Chapter 1

On my wedding day, saving Martin Rowe left me paralyzed.

In the three years after we married, no matter how busy he was, he always made time to take me to physical therapy.

A saleswoman once glanced a beat too long at my legs in the wheelchair, and he had her blacklisted across the entire industry.

His parents pushed him to divorce me, so he didn't set foot in the old family house for three years.

Everyone said he loved me to distraction. Then one day I happened to scroll past a post.

【What a man loves is the thrill. His paralyzed wife is still out there waiting in the cold, and he had me up against the door, again and again.】

The comment section was one long stream of insults, but the poster didn't seem to care.

【The truth is, his wife is paralyzed because I punctured the fuel line of the wedding car. But he never blamed me. He even sent me abroad to study, worried I'd feel guilty, and for two years the gifts never stopped coming.】

Staring at the face in her avatar—Martin Rowe's secretary—my chest gave a tremor, and I opened her profile.

Not one of her posts showed the man's face straight on. But I could never mistake my own husband's hands.

Rage boiled up in me. That same day I took Lisa Henson and demanded he give me an explanation.

When he came rushing over, what he held up in his hands was my father's urn.

"Sophie, either you let Lisa go, or I scatter this."

1.

I broke. I pressed the knife to Lisa Henson's throat.

The sharp blade cut into her skin, and blood welled up.

He wrenched off the lid and roared at me,

"Sophie Carter, you really think I won't?"

The next second he turned his palm over, and everything inside the urn drifted loose and scattered.

Every last thread of reason snapped. I lunged forward like a madwoman, my body slamming hard against the gravel.

With a heavy thud, the open urn rolled carelessly across the ground, and he scrambled to gather Lisa Henson into his arms.

My nails dug deep into the cracks of dirt as I dragged my useless legs, crawling toward my father with everything I had.

But I struggled on the ground for a long time, until I was covered in mud from head to toe, and still I couldn't move an inch closer.

He stopped in front of me with Lisa Henson in his arms, his voice full of pleading.

"She's innocent. If you have to blame someone, hate someone, take it out on me.

"I'm begging you, Sophie!"

He said my name with such weight, as if three years of swallowed patience had finally found its way out.

My heart clenched, wave after wave, but my eyes stayed fixed on the ashes spinning in the wind.

Frantic, out of options, I threw my arms around his feet, crying as I begged,

"Martin Rowe, my father… I was wrong, please…"

His steps stalled. Then he spoke to the bodyguard across from us.

"Take Mrs. Rowe home."

As his feet pulled stiffly away, his cold voice came down from above.

"Consider this a lesson. Don't lose your mind like this again."

After that night, Martin Rowe didn't come home for three days straight.

But he still messaged me on time every day, the way he always did, just to report in.

【Business dinner tonight. Not coming home.】

【Out of town. Back tomorrow.】

【Error in the proposal. Working late. Not coming home.】

I looked at the chat box, one message a day, my hands shaking so hard I couldn't even hold my cup.

Before, he would tell me to sleep early, tell me not to wait up, promise exactly when he'd be back the next day.

Words this cold and hard he had never once said to me.

But I had taken his darling and even cut her.

So this time he wouldn't even bother playing the part all the way through.

I opened the divorce agreement lying beside me, already signed.

All I wanted was the property my father left me and a few storefronts.

As for anything belonging to the Rowe family, it had never been mine, and I didn't want it.

There was a sound at the entryway. Martin Rowe walked in.

In that moment, without meaning to, my whole body went tense with fear.

Every move he made set me imagining, madly, the two of them tangled together.

He draped his coat over the sofa and pushed a book across to me.

"Ava Black's book—you've always loved her, haven't you?

"She happened to be holding a book fair in Tinsley City, so I got you a signed copy."

I looked at the cover. It was the one I'd mentioned to him last week.

He'd been busy heading into a meeting then and only gave a faint nod. I'd assumed he hadn't heard.

My nose stung before I could stop it. Even now, after all this, he'd still brought this book back for me.

It was this simple kindness of his that made me, before I could even blame him, first have to reach into my own heart and ask whether I had the right.

For a moment I honestly couldn't tell whether this was just habit, or whether he truly meant some of it.

But how can one person love two women at the same time?

Except whether he loved me or not no longer mattered. What haunted me in the dead of night was only the urn that had been knocked over that day.

I pressed down the surging emotions and still pushed the divorce agreement across to him.

"Sign it!"