Chapter 1

The day my daughter became seriously ill, I called Sophie.

I shouldn’t have called, but the sight of Star lying weakly in her hospital bed broke my heart, and she kept repeating,

“Daddy, I’m sick now. Do you think Mommy will come see me?”

The phone rang several times before she finally answered, and the lingering, breathy tone in Sophie’s voice, thick with desire, made my stomach churn.

“Hello?”

But we weren’t divorced yet, and she had already eagerly climbed into another man’s bed.

I forced down my disgust and continued.

“Star is sick. She wants to see you.”

But Sophie only let out a mocking laugh before saying,

“Are you trying to fool me with this pity act again? Ethan, do you think this is funny?”

“You were the one who cheated first. Now that things have come this far, what else do you have to say?”

“You owe me this!”

I had no intention of arguing with her. My daughter was breathing faintly on the bed, hovering between life and death, and I heard myself nearly breaking down outside the hospital room.

“I’m not lying to you this time!”

“Something really happened to Star. Can you please come see her?”

Sophie said nothing. She didn’t even give me a reaction.

The call was abruptly disconnected before I had time to respond.

The words I still wanted to say caught in my throat, leaving me in unbearable discomfort.

I was wrong. I was truly wrong.

The biggest mistake I had made in my life was trusting Sophie.

Sophie and I had once been in love.

When I first met her, she was standing beneath the sunlight in a white dress, chasing away a group of thugs who had been bullying me.

She told me she would protect me and that as long as she was there, no one would dare bully me.

She helped me to the teachers’ office, and I caught the faint scent of green plums on her, sweet with a hint of sourness.

I knew I had no ability or connections, so I worked desperately hard in school, all so I could give her a better life.

I paid her tuition and even supported her while she studied abroad, and the year she graduated, we got married.

After our wedding, she began traveling between different countries for work. During the hardest period of our lives, I was so busy that I could barely close my eyes all night.

That was when she hugged me from behind, her tears soaking through my back as she spoke softly.

“Honey, it breaks my heart to see you like this.”

“Why don’t I take over? You can stay home and enjoy yourself for a couple of days.”

I believed her. After all, we had been married for four years. I had no reason not to trust her.

But I lost. I lost completely.

The perfume on her grew stronger and stronger, and she even began hurriedly replying to messages right in front of me.

When I asked her about it, she only said,

“Oh, it’s all for work.”

But I had clearly seen her call the other person “baby.” I wasn’t completely without suspicion, but I loved her, so I chose to trust her.

Then one night, she finally came home drunk out of her mind and threw herself into my arms.

But the name she called out was another man’s.

“Noah…”

The next morning, after she woke up, I asked her about it, but she only gave me a mocking look.

“He’s just an employee I’m close to. It was only a name. Why are you being so petty?”

I was petty. I was petty.

But were those sickeningly sweet messages also my fault for being petty?

In the end, I never said those words aloud because I loved her.

But now my daughter lay in my arms, hovering between life and death, and Sophie, her own mother, wasn’t even willing to come take a look.

So all the beautiful love we had shared became nothing but an illusion. I thought I would cry.

But my mind simply went blank, as if I had lost all feeling.

There was a sharp pain in my stomach, yet I felt nothing.

It was as if I was going to die too.