Chapter 2

The screen displayed the synced backend data from that latest-model smartwatch on his wrist.

He'd bought that watch last month, claiming it was to monitor his sleep quality.

But this afternoon, I'd discovered that the watch's health app was secretly linked to another person's account.

The account's profile picture was a selfie of Vivian in tight yoga clothes.

"Every night at eleven o'clock, your heart rate spikes to 120 beats per minute."

I stared into his evasive eyes, tearing away his mask.

"Ethan, you've been carrying on with her this whole time!"

Ethan's lips trembled.

He instinctively hid his hand behind his back, trying to conceal the watch.

"You're making things up! I go running at eleven at night!"

I cut him off: "Stop lying! You even logged her menstrual cycle!"

I held his tablet in front of him.

After a brief silence, the panic in his eyes rapidly transformed into humiliated rage.

"You've been spying on me?"

He violently threw the tablet onto the sofa, glaring at me through clenched teeth.

"Charlotte, you're a psycho! Checking my phone every day, checking my watch—are you sick!? You're disgusting!"

I took a deep breath, suppressing the tearing pain in my chest.

"If being with me disgusts you so much, then get out right now and go to the hospital to see Vivian."

Ethan grabbed the car keys from the living room and yanked open the door without looking back.

"Fine, Charlotte. Don't regret this!"

I replied: "My only regret is being blind enough not to see what garbage you are."

"You think I want to come back to this cold, dead home?"

Ethan stood in the doorway, one foot across the threshold, then turned back and looked me up and down with utterly contemptuous eyes.

"Charlotte, look at yourself—this hysterical mess you've become. Your hair's a wreck, you don't even wear makeup, all you do is obsess over every little thing I do."

"Now look at Vivian—even when she's sick, she's gentler and more beautiful than you!"

So he finally said what he really thought.

I stood quietly in the center of the living room, watching this man I'd loved for seven years, feeling the blood in my veins turn to ice.

So in his eyes, the exhaustion I'd suffered staying up late caring for this household had become his reason to despise me.

I didn't speak. Instead, I turned and walked to the TV cabinet, pulling open the bottom drawer.

I took out a crumpled hospital payment receipt and a printout of an insurance policy.

I walked to the door and threw both documents directly in his face.

"Ethan, if you think she's so wonderful, why did you marry me in the first place?"

"You keep saying how pitiful she is—then what about this critical illness insurance policy worth three hundred thousand dollars?"

Ethan looked down at the papers scattered on the floor, his pupils contracting sharply.

That was an insurance policy he'd secretly bought for Vivian three months ago, with her mother listed as the beneficiary.

And the premium had been transferred from our joint savings account—money we'd been setting aside for a new house.

"You... you went through my study?" he shouted, livid.

I looked at him coldly:

"Ethan, have you forgotten how I nearly died on the operating table just one year ago?"