But this child was the tie binding me to Aiden Henson—and it had to be cut.

After taking a number, on the way to the gynecology department, a completely unremarkable girl walked straight up to me.

"Isabel, do you have a pad?"

She covered herself with both hands, a spot of red showing through—her period had leaked.

Out of sympathy, I gave her a new pack. And because of that, I was targeted by a group of people.

They grabbed my hair and slammed my head into the wall, spewing filthy insults.

"Everyone, look! This old hag is jealous—she's practically menopausal herself, so she's tormenting a college girl!"

The girl who'd borrowed pads from me stood in the middle of the crowd, a trace of provocation in her eyes.

I remembered her. She was the college student in Aiden's bed last night.

People really can't be judged by appearances. Such a frail, gentle-looking girl—yet when she spread rumors, she was vicious.

"At a young girl's most vulnerable moment, this old woman put insect eggs in the pad!"

"Look, she even registered for gynecology—maybe she's got some dirty disease?"

"Strip her clothes off and let's see what she's hiding!"

They raised their phones, shutters clicking relentlessly at my face.

Two fists can't beat four hands. I curled up on the ground, clutching my clothes tightly. The medical staff didn't dare intervene, afraid of getting burned.

Right before my clothes were torn apart, a familiar figure squeezed through the crowd.

With me surrounded by everyone, he found that college student with perfect accuracy and pulled her out first.

He shielded her carefully. Only when someone called my name did he seem to remember something and squeeze back in. After scanning the crowd for a long moment, he finally pulled me out.

"Isabel, give me your hand!"

I'd barely caught my breath when his scolding crashed over me like a wave.

"Isabel! Why are you still using such despicable methods? Are you trying to ruin her?"

"What happened to you? Did getting older make your heart more vicious too?"

"If you keep this up, I won't marry you!"

I looked into his eyes. My throat felt stuffed with cotton, making it almost impossible to breathe. It took everything I had to stay standing.

I opened my mouth, but in the end, I only managed a flat "Mm." No explanation would work. He'd never believed me. He'd never been afraid of losing me.

But old?

I'd just turned twenty-five. Even if I wasn't as young as that college student, I shouldn't be called old.

That night at the bar, when I was taking the marriage certificate photo with someone else, the staff had even said I looked young.

Aiden reached out, frowning, a trace of regret flickering across his face.

"I'm sorry. I was too anxious. I spoke too harshly."

I curled my lips into a faint smile.

"It's fine." After crying too many times, his instinctive cruelty couldn't hurt me anymore.

One or two harsh words also made it easier to see him clearly.

He moved to hug me. I stepped back.

This wasn't behavior that should exist between us anymore.

Thinking that, I felt I should tell him about my marriage again.

"Aiden, actually, I've already—"

Behind me, Tessa spoke up, cutting me off.

"Aiden, it hurts... I think it's infected."

He let go of me instantly and turned to leave.

I watched his retreating back, and the last trace of attachment in my eyes disappeared.

This wasn't the first time he'd chosen someone else when given a choice between us.

From mistress number three to mistress number eighteen, to the college girl warming his bed now—whether his lies were clumsy or sophisticated, he never believed me. Never chose me. Not once.

After all those years together, I think I stopped loving him a long time ago. What remained was obsession. I was obsessed with becoming the first person his face-blind eyes would recognize, obsessed with making him choose me just once.

The first time he made me compete for his attention, he picked someone else. I gripped his sleeve and begged him to stay. He peeled my fingers off the fabric one by one, his voice cold as the wind slicing past us, so harsh I could barely make out the words.

"Who are you?"

Those two words shattered me.

I refused to accept it. I fought back, again and again. The first time—after he claimed he'd "mistaken someone else for me" and slept with her—I called the cops. They showed up, but he smoothed it over with excuses. The second time, I posted the photos online. His PR team scrubbed them within the hour.

I waged war using methods that hurt him by a thousand but hurt me by eight hundred. That was the only way I earned my adoptive parents' guilt money, the only way I got permission to marry. But revenge always came with a price.

The first time, Aiden ripped the down jacket off my back and draped it over his mistress's shoulders. I stood outside in nothing but thermal underwear, "reflecting on my mistakes," until I passed out from the cold.

The second time, under his special "care," I lost a child.

That day, Avalon City's winter bit deep. Snow blanketed everything, freezing into thick ice on the ground. I felt the warmth spreading through my lower belly, helpless, watching it bloom into little blood-red flowers beneath me.

I shut my eyes. Enough remembering. I stared at the gynecology department door and sighed.

It's not like every man on earth was dead—why had I spent all those years hanging myself on that crooked tree? At least now I was free.

When my number was finally called, Aiden was rushing past with Tessa in his arms, sprinting between exam rooms, terrified something might be wrong with her body. I couldn't remember the last time he'd looked that worried about me.

As they passed, Tessa's foot swung out—accidentally or not. I glanced down. A dusty footprint smeared across my white shirt.

Aiden noticed and quickly apologized, but when his eyes met my face, confusion flickered across his features. "Have we met?"

I pulled my lab coat tight, hiding the ruined shirt underneath, and shook my head.

Sometimes I wondered if Aiden was really face-blind at all. If he was, how could he punish me so precisely? If he wasn't, why did he fail to recognize me every single time he looked at my face?

Lost in thought, I walked into the room, changed, and lay down on the operating table. The surgical light clicked on. I clutched the edge of my gown, my mind dragging me back to the first time I lost a child.

Back then, they'd rushed me into emergency treatment. Doctors rotated in and out, grim-faced, speaking in clipped tones. A friend once told me that was a bad sign.

My uterine wall was thin. Getting pregnant had never been easy for me. Aiden once moved heaven and earth to help me—tracking down remedies, spending fortunes on treatments. He even crammed his schedule so tight he barely slept four hours a night, just so he could brew my medicine himself.

Was he good to me? He was.

But while I was hemorrhaging and being resuscitated, he was in the room next door, in bed with someone else. The sounds carried through the wall—even the attending physician's face went red with fury. And after my surgery ended, he never came to see me. Not once.

I still remember exactly what the nurse said.

"You've been in a coma for a week and no one came to see you. I don't know what your family is thinking—a whole week and they didn't even notice."

Her words hit me like a plunge into ice water. My body was already cold, but now I couldn't feel temperature at all.

I tested the waters.

"Not a single person?"

The nurse's voice hardened with anger.

"No. Especially that pinned contact of yours—we called him thirty times and he hung up thirty times. The last call finally went through. He answered and asked who it was. Obviously doesn't care about you at all."

Back then, my only pinned contact was Aiden.

The anesthesia kicked in. My clenched fist loosened, and as consciousness blurred, a suffocating pressure seized my throat—like drowning in a tank of water, unable to catch my breath.

In that tank, I saw eighteen-year-old Aiden carrying my fainted body to the nurse's office, then secretly stuffing breakfast into my backpack.

I saw nineteen-year-old Aiden earning his first paycheck and buying me a real down jacket.

I saw twenty-year-old Aiden kneeling before his parents, holding me, saying he wanted to marry me.

What did he say back then?

One life. One world. One person.

Liar.

The light went out. I sat up from the bed and stared at the shapeless lump of flesh in the trash can.

I exhaled.

The car I'd booked arrived on time. I went back home and paid my respects to my adoptive parents—Hudson and Madison Henson, Aiden's mother and father.

I explained everything: I couldn't get pregnant anymore. I couldn't marry and become someone's wife. I had no fate with Aiden. Then I placed the black card on the table—the ten million dollars from the night I registered my marriage, returned to repay the debt of raising me.

Hudson and Madison shook their heads and sighed.

"Your household registration has already been transferred out. We have no relationship anymore. From now on, go far away. Just pretend you don't know us."

I kowtowed hard, turned, and left—stepping into the car of the man I'd married that night.

David Gilbert.

At that same moment, Aiden was on the phone arranging the wedding venue with someone else, discussing dress styles.

Just as he was about to call and consult me, he saw the selfie I'd posted—announcing that I was holding a marriage certificate with another man.