Seven years ago, to keep my dying mother alive, I worked eight jobs a day, and even that barely touched the medical bills that swallowed us whole.

Then one afternoon, in the middle of a delivery run, I came upon a car wreck. I called for help, and only then noticed the fuel leaking from the wreckage.

The moment I'd dragged everyone clear, the car went up in flames.

When the rescue crew arrived, I climbed back on my bike and rode off, never dreaming that one rescue would rewrite my entire life.

Not long after, a woman who introduced herself as Mrs. Rowe of the Rowe Group sought me out. Her son had been left comatose, she told me, and a fortune-teller had read our birth charts and declared them a perfect match.

She asked if I would become her daughter-in-law, marrying him to turn his luck and save his life. The compensation she offered was considerable.

For my mother's sake, I agreed. I signed a private contract with Mrs. Rowe, and on the strength of her promises, I took on the burden of nursing her son.

After a full year of my care, uncomplaining through every hardship, James Rowe finally woke.

With the media circling and the pressure mounting, he married me once he opened his eyes.

At first our life together was happy enough. He even tried to accept me. But three years in, when my mother passed, James changed completely.

He started staying out all night. He stopped answering my messages, ignored my calls, and flew into a rage if I so much as said a word or two to him.

Then came the kept women, a new one every few days. Now and then one would last three months, but every last one got swapped out in the end.

Until Marcella Pruitt appeared. The day I sent someone to dig into her background happened to be the day of my prenatal checkup.

But before that file ever reached my hands, she stabbed me thirteen times.

It was only after I finally saw her in person that I understood why James guarded her the way he did.

She bore a striking resemblance to his first love. Those eyes, especially. They were too alike.

The contract was nearly up anyway. This marriage, this living hell, was due to end.

I pulled myself back to the present and looked at the last line of the email——“Would you be willing to join us?”

Without hesitation, I pressed “Yes,” then sent off a reply, letting them know I would arrive in Maldea in four days.

Once that was done, I went straight to check myself out of the hospital.

Back home, I began erasing every trace I'd ever lived there.

Matching clothes, matching slippers, matching little couple's trinkets, all of it went into the trash.

While clearing out the vanity, I found a pair of pink pearl earrings, James's gift for our first anniversary.

I could still see him then, his eyes soft, his movements stiff as he fastened them on me. “My Connie can pull off anything! From now on, I'm buying you so many more pearls!”

A pity. From our fourth anniversary on, James never gave me another. He stopped marking the holidays altogether.

Every time, I'd cook a full table of food, and he'd stay out all night. I'd plant myself stubbornly at that table until dawn, and still he wouldn't come home, and the food would go cold.

Just like this lopsided marriage of ours, growing bleaker by the day.

I steadied myself, dropped the earrings into the trash, and pulled open a drawer to find it crammed with the written promises James had once given me.

In those first three years, every time he wronged me, James would write me a promise. And every one of them began the same way——“CV.”

My name is Constance Vance.

Back then, drowning in that sweet, happy marriage, I thought those letters were his own private pet name for me.

A pity I'd guessed wrong.

A year ago, I learned that James carried a first love in his heart. When he'd crashed that car, she had been inside it with him.

She wasn't among the people I pulled out. I looked into it later and understood: she'd been thrown into the gap between the back seat and the trunk, completely outside my line of sight, and so she missed her best chance at rescue.

That girl was named——“Celia Vance.”

So “CV” had been hers alone.

The instant I knew the truth, I finally understood why every promise James wrote carried such thick guilt, such deep self-reproach.

He'd been atoning to his first love. Through me.

I crushed the promise in my hand, and my heart felt like two invisible hands had ripped it clean in two, the pain so sharp I couldn't stand.

One hand braced on the vanity, the other sweeping every last promise into the trash.

Anything that was never mine, I want none of it.

I burned every last piece, then reached out to the Vanishing Society. Only after I'd sent them my exact requirements did I tuck my phone away.

When I looked up, James was standing in the doorway with Marcella tucked against his side.

His eyes dropped to the brazier, brows knitting together. "What are you throwing a fit about now?"

I said nothing.

No matter what I did, in James's eyes it was always some childish tantrum.

I'd heard accusations like this more times than I could count. Once, when I still loved him, I would have fought to explain myself.

But I didn't love him anymore. I couldn't be bothered to explain anything.

Marcella's gaze grazed the brazier without lingering, then she hooked her arm through James's and shot me a taunting little smile. "Connie, surely you're not going to start playing the heartbroken martyr just because of one thing he said?"

"All this pretending you don't care about anything. You're trying to get his attention again, aren't you? Win him back?"

She put on an air of perfect understanding. "Oh, who'd have guessed it. Connie's almost thirty, and she's still throwing little-girl tantrums."

"But we're both women, so of course I can read those little games of yours."

With that, she gave James a coy push and pouted. "Aren't you going to go comfort your wife? She is the lady of the Rowe house, after all. What if she gets upset and sends someone to bully me again?"

James ruffled her hair and reassured her, indulgent. "Don't worry. She wouldn't dare touch you. I looked into last time, too. It was another one of my enemies who arranged it."

Listening to them, the hands at my sides clenched tight.

With his resources, there was no way James hadn't uncovered the truth and the person behind it.

But to keep Marcella happy, he'd still chosen to hire someone to take those photos of me, to ruin my name.

I gave a self-mocking laugh. All at once, these seven years felt like the work of a fool.

Seven whole years of my youth, wasted on a man who was never worth it.

I'd even wrecked my own health for him.

"What are you laughing at?" James's eyes sharpened, fixed on me.

I picked up a glass of water and doused the flames, calm. "Nothing. It has nothing to do with you."

With that, I had no wish to stay a moment longer. I turned and walked out.

The next day, the moment I finished canceling my identity records, James's message came through.

【Bring a box of condoms to Allure Bar. Twenty minutes.】

The same as always.

James only ever remembered protection at the last possible second, with the arrow already drawn on the string.

Sometimes, by the time I arrived, I'd walk in on the live performance.

To that kind of thing, I'd long since gone numb.

I was about to ignore it when I remembered the peace pendant hanging at his throat, the one my mother had prayed over for him.

A man like him didn't deserve to wear it.

I turned and headed to the store, bought what I needed, and hailed a cab.

I made it in fifteen minutes. I'd just raised my hand to knock when I heard the jeering through the gap in the door.

"James, you've really got a knack for this. You've trained Constance to heel so well, you say one word and she doesn't dare say two."

"Right, right. James, you got any secrets? Share some wisdom with us."

The room went quiet.

James took a drag of his cigarette and answered, idle. "First, you treat her well. Indulge every little mood, no conditions. Let her fall in deep. Then, once there's no one left around her, she'll depend on you with everything she has."

"After that, no matter how you push her away, she can't leave you. Because in her world, outside of you, there's no one else."

The words set off a wave of laughter and agreement around the room, everyone praising how brilliant his methods were.

Standing in the doorway, I felt like I'd been dropped into ice, my limbs rigid, the blood running backward through me.

For years I'd never understood the change in him. I'd always believed it was something I hadn't done well enough.

Now, hearing the truth with my own ears, I finally understood. It wasn't that I wasn't good enough. It was that some people were never worth a single ounce of my heart.

“Yaoyao, why aren't you going in?”

Marcella's sweet, simpering voice drifted up behind me.

I'd barely turned around when she snatched my hand and yanked hard, throwing herself backward.

By the time I understood what was happening, James had already come out of the private room, carefully easing Marcella up into his arms.

She huddled against his chest, eyes rimmed with red. ：“James, don't blame Yaoyao. I'm sure she didn't mean it……”

James's gaze cut toward me, sharp as a blade. “Apologize.”

Two cold words, and just like that, I was guilty.

I clutched the plastic bag and tried to defend myself. ：“It wasn't me. I didn't push her……”

“Let it go, James. If Yaoyao says it wasn't her, then it wasn't her.” Marcella played the picture of grace and understanding.

Her mouth said she didn't care, but her body just happened to reveal the scrape across her palm.

James's brow knit, the chill around him deepening. ：“Constance. Apologize. Don't make me say it a third time.”

A few of the rich boys from the room spilled out to watch the show.

“Just apologize already, Constance. James won't lift a finger for you anyway. Ha—haven't you noticed there's no one standing behind you?”

“Pushes someone over and still acts like she's in the right! Who does she think she is, Marcella? Everybody's darling?”

“No wonder she can't have kids. Probably because she's racked up so much bad karma the heavens won't grant her any, so she can never sit steady as Mrs. Rowe.”

Listening to the steady drip of their mockery, my long-dead heart gave a dull, aching throb.

The deaths of those four children had always been a thorn buried in my chest.

“Constance, my patience has limits.” James's face darkened.

Marcella cooed her fake comfort. ：“It's all right, James. Yaoyao is Mrs. Rowe, after all. I'm just a nobody, a little commoner. How could I ever measure up to Mrs. Rowe?”

I'd already dug up everything about her background. I lifted my eyes to her, my pale lips curving faintly. ：“Do you really have no background?”

Something guilty flickered in the depths of her eyes.

She shrank back behind James as if frightened.

His brow furrowed as he shielded her behind him. “Constance, you'd threaten Marcie right in front of me?”

“Someone get over here. Make her kneel right there. She doesn't get up until we're done.”

The bodyguards trailing him stepped forward at once and forced me down onto the floor, rough and unceremonious.

Bone struck concrete with a hard crack, and the pain pulled a sharp gasp out of me.

Before they went back into the room, I clawed desperately at the hem of James's trousers, my voice low and pleading. ：“James, that peace pendant on your neck. Give it back to me.”

“I'll kneel two days and two nights. Just give me back the peace pendant.”

James reached up and touched it, then kicked my hand away, looking down at me from on high. ：“It's a piece of junk. You actually think I want it?”

“When we're finished in there, I'll give it back.”

The door shut. I knelt there, numb. Now and then a passing guest pointed and whispered. I heard none of it.

I don't know how long it had been when the thick smell of smoke suddenly reached me, and the next second the door swung open.

My voice came out raw. ：“James, the peace pendant……”

Before I could finish, he hauled me up by the arm. “The room's on fire. Move.”

He had Marcella tucked against his other side. She slid me a glance, unreadable, then said in a worried tone, ：“James, this is all my fault. I didn't keep that fire under control…… Yaoyao's peace pendant is still in there. Let me go back for it.”