Chapter 4

Valerie POV

After standing in the rain all night, I woke up with a fever of a hundred and four degrees.

The next morning, dragging my heavy body, I went to the hospital alone. As I sat on the plastic chairs in the hallway waiting for my name to be called, I saw Julian coming from the other end, gently carrying Sienna in his arms.

Sienna clung to him with tears in her eyes, looking incredibly pitiful. All because she had a tiny blister on her heel from wearing new heels.

Julian looked up and caught sight of me. When he saw my deathly pale face, his brows knitted into a tight knot. "Are you stalking us now? Valerie, can you get any more pathetic?"

My head was spinning from the fever, and I didn't even have the energy to argue. I just gave him a dead, cold look and walked into the doctor's office.

The doctor looked at my MRI scan and sighed heavily. "Valerie, the old injury in your left shoulder has worsened severely due to the cold and stress. If you don't rest immediately, you won't just lose the ability to fight. You will struggle to even lift groceries. Your career in the ring is over."

I nodded numbly. I didn't care anymore. I had already lost my ring.

The moment I stepped out of the office, Julian blocked my path. He glanced at the prescription in my hand, his eyes flickering for a second, but his face quickly turned cold again.

"Since you have so much free time to follow me to the hospital, do something useful," he commanded. "Sienna is attending a high-end jewelry gala tonight. You're going to be her personal bodyguard."

I let out a dry, raspy laugh. "Julian, I am legally your wife, and you want me to be a bodyguard for your mistress? What do you take me for?"

"You want to say no?" Julian took a step forward, his tall frame towering over me with immense pressure. His voice was laced with ice. "Your old coach is on life support in the ICU. It costs three thousand dollars a day. What do you think happens if I stop paying his medical bills today? Will he survive the night?"

My heart stopped. I stared at him, horrified.

My coach had ended up in a vegetative state after a car accident while trying to save me. In our past life, Julian had treated my coach like his own father, flying in the best neurosurgeons from around the world to treat him.

"You're using my coach's life to black-mail me?" My voice shook violently.

"Are you doing the job or not?" Julian's eyes were completely emotionless.

I bit my lip so hard I tasted copper. Finally, I closed my eyes and forced out a single word. "Yes."

The gala was incredibly lavish.

I wore a cheap black suit, standing behind Sienna like an invisible shadow, my face expressionless.

The whispers from the crowd cut through the air like knives:

"Isn't that Julian Vance's wife? Why is she acting like a bodyguard for his mistress?"

"I heard Julian doesn't care about her at all. She's just a classless street fighter anyway. She doesn't have Sienna's elegance."

Julian bid ten million dollars without even blinking to win a pink diamond necklace called "The Heart of the Ocean" for Sienna. Sienna wore it like a proud peacock, parading through the crowd to show off.

Suddenly, chaos erupted!

A crazed hater surged from the crowd, holding a bottle of clear liquid, his face twisted in rage as he lunged straight at Sienna!

"Go to hell, you homewrecker!"

"Ahhh!" Sienna screamed, her face pale with terror.

My fighter instincts kicked in faster than my brain. I bolted forward, executing a flawless, powerful front kick that sent the man flying back. The bottle smashed onto the marble floor, hissing and bubbling. It was highly concentrated acid!

The danger was averted, and the room gasped in shock.

But as Sienna fell backward, she purposely tripped herself, landing on a piece of broken glass. A tiny cut appeared on her palm.

"It hurts. Julian, it hurts so much." she sobbed hysterically.

Julian pushed through the crowd like a madman, shoving me out of the way so hard I hit the wall. He gathered Sienna in his arms. Once he saw she only had a scratch, he whipped his head around to glare at me, his eyes filled with pure rage.

"Did you do that on purpose?!"

I froze, staring at him in shock. "I just saved her life."

"You could have stopped him sooner! You were jealous of her, so you hesitated on purpose to let her get hurt!" Julian hissed, pointing at the shattered glass on the floor. His voice was cold as death. "Apologize to Sienna. Now."

The entire room went dead silent. Everyone watched us, waiting for the drama.

Forcing a proud national champion to publicly apologize to a mistress? This was worse than killing me.

I stood tall, my eyes red, stubbornly staring back at him. "I did nothing wrong."

"No apology?" Julian sneered, pulling out his phone. "Fine. I'll call the hospital to pull the plug on your coach right now."

"No!" I broke.

Under the mocking, disgusted stares of New York's elite, I slowly bent my spine, the spine that had never bent for anyone in the ring. I bowed deeply to Sienna.

"I'm sorry."

In that moment, I felt my dignity shatter into dust, never to be pieced back together.