### Chapter 2

A flicker of guilt crossed Stuart's eyes.

"Ellie's flower shop got hit with some trouble, so I took her out to get some air. How was I supposed to know she'd drink too much—"

He cleared his throat twice. "Enough. Next checkup, I promise I'll take our son myself."

But Stuart, you'll never get the chance to take him anywhere again.

The biting wind poured in over the windowsill. I stood facing the night air, and every word came out soaked in blood.

"No need. Bradley had a heart attack. He's dead!"

Shock flashed across his face and was gone.

Then his expression turned ugly, and he stared at me, eyes full of blame.

"Seraphina, I already told you that kiss didn't mean anything. Are you really so jealous you'd curse your own son?"

"I went through every line of his results at the last checkup. His condition is well under control. I've poured everything I have into this family, and all you do is throw tantrums. What kind of example is that for the child?"

Watching him stand there so sure of himself, I lost any desire to say another word to him.

I said it one word at a time. "Then let's divorce."

Stuart froze, then let out a scornful laugh.

"You're thirty years old and still this emotional, this reckless. No job, no income. You think you could even feed yourself without me?" Contempt filled his eyes. Then he glanced down and caught the corner of the cremation certificate sticking out of my bag.

"Cremation? Who's being cremated?"

He frowned, puzzled, and reached to pull it out. A burst of cheerful music chimed at his waist.

It was the ringtone he'd set just for Ellie, so she could always reach him first, no matter what.

Ellie was crying, all fragile.

"Stuart, some thugs smashed up the flower shop. I'm so scared—"

His pupils shrank. "Don't be scared. I'm coming right now."

"Put Bradley to bed yourself."

He grabbed his coat and strode out, never noticing that there was no sign of his son in the house, never noticing that the study he always kept locked had been left open.

Something pulled me inside, and the thing in the corner stabbed at my eyes.

Seven years ago, I was the most promising newcomer at the law firm, and I took on a difficult case.

The defendant was the most powerful crime syndicate in the area. To get back at me, they drove my family's company into bankruptcy, and my father, cornered by his creditors with nowhere to turn, jumped to his death.

I went alone to gather evidence of their crimes, wanting justice for my father.

When they drugged me and dragged me onto a yacht, it was Stuart, out fishing with friends, who saved me.

He wiped away my tears and the blood, one gentle stroke at a time. "Don't worry. That crowd comes to our hospital whenever they get hurt. I'll quietly help you gather the evidence."

Only later did I learn he was the youngest medical professor in the city, and the heir to the Weiss Group.

So many people longed to attach themselves to this powerful, brilliant doctor and never could, yet he was the one who reached out to me.

Six months later, with Stuart's help, I won the case, sent them all to prison, and avenged my father.

Through every night the nightmares came, he was the one beside me, stroking my back to soothe me.

To marry me, he broke with the Weiss family, and announced his love for me to the whole world.

Then the second year came, our son was born, and Stuart looked at me, torn.

"Baby, I know becoming a great lawyer is your dream."

"But I can't stand the thought of someone else raising our son. Could you quit and raise Bradley yourself? I promise I'll be good to you and our boy for the rest of my life."

I loved him so deeply that I gave up my own future with all my heart.

On so many sleepless nights, I would secretly run my fingers over my bar license.

When Stuart got up in the night and saw, he was overcome with guilt, holding me and promising over and over that he would never let me down.

But now my precious bar license was being used to prop up a flowerpot.

A safe sat in the corner. I tried Ellie's birthday.

The door opened. A pile of things slid out.

Inside a thick envelope were photos of the two of them, everywhere—embracing on a Hawaii beach, nestled together watching penguins in Antarctica, looking at the snow in the Rocky Mountains—

All the places I'd once wished to go with him.

He always said he was busy.

Yet he made it happen for someone else.

There was more—a thick stack of receipts: him funding Ellie's high-end apartment in the city center, setting up her flower shop, all of it.

I took out my phone and photographed every piece of it.

### Chapter 3

As I was putting everything back, I caught a line of writing on the folder for the flower shop renovation.

"Just fly. I'll carry every storm for you."

I stared at that sentence for a long, long time.

So it turned out he could throw himself behind someone's dream too.

Six years married. By day I washed his clothes and cooked his meals, by night I rocked our child to sleep, spinning like a top that never got to stop.

And online, my old colleagues were winning case after case. I watched them glowing in those photos, and all I felt was envy and a quiet ache.

The wind carried my tears off into the night sky.

In the end I laughed out loud.

I took out my phone and dialed the number I knew by heart.

"Fergus Gray, that overseas market in Chicago you mentioned. I'm in."

Fergus went quiet for a beat, then said, delighted,

"Seraphina, with you on board we'll be unstoppable! But it means relocating abroad. Have you really thought this through? Your husband, your child—"

"I've thought it through." My answer didn't waver.

"Then we leave in three days, on schedule."

Three days from now, I would walk away from him for good.

The next morning I went out first thing to buy a suitcase.

A child tripped and fell by the roadside, and her mother scooped her up against her chest, soothing her.

Watching the little one sob into her mother's shoulder, something in my chest twisted without warning.

I thought of Bradley. He'd clung to me more than anyone while he was alive. Every day the moment I got home he'd trail after me like a little shadow, wherever I went, he went. On the road to the afterlife, with no mother beside him, how frightened and heartbroken my baby must be.

He was so small. Would his little ghost lose its way home, not knowing how to find his mother?

I turned my head away, unable to look any longer, and the tears broke loose like a flood.

The moment I got home I started packing fast.

Anything Stuart had bought me, I wanted none of it.

But the protective jade pendant my mother had blessed for Bradley before she died, that I was taking with me.

Bradley had a congenital heart defect. Back then my mother heard of a master said to be miraculous, and she'd walked miles of road, dropping to her knees with every step, kowtowing until her forehead ran with blood.

When she pressed the jade pendant into my hands and I cried at the sight of her, she only smiled, warm.

"As long as Bradley is safe and healthy, as long as your family lives happy and whole, anything I do is worth it."

Just as she'd instructed, I tucked the pendant under Bradley's pillow.

But now the pendant was gone.

A chill ran through me. I was about to go ask the housekeeper when laughter drifted up from downstairs.

I walked to the open hallway overlooking the room below and saw Ellie Cooley sitting on the sofa with a brown teddy in her arms, Stuart beside her.

Ellie smiled and looped her arm through his.

"The second I said CoCo had a hard birth, you went and got her a jade pendant for protection. Stuart, you're so good to CoCo, you sweet godfather."

My gaze dropped, and all at once I saw it, the jade pendant around the teddy's neck, the very one my mother had blessed for Bradley.

Stuart ruffled Ellie's hair. He was severely germophobic, yet he lifted his own cup and held it for her to drink.

"You're the one. Running the flower shop and looking after the dog both, you've worn yourself out, you little fool."

That handsome face wore a doting smile I'd never once seen, and the sight of it scorched my eyes like fire.

There was a time I'd done housework all day, run a high fever, and absently picked up his cup to drink from it.

He hadn't said anything then. But later, that cup turned up in the trash.

So his germophobia depended on the person, after all.

He stood and headed for the kitchen. "Hungry? I'll go cook. Your favorite, beef stew."

For six years I'd tended to his every meal, down to the smallest detail, certain he didn't even know where the kitchen was.

So it turned out he would cook for someone else, too.

I came down the stairs step by step. Ellie looked up and curled her red lips at me, all charm.

"Oh, so you're home, Seraphina. And here I thought you'd actually gone to the county clerk's office to file for divorce."

"Just what I said. A lazy good-for-nothing who'd happily wrap around her own husband like a strangling vine, how could someone like that ever get divorced?"

"Honestly, next to you, I'm just built for a career. Too busy to even find myself a boyfriend."

### Chapter 4

I gave a thin, mocking smile.

"Miss Cooley, no time to find yourself a boyfriend, but plenty of time to seduce another woman's husband and play the mistress."

"And on top of that, you team up with my husband to steal the jade pendant my mother had blessed for us?"

The two housemaids nearby turned to her at once, startled, whispering between themselves.

"Wasn't she supposed to be Mr. Weiss's friend? So she's the mistress, and she comes right into the house…"

"Exactly. Steals another woman's man, then steals our mistress's things too. Shameless."

They pitched their voices just loud enough for Ellie to hear. Her face went a furious, mottled red.

"You filthy little servants, what do you know? Watch yourselves, or I'll have Stuart throw you both out!"

Seeing how brazen she was, the two of them rolled their eyes in open contempt and went back to their work.

I walked over, my voice cutting. "Give it back."

"A worthless piece of junk. Fine, you can have it." She pulled the pendant off the dog's neck, and the next instant a vicious glint flashed in her eyes.

She let go.

It cracked against the ground, breaking into pieces.

Ellie clapped a hand over her mouth in fake horror. "Oh! I'm so sorry, how much was it? I'll pay you back."

She dug out her wallet. "Old folks only buy cheap things, right? Thirty dollars should cover it."

My mother's face rose up in front of me, blood streaming down her head, still smiling at me.

My fingers shook. The fury was past holding back.

Crack!

A slap landed hard across Ellie's face.

She stumbled back, hand pressed to her cheek, her eyes red in an instant. "You— you hit me?"

My gaze was sharp, each word spaced and deliberate. "Let me tell you something. I see exactly what you're playing at. I don't say it, but that doesn't mean I'll go on letting you humiliate me forever."

Murder flashed in her eyes, and she made to lunge at me. Then her gaze caught on something behind me, her face changed, and the tears came down twice as hard.

"I didn't, I don't know what you're talking about…"

I gritted my teeth, about to speak again, when a sharp shout came from behind me.

"Seraphina, what do you think you're doing?!"

I turned. Stuart was coming out of the kitchen, his face dark enough to frighten.

He strode straight to Ellie and brushed his fingers gently over the red mark on her cheek, his eyes pained, as if he were the one who'd been burned. "She hit you? What happened?"

Ellie sniffled out her version of events, and Stuart's face only grew darker.

"It's a worthless little trinket. You had to hit someone over it?" He turned and rounded on me, his voice cold as ice.

"A worthless little trinket?" My voice trembled. "Stuart, that was my mother's keepsake!"

My reddened eyes, my shaking shoulders, gave him a moment's pause.

"What did you say?! Your mother passed away?" "While you wouldn't take my call because you'd rather be at the side of your precious sister's dog while it gave birth, my mother died in a car accident!"

His eyes flew wide. His mouth opened. "How could your mother possibly—"

Before he could finish, Ellie cut in.

"Passed away? I ran into your mother this morning, out shopping with Bradley."

"You bank on Stuart spoiling you, so you lie straight to his face. A woman with no shame at all. Stuart had nothing but the worst luck the day he met you!"

She snatched up the shards of the pendant from the ground and hurled them, furious, into the pond in the courtyard.

My mother's love for me vanished for good beneath the splash.

The rage swallowed me again like a rising tide, and I swung my hand at her.

Crack!

The slap never reached Ellie's face. Instead, Stuart's hand came down hard across mine.

"Cursing your own child and your own mother. Seraphina, aren't you afraid it'll come back on you?"

"And Ellie already offered to pay you back, so what more do you want? Not happy with the amount?" He pulled out his checkbook and scrawled a figure. "Is this enough?"

I held my burning cheek, staring at the check he held out, my heart feeling like an unseen hand had crushed it.

When I didn't take it, he tore off another check and wrote a new number.

"Not enough?" His tone was flat, as though this were only a deal being struck. "How about this, then?"

One check after another was pushed in front of me, the amounts climbing higher and higher, while my heart only went colder.

I reached out and took the last check, my fingertips trembling slightly.

"That's enough."

My voice was very soft, but it took everything I had to say it.

This marriage of ours was enough too.

I turned to leave, but before I'd taken two steps, Stuart's voice came at my back, cold and hard as iron.

"Stop right there."

My steps halted.

His tone left no room for argument. "You took the money. The matter of you hitting Ellie isn't finished."