“I heard this place belongs to you? You’re awfully young to be this selfish. Your wife already gave us the apartment to live in, and you still have the nerve to ask for three hundred dollars?”

I turned and shoved Claire away with all my strength.

So that was how she wanted to play it.

She was the one who had rented out the apartment, but she had told them I was the one asking for rent.

She got to look generous, while I became the petty one.

“Noah, let’s go home first. Once we’re home, I’ll tell you everything from start to finish.”

Claire clutched my wrist tightly, her eyes full of pleading.

But was she pleading for her own dignity, or for Mark?

When she saw my expression grow colder and colder, she made up her mind and tried to drag me out first.

Instead, I suddenly kicked over the umbrella stand by the entrance.

Then I pointed at the blue employee badge hanging on the wall, my voice trembling.

“You gave him my job too?

“So this is what you meant when you said he didn’t have a job?

“Claire, how much have you lied to me about?”

For that job, I had kept working remotely even while I was in the hospital recovering from surgery.

The moment I was discharged, I went straight back to work. I took care of Daisy while handling my job at the same time.

I had practically worked myself to death to rise from an entry-level position to associate director.

But three years ago, over dinner, Claire suddenly told me the company was cutting staff.

I was one of the people being let go.

She had apologized to me with red eyes, saying that although she was the HR director, she had no power over the board’s decision.

I felt sorry that she was caught in the middle. Even though I was deeply reluctant to leave, I comforted her instead.

“It’s okay, honey. This way, I can stay home and focus on taking care of Daisy.”

Over the next few years, I thought more than once that once Daisy started elementary school, I would go out and find a job again.

But today, I saw the employee badge that should have belonged to me, now bearing Mark’s name.

Judging by the employee number, his start date was two months after Emily died.

It was the very same month I left.

She had lied to me again.

The company had never laid me off.

She had wanted to give my position to Mark.

Now that she could no longer hide this either, Claire lowered her voice.

“Honey, I’m begging you. Let’s go home first...”

But I stood there without moving.

At this hour, she wasn’t at work because of Mark’s call.

And Mark wasn’t at work either.

Why?

At the thought, I let out a cold laugh.

“Claire, this is an associate director position in the creative department, and you actually dared to let him hold the title and collect a salary without showing up?”

“When I was working there, I was sick and asked you for leave, and you wouldn’t even approve it.”

Maybe my voice sounded too desolate, because Mark walked over.

The moment he opened his mouth, he sighed, his face twisted with distress.

“Noah, don’t blame Claire. She just felt that after Emily passed away, it wasn’t easy for me to raise two kids on my own. Besides, men and women are different. She did it for me, for Lily...”

I couldn’t bear another word and cut him off.

“Mark, you take more than twenty thousand a month for doing nothing, pay three hundred dollars to move your whole family of six into a place like this, and have my wife come over to help with every big and small thing.

“Exactly which part of your life is hard?”

“Noah!” Seeing Mark’s face turn pale, Claire grabbed me hard and dragged me out without caring how it looked.

She didn’t let go until we reached the entrance of the complex.

Then she put on that pleading expression again.

“Honey, please listen to me. I had no choice.

“After Emily died, Mark was devastated. He kept threatening to kill himself. I did all this to keep him stable.”

I stared straight at her until the look in my eyes made her skin crawl.

“When Emily died, you and your mother fell apart. I was the one who handled the entire funeral.

“I know better than you what state he was in.”

A man who had truly been devastated by the loss of his wife would not have taken his six-month-old daughter to trendy cafés for check-in photos.

If he had truly wanted to kill himself, he would not have slept until late morning while I was so exhausted I nearly collapsed, then pretended to wipe away a tear and say, “Noah, you’ve worked hard.”

Even now, she was still lying to me.

Today marked the eighth year of our marriage. Our daughter was six and a half.

And yet, for the first time, I looked at her seriously.

I wondered what exactly was going on inside the heart of this woman I had once loved so sincerely.

At that point, Claire seemed to deflate.

She lowered her head, kicked a stone by the curb, and gave up pretending.

“Noah, I’ll tell you the truth. Before Emily passed, she asked me to take care of Mark and the kids.

“Later, he came to me holding Lily and leading Ben by the hand. I couldn’t just ignore them.”

I shook my head.

“That isn’t a reason. If he came to you, you could have told me.

“But you chose to hide it from me. You even lied to me and took what belonged to me to give to him.”

The person in front of me stayed silent for a long time before forcing out one sentence.

“I was afraid you’d overthink it. I had no choice.”

There it was again.

No choice.

I didn’t understand.

At our wedding, she had promised that in sickness and in health, in life and in death, I would come first.

How had that woman spent three years lying to me for another man?

Was it only because he was Emily’s widower?

Or was it because she had other feelings for him?

“Claire, I’m asking you one last time.

“Other than all this, is there anything else you haven’t told me the truth about?”

Claire heard the meaning beneath my words and immediately shook her head.

“No. Really.

“And everything I’ve done for him was only because of Emily’s last wish. I didn’t want her soul to be unable to rest.”

After saying that, she came over to take my hand, lowering herself completely.

“Honey, believe me. That’s everything.

“I promise you, I’ll slowly reduce my contact with Mark. If he needs anything, he can go to his mother or hire a nanny.

“From now on, I’ll spend every weekend with you and Daisy.”

Every word sounded like an admission of fault, but she was avoiding the real issues.

She had not mentioned a single thing that actually needed to be fixed.

Disappointment surged through me. I clenched my teeth and pulled my arm free.

My phone vibrated. A friend had sent me a message.

“Didn’t you say you couldn’t get a spot at the downtown elementary school? I took my kid there this morning to handle enrollment, and I swear I saw your wife.

“Oh, right. I thought your child was a girl. Since when did she become a boy?”

In the video, the woman signing the paperwork was dressed exactly like Claire.

It was Claire.

And standing beside her, holding a model airplane with a spoiled, arrogant look on his face, was Ben Lewis.

Mark’s eldest son, the same age as Daisy.

No wonder Mark’s family had six people, but I had only seen five of them.

I raised my head, and the rage inside me burned stronger than it ever had before.

The job and the apartment she had given Mark were mine.

But that school placement belonged to Daisy.

“Claire, the thing I regret most is ever believing your lies!”

I shoved the phone in front of her. She looked at it blankly for a moment, then panicked.

“Noah, listen to me... Ben is old enough to start school, but Mark doesn’t own property here, so I...”

“Is Daisy not old enough to start school too? You gave your own daughter’s school spot to someone else’s child. Aren’t you afraid Daisy will hate you?”

“No, that’s not it. I had no choice. Emily asked me to...”

“No. You had a choice.”

For some reason, the moment I heard those three words again, the fury in my heart suddenly turned into a wave of sorrow.

So this was the woman I had married.

A good person in front of everyone else, and a liar in front of me.

At that moment, I became calm.

“When Mark had nowhere to live, you could have told me and let me decide whether to rent the apartment to him.

“When he had no job, you could have asked me to let him join my department, and I could have trained him myself.

“Even with this school placement, since you found a way to give it to Ben, you definitely could have found a way to get one for Daisy.

“But you didn’t. You used ‘I had no choice’ as an excuse. You abandoned me and our daughter, then handed every good thing over to them.”

Claire’s features twisted together as she kept shaking her head.

“That’s not what happened. Honey, listen to me. I really had no choice.”

My back slowly straightened.

“Then let me tell you what choice I’m going to make to get back what belongs to me.”

“What?”

I unlocked my phone and made the call right in front of her.

“I want to report a case. My wife rented out my apartment to her relatives at an extremely low price without my consent.

“I suspect they colluded maliciously in an attempt to unlawfully occupy my personal property.”