Chapter 1

"Your wife is just making up another excuse to ask for money."

With just one sneer from his trusted female assistant, my husband hung up my desperate call for help on that stormy night.

Safe in his warm conference room, he scolded me for being unreasonable and told me to "let the rain cool your head."

What he didn't know was that on that freezing night, because of his assistant's vicious lies and my inability to pay the medical fees, our newborn baby stopped breathing forever.

Three months later, discovering the horrifying truth, he searched frantically for me like a madman.

Finally, before our baby’s tombstone, a broken and desperate man knelt in the mud, begging me to take him back.

I just turned my back on him and walked away.

"We are over. Forever."

————

I stood at the bus stop, shielding my heavily pregnant belly as I shivered in the cold night wind.

The intersection ahead was completely gridlocked, and there was still no sign of the bus.

The chill slowly pierced through my thin maternity dress. After hesitating for a long time in the freezing rain, I finally pulled out my phone and dialed my husband, Alexander.

Growing up in an orphanage meant I had no family to turn to.

Before we got married, I had a stable career as a full-time medical device designer.

But a few months ago, my doctor warned me of a high risk of miscarriage and ordered me to quit working completely to stay home on bed rest.

However, having once been scammed out of a massive sum of money by his ex, Alexander was extremely paranoid about finances.

To avoid any financial disputes in our marriage, he handed over control of our household accounts—and my personal living allowance—to his personal assistant, Victoria.

Victoria had grown up with Alexander.

Ever since I got pregnant, she had been using the excuse of managing our household expenses to meddle with my funds.

Multiple times, she had embezzled the allowance Alexander allocated to me, deliberately delaying my medical bills.

I brought it up to Alexander a few times, but he brushed it off, claiming I was just being overly sensitive. After that, I tried to avoid asking him for money altogether, relying on my own savings for prenatal check-ups and daily expenses.

But when my savings completely ran dry and I was forced to request funds from her, I was met with nothing but intense scrutiny and endless delays.

She always found excuses to deny the transfers. She even doctored my expense reports, changing my legitimate medical bills into exorbitant jewelry and spa receipts, only to turn around and complain to Alexander that I was spending money like water.

When I tried to tell my husband the truth, Victoria would dismiss my defenses as irritability and paranoia caused by pregnancy hormones.

And Alexander always chose to believe the woman who had been by his side for years.

Because of this, we were currently in the middle of a cold war. If it weren't an absolute emergency, I wouldn't have called him—and I certainly didn't want to hear Victoria’s voice on the other end of his line.

"Irene, what is it?"

The call finally connected, Alexander's tone laced with obvious impatience.

In the background, I could hear someone presenting a project proposal. He was clearly in the middle of a vital meeting.

"Alexander, the flooding on the roads is severe, and the buses can't get through." I tried to keep my voice as steady as possible. "My credit cards have been frozen and I don't have any cash on me to get a cab. Can you come pick me up?"

"This meeting decides our mergers and acquisitions for the second half of the year." He cut me off quickly, his tone hard and unyielding. "If you're in trouble, call Victoria. I'll have her deal with it."

"No, please handle this yourself. Don't leave it to her." I immediately gripped my phone tighter as icy raindrops slid down my wrist and into my sleeve.

"When are you going to drop this prejudice against her?" He sighed, clearly unwilling to argue. "Hold on, I'm putting her on the line."

"No, wait—" I tried to stop him, but the voice on the other end changed in a heartbeat.

Victoria's perfectly composed and professional voice came through the speaker. "Irene, where are you right now?"

A gust of freezing wind hit me. I looked at the flooded street, where the water had already submerged half of the tires on passing cars, and urged, "I'm at the bus stop on Sixth Avenue."

Victoria deliberately slowed her speech, adopting a sickeningly patient tone. "I can arrange for one of the company’s executive cars to pick you up right now. Just stay where you are and wait for the driver."

I knew exactly how administrative car dispatches worked.

In this atrocious weather, if she intentionally dragged out the approval process before the driver even hit the road, I would be stuck standing in this freezing water for hours.

"I don't need a company car." I insisted into the phone. "Just transfer me the cab fare. I can flag down a taxi myself."

A soft, mocking laugh echoed through the receiver.

"You see, Irene? You're just looking for another excuse to get your hands on some cash." Victoria's voice remained infuriatingly composed, lacking even a ripple of emotion.

"I just need cab fare to get home!" My breathing started to grow heavy.

"Can you please keep your emotions in check?" Victoria replied methodically, sounding like an incredibly tolerant bystander. "You're always getting this hysterical, and it doesn't help the situation at all."

Just then, Alexander's voice sounded in the background.

He had clearly only caught those last few words of Victoria patiently dealing with me. A second later, he took the phone back.

"It's pouring out there. You'll never flag down a cab on your own." Alexander's voice was cold and hard, leaving no room for argument. "Do as Victoria says and wait for the driver to pick you up."

"Alexander, listen to me—"

The call was abruptly cut off.

Only the dull, lifeless dial tone remained in the speaker.

I stood entirely alone at the edge of the empty bus stop, surrounded by nothing but the relentless, deafening sound of the rain.

The rising floodwaters had already submerged my ankles, the freezing rain rapidly stripping away my body heat.

Just as I tried to peer through the downpour to see if any cabs were passing by, a sudden, piercing pain shot through the depths of my abdomen.

My legs gave out, and my hands instinctively flew to clutch my belly.