During the early stages of my pregnancy, I felt a heavy, dragging pain in my lower abdomen. I wanted to take sick leave, but Thayer’s assistant refused and forced me to work overtime until midnight.

"Mr. Alcott is vacationing in Bali with his 38th girlfriend. I’m in charge of all company matters now," the woman said with a smile full of malice. "Without my approval, don’t even think about stepping a foot outside this company."

She deliberately made things hard for me just to win Thayer’s favor and become his 39th girlfriend.

The pain kept worsening. Enduring it, I called Thayer.

He only responded with a cold sneer. "Whatever Aveline says is how I see it too. What? Is working a little more going to kill you? Do you really think you're Mrs. Alcott? You're just the daughter of a maid. What makes you think you're so delicate?"

After five humiliating years of marriage, I finally gave up completely. "Let’s get a divorce."

Thayer laughed mockingly. A woman’s panting could be heard in the background. "Althea, this is the 99th time you’ve said that. And every time, you come back crying and begging me to take you back. Don’t forget, your mom’s still lying in that hospital bed!"

He hung up.

Aveline shot me a smug look and immediately posted in the company group chat.

[Althea's 100th divorce threat. Place your bets, is it real or fake?]

Thayer quickly placed fourteen thousand dollars on “fake.”

But he didn’t know that this time, I was really done. I didn’t want to be entangled with him any longer.

So why did that man go completely mad and crash my wedding after I truly left?

***

I heard that after half a year I brought up divorce again, the company group chat exploded.

"Everyone knows Althea is just Mr. Alcott’s lapdog. The moment he crooks his finger, she comes running back, wagging her tail."

"Everything she has is because of the Alcott Family. Without Mr. Alcott, who even is Althea?"

Nearly a thousand people were online in the chat and not a single one bet that I’d actually go through with the divorce.

Satisfied, Thayer sent out a fourteen thousand dollars. The chat was instantly flooded with private messages calling me things like "cheap" and "dramatic."

I let out a self-deprecating laugh and placed a token one-dollar bet on “real divorce.” Then I replied in the group.

[I’ll have the divorce agreement drafted by my lawyer immediately.]

The chat fell silent for a moment, then erupted again, this time with a wave of furious scolding, all condemning me for “not knowing what’s good for me.”

Thayer called me directly, his voice laced with anger. “Althea, know your place. Stop with these cheap tricks. Delete that message, or forget about your mother’s medical expenses this month.”

He’d always used that threat against me, withholding her treatment fees, to keep me in check. Because of it, I’d worked at the company for five years without a single cent in salary.

He forced me to give up my own room to make space for his mistresses. He even made me teach them how to please him in bed.

In front of the entire company, he had me serve tea, fetch shoes and fan those women he brought in.

My coworkers said to my face, without a hint of shame.

“She’s the kind of cheap woman no one wants, even if she throws herself at them.”

I gritted my teeth and endured it all. But now, I just felt exhausted.

Thankfully, the technology I developed recently sold for a good price on the market.

Thayer agreed to give me a bonus of forty thousand dollars. It was enough to cover my mother’s upcoming surgery.

My inbox was already overflowing with job offers from other tech firms.

The pain in my lower abdomen worsened. I packed my things, ready to leave, only to be stopped by Aveline again.

“Who said you could leave, you little tramp?”

Contempt was written all over her face.

I handed her a letter calmly.

“This is my resignation,” I spoke indifferently.

At first, Aveline’s face lit up with joy, but the next second, she tore my resignation letter to shreds.

“No need to make things difficult for me,” I said calmly. “Once I, the legitimate wife, get out of the way, you’ll have a better shot at climbing higher.”

I gently caressed my stomach, then pulled out a DVD from the drawer and handed it to her.

“This contains every position that pleases Thayer. It’ll help you rise to the top as fast as possible.”

Suppressing the nausea welling up in my throat, I forced a smile and offered it up with both hands.

Aveline accepted the disc with delight, but right after, she dialed a video call to Thayer.

Assistants didn’t normally have the authority for video calls, unless their relationship had already far surpassed professional boundaries.

The nausea hit me even harder.

I stared coldly at the screen, where the man who once caressed me so tenderly now lounged with women in his arms, his hands shamelessly roaming over their bodies.

“Mr. Alcott, just now, Althea took your call and instead of working, she started badmouthing you, tore up company documents and even tried to resign. It was terrifying,” Aveline squeaked, pretending to be all worried for the company.

The moment Thayer saw her, he shoved the woman beside him aside and gazed longingly at Aveline’s seductive figure.

People nearby craned their necks to look in my direction because they knew that I was about to be in serious trouble again.

As expected, the moment Thayer heard Aveline’s words, he chuckled and posted a message in the company group chat.

“Fourteen thousand dollars to whoever comes up with a punishment that satisfies me. The money’s yours.”

The chat instantly lit up.

One person suggested I bark like a dog. Another said I should wear a sign saying “I’m an idiot” and stand in front of the company building.

Yet another said I deserved to be doused in buckets of cold water “to snap me out of it.”

Three suggestions quickly surged to the top.

Thayer seemed especially interested in the sign idea, but after a moment’s thought, likely for the sake of the company’s stock price, he simply curled his lips and said, “Althea, consider yourself lucky. We’ll go with the cold water. You need to wake up.”

As soon as he gave the word, Aveline eagerly ordered the security guards to bring over more than a dozen buckets of ice water.

My body was already wracked with pain and my vision blurred so badly that everything appeared in doubles.

Leaning weakly against my desk for support, I tried to explain, barely able to get the words out.

“Tha… Thayer, I’m really… not feeling well…”

Thayer looked down at me with nothing but scorn. He pulled the woman beside him into his arms and kissed her in front of everyone.

“Althea, drop the act. Is this your latest trick to get my attention? Let me tell you something. I’m not blind. Stop being so pathetic.”

The sultry woman clung to his body, rubbing up against him as if she belonged there. Ice-cold water came crashing down on me, soaking me to the bone. Thayer, meanwhile, laughed with unabashed joy.

The men around me looked like they couldn’t get enough, some practically glued their phone cameras to me, their filthy, lecherous stares crawling across my drenched body. The exhaustion, both physical and emotional, became unbearable.

That incident all those years ago wasn’t my choice. But because of it, he had hated me for five long years.

I didn’t know after how many buckets it happened, but eventually, I lost consciousness. My head struck the edge of the desk, splitting open with a sharp crack.

Just before the darkness took me, I thought I heard his panicked voice.

“Aveline, what are you doing? Hurry up and get her to a hospital!”

When I finally came to, the first thing I saw was Thayer staring at me from the side of the hospital bed, his eyes full of disgust.

“Althea, you really are just like your mother — born pathetic.”

“What now? Can’t you live without a man? Faking illness just to make me come running? You must’ve worked so hard to put on this act.”

Five years ago.

I was just a housemaid’s daughter. I’d just received an offer from a top-tier research company.

Then one night, I woke up in bed with Thayer and outside the room, the hallway was swarmed with reporters.

To stabilize the stock price, Thayer's gravely ill grandfather publicly announced online that I was to be his future granddaughter-in-law. On the day of our engagement, he passed away.

Neither my ailing mother’s attempt to take the blame, claiming she coveted the Alcott Family’s status and was trying to marry me off for gain, nor my repeated explanations that neither of us had anything to do with that incident, could dissolve the hatred Thayer held toward me.

“Althea, ever since we started dating, I personally prepared everything for our wedding. I even knelt in the ancestral hall for a full month just to get Grandpa’s approval. How dare you… how dare you do this to me! To the Alcott Family!”

That night, he crushed the engagement ring he had designed for me underfoot, shredded the wedding dress he had chosen and tore apart the meticulously crafted wedding plan he had spent six months designing—then hurled the pieces in my face.

On our wedding day, the groom never showed up. That very night, he brought home his first mistress.

He locked me in the bathroom of the bridal suite, forcing me to listen as the two of them went at it again and again in the bedroom I had lovingly decorated.

Afterward, he made me kneel and clean up for them.

The next morning, all my belongings were thrown into the servant’s quarters and his mistress moved into our bedroom.

My mother had repeatedly rejected Mr. Alcott’s proposal to unite our families. I didn’t believe she was the one behind that scheme. But Thayer refused to listen and refused to believe otherwise.

Looking at the man before me, his expression dark and cold, I felt nothing but a dull ache in my heart.

"I'll let you go."

Thayer let out a scornful laugh, curling his fingers toward the door with disdain.

"Then you'd better keep your word. And while you're at it, prepare a room for my thirty-ninth lover. Make sure to stock it with jewelry and clothes that young girls like."

I used to scream and argue hysterically, but this time, I was unusually quiet and accommodating.

"Do you need a condom? What flavor do you prefer?"

"Sorry," Aveline said coyly, swaying over to Thayer with feigned weakness. "Mr. Alcott doesn’t like using protection with me."

Her low-cut dress exposed her chest, covered in kiss marks. Thayer smiled and pulled her into his arms, indulging in a long, passionate kiss.

"I thought your legs were too weak to walk. What are you doing sneaking over here?"

"I missed you, Mr. Alcott..."

Seeing him getting intimate with different women had become so common that I was numb to them.

But I never imagined that even during a hospital visit for me, he’d still find time to sneak in a quick session with another woman without protection—something even I, his legal wife, had never experienced.

Just then, three knocks sounded at the door. A man wearing gold-rimmed glasses stepped in, interrupting their shameless display.

“Mr. Merrick," I said, my voice weak and pale.

"Lucien, why are you here?" Thayer’s expression turned cold, a flash of displeasure in his eyes.

"I’ve come to deliver the divorce papers."

Lucien lifted the documents in his hand, his voice indifferent. “Divorce papers.”

Divorce?

Thayer let out a cold chuckle, his eyes slicing toward the man like frost-tipped blades.

I took the divorce papers from Lucien and smiled lightly. “Thank you. I’ll buy you a coffee sometime.”

“Althea, do you really need to thank me?” Lucien pretended to be offended and, with a firm gesture, re-save my number after I had previously deleted him.

“If you need anything, just call. Divorce lawsuits happen to be my specialty.”

As soon as he walked out, the man in front of me gripped my wrist tightly. Disgust dripped from the corners of his eyes. “What? Already climbed into Lucien’s bed, huh? No wonder you're so defiant today. Turns out you spent the night with another man!”

“How much for one night? Say it!”

I stared wide-eyed at the man, furious, stunned by his senseless rage.

“One grand? Two? Don’t tell me it was for free. You’re cheaper than a hostess at a club.”

My dignity was ground underfoot like trash. I finally went cold, face expressionless and handed him the divorce agreement. “Sign it. I’m too cheap for the Alcott Family anyway.”

My patience and pleading had only fueled his escalating cruelty and humiliation.

For the past five years, I had been like a gambler putting everything on the line, always thinking we could return to how things once were.

But love had long since become unrecognizable, overgrown with twisted thorns that cut deeper the closer I got.

Then, to my surprise, Thayer’s expression froze for a split second. But instead of signing, he raised his hand and tore the divorce agreement to shreds, flinging the pieces in my face.

“Althea,” he sneered, “You’re nothing but a dog under my feet. What right do you have to choose?”

A doctor called out for the patient’s family and Thayer hurried out of the room.

Only Aveline and I remained.

“Althea, did you know?” Aveline said with a soft, fragile smile. “I told Thayer I wanted a baby, and from that moment on, he never used protection again.”

“Last time, when you ran through the rain late at night to bring him an umbrella and almost got hit by a car, that umbrella was for me. I was completely worn out after all that and Thayer was just worried I might hurt my body.”

Smiling, she handed me a glass of water, but just as I reached for it, she spilled it all over herself.

“Althea, I kindly brought you water and you threw it on me?”

Thayer's smile vanished the moment he looked over. He yanked me off the bed and helped Aveline up, his gaze vicious.

“Throw it back at her. I’ll protect you.”

He took Aveline and splashed ten full glasses of water onto my face, each one like a slap across my cheeks.

My heart turned bitter and I stopped trying to explain.

After all, it was always like this. No matter what happened, he never believed me.

The first mistress said I made her kneel and kowtow. He forced me to kneel with her, banging my head against the ground until it bled.

The second one said I tore her dress. He ripped my dress with her, leaving me naked in the villa for ten days.

The third one accused me of stealing her research. He signed my technical work—something I stayed up nights for over a month to complete—under her name and let others scold me as a plagiarist.

And the list went on.

Perhaps... he never needed my explanation at all.