Chapter 3

Mia didn’t come home all night.

At seven the next morning, I got a text from her: [I need a few days to calm down. Don’t come to the studio this week.]

I stared at the screen and thought of another day six months ago.

That day, she also didn’t come home all night, and the next morning she sent me a similar message: [Last night I stayed too late with a client looking at the site. I slept at the hotel. I’m going straight to the construction site today.]

I believed her then.

I even replied: [Get some rest. Remember to eat breakfast.]

Such a considerate boyfriend.

I put down my phone and started systematically checking the studio’s accounts from the past year. We were partners, and Mia had always handled the finances, while I handled design and construction.

On the surface, everything looked normal.

But what if the design fee from Cloud Isle had never been recorded properly?

I opened my computer and logged into the company email—the password was the date we got together. Mia probably never thought I would check that.

There wasn’t anything unusual in the inbox. But in sent mail, there was an email from three months ago sent to a private address, with an attachment in a zip file titled "Cloud Isle Final Version."

And the prefix of that private email address was Liam_Private.

I opened the contacts and searched for the client contact on the Cloud Isle project. Found it—a general manager with the last name Grant.

Before dialing, I hesitated for three seconds.

Then I pressed the call button.

It rang five times before he answered. "Hello, who is this?"

"Hello, Mr. Grant. This is Ethan Blake from Mia Reed Design Studio." I tried to keep my voice professional. "I wanted to confirm some design details about the Cloud Isle project."

"Designer Blake," Mr. Grant said warmly, "why are you calling all of a sudden? That project was finished a long time ago, wasn’t it?"

"It’s like this. We’re organizing project materials and preparing for the next annual selection. I wanted to confirm the original design communication date. Could you tell me when you first saw the proposal?"

"Let me think... it should’ve been last August? Right, the last week of August. Designer Reed came to us with the proposal. The moment we saw it, we were hooked. Especially that 'starry glass house' concept. It was incredibly eye-catching."

Last August.

The day Mia and I talked about that concept was August 15.

"At that time, the plan was already pretty polished, right?" I asked.

"Very polished! Full set of drawings, even material samples. Mr. Grant made the decision on the spot."

After hanging up, I sat in front of the computer and didn’t move for a long time.

August 15 to the end of August.

Two weeks.

Two weeks were enough for her to turn a midnight fantasy into a mature business proposal that could win over a client.

And enough for her to decide not to tell me about it.

I heard keys at the door. I quickly closed the email page and switched to the design software interface.

Mia Reed pushed the door open and came in looking like she hadn’t slept all night, but she had changed clothes and put on makeup.

"We need to talk," she said, her tone eerily calm.

"About what?"

She walked over and put a document in front of me.

I looked down. It was a prenuptial agreement.

"Sign this, and the wedding goes ahead as planned," she said. "You get sixty percent of the studio shares, I get forty percent. The house is yours, but you’ll need to compensate me in cash for half the market value. The wedding budget will follow your plan."

I flipped through the terms and stopped on the addendum on the last page: "Both parties agree not to pursue any responsibility from the other regarding the copyright issue of the Cloud Isle project."

"So you’re admitting it?" I looked up at her.

"I’m trying to solve the problem." Mia pulled out a chair and sat down. "Ethan, we’ve been together seven years. Do we really need to tear each other apart over one project? Yes, I should have told you. That was my fault. But that project saved the studio, or we might already be bankrupt."

"Bankrupt?"

"Yeah." She gave a bitter laugh. "Around this time last year, the company had less than a hundred grand left. We couldn’t collect the final payments on three projects, and we wouldn’t even have been able to make payroll the next month. I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you to worry."

"So you sold the future home we built together?"

"That was the only way!" She raised her voice. "The Grants had been looking for a designer for their resort villas. I took the proposal to them, and it won immediately! The design fee was eight hundred thousand, and the four-hundred-thousand deposit came in the next day! Ethan, that was four hundred grand!"

I looked at her flushed face, and all of a sudden I just felt tired.

"Mia," I said, "in these seven years, have I ever left you when you were at your lowest?"

She froze.

"When something happened in your family in your junior year, I worked three jobs to help pay your tuition. When we first started the studio and couldn’t get projects, I put in the money my parents gave me for a house. You said you wanted to study abroad, and I supported you going, while I kept the studio going by myself for a whole year."

My voice was calm, like I was talking about someone else.

"I never once thought about giving up on you, or giving up on our shared dream, because of money, pain, or not seeing a future."

"But you did give up," I said. "The moment you decided to steal our shared future and turn it into money, you had already given up."

Mia’s face turned paler and paler.

"If you sign this agreement, we can still keep going." Her voice started to shake. "Ethan, I was wrong. I really was wrong. But I did all this for our future too..."

"There is no us anymore." I stood up and pushed the agreement back to her. "Mia, we’re done."

She sat there, looking up at me, and tears finally poured down in big drops.

For a moment, she looked like that helpless girl from back then again.

But I knew that wasn’t real.

Just like that starry glass house design looked like a dream from above, while the price tag had long been written underneath it.

"I’ll have a third-party audit the studio’s accounts," I said. "As for the Cloud Isle design fee, I’ll take every cent that’s mine. And as for the copyright issue..."

I paused and looked at her suddenly terrified eyes.

"What do you think the Grants will do if they find out the original design they paid so much for was really a stolen dream?"