"I forced her?" I looked straight at Clive. "When her parents and your family had backed her into a corner, I was the one who took her in!"

"If you wanted to keep her and the baby, you could have sent her abroad. Instead you'd rather burn down our wedding than not marry her. Is the child even yours?"

The slap landed hard across my face.

Clive's expression went black. "You knew Mom and Dad didn't like Jade, and you took her in on purpose so they'd unload all their anger on her. As if that wasn't enough, now you want to ruin her name too!"

A low ripple of gasps went up around us. A few of them, I realized, were guests who'd been at the wedding earlier.

"Wait, the wedding got called off because of this woman?"

"Tsk. Catching a mistress in the act, huh."

Someone called out, loud and deliberate, "Mr. Sanchez, what exactly is this lady to you?"

I twisted my lips. "Yeah, Clive. What are we?"

Jade pushed forward through the pointing fingers. "Millicent, hit me, curse me, do whatever you want. Just please don't put Clive on the spot in front of everyone—"

I dodged the hand she reached toward me, and she suddenly clutched her stomach with a sharp hiss.

Clive caught her against him at once, and when he saw how pale she'd gone, something in his eyes turned to stone.

"Jade is my first love!"

He tucked her behind him and pulled a photo from his pocket. A picture of two people, a boy and a girl in school uniforms, standing side by side.

"I only found out recently. Back then it was Millicent Maddox who hired thugs to torment her, who forced her to break up with me. This vicious woman is the real mistress who tore us apart!"

My eyes went wide, and my voice shook at the sheer madness of it.

"Clive—you sure that's how that photo really goes?"

After Raymond died, Clive sank into a deep depression. Watching him like that, I hated that I couldn't take the pain off him and carry it myself.

He said he wanted every photo of Raymond, and I went to acquaintances one by one, begging, doing whatever it took to give him that.

The one in his hand was the one I'd dug out after nights without sleep, sifting through tens of thousands of pictures on his old phone.

It had been a photo of three people.

Now Raymond, who'd stood in the middle, had been cut away, leaving only Clive and Jade.

Looking at how carefully it had been doctored, a cold dread crawled over my whole body.

So he'd prepared all along to pour every filthy thing onto me.

A bleak chill spread through me. I took out my phone, pulled up the original, and barely lifted my hand before Clive's face flashed with panic and he knocked the phone flying.

"Millicent Maddox! What else are you trying to do to Jade?"

"Isn't this all about you wanting back the thing I gave her? Fine, take it!"

He lifted the heirloom pendant off Jade's neck and hurled it against the ground.

"Take your thing and get out! Don't ever come bother us again!"

I lunged on instinct, but I was too slow.

The jade hit the floor a beat ahead of me, and a flying shard sliced a long cut across my face.

Blood welled up, but I felt nothing, my eyes red and fixed on Clive.

He took a step back without meaning to, panic crossing his face.

He had never once imagined that my eyes could look at him with hate.

"Millicent... I..."

Before he finished, Jade cried out in pain. "My stomach! Clive, the baby—"

Clive snapped back to her and swept her up into his arms.

"Don't be scared. I'm taking you to the hospital right now!"

The leather shoes I'd once polished spotless ground down over the back of my hand, and his stride never wavered.

The pain blacked out my vision, but I kept my eyes open and watched his back as he walked away.

The image in my mind slowly overlaid it.

The Clive in my memory, the night that rich heir drugged me and dragged me off when I couldn't fight back, had thrown himself in without a second thought and knocked the man down with one punch.

That night, he'd held me just like this, and walked away just as fast, never once looking back.

He saved me, and that rich boy made him pay for it.

　　I cried so hard I couldn't speak, sick with guilt and the ache of watching him hurt for my sake.

　　But he only wiped my tears away, gentle as anything. "I'm here. I won't let anyone hurt you."

　　And now, for another woman, he had become the one who hurt me most.

　　I should have seen the change in him long ago.

　　When Jade Jennings first came back, he used to tell me the things she'd shared about his older brother.

　　Little by little, every other word out of his mouth was about her.

　　Someone said she loved roses, so he bought nine hundred and ninety-nine of them and scattered them all over the house.

　　He'd forgotten I was allergic to pollen.

　　He drove me to the hospital with his brow furrowed, scolding me the whole way. "Why didn't you say you were allergic? What a buzzkill. Jade was finally happy."

　　There was a time he carried a face mask for me everywhere we went, a time a single sneeze from me set him on edge.

　　Then there was the day a man stopped Jade on the street to ask for her number.

　　She only frowned, and Clive Sanchez, always so steady and even-tempered, lost his mind. He pinned the man to the ground and beat him until his face was a ruin of blood.

　　Afterward he ordered the hospital not to treat him, and the man was crippled for life.

　　I told him he'd gone too far. He just looked at me, disappointed.

　　"I was only thinking of how you used to be. Back then I beat that bastard for you too. So why is it, the second it's Jade, you don't understand me anymore?"

　　I didn't understand.

　　Back then he hit someone to buy us the chance to run.

　　This time, it was simply because Jade had lost her temper.

　　The memories churned and tangled. I shook my head, pushed myself up off the ground in front of all those staring eyes, and walked away alone.

　　I don't know how long I'd been walking when a few men cut me off.

　　"Well, if it isn't Millicent Maddox, the famous little homewrecker."

　　"Hear you hired men to ruin some innocent girl when you were barely grown. A slut like you ought to get a taste of her own medicine."

　　The words had barely landed before the thugs lunged and dragged me into an alley.

　　They tore at my clothes and twisted my injured hand so hard I bit down and tasted blood.

　　I screamed for help, but the passersby heard it was a homewrecker getting what she deserved, and watched with cold eyes.

　　Only one person couldn't stomach it. "Beating up a mistress doesn't mean you get to assault her in the street. Let her go, now!"

　　I clutched at it like a drowning woman grabbing a reed. "Please, save me! Please!"

　　One of the thugs shouted, "You know who she is? She's Millicent Maddox! You're really going to protect trash like this?"

　　The man's face changed. "The murderer Mr. Sanchez just exposed? Quick, haul her to the police station!"

　　Something roared blank in my head. The thugs froze too, and their grip loosened.

　　I fumbled my phone out and found the source of it all soon enough.

　　It was a video Clive had posted.

　　"The rumors online about me sleeping with my widowed sister-in-law are all Millicent Maddox's slander."

　　"Back in high school, she wanted me, so she hired street thugs to torment my first love until the girl dropped out. She had me fooled. I only learned the truth two months ago, and I broke things off with her immediately."

　　"Considering how young she was at the time, I wanted to cover for her. I never imagined she'd refuse to repent, that she'd spread lies about my first love and my brother. That's the only reason I'm forced to tell the truth now."

　　At the end of the video, he held up two marriage certificates.

　　"If it weren't for Millicent Maddox, my first love and I would have been married long ago. Everything's back on track now. I hope you'll all wish us well."

　　Beneath the video, one comment had been voted to the top.

　　【Heard your brother's death had something to do with Millicent Maddox. True or not?】

　　Clive replied: 【I've already gone to the police. I trust the truth will come out.】

　　That reply blew the comment section wide open.

　　【He went to the police, so he must have proof!】

　　【Killed his brother and then smeared his name too. Pure evil. Why couldn't it have been this slut who died?】

　　【Don't just curse her here. I found the witch's number and address. Let's all go pay her our regards together!】

I called Clive with shaking hands.

"Why would you put out a statement like that?"

He didn't even pause. "Someone posted the whole thing online, and now everyone's asking me about it. What was I supposed to do? If you hadn't made a scene, none of this would be happening!"

"Someone recognized Jade at the hospital. She's just a young woman. Getting dragged into something like this is bad for her."

"And it isn't bad for me?" My voice broke.

He gave a short laugh. "You got drugged and walked around the next day like nothing happened. A little name-calling, and you're falling apart?"

"Stop blowing this out of proportion. I'm going to ride the momentum from the statement and do a livestream to give Jade the proposal I owe her. Bring me the ring. You can apologize to her on camera, in front of everyone. That clears her name, and maybe the public lets you off too."

"That ring is one I designed myself." I couldn't hold it in. "And you want me to hand it to another woman?"

His tone turned heavy with meaning. "It's just a ring, Millicent. The storm has to die down first. Only after that—after a long time apart—can I come back to your side."

"I know I'm all you have. If there were any other way, I wouldn't leave you either."

He'd said something like that when he proposed too.

"I know I'm all you have. If there were any other way..."

"I want to be the one you lean on."

After my mother died and the shock left my father paralyzed by a stroke, Clive became the only thing I had to lean on.

And now he was using exactly that. He thought I couldn't live without him, so he could humiliate me however he pleased.

Whatever was left of my heart went cold.

The moment I hung up, someone shouted, "The police are here! Quick! We've caught the murderer, Millicent Maddox!"

So while I'd been on the phone, someone had used the chance to call them.

They took me to the station.

But what waited for me wasn't an interrogation. It was footage.

An officer pointed to the timestamp in the bottom left corner. "Does this date mean anything to you?"

"Yes."

It was the most painful day of my life. And the happiest.

Three months ago, at the Sanchez company gala, Clive was supposed to give the opening speech, and he never showed.

When I couldn't reach him no matter what I tried, the news broke that a pileup had happened on the only road he could have taken.

I rushed to the hospital and heard the blood bank was running dangerously low, while a patient named Sanchez urgently needed a transfusion.

I grabbed the first doctor who passed. "Take my blood! I'm his girlfriend! Take as much as you need!"

The bag slowly filled with red while my vision went black, and I kept praying he was safe, even if it cost me my life.

That was when my phone rang.

Clive's voice came through, perfectly fine. "Where did you go? I didn't pick up because I was setting up a surprise for you. Stop sulking and come back already!"

A false alarm. I was wild with joy. I ignored the nurse's protests and dragged my body, weak and cold from blood loss, out of the hospital. All I wanted was to see him.

That night, with no warning at all, Clive proposed.

I was drowning in the joy of getting back what I thought I'd lost, in the happiness of a proposal from the man I loved.

I never noticed that his so-called surprise was a single ring that didn't fit my finger.

On the screen, that night finally came back to me as it had truly happened.

At the roadside, the window of an SUV rolled down and a skimpy maid costume came flying out.

The car rocked, and through the glass I saw them—Clive and Jade twisted together, moving, and the ring catching the light on her hand.

The ring Clive used to propose to me.

So while I was begging the nurses to draw eight hundred milliliters of my blood, ready to trade my life for his safety, he was rolling around with Jade.

And the proposal ring had just been slipped off her finger.

A tearing pain ripped through the heart that had long gone numb, and the tears came before I could stop them.

In silence, the officer opened another clip.

When I saw what was on it, my hand froze in the middle of wiping my tears.