When I married him, my friends were blunt. “He’s broke and not even that cute. You could clearly do better.” I just smiled. “The love he gives me is priceless.” Who would have thought that a year later, Julian suddenly became rich overnight and immediately replace me with some young college girl? He figured I was too soft to leave, so he grew bolder. He even made out with his mistress into my room, on the very day I gave birth. But there was one thing he never knew: the curse that runs in my family’s blood. And the price for breaking it is one he could never afford. Our family carried a generational curse: the more one gave in the marriage, the more the other would be forced to repay, multiplied, after a divorce. That’s why when I found out Julian was cheating, I didn’t make a scene. “Anya! Mom says you poured out her chicken soup. She spent three hours on it. How could you be so disrespectful!” Julian hadn’t been home in a month. The moment he stepped through the door, the accusations started. I was still nursing our newborn. His words made me flinch. “That soup was from your last visit. It was leftovers then. It’s been in the fridge for thirty days. It’s moldy. It stinks.” Brenda, my mother-in-law, started crying nearby. “I was saving it for myself! You threw it away without my permission! You have no manners!” Julian immediately scowled. “She’s being frugal, if she wants to keep it, let her keep it! The fridge is big enough, what’s wrong with letting her store it?” My anger flared. “The fridge is packed with freshly stored breast milk! If that chicken soup went bad and affected the milk, and Summer gets sick, are you going to take her to the hospital?” “If the breast milk spoils, you can just pump more, right?” Julian said it so casually, completely ignoring how much agony I’d gone through to get my milk flowing, or how much time I’d spent carefully storing it. Brenda chimed in, echoing Julian’s sharp accusations. “If my granddaughter gets sick, it’s your fault! What good is making three thousand bucks a month? It’s all thanks to my son supporting you! Your fancy university degree is useless; your ‘salary’ isn’t even as good as my niece who only finished high school!” My vision swam with anger. I didn’t have a job, no income, wasn’t that because I’d quit after I got pregnant? I lay weakly on the hospital bed. Julian was working non-stop, day and night. I couldn’t even get up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night without help, having to ask a nurse. I kept telling myself Julian was working hard, and I swallowed my resentment. Until one day, I went downstairs to buy groceries and saw him leaning against his car window, chatting intimately with a beautiful college student. She even kissed him on the cheek. After she left, he lit a cigarette and, with a smug grin, chatted with the building’s security guard. “What do you think? Eighteen, much fresher than my wife.” “My wife went to a fancy university, but she still pops out babies for me, mops floors, and washes dishes.” “I’m not going home. If I do, I’d have to help with the kid, right? It’s utterly annoying…” “You don’t know, after she gave birth, her figure’s all swollen, ugh. Doesn’t wear makeup, doesn’t wash her hair, a complete slob. Just looking at her makes me sick.” Every single one of his words hit me like a lightning bolt, crushing my shoulders. He seemed to have forgotten. The down payment for the house we were living in? He’d borrowed my savings for it, and still hadn’t paid me back. I couldn’t take it. I stormed over to confront him, but he felt humiliated. Right in front of the security guard, he slapped me hard across the face twice, then kicked me. “Bitch, how dare you talk to me like that? You need to remember who supports this family, who gives you the money you spend!” He was right. As soon as my maternity leave was over, the company fired me. Now, I was just a stay-at-home mom, reliant on my husband. I touched my face, swollen like a balloon, staring at him in disbelief. Only one thought burned in my mind: I had to get revenge. Luckily, he still didn’t know about my family’s curse.
The next day, I called my mother, Eleanor. Her voice was calm, as if she’d been expecting this. “You had the ceremony, but you never filed the license with the state. So the curse’s power will be halved. Leave him now, and the worst he’ll face is a year of gut rot and a ruined reputation. It’s a slap on the wrist compared to what you’ve endured.” I calmed down. Right, I couldn’t separate yet. Not only would I not separate, I needed to officially register our marriage. The more he owed me, the more he wronged me, the more he’d have to repay. Ten months of pregnancy for him to suffer stomach problems for a year? No way. I wanted him to suffer a fate worse than death. For six years, he thought I couldn’t leave him, and he grew increasingly outrageous. He’d hit and curse me at the slightest provocation. Finally, when Summer was six and Julian suggested divorce, the time was ripe. I did the math. With all the debts and sins he’d accumulated during our marriage, he definitely wouldn’t escape death. I deliberately brought up dividing our marital assets. As expected, he exploded in rage, calling me vicious, his face turning beet red. “Have you earned a single penny for this family all these years? Let me tell you, the house is already in my mother’s name, and I don’t have a cent to my name! Plus, I want custody of Summer!” Brenda also pointed her finger at my nose, screaming, “Bitch! If you hadn’t latched onto my son, he wouldn’t have been soft enough to marry you! Divorce is because you didn’t treat him well enough, and now you’re dreaming of our assets? Fat chance!” Seeing them so eager to rush to their doom, I felt at ease. “Fine, I don’t want anything. I’ll leave with nothing.” Brenda was ecstatic, afraid I’d change my mind, and rushed Julian to book a divorce appointment at City Hall. The divorce went unusually smoothly. Stepping out of City Hall, he was officially my ex-husband. My ex-husband warned me not to tell anyone about the divorce. He probably had an image of a happy, perfect family outside, and if his clients or superiors found out, it would hurt his career. He probably always thought I was easy to manipulate. Submissive, only crying when I was hit or cursed. Even after divorce, he believed I wouldn’t defy him. “Who knows?” I curved my lips into a smile, completely abandoning my usual docile demeanor. “That depends on my mood.” He was shocked by my attitude, then flushed with anger. “You little bitch, how dare you talk to me like that!” He’d always been like this, thinking he was a king, that everyone should flatter and please him. Little did he know, my years of submissiveness were just for a multiplied repayment. My ex-husband raised his fist, intending to punch me in the head like he used to, to vent his fury. But this time, he didn’t get his way. I raised my slender arm and grabbed his wrist. “This is in front of City Hall, there are cameras everywhere. If you touch me, I’ll call the police.” His lips twitched violently, then a look of pain crossed his face, and he suddenly threw up. I understood immediately, and smiled. The curse was already kicking in.
Ignoring me, he rushed to the bathroom. Soon after, an ambulance pulled up to City Hall. My ex-husband, pale-faced, was carried away on a stretcher. He was always robust, capable of juggling two mistresses, a wife, and non-stop work with ease. Now, he was frothing at the mouth and collapsing in a bathroom. Under the bright sun, I finally laughed out loud. I used my remaining savings to rent a tiny, dilapidated apartment and sent out countless resumes. Unfortunately, I’d been out of the workforce for too long. Even with a good degree and experience at a major company, finding a suitable job was incredibly difficult. A month later, I received my first interview call. When Chloe, the HR person, scheduled the interview, she suggested I start as an assistant, with a relatively low salary. I smiled and said, “No problem.” When she saw the ‘Family’ section on my resume, her expression changed slightly. She looked at me with a complex mix of pity and guilt. She poured me a cup of coffee and asked me to wait in her office. When she returned, she told me, “You’re hired. Your salary will be ten thousand before tax.” On my first day, I saw my ex-husband in the Vice President’s office. He had always hidden his true salary and never told me where he worked. I never expected it to be here. Before we married, he was just a regular engineer. Six years later, he’d been promoted to Vice President. And I, meanwhile, had been trapped in the cage of marriage, becoming a housewife who struggled to even find an entry-level job. My ex-husband was just recovering from his illness, his face ashen. The moment he saw me, his first reaction was shock, panic, and disbelief. He practically accused me with his eyes, cursing me for being an inescapable shadow. However, before he could think too much, he suddenly bent over, clutched his mouth, and dry-heaved again. A foul smell filled the office. Chloe covered her nose, stepped back several paces, and said with disgust, “You were in the hospital for half a month, and your stomach issues still aren’t resolved?” I sneered inwardly. Stomach issues? This was definitely pregnancy. I remembered my own early pregnancy, with morning sickness every single day. Julian had used all sorts of sweet talk to convince me to let Richard and Brenda, who lived in the countryside, move in to help take care of me. Richard was a typical rural man, extremely chauvinistic. He wouldn’t even pick up a spoon if it fell. Brenda’s primary task, besides waiting on Richard, was to assign me chores: washing dishes, mopping floors, cooking. Julian would sometimes offer to help, but she’d wave him away. “Men can’t do these things!” After Brenda said that, Julian would genuinely lie on the sofa, playing on his phone with a clear conscience. I threw up continuously for three months, and even swallowing felt like a painful effort. At first, Julian would offer a few words of comfort. But later, he complained that my restless turning and tossing at night disturbed his sleep and told me to stop moving so much. I explained that it was because of nausea and chest tightness that I couldn’t sleep. He dismissed me impatiently. “All pregnant women go through this. My mother worked in the fields right up to her delivery. Why are you so weak? I think you just want to cause problems for my mother.” I wanted to argue, but he turned away, ending the discussion. You never know pain until you feel the knife yourself. Now he was trapped in a ten-month pregnancy a hundred times worse than mine had been. I sincerely hoped he would survive it. After all, what he owed me stretched far beyond a swollen belly. And I could not wait to see what came next.
🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “NovelMaster” app 🔍 search for “342252”, and watch the full series ✨! #NovelMaster #浪漫Romance #现实主义Realistic #擦边Steamy #重生Reborn
Leave a Reply