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?!”

The basement smelled of mold and stale water, the dampness sticking to my skin like decay. Hunger clawed at my insides, my mouth dry and cracked, every vein throbbing from the dialysis sessions I had missed.

My body was failing me.

I curled up on the freezing concrete, arms locked around my knees, whispering nonsense to myself just to break the suffocating silence.

Then I heard movement. Footsteps. Voices drifting from above.

“Sir, I beg you,” the maid said shakily. “Madam hasn’t eaten in days. She needs dialysis. If this continues, she won’t survive.”

Leander replied without hesitation, his tone cold and merciless. “I don’t care. She dared lay a hand on Virelle and the baby. I brought Virelle here only to apologize, and she attacked her. That woman is rotten to the core. Let her stay down there and rot.”

The maid tried again, her voice quivering. “But sir, her treatment—if she misses it—”

“I’ve had enough,” Leander snapped. “No more doctors. No more sympathy. Let her suffer. If she dies, then so be it. She deserves it. And don’t ever let her ask about her mother again. After what she’s done, she has no right to call herself someone’s daughter.”

A hollow laugh shook out of me. My mother. He still thought she was alive. He didn’t even know I had made the hospital promise never to tell him when she passed. He had never cared enough to find out.

Time blurred. I don’t know how many hours passed — maybe even days. Eventually my strength vanished, and darkness swallowed me.

When I came to, the voice I heard wasn’t his.

“Please,” Virelle whispered outside the door. “Let her out. She’ll die if you keep her there.”

Keys jingled. The lock creaked. Light flooded the room as the maid gently shook my shoulder. I opened my eyes to see Virelle standing there, tears streaking her face.

“I’m so sorry,” she sobbed. “For the money. For running away. For Leander. For everything. I never wanted this to happen to you.”

“I will never forgive you,” I croaked.

She flinched, but Leander cut in sharply, anger seeping into every word. “Have you lost your mind, Joyce? She’s apologizing to you! If it weren’t for her, you’d still be locked in that basement. And after what you did to her unborn child, you think you deserve mercy? She nearly lost it!”

Virelle touched his arm gently. “Leander, please. Take her to the hospital. She really needs help.”

He drove without speaking. Virelle sat beside him, one hand protectively over her belly while he squeezed it every now and then. He never once looked my way.

The moment we arrived, nurses rushed me inside, sticking needles into my arms, murmuring about how close I was to collapsing again. Their voices felt distant, like echoes underwater.

Later, I lay propped against pillows, my body stabilized but my soul in ruins. The television murmured softly in the background until a familiar voice sliced through the haze.

“…I only ran because I was scared,” Virelle said on the screen, sitting before a row of reporters. Her eyes were red, hands trembling as camera flashes exploded around her. “Joyce hated me after the incident with the money. She said she wanted me gone, that she’d kill me if I ever came back. That’s why I hid. I was terrified.”

Journalists scribbled furiously. Virelle dabbed at her tears, her performance flawless.

“And yet,” she added softly, “I still returned. Because I wanted to apologize. She’s my best friend. I don’t want her ruined because of me. I love her like my own sister, no matter what. I’ll repay everything.”

A bitter sound escaped my throat. That was it. I had reached my limit.

By evening, I was discharged. I steadied myself and stepped outside — straight into madness.

“Joyce! Did you really attack Virelle?”

“Did you threaten her unborn child?”

“Why won’t you forgive her when she’s admitted everything?”

Microphones shoved at my face, cameras blinding me, the noise crashing into my skull. I raised my arms weakly, overwhelmed.

Then Virelle pushed through the crowd.

“Stop!” she cried, wrapping her arms around me. “She’s my closest friend. Don’t treat her like this. She doesn’t deserve it.”

The reporters softened instantly. She shielded me like a hero, whispering, “It’s okay, I’m here.”

Back at the estate, she hovered over me with exaggerated care.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured, trailing after me. “Please forgive me, Joyce. Let’s start over.”

“I don’t want anything anymore,” I replied dully. “I just want to leave.”

Her expression collapsed. She reached for me, but I stepped away.

Then she suddenly bent forward, gasping.

“My stomach— it hurts…”

Blood soaked the fabric of her dress.

Leander rushed in. “Virelle!” He caught her as she sagged against him, panic flooding his face.

In a faint, trembling voice she whispered, “I think… I’m losing the baby…”