When the wedding was postponed for the seventh time, news came that Ryan Floyd had been critically injured on a mission.

Eight months pregnant, I traveled over a thousand miles to his workplace. When I presented our marriage certificate, I was detained on the spot.

"Showing up with a fake certificate trying to sneak into a restricted zone? Spies really don't value their lives, do they?"

The words hit me like a bolt of lightning. But just as they were about to haul me away, I caught a glimpse of a familiar figure.

I clutched at her like a lifeline. "Joan, please, tell them! I'm Ryan's wife!"

The woman walked straight past me and handed a document to the man across the way.

The same man who had just been interrogating me with that cold, clipped tone broke into a warm smile.

"Ah, so you're Engineer Floyd's wife. My apologies for the trouble."

I stared at the scene unfolding before me, too stunned to speak.

A knock came at the door. Ryan Floyd appeared in a wheelchair, his gaze landing on me.

The man asked him, "Engineer Floyd, do you know this woman?"

He shook his head. "No. Doesn't ring a bell."

I was thrown into a dim holding cell, interrogated until I nearly broke. Not once did he come to see me.

The day they released me, I sold my wedding ring and went to the nearest branch of the Design Institute.

……

After I explained why I was there, the director glanced at my belly and spoke with hesitation.

"Architect Cooley, are you really sure you want to join the Western Heritage Survey Project?"

"This project is out in the Western Highlands. One wrong step and they'll never find your body."

"Not to mention, your baby will only be a month old by then. Can you really bear to leave?"

I let out a quiet laugh. "I have to be myself first before I can be my child's mother."

"No one has the right to hold another person back. Not even someone who shares your blood."

"Does your husband agree to this?"

"His work is dangerous enough. If you both end up sacrificing yourselves for the country, what happens to the child?"

Three years ago, when Ryan Floyd chose the path of bomb disposal, he had said the same kind of thing.

"In my line of work, every day could be the last. I'm terrified that in the end, I won't be able to give you the life you deserve."

"Catherine, let's get our marriage license. That way, no matter where we are, we'll always be each other's closest person."

I got the license with him, and the Floyd family finally agreed to let him go out west.

And I, the brilliant young architect at the Design Institute, stayed behind in Southport and became the Floyd family's most dutiful granddaughter-in-law.

My mother-in-law would eye my flat stomach and complain behind my back.

"She's nothing but a hen that can't lay eggs. No wonder Ryan keeps putting off the wedding."

During his first year's leave, we had a terrible fight.

"Ryan Floyd, do you love me or not?"

"Give me a straight answer. I won't cling to you."

My mother-in-law had even been arranging meetings with other women for him, openly and behind closed doors. The neighbors whispered that the youngest Floyd grandson's wife must be loose, since she'd been married half a year with nothing to show for it.

I was sick of the gossip.

"Stringing each other along is the most pointless thing in the world. I may come from nothing, Catherine Cooley, but I don't need a single penny from the Floyd family."

"If you think I'm some object you can summon and dismiss at will, then let me go now. It'll be better for both of us."

He caught me by the waist and pressed me against the wall. Warm tears slid down my neck.

His voice came out hoarse, cracking with a sob. "How could you think that? I love you. I truly do."

"How could I ever dismiss you? The truth is, I'm so afraid of breaking you that I barely dare to touch you."

"I'm terrified that one day I'll really die out there, and I won't know what to do about you."

"If I have any regrets, it's that I was reckless enough to drag you into this. I should never have tied you to a man on borrowed time."

I don't remember what he said after that. All I remember is the sound of his heartbeat as his warm chest drew close to mine.

Later, every time the Floyd family urged him to hold a wedding whenever he came home on leave, he found some excuse to refuse.

I thought he was worried that if he died in the line of duty someday, it would be harder for me to find happiness again.

It wasn't until now that I began to dimly understand. His heart had probably never been with me at all.

After his elder brother passed away, the woman who'd been engaged to him refused to leave the Floyd household, declaring she would remain faithful to her late fiancé for the rest of her life.

Over time, everyone came to regard Joan Short as the eldest grandson's widow.

And with that role came all the resources and status a Floyd daughter-in-law was entitled to.

There was only one condition: until Ryan married, she couldn't leave Southport.

The Floyd family needed a granddaughter-in-law who could tend to the elders at home and handle social obligations on their behalf.

Perhaps from the very beginning, Ryan had only gotten that marriage certificate with me to trap me in the Floyd household so his brother's widow could come and go as she pleased.

Now I couldn't even tell whether the two syllables he'd murmured during our most intimate moments were my name or hers.

I tucked the memories away, dabbed a few drops of water onto the stamp of the forged certificate, and placed it in front of the director.

"You don't need to worry about the Floyd family, sir."

I knew all his so-called concerns were a front. What he really feared was that letting me go would anger the Floyds.

A century-old family like theirs, one that had emerged unscathed from the darkest decade in the nation's history, wielded more than enough influence by now.

He watched the red ink bleed and dissolve into the water. With a sigh, he put my letter away.

"If that's the case, I'll make sure this gets sent to the National Institute as soon as possible."

"You know, if it weren't for the marriage, with your talent, you'd probably already be a chief architect."

I looked at the map of the country hanging on the wall and said calmly, "This time, I will be the youngest chief architect the Design Institute has ever had."

He nodded with a quiet laugh, an acknowledgment in itself.

"How long are you planning to stay here?"

"The chief engineer from the National Bureau of Architecture is coming. He mentioned you in a letter just the other day. After all these years, won't you see him?"

I froze. How could I possibly face him now?

I had just reached the entrance of the small motel when someone called out to me.

"Catherine!"

Ryan stepped out from the shadows, his body already fully recovered.

I clenched my fist and slapped him across the face.

"That's the price for deceiving me."

He ran his tongue along the split corner of his lip, tasting blood, and blocked my path.

"I heard you applied for a transfer to the western heritage surveying project."

I said nothing, which was answer enough.

"Grandma will never agree. Don't even think about it."

I scoffed. "Why would I need anyone in your family's permission?"

"Other than the child in my belly, you and I have no legal relationship whatsoever. You know that better than anyone, don't you?"

He faltered, his throat working several times before he finally spoke. "Catherine, it's not what you think. I can explain."

"Explain? Tell me it wasn't you who got a marriage certificate with your own brother's widow?"

Pain flashed through his eyes. He seized my wrist. "You're leaving me?"

"I won't allow it!"

A bitter laugh nearly escaped me. He was the one who had betrayed me, and now he was saying he wouldn't allow me to leave.

He wanted it all, didn't he?

"Ryan, I've been craving sour things so much lately. You don't think this little one might be a boy, do you?"

Joan strolled toward him, hugging a bag of candied hawthorn, her face the picture of innocence. When she spotted me, she stopped dead in her tracks.

"Oh, Catherine's here too..."

Only then did my gaze drop to her abdomen. The slight swell was already visible.

Even though I'd braced myself for this, the ache still rose, bitter and sharp.

How could Ryan have done this to me?

I broke down completely. "She was your brother's woman! You slept with her. How could you do that to George?"

I pointed straight at Joan. "Didn't you swear you'd stay faithful to George for the rest of your life? Sleeping with your own brother-in-law is what you call faithfulness?"

Slap!

A searing sting exploded across my face.

Ryan's hand still hung in the air.

"Joan and my brother were never married. Who gave you the right to say something so vile?"

I stared in disbelief at the husband I'd once been so intimate with. He hadn't hit me because I'd insulted him. He'd hit me because I'd insulted Joan.

Joanie. That was what he called her. With me, it was always "Catherine," except in the heat of passion.

So all those nights, all the tenderness I thought was love, I'd been nothing more than Joan's stand-in.

I tilted my head back, forcing the tears not to fall, refusing to let myself look any more pathetic than I already did.

Joan rushed forward and wrapped her arms around Ryan, her voice soft and reproachful. "Honestly, you don't know the first thing about being gentle with a woman. Catherine is still carrying your child. If something happens to her, how will you explain that to Grandma?"

She made it sound like she was defending me. In reality, she was flaunting how much Ryan favored her.

Ryan shifted uncomfortably. "I got carried away just now, but you were the one who started cursing at Joan first..."

"Ryan. We're done."

"I'll have the baby delivered to the Floyd family after it's born."

He suddenly grew agitated. "What's that supposed to mean? You'd abandon our own child?"

"So it can be a constant reminder that I was tricked? That this baby is the product of someone's lie?"

I didn't remember how I made it back to my room.

When violent pounding erupted against the door, everything that had happened over the past few days still felt like a nightmare I hadn't woken from.

"Catherine Cooley, someone has reported you for stealing data from the Design Institute. You need to come with us for an investigation."

My hands were wrenched behind my back and cuffed. I struggled against the security officers. "Who reported me? It was Ryan, wasn't it?"

The man's expression shifted to something like smug confirmation. "Looks like Engineer Floyd wasn't wrong about you after all. Let's go."

In the dead of night, I was tied to a post in the central courtyard of Ryan's workplace, subjected to interrogation by everyone present.

"If Engineer Floyd hadn't put in a good word for you, you'd already be at the police station."

Hostile faces swarmed in front of me, one after another. My skull buzzed so loudly I could barely think.

"Look at you. God knows whose bastard that is in your belly, and yet you had the nerve to try marrying Engineer Floyd."

"Engineer Floyd is a son of the Floyd family of Southport. You think someone like you could ever be worthy of him?"

"Having a woman like you harassing him, Engineer Floyd must have the worst luck in eight lifetimes."

Winter was closing in. The night wind slashed across my skin like a blade.

My lower abdomen tightened, little by little. Tears spilled as I begged. "I've never seen any data. I'm being framed."

"I need to see Ryan Floyd. The baby I'm carrying is his."

"Ryan Floyd tricked me into marriage. He used forged marriage certificates to make me think I was his wife."

"Since you all know the Floyd family, then you should know that if anything happens to a Floyd heir on your watch, every last one of you will pay for it."

A palm cracked across my face. The man grabbed my collar and cursed under his breath.

"I'm already sick of that Floyd kid riding his family's coattails to the top. And now you, you little tramp, think you can threaten me too?"

He patted my swollen belly and sneered. "If what's in there is really a Floyd, I'll eat my own shoe."

The line drew instant laughter from the crowd.

People surged forward from below, hands grabbing at me from every direction. Some were furious that I'd dared set my sights on Ryan. Others, like the man himself, were simply taking out their jealousy and resentment of Ryan on me.

They were wary enough of the baby in my belly not to truly hurt me, but pulling my hair and pinching my arms were fair game.