Chapter 2

"Antonia, are you really this desperate?" I looked at her, my voice frighteningly calm. "All I said was that the cash flow snapped. I didn't say it was over. Give me time and I might climb back up."

"Climb back up?" She let out a scornful laugh, contempt all over her face. "Jason, stop dreaming. Thirteen million in debt, and what are you going to pay it with? Sell a kidney? Even if I sold you off you wouldn't fetch that much!"

She walked right up to me and jabbed a finger at my nose, looking down on me. "I'm no heiress, but there's no way I'm spending my life with a broke man buried in debt. I married you because I thought you had potential. Now you're useless. Why would I hang myself on a crooked tree like you?"

"Then what about your brother's loan-shark debt?" I asked.

"That's your debt. What's it got to do with me? Besides," she lifted her chin, pleased with herself, "I already talked to a lawyer. This is corporate debt. As long as we divorce right now, I'm not on the hook for any of it. And the house and car under my name? You gave those to me as gifts. Don't even think about getting them back!"

Listen to that. So shrewd.

This was the woman who shared my bed.

My phone was still buzzing.

It was that alumni group chat.

A lot of them had left, but a few who hadn't were still typing.

"Jason, honestly I'd like to help, but money's tight for me too right now, I'm stuck holding stocks." "Yeah, times are hard for everyone, don't take it too hard, worst case you can always make a living doing food delivery." "Don't come asking me for money, I've already blocked you."

Looking at these brothers who used to pound their chests over drinks swearing we'd share every good fortune, I just found it laughable.

"Sign it." Antonia tossed the pen at me. "Don't waste my time, I called a car."

I watched the finality in her back as she turned, and the last trace of hesitation in me dissolved.

"Fine."

I picked up the pen and signed my name on the papers.

In that moment, I didn't feel grief. I felt released.

Antonia snatched the papers, checked them over, and a triumphant smile spread across her face.

"Jason, don't ever come looking for me again. I don't know you."

With that, she dragged off her two suitcases stuffed with luxury goods and slammed the door without a backward glance.

The huge house fell dead silent again.

I went to the liquor cabinet, opened a bottle of expensive whiskey, and took a long pull straight from it.

The sharp liquid burned down my throat, but it couldn't warm a heart this cold.

This was human nature.

When you're riding high, everyone around you is a good person. Only when you hit the bottom can you see who's human and who's a devil.

I thought I'd be furious, that I'd smash things to vent.

But I didn't.

I just sat there quietly, watching the sky outside slowly brighten.

In one night I'd lost my marriage and lost my so-called friends, and yet I felt lighter than I ever had.

By the time the sky was fully bright, the hangover headache forced me to close my eyes.

Just as I was drifting off, the phone I'd thrown onto the carpet suddenly rang.

Not a message tone. A call.

Who would be calling me at this hour?

A debt collector? Someone wanting a laugh at my expense?

I fumbled for the phone and squinted at the caller ID.

In that instant, half my drunkenness burned off.

Two words flashed on the screen, a name buried at the very bottom of my contacts, one I hadn't dared to dial for ten whole years.

Fern Pruitt.

The phone kept ringing, insistent, like some urgent call.

I took a deep breath and pressed answer with a trembling finger.

"Hello…"

My voice came out hoarse and dry, like I'd swallowed a mouthful of sand.

There were a few seconds of silence on the other end, and then a familiar, slightly trembling woman's voice.

"Jason… is that you?"

It was Fern.

Ten years without seeing each other, and even through the static, I knew her voice at once.

Still so gentle, soft in that way from her hometown, only now with a thread of urgency and exhaustion in it.

"It's me." I gripped the phone, my heart racing for no reason I could name.

"Where are you? Are you okay?" she asked, urgent. "I… I saw the messages in the group."

I gave a bitter laugh.

So it turned out bad news travels fast. The screenshots from that group had probably already spread through every alumni circle.

"I'm fine, not dead." I tried to keep my tone light. "What, you here to laugh at me too?"

"What are you talking about!" Fern's voice suddenly rose, an edge of anger in it. "Am I that kind of person?"

There was the sound of her rummaging through something on the other end, paper rustling.

After a moment, she took a deep breath, and her tone turned utterly serious.

"Jason, listen to me. I don't know exactly how much you owe, but I… I've pulled some money together here."

"You pulled money together?" I froze.

"Mm." Fern spoke fast, as if afraid I'd refuse. "I did an emergency sale of the two apartments in my name, and the place I'm living in now too. The prices were low because I sold in a hurry, but with my savings from these years, it comes to nine million four hundred thirty thousand."

Nine million four hundred thirty thousand.

The number hit me like a hammer, slamming hard into my chest.

I went rigid all over.

"It's not enough to clear your debt, but it should get you through the worst of it." Fern's voice went on, careful now. "I've already wired it to that old card of yours ending in 8889, your salary account. That one shouldn't be frozen, right? Use it first, and the rest I still owe… I'll figure it out. I can borrow, and if it comes to it I can work a job…"

"Fern!"

I cut her off, my eyes going red in an instant.

Something was lodged in my throat, aching and raw.

It wasn't just a number.

It was everything Fern had.

For me, an "old classmate," for me, the ex-boyfriend who had "abandoned" her back then, she'd sold every property she owned and hadn't even kept a place to live?

The memories came rushing in like a tide.

Ten years ago, the girl who was always in a white dress, the girl who handed me a bottle of water on the field, the girl who ate at roadside stalls with me and laughed the whole time.

We had loved each other so much once.

Back then I was dead broke, but I swore I'd give her the best life.

Reality was too cruel.

Her parents looked down on how poor my family was, on me being a nobody with no background.

"Jason, what can you give Fern? That mouth of yours? If you really love her, leave her!"

Her mother knelt in front of me, threatening to kill herself.

Fern cried her eyes out, clinging to my hand, refusing to let go.

But I looked at those red, swollen eyes of hers, watched her tear herself apart from her family for me