The entire thread went dead silent.

Even Shane and the woman who had replied earlier said nothing.

But I already knew who she was.

She was a student my father's foundation had sponsored, Claire Davis.

The same Claire Davis who had once stood on my doorstep in faded jeans, blushing as she vowed she would repay my father and me for the rest of her life.

"Whoa, is it really the ex-wife?"

"Please, tell us what happened! We need to know."

But I had no strength left to reply.

One was the man I loved more than life itself, the other was a girl my father had sponsored and treated like a daughter.

And together, they had deceived me for seven years.

I sat numb on my bed all night, my mind a maelstrom.

I imagined storming into their home and demanding to know why. I even imagined killing them both.

But by morning, a cold calm had settled over me. I had to tell the truth. For myself, and for my father, who was lying in a hospital bed because of them.

I opened the forum again. The thread was now trending on the homepage.

I placed my fingers on the keyboard, memories scrolling through my mind like an old movie.

"Since everyone wants to hear it, I'll tell my story."

When I first met Shane Miller, I was 25, a typical New York heiress, known for her kindness and not much else.

Shane was only 18, from a poor family in the Rust Belt, with relatives who wanted nothing to do with him.

He was rail-thin, but his eyes burned with the fierce, insecure hunger of a wolf.

My father took me to a donor gala at his university.

Shane stood among a crowd of well-dressed legacy kids, looking painfully out of place. The people around him pointed and snickered, looking at him like he was a beggar who had stumbled into a palace.

My father told me to pick someone to sponsor.

I looked up and met a pair of stubborn, wounded eyes.

I knew in that moment that he didn't belong there, with them.

"Him."

I said, pointing at Shane.

My father asked, "Are you sure? You don't want to look around a bit more?"

I shook my head. "No. It's him."

I never expected that a single nod would lead to a decade of entanglement.

The day before Thanksgiving, I had my driver pick up a high-end pumpkin pie and brought it to him.

"This is for you. Go on, eat it. Think of it as a celebration of your new life."

Shane hadn't cried when his relatives abandoned him, but as he stared at that pie, his eyes turned red.

He said, "Miss Ava, no one in my life has ever been this good to me. I'll repay you. I swear it."

He didn't disappoint. With my father's and my support, he got into New York University on a full scholarship.

By his sophomore year, Shane stopped taking our living stipends and started his own business out of a rundown garage in Brooklyn.

He quickly proved to have an astonishing talent for business. In just three short years, he had already made a name for himself in the New York tech scene.

That same year, on his graduation day, he knelt before me with an enormous bouquet of flowers and a ring.

He said, "Ava, you're the only light in my world. For the rest of my life, I only want to protect that light. You pulled me from the darkness, and from now on, you'll be my one and only."

Such beautiful words.

At the time, the gossip was vicious. Someone at a bar called me old, a full seven years his senior. They said I didn't deserve the young and wealthy Shane, pointing a finger at me and calling me a cradle robber.

That night, Shane beat the rich kid who'd been talking trash and sent him to the emergency room.

He was injured in the fight, needing more than a dozen stitches in his arm.

The man he hit had connections in the city. The moment I bailed Shane out of the police station and saw him covered in blood, I burst into tears.

He cupped my face and said, "Silly, what are you crying for? No one gets to insult you. For you, I'd take on the whole world."

That night, I accepted his proposal, and we set the wedding for Thanksgiving.

"Aww, I'm crying. This sounds like true love! How did it turn into what happened later?"

"Was it the class difference? Or the seven-year age gap?"

I looked at the screen, smiled bitterly, and replied:

"Neither. It was because of greed and insecurity."

"He ran away from our wedding."

As soon as I typed that, Shane, who had been silent for so long, suddenly reappeared.

He posted:

"Ava, that's enough. Don't talk about this online. This is our private life."

The man who faked his death had finally decided to show his face.

"Private life?"

"Don't listen to him. When that woman was bragging about your affair online, why didn't you say it was your private life then?"

"What happened after he ran away from the wedding? What did he do, and why did he run?"

I ignored Shane and continued.

"On the day of the wedding, the groom was a no-show. Ava Prescott became the city's laughingstock, an old woman played and abandoned by a poor boy from the sticks."

When Shane came back three days later, he knelt before me, begging for forgiveness.

He said he came from nothing and didn't know how to face so many people from high society.

He said he felt he didn't deserve me, which was why he couldn't show up.

He said he'd grown up watching his parents fight and that marriage terrified him.

He begged me for one more chance.

He promised he would never let me down again.

I looked into his red-rimmed eyes, and my heart softened.

"A wedding is just a ceremony," I told him. "It doesn't matter if we have one or not."

"As long as we're happy together, that's all that matters."

The next day, we registered our marriage without telling a soul.

Shane held me tight and whispered, "Ava, meeting you is the luckiest thing that's ever happened to me. I'll love you for the rest of my life."

"From now on, I'll take care of you."

That was the happiest time of my life.

Until my father sponsored another student, a young woman named Claire Davis.

Shane, who had been swamped with work for months, suddenly had free time.

He started visiting my father's place daily, ostensibly to keep the old man company.

Sometimes when I came home, I would find Shane and Claire Davis sitting close together, deep in conversation.

They talked about the simplicity of the Rust Belt versus the selfish greed of New York, the rustic scenery of their hometowns versus the grime and chaos of the city.

The two of them hit it off instantly.

It was as if they were two halves of the same soul.

One day, he said to me,

"It's not very convenient for Claire to keep living at your father's place. I mean, your father is a single man and she's a young woman. Her staying there will cause talk. We should have Claire move out, and we can support her."

I frowned, a small thorn lodging itself in my heart.

My father was old, and besides, they weren't alone in the house. Our live-in housekeeper, Maria, was always there.

The way he said it made it sound like my father had ulterior motives for helping Claire.

I felt uneasy but agreed. After all, Shane had always been so grateful for the help he'd received.

"If you think that's best, you can handle it."

He personally rented an apartment for Claire in Brooklyn, saying he couldn't bear to see another girl from his background dependent on someone else's charity.

He even brought her into his company as an intern.

By then, I was three months pregnant.

Claire stood obediently by Shane's side, smiling at me.

"Ava, don't worry. I'll take good care of Shane."

At the time, I missed the blatant provocation in her eyes.

Until the day before Thanksgiving, when I went to his office to drop off a gift.

In Central Park, I saw them. Kissing passionately.

"Shane, do you and Ava kiss this passionately at home?" Claire asked, breathless.

Shane answered with a note of disdain, "Don't even bring her up. Ava's… different. Older. It's a lot of pressure. She's not like you—so alive."

The packages in my hands scattered across the pavement.

I froze, a fire igniting in my chest. I snatched up the pumpkin pie box and hurled it at them.

Shane immediately shielded Claire and shoved me away.

The ground was slick with a thin layer of ice, and I fell hard.

Shane looked down at me, his expression impatient and cold.

"Ava, are you done making a scene?"

"You're getting older, is this what happens? You turn into some kind of hysterical shrew? What the hell are you doing, making a scene out here?"

I stared up at Shane in disbelief.

I didn't have time for anger. Terror shot through me, and I immediately clutched at Shane. A sharp cramp twisted in my stomach.

"Just take me to the hospital, I'm begging you. Save our baby."

I saw a flicker of hesitation in Shane's eyes, but just as he started to step forward, Claire clung to his sleeve, crying out.

"Shane, I'm so scared… Was she trying to kill me just now? My stomach hurts…"

Shane held her, comforting her gently, then looked back at me, his face a cold mask.

"Ava, stop the act. You fell. Call an ambulance yourself."

With that, he walked away with Claire in his arms, not sparing me a second glance.

I passed out. I lay on the cold ground for twenty minutes until a passerby finally called an ambulance.