Chapter 3

Victoria finally reacted. Her face darkened as she rushed over, shoved me off, and helped Adrian up.

“Hold this lunatic down!”

The bodyguards pinned me to the floor like a heap of wet rags. Victoria grabbed my hair and slapped me so hard my ears rang.

“What the hell is wrong with you? How dare you touch Adrian!”

Still furious, she kicked me twice more. I grunted in pain, and the prayer beads I’d been clutching rolled out of my hand.

Victoria picked them up and sneered. “You even brought that little animal’s beads to beg for sympathy. Who do you think you are?”

I realized what she was about to do. My eyes widened. “Don’t!”

Before the word had left my mouth, she pulled the bracelet apart.

The beads scattered across the floor. Several rolled beneath the table, coating themselves in grease.

I broke free of the bodyguards like a madman and crawled after them, frantic, picking them up one by one.

I held them in my palm as though they were priceless treasures, grief clouding my eyes. “Don’t be scared, Sophie. Don’t be scared…”

Victoria stared at me, her expression ugly. At last, she forced the words through clenched teeth.

“Take this lunatic outside. Make him kneel until he comes to his senses.”

The bodyguards dragged me out and forced me to my knees.

Around midnight, rain began pouring down. My body, which had barely held together for two days, finally gave out.

As I drifted in and out of consciousness, I seemed to return to three days earlier.

My daughter had called me in tears. “Daddy, it hurts. Adrian lied. He told Mommy to break my leg…”

“My leg hurts so much, Daddy. Please save me…”

“Die already, you little bitch. Once you’re dead, Victoria will be all mine!”

Just before the call on her smartwatch disconnected, I heard Adrian’s vicious voice.

I dropped everything at work and booked a flight home.

I called Victoria countless times, but she never answered. In the end, she even blocked me.

We’d been married seven years, yet my daughter and I meant less to her than the clothes on Adrian’s back.

Years ago, I’d happened to save her grandfather’s life. On his deathbed, he’d asked to see Victoria and me married.

Otherwise, she never would have looked twice at me.

Even Sophie had only been conceived because of pressure tied to the company at the time.

In all five years of Sophie’s life, Victoria had never once celebrated her birthday.

Whenever I begged, she said, “Why does a little kid need a birthday party? You spoil her too much.”

But she’d never missed Adrian’s birthday. Once, she’d even turned down a ten-million-dollar deal to celebrate with him.

She was my wife and Sophie’s mother, yet she gave all her time and tenderness to another man.

The devotion I’d once felt, the love I’d kept secret for so long, had slowly worn away under seven years of cold indifference.

But every time I saw the longing in Sophie’s eyes when she talked about her mother, the word “divorce” died on my lips.

I never imagined that my hesitation would cost my daughter her life…

When I woke with tears covering my face, I rasped to the bodyguard beside me.

“Tell Victoria I want a divorce.”