Chapter 3

I sat on the couch at home, staring blankly for a long time.

My muscles ached from the tension gripping my body.

Over and over, I tortured myself by watching every clip of them together.

Surging grief battered my heart, but my last thread of reason made me record each segment.

Close to midnight, Sean pushed open the front door. "Still up this late?" he asked.

I turned off my phone and walked over to him.

A clean scent clung to him, some hotel body wash I didn't recognize.

Taking a deep breath, I swallowed the lump in my throat.

Feigning worry, I said, "I went to see Hailee tonight, but she wasn't at the shop. She told me on the phone she was there. Why would she lie?"

Sean avoided my gaze, shrugging casually. "How would I know?"

"I got you some perfume." He handed me a designer gift bag. "To make up for missing our anniversary."

It made me sick.

A bottle of perfume, probably picked by someone else, and he called it compensation?

If Sean had looked at me for even a second, he'd have seen the mockery in my eyes, felt the collapse brewing inside me.

But he just yawned carelessly. "I'm beat from tonight. I'm heading to bed."

In the middle of the night, driven by anger, I unlocked Sean's phone again.

I checked his shopping apps, food delivery apps, everything, but found no evidence.

Then I opened the telecom app and pulled up his call history.

The number with the most minutes was unfamiliar.

Following that number, I found Hailee's alternate social media account.

When we were seventeen, just starting to dream of love, Hailee and I lay on the same bed watching a movie.

I cried at the ending, declaring boldly, "I'm going to marry a man like the hero."

She wiped my tears, teasing, "Fine, I'll be the first to congratulate you when you do."

Now, Hailee's alternate account had a profile picture-a screenshot of that movie's hero.

A friendship that spanned nearly thirty years, from childhood to now, amounted to this.

Their chat history was wiped clean, but staring at that profile picture, my eyes burned.

If Sean's betrayal was a slap across my face, Hailee's was a knife plunged straight through me.

A gaping hole tore open in my chest.

My fingers scrolled through their transaction history, and it went on endlessly.

The oldest transfer dated back to last June.

That month, I was so busy and distracted I didn't even realize I was pregnant.

When I miscarried, I drowned in guilt and barely spoke to Sean for a whole month.

That was when Hailee, under the pretense of looking after me, started coming to our house every day.

When people's heart truly shattered, they became eerily calm.

I scrolled through the transactions with cold detachment.

Almost every week, there were transfers-ten or twenty thousand for holidays, a few thousand for gifts, even smaller sums for pocket money.

I took screenshots of every single transaction, my face blank.

The total far exceeded what a university professor like Sean could earn.

He owed me compensation, that much was certain.