“President Delgado, the chef has already left for the night. You can order delivery.”

Gavin shot to his feet and closed the distance in three strides, towering over me.

“Eudora, what the hell is wrong with you today? Are you actually trying to defy me?”

He reeked of liquor. Clearly not in a good mood.

“I'm tired.”

I pushed past him toward the stairs.

He grabbed my wrist, fingers clamping down hard enough to grind the bones together.

“Tired? You weren't tired out there messing around with some stranger?”

He shoved his phone in my face. On the screen was a photo of Connor dropping me off earlier today.

I had no idea who had taken it, but the angle was vicious. It looked like we were kissing inside the car.

“Explain.”

Gavin's eyes burned with the rage of a man whose possession had stepped out of line.

“I ran into him. He gave me a ride.”

I looked at him, steady.

“Gavin, you brought Lauren home. So you get to do whatever you want, but I can't even accept a ride?”

“You think you compare to Lauren?”

He sneered.

“She's a proper lady from a real family. You're……”

He stopped himself. As if even he found the word too ugly to finish.

“I'm what?” I finished it for him.

“An orphan. A gold-digger. Your bed-warming tool. Right?”

Gavin pressed his lips together. He didn't deny it.

Something sharp drove through my chest, and whatever warmth was left went cold for good.

“Since President Delgado thinks so little of me, let's end the contract.”

I finally said the words I'd kept locked inside for so long.

Gavin stared, like he'd just heard a joke.

“End the contract? Eudora, don't forget—your grandmother's still in that care facility. Without me, how are you paying those bills? Going to sell yourself?”

The slap cracked through the empty living room before I even registered my hand moving.

My palm was numb, my whole body shaking.

Gavin's head snapped to the side. A red handprint rose fast across his cheek.

He turned back slowly, disbelief in his eyes, a storm gathering beneath.

“Eudora. You hit me?”

“That was for the Eudora who was stupid enough to love you for five years.”

I pulled my hand back, nails digging into my palm.

“Gavin. We're done.”

I turned and walked upstairs without looking at him again.

Behind me, a vase shattered against the floor, and Gavin's roar followed：

“Eudora! If you walk out that door today, don't ever come crawling back to me!”

I closed the bedroom door, leaned against it, and slid to the floor.

One hand on my stomach, I whispered：

“Don't be scared, baby. Mama's taking you away.”

Over the next two days, as if to punish me, Gavin paraded Lauren to every high-profile event he could find.

The headlines were everywhere: “Delgado Group president and childhood sweetheart—happy news imminent.”

I packed inside the manor.

There wasn't much to pack.

The designer bags, the jewelry, the clothes Gavin had given me. I left every piece behind.

All I took were my documents, my bankbook, and the pregnancy report.

The day I left, it was raining.

Gavin wasn't home. Neither was Lauren.

I'd arranged Grandma Stella's transfer to a care facility in a small southern city.

It wasn't as luxurious as the one here, but it was quiet, and the fees were something I could manage.

Before I walked out, I placed a resignation letter and a signed “breakup agreement” on Gavin's desk in the study.

The terms were simple: every cent he'd given me over five years, counted as salary and compensation for what he'd put me through. After that, we owed each other nothing.

Connor's car was already waiting at the curb when I walked out of the estate gates.

He was leaning against the door, a scatter of cigarette butts at his feet.

The moment he saw me dragging my suitcase out, he crushed the cigarette and crossed the distance in a few long strides to take the handle from me.

“You're sure about this?”

His eyes searched mine, something complicated moving behind them.

“Yeah.”

I turned back one last time to look at the gilded cage that had held me for five years.

“Let's go.”

The engine started, and the car slid into the curtain of rain.

I watched the scenery fall away through the window, and the tears I'd been holding back finally came.

Goodbye, Gavin.

Goodbye to five ridiculous, wasted years I'll never get back.

Gavin didn't realize Eudora was gone until three days later.

For those three days he'd stayed away on purpose, sleeping at the apartment near the office, waiting for her to give in.

That was how it always went. After every fight, she'd show up within a day with a pot of freshly made soup, voice soft, apology ready.

But this time, three full days passed. His phone stayed silent. Not a single message. Not a single call.

“President Delgado, here's the quarterly financial report……”

The new assistant placed the file on his desk with trembling hands.

“Where's Eudora Henson? Tell her to come see me.”

Gavin yanked at his tie, irritated. The coffee never tasted right when someone else made it, and nobody sorted his files the way she did.

The assistant froze for a second, then said carefully：

“President Delgado, Secretary Henson……she hasn't come in for three days now. HR said they received an email. It was her resignation letter……”

“Resignation?”

Gavin was so furious he laughed.

“She's really gotten addicted to the act.”

He picked up his phone and dialed Eudora's number.

“The number you have dialed is currently powered off.”

The mechanical female voice only stoked his anger higher.

“Find her! I don't care what hole she's hiding in, find her!”

Gavin didn't believe Eudora actually had the nerve to leave.

She couldn't survive without him. Not without his money. Not without him.

That night, Gavin went back to Hillside Manor.

The house was pitch black. No soft yellow lamp left on the way it always was.

The faint jasmine scent that used to linger in the air had faded too, replaced by nothing but cold, dead silence.

“Eudora?”

He called out once. No one answered.

He pushed open the master bedroom door on the second floor and flicked on the light.

The room was immaculate, as if no one had ever lived there.

In the walk-in closet, half of Eudora's clothes were gone. What remained were the seasonal pieces he'd tossed her way over the years, tags still attached, never worn.

The vanity was bare. The only thing sitting on it was a car key.

Something unnamed and panicked began to rise inside him.

He strode to the study, and his gaze landed immediately on the two documents lying on the desk.

A resignation letter. A breakup agreement.

The handwriting was neat and graceful, but every stroke cut with finality.

“Gavin—we're even.”

He stared at those words, then crushed the paper into a ball and hurled it at the floor.

“Eudora Henson, you've really outdone yourself!”

He'd thought she was throwing a tantrum. He never imagined she'd been planning to leave all along.

“We're even? You slept with me for five years and you think you can just walk away? Keep dreaming!”

Gavin snatched up his phone and made several calls.

“Shut down every exit route. Pull Eudora Henson's ID usage records. Tear this city apart if you have to, but find her!”

The first month after Eudora left.

Gavin couldn't sleep.

Without that familiar trace of jasmine, he tossed and turned all night, barely managing to doze off at dawn.

His temper grew worse by the day, and everyone at the company walked on eggshells.

Lauren tried to stay the night several times, but he turned her away every time with the same excuse: “I'm used to sleeping alone.”

It wasn't that he couldn't sleep alone. It was that he'd grown used to sleeping with Eudora beside him.

Even on nights they didn't touch, all he needed was to reach over and feel the warmth of her body, and something in him would settle.

“Gavin, are you……thinking about Eudora?”

Lauren's voice was careful, testing.

Gavin cut into his steak without looking up, his expression cold.

“Why would I think about her? Ungrateful wretch I never should've fed.”

“It's just……I found this in the back of the closet.”

Lauren held out a crumpled sheet of paper.

A lab report from the hospital.

Gavin took it, glanced down with casual disinterest, and his pupils contracted sharply.

“Pregnancy test positive……”

The date was……a month ago?

That day she'd said she wanted to have a baby. He'd assumed she was scheming, and he'd humiliated her for it.

She was already pregnant then?

His hand began to shake. His wine glass tipped, and dark red pooled across the white tablecloth like a stain that looked too much like blood.

“She's pregnant……”

The words left him barely above a whisper. Eudora's face flashed through his mind, pale as it had been that day, and then that final resolute look in her eyes.

“I want your seed. But I don't want you anymore.”

The words looped through his skull like a curse.

He'd always believed she'd said it out of anger.

She'd meant every word.

She had taken his child and run.

“Get the car. The care facility. Now!”

He shoved back from the table, the chair shrieking across the floor.

If she was going to leave, she'd take her sickly grandmother with her. Find the grandmother, find her.

The room at the care facility was already empty.

“Stella Henson? She was transferred out two weeks ago.”

The nurse scrolled through the records.

“It looks like she was moved to……I'm sorry, the family requested confidentiality.”

Gavin stood in the middle of the empty room, and it felt like every drop of blood in his body was running the wrong way.

She had planned all of this. Every step, him included, and then she'd walked away without a trace.

“Eudora Henson……”

He ground her name between his teeth, and the panic rising in his chest finally drowned out the anger.

He couldn't find her.

The woman who had always come when called, who had always stood exactly half a step behind him, had vanished from his world completely.

“President Delgado, we found something!”

His assistant rushed in, sweat beading across his forehead.

“A property under Connor Harding's name, there's been recent power usage, and……someone spotted a woman matching Ms. Henson's description nearby.”

“Where?”

“Seabrook. A seaside village.”

Gavin was out the door before the sentence ended.

Eudora Henson, when I get my hands on you, I'll break your legs.

He was vicious in his head, but his trembling fingers gave him away.

He was afraid.

Afraid that she truly didn't want him anymore.

Seabrook—the sea breeze tasting faintly of salt.

I'd rented a little courtyard house by the shore. Sun on my skin every morning, flowers to tend, days that unfolded slow and easy.

My belly had started to round. Connor found me a dependable auntie to handle meals and keep the house running, and every weekend he flew down himself, arms loaded with supplements and baby things.

“How's this rocking horse look? Gotta have something for my future godson to ride.”

Connor crouched in the courtyard assembling it, sweat beading across his forehead.

I sat in the rocking chair and watched him, smiling.

“How do you know it's a boy? What if it's a girl?”

“Even better! A girl who looks like you. Beautiful.”

Connor lifted his head, and sunlight spilled across his face—bright enough to make me squint.