Chapter 4

The day before leaving.

I took Nina to buy necessities at the downtown mall.

The mall was crowded with people.

Nina held my hand and stopped as we passed a pizza restaurant.

I followed her gaze.

Through the glass, I saw Luke.

He was patiently cutting a small piece of pizza with a knife and fork, blowing on it, then carefully feeding it to Ryan.

Linda sat beside him, smiling happily, naturally pulling out a napkin to wipe sauce from the corner of Luke's mouth.

A family of three, happy and harmonious.

Watching this scene, I actually felt like laughing.

This was his so-called emergency task.

His lie exposed right to my face—ridiculous and ironic.

Nina's little hand gripped the corner of my clothes tightly as she asked quietly, "Mom, isn't Dad supposed to be working?"

I laughed coldly and pulled Nina to leave.

A piercing alarm suddenly sounded.

The next second, a massive explosion erupted from the kitchen in the first-floor dining area.

Flames and thick smoke burst through the mall's interior glass walls.

The crowd screamed and surged toward the emergency exits.

"Nina!"

I shouted, instinctively grabbing my daughter's hand.

But the crowd was like a madness with no direction.

A burly man crashed into me from the side. My back hit something and I stumbled, falling to the ground.

My hand was empty.

"Mom!"

By the time I scrambled up, thick smoke had spread to the second floor.

I searched through the crowd.

Through the black smoke, I saw Nina fall under a counter.

She was blocked by a fallen advertising board.

Just then, a figure rushed out.

It was Luke.

He immediately began evacuating people.

He saw her! He saw his daughter fallen under the counter!

From the other side came Linda's scream.

"Luke!"

"Help!"

"Ryan's trapped under a shelf!"

Luke's body went rigid.

He turned back, staring at his biological daughter so close by, his eyes filled with a struggle I couldn't understand.

That struggle lasted less than two seconds.

He shouted toward Nina.

"Nina, don't move!"

"Dad will come back for you after getting Ryan out!"

With that, I watched him decisively turn and rush toward that other woman and her child.

He picked up Ryan, protecting Linda as they rushed toward the safety passage.

In a life-or-death moment, he abandoned his biological daughter once again.

Watching this scene, I bit my lip hard enough to draw blood.

With one "wait a moment," he gave up on his own daughter.

In the billowing smoke.

Nina watched Luke disappear, her small body motionless.

She stopped crying, stopped calling out.

She just slowly lowered the little hand covering her nose and mouth, letting the choking black smoke pour into her throat.

A tear slid down her cheek as her lips moved.

"Mom, Dad went to save someone else... Today, Nina really has no dad anymore."

Those words pierced through my last shred of rationality.

I screamed, grabbed a fire extinguisher from the corner, and smashed at the obstacles blocking the way like a madwoman.

"Nina!"

"Mom's here!"

"Mom's here!"

I scooped up my daughter, who was about to lose consciousness, covered her face with my jacket, and rushed out.

The moment I ran out of the fire scene, an ambulance had just arrived.

I rushed onto the vehicle carrying my oxygen-deprived daughter.

Outside the emergency room, the red light came on.

I collapsed onto the bench.

I took out my phone and opened my lawyer's chat.

[I've signed the divorce agreement.]

[Go through litigation. Cut all ties completely.]

After sending it, I opened the booking app.

I changed our originally tomorrow's flight to tonight's earliest available one.

I didn't want to stay in this place for one more second.

Luke, you've lost us forever.