###Chapter 3
A velvet box rolled to my feet. I opened it. Inside was a pair of expensive diamond rings I had never seen before. Their bright light hurt my eyes.
Then a stack of saved ticket stubs and photos fell out.
My hands trembled as I checked the dates. Tears ran down my face, but a strange, bitter smile pulled at my lips.
On top was a yellowed cruise ticket. The date was the day my daughter was born.
Richard said he had an urgent business trip. But in the photo, while I was bleeding heavily during a difficult childbirth, he was kneeling on a sunset deck in the Aegean Sea, putting a diamond ring on Margareth’s finger. His eyes looked as devoted as a believer.
The next one was a ticket to the Louvre. The date was my thirty-second birthday.
That night, I waited in a restaurant until it closed, only to receive a message from his assistant saying, “Mr. Hawthorne is accompanying an important client.” But he had booked the Eiffel Tower restaurant to make Margareth, that “client,” happy.
Ticket after ticket, photo after photo, it felt like knives stabbing into my heart.
The day my parents died in a car accident, he was in Bali, kissing Margareth passionately while she wore a bikini. They looked like a perfect couple.
On our twentieth wedding anniversary, he was feeding pigeons with her in Prague Square. Time had left fine lines on their faces, but the way he looked at her was still so intense that it shocked me.
All of these places were places I once dreamed of visiting.
Whenever I mentioned traveling together, he would only reply coldly, “It’s boring. I don’t want to go.”
So it was not the scenery that was boring. It was me.
My eyes stopped on the last card. It was a pregnancy checkup card from a high-end private hospital, dated three months ago.
On the back of the card were Richard’s familiar words:
“It’s okay that the baby is gone, my love. This time, we will never be apart again.”
Suddenly, everything felt so ridiculous.
Three months ago, he was “on a business trip” for a whole month.
At that time, his wrong decision almost caused the company to lose tens of millions. I stayed up for three days and nights to fix it. My stomach hurt so badly that I curled up on the floor.
I called him, my voice shaking. “Richard, I feel very unwell. Can you come back?”
He only sounded impatient. “If you’re sick, see a doctor. What can I do?”
So during that month, he had been accompanying Margareth to pregnancy checkups and arranging the best nutritionists in the world to take care of her after her miscarriage.
My stomach churned. I rushed into the bathroom and started retching violently.
I splashed cold water on my face and looked up at the woman in the mirror: pale yellow skin, empty eyes, looking old and worn out.
No wonder he would not even spare me a proper glance.
But he forgot that I was once bright and full of life, young and beautiful. Who drained away my youth?
After drying my face, I returned to the study and took out the share agreement.
Then I dialed a familiar number again. The man was Richard’s biggest rival and the person he hated the most, Margot Ward.
“Besides business cooperation, I’ll give you a big gift,” I said calmly, in a voice that even felt strange to me. “Twenty percent of Hawthorne Group’s shares. I believe you would be interested.”
Margot’s tone turned playful. “Oh? You’re really willing to give it up? That’s Richard’s lifeline.”
“Willing?” I let out a bitter laugh. “What he did to me was ten thousand times worse than this.”
Hearing the tremble in my voice, Margot became serious. “What exactly did he do? Hermione, tell me. I will help you.”
That simple care from someone outside the family made the wall around my heart collapse in an instant.
After listening to everything I said, there was silence on the other end of the phone. Then his steady voice came again.
“I understand. Hermione, I stand on your side unconditionally. We’ll meet in five days.”
“Thank you, Margot.”
Just as I hung up, a burst of rough footsteps rushed in.
“Can’t you even handle such a small thing? You’re useless!”
