Eight Years of Fake Marriage, I Finally Let Go

My younger brother's cancer flared up again, and he needed emergency treatment. But every available medical resource had already been diverted elsewhere.

For the ninety-ninth time, I finally managed to get through to my husband, Terrence Hanson.

"Terrence, my brother, he—"

"Denise, be good. I'm busy right now. I'll come back and find you later."

Before I could finish, he hung up.

Unwilling to give up, I dialed again.

This time, the phone screen showed I'd been blocked.

A second later, the heart monitor behind me let out its mournful flatline. At the same time, my husband's new lover updated her feed—celebrating that her cat had just given birth.

So this was his so-called "urgent business"—helping his mistress deliver kittens.

In my despair, I finally messaged the one man I had never saved under a name.

"You once said you owed me, and that if I ever asked, you'd do anything for me."

"I need you to help me create a new identity—and find me a place to stay."

His reply came almost instantly, "One month from now, I'll be waiting at Charles de Gaulle Airport."

...

I clicked on Sienna’s latest post again.

It was a photo of a newborn kitten.

The caption read: [Thanks to someone’s support, a new life has come into the world~]

But in the mirror behind the photo, I caught sight of a familiar figure.

Terrence.

The gentle gaze that once belonged only to me was now resting in Sienna.

On her side, a new life had begun.

But my brother... would never have another chance.

Out of the corner of my eye, I caught sight of the framed photo on my nightstand.

In it, my brother was lively, radiant with youth. And I, was smiling sweetly.

And the young Terrence—his gaze fixed on me—was full of tenderness and indulgence.

The year that photo was taken, Terrence had not yet been found by the Hanson family.

Back then, he was nothing but a feral wolf cub from the slums, surviving by his fists.

Seven years ago, I stumbled upon him in a dark alley, his head bleeding from a fight.

I hadn't planned to interfere, but his eyes shone even in the darkness.

On impulse, I took the battered young man back to my tiny thirty-square-meter apartment.

Everything that followed seemed to play fast-forward.

Terrence rose from the street thug to the feared and admired Mr. Hanson.

I moved from a crumbling urban village to a grand villa.

My brother no longer had to suffocate in a cramped flat, dragging his sick body through exhaust fumes.

I used to circle the master bedroom again and again, asking him over and over, "From now on, this will always be our home, right?"

Terrence never lost patience. He would just pull me into his arms and answer, "Mm. Our home."

But now, my brother was gone. And that home... had long ceased to exist.

I collapsed onto the floor, clutching my brother's still-warm hand, sobbing until my chest felt like it was tearing apart.

I couldn't even remember how many documents I signed that night.

All I knew was that my once-lively brother, wasted to under a hundred pounds by illness, had been reduced to a small urn of ashes.

Taking a deep breath, I opened my chat with Terrence.

The last messages between us were from half a month ago. That day, I had asked when he would be back.

He replied with a sixty-second voice message, only to say, in the end, that something urgent at the company kept him away.

That day was our first wedding anniversary, and he had forgotten.

But in Sienna’s story feed, he appeared—smiling at her side, accompanying her to the Maldives to watch the sea.