On our third anniversary, the restaurant my wife, Selena Sander, and I frequent is reserved by her twisted first love, Shane Johnson.

He tramples over the rose petals that are scattered all over the floor while making his way toward our table. Then, he slaps a pregnancy report onto the table.

"Three years ago, I personally tattooed a rose on Selena's abdomen. I even made a vow with her, saying that she cannot give birth to your child until I find someone I love more than her."

As Shane points at the name shown on the pregnancy report, he flashes me a cruel smile.

"Now, I've found my true love. That's why I came to inform Selena that our vow can now be broken."

The bitterness that I tasted from the countless contraceptives that I've taken over the past three years suddenly floods my mouth. I then turn to look at Selena.

There's no trace of guilt shown on her expression despite having gotten exposed by Shane. Instead, she just looks at me coldly.

"You heard him, right?" she utters. "We can have a child together now."

At that moment, I feel like strangling her more than anything else in the world.

"What? Aren't you happy for me?"

Selena Sander's voice was coated in ice, and her words stabbed into my eardrums like icicles. She didn't even look at me as she spoke, her gaze still locked on the man called Shane Johnson.

It was as though he were her husband, whereas I was simply an insignificant bystander.

Shane scoffed as he looked down at me arrogantly. "Adrian Luther, you really should be thanking me. If it weren't for my generosity, you wouldn't have been able to even touch Selena in this lifetime.

"Oh, wait. That's not right. What I mean is, without my sudden graciousness, you can forget about ever having a child with her."

His words seemed to home in on the softest part of my heart and slice deep inside.

For the past three years, I would take a small white pill every morning, as Selena had said she was allergic to latex, yet she couldn't bear the thought of me going for a vasectomy.

Back then, she had said, "Darling, I know this is tough on you. However, you can stop after a few years, and we decide to have kids, okay?"

I had believed her.

I had loved her so much that I had been willing to do anything for her.

Even though I had to take that incredibly bitter pill every morning, even though my friends laughed at me, calling me stupid for taking the pill despite being a man, I still thought that my action was simply proof of my love for her.

But now, the man, Shane, was telling me that all my suffering had only been because of a promise. A promise between him and Selena, made when he tattooed that rose on her lower abdomen.

My stomach churned with nausea, and it was as though all the bitterness from the years of pills was surging up my throat all at once.

I searched Selena's face intently, hoping to see any signs of guilt. Even a little would do.

Yet, there was none.

There was absolutely no guilt on her face. All she did was furrow her brows slightly in seeming impatience.

"Shane, are you done talking? If you are, stop bothering us and leave. We're trying to enjoy our anniversary," she said so casually, her words flippant in the manner one would shoo a particularly annoying fly.

For a quick second, the smile on Shane's lips froze. However, it then turned into a playful and teasing smirk.

"Selena, you're as heartless as ever. Still, I like it."

Leaning down close to her ear, he added in a volume only the three of us could hear, "Don't forget that I tattooed that rose on you myself. Every line, every thorn adorning it—they all remember my scent."

I watched as Selena's ears rapidly flushed a bright red, and my heart thoroughly sank to the bottom of my feet. It felt as though it had been plunged into icy waters.

Shane straightened back up to admire our expressions, a smug and pleased look in his eyes.

It reminded me of the way a victorious general would inspect his spoils of war.

Finally, he shifted his gaze to me, and I could see that it was filled with disdain and pity.

"Adrian, one should never be too naive. Did you seriously think you married a pure, innocent white rose?

"No, you're nothing but a gardener to water and fertilize her. I'm the one who can pluck her whenever I want."

With that, he spun to leave, head tossed back in triumphant laughter as he stepped on the irritating rose petals he had brought with him.

Everyone in the restaurant was looking at us, their gazes prickling at my back like needles. In that instant, I felt like a clown stripped of all clothing for everyone to stare at.

Meanwhile, my wife, the woman I had loved for five whole years, never even spared me a comforting glance.

Instead, she gracefully picked up her cutlery and began cutting her steak into bite-sized pieces.

"What are you still daydreaming for? Eat. The beef wellington here is your favorite, isn't it?"

I took in Selena's elegant movements and her expressionless face and felt a chill like never before sweep through me.

At that moment, I finally understood something.

It wasn't that she didn't care—she just didn't care about me.

…

On the journey back to our house, a dead silence stretched between us. I gripped the steering wheel tightly, the force turning my fingers white.

Meanwhile, Selena was in the passenger seat, her head tilted to gaze out the window at the flashing neon lights.

She was still in the white dress I had painstakingly picked out for our anniversary. Under the moonlight's illumination, she glowed, as beautiful as a goddess.

However, I knew under the ethereal-looking skin lay a cold and selfish heart.

"Why?" At last, I couldn't hold back anymore and spoke up in a hoarse voice, "Why would you do this to me?"

Selena didn't even turn to look at me as she asked, "What did I do to you?"

Her tone was light and flippant, much like how one would ask about the weather.

"I just want to have a baby with you. Is that wrong?"

Hearing that, I abruptly slammed on the brakes. The car tires screeched against the asphalt as the vehicle suddenly halted, the momentum throwing both of us forward.

"Have a baby with me?" I whipped my head around to snap, "Don't you mean it's because you've received permission from your first love and decided to grace me with the honor of having a baby with you?"

That had Selena finally turning to lock eyes with me. There was no anger or guilt in her gaze, just cold indifference.

"Adrian, if you insist on thinking of it that way, then there's nothing I can do about it. Everything is in the past now, and Shane has also said the promise is void and null. From now on, we can live like a normal pair of husband and wife. Isn't that a good thing?"

"A normal pair of husband and wife?" I scoffed as though I had heard the biggest joke of the century. "Selena Sander, tell me—just what sort of normal couple has the husband taking hormonal pills for three entire years, all because his wife has to keep a promise to another man?

"Do you have any idea just how much harm those pills cause to the body? Every time I go for a medical checkup, the doctor warns me that my liver function is abnormal!"

I thought she would finally feel guilty after hearing that and she would apologize.

However, all I received in response was a frown.

"Didn't I already promise to buy you plenty of supplements once you stop taking the pills? Why are you being so petty? It's just a few pills. Is it really necessary for you to hold a grudge for so long?"

Immediately, all the blood froze in my veins.

As it turned out, the suffering and pain I endured was nothing but "a few pills" to her.

I thought back to three years ago, when we first married.

At the time, I had been eagerly fantasizing about how our children would look. However, she told me she wasn't ready yet and that she was allergic to latex. Not wanting her to suffer the side effects of taking contraceptive pills, I voluntarily suggested that I do it instead.

She had hugged me with red-rimmed eyes, saying, "Darling, you're truly so good to me. I'll never be able to leave you for the rest of our lives."

I had been so touched by her words then that I had even thought doing anything for her was totally worth it.

Looking back on it now, I realized that she had probably been thinking of Shane at the time.

Her lower abdomen carried the humiliating mark another man left on her, while I, the official husband, killed any possibility of us having children with my own two hands.

What a fool I was.

The air within the car seemed to grow thin, making me feel as though I couldn't breathe. As I stared at the familiar face before me, one that suddenly seemed like a stranger, I felt nothing but utter disgust.

"Let's get a divorce."

My voice wasn't loud, but it still went off like a bomb in the silence of the car.

At long last, there was a crack in Selena's indifferent mask. She shot me a look of disbelief and annoyance, as though I were an unreasonable child.

"Adrian Luther, could you stop with the tantrum? Just because of a few words from Shane, you want to divorce me? Is your love that cheap?"

A laugh burst from my lips, and I couldn't stop even as tears threatened to fall.

"My love isn't cheap. It's just that you, Selena Sander, don't deserve it."

…

I didn't even turn off the engine as I dumped Selena back to the place I no longer called home, immediately jamming my foot on the accelerator once she was out of the car. With a roar, it sped forward like a loose arrow.

My destination?

A place in the suburbs, one that I hadn't been to in a long time.

That place held everything I had given up for Selena.

Now, I would find them and bring them back, piece by piece.

…

I parked the car in front of the abandoned warehouse that used to be my studio.

Three years ago, I disbanded the team and abandoned the title of my genius hacker persona, "A", all for the sake of taking better care of Selena.

At the time, I sealed everything away in this warehouse and told myself that my family was more important than my career.

Now, I realized just how ridiculously wrong I had been.

As I pushed open the dusty doors, the familiar tang of metals and electronic parts rushed into my nose.

Then, I headed straight to the deepest part of the studio and yanked off an enormous dust cover. Underneath it was a matrix composed of row upon row of precision servers and over a dozen monitors.

The instant I flipped the power source switch, a soft humming began while the monitors gradually lit up one by one, bathing me in a cold blue light.

I sat down and allowed my fingers to fly across the keyboard, reawakening the codes and commands I had sealed away three years ago.

I had to look into just what Shane was up to. There was definitely something up with that woman mentioned in the pregnancy checkup report, Leah York.

After all, Shane was an incredibly conceited man. If he really had found his true love, a woman willing to give him a child, then he wouldn't be acting the way he had earlier tonight—a complex mix of gloating smugness and resentment.

Instead, it was more like he was using an extreme method to declare his ownership of Selena and, at the same time, thoroughly snuff out my wishful thinking.

In no time at all, I succeeded in hacking through an encoded database, allowing me access to all information on Leah.

She was Shane's current girlfriend and a small-time model with hardly any popularity. Her résumé was squeaky clean, but it didn't take me long to discover something strange.

The last photo she had posted on her social media was from one month ago. In it, her abdomen was still flat as she lounged on a beach.

However, the pregnancy report stated that she was supposed to be 12 weeks along, which was three months.

The timelines didn't align.

I continued to dig further by checking her transaction records and whereabouts the past three months, only to realize that there was nothing related to a pregnancy. In fact, the establishment she frequented the most was actually a private aesthetic clinic.

My lips curled into a cold smirk. As I expected, there was something fishy going on.

Following that, I hacked into the clinic's system and easily found Leah's file. She wasn't pregnant at all, and the reason she had gone there was to undergo liposuction.

As for the doctor who had signed off on that fake pregnancy checkup report, he happened to receive a transfer of 500 thousand dollars into his bank account yesterday.

The sender of that money was none other than Shane's assistant.

Everything became clear to me.

From the get-go, Shane had simply been putting on a show. All that bullshit about finding his true love was nothing but a lie meant to aggravate Selena and humiliate me. He had wanted to prove that even if he didn't want Selena anymore, she was still his possession.

And Selena, my dear wife, actually believed in such a lousy lie and willingly cooperated with him, turning me into a toy to be played with.

I gathered all the evidence, encrypted it with a password, and then sent it to another cloud drive for safekeeping.

By the time I finished, dawn was already peeking over the horizon.

Leaning back in my chair, I stared at the data and numbers flashing across my screens as my hatred and fury threatened to consume me whole.

Three years of enduring and contributions, yet all I received in return was an elaborate scheme to humiliate me. Both Shane and Selena had treated me like a fool, one whom they could walk all over as they pleased.

"Shane Johnson, Selena Sander, did you two seriously believe I was an easy target to bully?" I growled.

Shutting off my computer, I stood up.

Outside the warehouse, the early morning light was piercing through the darkness. I thought this was the perfect symbolism for the show that was about to start.

I was done holding back. I wanted them to pay dearly for their actions. I wanted Selena to know just what she had given up on.

More importantly, I wanted Shane to understand that a gardener could also sometimes turn into a scythe-wielding grim reaper.