Chapter 2

At eleven thirty that night, the security door opened with a click.

Sinclair came in while tugging at his tie.

He put on an exhausted act, but the sharp smell of perfume on his collar could not be hidden at all.

It was Margaret’s favorite scent.

I sat in the unlit living room and watched him change his shoes coldly.

“Why didn’t you turn on the lights? You scared me.”

He muttered as he casually tossed a limited-edition souvenir bag from the amusement park onto the shoe cabinet.

“Juliet waited for you onstage for a long time today,” I said, staring at him in an unusually calm voice.

Sinclair paused, and his brows instantly knitted together.

“Samuel, do you have to pick a fight in the middle of the night?”

“I told you, Brooks got pushed down at the amusement park and hit his head, and Margaret was so scared she kept crying, so how could I ignore that?”

“So you abandoned Juliet’s showcase?”

“Didn’t Juliet have you with her?” Sinclair raised his voice and argued as if he were completely in the right.

“She’s not going to lose a piece of flesh just because she missed one piano performance!”

“What about Brooks? He doesn’t have a dad, and he’s already pitiful enough, so what’s wrong with making Juliet feel wronged once?”

“Do you have to be so petty with a kid from a single-parent family?”

Looking at the shameless man in front of me, I only found it absurd.

This was the husband I had been married to for six years.

For someone else’s son, he had not hesitated to leave Juliet onstage as a joke, and then he turned around and forced us to be generous about it.

I did not speak and directly threw my phone onto the coffee table, sliding it to his hand.

The screen was lit, showing the Ins post Margaret had made half an hour earlier.

In the photo, Sinclair was holding Brooks with one arm, smiling with a face full of fatherly tenderness.

Brooks was holding an oversized cotton candy, and his forehead was perfectly clean, without even a red mark, let alone a cut.

Behind them were brilliant fireworks at the amusement park.

The caption was painfully glaring: Even without a complete family, he still has the strongest arms to lean on.

Sinclair lowered his head and saw the screen clearly, and his face froze.

But he only felt guilty for one second before immediately turning shame into anger.

“You checked up on me? Samuel, are you sick?”

“Margaret only posted a feeling she had, and Brooks was crying too hard, so what’s wrong with me taking him to watch fireworks to comfort him?”

“Do you have to make such a big deal out of it?”

“Yes, I don’t have to.” I was too tired to listen to his bullshit, so I picked up my phone and got up to walk toward the master bedroom.

In the master bedroom, Juliet was sleeping very uneasily.

Her little face was tightly scrunched up, and there were still tear marks at the corners of her eyes.

I pulled over a thin blanket and carefully picked her up.

“What are you doing?” Sinclair followed me over, his face full of impatience.

“Why are you disturbing the child in the middle of the night?”

“Because you’re filthy.” I did not look back as I carried Juliet toward the guest room.

“Samuel!” Sinclair shouted behind me in frustration and anger.

“You are completely unreasonable! Fine, make a scene if you want! Let’s see how long you can stay mad!”

With a bang, I kicked the guest room door shut and locked it behind me.

From outside came the sound of Sinclair slamming the bathroom door.

He probably thought I would be like before, sulking for a few days, shedding a few tears, and then continuing to swallow my anger for the sake of giving Juliet a complete family.

But he did not know that when a woman even found arguing unnecessary, it meant she had completely given up.

I placed Juliet on the bed and gently patted her back.

Looking at Juliet’s sleeping face, I had never felt more clear-headed.

I could not live like this anymore.