“Giving up on this operation is the same as signing away your future, Joyce,” the doctor warned quietly. “You understand what’s at stake. Without a transplant, you might not even survive another few weeks.”

She paused, her fingers brushing the edge of my medical file, her gaze gentle but firm. “You’ve waited years for a matching donor. Everything is ready. Please don’t throw this away now.”

I stared at my own hands — skin stretched too thin over bone, veins faint and lifeless. They shook as if they didn’t belong to me anymore. I had to swallow twice before my voice came out.

“I don’t need it, Doctor. It’s fine. My life doesn’t have a purpose anymore. Let someone else take it… someone who still wants to keep breathing.”

“Joyce, listen—” she began urgently.

I rose before she could finish, lowering my head in a shallow bow as if politeness could soften the cruelty of my decision, and hurried out of her office.

The hallway felt endless. My knees trembled so badly I barely made it to the bench outside before collapsing onto it, my lungs burning, my whole body quaking as though winter had settled into my bones.

On any other day, I would have fought for survival. I would have clung desperately to every breath for Leander — for the vows we once whispered about building a home filled with children, noisy dinners, ordinary happiness. For him, I would have endured anything.

But that life had already died.

I fixed my gaze on the glossy hospital tiles as the past dragged me backward.

Five years earlier, I had married the man I loved since we were teenagers. Everyone thought Leander and I were destiny — the childhood couple who would grow old together, bound by affection and family ties. No one ever suspected there was more than romance behind my marriage.

Five years ago was also when my world shattered.

My family’s company collapsed after Virelle — the girl I called my sister, my closest friend — stole everything. She had struggled to find work after graduation because of her background, and against my parents’ wishes, I insisted she join our finance department. I believed in her. Trusted her completely.

She emptied our accounts and disappeared.

My father couldn’t survive the disgrace. He ended his own life.

My mother, crushed by grief, became a shadow of herself, clinging to frail breaths only because I refused to let go.

And that was when Leander became everyone’s hero.

He married me when I was drowning in scandal and debt. His influential family rescued mine. My mother got treatment. Our home stayed standing. I told myself he still loved me — that the boy who promised never to abandon me in high school was still somewhere inside the man I married.

But a week ago, the illusion cracked.

It was our fifth wedding anniversary. We had planned a quiet celebration, but that afternoon he called and said flatly, “Something came up. Cancel everything.”

No apology. No warmth. Just dismissal.

Instead of staying home, pretending I was fine, I drove to the marina. The yacht had always been my refuge — the smell of salt, the hush of water. I thought it might ease the hollow inside me.

It didn’t.

As I stepped onto the deck, voices drifted toward me.

Virelle’s voice, cautious and soft. “Is it really okay for you to be here today? Isn’t this the day you married Joyce?”

Leander replied without hesitation. “So what? You know I only married her because everyone expected it — my parents included. Her family used to be generous to us when they had money. And after you walked out on me five years ago, she was the only option.”

Virelle sounded remorseful, almost crying. “I never meant for things to go so wrong. I was stupid, trusting those men. I thought I was helping the company because I owed her too.”

“That’s exactly why she wanted you dead,” Leander snapped. “Instead of forgiving you, she tried to destroy you. You’re the one who paid the price. Don’t worry. She won’t be around forever. When she’s gone, we’ll finally have our life — with our son.”

I stumbled back, clamping my hand over my mouth to keep from screaming. The deck blurred. My heart pounded so violently I thought I might collapse right there.

Virelle hadn’t disappeared.

He had hidden her.

I escaped before they noticed me, carrying a truth that hollowed me out from the inside.

“Joyce?”

The nurse’s call dragged me out of the memory. Her face was pale. “Your mother… something’s wrong. Please come now.”

Terror ripped through me as I sprinted after her.

The room was chaos — alarms blaring, doctors shouting, hands pressing against my mother’s fragile body. I froze at the doorway, whispering her name over and over like a prayer.

Then the monitors went silent.

The doctor turned toward me slowly. “I’m so sorry. We’ve done all we can.”

My legs folded beneath me. I collapsed beside the bed, gripping my mother’s cold fingers, sobbing until my chest hurt.

“Please… don’t leave me too. I can’t do this alone…”

She was gone.

The last reason I had to fight was gone.

My illness no longer felt like a curse — it felt like release.

I took out my phone with shaking hands and dialed Leander’s number. The call connected.

But his voice didn’t answer.

A woman laughed softly into the line, breathless. “Mmm… Leander… don’t slow down…”

I ended the call at once, my fingers trembling so violently the phone nearly slipped from my grip. The echo of that woman’s voice stayed lodged in my head like a cruel melody. I didn’t need to see her face to recognize it.

Virelle.

While my hands were wrapped around my mother’s lifeless fingers, hers had been wrapped around my husband. While sympathy cards piled up on my table, they were buried in pleasure.

I carried my mother’s urn to the cemetery by myself. No one walked beside me. Leander wasn’t there. His parents didn’t show. Not a single member of his powerful family spared me a glance. I stood alone in the gray drizzle, lowering her ashes into the ground with shaking arms, tears blinding me until the world dissolved into mud and shadow.

It felt like I was burying my last breath.

The grief crushed me from the inside. Between heartbreak, exhaustion, and betrayal, my body finally gave in. I collapsed right there among the headstones.

When I woke, the ceiling lights of the hospital burned into my eyes once again.

Two days passed in that sterile room. Not a single call from Leander. Not even a hollow text asking whether I was still breathing.

And yet, as I stared at the blank white tiles overhead, memories attacked me mercilessly.

I first met Leander in high school, the day I fainted during class when my anemia flared. Before the teacher could react, he was already there, lifting me carefully and carrying me to the infirmary like I was made of glass.

I could still hear his voice, soft with fear as he held my hand on that narrow bed.

“You scared me, Joyce,” he whispered. “Don’t ever do that again. I’ll look after you. Always.”

That moment became the foundation of everything — our romance, the vows we made under starry skies, the futures we planned. He chased me with relentless sincerity, the school’s golden boy choosing a quiet bookworm whose entire world revolved around him and Virelle.

Virelle.

How blind I had been.

I welcomed her into our lives. I brushed aside rumors, laughed off side-glances, defended them when classmates whispered. I told myself I was lucky — my best friend and my boyfriend getting along so well.

I never imagined that behind those smiles, they were carving me open, year after year, until there was almost nothing left.

I blinked hard, forcing back the tears as something fiercer than sorrow surfaced inside me.

Enough.

I reached for my phone and dialed my attorney.

“I’m filing for divorce,” I said calmly.

There was a stunned silence. Then he replied carefully, “Joyce… you remember the prenup, don’t you? If you go through with this, Leander can sever financial ties. No support. No help for your mother’s care. Nothing.”

“She’s gone,” I interrupted, my throat tightening. “And I won’t be here much longer either. Just prepare the papers. I’ll make him sign.”

I ended the call without waiting for his response, tossing the phone aside as my heart thundered painfully in my chest.

A soft chime followed.

An email from Leander — he’d forgotten to log out of his account on my device.

With a sinking feeling, I opened it.

An ultrasound image filled the screen. A tiny life growing inside another woman.

Not mine. Never mine.

Attached were flight tickets to the Persian Sea — the very place I had begged him to visit for years. He’d always brushed me off, saying he was too busy, that it wasn’t worth the trouble.

Yet everything was booked now: luxury hotel, private excursions, two tickets.

For Virelle.

My vision swam as tears cascaded uncontrollably. How long had I been their private joke?

I didn’t notice the door opening until Leander called my name.

“Joyce!”

I looked up. He stood there breathing hard, eyes wide in a poorly rehearsed panic.

“I—I didn’t know you were back here. I was worried—”

I laughed, the sound jagged and broken. “Worried? Or did you simply forget I existed because you stopped loving me a long time ago?”

He stiffened, then forced tenderness onto his face.

“I’m sorry, okay? I love you. I’ve just been overwhelmed with work. You shouldn’t exhaust yourself. Let’s focus on your surgery — that’s all that matters right now.”

My stomach twisted. “Or is this about guilt because you’re sleeping with someone else?”

For a split second, his eyes betrayed him before he masked it with a smile.

“You’re imagining things. Let me get you discharged. We’ll go home.”

Too drained to resist, I followed him to the car, watching raindrops race down the window while my reflection stared back at me like a stranger.

Then his phone rang.

He answered instantly.

Through the speaker, a trembling female voice sobbed, “Leander… my stomach hurts. Something’s wrong. Please come. I think the baby—”

Virelle.

He braked violently and pulled over.

“Get out,” he said flatly.

I stared at him in disbelief. “What did you say?”

“I can’t take you home. I have urgent business. Call yourself a cab.”

“Are you serious? It’s pouring rain and I just left the hospital—”

“GET OUT!” he roared, shoving my arm.

I fell onto the roadside as the door slammed behind me. Rain soaked me within seconds, cold and merciless, as his car sped away.

I sat there in the mud, hugging myself, shaking uncontrollably.

The man who once swore to carry me through every hardship couldn’t even spare me a ride.

And in that storm, I finally understood — I wasn’t his wife anymore.

I was nothing at all.

When my eyes finally fluttered open, I was no longer lying on cold gravel beneath the rain. I was back in my own bedroom at the estate, wrapped in silk sheets that felt foreign against my skin. For a moment I couldn’t understand where I was.

All I could remember was the storm — water soaking into my clothes, my limbs trembling uncontrollably, the asphalt numbing my bones as Leander’s taillights vanished into the dark.

“Madam, please don’t move too much,” the maid murmured, carefully tucking the blanket back over my shoulders.

Despite the dull ache in my chest, I forced myself upright. “How did I get here?” I croaked. “Who brought me back?”

A foolish spark lit inside me — a fragile hope that maybe Leander had returned, that remorse had finally dragged him back to me.

But the maid shook her head softly. “It wasn’t the master. A man I didn’t recognize carried you in. He said he was only passing by. He left this for you.”

She placed a small slip of paper in my palm. My fingers quivered as I unfolded it and stared at the unfamiliar phone number.

A stranger. I didn’t hesitate. I dialed immediately. After a short ring, a man answered, his voice calm and deep.

“Yes?”

“Who are you?” I asked, my throat dry. “Why did you help me?”

There was a brief silence on the other end, and then a name from my past wrapped around my heart.

“Joyce… it’s Caelum.”

Everything inside me stilled.

Caelum — my childhood companion, the boy who used to wait for me under the old oak tree, who had always offered his hand whenever I tripped. Before Leander, before ruin, Caelum had been my safest place. And now he was Leander’s fiercest rival.

Memories rushed back — warm afternoons, scraped knees, laughter that once felt endless. And then the years when Leander came into my life and tore that bond apart.

“Caelum…” My voice was barely a whisper.

“I heard what happened,” he replied quietly. He sounded controlled, but I sensed the fury beneath it — not aimed at me, never me, but at Leander. “So tell me something, Joyce. Will you marry me?”

On any normal day I would have thought he was joking. I would have laughed it off, told him to stop being ridiculous. But today, when my body was broken and my heart already dead, his words felt like a rope thrown to someone drowning.

“Alright,” I said, startling even myself. “Come for me in five days.”

Then I ended the call.

The room felt unbearably quiet. My fingers clenched into my palms.

Five days. I only needed five days to erase every trace of this marriage.

That night, I began packing. I pulled clothes from drawers, gathered books, stuffed little keepsakes into suitcases — the fragments of a life I had hidden away inside this grand, empty estate.

With every folded shirt and snapped zipper, I felt like I was taking something back from Leander.

Then I came to the relics — photographs, souvenirs, the wedding album, the love letters he once wrote. I stacked them beside the fireplace and burned them one by one, watching his smile disintegrate into cinders, his vows curling into smoke.

When my wedding ring lay in my palm, my hand trembled. It was the last shackle. I closed my fist around it until the metal bit into my skin, then turned toward the trash.

The door flew open.

Leander stood there.

“What are you doing?” His gaze swept over the half-filled suitcases, the drifting ash, the ring clenched in my hand.

“Nothing important,” I replied coldly. “I’m throwing this away.”

His expression twisted. “Have you lost your mind? That’s our ring. You can’t just throw it out.”

“I don’t want it anymore,” I said, my voice sharp. “I want a divorce.”

His eyes widened. “Divorce? Are you crazy? Do you think I’d agree to that? Where would you even go? What about your mother? Your surgery? You’re penniless without me.”

“And who caused that?” I shot back, rage flooding my veins. “Virelle. You swore you’d help me find her — and now look at you!”

He stiffened, then grabbed my arm in desperation. “I’m sorry, alright? Is this about the hospital? About our anniversary? Don’t be like this, Joyce.” His voice softened into pleading. “I’ll make it up to you. I swear.”

“Your promises are empty,” I whispered.

Then another voice broke the air.

“Is this because of me?”

Leander froze. I turned toward the doorway.

Virelle stood there, pale and shaking, tears streaking down her cheeks. “I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I shouldn’t have—”

A cold laugh tore from my throat. “You actually brought her here?” I stared at Leander, disgust twisting my face. “You dragged your lover into my home?”

“She isn’t my lover,” he insisted quickly. “I told you I’d find her. She came to apologize—”

But I had already snapped.

Years of grief and fury exploded. I surged forward and shoved Virelle hard.

“You destroyed everything!” I screamed. “My father is dead because of you. My mother wasted away because of you. And now you dare stand here and cry?!”

She staggered into the dresser. My hand lashed out instinctively, the slap echoing through the room. Virelle stumbled again, her knee striking the bedframe as she collapsed, clutching her abdomen.

“Leander!” she cried weakly.

When she pulled her hands away, crimson stained her fingers.

My breath stopped.

Leander roared my name and rushed to her side, gathering her into his arms. “She’s bleeding!”

Then he turned on me, eyes blazing with hatred, and shoved me so violently I crashed to the floor.

“You attacked a pregnant woman?!” he shouted. “Have you lost your mind? She’s carrying my child — and you dared lay a hand on her?!”