Veronica was silent, but her face showed none of the relief I had imagined. After a long while, she finally spoke, as if delivering a heavy decision.

“Stop it. If you keep wearing white clothes like before, I won’t mistake you. I won’t divorce you.”

“Really?” I forced a smile, lifting my head to look at her.

She had already forgotten what document she accepted from me that morning. I had only worn a wig and changed my clothes, and Veronica thought I was the new secretary.

Without even glancing, she signed the divorce papers and even had me tidy up the safe in her study.

Inside, I found a photo of Enzo carefully cut from yesterday’s magazine. The safe was filled with countless reports about him, marked in red, in blue, in black.

No matter how Enzo dressed, Veronica could recognize him.

The oldest photo showed Enzo still in high school, wearing a white shirt with his hair cropped short, the very same image I had carried with me for three years.

As I stood in a daze, Veronica grabbed my hand. “Lincoln, I won’t lose you again.”

I curled my lips in a bitter smile, just about to open my mouth and tell her everything, but suddenly she shoved me aside and ran in another direction.

I followed her gaze and saw Enzo’s back disappearing into the crowd. Halfway there, Veronica seemed to remember something.

She turned back and shouted, “Lincoln, wait for me, I’ll be right back.”

But her words were thrown toward another man beside me, dressed in the same gray-green suit.

Without hesitation, I turned and left. Veronica grew furious when she realized I had gone on my own, but that day, I was only sitting in a nearby café, discussing paperwork for a new identity. The whole afternoon until nightfall, Veronica never returned.

I ignored her because once I changed my clothes, I became invisible in her eyes. When the overseas procedures were finished, the first thing I did was go to the mall and buy new clothes.

For years, just to make Veronica notice me more, my closet had been filled only with white, like a walking mourning hall, but now even a single glance at it made me sick.

The sales clerk eagerly brought out a light blue suit, and just as I was about to swipe my card, a cold voice cut in.

“I want this one too.”

I turned my head and saw Enzo’s arrogant face. He looked me over with contempt.

“Lincoln, what are you still struggling for? Didn’t the airport incident make it clear enough?”

He sneered. “Veronica doesn’t love you. No matter how expensive the clothes you buy, she’ll still treat you like air.”

I didn’t bother wasting words on him. Instead, I took out a black card from my wallet and handed it to the clerk.

“Wrap up this one he touched, and all the pieces from this series, for me. And also, show him out.”

The clerk immediately moved to ask him to leave, but just then Veronica appeared, walking straight toward Enzo without sparing me a single glance.

“Wrap up the clothes and give them to Mr. Lynch.”

The clerk froze and whispered a reminder, “President Vargas, but this gentleman is your…”

I had grown a beard and worn a striking gold-gray perm, so of course, Veronica didn’t recognize me.

“What is he, anyway?” Veronica’s voice wasn’t loud, but every word carried clearly across the counter. “Some nobody from who-knows-where, thinking he can compete with Veronica for anything?”

She turned to the sales clerk, whose face had already gone pale, her tone cold with unquestionable authority.

“From today on, remember Mr. Lynch’s face. From now on, every business under Vargas Corporation must give him priority service.”

Enzo tossed the suit aside with an arrogant flick. “No need. I don’t lack that. Leave it to those pitiful people who aren’t loved.”

Veronica didn’t seem to mind. “As long as you’re happy.”

I stood there, watching the way her eyes lingered on Enzo without once straying away, and the last trace of warmth in my heart turned completely cold.

When I returned to the villa I had lived in for three years, the access system failed to recognize me. Just as I reached for my phone to call the housekeeper, the door opened from inside.

Enzo stood there, wearing my slippers and wrapped in Veronica’s bathrobe. He frowned as if looking at something filthy.

“I thought you were a decent man who knew his place. Clinging to Veronica, does that make sense to you? Wearing white to copy me, does that make sense to you?”

I stood outside as the night wind cut through my clothes. Yeah, it really made no sense. What was I still holding on to?

I lowered my head and took off the diamond ring Veronica had personally designed, then placed my black card, car keys, and our marriage certificate neatly in a row, everything that symbolized “Mr. Perkins.”

After that, I turned around and never looked back.

Taking out a brand-new phone, I dialed a number. “Hello, it’s me. From now on, there’s no more Mr. Perkins in this world.”

Veronica never reached out again, probably thinking I was still throwing a childish tantrum, but it didn’t matter. I was too busy to care.

The tabloids, however, remained tireless. In every photo, she and Enzo appeared together, and on her once-cold face lingered a tenderness I had never seen before.

When asked about her and Enzo, Veronica neither confirmed nor denied. I swiped past the news, powered off my phone, and turned back to the pile of documents before me.

All the assets I had once used to climb toward Veronica I sold off, converted into cash, and donated every cent to a grassroots anti-trafficking group.

The person in charge was so excited they could barely speak, thanking me again and again, but I only stared blankly at the photos of the rescued children.

Veronica and I had once escaped from the traffickers, but we got lost in the mountains.

Little Veronica gave me the last bit of wild fruit she had picked while filling her own stomach with mud, yet even so, we were caught and dragged back.

The rusty iron rod struck our bodies, and I screamed in terror while Veronica shielded me beneath her, muffling her groans as she endured all the blows. The stench of blood filled the air, and she was on the brink of death.

When the traffickers got drunk, I seized the chance, crawled through a dog hole, and called the police.

Later, Veronica was taken away by her family, who had arrived, and I didn’t even have the chance to say goodbye. Her promise before losing consciousness, that she would marry me, became my only obsession for years.

I used all my strength, step by step, to reach her side and become her husband, but it was nothing more than a one-man show, because Veronica had long forgotten.

When I returned to the short-term rental I was staying at, Enzo was sitting inside leisurely. He even lifted his eyes and smiled.

“You’re back?”

The next second, police sirens wailed outside, and the door was slammed open by a powerful force as a group of men in black rushed in, pressing me to the ground without a word.

“Don’t move!”

Then Veronica rushed in, throwing herself into Enzo’s arms with her voice trembling in fear.

“Veronica, it’s okay now. It was my oversight that led you to be kidnapped.”

She held him like a long-lost treasure and said, “I promised you, I won’t let anything happen to you again,” words that struck me with painful familiarity.

The head of the bodyguards who was holding me recognized me and stammered, “President, this is…”

Veronica finally turned to look at me, but her eyes treated me like an enemy.

Her slap sent my face to the side, and the metallic taste of blood filled my mouth; I didn’t cry, though the urge to laugh nearly broke free.

“Do I care who he is?” Veronica’s voice was cold. “If anyone hurts Veronica, even if he’s the son of the richest man, I will make him pay. Teach him a lesson. Let him know what happens when you kidnap Veronica.”

The bodyguard captain opened his mouth, but Veronica’s glare shut him up. They dragged me into an empty room, and fists and boots came down on me without mercy.

My body ached, but my mind wandered, so this was how harsh the blows had felt when Veronica once took them for me.

The metallic taste of blood filled my mouth and nose, yet fear of death never came, because my life had always been given by Veronica, and now it felt as if it were simply being returned.

I didn’t know how much time had passed before the door opened. Enzo leaned into Veronica’s arms and said, “He’s been taught his lesson, just send him away. Make sure I never see him again in this life.”

Veronica did not hesitate. “Alright.”

She personally escorted me to the private airport. When they pushed me up the boarding stairs, the necklace around my neck was torn off, and the phoenix-leaf pendant fell to the ground.

It had been chosen by Veronica for me, the only time she had remembered, after her secretary reminded her, to give me a birthday gift, and at the villa gate, I hadn’t been able to throw it away.

Veronica frowned as she picked it up. “This… why does it look familiar?”

My heart, at that moment, skipped a beat.

But Enzo only cleared his throat twice and tugged her sleeve. “Veronica, the wind is strong. I’m cold.”

Veronica’s hesitation vanished as if it had never existed, and she casually tossed the pendant aside before raising her foot and crushing it beneath her heel.

“Drag him up there, and never let him set foot in this country again.”

The roar of the engines pressed me back into my seat, and that was fine.

She had personally sent me away and cut off the past, and from then on, we would never meet again.

…

This was Veronica’s fiftieth visit to a psychologist. The aftereffects of being abducted as a child, including face blindness, had left marks that disturbed her life.

Lincoln had been so angry this time that he hadn’t contacted her for nearly half a month.

It was her fault, because she had been too busy accompanying Enzo, but she had already broken the promise she had made as a child: she had married someone else.

She could not refuse such a small request to accompany him. This time, the therapist asked her, under hypnosis, to draw the image of that little boy, and step by step, she had to reconstruct the scenes of the abduction to heal the wound it had left behind.

Veronica thought it would be easy and assumed the sketch would inevitably look like Enzo. But when the psychologist took the drawing, he cried out in shock.

“How could it be him?”