Chapter 3

Lewis stiffened, then almost reflexively called me back.

I picked up, my voice barely there. "Hello."

"Noreen, listen to me..."

Out of the corner of his eye, Lewis caught Ida's face darkening, and he paused.

He cleared his throat, and the urgency in his voice flattened out.

"It's nothing. I just wanted to tell you, the seven hundred ninety thousand in your account, I spent all of it."

Then he hung up.

I stood frozen where I was, as if struck by lightning, my mind blank for a moment.

The next second, I fumbled my banking app open and checked my balance.

Zero.

That little circle broke me, and the tears came down in fat drops.

Inside the photo studio, Lewis took out a pigeon-blood ruby necklace and fastened it around Ida's neck.

"I used the money she saved and added five million to buy it. Call it her gift to you."

Ida's expression eased. She checked herself in the mirror, the corners of her mouth curving up.

She turned and pressed a kiss to the side of Lewis's face, her voice soft and smug.

"Five years of her blood and sweat, and in the end it's my dowry. Call it her show of goodwill."

Mom slipped a dragon-and-phoenix bracelet onto her wrist.

"Seven hundred ninety thousand is still too shabby. She is the one I gave birth to, after all, so Mom will make it up to you with a bracelet."

Dad drew a set of brand-new car keys from his inside jacket pocket.

"Dad's giving you a Maybach. Go wherever you want from now on."

It felt like a hole had been torn open in my chest.

To save that seven hundred ninety thousand, I had scrimped for five years.

I always ate the cheapest greens, the ones the market stalls sold off right before closing.

One down jacket, patched and re-patched, got me through four winters.

My phone screen had been cracked for three years, and I never fixed it.

Penny by penny, I saved. Ten thousand more and it would have been enough for his eye surgery.

Well, now the money was gone, and Lewis didn't need the surgery either.

I let out an absurd little laugh.

Everything I had given it all for was just a romantic gesture he handed to someone else, just a wave of my parents' hands and their gilded extravagance.

Back at the marriage registration desk in the subway station, they stepped back into the line.

Ida looked at the wedding photos, satisfied, then went on talking about the wedding.

"Let's set the wedding date for after Noreen has the baby."

"She loves money so much, so we'll just buy the child off her and announce at the wedding that it's ours."

She let out a scornful little snort.

"She's really getting off easy. If I weren't afraid of the pain and didn't want to give birth myself, how would a child of hers ever make it into a family like ours."

It was like a bucket of cold water thrown over me. I was shaking all over.

No wonder, before the pregnancy, he suddenly turned so clingy, wanting me several times every night.

And once there was a child, he grew unusually tense.

He took me for checkups on schedule and watched over me every day to make sure I ate on time.

Once, when I worked overtime past midnight, he did something rare and lost his temper.

"If you won't take care of yourself, at least think about the child in your belly!"

Now that I thought about it, it wasn't me he was anxious about. It was the little life inside me.

I lowered my head and touched my belly.

But what he didn't know was that the child was gone.

A few days ago his fever spiked to a hundred and four, and late at night I couldn't get a car, so I carried him unconscious on my back and ran three streets to the hospital.

I was in such a rush getting there that my foot slipped and I fell. There was blood, all over my lower body.

Afraid he'd be heartbroken and blame himself, I never dared tell him, not even now.

Maybe this was fate.

Somewhere in that daze, I heard Lewis say, "I'm going to the restroom."

The next second, someone grabbed my arm.

I looked up. Lewis was pulling me toward a corner.

Off in the distance, Yara was touching up Ida's makeup and hadn't noticed anything over here.

"You already know." His voice was certain.

I tugged at the corner of my mouth. "Which part are you talking about?"

"That you know I faked being blind? That our relationship was fake? Or that the child was meant for Ida?"

"Lewis, these five years, you deceived me so cruelly."

His eyes slid away from mine. "Why are you here? Who told you?"

My phone chimed.

That person had sent a message.

【Almost there. Wait for me.】

I pressed the screen dark, my voice calm.

"I just happened to come to register a marriage."