###Chapter 1

"Please help me look at this divorce agreement," I said as I pushed the yellowed paper over.

"This was signed on the wedding night of David and me ten years ago. Was there anything else I needed to do?"

After flipping through it, my lawyer frowned.

"It would automatically take effect in half a month and you could go directly to get the divorce certificate. But you had a lovely daughter, Ma’am … were you really willing to leave him?"

My fingers dug into the sofa unconsciously.

"Yes, I would do as he wished!"

Two days ago, I had flown abroad to discuss business for Yates Corporation but received a video of my daughter being imprisoned on the plane. In the footage, seven-year-old Charlotte was tied up in the basement and it was David's bodyguard who poured feces on her.

"You stupid girl, how dare you slander Miss Hurley for having a child with someone else! Everyone knew that Miss Hurley even gave her virginity to Mr. Yates!"

David's first love, Jessica Hurley, stood aside, holding her nose and sneering.

"No matter what bad things you two mother and daughter said about me, don't think David would believe it. After all, he only loved me."

David suddenly appeared at the door. My heart was hanging, hoping that he would save our daughter, but he ignored Charlotte's tearful eyes and directly picked up the flustered Jessica.

Jessica pretended to be wronged.

"I locked up your daughter. Weren’t you angry?"

The man's gentle eyes fell on her slightly protruding belly and he replied indifferently, "She was just the product of me forgetting to add contraceptives to Catherine's milk."

"Jessica, our child would inherit everything. As for them, mother and daughter, I should be able to compensate them with the rest of my life."

Darkness swallowed my breath in an instant. At that moment, I was completely awake. Pleading for the plane to return immediately, I made a phone call.

"Mr. Powell, I accepted your offer and I would start working in your company in half a month."

Half a month later, I would give David Yates the ‘freedom’ he had dreamed of.

***

When I got home, I saw my daughter lying in bed with a fever and unconscious because of the shock. My heart was broken.

My daughter frowned and cried nightmarishly, "Dad, help me … "

The helpless whine, like an abandoned beast cub, made my heart bleed.

I went back to the bedroom and found the divorce agreement from the deep of the cabinet. When David came out of the bathroom, I had wiped away my tears. The half-open white shirt revealed a strong chest and a few fresh lipstick marks.

When he saw me, he was stunned for a moment.

However, he did not feel guilty about his daughter's experience at all as he quickly yelled at me in the first sentence he talked to me, "Did you know that returning to the ship without permission almost destroyed Yates Corporation's business worth hundreds of millions?!"

"You and our daughter were really selfish."

My heart clenched and I bit my lip.

"Did you want me to watch my child being bullied by others?"

A trace of surprise flashed across his face and then he changed the subject with a cold look.

"There was a very important party next month and you and Charlotte needed to attend together."

I paused, shook my head and said, "I couldn't go."

After all, next month, I would no longer be his wife as he wished.

"Why couldn’t you go?"

David frowned and then he seemed to understand something.

"Was this it because Charlotte said bad things about Jessica, so I gave her a little lesson and you were giving me a face now?"

"Besides, I told you on the first day of our marriage that I had someone I liked. Don't forget it."

My heart felt like it had been stabbed and waves of continuous pain emerged. Ten years ago, when my mother told me that David and I were engaged, I had been ecstatic because I had had a crush on him since I was a child. But on the happiest day, David had given me the heaviest blow.

"I had a lover, but she was just an ordinary girl from an ordinary family, so I couldn’t marry her."

That night, he had been drunk and stared at me coldly.

"I would control the Yates Family within ten years and then no one could stop me! So don’t expect me to fall in love with you. We would automatically divorce after ten years."

That night, I had signed the contract but cried all night in the cold yard. In the second week of our marriage, Jessica boarded a plane to a foreign country because of a quarrel with David. So, he went on to find her.

At that time, David didn’t go home all night and when he came back, he was always drunk and treated me like nothing. Until that night, he came back drunk again and hugged me passionately. But when he kissed me on the bed, he called Jessica’s name over and over again.

"Jessica, I wouldn’t let you marry anyone else! You could only be mine!" I cried under him with tears, nails dug into my palms and blood dripped into the sheets.

That was our first night, but David frantically called out another person’s name all night. When I woke up the next day, David saw my red and swollen eyes. He was stunned for a moment and finally got out of bed without saying a word.

I also pretended that nothing had happened, prepared breakfast and work documents for him and sent him out to work. Since then, I had been more considerate.

David was tired and had a stomach disease, so I learned about healthy food and prepared his three meals in person. He was under great pressure at work, so I took the initiative to give up my career, became his subordinate and took on the most tiring work.

Later, we had a daughter and gradually, David seemed to treat me as his wife.

David began to bring me various gifts when he came back from a business trip. He would bring me a glass of milk when I couldn’t sleep. He would even accompany me and my daughter to watch the stars on the terrace late at night.

His hot body temperature covered me from behind like a close lover.

Gradually, it seemed as if we had never signed any divorce agreement. I had naively thought that he might have really fallen in love with me. But more than three months ago, Jessica suddenly returned to the UK with her adopted son, Gregory.

David returned to her side as soon as he heard the news. He spent her birthday with her and accompanied her and Gregory to watch the meteor shower.

He even gave up an important business trip just because Jessica said, "I had a nightmare … "

When I saw David letting his daughter suffer such torture for Jessica, I woke up. He had never loved us, his wife and daughter. I gave everything for him, but it couldn’t match the look of his first love. The dream was over and it was time to leave.

"Remember to dress Charlotte nicely when the time comes. Don’t embarrass me and the Yates Family."

David's voice pulled my thoughts back and I looked at him in a daze.

Didn’t he remember that we automatically canceled the engagement in half a month?

###Chapter 2

In the past ten years, the closer I had gotten to the day when the contract expired, the more afraid I had been, fearing that he would abandon me without hesitation when the deadline came. But as the date approached, David never mentioned it.

Just when I had hesitated about whether to take the initiative to ask for a divorce, David's phone suddenly rang with a series of unique ringtones. I had known that he had set it up for Jessica, to ensure that he could receive her call as soon as possible.

As soon as the call connected, Jessica's crying voice came from the other end and David's face suddenly changed.

"Don’t worry, I’ll be there soon."

David rushed out while speaking. Because he had been too anxious, his shoulder had hit me heavily. I had hit the wall and felt dizzy from the back of my head. But David had ignored it and disappeared quickly.

Half a day later, I recovered and felt a big swelling on the back of my head. I went back to the room silently to apply medicine to myself and tried my best to endure not crying.

I had stayed by my daughter's bed, staring at her sleeping face in the darkening sky, until a burst of laughter came from the yard.

"David, fortunately you arrived in time and rescued me from the broken elevator. Otherwise, the baby might have miscarried."

Through the window, I saw David holding Jessica's hand and holding Jessica's adopted son with his other strong arm.

He kissed her forehead like kissing his favorite little girl.

"With me protecting you and your son, you never have to be afraid."

I noticed that the boy, who was about the same age as Charlotte, had a pair of emerald green eyes that were almost the same as Jessica's. He was wearing a well-made tailored clothes, from head to toe, all of them were luxury brands.

My daughter had grown up so big, but she had never worn any luxury goods, just because David always said that he didn’t want others to think we were extravagant.

Jessica's voice came again, "Do you really want us to move in? What if Catherine is angry? I don’t want to destroy your relationship."

David paused, his eyes moved slightly and then he said, "She had no right to say no! As long as I was here, this was your home with the children."

I grabbed my clothes tightly, laughed at myself and retracted my gaze.

Soon, the familiar footsteps came upstairs. David walked into the house and threw a green skirt into my hand.

"This was for Charlotte. Didn’t she like green the most?"

But my daughter liked blue and hated green the most. He hadn’t understood it at all after seven years. I stared at the skirt without saying anything. David’s face showed a trace of confusion and then he seemed to understand something.

He hugged me from behind and kissed my hair gently.

"I knew I had neglected you and our daughter during this period. I would make it up to you."

"Jessica had just returned to the UK and had no place to live. I would take her and Gregory over and let them live in our house for a while."

As my arms tightened, a strong perfume smell came from his body, which made me want to vomit. I pushed him away and smiled coldly.

"Whatever, let whoever you love live."

My coldness made David frown unhappily and suddenly, a unique ringtone came from his waist.

He immediately loosened his arms around me and answered the phone.

"I had work."

He turned around, with an irrepressible smile on his face and walked out quickly.

Half an hour later, I received a message from David on my phone.

"Bring me a box of stomach medicine to Yates Club."

Knowing that he had stomach problems, I didn’t doubt him. When I rushed to the familiar door of the box, I saw through the crack in the door at first glance that in the dim space, Jessica was sitting on David's lap and the two of them were intimately entangled like an inseparable vine.

Several of David's buddies were there.

Suddenly someone asked, "Now Jessica is back with you and she is pregnant with your child. What if Catherine finds out?"

David frowned slightly and then I heard him sneer.

"She had been like a dog to me since high school. She couldn’t even be forced to leave. So what if she knew?"

###Chapter 3

A burst of laughter almost overturned the roof.

Only one man stared at Jessica on David's legs and asked disdainfully, "Catherine had devoted a full ten years to you. You treated her like this for the woman who had abandoned you in the past. It was too heartless, wasn’t it?"

The next second, the man was hit hard in the face by David.

"I didn’t allow anyone to say that about Jessica! She had been forced to do it in the past. Her parents had married her to someone else, but she never consummated the marriage with that incompetent old man!"

Back then, David had no say in the Yates Family. He had had an elder brother with outstanding abilities. He had thought Jessica left because of jealousy.

But he hadn’t known that it was when Jessica found out that he was not the first heir of the Yates Family that she had left him without hesitation and went abroad.

After I had married David, in order to help him, I had accompanied clients to discuss business and drank so much that my stomach was perforated. I had attended every important meeting with a high fever and negotiated countless big deals.

I had even worked overtime for several weeks while pregnant, just to let him attend the international industry summit with a presentation ...

Over time, his parents had finally favored him. Ten years later, when he had finally taken control of the Yates Corporation business empire, she came back. And I was still just a bootlicker who came and went at his call, a complete joke in his eyes.

I felt a sharp pain in my chest and I instinctively hid in the corridor next to me. In order to protect Jessica, David had abandoned his usual calmness and his furious look with red eyes made everyone in the box dare not breathe.

Then, he picked up Jessica, who was crying in grievance and just as he reached the door, he stopped.

"None of you were allowed to say a word in front of Catherine!"

His voice was cold and firm as he said, "You must not let her know that the child in Jessica's belly was mine."

Then, he had hugged his crying mistress and left.

But where he couldn’t see, Jessica had cast a smug and arrogant look at me. I finally understood that the text message had been sent to me by Jessica on his phone so that I could see it all. I had walked on the street in a daze for a long, long time.

When I got home, I was stopped by Jessica in the corridor.

"Did you know? Every year on my birthday, he flew to accompany me just to give me a gift. Last year it was a Chanel necklace and the year before it was the latest limited edition Patek Philippe watch …"

"Those were all the styles I mentioned on social platforms that I liked and he actually remembered them all the time."

"But I had deliberately gotten angry with him and thrown those gifts to him directly. In the end, I could get something more valuable than them. This man’s hot, vigorous, sexy body and his heart that was always in love with me and couldn’t stop."

My fingers suddenly tightened and my nails sank deeply into my palm.

I remembered clearly that on those days every year, David had said he was going on a business trip abroad even though I didn’t see any arrangements on his work schedule.

Last year, he had brought a Chanel necklace. The year before, an expensive Patek Philippe watch …

I had been so happy that I put them all in my cabinet and couldn’t bear to wear them. But it turned out that he gave them to me after Jessica didn’t want them anymore.

Jessica continued to hurt my eardrums, "Also, eight years ago on Christmas, I had a big fight with my then-husband and he actually flew over overnight and stayed outside my house in the snow for a whole night."

I remembered that Christmas Eve. David had asked me for sex many times, contrary to his usual behavior and I had thought he finally started to fall in love with me.

When I woke up the next day, the pillow had already been cold and he had said he was on an urgent business trip and I hadn’t doubted it at all. It was also on that night that we had a daughter …

Now, I finally knew that David had forgotten to give me the contraceptive pill that day, just because he had been in a hurry to see Jessica?!