Chapter 3

Catching sight of me at the door, Ethan's smile froze on his face.

He quickly walked up to me and reached out to embrace me.

"Isabelle, here's the thing..."

"Vanessa's mother doesn't have much time left. Her biggest wish before passing is to see Vanessa get married."

"Vanessa still doesn't have a boyfriend. I plan to first pretend to hold a wedding with her. Your wedding will have to be postponed..."

I stared at Vanessa.

The wedding dress that had been custom-made to my measurements fit Vanessa, who was a head shorter than me, perfectly.

Vanessa pretended to speak weakly:

"Ethan, maybe we should just forget it. After all, Isabelle has been waiting for five years. I feel bad about this."

She made a show of trying to take off the dress but was stopped by my son.

He crashed into me like a cannonball.

"Bad woman! You must be jealous that Auntie looks like a fairy in the wedding dress! Your stomach looks like old tree bark—nothing looks good on you!"

I was knocked hard to the ground, too pained to recover for a long time.

Seeing my pained expression, my son felt a bit guilty.

But he still stood there with his neck stiff.

Ethan rushed over to pull me up.

"Ryan! Why did you push Mommy?"

His gaze fell on my abdomen, his expression somewhat reluctant.

"Isabelle, if you really mind, I'll have someone else pretend with Vanessa..."

I shook off his hand and stood up by myself.

"I don't mind."

I opened my phone calculator.

"Besides the wedding and the dress, I need to add the money for your wedding night with her..."

Before I could finish calculating, Ethan slapped my phone out of my hand.

"Isabelle, are you sick? Ryan is right here!"

"Vanessa and I are completely innocent. I really don't understand how you became like this!"

I looked up at him.

"She wants to steal everything I have. I can't compete with her, so asking for some monetary compensation is wrong too?"

Ethan was speechless.

His chest heaved violently, as if he was extremely angry with me.

"I can't be bothered to argue with you."

He pulled out his phone and jabbed at the screen as if venting.

The next second, a deposit notification popped up on my phone.

"I must have been blind back then!"

Ethan pulled the two of them out and slammed the door so hard it shook.

I looked at the string of zeros on the screen, desperately holding back my spinning tears.

When I first got together with Ethan, he had nothing.

I shared a discounted hamburger with him and lived in a dark, damp basement.

Back then, he often felt indebted to me. After work, he'd deliver food just to earn extra money to buy me cakes that other girls loved.

When I casually mentioned that clothes were hard to dry, he spent half a month's salary to buy me a small dryer.

When I caught him drinking cold water in the middle of the night to fill his stomach, I cried out of heartache.

But he just held me tighter and choked up, saying I had suffered with him, vowing to compensate me well once he had money.

But after he turned his life around, every single thing he tried to compensate me with was stolen by Vanessa.

Now I was just fighting for some financial compensation for myself, and in return I got "I must have been blind."

I tried to take deep breaths and scrolled through my phone to distract myself.

But my social media feed was full of posts from Vanessa.

Ethan had taken her to discuss wedding plans.

The venue renderings she posted were the exact version I had carefully refined bit by bit according to my own preferences.

I never imagined that the wedding I'd looked forward to for so long would end up benefiting my own husband and another woman.

I gripped my phone tightly and was about to block her.

But my eyes inadvertently caught sight of her wrist.

When I saw clearly what she was wearing, I couldn't hold back anymore. I rushed straight to her location!