Chapter 2

Victoria carried several large bags of gifts and deliberately bought a watch for my daughter.

"If you wanted a watch, you could have asked me. How could you steal one?"

Ryan’s eyes lit up. He took the watch and handed it to our daughter.

I angrily snatched it and smashed it against the floor. Wasn’t this obviously meant to mock us?

"What are you doing? You’re being so petty. Victoria only wants what’s best for our daughter. That watch cost several thousand dollars."

Our daughter walked upstairs with a dark expression. Ryan told me to leave her alone.

Victoria stood nearby and spoke in a mocking, sarcastic tone. "She’s just a child. If she did something wrong, she should pay the price. Is stealing really something to be proud of? If you don’t teach children when they’re young, they’ll grow up with no sense of right and wrong."

"It’s my responsibility that my daughter wasn’t raised properly, isn’t it?"

I clenched my teeth and shouted, "My daughter didn’t steal that watch at all. The two of you know exactly where it came from."

Ryan was enraged by my words. He rushed over and slapped me.

"Don’t push me too far. Victoria meant well. Besides, your daughter has a mental illness. She was never going anywhere in life anyway, so what’s wrong with her having a criminal record?"

I never imagined my husband could say something like that.

That was his biological daughter.

Was his own daughter really less important than the daughter of his first love, a girl who wasn’t even related to him by blood?

"Do you even hear yourself?"

My husband ignored me and dragged Victoria outside. He said I had ruined his mood, so the two of them were going out to eat.

I sat alone in the living room, lighting cigarette after cigarette.

When had Ryan become like this? He seemed determined to drain our family dry to support his female friend.

When I first met Ryan, he had been gentle and responsible.

At the time, my grandmother came to visit me. She had a physical disability and struggled to walk. People often pointed at her, and even when she asked for directions, they treated her with disdain.

Ryan was the one who brought her to me. Before coming over, he had even taken her out to dinner.

I had been deeply moved.

Later, when my grandmother accidentally fell, Ryan was the one who helped her and took her to the hospital.

He had been different from everyone else. He was like a ray of light shining into my heart.

If not for his female friend Victoria constantly appearing in our lives, everything might have been different.

On the day we got married, Victoria had suddenly gotten married herself. She even texted Ryan.

[If you say the word, I’ll replace the groom with you.]

Ryan had been touched and kept the message, but he insisted that they were only friends.

Whenever we argued after that, Ryan would always say the same thing.

"If there were really something between us, we would have gotten together long ago."

Later, Victoria’s husband died after his heart condition returned, leaving behind their daughter, Ava.

Ryan personally took care of everything. He said that he and Victoria had grown up together, so of course he had to help her.

I opened my phone and saw Victoria’s post on Instagram. It showed Ryan posing with her daughter, Ava.

[Not her biological father, but better than one. The best childhood friend in the world—and Ava’s "dad."]

Watching him eagerly play father to someone else’s child felt almost laughable.

When I went upstairs, I saw that my daughter had fallen asleep. Only then did I feel slightly relieved.