to be over two hundred pounds, right?”
“Leonardo is so kind. Even at a time like this, he’s still thinking about saving someone.”
The water stopped. I lay on the ground, shaking all over.
My wounds had been blasted until they turned white at the edges. Blood and water mixed together, spreading beneath me.
My soaked clothes stuck to my body. I couldn’t tell what was water and what was blood.
Russell crouched down. A bodyguard grabbed my hair and yanked my face up.
“James, have you thought it over?”
Blood frothed from my mouth. I couldn’t speak.
She gently stroked my hair, her tone like coaxing a child.
“It’s just an apology. Is it worth torturing yourself like this? Apologize to Leonardo and I’ll take you to the hospital right away.”
Leonardo stuck his head out behind her, looking at me with a nervous expression.
“James, stop making Russell angry. Just say you’re sorry. I won’t hold it against you.”
He moved closer, lowering his voice so only the three of us could hear.
“James, just admit you were wrong. My life is cheap anyway. You can even kowtow to me—I won’t think it’s humiliating. You’re the one suffering by being stubborn like this.”
I looked at his face, so close.
That face wore an expression of utmost concern, his brows tightly furrowed as if he was worried sick about me.
I gathered the bloody water in my mouth and spat it forcefully at his face.
The bloody water splattered all over his face.
Leonardo grunted, staggering back two steps, frantically wiping his face and smearing blood streaks all over it.
Russell slapped me hard across the face. I staggered to one side, my face burning, my head ringing.
“You don’t know what’s good for you!”
The bodyguard held me down. She crouched down, her voice dropping to an icy whisper.
“Still daring to bully Leonardo in this condition? Do you think I won’t kill you?”
Leonardo grabbed her arm from the side, his voice tight.
“Russell, forget it. James didn’t mean it. He must be feeling too terrible to act like this…”
Russell pulled Leonardo behind her with one hand, pointing straight at me.
“Since you’re so ungrateful, then don’t blame me.”
Russell took out a wooden box from the car and waved it in front of me. It was my grandmother’s urn.
My blood froze in an instant.
“You…”
Russell smiled. Her smile was as gentle as on our wedding day.
“Didn’t you say your grandmother loved you most when she was alive? Do you think if she knew her ashes were scattered on the highway, she’d be angry enough to come back to life?”
Leonardo stood beside her, his tone light and airy.
“Russell, don’t. At least she was an elderly person.”
Russell ignored him and held the urn high, pointing it at the livestream camera.
“Everyone, want to watch me scatter ashes live? Fifty cents per person. Crowdfunding. When it hits a thousand, I’ll scatter them.”
The livestream completely exploded.
“Holy shit, Miss Russell is serious!”
“Fifty cents? I’ll give five hundred!”
“Quick! I want to see!”
“This is too exciting.”
“Already donated! Miss Russell, scatter them quick!”
The comments flew so fast the screen lagged.
Leonardo pulled at the corner of his mouth, his voice neither loud nor soft.
“James is usually so filial. I bet he’ll kneel and beg Russell now.”
Russell glanced at him and nodded.
She turned to look at me, her hand already reaching into the urn.
“James, if you kneel now, there’s still time.”
My voice was hoarse, my whole body trembling.
“Russell, that’s my grandmother! You can’t!”
“Why can’t I?”
She tilted her head to look at me, her tone flippant.
“You won’t even kowtow. I’m giving you motivation, and you’re still not happy about it?”
I clenched my fists, my eyes reddening as I stared at the urn.
“Russell, don’t touch my grandmother.”
Leonardo crouched down and tilted his head to look at me, his face full of false sympathy.
“James, stop being stubborn. It’s just kneeling, isn’t it? You don’t want her to die without peace, do you?”
He leaned closer, lowering his voice.
“Kneel. I’ll put something down for you. It won’t hurt.”
I stared at the urn in Russell’s hand, my lips trembling, unable to speak.
Russell raised the urn higher, her hand already grasping a handful.
“Three, two, one…”
She flung it outward. The instant the ashes flew out, suddenly a hand steadily caught the falling ash.
Most of the ash that leaked through Russell’s fingers was caught.
Russell’s smile froze on her face. Leonardo stepped back.
She didn’t have time to curse.
Because overhead, three helicopters were slowly descending.
🌟 Continue the story here
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