Chapter 2

Watching Arthur turn his back and walk away, acting like he was utterly heartbroken and disappointed in us, was the final straw.

My mom’s blood pressure spiked instantly from pure rage. Her eyes rolled back, and she collapsed backward.

Terror gripped my chest. I caught her just in time and screamed toward Arthur's back, "Dad!"

Arthur was a renowned chief surgeon at the top hospital in the city, celebrated for saving countless lives.

He was the only medical expert in the room, so I swallowed my pride and begged him with a shaking voice.

Arthur merely glanced back at my mother over his shoulder, cold as ice. "Eleanor, you’re in your forties. Pulling a pathetic fainting stunt to get my attention? Don't you feel ridiculous?"

I pleaded in tears, "Dad! Please! She really passed out!"

Arthur scoffed callously. "Good. The world would be better off if she died."

With that, he didn't even glance back as he escorted his new lover out the double doors.

A wave of suffocating despair washed over me.

My grandfather leaned on his cane, standing beside us with a calm, imposing demeanor. He stared after Arthur, his gaze brimming with disgust.

"That... is the pathetic excuse of a man your mother married?!"

Tears streamed down my face. Within seconds, Grandfather's bodyguards rushed in from outside, lifting my mother gently and speeding her off toward the hospital.

In the back of the car, I gripped my mother's cold hand tightly, memories of ten years ago flashing relentlessly through my mind.

Back then, Arthur made a critical error during surgery that resulted in a patient's death, slapping our family with a massive malpractice judgment.

The three of us had to squeeze into a decaying, mold-infested apartment in the grungiest part of town, the peeling walls covered in dark, damp stains.

The winters were brutal. My mom and I could only afford cheap, thin jackets bought from clearance bins, entirely useless against the biting wind. We froze the moment we stepped outside.

The warmest coats we owned were reserved for Arthur, because he was the one working shifts to pay down his debt.

One winter, his paycheck was delayed, and my mom didn't have enough change left to buy groceries.

She boiled the last bundle of plain noodles in the pantry, somehow scrounging up a single egg to hide at the bottom of the bowl.

I watched with wide, hungry eyes as she set the steaming bowl before us, cheering, "Finally, something better than plain rice and salt!"

Arthur had sat there, smoking cheap cigarettes, coughing with red-rimmed eyes as he swore he’d give us the life we deserved the following year.

Yet, after ten years of struggle, just when our lives finally turned around, his first love came back to the country.

Arthur threw everything away without a second thought.

He took every penny my mom and he had scraped together through sweat and blood over the last decade and blew it all on luxury boutiques for Lily.

Every stitch of clothing my mom and I owned wouldn't even cover the tax on one of the dresses he bought for that woman.

Three designer dresses... enough to buy thousands of warm bowls of noodles with an egg at the bottom.

My eyes burned, a sharp, aching pain spreading from my chest straight to my fingertips.

Remembering Arthur's parting curse, I pressed my cheek against my mother’s pale hand. "You're not going to die, Mom. You're going to live a long, beautiful life."

Because the only one who deserved to rot in hell was Arthur.