Chapter 1

When I was cleaning the room, I found a dried-out condom under the bed, and Claire casually said it must have fallen out the last time we had sex.

She even turned around and blamed me for not cleaning properly.

I asked for a divorce, and she looked shocked. “You used it yourself, so what are you freaking out about? You’re suspicious of everything all day long!”

I have a thing about cleanliness, and I clean every corner of the house on a schedule.

The last time Claire and I were intimate was two weeks ago, and I had cleaned the room three times since then.

So when Claire picked up the wrinkled condom and slapped it in my face, accusing me of not cleaning properly, I just smiled helplessly.

We had been married for seven years, and Claire had gone from a fresh college graduate to the Ms. Mason everyone respectfully called “President Mason.”

And I had become the stay-at-home husband she ordered around, the gold-digging man other people looked down on.

But what they did not know was that I was the one who paid for Claire’s startup money.

Back when she was first starting her business, we were both swamped, and even though we worked for the same company, we barely saw each other.

She said she wanted to come home every day and see me, with hot food waiting for her, so I gave up everything and stayed behind her.

Now she had forgotten all that, and in her eyes I had become a leech who only knew how to ask her for money!

I took the divorce papers to the study, and Claire looked at me in disbelief. “Evan, are you seriously never going to stop?”

“You’re so desperate to get divorced, so that condom wasn’t from you and some other woman, was it?”

I frowned and tightened my fingers. “Do you really think I’m that kind of person?”

Claire was silent for a long time, then sat down on the leather sofa and rubbed her temples. “I finally got a little progress in my career, so can you stop trying to force me like your parents did, by using divorce?”

By “force me,” she meant having a baby.

But even after seven years of marriage, I had never forced her to do anything she didn’t want to do.

Seven years, and if Claire had even a little room for me in her heart and paid attention to me even a little, she could not have missed it.

I shook my head, and Claire suddenly stood up. “Then what is it really for? Just because of a made-up condom?”

“I never brought anyone home. I told you, you just didn’t clean properly and left it there.”

I gave a bitter smile, and even now she was still blaming me.

Blaming me for not cleaning properly!

“Sign the papers, and let’s just end these seven years on good terms.”

“Evan!” Maybe she thought I was being too stubborn, because Claire suddenly snatched the divorce papers from my hand and threw them back in my face. “There’s a limit to how ridiculous you can be. Do you know how tired I am every day from going to work and running the business to support this family?”

“Everything you eat and wear now comes from me. You sit around all day and I support you, and when I come home I still have to take care of your feelings and deal with a pile of garbage. I never blamed you, so what more do you want?”

Claire probably did not even notice that when she said that, all I could see in her eyes was resentment.

I knew she looked down on me.

“Yes, without you these past years I would have been out on the street already. Getting divorced is also to lighten your burden.”

I took a breath, using almost all my strength. “Claire, let’s stop here. A divorce is better for both of us.”

That night, we fought badly, and Claire tore up the divorce papers. No matter what I said, she refused to sign.

I did not want to make a scene, so I could only let her calm down first.

Just as I was about to leave the study, Claire got a phone call.

At the moment I closed the door, I clearly heard the man on the other end say, “Good. At least that leech is finally going to leave Ms. Mason after all these years.”