Chapter 3

When they saw me, the surprise on their faces quickly turned into annoyance and indifference.

They didn't have to pretend any longer.

Rhett said, "Since you've heard everything, I don't have to explain further."

His tone was casual, as if he were discussing the weather.

Emeline crouched down and straightened the boy's collar. Then she stood up, with her arms crossed. She looked down at me with a slightly contemptuous smile on her lips.

"Kristy, shouldn't you thank me? I'm helping you break free. Think about it. How do you continue your life, as you might get sick at any moment and carry the burden of possibly passing on a curse to the next generation?"

Each word she uttered pierced my heart like a poisoned needle.

The little boy tugged at Emeline's sleeve and asked timidly, "Mommy, who is this lady? Why is she crying?"

Emeline gently patted her son's head and said in a sick-sweet voice, "She has nothing to do with us, baby. Let's go. I will take you to your Lego class."

She took the boy's hand, and Rhett followed behind them. The family walked past me.

Rhett never looked back at me.

I seemed to be an inconvenient obstacle in their path or a speck of dust on their shoe.

The law firm's security soon came to me. They grabbed my arms from either side. "Miss, please leave. You're disrupting our work."

I was forcefully shoved out of the exclusive office building.

I stood on the bustling street and looked at my disheveled reflection in the glass facade. Suddenly, I laughed.

Then tears ran down my face.

Seven years of devotion, seven years of my youth-I worked tirelessly from dawn to dusk, funding his education, doing his laundry and cooking for him, and giving him all the best things I had.

I had thought I was his strongest pillar of support, the one he promised, "When I achieve great success, I will make you the happiest woman in the world."

But in fact, I was just a tool to be discarded after use, a convenient scapegoat for their affair, and a "country woman" beneath the pedestal of their happy life.

After my sadness, a chilling coldness rose from my feet, and it instantly froze my tears.

It was anger.

My anger was about to burn everything to ashes.

Did they think they could destroy me so easily?

Did they think I would live out my days in the shadows, burdened by the false accusations as they planned?

I wouldn't.

I absolutely wouldn't.