Chapter 3

Liam's stunned silence was all the confirmation I needed.

My heart thudded violently against my ribs, and then, a chilling numbness took over.

The anger, the grief, the betrayal—all of it dissolved into thin air.

What took its place was an icy, lethal clarity.

He clearly never expected me to trace it to Tiffany so quickly.

His mouth opened and closed as if searching for an excuse, but facing my dead, unblinking glare, his shoulders finally slumped in defeat.

"Evelyn... it's not what you think."

"Then tell me what it is."

My voice was quiet, but every syllable felt like sharp glass.

My hands were shaking beneath my sleeves, but I clenched them into fists so he wouldn't see.

"Did she hold a gun to your head? Did she force you to sleep with her?"

"Liam, you went behind my back and moved Maya's primary school district address. And now you have the nerve to tell me it’s not what I think?"

He opened his mouth to spin another lie, but I shoved my phone right into his chest—the screenshot of the hospital transaction glaring bright.

"Should I call Dr. Vance right now and ask her whose baby she just brought home?"

His face turned from pale white to a sickly green.

"Liam, I am giving you one chance," I warned. "Tell me the truth."

Silence hung heavy in the room for thirty agonizing seconds. Only the ticking of the wall clock filled the void.

Finally, looking completely defeated, he buried his face in his hands, his voice cracked and barely audible:

"Yes. Tiffany and I have a child together. A boy."

He slowly raised his head. Shockingly, there was no remorse in his eyes—only a twisted sense of justification.

"Evelyn, we’ve been married for eight years, and you only gave me a daughter."

"My mother breathes down my neck every single day about our family legacy. She says the Miller family name ends with me if I don't have a son. What choice did I have?!"

What choice did he have?

With one casual excuse, he washed his hands of his betrayal and placed the blame entirely on my shoulders for "failing" to give him a male heir.

A cold, bitter laugh escaped my throat.

"So because I had a girl, you had every right to keep a mistress and knock her up?"

"I'm not keeping her!" Liam snapped defensively. "Tiffany is completely independent! She has never asked me for an allowance!"

"This hospital stay... it was my mom! My mom insisted that the baby deserved the absolute best care in the city, so she told me to use that money! She swore she’d pay you back later!"

Brenda again.

What a joke. Pay me back later.

To them, my sweat and tears were just an interest-free ATM they could tap into whenever they pleased, without even asking.

"And Maya’s school registration? Was that Brenda’s brilliant idea, too?"

Liam looked away again, shifting uncomfortably.

"That private school was a long shot anyway. My mom had an astrologer look into it, and he said that school has terrible energy that curses male heirs. We just figured... we’d transfer our primary residential address to the new condo so the baby can have the enrollment priority later."

The baby.

He said it so naturally.

A newborn affair baby had already erased my daughter's existence in his eyes.

And the future I spent five miserable years clawing for was reduced to a "long shot" in his pathetic excuse of a mind.

I closed my eyes for three seconds. When I opened them, the final trace of affection I had ever harbored for this man was dead and buried.

"Liam, I want a divorce."

My voice was terrifyingly calm.

He jumped up like a scalded dog. "Divorce?! Evelyn, are you insane?! You want to blow up our marriage over this? I am not agreeing to a divorce!"

"You don't get a say." I looked at him as if he were a complete stranger. "You committed adultery during our marriage, you illegally transferred marital funds, and you fathered an illegitimate child."

"Liam, what makes you think you have any leverage here?"

"I—" He choked, his face flushing crimson.

The bedroom door was violently kicked open from outside. Brenda, who had clearly been eavesdropping against the wood, stormed in.

She pointed a crooked finger directly at my face, spitting as she shrieked:

"Evelyn, you vindictive bitch! How has our family ever mistreated you?!"

"He borrowed a bit of money, and you want to tear this family apart?! You couldn't even give him a son, and you think you're in the right?!"

I stared her down, my voice colder than ice.

"First of all, that wasn't 'a bit of money.' That was three hundred thousand dollars of my daughter’s tuition fund, earned exclusively by my own hard work."

"Second, if you didn't get a grandson from me, blame your son’s genetics. Why don't you drag him to a clinic and see whose chromosomes determine the baby's gender?"

"Third, I am not asking for your permission. I am notifying you: this marriage is over."

Brenda froze. She had never seen me look so utterly ruthless.

Liam panicked, grabbing my wrist. "Evelyn, please, don't do this! Maya is so young. Do you really want her growing up in a broken home?"

"Listen to me, I'll cut ties with Tiffany tomorrow. I'll deal with the child. We can go back to how things were, okay?"

Go back to how things were?

I ripped my arm out of his grasp, repulsed. "Do you honestly think there's any coming back from this?"

I turned, walked over to my desk, and opened my laptop to search for elite legal counsel.

I needed the absolute best trial attorney specializing in high-asset divorces and marital fraud.

I was going to reclaim every single dime that belonged to me—including the three hundred thousand dollars, and every ounce of effort I had poured into this house.

Liam didn't dare follow me.

Late that night, muffled shouting drifted from the living room.

It was Liam and Brenda.

"...This is all your fault! You forced me to go after Tiffany!"

"What good does whining do now?! You're my son, who else was I supposed to look out for?!"

"Evelyn is dead serious about leaving. What are we going to do?"

"What can she do? We stall! She has no real corporate job and no money of her own right now. Let's see how long she lasts on her own!"

In the darkness of my room, my phone quietly recorded every single word through the door.

No money. No job.

They genuinely believed that was my Achilles' heel.

They had no idea what kind of monster a protective mother becomes when backed into a corner.

The next morning, I made an excuse about taking Maya to the children’s museum and slipped out of that suffocating house.

Instead of the museum, I followed the trail of credit card charges I found on Liam's backup cloud account, leading straight to Tiffany's luxury gated community.

The security at the gate was tight, so I parked across the street and took a corner booth in a coffee shop.

I didn't know exactly what I was waiting for. Maybe I just needed to look my enemy in the eye.

At four in the afternoon, a familiar black BMW pulled up to the security barrier.

Liam's car.

He hopped out of the driver's seat, hurried around to the passenger side, and carefully opened the door.

A slender woman in a flowy white dress stepped out, cradling a bundle of blankets in her arms.

It was Tiffany.

She looked thinner than in her professional headshots, her face slightly pale, but her expression glowed with maternal softness.

Liam reached out, taking the baby from her arms with the utmost gentleness, pressing a soft kiss against the newborn’s forehead. His face shone with pride and joy.

For a brief, agonizing moment, my mind flashed back five years to the day Maya was born.

He had looked at her with the exact same tenderness back then.

He didn't hate children. He just hated that Maya was a girl.

Sitting by the cafe window, separated by a wide boulevard, I watched the happy "family of three" stroll past the gates.

My heart was completely still.

I lifted my phone and snapped several high-resolution photos.

Then, I opened my contacts and sent a message to a number I hadn't dialed in years.

Mark, it's Evelyn. Do you still have the contact info for that private investigator you mentioned last year?