Chapter 1

The blizzard in New York was like a sharp blade, mercilessly cutting through the dilapidated streets of Brooklyn.

I sat in an inconspicuous black sedan on the street corner. The car's heater was on full blast, but I still held my daughter in my arms even tighter.

Six-year-old Lily had just fallen asleep.

I lowered the car window a crack , less than two centimeters wide, and looked at the scene under the streetlights ten meters away.

There stood Victoria—my wife whom I would have given my life to love. At that moment, she was wearing an expensive mink coat and red-soled high heels, kicking the iron door of the slum apartment I had rented three years ago with a look of disgust on her face.

"Bang! Bang!" The dull banging on the door was particularly jarring in the wind and snow.

The man standing beside her, holding an umbrella for her, was Julian.

Looking at those two faces, a nauseating, dull pain rose from the depths of my soul, and past memories churned in my mind like knives.

Victoria wasn't like this when I met her.

At that time, I was a rising star geek on Wall Street, and she was an entrepreneur who kept hitting roadblocks.

To help her, I spent countless days and nights writing the core trading algorithm for her, and I pursued her with all my might. When she hugged me and said, "Arthur, let's get married," while she was running a high fever, I naively thought I had the whole world to myself.

Until Julian returned from Europe

He was Victoria's first love. When he returned, Victoria was like a lost soul. She started working overtime frequently, and a strange cologne scent began to appear on her. And I, her husband, instantly became a superfluous joke.

Even more tragically, it was around that time that Victoria became pregnant with my child.

While I was on a business trip in Europe, Victoria suffered premature labor and severe bleeding, and was in a coma for three weeks.

When she woke up, Julian told her with great distress that the baby had died of suffocation at birth.

I sensed a conspiracy. I kept it a secret from everyone and hired someone to investigate. It turned out my child wasn't dead at all. Julian, fearing the child would become an obstacle between him and Victoria, had sabotaged the child and abandoned her. Not daring to alert him, I investigated alone and finally found the abandoned Lily in an orphanage several months later.

I happily took my daughter to explain to her, but what awaited me was a stack of photos thrown at my face.

That was a photo that Julian had carefully photoshopped—in the photo, "I" was seen embracing various women of the night as I entered and left a hotel.

"Arthur, you disgust me! You cheated on me while I was pregnant, and then you even brought your illegitimate daughter with that other woman to me and lied to me that she was my child?!"

Victoria looked at me like I was a pile of stinking garbage.

No matter how I explained, she wouldn't even bother with a DNA test. In her mind, Julian's words were the absolute truth.

She firmly believes that Lily is the "bastard child" I had with my affair.

What truly plunged me into the deepest abyss was the financial crisis three years ago.

Julian's hedge fund was facing charges from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for illegal operations. Late that night, Victoria knelt before me, crying, and gripped my hand tightly.

“Arthur, it’s only three years, it will pass quickly… This project is very important to Julian, he can’t have a criminal record!”

"Please help him, I'm begging you, for the sake of our marriage..."

I refuse.

Why should I take the blame for a scumbag who destroyed my marriage?

When she saw that I refused, she wiped away her tears , waved her hand, and the person outside the door immediately cut off Lily's medical funds account — Lily suffers from a rare heart condition and has been relying on expensive medications to survive.

I intended to pay my daughter's medical bills myself, but I discovered that Julian, in order to find a scapegoat, had preemptively shifted all the blame for the irregularities onto my personal account, resulting in my personal account being frozen .

I simply don't have any working capital available.

“Arthur, I know you love this bastard child . If you don’t agree, the hospital will stop the medication tonight.”

I compromised.

At the time, I still loved her and couldn't bear to see Lily die like that. I agreed and signed a plea agreement, naively thinking that by sacrificing myself, I could at least elicit a trace of guilt from her and secure the medical expenses to keep my daughter alive.

But I underestimated their malice.

Three months ago, just as I was about to be released from prison , Julian came to visit me. He told me that he had accidentally hit Lily while driving the night before .

This insidious man blocked the news, terminated all of Lily's medical trusts , and attempted to leave Lily to fend for herself.

He ran up to me, swaggering around, wanting to see the look of despair on my face.

But to his surprise, his appearance not only did not dampen my fighting spirit, but instead inspired my desire to leave.

While in prison, I helped a convicted Mafia member who faked my death by setting a fire and using the charred corpse of a death row inmate . After leaving, I obtained forged identification documents, picked up Lily, and provided her with medical treatment ...

"Arthur! Stop playing hide-and-seek, get out here!"

Victoria's sharp shouts pulled me back to reality from the pool of blood in my memories.

Today should have been the day I was "released from prison".

"I know you're being released from prison today!"

She yelled at the dilapidated iron gate, "Julian 's in trouble! His new mutual fund is under investigation! I need you now, do you hear me ! Don't hide away. You've already been to jail, a few more years won't make a difference! "

I thought that after I got out of prison, she would at least feel guilty. I never expected that the first thing she did when she came to me was to persuade me to serve a few more years in prison for her first love.

A loud crash.

The iron gate in the distance was suddenly pulled open from the inside.

Mrs. Martha, the landlady, was wearing her pajamas and holding a broom. She angrily chased people off the steps, yelling, "Stop banging! Do you want to wake up the whole building, you crazy woman!"

Victoria took a half step back and said coldly, "Make Arthur come out and see me."

"See him? You'll have to go to hell to see him!"

Mrs. Martha spat angrily, "Arthur didn't even make it out of prison! He was burned to a crisp in the riot fire at the state prison three months ago! Go back to your Manhattan and stop acting crazy at the doorstep of the dead!"

Bang! The iron gate slammed shut.

The blizzard seemed to freeze for a second.

I stared intently at Victoria's face through the dimly lit car window.

Upon hearing the news of my death , her expression froze for a moment.

But then, a disdainful sneer appeared on his face.

"Die in prison?"

Victoria scoffed : " How could someone as cunning as him die? It must be a ruse, a ploy by him to avoid taking the blame for Julian , hoping to extort money from him!"

After saying that, she didn't look at the door again, and pulled Julian away, walking towards the luxury car not far away without looking back.

"He must be hiding."