I don’t know how I ended up in the hospital.
When I opened my eyes, everything was blinding white.
The sharp smell of disinfectant stung my nose.
A young nurse noticed I was awake and walked over.
“Miss Su, you’re finally up. You lost a lot of blood. The baby… couldn’t be saved.”
My mind went completely blank.
The baby…
gone.
The only bond between me and William—
gone.
Tears slid down my face silently, soaking into the pillow.
I didn’t sob.
It was just… the place where my heart used to be felt hollow, like someone had carved it open and left it to freeze.
The nurse sighed softly.
“Your father’s surgery went very well. He’s out of danger now. He kept asking for you… Do you want to see him?”
My father.
Right.
I still had him.
I couldn’t break.
I forced myself upright, pulled out the IV needle despite the nurse’s protests, and dragged my weak body down the hall.
When I reached his room and saw him lying there—pale, tubes everywhere, the rise and fall of his chest so faint—
my knees gave out.
I collapsed beside the bed and sobbed harder than I ever had in my life.
It was my fault.
My foolish love for a man who never wanted me…
almost cost me the only family I had left.
When the tears finally dried, I wiped my face clean.
And something inside me shifted.
Suzy, enough.
Wake up.
---
Three days later, I was discharged.
When I returned to the villa I used to call “home,” everything was frozen in time—
exactly the way it had been that night.
The dried blood on the dining table stood out like an ugly scar.
Expressionless, I walked upstairs.
In the bedroom, I opened a drawer.
The divorce agreement was still lying inside, untouched.
I picked up a pen
and signed my name at the bottom—
bold, final, without a trace of hesitation.
Suzy.
Then I packed a small suitcase.
Just a few pieces of clothing
and the keepsakes my mother left me.
Everything else in this house belonged to William.
I didn’t want a single thing.
Before leaving, I placed the signed divorce papers and a house key on the entryway cabinet.
And I left a note.
Just one sentence:
We’re even now, William.
With that, I pulled my suitcase behind me and walked out—
out of the mansion that had been my prison for three long years.
I didn’t look back.
The sunlight outside was painfully bright.
I narrowed my eyes, inhaled deeply.
From now on, the world was wide, and I lived for myself.
---
I left the city with my father and moved to a quiet southern town where no one knew our names.
I sold the jewelry my mother had left me.
Rented a small courtyard house.
Took care of my father and rebuilt my life from nothing.
I changed my phone number.
Cut off every tie to my past.
To them, I might as well have vanished.
And I truly believed William and I would never cross paths again.
Until one year later—
I saw his name again in a financial news report.
There he was, still the untouchable king of the business world.
Sharp suit, arrogant poise.
Beside him stood Anna, smiling sweetly at the cameras.
The report said the Shen Group reached new heights under his leadership.
And he and Miss Qiao were expected to announce their engagement soon.
I turned off the TV calmly.
Then went back outside to water the flowers in my little courtyard.
My heart didn’t react.
Not even a flinch.
A woman who has already died once
doesn’t feel pain anymore.
The first year after Suzy left, William lived in a rare state of ease.
Without that woman who always looked at him with those soft, adoring eyes—eyes that somehow managed to irritate him every single time—
his world felt finally, blessedly quiet.
Anna was gentle and sweet, endlessly considerate, fussing over him in all the ways a perfect woman should.
Everyone said they were meant to be.
And William believed it.
He really did.
He thought they’d get married soon and build the life he’d dreamed of for years.
So why…
why did it feel like something was missing?
Whenever he came home, the villa felt colder than it used to—
no soft light waiting for him in the entryway,
no home-cooked meal warming on the table.
The walk-in closet was spotless.
Everything that had once belonged to Suzy was gone, as if she’d never existed.
Sometimes he’d scoff, irritated by the memory of her.
That woman was ruthless—took the money and vanished without a trace.
Part of him even wondered, cruelly,
if she was hiding in some corner of the world now, crying her eyes out because she couldn’t survive without a man to cling to.
Then one day, he found a forgotten bottle in the corner of his study.
Folic acid.
He frowned, tossed it into the trash without another thought.
But that night, he had a dream.
Suzy stood there in a white dress, hands gently resting over her stomach, smiling softly.
“William,” she whispered,
“we’re having a baby.”
He bolted awake, heart pounding, sweat soaking through his shirt.
A fear he’d never felt before wrapped cold fingers around his throat.
He started investigating.
He needed to know.
Had Suzy been pregnant that night?
The results came quickly—just a few thin pages, but they hit him like a ten-ton weight.
Suzy. Eight weeks pregnant. Threatened miscarriage.
Patient experienced severe bleeding due to emotional distress and external impact.
Fetus not saved.
Family did not sign surgical consent.
His hands trembled so violently he almost dropped the report.
She…
had really been pregnant.
She wasn’t lying.
And he—
he had killed his own child.
He remembered her lying there in that pool of blood, reaching out to him in desperation…
while he walked away holding another woman in his arms.
A raw, animal sound tore out of him.
He slammed his fist onto his desk so hard blood seeped from his knuckles, but he didn’t feel a thing.
His heart felt like it was being carved open, piece by piece.
He lost his mind.
Grabbed his keys.
Drove straight back to the villa.
He tore through Suzy’s old room, ripping open drawers, cabinets, anything he could get his hands on.
Finally, in a hidden compartment of a drawer, he found it—
A crumpled pregnancy test.
A small ultrasound picture with a tiny gestational sac.
And beside them, a journal she had kept.
October 12 — I’m pregnant. Will William love this baby?
October 25 — The baby is so good. So quiet. I think… I’ll tell William on our anniversary. He’ll be surprised.
November 15 — Check-up today. Doctor says the baby is healthy. I gave him/her a nickname—Nian Nian. I hope William will remember us, even just a little.
The last page was dated the night of their third anniversary.
He’s back. With Anna.
He said the baby was a sin.
The handwriting trailed off, blurred by tears.
William collapsed to the floor, strength draining from his body.
And then he cried—
loud, broken, gut-wrenching sobs—
like a man whose soul had finally shattered.
Regret crawled through him like poison, tearing him apart from the inside out.