After I uploaded what the two of them had done to the cloud, I finally fell into a heavy sleep.
The next morning I took a cab straight to Lewis's company and called a shareholders' meeting. The shareholders' secretaries only knew me as Mr. Thomas's wife, and my fax meant nothing to them. But the moment their bosses heard, they rushed straight up to the top-floor conference room.
Word reached Lewis fast. He shoved the conference room doors open.
"What are you making a scene about now?" He frowned and waved me over to the doorway.
"Nothing." I looked at him, cold. If a stare could kill, Lewis would have died a thousand times over under mine.
"You don't understand company matters, and these shareholders aren't people you're in any position to meet, understand? Actually, it's fine you're here. I'm going to announce Violet as vice president of Thomas Group, and tomorrow she's going to quietly strike these shareholders off the system." Lewis said it plainly.
Back then, once I'd talked these people around, they'd thrown everything behind Lewis for my sake, sparing no money and no connections.
Thomas Group had only reached this point because of those college classmates I once funded, the very shareholders he was so casually declaring he'd remove.
"Violet's pregnant. She's very sensitive right now, and she wants every one of the pretty shareholders gone." Lewis said it like it was nothing at all.
He was going to strike off shareholders who had emptied their pockets to help, all because of something Violet said offhand during her pregnancy? I had almost, out of decency, meant to warn them.
"You're a housewife who couldn't even manage to become a mother. How could you possibly understand Violet?" Lewis's face was turning a hard, iron gray.
Thinking of that baby, barely formed, my fingertips shook with the ache of it.
When I was confirmed pregnant, he told me a pregnant woman shouldn't be so precious about herself. While I endured the side effects of the IVF drugs day after day, he was behind my back, working out with Violet how to kill my baby.
I laughed out loud all at once, nodding again and again. "You're right, I don't understand a thing. Since the two of you have already decided, then here's to Thomas Group going from strength to strength."
I turned and went back into the conference room, and told my college classmates right away that Lewis meant to quietly strike them off.
One of them had once been my roommate. She'd come out of a poor mountain region, and if not for my funding she'd never have become the renowned entrepreneur she was.
She looked at me and said, "I always felt Lewis wasn't reliable. Back then I was sure he'd brainwashed you. It's just as well. I'll have my secretary pull our investment now."
Every classmate got on the phone with their assistants at once, demanding to sever ties with Thomas Group as fast as possible.
Lewis watched us from the other side of the soundproof glass wall, with no idea what we were saying.
When I walked out of the conference room, I ignored Lewis glaring at the door and left the place without another word.
His words were like a rusted knife, dragging back and forth through my wound.
My chest was tight, like a stone pressing down on it, and I couldn't hold on any longer. I ran out.
I don't know how long I ran. When I finally stopped, spent, I found I'd come without meaning to, to the park where Lewis and I had our first date.
I'd barely reached the water when I saw Violet walking toward me with a sneering little laugh.
"Sis, you've been married to Lewis all these years and you don't even have a job. Not like me. Tomorrow I'm going to be vice president of Thomas Group."
"You know what I love about Lewis?"
"His money? His face? Wrong. What I love is the way he loves you. Anything that belongs to you, I want it, and I want to enjoy it right in front of you."
"To get him, I even carried his child. He told me you were a dead fish in bed. Not like me. Men can't get enough of me." She was laughing so hard there were tears in her eyes.
I kept ignoring her. I knew this exact look in my eyes was the thing Violet hated most.
"Oh, right. That unborn baby of yours was never any human-gene experiment. It was abortion drugs mixed specially for you. Your child was never going to be born. Not like mine, who's been enjoying endless wealth and glory from inside my belly."
My breath went ragged, and the dark came at me in waves. With every bit of strength I had, I grabbed her hair and wrenched her hard toward the ground.
"I'm going to make you regret this."
"I'm going to let the whole world know you stole a married man. And that man is your own sister's husband. You'll be branded a woman with no morals for the rest of your life!"
My move frightened her. Then, all at once, she threw herself into the artificial lake beside us.
"Sis, I'm sorry!" she cried out from the water.
"I'll never show my face in front of you again. If my dying makes you happy, I'll sink to the bottom of this lake right now."
Lewis came running and shoved me hard toward the water. "You're vicious!"
I lost my footing and went in. The cold water swallowed me in an instant, and I thrashed on instinct, my face streaming, though I couldn't tell the lake water from the tears of everything I'd swallowed.
"Lewis, we've known each other for over ten years. In your eyes, am I really that kind of person?" I demanded, wretched in the water.
He watched me bob up and down, and stayed silent a few seconds, a flicker of guilt crossing his face. The next second he dove in and lifted Violet up onto the bank.
"There's a limit to how far your foolishness can go."
I kept struggling in the water, in no state to answer him.
On the bank Lewis held Violet, soaked through, his eyes full of tenderness for her.
He looked down his nose at me. "You can reflect on yourself in there."
And so he carried her off in his arms, and let me sink and rise in the water before his very eyes.
The evening lake was cold enough to bite into bone, and I floated helpless in that vast expanse.
Once, Lewis would come undone over the smallest bit of my hair getting wet in the rain. Now he didn't spare a thought for the fact that I'd lost a baby days ago, and let me drown in that foul, reeking water.
Only when my vision went black and I had no strength left to struggle did Lewis order his bodyguards to fish me out.
When I came to again, I was in a cramped, pitch-black space where I couldn't see my own hand. I could feel clearly that my body was moving the whole time.
Not far off, Lewis was talking to Violet in that gentle voice. "I promise I won't let Nadia near you again. She's an impossible woman. The passenger seat is yours forever, and as for Nadia, the trunk suits her just fine."
With that, they fell into a kiss.
The sound of them kissing bored clearly into my ears. I wept without a sound, and the exhaustion pulled me back down into endless darkness.
I don't know how long it was before a basin of cold water woke me. Through the blur I saw Lewis like a lion gone mad. "You made Violet bleed! If anything happens to her and my son, I will never let you off!"
