Chapter 2

That day, I accidentally knocked over my favorite vase and it shattered.

When Adrian saw it, he simply told the housekeeper to clean up the pieces.

But that vase—we'd made it together by hand, in a small Italian town, during the year we loved each other the most.

He'd once said, so seriously, that he'd keep it for the rest of his life.

"Maybe I can piece it back together."

I crouched on the floor, trying to fit the fragments together.

He frowned and pulled me up.

"It's just a worthless vase."

My eyes stung red instantly.

But he was looking at my belly.

"Are you feeling unwell again?"

I used to comfort myself that he was a rational person—it was normal for him not to care about sentimental objects.

Until that evening, when I went to his study to bring him fruit, and I saw a locked glass case.

Inside, carefully preserved, was a pen Chloe had given him.

That pen was worth twenty dollars.

In that instant, I went cold from head to toe.

I had a screaming fight with him. I even smashed open the case and threw the pen in the trash.

The next second, he picked it up like he was retrieving something priceless.

When he looked back at me, all that was left in Adrian's eyes was impatience.

"Ava, go look in a mirror and see what you look like right now."

"You broke the vase yourself today. What exactly are you blaming me for?"

I made him swear he hadn't fallen for Chloe. I told him if he lied, God could punish them both.

Don Moretti, who had never believed in God, actually hesitated.

A long time passed before he finally spoke.

"Yes. I have feelings for her."

"But we haven't slept together, and we won't. You don't need to act like you've been devastated."

I couldn't hold back my tears.

He sighed, reached over, and smoothed my tangled hair.

"Ava, we've been together for eleven years. There's no excitement left."

"To put it bluntly, kissing you—I don't feel anything anymore."

"Sometimes I even regret that I married you abroad the moment I turned eighteen. Back then, I never imagined that ten years later I'd fall in love with someone else."

The man who once set off fireworks across an entire city just to make me smile—that was him.

The man now calmly telling me he'd fallen in love with someone else—also him.

"Chloe is lively. Not dull like you."

"She likes pranks, she likes watching cheesy romance movies, she likes feeding stray cats on the street."

"You used to like all those things too. But when she does them, I just find it adorable. I can't control the way my heart reacts."

Finally, he lit a cigarette.

His tone was gentle. And cruel.

"As long as you're willing, the title of Mrs. Moretti will always be yours."

"But you have to accept that she's the only one in my heart."

After that night, I spiraled into a long breakdown.

I cried every day until my eyes were raw and swollen.

I tried to deliberately not care when he came home late, not care that he missed prenatal appointments again and again, not care that he took Chloe on vacation to Hawaii.

But all of it was self-deception.

Until today—when he knelt before me in front of everyone and begged me to give my heart to Chloe, willing to sacrifice our six-month-old unborn child.

I suddenly felt that this marriage had lost all meaning.