Right in front of Raiden, I was ready to jump off the building.

At the very last second, he caught me, shaking as he begged for forgiveness.

Like every man caught cheating, he cried and admitted he was wrong.

He said it was all a misunderstanding. He said he still loved me and pleaded for another chance.

That night, Raiden knelt before me, tears running down his face as he looked up. “Elysia, please forgive me just this once, okay?”

I made the second biggest mistake of my life. I decided to forgive him.

For the sake of our child.

Because of the love, I still couldn’t let go of.

Also, because my mother had just been in a car crash, and I had nowhere else to go.

So, Raiden and I ended up back together.

Not long after, I became pregnant again and gave birth to our second child, Amara.

Like Castor, Amara was taken away as soon as she was born.

The excuse they gave was that Raiden needed to stay focused on work and couldn’t stand the noise of children.

To catch even a glimpse of my two children, I had to show up at the old mansion before sunrise each day to complete my chores.

Make tea, pour drinks, massage shoulders, and pat backs.

I even had to kneel and wash Jennifer’s feet.

All of it just to earn a little sympathy, so she would let me stay close to my children.

But what I received for all that effort was Raiden’s endless cheating and my children’s growing hatred.

Castor never once called me “mom.”

Whenever he saw me, he would frown and mutter, “That dumb village woman is here again. I don’t want to see her.”

Amara still couldn’t speak, but she would only cry and reach for her grandmother instead.

Meanwhile, my mother’s illness kept getting worse.

My children’s coldness and the burden of life left me completely drained and hopeless.

When I needed someone’s support, when I was desperate for comfort, Raiden had already built a new family with another woman.

That day happened to be our wedding anniversary.

Castor turned down my invite to celebrate. Raiden ended my call without a word.

His mistress, on the other hand, was the one who sent me a video of them together in bed.

Hearing their intimate voices, I completely broke down inside. I lost control and cut my arm with a knife.

By the time Isabella rushed into the bathroom, I had already lost nearly all my blood.

Terrified, she called Raiden for help, but this time, he didn’t return home until early morning.

He crouched in front of me, smiling as his eyes swept over my wounded arm.

“Didn’t you say you wanted to die?”

“It’s been all night. Why are you still here, hanging around the Curtis family like a stray dog?”

Those words crushed the last trace of calm I still had. Without thinking, I jumped from the balcony.

I survived. Only one leg was broken.

Jennifer dismissed all the gossiping reporters, dragged me into my mother’s hospital room, and stared down coldly.

“The ICU costs twenty thousand dollars a day.”

“If you dare embarrass the Curtis family again, I’ll make sure your mother dies with you!”

That was when I finally understood, death could be a kind of mercy.

I couldn’t let go of the love I once had, nor could I cut off my bond with blood.

So I could only keep crawling through this marriage, stripped of pride and dignity.

Watching my son and daughter drift further away from me.

Watching Raiden flirt with one woman after another.

Watching them use my mother’s life to keep me trapped.

Marrying into money was both a sweet joy and a heavy chain.

Cinderella had climbed to the top and became Mrs. Curtis, but the prince was still lost in his own world of love games.

Outside, he went on saving one pretty poor woman after another. Until one day, Raiden crossed the line.

He fell for a woman in her thirties, a socialite who had been married several times, and even got her pregnant.

Jennifer completely lost her mind in fury. She burst into my room, slapped me twice across the face, and yelled at me for not keeping my husband in check.

“A woman who can’t even hold her own husband’s heart, what good are you?”

“I’m ordering you to fix this mess right now, or else…”

“I’ll stop your mother’s treatment immediately and make sure you never see Castor and Amara again in your life!”

After the marriage had fallen apart, the only family tie left became my last bit of strength.

I couldn’t let go of my mother, and I couldn’t lose the last bit of hope.

I instantly went to meet Hestia Miranda.

She wasn’t like the other women Raiden had been with, those who were proud and full of themselves.

Instead, she was gentle and polite.

Every time she spoke, she called me “Mrs. Curtis,” her eyes shining with flattery when they met mine.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Curtis. I never meant to ruin your family.”

“I just care about Raiden too much.”

“If it’s for his sake, I’m willing to end this pregnancy and never appear again.”

Hestia kept her promise. After taking the money, she disappeared completely.

That night, Raiden, who hadn’t been home for a long time, suddenly opened my bedroom door.

Without saying a word, he pushed me onto the bed and forced himself on me.

For a whole month, he didn’t allow me to get up until I became pregnant again with our third child.

As a reward for fixing the problem and to make sure he stayed home, Jennifer did something she had never done before. She agreed to let me keep this baby by my side and raise it myself.

And my mother’s condition also started to get better under the Curtis family’s private doctors.

I was delighted.

I believed my misery had finally come to an end.

I thought my life was finally turning around.

When I was eight months pregnant, Raiden suddenly pushed me down the stairs.

Standing there, he watched me struggle in a pool of blood and said coldly, “When you drove Hestia away and made her lose her child, did you ever think this day would come?”

“Did you ever consider how much she suffered?”

“You owe Hestia a life. This is what you deserve.”

With pain and despair, I lost consciousness.

When I opened my eyes, the baby was gone.

I cried as if my heart had been torn apart, unable to accept what had happened.

Yet the bad news didn’t end there.

My mother’s doctor told me that after waking up, she learned everything I had gone through in the Curtis family.

Her emotional collapse made her illness worse, and she now needed an urgent operation.

The surgery required two hundred thousand dollars, and I didn’t have the money.

No property from the Curtis family was under my name.

Those designer bags and pieces of jewelry, I didn’t own any of them.

Two hundred thousand dollars, to Raiden, was nothing more than the price of one meal.

To me, it was the final weight that broke me completely.

Crying, I called him and begged for a bit of pity.

As long as my mother could be saved, I was willing to serve him like a laboring animal.

But Raiden said coldly, “Elysia, don’t think too highly of yourself.”

“You really believe I’ll fall for your pitiful lies?”

“To fight with Hestia, you’ll say anything, won’t you?”

He ended the call without emotion. And the last sound I heard was the two of them lost in their passion.

My mother stopped breathing completely amid those vague moans.

While I was taking care of her funeral arrangements, I happened to notice the headline of the day.

[The Rich Young Master Spends Tens Of Millions To Propose To His New Lover, The Former Cinderella Is Coldly Abandoned.]

The fallen Cinderella had returned to what she once was, and with that, two lives were gone.

Soon after, Raiden found out about my mother’s death.

He didn’t say a word, only transferred two million to me quietly.

For him, spending two million to end a problem was worth it.

He thought he had paid me back many times over, so what else could I want?

This was love. This was Raiden’s kind of love.

I should have been grateful, trembling in humility as I accepted it.

But for me, the last connection I had to this world was gone.

My children were gone, and my mother was dead.

I was finally free.

Worn out, I asked Raiden for a divorce.

The first time, he looked at me with clear disgust.

“Divorce? Do you really have the courage to walk away from me?”

“Do you understand that once you leave, you’ll be left with nothing?”

The second time, his tone turned impatient.

“Fine. I’m just messing around outside. It’s not like I won’t come back.”

“Be good, don’t get upset. When I return, I’ll take you on a trip to Phoenix.”

The third time came, Raiden tore the divorce papers apart in anger and shame.

The fourth time, then the fifth, came and went. At last, Raiden agreed.

With superiority in his expression, he stared at me.

“Hestia is right. Letting you calm down for a while might be better.”

“Once you suffer out there, you’ll realize how good the Curtis family truly is.”

He signed his name easily on the divorce papers, waiting for me to break down and beg for him like before.

What he didn’t realize was that this time, I had made up my mind to go.

The villa keys, I handed over to Isabella.

Calmly, I said, “I sold the house, and the new owner agreed to let you keep working here.”

“Isabella, you’ve been the only one in this family who’s ever been kind to me. I hope your life stays peaceful and happy.”

Tears turned Isabella’s eyes red. For a long while, she couldn’t speak.

In the end, she only managed to say one line, “Have a safe trip.”

She never asked where I was heading or what I planned to do.

She simply knew that I had finally broken free from the nightmare of the Curtis family.

After a short silence, I took my suitcase and walked out of that cage that had held me for ten years, never looking back.

At the same time, Raiden, still lost in his soft dreamland, suddenly woke up from a nightmare.