Chapter 1

After the car accident, with a fractured wrist and bleeding knees, I sat by the curb and waited fifteen minutes for Frank Zhuang.

When he finally arrived, his first words were not of concern, but an accusation—asking why I hadn’t called him first.

The very next second, he rushed toward another woman. He personally massaged her foot and bought her flat shoes, abandoning me, covered in injuries, right by the side of the road.

My heart went completely cold, and I resolved to leave the husband with whom I had weathered years of hardship.

Little did Frank know, I was no helpless orphan with nowhere to go. Thousands of miles away in Paris, my family had already prepared the inheritance papers, merely waiting for my return to claim it all.

He thought I could never leave him.

He didn't realize that this time, I truly was done with him.

Laura Nie POV

Frank and I were a couple who had clawed our way up from nothing.

In our early days, I crammed into a drafty rental room with him, eating instant noodles. I stayed by his side through every hardship until we finally had a house, a car, and a company running on track.

When the car accident happened, I sat on the pavement for a full fifteen minutes.

Frank’s car screeched to a halt at an angle against the curb. He slammed the car door shut with a loud bang.

Striding over, he scanned me from head to toe.

"Something this major happens, and your first reaction wasn't to call me?"

I didn't stand up.

My right wrist was swollen like a loaf of bread. A large patch of my jeans at the knee was shredded, the dark red flesh mashed together with the fabric.

I had thought he would crouch down first and gently check the limp wrist hanging at my side.

Instead, the moment he opened his mouth, he came at me with an interrogation.

People in our social circle loved to praise Frank for being a devoted husband.

Both of us had lost our parents when we were young. We were orphans who had tumbled together out of the mud in an unfamiliar city.

Later on, Frank often said that the kind of wife he wanted was one who never made a fuss and kept the house spotless.

I hadn't been that kind of woman in the past.

Back then, I could send him twenty messages a day. If a croissant from a roadside bakery tasted bad, or if a stray cat was lying on someone's car hood, I would take a photo and send it to him.

If he came home half an hour late at night, I would press him three times about his schedule.

Later, I became the person he wanted me to be.

I stopped asking about his itinerary, stopped touching his phone, and stopped sharing the mundanities of my day.

Frank boasted at dinner tables that his wife had finally grown sensible.

He never stopped to think about how a person could suddenly turn so quiet in just two weeks.

It was the complete numbness of a dying heart—too tired to even let out a whimper of pain.

The truck driver responsible for the crash was crouching beneath a streetlight smoking, his fingers trembling so violently that he couldn't align the cigarette with his lips.

A passerby had helped me call the police and an ambulance, then picked up my purse from the asphalt and tucked it back into my arms.

I pulled my swollen wrist back into the sleeve of my trench coat. "The traffic police were faster than you."

"I asked you why you didn't call me," Frank said in a low voice, his brows knit tight. "Who am I to you?"

"My husband."

"Then why didn't you call?"

I lifted my eyes to look at him. "I did."

Frank’s Adam's apple bobbed up and down.

Using my left hand, I unlocked my phone with its cracked inner screen and held the topmost entry of the call log right before his eyes.

I had dialed the moment of the crash. It had rung until it automatically disconnected.

"I was in a board meeting," he defended himself.

"I know."

"You knew, and you still called?"

"If I hadn't made that call, you'd be using a different script right now."

My tone was completely flat.

Frank snatched the phone and tossed it back into my lap. "I rushed over the second the meeting ended. How dare you sit here letting people gawk at you like a circus monkey?"

"I can't get up."

"If you can't get up, couldn't you have asked a passerby to take you to the hospital?"

"I was waiting for you."

That single sentence cut him off completely.

Frank's fingers clenched and unclenched, his expression darkening further. "You're always like this. Enduring everything on your own. Who are you putting on a show for?"

I cast my eyes down and said nothing.

In my heart, I took back the words "waiting for you."

From now on, whether going to the ER or the crematorium, I would hail my own cab and register my own name.

The car pulled up outside the gates of the private hospital.

Frank walked around to the passenger side and pulled the door open. Just as my foot in its high heel touched the ground, a woman's voice drifted down from the steps of the outpatient clinic.