Chapter 1

My dad called to say my mom was dying. He needed me to get to the hospital right away, to see her one last time.

I told my husband and started to rush out.

Instead he grabbed my arm and said, irritated, "If she's about to die, then don't go. It's my dad's sixtieth birthday party today. You come back reeking of a dead person, how much bad luck is that?"

The fury nearly made me pass out.

But my mind was on my mom, so I didn't fight with Bartholomew Donaldson.

I shot him one hard look and turned to go.

He yanked me back, rough about it, and shoved me down into the seat. "You're the eldest daughter-in-law. My dad's throwing a birthday banquet, and you're not there? Does that look right?"

"Is seeing your mom one last time really that important? If she's going to die, she'll die whether you're there or not. You're not a doctor. Don't go."

I cried and struggled, but I couldn't break free.

I slipped a message into my family group chat. "Come help me, please. Bartholomew's making me run his dad's birthday party and won't let me go to the hospital."

The group blew up instantly. "Has he lost his mind?"

"If he really pulls this, we'll turn his dad's birthday into a funeral!"

"..."

I lifted my head and looked at Bartholomew, tears streaming down my face. "I'm going to see my mom. If you dare stop me, my family won't let it go."

Bartholomew let out a cold laugh. "Who do you think you're scaring?"

"The dead make way for the living. You never heard that?"

"My dad's holding his birthday banquet here, and you're going to sneak off to go cry over a corpse? How's that going to sit with him?"

"You know better than anyone how much he cares about this."

"You leave a bad taste in his mouth today, that's you being an unfilial daughter-in-law."

Watching me keep crying, Bartholomew said viciously, "Stop it. Who exactly are you mourning?"

Carly Donaldson chimed in from beside him, put out. "You're really something, you know that?"

"It's my dad's birthday today, and you're sniffling and sobbing. Who are you trying to jinx?"

"If the relatives and friends saw this, what would they think?"

Bartholomew gave a cold snort too. "A grown woman, and not a shred of manners."

The two of them took turns sneering at me, and my heart had gone cold long ago.

From the day I married into the Donaldson family, I never had a single peaceful day.

Bartholomew lived with his parents, and there was an unmarried younger sister at home too.

Bartholomew had said, "You're the eldest daughter-in-law. From now on, you run the household."

It sounded nice. What it actually meant was that I did all the housework.

Three meals a day, I cooked for everyone.

Only after they'd finished eating could I steal a moment to swallow a few bites and fill my stomach.

Then I washed the dishes and scrubbed the pots.

Every time Bartholomew's parents came down with an ache or a fever and had to go to the hospital, I was the one who took time off to go with them.

By the end of the month, my pay would be docked so much that Bartholomew looked down on me for it.

His sister, Carly, I paid her college tuition.

She'd even go out with her classmates, run short on cash, and come straight to me, telling me to transfer her the money.

Even after Bartholomew lost his job, it was my dad who pulled strings to find him a new one.

Sometimes I felt like I hadn't married a man. I'd sold myself to them as their servant.

But it never crossed my mind that everything I gave would buy me not gratitude but the opposite, that they'd take me less and less seriously, until they stopped treating me like a person at all.

My mom was dying, and they wouldn't let me see her one last time. The reason, of all things, was that Bartholomew's father was having a birthday and they were afraid of bad luck.

It was absurd.

The thought of it made the tears fall harder.

Bartholomew pinched me, hard. "You want to cry, go cry in the back. Don't sit here putting on a sour face for everyone to see."

I raised my head slowly and looked at him. "If I don't make it to the hospital within half an hour, my family will come and take me out of here."

"Bartholomew, I'm not afraid of making an ugly scene. It's not my dad's birthday party today anyway. Think it over."