I did not care who he was with anymore.

As expected, Caleb did not show up for the next few days. He did not even text me.

On the day I was discharged from the hospital, however, I found him waiting for me in the carpark.

I immediately turned to leave, but he gave chase. He stood in my way and grabbed my things.

“Get into the car.” His tone was overbearing, as always.

It was pointless to argue with him. I rolled my eyes and got into the backseat.

A strong and familiar scent of perfume wafted over from the passenger seat. It was Luna’s favorite brand.

I used to smell this scent in the car often. Every time, I would agitatedly ask Caleb what was going on. Today, however, I just glanced at the front passenger seat before looking away without a word.

Caleb stood outside the car, glancing at my stomach before scoffing. “So you stopped pretending after a few days in the hospital?”

It was almost winter, and my body was weak after the miscarriage. I did not want to catch a cold, so I wore a few more layers of clothing. I even added some heat packs to alleviate the pain in my stomach.

From the outside, my belly looked as swollen as it did before my induced labor. The difference was even harder to spot once I sat down.

I glanced at Caleb, staying silent when I saw the look of irony on his face.

He thought I could not possibly miscarry six months into the pregnancy. He refused to believe a light shove could have killed his baby.

I could not be bothered to argue with him. I just closed my eyes and waited for him to take me home.

Since he could not get a reaction out of me, Caleb grumbled and started the car. Almost as soon as he left the basement carpark, his phone rang with Luna’s personalized ringtone.

I opened my eyes in time to see him reject the call in a panic. He saw I was awake in the rear mirror and awkwardly explained, “Uh… John changed my ringtone as a prank. Don’t misunderstand, Ella.”

John was his secretary. Just then, the phone rang again. The caller ID clearly said, “Luna Baby”.

I was unperturbed, looking at the guilt flashing across Caleb’s face with a sardonic smirk.

“Answer the call. She called twice in a row, after all. Maybe it’s something important.”

Luna was doing this on purpose. She knew I was with Caleb, so she wanted to use her old tricks to tear us apart. After all, she had succeeded every time before. Caleb would abandon me and rush to her side every time.

Caleb picked up the call, his tone guilty. “I’m driving. Whatever it is, you can tell me later.”

She said something I could not hear. The next second, Caleb’s eyes widened in panic, and he slammed the brakes.

Skree— My body fell forward from the momentum. The next instant, another impact struck me from behind.

Someone had crashed into us. A steel pipe pierced into the car, stabbing me exactly in the belly.

Warm blood leaked out through my thick layers of clothing, dying the car seat red.

Caleb’s head slammed into the steering wheel. To my surprise, the first thing he did upon getting up was turn around to check on me. “Ella, are you alright?”

I was too weak to reply, holding my wound and panting as all the blood drained from my face. The blood loss was making me dizzy.

Caleb pulled off his seatbelt and ran to the back seat in a panic, trying to pull me up.

He also turned pale when he saw the bloodied steel pipe sticking out of my body.

“Ella, t-the baby…” Caleb’s voice was trembling.

My lips twitched. Somehow I found the energy to mock him. “Believe it or not, Caleb, our baby is long gone…”

The pipe had gone through my belly. Even if I had not been induced earlier, there was no way the baby could have survived.

I was heartbroken. In order to conceive, I had done so much research that I knew as much theory as a freshly graduated obstetrician. I knew that the chances were high that I would lose my womb.

I would never become a mother again.

Caleb’s gaze was manic. He wanted to pick me up, but he did not dare to touch me when he saw the long steel pipe. His expression was distraught. “Don’t worry, honey, I’ll find a way to save you right now!

“I’ll take you to the hospital! You and the baby will be fine, I promise…”

I had not heard him call me “honey” for almost three years. What a blast from the past…

I closed my eyes amidst the irony. Before I lost consciousness, I could hear Caleb’s anguished cries. He seemed to be calling someone while yelling at the driver who rear-ended us.

Whatever. I did not care. I was tired, and I wanted to sleep…

Caleb and I started dating in high school. That year, I was the school idol and the top scorer. He was the welfare case and the perpetual runner-up.

He was handsome and good at his studies. Even though he was poor, plenty of girls confessed to him. However, he wrote me a love song and played it on stage during the year-end party, singing his love for me.

Everyone objected, but I insisted on dating him.

I had fallen in love with him at first sight. His good looks, stubborn temper, and rugged determination won my heart.

After every exam, he would wait in anticipation for his results. Once he got what he expected, he would congratulate me for coming in first.

I liked how sincere and honest he was. I naively believed that he was pure at heart.

We went to the same Ivy League university and chose different majors. Both of us shone in our respective fields.

He rejected everyone else’s advances, buying me gifts and treating me to fancy meals with his scholarship money.

When I graduated, I came to this city and started a company with him using the seed money my parents gave me.

To save money, we did not even have a wedding ceremony. We just registered our marriage, ate a cake we bought at a discount in our tiny apartment, drank two bottles of the cheapest wine, and swore our lives to each other.

We did not dare to have a baby at the time, but I accidentally fell pregnant the next year.

It was only after I miscarried that we went for a test and found out about Caleb’s serious disease.

The doctor had said that even if we did not use protection, it would not be easy for us to conceive. Nevertheless, that baby had beaten the odds and settled in my belly.

Unfortunately, we were both too careless. Neither of us noticed until he left us.

Since then, Caleb started to worry about continuing his family line. He asked me to consider having a baby earlier, while we still could. I felt bad for him, so I agreed.

At the time, his company had just started up. Money was tight, and I could not bear to give him any more pressure, so I lowered my head and asked my parents for money.

I took their scolding on the nose, borrowed fifty thousand dollars, and went to the hospital for IVF treatments.

I spent most of the next four years in hospitals doing checkups and taking care of my body at home, trying to conceive. I moved my career online. Sometimes, I would find time to help Caleb at his company, sharing some of his burden.

With my help, Caleb’s company grew steadily. Three years ago, it finally went public and became a rising star in the local business scene.

That day, Caleb was carted home drunk. As soon as he walked into the door, he hugged me and ranted, “Honey, we finally… don’t have to worry about money anymore… Your husband finally became rich…”

He grabbed a handful of cash and threw it into the air. The notes drifted down onto him, me… and the woman at the door.

“Nice to meet you, Ella. I’m Luna James, Caleb’s childhood friend.”

The one who had brought him home was Luna, his childhood friend who had been missing for years. From the moment I laid eyes on her, I felt a strange sense of hostility.

In the end, I could not even sleep in peace. It was too noisy outside. Caleb seemed to arguing with someone, and it even escalated into a fight.

The steel pipe had me pinned onto the seat. I could not move, so I could only tap the door with my phone, reminding the people outside that there was a patient in here.

“Stop fighting! I see blood over there, someone’s hurt! I’m a doctor, let me through!” A woman’s voice rapidly approached me. “Sir, please calm down and leave the judgment of the case to the cops. Your wife’s life is in danger. We should save her first!”

Caleb had long since lost his mind. He did not dare to yell at the doctor, so he roared at someone else instead.

“What the hell were you doing? If you’re driving such a huge truck with all those steel pipes, you should at least tie them down! My wife and I had been trying for years to get this baby! If anything happens to it, I’ll make you and your entire family pay the price!”

So it was the truck driver who rear-ended me. The pipes were his cargo.

Still, how was this his fault? It was Caleb’s fault for braking so suddenly. Was he trying to blame the other party to run away from his sins?

I scoffed at him inwardly, but I had no energy to speak. The next moment, a woman’s anxious face peered into the car.

“Don’t worry, ma’am, I’m a doctor! Where are you hurt?

“Huh? It’s you?”

I forced my eyes open and looked at her weakly. “It’s you…”

The woman was the doctor who met me at the hospital and performed the emergency induction. I remembered they called her Dr. Shay.

She looked at me and then at Caleb, who was still throwing a tantrum outside. In the end, she could not help but roar, “Enough, stop fighting!

“Hey, bastard. Yes, you. Is this your wife? Are you her next of kin?”

Out of the corner of my eyes, I saw Caleb nodding in a daze.

Dr. Shay scoffed. “So you were the missing husband! Don’t you know your wife lost her baby a few days ago after blunt-force trauma to her abdomen? She almost bled out, and we had to induce labor!”