I sat in the wreck of the nursery, unable to make myself leave.

It wasn't until Lewis's voice came from beside me that I understood I'd been sitting there a whole day and night.

"You're the baby's aunt anyway. Once it's born, you can look after the baby and Violet. Saves us hiring a nurse." Lewis said it looking straight into my eyes.

There was nothing left in my line of sight but ruin.

I forced out a dry voice. "As you wish."

Seeing that I was still this cold, deaf to everything, the guilt on his face turned to impatience. "Nadia, don't play any of your games with me."

And as if that hadn't taken the edge off, he swung his hand and struck me across the cheek.

My cheek flared red and swollen at once, and just as I was about to hit back, the maid brought my grandmother in.

Her gaze swept over my swollen cheek and my tangled hair, then went straight to Lewis. "My precious granddaughter is pregnant?"

The words had barely left her when Violet, who'd been resting in the bedroom, came trotting out and into Grandmother's arms.

"My darling girl, you have to rest properly now. You're the little treasure of this whole family." Grandmother's face was pure delight.

"Don't worry, Grandmother. Violet's done this family a great service. I'll take good care of her." Lewis said it watching Violet, who wore a bashful little blush.

"Nadia, you bring nothing but bad luck. How can a woman who's just miscarried stand in front of our Violet?" Grandmother turned to me all at once, the joy in her eyes going cold in an instant.

Violet pouted, hurt rising on her face. "Just let my sister stay here and look after me. Otherwise she'd have nowhere to go."

I looked at the three of them, and the bitterness rose out of my eyes before I could hold it back.

Human joy and sorrow really don't run on the same current.

"Grandmother, my child's death was a gift from the two of them."

Lewis's face darkened instantly, and he cut me off. "Nadia, I know you're jealous of Violet. For the sake of our marriage, I'll turn a blind eye to these things you say to hurt her."

The pain in my heart came on hard, but my face stayed perfectly calm. "So you do know we're married? Once this thing between the two of you gets out, won't the whole world laugh itself sick? The great Thomas Group, tangled up with his own sister-in-law, and a bastard child on the way."

Ever since my parents took Violet in, she had fought and grabbed for everything that was mine. Every time she wanted to hurt me and succeed at it, she'd frame me in front of my parents without a second thought, and it was Lewis who proved me innocent, again and again.

In the end, Violet took my child and my love too.

"I finally managed to carry a baby, and the two of you killed my baby with your own hands." I said it shrill, laying out their crime.

"How many times do I have to say it? That was for the good of all mankind. Nadia, you benefited too. Your fetus was defective, and on top of that it was a girl."

"You know I have to have an heir. A girl can't be my heir." Lewis's voice was cold as a glacier.

Only because it was a girl, they murdered my child under a high and noble excuse.

Violet stroked her belly and began to sniffle. "I'm sorry, sister. I shouldn't have hurt you and your test-tube baby…"

I saw the glint of self-satisfaction shining under her tears.

"Enough! Nadia, Violet grew up in an orphanage. Do you have any idea how much she suffered all the way up?"

"Provoke me again and I'll throw you into the red-light district. I'll let the people there teach you what manners are." Lewis leaned hard on that last line.

I had once thought Lewis was only taken with Violet for a while, that he'd come around after a time, and I had even been willing to wait for him to apologize. I never imagined Lewis and Violet would join hands to murder my child, and say things this cruel to me on top of it.

The corner of my mouth curled into a scornful smile, and I just looked at Lewis's face.

They thought I had always been a homemaker leaning on Lewis.

They had no idea that behind them all I held multinational assets, and had run an AI lab for years.

Lewis's original shareholders were college classmates I had once helped, and it was I who quietly talked them into funding him.

Those classmates didn't understand why I would back some penniless nobody so hard, and I told them without hesitation that Lewis was a one-in-a-thousand stock with real potential.

At the time they said it to me over and over. "First, if Lewis doesn't have what it takes, we pull our money right away. Second, if Lewis ever fails you, we will stand firmly on your side."

I nodded, confident. And reality had slapped me across the face.

Sick of the three of them and their performance, I walked past them, expressionless, up to the second floor.

Grandmother held the weeping Violet and stroked her hair to soothe her. "You can't cry in early pregnancy, sweet girl. We spoiled Nadia rotten. With us here, she won't dare hurt you."

I stood on the second-floor stairs and looked down, and I saw Violet being held and kissed by Lewis.

Her eyes kept streaming tears, but the corner of her mouth lifted toward me.

I swallowed the bitterness down into my belly, met her gaze, and raised my head with a proud smile.

What they didn't know was that I had just caught every one of their ugly faces, whole and complete, on my phone.

After I uploaded what the two of them had done to the cloud, I finally fell into a heavy sleep.

The next morning I took a cab straight to Lewis's company and called a shareholders' meeting. The shareholders' secretaries only knew me as Mr. Thomas's wife, and my fax meant nothing to them. But the moment their bosses heard, they rushed straight up to the top-floor conference room.

Word reached Lewis fast. He shoved the conference room doors open.

"What are you making a scene about now?" He frowned and waved me over to the doorway.

"Nothing." I looked at him, cold. If a stare could kill, Lewis would have died a thousand times over under mine.

"You don't understand company matters, and these shareholders aren't people you're in any position to meet, understand? Actually, it's fine you're here. I'm going to announce Violet as vice president of Thomas Group, and tomorrow she's going to quietly strike these shareholders off the system." Lewis said it plainly.

Back then, once I'd talked these people around, they'd thrown everything behind Lewis for my sake, sparing no money and no connections.

Thomas Group had only reached this point because of those college classmates I once funded, the very shareholders he was so casually declaring he'd remove.

"Violet's pregnant. She's very sensitive right now, and she wants every one of the pretty shareholders gone." Lewis said it like it was nothing at all.

He was going to strike off shareholders who had emptied their pockets to help, all because of something Violet said offhand during her pregnancy? I had almost, out of decency, meant to warn them.

"You're a housewife who couldn't even manage to become a mother. How could you possibly understand Violet?" Lewis's face was turning a hard, iron gray.

Thinking of that baby, barely formed, my fingertips shook with the ache of it.

When I was confirmed pregnant, he told me a pregnant woman shouldn't be so precious about herself. While I endured the side effects of the IVF drugs day after day, he was behind my back, working out with Violet how to kill my baby.

I laughed out loud all at once, nodding again and again. "You're right, I don't understand a thing. Since the two of you have already decided, then here's to Thomas Group going from strength to strength."

I turned and went back into the conference room, and told my college classmates right away that Lewis meant to quietly strike them off.

One of them had once been my roommate. She'd come out of a poor mountain region, and if not for my funding she'd never have become the renowned entrepreneur she was.

She looked at me and said, "I always felt Lewis wasn't reliable. Back then I was sure he'd brainwashed you. It's just as well. I'll have my secretary pull our investment now."

Every classmate got on the phone with their assistants at once, demanding to sever ties with Thomas Group as fast as possible.

Lewis watched us from the other side of the soundproof glass wall, with no idea what we were saying.

When I walked out of the conference room, I ignored Lewis glaring at the door and left the place without another word.

His words were like a rusted knife, dragging back and forth through my wound.

My chest was tight, like a stone pressing down on it, and I couldn't hold on any longer. I ran out.

I don't know how long I ran. When I finally stopped, spent, I found I'd come without meaning to, to the park where Lewis and I had our first date.

I'd barely reached the water when I saw Violet walking toward me with a sneering little laugh.

"Sis, you've been married to Lewis all these years and you don't even have a job. Not like me. Tomorrow I'm going to be vice president of Thomas Group."

"You know what I love about Lewis?"

"His money? His face? Wrong. What I love is the way he loves you. Anything that belongs to you, I want it, and I want to enjoy it right in front of you."

"To get him, I even carried his child. He told me you were a dead fish in bed. Not like me. Men can't get enough of me." She was laughing so hard there were tears in her eyes.

I kept ignoring her. I knew this exact look in my eyes was the thing Violet hated most.

"Oh, right. That unborn baby of yours was never any human-gene experiment. It was abortion drugs mixed specially for you. Your child was never going to be born. Not like mine, who's been enjoying endless wealth and glory from inside my belly."

My breath went ragged, and the dark came at me in waves. With every bit of strength I had, I grabbed her hair and wrenched her hard toward the ground.

"I'm going to make you regret this."

"I'm going to let the whole world know you stole a married man. And that man is your own sister's husband. You'll be branded a woman with no morals for the rest of your life!"

My move frightened her. Then, all at once, she threw herself into the artificial lake beside us.

"Sis, I'm sorry!" she cried out from the water.

"I'll never show my face in front of you again. If my dying makes you happy, I'll sink to the bottom of this lake right now."

Lewis came running and shoved me hard toward the water. "You're vicious!"

I lost my footing and went in. The cold water swallowed me in an instant, and I thrashed on instinct, my face streaming, though I couldn't tell the lake water from the tears of everything I'd swallowed.

"Lewis, we've known each other for over ten years. In your eyes, am I really that kind of person?" I demanded, wretched in the water.

He watched me bob up and down, and stayed silent a few seconds, a flicker of guilt crossing his face. The next second he dove in and lifted Violet up onto the bank.

"There's a limit to how far your foolishness can go."

I kept struggling in the water, in no state to answer him.

On the bank Lewis held Violet, soaked through, his eyes full of tenderness for her.

He looked down his nose at me. "You can reflect on yourself in there."

And so he carried her off in his arms, and let me sink and rise in the water before his very eyes.

The evening lake was cold enough to bite into bone, and I floated helpless in that vast expanse.

Once, Lewis would come undone over the smallest bit of my hair getting wet in the rain. Now he didn't spare a thought for the fact that I'd lost a baby days ago, and let me drown in that foul, reeking water.

Only when my vision went black and I had no strength left to struggle did Lewis order his bodyguards to fish me out.

When I came to again, I was in a cramped, pitch-black space where I couldn't see my own hand. I could feel clearly that my body was moving the whole time.

Not far off, Lewis was talking to Violet in that gentle voice. "I promise I won't let Nadia near you again. She's an impossible woman. The passenger seat is yours forever, and as for Nadia, the trunk suits her just fine."

With that, they fell into a kiss.

The sound of them kissing bored clearly into my ears. I wept without a sound, and the exhaustion pulled me back down into endless darkness.

I don't know how long it was before a basin of cold water woke me. Through the blur I saw Lewis like a lion gone mad. "You made Violet bleed! If anything happens to her and my son, I will never let you off!"

The cold went straight through me. That bucket of ice water left my whole body shaking. The pressure crushed the breath out of me, and from my dry throat I managed a few words: "It had nothing to do with me."

"I saw Violet begging you for mercy in that lake with my own eyes!"

I forced out the explanation. "She jumped in herself."

Lewis flew into a rage and rained blows down on me from every direction.

I curled up on the floor, both hands shielding my head.

"Violet's bleeding now! If anything happens to that baby, I will not let this go!"

I bore the fists coming down like rain and shouted back, "Why won't you check the security footage? With your power, you can't pull it up?"

"Still won't admit it, huh? I'll make you accept it." Lewis suddenly stopped hitting me.

He ordered a bodyguard to bring a laptop.

Pinned down by the bodyguard, I watched the full footage from the park.

In it, I was gripping Violet's hair and hitting her, and in the shoving I pushed her into the lake.

Then it cut off.

I shook my head, stunned. "I didn't push her! She provoked me first!"

Lewis's face was terrifyingly dark. He dragged me across the floor and hauled me into the bathroom.

"Don't touch me. Or I'll make you cry and beg me." I looked at him, cold and flat.

"You're just jealous of Violet. Now I'll let you taste what the water feels like." Lewis didn't care about a word I said.

He threw me in and fitted a voice-controlled lock on the outside that only Violet could open.

I pulled myself up in the cramped bathroom and pounded on the glass wall. "Let me out, or I'll make you sorry!"

Before I could finish, the showerhead overhead suddenly poured down a flood of ice water. My feet slipped and I hit the floor.

Violet was wheeled out in a wheelchair by the maid. She held the remote for the showerhead, pressed close to the glass, and lowered her voice. "Take your time and enjoy it. I dealt with the footage a long time ago."

"Sis, I'll let you out right now." Violet said it loudly, for show.

"I don't care what tricks you're playing. You just wait!" I braced myself against the glass and stood.

Hearing that, Lewis took the remote, turned the water to its highest setting, and shut off the floor drain.

The water rose quickly to my chest, and the air in the cramped bathroom grew thinner and thinner.

"You come out when you admit you were wrong!" Lewis gritted through his teeth.

I refused to say a word, until the water reached my lips.

Lewis, with a flicker of reluctance, turned the showerhead down to its lowest setting. "Why are you so stubborn? Just admit it and I'll let you out."

His finger was already hovering over the stop button on the remote. All I had to do was beg, and he would let me out.

Except Violet suddenly screamed.

"My blood, my baby!" Violet swiped a hand between her thighs, and a smear of red came away on her fingers.

Lewis dropped the remote on the floor at once and scooped Violet up in both arms. "I'll get you to the best hospital there is!"

His panicked back slowly disappeared, and my consciousness slowly drifted away with it.

I closed my eyes, bitter, with no strength left in me.

"Ma'am, hold on, I'll find a way to save you." The maid, terrified, banged on the glass and woke me.

With the last of my strength, I gave her a small smile.

She picked up the remote Lewis had already smashed, got nowhere with it, then grabbed a golf club nearby and took a long time to break the glass wall.

Given back my life, I gulped down air in great mouthfuls.

Then my phone got a fax.

I opened it with trembling fingers. It was from my private lawyer. He'd successfully finalized the divorce agreement, effective from today.

I asked him to courier a copy to Lewis's CEO office and to require Lewis to sign for it in person.

I didn't have time to change clothes. I took my suitcase and left.

The moment I sat down in the taxi, my phone buzzed nonstop.

It was a message from Lewis: "Get to the hospital now!"

Grandmother had sent one too: "What kind of sister are you? Pushing your younger sister into the water? Lucky the baby's fine."

Mom had sent one as well: "Nadia, tomorrow we're inviting people from every circle to celebrate the pregnancy and announce this as the heir to Thomas Group. You'd better show up tomorrow with a gift and beg Violet to forgive you."

Then Lewis sent another: "For the sake of you being my wife, all you have to do is kneel to Violet, and I'll forgive you and let you take care of her again."

The message made me sick.

I said it to myself. "I'm not your wife anymore."

With that, I blocked every one of them across all platforms without a second thought.

Before long the taxi reached the airport that bore Rudolph Mason's name.

I walked straight to the private VIP lounge.

Inside, Rudolph and his private medical team had been waiting for me for a long time.

The moment I appeared, all the medical staff rushed over.

After a full physical exam, we boarded the private jet.

Before takeoff, I sent the lawyer a few messages, asking him to have the rare gift I'd spent these past days preparing delivered at the very height of the banquet.

I looked down at the city shrinking outside the window, and I couldn't help looking forward to tomorrow.

I hoped that gift would satisfy every last one of them.