### Chapter 5
Vanessa dropped to the floor, clutching her stomach, and screamed.
“My baby! Audrey, why did you push me?”
The next second, Frederick burst into the bathroom.
He saw Vanessa crumpled on the tiles, sobbing, and his face went dark as he turned on me.
“What did you do to her?!”
Before I could say a word, he shoved me aside and scooped up Vanessa, still crying her pretty little eyes out.
“Ah!”
I hit the cold tile floor hard, and a searing pain tore through my stomach.
Beneath me, a dark red stain slowly spread.
I reached for Frederick, terrified：“I didn't do anything to her. Frederick, my stomach……”
“Shut up. Don't fucking pretend with me.”
He didn't even glance at me. He carried Vanessa out the door and was gone.
I curled up on the floor, cold sweat soaking through every layer I wore.
My abdomen was screaming. My heart, though—that didn't hurt so much anymore.
I dragged myself upright, made it down the stairs one step at a time, and called a cab alone.
Blood ran down my legs. The driver was so frightened he blew through two red lights.
We passed the little park on the corner, and I suddenly remembered where it all began.
That same old tree. A boy standing under it, face going red because I'd told him first, nodding before he could get a full sentence out.
“Yeah, yeah……”
“I mean, I like you too, Audrey.”
The memory flickered past, so sweet it made me laugh out loud even as my eyes blurred with tears.
That “honest man” I'd found so endearingly sincere had only ever been something I invented.
Just last night, a full asset report on Frederick had landed in my inbox.
Hundreds of millions.
Even his parents weren't ordinary office workers. They were silent owners behind an entire company.
Yet he hadn't even been willing to give us a decent wedding.
I finally saw it for what it was: he had never loved me.
Five years of marriage, nothing but a game to him. A lie spun to keep me from ever learning about the money.
Sitting on the hospital bed, I pressed my hands against my hollow stomach, and my eyes went cold.
I dialed my attorney：
“I've sent over all the evidence. File to freeze Frederick Sanchez's assets.”
I'd meant to part on decent terms. No need for that now.
My phone buzzed. A message from Daniel Fleming, my college friend and CEO of Westfield Group.
“Tickets are booked. I'll send a car for you the day after tomorrow.”
“Good. See you then.”
The baby was gone. Five years of love, severed clean. It was time to leave.
At the gate, right before boarding, a text from Frederick.
“Do you have any idea Vanessa almost lost the baby because of you?”
“Fine, I lied to you. I slept with her. But if you're angry, take it out on me. What does she have to do with it?”
“Just apologize to Vanessa and we'll put it behind us. You only did all this because you love me too much, and being pregnant made you a little emotional. I get it.”
That interrogating tone, that lofty charity-dispensing attitude—I actually laughed.
What right did he have to defend Vanessa to me?
Where did he find the nerve to demand I apologize?
I typed fast：“In a few days, you can talk to my attorney. In court.”
Sent. Phone off. I walked onto the plane without looking back.
Once I stopped loving him, the whole sky opened up. I was done being someone's useless housewife. I had a career to claim—world-class AI engineer.
Eight hours later I landed and powered the phone back on.
Frederick's missed calls and messages hit the screen like artillery fire.
The first few dozen were all threats and warnings.
Then the tone shifted, fraying into agitation and unease.
By the last hundred or so, the long and short voice messages, the broken strings of text, they reeked of raw, bone-deep panic.
He had finally realized the divorce was real, and that I had slipped out of his grip for good.
