He threw himself in front of his grandmother's cane without a second thought, shielding Rose behind him—and in that single motion, every word of comfort he'd offered me moments ago turned to ash.

"Grandma! This was my idea. I was trying to protect the family—don't take it out on someone innocent!"

Evelyn froze, her gaze cutting toward me instinctively.

Blood was soaking through the white sheets beneath me. Her cane came down hard across Percival's back.

"You animal! Her wound hasn't even closed—how could you let her hold the baby!"

Panic and regret flashed through his eyes. He started toward me—

But behind him, Rose crumpled to the floor.

He spun, catching her, already moving for the door.

Evelyn planted herself in his path.

"You're not leaving! Your wife is still in that bed! Have you forgotten you have a family?"

Percival's jaw worked. Conflict warred across his face.

"I haven't! But you hit her—she's hurt! I can't just ignore that! Aria... she has you. She'll be fine!"

Once, he'd shielded me like that.

Once, I was never the one left behind.

I swallowed the pain clawing up my throat and looked at him. My voice came out flat, distant.

"Grandma. Let him go."

He stared at me, clearly caught off guard by my composure.

After all, the old Aria would have begged. Screamed. Thrown herself at his feet. Shredded every last scrap of dignity just to make him stay.

Something complicated flickered in his eyes—words forming, then dying unspoken.

He left.

The nurses helped me redress my wound. The baby was soothed back to sleep.

Then my phone lit up.

[I forgot about your stitches. Sorry. I just didn't want a scene at the hospital—it would've looked bad for the family.]

[Rose is still unconscious. She needs someone with her. I won't be coming back tonight. Get some rest.]

I stared at the screen until the words blurred.

I remembered a different version of him. The one who'd flown eleven hours the moment he heard I was hurt. Who'd cleared his entire schedule just to sit beside me during a routine checkup. Who refused to leave my side.

Evelyn caught me staring and snatched the phone from my hands. She read the messages, and a cold scoff escaped her.

"That ungrateful wretch. Just wait until he comes home—I'll deal with him myself. Aria, don't worry. Grandma will—"

I laughed.

It stopped her mid-sentence.

My gaze met hers, calm and unblinking.

"You allowed all of this to happen, didn't you?"

"I stopped caring about what he does a long time ago." I didn't let her respond. "You made me a promise. Once I gave birth, you'd help me get the divorce. I'm holding you to that."

Her expression cracked. Guilt pooled in her eyes, heavy and undisguised.

"I failed you, child."

She exhaled slowly. "I already tricked him into signing the divorce papers. Finish your thirty days of recovery, and then... you're free to go."

Evelyn took the baby into her own care, personally arranging round-the-clock help.

I checked into the postpartum recovery suite under the guise of standard confinement, dodging prying eyes and wagging tongues.

But that night, the gossip still detonated across every business circle in the city:

The Stephens heir abandons his wife hours after childbirth—storms out to protect his sister-in-law—defies the family matriarch.

Stephens Group stock plummeted. Percival was drowning in damage control.

Rose's lifestyle influencer account got swarmed. Netizens dug up the scandal I'd once tried to expose—how she'd made a play for her own sister's husband—the same story Percival had buried with his connections.

Her comment sections turned into a bloodbath. If he hadn't intervened again, she'd have been deplatformed and sued for breach of contract.

Seven days passed before I saw him again.

The moment he walked in, his eyes locked onto mine—cold, accusing.

"Aria." His voice was tight with barely leashed anger. "Does destroying us really make you happy? Is this the kind of revenge you wanted?"

I blinked, and then it clicked.

He'd decided I was the one who'd leaked the scandal.

Of course he had. I used to work in media. Spinning narratives was what I did best.

What a shame that the first time I went mad and tried to expose his affair with Rose, he threatened to have me fired—citing privacy violations and defamation.

Finding anyone willing to help me now wasn't going to be easy.

I shot him a glance, long past the point of feeling wronged by his accusations.

I continued wrapping the memorial gift for Mingchu's anniversary.

"You know as well as I do that what I've got on you two isn't limited to what's already out there. If I wanted to leak more, you'd be hemorrhaging a lot more than reputation."

He stood frozen in the doorway for a long moment.

When he finally spoke, his voice was almost helpless.

"After this is over, I'll end things with her. But promise me—we'll make this work. We'll build a real life together. Once the baby comes, we'll be a happy family."

These words. I'd heard them almost daily when I was pregnant.

And yet they never stopped him from tangling himself up with Rose again and again.

One day it was pity for her status as an illegitimate child. The next, sympathy for how alone she was without family to lean on.

There was always a reason—a thousand reasons—why he couldn't help himself around her. Why he had to protect her at all costs.

He didn't move from the doorway, as if he'd stand there until I gave him an answer.

I watched him block out the sunlight and offered a hollow response just to make him leave.

It wasn't until the next morning—when a sex tape of me "cheating" went viral across every platform—that I finally understood what he meant by after this is over.

Percival had released a statement video.

In it, he faced the cameras with perfectly calibrated grief, explaining that I had been caught having an affair during my pregnancy by my own sister. That my exposé of him was nothing but retaliation for being discovered.

Rose sobbed beside him, tears streaming prettily down her face, recounting how she had only tried to counsel me not to hurt Percival's feelings—and how I had turned on her, convinced she would expose my infidelity.

The internet exploded. Everyone demanded Percival divorce "that slut" immediately.

But he played the devoted husband.

"No matter what Aria has done in this lifetime, I cannot stop loving her."

Watching his performance, bile rose in my throat. I couldn't hold it back.

Percival heard me retching from outside and rushed in.

"What's wrong?"

I looked up, still nauseous, and saw Rose trailing in behind him. I shoved his hand away.

"Nothing's wrong. You just make me sick." I met his eyes. "To protect your mistress's crimes, you'll drag your wife's name through the mud without a second thought. Percival, your love really is something special."

His face went white. He opened his mouth to explain.

But Rose dropped to her knees first, weeping like a willow in the rain.

"I'm so sorry, sister! This is all my fault! Percival only made you take the fall because of me!"

Percival's expression melted into instant heartache. He turned to me, his gaze sharp with reproach.

"That's exactly what I came to tell you. The video is AI-generated—I made it myself. At the end of the day, she's your sister. Sacrificing yourself to help her is only right. When I protect her, I'm protecting your family bond. Why do you have to be so aggressive toward her?"

He wasn't finished.

"Besides, you're a housewife. Reputation means nothing to you. Let people talk—it won't change how I feel about you. I know the video is fake, and that's enough. But she's different. She has no one. Her career depends on her public image. If her reputation is destroyed, she loses everything."

Listening to his self-righteous justifications, I felt nothing but revulsion.

Housewife. As if that wasn't his doing.

He was the one who had pressured the company into firing me. He was the one who had blacklisted me across the entire industry—let it be known that anyone who hired me was making an enemy of him.

I'd been rejected from interview after interview. When I finally found a small private studio willing to take me on, he had reported us to the authorities out of pure spite.

In the end, every one of my media credentials was revoked. I became an industry pariah, someone everyone agreed deserved to be cast out.

I didn't bother arguing with him. The midwife had said emotional stability was crucial during postpartum recovery.

Just another two weeks, I reminded myself.

Two more weeks, and I would finally be free.

Grandma had promised to clear my name at the right moment. What they thought of me no longer mattered.

I stared at him, my face blank, then exhaled slowly and rolled over, burrowing into the covers.

"Do whatever you want."

He'd expected me to lash out at Rose like I used to—physically. He was so tense he'd planted himself in front of her like a human shield.

But when I simply turned my back and lay down, every trace of his alarm evaporated.

After a long pause, his voice came out thick with disbelief.

"You're... not angry?"

My tone stayed flat. "Isn't this what you've always wanted? Me getting along with her?"

Relief flooded his face, and he actually laughed. "Finally, you're learning. I knew you weren't really that heartless. I'll make it up to you—I promise."

I didn't respond. Not a word, not a glance, until they were both gone.

For a long time afterward, I pressed my palm to my chest.

So this was what letting go felt like.

Over the next few days, guilt seemed to drive him back to my room again and again. I gave him nothing—cold shoulders, closed doors—but he never lost patience. He just kept painting pictures of the beautiful life we'd have together.

Until he brought up the one-month celebration for the baby. Then his confidence faltered.

"Rose will never be able to publicly acknowledge her own child. So I thought... while the baby's still too young to understand... I'd let her attend the celebration openly. As the mother."

He hesitated. "It would give her some closure. Don't you think?"

My knitting needles never paused. I didn't even look up.

"I told you—do what you want. It's not my child. None of this has anything to do with me."

His jaw tightened. A flush crept up his neck, and something dark flickered in his eyes. He snatched the memorial offerings I'd prepared for Mingchu out of my hands.

"Why have you been like this lately? Do you even understand what it means for her to attend? It's as good as announcing she's the lady of the Stephens household. You never would have allowed that before."

I paused, finally sparing him a bored glance.

"And that's a bad thing? Two months ago, when you two were in bed together, didn't you say it was a shame you could never give her a proper title?"

He went white. Marble-still. A statue drained of blood.

I plucked the items from his frozen hands, my composure unruffled, as if nothing had happened.

He hovered at my ear after that, stumbling through excuses—he didn't love her, he'd been drugged, he only slept with her because he felt responsible—until my silence finally crushed his pathetic explanations into dust.

After that day, he stopped visiting.

But Rose's social media told me everything I needed to know. Post after post: the three of them at photo studios, posing as a picture-perfect family in every style imaginable.

The day I finished my postpartum confinement was the day the Stephens family threw a grand celebration for that illegitimate child.

Grandma messaged me: The divorce papers will be ready tomorrow.

I went back to the house to collect my things.

The home that had once been ours—warm, familiar—had been gutted and rebuilt in Rose's taste. Every corner, every detail, remade for her.

Even the portrait that used to sit by the living room TV—him cradling my pregnant belly, both of us smiling—had been replaced. Now it was a family photo: Percival, Rose, and the baby.

In the picture, Percival was beaming.

Happier than he'd looked the day I said yes to him.

I went to the bedroom to pack the clothes I'd brought into the marriage.

But no matter how many times I searched the closet, I couldn't find it—the qipao my mother had sewn for me by hand before she passed, every stitch an heirloom of embroidered silk.

I was about to call and ask when I saw it.

Rose's latest post. Her at the celebration. Wearing my mother's qipao.

Rage erupted—white-hot, volcanic.

I grabbed a taxi and stormed into the banquet hall.

There she was, arm linked through Percival's, accepting congratulations with a gracious smile, basking in the admiration of the crowd.

The moment he saw me, guilt flickered across Percival's face—but underneath it, a smug satisfaction, like he'd been expecting this all along.

He released Rose and walked toward me.