The day I went with Sally James to pick up her prenatal results, she suddenly confessed.

"I cheated on you."

"And the baby isn't yours. It's your driver's. It's Sebastian Henson's."

Sally said it the way someone sets down a heavy bag, her tone so light it bordered on cruel.

"Sebastian's young, you know. He's different. He knows how to sweet-talk a woman, how to wear her out."

"Not like you. You were raised on rules your whole life, the perfect young master. He's a refreshing change."

My fingertips tightened, inch by inch.

She added with a smile,

"But don't worry. I'll still be Mrs. Gilbert."

"I'll still give you all the dignity you need."

"You can't just chain me down because I'm pregnant."

"A woman wanting a little excitement on the side, that's perfectly normal."

I laughed.

To marry Sally, I gave up my claim to the family inheritance.

Then, with my own two hands, I built her company up from nothing.

But surely she didn't actually believe that being called "boss" a few times made her one of us?

I could lift her to the heights. And I could shatter her into pieces.

——

Sally watched the color drain from my face and sighed.

"Ulysses Gilbert, I was always going to find the right moment to tell you."

"I just didn't expect the pregnancy to show up today."

I looked down at the crumpled prenatal slip in my fist.

"How long?"

Sally paused.

"Six months."

Sebastian, standing behind her, supplied with a grin,

"Longer than that, isn't it, Sally?"

"The first time was the night Ulysses flew to Harbor City to negotiate your funding. You were drunk. You held onto me and said Ulysses had every good quality except one. He was always so buttoned up."

Something inside me clenched, like a hand crushing my chest.

I went to Harbor City to lock down the funding that would save her company.

Her cash flow had been days from collapse.

The Gilbert family had thrown me out. Everyone was waiting to watch me fail.

But I still flew into Harbor City through the typhoon, drank at that table until my stomach bled.

So while I lay in a hospital bed with an IV in my arm, she and my driver were tangled up together.

Sebastian tilted his head and looked at me, his eyes shining with open triumph.

"Mr. Gilbert, that morning, Miss James even praised me for being young and full of energy."

"Said being with me was a lot more fun than being with you."

I looked at that familiar face and, for a moment, couldn't speak.

Ten years ago, I went to do charity work in the mountains.

Back then he wasn't Sebastian. He was just a boy with a different name.

So thin he was nothing but bones, too starved to even stand steady.

I paid for his treatment. I put him through school.

After he graduated, afraid people would look down on him, I kept him close as my driver and assistant.

I taught him cars. I taught him how to read a room. I taught him how to bow his head with dignity in a world full of money and ego.

He once knelt in front of me, eyes rimmed red, and said,

"Ulysses, without you, there'd be no me. None of this."

So this was the gratitude he meant.

Getting Sally pregnant with his child.

Seeing me fixed on Sebastian, Sally frowned.

"Ulysses, this isn't really his fault."

"I'm the one who fell first."

But Sebastian reacted as if he'd heard the most moving words of love, his eyes welling up.

"Sally..."

They nearly made me laugh out of sheer disgust.

Sally looked at me, her voice softening.

"Don't blame him. Sebastian's young, his heart's simple."

"He's not like you, raised on rules from childhood, always so stiff about everything."

"With him, it's easy. And exciting."

When she finished, her gaze finally settled on the prenatal slip in my hand.

"Ulysses, if the baby bothers you, we can just tell everyone it's yours."

“Don't worry. I'll go on being your wife.”

“And this child can call you Daddy too.”

She talked about it like a partnership she'd already worked out down to the last clause.

Her tone was almost reasonable.

“But just because I'm pregnant, don't think you can force me to cut things off with Sebastian.”

Sebastian reached up and stroked the watch on his wrist.

That watch was my graduation gift to him.

He'd told me he was nervous about his first business dinner, afraid he'd embarrass himself.

I fastened it on his wrist with my own hands.

He let out a soft laugh and looked at me, smug.

“Ulysses, why don't you stick around and watch?”

“Could be a good lesson.”

“Wouldn't want Sally to keep finding you boring.”

Something turned over in my stomach.

Sebastian, though, had finally peeled off that mild, dutiful mask, and his voice grew lighter and breezier by the second.

“You taught me how to read, how to drive, how to talk at a dinner table.”

“But you never seemed to figure out how to make a woman unable to leave you. Want me to teach you that?”

Sally frowned.

“Sebastian.”

Like she was scolding him for going too far.

Yet her hand reached out and pulled him back to her side, shielding him as naturally as breathing.

All at once I remembered seven years ago.

The first time Sally came to me for investment.

She'd worn a business suit washed pale with age, her palms sweating from nerves.

No one believed in her project.

I gave her that first round of money, and I opened my own network to her.

To marry her, I broke with the Gilbert family.

My sister, Glenda, pointed at me and snapped,

“Ulysses, you'll regret this sooner or later.”

Back then I only thought she didn't understand Sally.

I said,

“She's not like the others.”

“She didn't come close to me for the Gilbert money.”

Later, my inheritance was cut off, and I was thrown out of the old Gilbert estate.

Sally held me and cried, swearing she'd never wrong me, not in this lifetime.

I believed her.

I stood with her from a single cramped office.

Sat with her through pitches to investors, through all-nighters rewriting proposals.

Outside, people called her Ms. James, said she was young and brilliant.

She'd heard it long enough that she'd probably forgotten.

Who put her in the chair she was sitting in.

When I said nothing, Sally finally started to lose patience.

“Ulysses, don't blow this up into something bigger.”

“You're a Gilbert. No one understands keeping up appearances better than you.”

“I'll give you all the respect you deserve.”

“As for Sebastian, I won't shortchange him either.”

“The two of you both matter a great deal to me.”

Both of us mattered.

I stared at her for a few seconds, and then I laughed.

“Sally.”

“You married me and actually thought that made you one of us?”

Her face darkened in an instant.

“Ulysses, what's that supposed to mean?”

I didn't answer. I just slid the wedding band off my ring finger.

That ring. The night I broke with the Gilbert family, she'd put it on me with her own hands.

She said she'd love only me, for the rest of her life.

Thinking about it now, it just felt filthy.

I dropped the ring into the trash without a second thought.

Sebastian's eyes flicked toward it on reflex, and something greedy flashed through them.

I caught it, and I laughed softly.

“Like it? Go on, fish it out.”

“The things I throw away, haven't you always loved those?”

Sebastian's face flushed red.

Sally finally rose to her feet.

“Ulysses, don't push it too far.”

“Sebastian's already suffered enough.”

Suddenly I laughed.

“Fine.”

“Since he's so talented, let's all learn something from him.”

With that, I took out my phone and started recording.

The lens trained on Sebastian.

“Go on. Start talking.”

“Teach everyone how a man takes the salary his benefactor gives him, then sleeps with his benefactor's wife.”

“And while you're at it, teach them how you get another man's wife pregnant with your child.”

The color drained from Sebastian's face in an instant.

He instinctively shrank behind Sally.

“Sally……”

Sally's expression turned glacial.

She reached out, blocking the lens, fury barely leashed beneath her voice.

“Ulysses, that's enough.”

“You're upset right now. I understand that.”

“But you can't destroy a young man's whole life just because you're hurting!”

“Yes, Sebastian made a mistake.”

“But it wasn't easy for him, clawing his way out of the backwoods on his own all these years.”

“One word from you, and he loses his job, his reputation, everything he fought so hard to earn.”

“Do you think that's fair?”

I stared at her, almost laughing out loud.

Reading my silence as surrender, Sally softened.

“Ulysses, put the phone down first.”

“You're my husband. I won't shortchange you.”

“Just don't turn yourself into some sore loser who can't take a hit.”

Sore loser. Those words landed, and the last ripple inside me went still.

I looked at her and asked softly：

“So this is going too far?”

Sally blinked, thrown.

The next second.

I raised my hand and slapped Sebastian hard across the face.

The crack of it rang through the entire lounge.

His head snapped sideways, five red welts blooming across his cheek.

I shook out my stinging hand.

“I haven't even gotten to the part that goes too far yet.”

That was when Sally finally lost it.

She lunged forward and shoved me with both hands.

The small of my back slammed into the corner of the table. Pain blacked out my vision.

The prenatal checkup slip fell from my hand to the floor.

Sally didn't even glance at it.

She went straight to Sebastian, gathering him into her arms, sheltering him.

“Ulysses!”

“How did you turn into this?”

Her eyes were full of disappointment when she looked at me.

As if I were the one who'd done something wrong.

“You used to be the kindest man I knew.”

“Sebastian had such a hard childhood. Weren't you the one who ached for him the most?”

“And now, just because he fell in love with me, you want to ruin him?”

A strange laugh rose in me.

She said I'd changed.

But Sally.

Who was it that turned sickening first?

And just like that, I remembered something from long ago.

The first time Sally proposed to me, she was so nervous she couldn't even get the ring box open.

Eyes red, she slid the ring onto my finger and said：

“Ulysses, getting to stand beside you in this life is more luck than I deserve.”

“No matter how high I climb someday, I'll always remember it was you who pulled me up.”

Back then she was raw, sincere, with no one in her eyes but me.

And now, that face that once cradled my hand and made its vows.

It slowly blurred into the face in front of me, the one shielding Sebastian and demanding to know how I'd become this.

And suddenly, I was calm.

I hadn't changed.

The woman who swore she'd never betray me.

She'd died the day she betrayed me for the first time.

I didn't say another word.

I turned and walked out of the office.

Behind me, Sebastian was still crying softly.

“Sally, is Ulysses really going to ruin me?”

Sally lowered her voice to soothe him：

“No. As long as I'm here, no one can touch you.”

“Though, how are you going to thank me?”

Sebastian's tears turned to a grin. He gave Sally a light, playful punch, voice melting into a whine.

“Sally, there you go teasing me again……”