3

I didn't sleep at all last night.

I originally intended to ask Ethan for my mother's medical expenses, but seeing the almost couple-like intimacy between Ethan and Chloe made my heart clench in pain.

At noon today, the two of them set off together to attend a gathering of Manhattan's new financial elites.

And just now, my father called again, urging me frantically amidst the medical emergency.

I had no choice but to drag my unhealed body to the gathering.

As soon as I entered the banquet hall, I was surrounded by the cold, exclusive air typical of Manhattan's new financial elite circle.

"Is she that stay-at-home wife of Ethan's who just cooks all day?"

"I heard she's from a corn-farming town in the Midwest. Now that Ethan's net worth has skyrocketed, she's really hit the jackpot."

"Tsk, look at her dress. It doesn't even have a couture label. It's probably cheaper than that silk shawl Chloe posted on her social media last night..."

A few socialites holding champagne flutes stood not far away, brazenly exchanging disdainful looks.

Here, any woman unable to personally generate millions in net profit was just a despised accessory.

Suppressing my dizziness, I gripped my clutch tightly. My gaze darted through the crowd and locked onto Ethan, who was standing by the terrace chatting with a few venture capital partners.

"Ethan." I waited until he finished his sentence before stepping slightly behind him and whispering in a trembling, barely audible voice, "Can I talk to you alone for a minute? Just one minute."

Ethan turned his head, frowning in displeasure, but upon seeing my deathly pale face, he murmured something to the people beside him and walked toward a relatively quiet corner of the terrace.

"My mother's heart surgery has been moved up. We're still short a hundred and ten thousand out of pocket." I pulled a crumpled piece of paper from my bag—an IOU I had written out last night. "I'm not asking for a handout. Treat it as a loan. I'll pay it back in installments, with interest..."

Before I could finish, a brief look of astonishment flashed in Ethan's eyes.

Just as his fingers unconsciously reached toward the inner breast pocket of his suit where his checkbook was—

"Could everyone quiet down for a moment? This happens to be a perfectly classic case study!"

Chloe's sharp, high-pitched voice suddenly rang out from the center of the banquet hall.

At some point, she had cut the background music and was tapping a fork against a crystal glass, forcefully drawing the attention of dozens of elite tycoons to this originally inconspicuous corner.

"Chloe! What are you doing?" Ethan asked, startled.

"Ethan, this is exactly the crucial stage of 'Humiliation Exposure Therapy'."

Chloe strolled over gracefully. Wearing a flashy red Celine haute couture gown today, she exuded total dominance. "Everyone, look here. This is the core subject of our study today—the emergency response of a habitually demanding partner when faced with 'independent boundaries'."

The entire hall fell dead silent. Dozens of pairs of scrutinizing and mocking eyes hit me like spotlights.

"Just two hours ago, Elena failed the marriage scoring system because she refused to pay her $800 50/50 share for dinner. And now, utilizing the most cliché 'critically ill relative' script, she is demanding her husband cover a six-figure cash shortfall."

Gasps erupted around us, immediately followed by mocking whispers.

"Wow, the standard gold-digger playbook: car crashes, terminal illnesses, family bankruptcy..."

"Unbelievable. This is the definition of a bottomless pit of poor relatives."

I froze, about to speak up in anger, when Chloe raised her microphone, amplifying her voice. "This is utilizing male guilt to enact moral kidnapping! Once you set this precedent, it becomes an endless drain of blood!"

"I'm not lying!" Driven to red-eyed desperation by this unwarranted slander, I frantically pulled out my phone, brought up the detailed hospital bill, and shoved it toward the nearest partner's wife. "It's true! My mother urgently needs $120,000 for imported heart valves. It has the attending doctor's stamp. I can show you the hospital transfer records!"

The woman stepped back in disgust. "Forging a set of medical records costs fifty bucks. Do you think we're idiots?"

"Ethan!" I snapped my head toward my husband, my tears finally breaking through. "Five years ago in Brooklyn, when your mother suddenly fell gravely ill and you had no money for her hospitalization, I sold the last necklace my grandmother left me to cover the gap for you. Now my mother is lying in a hospital waiting for her life to be saved, and you're letting her humiliate me like this in front of all these people?!"

This deeply private, bottom-of-the-barrel scar was torn open by me in public.

Ethan's face instantly darkened to the extreme.

In front of these venture capital tycoons who could sway his stock price at any moment, admitting he was once so destitute he had to rely on a woman selling her jewelry to survive was undoubtedly the most fatal stain on his reputation as a self-proclaimed elite CEO.

He took a step forward, his eyes filled with an unprecedented level of disgust and coldness.

"Elena, enough." He spoke in a tone void of warmth, filled only with command. "We have clear financial boundaries. No matter how many excuses you fabricate, I will not pay this money. If you want to continue living in my house, drop these extortion tactics."

Boom. A nerve in my brain that had been taut for over twenty years completely snapped.

The baby I had aborted, my mother's life, and even the five years of mutual devotion between us—none of it meant a thing.

In his eyes, his pathetic shred of elite dignity and this woman's scorecard were more important than the lives of my entire family.

Breaking out in a cold sweat, I swayed unsteadily. Agonizing pain forced me to involuntarily double over as I retched up a mouthful of stomach acid.

Click, flash—

A barrage of camera flashes erupted from the crowd.

Someone even raised a filming rig with a fill light, shoving the lens right into my face.

"Stop filming..." I raised my hands in a futile attempt to shield my face.

"Let her face the camera." Chloe stepped out of the frame, providing voiceover commentary in an extremely professional tone. "Only by making her experience extreme shame under social pressure can we correct her parasitic, dependent personality. This is also part of the healing efficacy of our course."

How I struggled to escape that building, I no longer remember.

The cold wind mixed with the night rain battered my face. I stood beside a trash can near Central Park, dry-heaving violently.

Buzz— My phone vibrated frantically.

It was from Maya. Just a screenshot and a hysterical curse word.

I opened the screenshot.

It was from an Instagram gossip account with five million followers. They had just posted an exclusive teaser a minute ago.

[Gold Digger Rehab: Public Execution Lesson 1 for a CEO's Wife]

The video's thumbnail was my face in the banquet hall—eyes red, begging like a mad dog while holding up that IOU. The bottom right corner glaringly featured Ethan's company logo and Chloe's arrogant red lips.