Chapter 1

1: 1

My husband and I had just lain down to be together when my brother kicked the door open, an arm slung around some girl covered in tattoos and reeking of cigarettes.

"Brother-in-law, all these years, still the same two moves with my sister? Doesn't it get old?"

My brother's private life was a mess. Every few days he brought a different woman home, and he was always egging my husband on to go chase a thrill with him.

Cold-voiced, I told him to get out.

"Play that hard and sooner or later it'll cost you your life."

But my husband brushed it off.

"Don't be so dramatic. He just likes to have fun. He's not stupid."

After that, the women my brother brought home got stranger and stranger.

My husband complained out loud, but his eyes lingered longer and longer.

I said something a few times, and my brother pointed right in my face and cursed:

"Kill the mood one more time and see if I don't smack you."

He raised his hand, and my husband didn't stop him. He just frowned, annoyed.

"You're a doctor. That doesn't mean you get to look at everyone like they're diseased."

I stopped arguing. I only made him sign a marital fidelity agreement.

【If either party is unfaithful, we divorce immediately.】

【The party at fault gives up all shared marital property and leaves with nothing.】

My husband laughed at me for making a fuss over nothing and signed it without a second thought.

A few days later, my brother sent him a photo.

【This one's really something. Tonight, together?】

My husband stared at the photo for a long time, then finally got up to change.

"A friend's asking me over to watch the World Cup. I'll be right back."

I opened the test report the hospital had just updated.

The patient in that report was the exact woman in the photo.

HIV viral load extremely high. Already progressed into full-blown AIDS.

I didn't stop him. I only answered calmly: "Go."

1.

This wasn't the first time my brother had trampled every boundary.

Two weeks earlier, he'd slept with a woman in the marriage bed my husband and I shared.

I'd brought a client back on short notice to grab some files, and the moment the client pushed open the bedroom door,

there were clothes strewn all over the floor, along with a scattering of vile little toys.

The client screamed in fright, and my brother had the nerve to yell at us:

"You don't know how to knock before you come in? Didn't your parents teach you anything?"

The client's face went dark right there and walked straight out.

The next day, the story was all over the company.

Everyone assumed it was my husband fooling around at home.

I explained it countless times and still got whispered about behind my back. Even clients I'd worked with for years began pulling away from me.

But my brother, far from apologizing, thought I was overreacting.

After that, he used my credit card to treat women to dinner,

took people out overnight in my car, even handed off my bags and jewelry to women he'd just met.

I hit my limit and told him to move out at once.

Instead, he kicked over my suitcase, grabbed a fistful of my hair, and shoved me hard against the wall.

"Who do you think you are, telling me to leave?"

"I'm the only son in this family. Mom and Dad handed me to you before they died. You're supposed to support me for the rest of my life!"

"This house is my brother-in-law's. I'll live here as long as I want. Since when do you get a say?"

My forehead was split and bleeding from the hit. I pulled out my phone to call the police.

But my husband snatched it right out of my hand.

"We're all family. How would it look if this blew up?"

"Your parents have only been gone a few years. You really want to put their only son away and leave them no peace even in the grave?"

I stared at him, unable to believe it.

"When they were alive, they never treated me like a daughter. Why should I look after their son?"

Growing up, every good thing to eat or drink in that house went to my brother.

I'd cook for him while burning with fever, and if he so much as scraped his skin, Mom and Dad could stand there cursing me all night.

To fund his spending, they forced me to drop out of school and work.

When I refused, they beat me so badly I didn't dare wear short sleeves for half a month.

Later I got far away from home. On my own, I studied, worked, and bought a house in this city, and only then did I finally break free of them.

But after Mom and Dad died, my brother showed up at my door with a will.

The will didn't leave me a single cent. It only said that I, as his older sister, was to take good care of him.

From then on, he treated this place like his own home.

Ate my food, lived in my house, spent my money, and ordered me around like a servant.

Every time I was about to lose my temper, my husband would step in front of me and plead, patient and earnest:

"However much they favored him, they're still the parents who gave birth to you and raised you."

"Your brother's still young, and he doesn't have a job. If you don't look after him, who will?"

"His temper's a little rough, sure, but he's not a bad person at heart."

"You're his older sister. Can't you cut him a little more slack?"

I looked at my husband, and all those words jammed up in my chest.

Back then, it was exactly this gentle, guileless look of his that had drawn me to him.

He didn't understand what I'd suffered in that house, and he had no idea just how shameless my brother really was. That was why he kept pleading for him, over and over.

For my husband's sake, I gave my brother one month.

Within that month, job or no job, he had to move out.

But the month passed, and not only did he not look for work, the women he brought home only multiplied.

And my husband complained out loud while his eyes lingered longer each time.

Until just now.

I watched with my own eyes as he stared at the reeking club girl in my brother's arms, unwilling to pull his gaze away.

I finally had to admit it.

Maybe I'd had it wrong from the very start.

He wanted to keep my brother around, and it wasn't out of kindness.