Back when I was carrying Cherry, Claude and I picked out matching mother-daughter outfits too.

He was just as tender then.

Only now the leading lady wasn't me anymore.

My study had been turned into her bedroom at some point.

And my man, it seemed, had become hers.

If my daughter were still alive, would she have been torn from my side too?

A few tears slid down my cheeks, scalding every inch of skin they touched.

My phone rang. It was the hospital.

“Ms. Fox, the body has been prepared. We can only hold it for seven days at most.”

“We heard you still haven't come to handle the paperwork. If you don't want to come, we can contact the child's father instead.”

That absurd call from the hospital that day, and everyone remembering me as the wicked woman who let her child die to keep her money.

But I no longer had the strength to defend myself.

“There's no need.”

“The child's father isn't in her life anymore. I'll come right away.”

Cherry had never once left my side.

Her first time alone was lying by herself in a cold drawer, turning to ash by herself inside a burning box.

I don't know how many times I cried until I passed out.

My arms blistered in long strings where I'd beaten them against the cremation furnace.

The crash had been too brutal.

That tiny handful of ash, in the end, wasn't even as big as my palm.

I held the urn and sat alone at the roadside until deep into the night.

And finally I dialed the number I hadn't called in eight years.

“Mom, Dad, Ethan……I was wrong……”

My brother cut me off, urgent.

“You silly girl, you've finally swallowed your pride. Mom and Dad have worried about you all these years. All they ever wanted was for you to come around!”

On the other end, my father growled low with rage, and my mother wept softly.

“We already know what happened. I never thought much of that Sanchez boy from the start, all that ambition in his eyes. I never imagined he'd stop acting like a human being altogether! My poor little granddaughter!”

“Wait there. We're coming right now!”

My family's voices woke memories I'd sealed away.

I couldn't stop the tears from breaking loose again.

Eight years ago, Claude was just a poor student my family was sponsoring.

Then our relationship came out, and my father flew into a rage and pulled the funding.

It was me who threw caution to the wind, took the ten-million-dollar dowry my father had set aside for me, ran off with Claude, and bankrolled his start-up.

Back then we'd just settled into a shabby little studio in a strange city, and Claude knelt on the floor, gripping both my hands, and swore to me.

“Ruby, I'll work as hard as it takes. I'll bring you home in glory, and I'll make your father accept me!”

When I hemorrhaged during a difficult labor, he gave a full eight hundred milliliters of his own blood and dragged us both back from death's door.

He said: “Ruby, my life is yours. If you're gone, I can't go on living either.”

Every pot of gold, every achievement, he credited openly to me.

Until the company grew big, Maccabee Lewis was hired on, and everything began to change.

Somewhere along the way, the two of them grew closer and closer. He stopped caring about my red, swollen eyes, stopped caring when Cherry cried that she wanted her daddy.

He handed my work, piece by piece, over to Maccabee, as if she were the lady of the company, the woman who'd fought alongside him all this way.

Until the day Maccabee made one mistake that cost the company seven figures in an instant.

I was so furious I tried to fire her on the spot.

But Claude sent me packing back home instead.

And he trotted out the same line he always used to shield Maccabee: “Ruby, I married you so you could stay home and enjoy life as Mrs. Sanchez.”

Then he turned around and froze all my cards, so that everything required Maccabee's approval.

His way of getting back at me for making Maccabee lose face in public……

And our daughter, because of it, missed the best window to be saved, and died before my eyes with no treatment in time……

Dad was right.

A man doesn't suddenly turn rotten. He was rotten all along.

I wiped my eyes, and without realizing it, I had walked all the way home.

Construction trucks roared. Dust blew everywhere.

My room and Cherry's had been gutted into one big concrete cavity, and all of Cherry's favorite dolls had been shredded and churned into the dirt.

"What do you think you're doing?!"

I screamed and rushed forward to salvage what I could.

A pair of hands yanked me aside.

Maccabee met my eyes, pleased with herself.

"Ruby, we're just renovating."

"You've always been off your head, and now you've started scheming against the child. There's no curing you, so Claude and I had no choice but to ask the app for help. It recommended we redo the place, fix the energy of the house."

Behind her, Claude nodded along.

"Change the layout, expand the bedroom a little."

When he saw me pressing my lips together, saying nothing, just staring at the ruined things, Claude added one more line.

"They're just objects. If they're broken, they're broken. When I have time I'll take you and Cherry to buy new ones. You can pick them out yourselves."

I looked at him and let out a soft laugh.

"The token of our love, the anniversary gifts, Cherry's baby teeth, those are just objects too?"

Claude's body stiffened, and something guilty crept into his eyes.

Maccabee was grinding her back teeth, but she quickly pulled on a pitiful face.

"I'm sorry, Ruby, it was all my carelessness. I never thought you'd be this angry. I'll go pick them back up right now!"

She made as if to duck under the truck's grappling claw, but her feet didn't move an inch.

That terrified Claude too, and he rushed to shield her.

"Ruby, can you stop being so snide?"

"You had too much stuff. Maccabee hadn't finished clearing it out before the machine started up. It was just an accident. You're going to blame her for that too?"

"Cherry would never be as unreasonable as you."

I gave another helpless little laugh, lifted the urn I'd been holding against my chest, and looked at him with cold eyes.

"Cherry's right here. Ask her yourself."

Claude looked at the small ceramic urn in my arms, and maybe because he was thinking he hadn't seen his daughter in two nights, the corner of his mouth twitched.

He started to reach out to open it. Maccabee beat him to it.

She quickly grabbed a handful and flung it into the air, sneering in contempt.

"Isn't this just dirt off the ground? You scooped it up by the door when you came in just now, didn't you? This is going too far!"

She curled her lip and hooked her arm through Claude's.

"Claude, I think from now on Cherry should sleep with me. She keeps wishing the child dead. What if one day she actually does something to her? It scares me just thinking about it."

"Cherry isn't mine by blood, but I would never treat her like that!"

Once again, Claude took her side.

His fingers trembled, clenched into a fist, and in an instant rage took him whole. He snatched up the urn and hurled it down.

"Ruby, what a vicious mind you have!"

"If you won't repent, I swear I'll never let you see your daughter again!"

The urn shattered in the dirt, and there was no telling which was dirt and which was ash.

"Murderers! You're murderers!"

"I'll kill you!"

I lost all control and threw myself at them, clawing.

I scratched Claude's arm and Maccabee's cheek.

One of the workers couldn't stand to watch any longer and spoke up quietly.

"Sir, you really should look into your daughter. That ash just now didn't look like—"

Claude was completely consumed by fury, gripping my arm hard enough to break it.

"If something happened, it's because she's stupid! She didn't go raise the money, and she believed the app."

"So we'll just have another one, name her Cherry too. What is there to make a scene about? And besides, this is all a lie she's carefully made up!"

"Ruby, if you'd just lowered your head and admitted you were wrong sooner, things would never have come to this."

Every word was a knife sawing back and forth through my heart.

I bit down on the pain and looked at him through my teeth, my voice shaking, breaking apart.

"I really do regret stealing that money to build the company with you! Get out! Get out of my sight!"

Maccabee suddenly burst out laughing.

"Get out? Get out to where? Without Claude grinding day and night, how would the company be where it is today? If anyone's getting out, it's you."

"Ruby, eight years ago you stopped being the high and mighty Fox heiress. As one woman to another, I'd advise you to know your place. Push Claude too far and he'll throw you out on the streets, and that'll be ugly."

She drew out every syllable. "Especially for a woman on the streets. She might even end up—"

A car braked sharply at the gate, and several Rolls-Royces pulled up.

A tall man in black stepped out of the lead car.

"Who said she's no longer the Fox heiress?"