"Donate the cord blood."

Those words sliced through me, sharp as a blade, piercing straight into my heart.

Was my unborn child really meant to be nothing more than medicine for his beloved woman?

Blood rushed to my head, and my whole body trembled.

Dylan tried to touch my shoulder, but I turned away in disgust.

His face darkened, his tone turning to ice. "Claudia, don't be ungrateful. If you agree, I won't divorce you. Once the child is born, I'll give him the best life. This is the greatest favor I can offer you. After all, we have been married for eight years."

Favor?

I laughed bitterly.

I grabbed a nearby porcelain figurine and hurled it at his forehead with all my strength.

"Bang!"

Blood flowed down from his temple.

I stared at him fiercely and demanded, "What makes you think you can sacrifice my own child for you and that woman? Why would you use my child as a stepping stone for your love?"

Dylan wiped the blood from his forehead, his eyes dark and terrifying.

"Why?"

He smiled, his expression full of contempt. "Because you're a cripple now!"

His cold words, like a blunt knife, cut repeatedly into my already scarred wound.

"Claudia, take a good look at yourself. Without me, what could you do? A dancer with a broken leg? Without me, you and this child of unknown origin couldn't even survive."

He leaned close to my ear, his tone mocking. "Don't forget, the one in your belly is the child of a beggar. Do you think the Wallace family would accept a grandchild fathered by a beggar? So, giving the umbilical cord blood to Nora is your only chance to show your value."

I looked at the face I had loved for eight years, and my stomach turned.

Dylan was still justifying his shameless actions.

"This isn't about sacrifice. It's about saving a life. "Claudia, Nora is innocent. If you refuse to donate out of pure selfishness, it will be no different from killing her with your own hands. This sin will follow you for the rest of your life. You and your child will live in guilt forever."

I stared back coldly.

What a noble love.

This so-called redemption was built on the sacrifice of my child.

This deep affection trampled on my broken bones and ruined my life.

I had imagined countless times, once my legs were healed, I would have a lovely child with Dylan.

I would teach him to dance and tell him that his mother was once the brightest star on the stage.

But that simple dream was first stripped away by Dylan's lies.

Now, he was trying to twist it into a tool to save another woman.

My heart felt as if it were being tightly gripped by an invisible hand, so painful that I could hardly breathe.

I mustered all my strength to push him away.

"Dylan."

I wiped my tears, looking at his pitiful appearance, my voice cold. "I will get a divorce. The child is mine, and no one else will touch him. As for you... This eight years of deception and humiliation, I will make you pay dearly."

After saying that, I didn't look back at his shocked face, and walked away.

The bodyguards immediately followed, shielding me from anyone who tried to stop me.

Behind me was Dylan's furious roar and a scene of chaos.

But I didn't look back.

There were no tears.

No hysterics.

Just a dead, chilling calm inside me, with a single flame of revenge flickering to life.

In the car, I pulled out my phone and dialed a number.

On the other end was Elora Wade, my father's most capable lead investigative journalist.

A woman known in certain circles for being able to "dig up secrets from the dead".

"Elora. It's me, Claudia," I said, my voice unnervingly steady. I want everything on Dylan's stand-in. His background, his family, every single transaction record between him and Dylan. The more detailed, the better."

Elora paused for a few seconds. "Miss, what do you mean by look-alike stand-in?"

I forced a smirk, my tone flat. "Dylan is a narcissistic control freak. He would never tolerate a sloppy imitation. To make sure that beggar could play his part perfectly, Dylan wrote a manual himself. Dozens of pages long.

It detailed everything. Even the private, intimate details of how he thought I should be handled.

The digital copy is in my cloud drive."

Elora's voice took on a new gravity. "Understood, Miss. You'll have everything you need within three days."

I interrupted her. "No, I need you to do one more thing. Inform my father that it's time to act. Start with the smaller stuff. The tax evasion at his company. The intern exploitation scandals. I want him to watch, helpless, as the empire he's so proud of is slowly eaten away from the inside, like termites gnawing at the foundations."

By the time I finished, the car had arrived at the villa, where I'd shared with Dylan.

I didn't return to the bedroom filled with humiliating memories.

Instead, I walked straight to the very back of the house, to a room that had been sealed shut for eight full years.

It was my dance studio.

Eight years had passed since I last set foot in here.

Inside, all the mirrors were covered with thick white cloths.

I walked over and gestured for the cloths to be pulled away, one by one.

The mirrors reflected a stranger.

Her face was pale, her figure frail.

I leaned against the cold bar, slowly lifting my right leg.

At the ankle, there was a grotesque scar, ugly and painful.

I had once felt inferior because of this scar, a constant reminder that I was a cripple.

A cripple that could never stand on stage again.

But now, looking at the wounded version of myself in the mirror, I felt an unprecedented sense of calm.

Dylan destroyed my dance career and my dreams.

But he probably never imagined that he also built for me a larger stage with his own hands.

A stage centered around revenge, with the entire Larson family as its backdrop.

And now, the show was about to begin.

Dylan probably thought my father's moves were just a small warning.

When his company's stock price started fluctuating abnormally, he was still fuming, convinced that I would soon calm down, come crawling back to him in tears, begging him not to abandon me and our child.

He was too arrogant.

And he had no idea just how much hatred a woman who had been completely shattered could unleash.

Dylan didn't get my surrender. Instead, he got a death knell.

Nora's doctor called, voice urgent. "Mr. Larson, Ms. Barton's condition has suddenly worsened! Conventional treatments aren't working anymore! We've urgently contacted an overseas institution. They have an experimental drug that might help, but we need to transfer 50 million immediately to airlift it here! Otherwise, Ms. Barton might not make it through the month."

50 million.

Dylan immediately called his CFO, ordering him to pull the funds from the company account.

The CFO's voice trembled on the other end. "Mr. Larson, we can't! Our major investors just withdrew their capital. All our accounts are under bank supervision now!"

Dylan's heart sank. A terrible premonition settled over him.

He tried tapping into his personal assets, only to find every bank account and line of credit frozen.

Before he could process it, his office door slammed open.

His PR director, face pale, rushed in and shoved a phone in his face.

"Mr. Larson, we have a major crisis!"

On the screen was the real-time trending topics.

"Dylan, CEO of Larson Group, accused of deceit and harming his wife."

A glaring red "breaking news" tag followed.

The top video showed a disheveled man sobbing into the camera, exposing how Dylan had paid him to mimic his mannerisms and sleep with his wife.

Below, crystal-clear bank transfer records and a detailed, dozens-page-long imitation manual were attached.

The evidence was irrefutable.

Dylan stared at the screen, mind blank.

The image he had maintained for eight years as the affectionate and genteel CEO was shattered in that instant.

He finally understood that Claudia wasn't throwing a tantrum.

She was executing a long-planned public execution.

The phone rang again.

The hospital's payment reminder call came through again, sounding like a death knell.

On his computer screen, an email popped up from the board of directors, demanding his immediate resignation.

Despair swallowed Dylan whole.

He frantically dialed my number, but the receiver only offered the cold, automated message. "The number you have dialed is powered off."

At the same time, I was lounging comfortably in the VIP bed of a private hospital room. The doctor had just finished a detailed prenatal checkup.

"Ms. Wallace, don't worry. Both you and the baby are perfectly healthy."

I thanked him with a smile and picked up my phone.

The screen showed dozens of missed calls and messages from Dylan.

The latest one, dripping with his trademark condescending command. "Claudia, I order you to pick up the phone!"

I looked at the words, a light chuckle escaping my lips. I didn't reply.

I waited until evening began to fall, then leisurely removed Dylan's number from the blocklist.

The phone rang almost instantly.

On the other end, Dylan's breathless voice came through.

I settled back against the soft hospital bed, gently stroking my stomach, and spoke softly into the phone. "Mr. Larson, you were looking for me?"