On the way to his college entrance exam, the son unexpectedly saw his mother and his childhood friend locked in a passionate embrace inside a Land Rover.
The car was shaking, their silhouettes intertwined. Rage surged through him. Without thinking, he picked up a brick and smashed the window.
Fuming, he yanked the door open and confronted his mother. "Why are you doing this to Dad?" he shouted.
Before he could get an answer, he was slapped—twice—by his mother’s lover.
His sudden appearance had startled them, and his mother’s frustration boiled over.
"Get out of here! Do you want the whole world to see your mother like this?" she snapped.
She slammed the car door shut, catching the hem of her son’s coat.
Without a word, the childhood friend hit the gas. The car surged forward, dragging the son behind it for hundreds of meters.
His ribs shattered. Blood poured from his mouth as he screamed for help, but the car never stopped or turned around.
When I got the call from the hospital, it felt like lightning struck my chest.
I rushed over, only to find out I was too late.
My boy—my only son—was already gone.
——
I held his bloodied body in my arms, unable to breathe through my sobs.
Tears fell endlessly, like pearls from a broken string.
I took his broken, battered hands and pressed them against my face.
"Son, wake up! Look at your father!" I cried.
"How can you just leave me like this?"
That morning, he smiled so brightly.
"Dad, after the exam, let’s go fishing, okay?" he had said.
I couldn’t accept the truth. Anguish swallowed me. I coughed up blood and collapsed.
When I woke up, I was in a hospital bed. They had already moved my son’s body to the morgue.
I didn’t bother with shoes. I ran barefoot all the way there, heart pounding.
But nothing prepared me for what I saw.
There, outside the morgue, my wife and Victor Morgan—my son’s childhood friend—were in each other’s arms.
A doctor was questioning him.
“I was having an affair with her,” Victor confessed. “I didn’t expect her son to suddenly show up. I panicked…”
I stood frozen, anger consuming me.
Grief is still raw, now layered with betrayal.
As they pulled apart, I lunged. I punched Victor hard in the face.
The hallway erupted into chaos. My wife covered herself with one hand and clung to me with the other.
"Daniel Carter, stop it! Are you crazy?" she yelled.
My eyes burned red. I grabbed Victor by the throat, lifting him off his feet.
That’s when my wife grabbed a pen from the nurse’s table and stabbed it into my wrist.
"Snap out of it!" she shouted. "Everyone already knows!"
"You two make me sick!" I roared. "If it weren’t for him, would you and Victor be like this?"
I yanked my hand free and grabbed her.
"What did you just say? What did you mean by that?"
Did my son really die because he discovered their affair?
The thought tore through me. My chest tightened until I could barely breathe.
Before she could respond, Victor—his face bruised—began crying.
"I’m sorry, Daniel," he choked. "Isabelle and I... We were drunk and made a mistake."
Drunk? That early in the morning? Who did they think they were fooling?
Cheating is cheating.
Isabelle Carter shoved me aside.
"Move, look at yourself—what a pitiful sight," she sneered.
"Your wife looked for another man, maybe ask yourself why."
She turned to Victor. "Victor, we don’t need to explain anything to him."
She helped him up, her hand gently wiping away his tears.
My heart shattered again—not just from grief, but from betrayal.
How did everything fall apart in a single day?
“Damn it, Daniel! If I hadn’t stopped you, would you have killed Victor? You’re a murderer!”
But I couldn’t hear anything anymore. All I wanted was the truth about how my son died.
Yet Isabelle refused to speak and raised her hand to slap me again.
“Yes! I was the one driving! I hit him with the car—satisfied now?”
Then she walked away with Victor.
As she passed, she deliberately bumped into me and gave a smug smile.
I chased after her and slapped her hard across the face.
“Our son is dead—do you understand that? Dead!”
“So it really was you. You ran him over yourself. You’re not even human. You don’t deserve to be called his mother. You’re a monster!”
Isabelle held her cheek, stunned. She never expected me to hit her.
Since our wedding, I have treated her like a princess—never once scolded her, let alone raised a hand.
“You dared to hit me?” she gasped.
“Yes, I hit you. My son is lying cold in the morgue right now. His body isn’t even stiff yet...”
“Can’t you come up with a better lie? Your son’s dead? Hit by my car?”
She stared at me with disgust, then grabbed the stab wound on my wrist and squeezed it hard.
Pain shot through me, and before I could pull away, Victor shoved me aside.
“Enough, Daniel. I know what happened between me and Isabelle is disgraceful, but stop blaming everything on her. She’s a woman—she deserves care, not cruelty.”
“What do you know?” I spat. “All you do is run your mouth like a lunatic.”
“It was your son who attacked me this morning. Who cares about him now?”
My blood turned cold. I felt like arrows were piercing straight into my heart.
So it really was them.
The doctor had said my son was dragged hundreds of meters by the car before he died.
He must’ve discovered the affair and tried to stop them, only to be run over.
Enraged, I lunged at Victor.
But bodyguards hired by Isabelle pinned me down, and she kicked my knee with full force.
“I knew it! You still want to hurt Victor. What did he do wrong to deserve death?”
“Apologize to him!”
I thrashed like a wild animal.
“Isabelle, you want me to apologize to him—the one who murdered my son? In your dreams.”
My rage consumed me, burning away the last of my reasons.
It was their affair—their betrayal—that cost me my son’s life.
Smack!
“Who are you calling a murderer?” she yelled. “Who did we kill? You think you can parade your son’s death around like a banner? Are you even a father?”
She slapped me again, forcing me to bow and apologize to Victor.
When I refused, her patience snapped.
She grabbed my hair, slammed my head to the ground, and made me kowtow repeatedly.
My head split open from the force. Blood dripped down, and pain tore through my skull and chest.
Years ago, this same woman had clung to me with tears in her eyes.
She promised we’d live a happy life together—that she would never betray me or hurt me for another man.
Now those vows burned into ashes, scattered like dust in the wind.
I bit down hard on my lip. Blood from my forehead mixed with my tears as I lay collapsed on the cold ground.
“Isabelle,” I whispered hoarsely, “go to the morgue. See for yourself if I’m lying.”
“Go look at your son. He hasn’t even closed his eyes yet!”
I don’t know if he died with his eyes open, or if it’s like what the old folks in my hometown used to say—if someone refuses to close their eyes after death, it means they’re still clinging to this world, unable to let go.
Looking at my devastated expression, watching my tears fall without end,
Isabelle trembled slightly, and memories of that morning slowly surfaced.
But in the next second, she sneered.
“They all left in the car. Nothing else happened after that.”
She squatted in front of me, her voice cold and devoid of emotion.
“I’m starting to wonder something—did you instruct your son to take that road on purpose? Did you want him to catch me cheating just so he’d hate me?”
“My son is taking the college entrance exam. He doesn’t have time for nonsense like this. It’s you who can’t move on—you came to the hospital, caused a scene, and even lied about your son being dead.”
By the end, Isabelle was shouting.
Since hiring Victor as her assistant, their relationship had become increasingly intimate.
Once, I went to her office to surprise her with lunch, only to walk in and see her sitting on Victor’s lap, laughing and playing.
No wonder her coworkers always gave me odd looks. Maybe they all thought I wore the crown of a fool.
I stormed in and pulled her off him, but before I could even speak, she scolded me.
“What’s that supposed to mean? You think I’m cheating?”
“Victor saw I was tired and offered a massage. I accidentally fell into his arms, and you just happened to walk in!”
She said it while trembling, and I had no proof to refute her.
After that, she became even busier—so busy she stopped coming home.
She didn’t even show up for our son’s birthday.
I only learned from her social media posts that she’d gone on a trip with Victor.
Apparently, because Victor never married in his thirties and said he couldn’t forget her, Isabelle was so moved she threw everything away for him.
Just then, Victor’s nose started bleeding. Isabelle, alarmed, rushed to him, using her sleeve to stop the flow.
She used to be a clean freak, refusing to let anything dirty touch her clothes.
But for him, for Victor, all her rules could be broken.
“Victor, what’s wrong? Why are you bleeding?”
Then, turning to me, she shot me a venomous glare.
“You punched him, didn’t you? You made him bleed!”
Her eyes were like a snake’s—cold and deadly, ready to strike.
My forehead was bleeding too, but she didn’t even glance at me.
Yet when a drop of blood trickled from Victor’s nose, she acted like it was a crisis.
She hurriedly left with him, and I, dizzy and brokenhearted, forced myself toward the morgue.
I couldn’t collapse now—my son’s funeral still needed me.
But before I could enter, Isabelle grabbed my arm.
“You think you can just leave after hurting Victor? He’s lost a lot of blood, and his blood type is rare—panda blood. You have it too. Go save him.”
I gripped her wrist tightly. “Isabelle, go in and see for yourself. Then tell me if I’m lying.”
But she flung my hand away, sneered at the morgue, and said coldly,
“Take him away. If he wants to tell stories, let him tell them to the dead!”
She ordered her men to restrain me, and I struggled like mad.
To think they wanted me to donate blood to the man who killed my son—
The humiliation of it will haunt me for the rest of my life.
Isabelle instructed the doctor to insert a needle into my arm immediately.
The doctor looked at my battered face with sympathy.
“Mrs. Carter… Mr. Morgan’s bleeding isn’t severe. It’s already stopped. Maybe we can… just forget it?”
