Chapter 2

I picked up my phone and contacted a friend who had just returned from abroad.

We met up pretty quickly.

While Aiden was out all night, I brought my friend home.

Aiden had no idea. He thought I had no money and had to do whatever he said at home.

Little did he know, everyone in the house was now on my side.

'Young bodies are really great.' 

By the end of the month, two clear red lines on the pregnancy test announced that I'd achieved my first goal.

When they got the news, his parents happily invited us over for dinner.

They were total snobs. Back when my family was doing well, they sucked up to me constantly.

After we went bankrupt, I never saw a friendly face from them again. At family gatherings, they even treated me like I was invisible.

I even sat right there and watched as Aiden's mother, Bianca Brown, set him up with other women.

It was Aiden who said divorcing right after starting his company would look bad, so they dropped it.

Then they started picking on me for not having kids. They wouldn't let me go to the hospital, but instead gave me all kinds of folk remedies.

Those things tasted so bitter they made me sick. I asked Aiden for help, but he just ignored me.

He even said, "Isn't this what all women go through to have kids? Who told you to be useless?"

That night, heavy snow was falling. Halfway up the mountain, Aiden's phone rang.

He answered almost instantly, his voice gentle in a way I hadn't heard in ages, "What's wrong? Take your time, don't cry. I'll be right there."

After hanging up, he slammed on the brakes, his tone instantly ice-cold.

"Vivian, go meet my parents yourself. Sarah's not feeling well, I need to go be with her."

Before I could say anything, he impatiently opened the car door and shoved me out.

I stumbled and fell to my knees in the snow, a sharp pain shooting through my lower abdomen. I quickly clutched my stomach.

Without even glancing at me, Aiden slammed the door and drove off.

The snow kept falling harder. I was freezing all over, my knees aching with that old injury.

That was from when Bianca wanted to "build my character" and make me show filial piety by kneeling in winter, leaving me with chronic pain.

She made me kneel on cold tiles in the dead of winter to wash her feet.

One time, she even forced me to drink her foot-washing water, saying that drinking the foot water of a woman who'd given birth to a son would help me have a son too.

Before the bankruptcy, I'd never suffered like this.

Now, my hair and eyelashes were covered in ice crystals.

I remembered that day I fought with Aiden's mistress—it was snowing just as hard.

Same fight, but I was locked up for seven days and tortured, while his mistress got out early and had a great time with him.

Now here I was, thrown to the ground in a thin down jacket, while Aiden held his mistress in the car with the heat on.

It really was cold.