“Jim, how could you do this to me?!” My heart twisted in pain, and I wanted to grab his collar and shout, “Grace killed me!”

But my hands just passed through him.

“The pine resin must have been poured on the victim before they died.

“The stomach cavity has also been injected with a strong acid. All the organs have melted and rotted away. Otherwise, the decay within the victim’s body wouldn’t have been preserved to this extent… Hmm?”

Jim was calmly analyzing my body, but once he opened up my stomach cavity, he scowled.

Zephyr noticed it and asked, “What’s wrong?”

“The victim was pregnant.” Jim sighed and turned my body over to Zephyr. “The murderer injected the resin into the victim’s womb through her genitals. The fetus is preserved to perfection.”

“What the hell?! What crazy b*stard did this?!” After recovering from his shock, Zephyr cursed so loudly that his voice echoed in the dissection room.

Meanwhile, I stared at my stomach in surprise.

I could see the tiny life form had just begun to take shape. His cheek and umbilical cord were pressed together, and his eyes were shut. He seemed to be at peace. It looked like he was sleeping.

But he was murdered!

I felt such a strong urge to cry that I nearly lost control of myself, but ghosts could not cry.

I could only scream and tear at the air. “My baby!”

He could have been born safely.

I had even prepared cute clothes and shoes for him. I meticulously researched baby formulas and had a dozen names ready for him.

But Grace had destroyed it all!

Jim was silent for a long time before he said, “The victim’s bones and organs are ruined, and since they decayed in a sealed environment, I won’t be able to extract the DNA.

“The only way to identify her is to cut up the baby.”

My mind went blank.

What did he mean by that?

Was he going to cup up our baby?

“Don’t you dare, Jim!

“I won’t let you hurt him, you hear me?!”

The grief made me tremble. I screamed repeatedly, but it did nothing.

Clang! Clang! Clang!

Jim used a hammer and chisel to extract the fetus from my womb.

He was not even the size of a palm.

“Jim, I hope that you can get the results soon.” Zephyr sighed. He could not bear to look. “Let’s give the victim and the poor baby the justice they deserve.”

Jim said nothing.

He stared at the baby quietly for a moment before he suddenly looked up and asked, “Do we have any news about Luna?”

“Her?”

The topic changed too quickly, and it caught Zephyr off guard, but his expression soon turned into one of frustration. “I don’t want to talk about her. We can’t even find a single strand of her hair. When I think about what she did, she makes me angry.

“She was a top-secret researcher and had the best benefits in the country, but she stole the research results and fled to another country!”

He kicked the wall in anger. “She’s no different from a spy!”

“No! I didn’t do it! Grace framed me!” I screamed in the hopes that he could hear me.

Jim said calmly, “That’s why I kept suggesting labeling her a globally wanted criminal and also removing her name from all her research articles.

“After all, no one knows her pride better than I do.

“If we provoke her like that, she might feel so worked up that she might show herself.”

In an instant, I felt chilled to the bone.

‘Jim, is that really how you intend to use your knowledge of me?’

When Zephyr heard that, he gave Jim a thumbs-up and said excitedly, “As expected of a wedded couple! We’ll do that!”as

Jim frowned. “We’re no longer married.

“She’s no longer worthy of being my wife. But she has to pay the price for the damages she caused the country and to Grace.”

I could not believe my ears.

For Grace’s sake, he was willing to erase all of my past contributions?

Those were the results I got after getting my fingers frozen by liquid nitrogen, getting burned by sulfuric acid, risking becoming infertile, and spending countless nights performing experiments and calculations!

Those results were more important than my life!

“Sorry. It just slipped out,” said Zephyr awkwardly. “You and Grace are getting married soon, and I just...”

“It’s fine. But don’t let it happen again.” With an icy face, Jim cleaned up the instruments. “Let’s go. Once I send this fetus to the lab, I have to go back and cook for Grace.”

My mind buzzed.

When I snapped out of my daze, I found that I could drift around beside Jim.

I watched him buy groceries that Grace liked. Then, he went back to the house that once belonged to me, but it no longer had anything within it that I once owned.

It was covered with Grace’s things.

Even the air was filled with her scent.

I felt suffocated.

“I’m back!”

Right after Jim tied the apron around his waist, the doorbell rang.

Jim went to open the door and hugged Grace. “Did you manage to choose your wedding gown?”

They looked so intimate with each other, and Jim made her feel so safe.

Jim had never treated me like that.

He once told me that he was an absolutely rational man and would not indulge in such romantic things.

“I did!” Grace wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him. She looked happy. “Shall I try it on for you?”

Jim gave her a gentle nod. “Sure.”

I felt my heart tearing apart.

In the past, when Jim came back from work, I once asked him the same question, and what did I get for it?

“Can’t you smell the scent of oil and smoke on you? What if it gets on your wedding gown?” With impatience, he unbuttoned his collar. “In any case, it’s just a white wedding gown. It’s nothing rare. So long as you like it, it’s fine.

“Hurry up and finish cooking. I’m hungry.”

He just did not want to see it because it was not being worn by the person he was expecting.

“Well?”

Grace came out of the room after she was done changing. It was the same dress that I wore in the past!

But Jim did not seem to notice it and did not even seem to realize that he had seen the dress before. He looked genuinely shocked. “Grace, you look so beautiful!”

Grace lifted the hem of her dress and spun around a few times before wincing. “Ahhh!”

Jim hurriedly caught her. “What’s wrong? Are your legs hurting again?”

“No. I almost tripped just now.”

As Grace lay in his arms with affection in her eyes.

“You’re lying. You tried to protect the lab results back then, and Luna crushed the bones in your foot. The doctors even said that you’d have long-term effects from it.”

Jim lifted her and laid her on the sofa before lifting her foot and carefully caressing it.

“No! That’s not true! Grace lied to you!” I screamed as my heart bled, but I could only drift around uselessly.

“Why won’t you believe me, Jim?!

“Weren’t you supposed to be the most cautious and observant forensic scientist?! Why can’t you tell that Grace is lying?!”

Grace sighed. “But I was useless. I couldn’t protect the results.”

“You did your best.” Jim looked at her closely. “Don’t worry. Zephyr will capture her and make her pay.”

Then, he led her to the dining table. “Wait just a little longer. We can eat soon.”

“Okay!” Grace nodded happily.

As I watched Jim busying himself in the kitchen and cooking, my heart was overwhelmed with sorrow.

He had never cooked in the past, much less stepped into the kitchen.

“The smell of oil and smoke will affect my sense of smell. It’ll be far too easy to make mistakes when trying to decipher the smell of corpses.

“My hands are only for cutting open corpses. The arc of kitchen knives can easily damage the nerves at my fingertips. I can’t afford to make a mistake.”

I laughed bitterly as I recalled his words.

All of those had been just excuses. He simply did not love me.

But I thought his excuses were real and spent so much effort and energy thinking about new recipes for him. I had to make sure that they were tasty and nutritious and also had to worry about whether they would affect his sense of smell and taste.

I was such an idiot.

At that time, I did not know about Grace.

Besides, Jim was the one who tried to win my heart.

Then, half a year after we got married, he got drunk and mistook me for Grace.

It was then that I learned that he had a crush on her and had never gotten over it.

They were childhood friends, and they even went to the same university.

In the year they graduated, Grace dumped him because a rich man who lived somewhere along the Mediterranean coastline said that he would sponsor her to become a celebrity in Hollywood. She even changed all of her contact numbers.

Later, I got to know Jim at an academic exchange.

He claimed that he was attracted by my confidence and wanted to get to know me.

He pursued me for two years.

At that time, he was polite and took great care of me, and I could not help but be moved by it.

But on the day of our wedding, Grace showed up. With a graceful but dull smile, she wished us happiness.

Jim stared at her in a daze for a long time.

From that day on, our marriage veered off the course of what I had hoped for.

“Could you stop being so paranoid? You’re a researcher, but you’re acting like you’re crazy.

“I worked overtime before too, you know?

“Besides, there’s no law stating that we can’t be friends after a breakup.

“If you continue kicking up a fuss, I’m going to be really disappointed in you, Luna.”

But would friends go to a private theater to watch a movie together on Valentine’s Day?

What exactly was the definition of friendship?

Would a friend give her married male friend underwear as a gift for his birthday?

Would a friend cast aside his wife while he was being intimate with her in the bedroom after one phone call just to buy a packet of sanitary pads for his female friend?

Who exactly was supposed to be disappointed with whom?

Then, one time, I came back early from a business trip and heard him talking to someone on the phone in our bedroom.

“I’m sorry, Grace.

“If I weren’t married to Luna, I would definitely choose to be with you, but I’ve been with her for a long time, and she has helped me with many things. I can’t be cruel and push her away.”

So, to Jim, I was just a tool that he could use!

But he made it seem like I was his responsibility.

How utterly hypocritical!

He even asked me to pull some strings to have Grace join the research team because our fields were similar. He claimed that she could help me.

That led to our worst argument after our marriage.

I had been against it because I could not take the future of the nation’s scientific research and development lightly.

He stopped pretending to be nice from that moment on.

“Luna, I can’t believe you’re so petty! You’re just worried that Grace will get too close to me. Yet, you make it sound like your reasons are so high and moral. You just want to do whatever it takes to ruin Grace’s career!

“I was wrong about you!

“If you continue like this, I’m going to leave you!”

In the end, he set aside his principles and went to numerous business dinners and had to cozy up to plenty of people before he finally got Grace into the research team as my assistant.