A wave of emotion surged through me, thick as fog, swallowing me whole.

I could barely breathe.

I stayed silent for a long time before finally managing a hoarse response.

…

Late at night, Pierse called my name softly.

“Eva, are you asleep?”

His voice was gentle, as if making sure I was deep in sleep before he carefully got up and stepped onto the balcony to make a call.

“You saw my wife today?”

“Doll, divorce isn’t as simple as you think.”

“You’ve always been good, don’t start making a fuss now, okay?”

Just a few steps away, separated only by a glass door, my husband was soothing his young lover.

“Of course, I love you. I love you the most.”

His voice was soft, affectionate, laced with tenderness.

A faint curl of smoke rose from between his fingers.

I stared at him, frozen.

Then, as if sensing something, Pierse turned his head.

Through the glass, our eyes met.

He stiffened on the spot. “…Eva.”

I closed my eyes for a moment before rasping, “Pierse, who are you talking to?”

“No one special. There’s an issue with the new proposal. Tommy and the team needed my input.”

He put away his phone and walked toward me.

His tone was effortless, as if he had used the same hollow excuse countless times before.

I caught the lingering scent of smoke on him and coughed twice.

He immediately reached out and pressed his palm to my forehead in concern.

“You’re not running a fever, are you? It’s been raining all night, the temperature’s dropped. I’ll grab an extra blanket for you in a bit.”

As he spoke, his gaze flickered over my face, subtle but assessing.

He was trying to see if I had overheard his conversation just now.

I pulled my robe a little tighter around me and softly responded, “Alright.”

My voice was as calm and steady as always.

Pierse visibly relaxed.

“Go back to sleep.”

…

Back in bed, he dozed off quickly.

He had tucked the blankets snugly around me, yet I lay there staring at the dark ceiling, wide awake.

The moment I closed my eyes, memories flooded in.

I was twelve when Pierse and his mother moved to town while she recovered from an illness. That was when we met.

Back then, I was always hungry.

Whenever my parents fought, my mother would punish me by making me stand outside in the yard for hours.

My little brother grinned smugly, gnawing on a drumstick right in front of me.

"Hey, worthless girl. Mom said you’ll only ever get my leftovers."

Pierse would march right in, grab my wrist in front of both my mom and brother, and drag me away to his house for dinner.

My mother, still seething from her latest fight with my father, couldn’t take her anger out on me.

Instead, she shouted after us, furious,

"If you like her so much, why don’t you just marry her?"

Pierse suddenly stopped, turned back, and smiled.

"That’s fine by me. It’s much better than letting her starve in your house."

…

After high school, my parents finally ended their toxic marriage.

My father walked away without looking back.

My mother, on the other hand, made it clear.

"Eva, you’re eighteen now. An adult. I have no obligation to support you anymore. Don’t expect another cent from me."

I scraped my way through four years of college, surviving on student loans and scholarships.

Meanwhile, Pierse worked himself to the bone, saving up every dollar until he finally had enough to start his own business.

In our senior year, he missed my birthday because of a business dinner.

But late that night, he still showed up outside my dorm, out of breath, clutching a bouquet of flowers.

He shoved them into my arms and pulled me into a tight hug.

"Eva, I’m going to give you the best life."

…

As time went on, our lives only got better.

On our wedding day, Pierse held my hand and made a solemn vow.

"In a world where everything changes, my love for you never will. Eva, I will love you forever. I will never waver, never betray you."

And I believed him wholeheartedly until I discovered Dolly.

Before that, I had always thought I was his one and only.

By the time I woke up the next morning, the rain had long stopped.

Sunlight poured in through the window, bright and clear, as if the whole world had never known a shadow.

For a fleeting moment, I almost believed that everything from yesterday was just a bad dream.

Then I shifted slightly, and a sharp sting shot through my injured leg.

With the pain came everything else—a tidal wave of tangled memories from the day before, crashing over me all at once.

Dolly.

The moment her name crossed my mind, a crushing weight settled over my chest.

Her strange hostility in the clinic yesterday, and her taunting words.

Now, it all made sense.

I reached for my phone and saw a message from Pierse.

"Eva, you’re hurt. Get some rest. I already took care of things at work, so you don’t have to worry about going in today."

"Something came up at the office, so I’ll be home late. Don’t wait for me for dinner."

I didn’t reply.

Instead, I got in a cab and headed straight to our old university.

It was just after class, and students streamed out of the buildings.

Dolly walked out with her head high, looking every bit the picture of confidence.

The moment she spotted Pierse’s Bentley parked by the gate, she ran straight to it, throwing herself into his arms.

"Pierse, I missed you so much."

He wrapped an arm around her and smiled, pressing a quick kiss to the tip of her nose. "Still mad at me?"

"Of course I am! Unless you make it up to me properly today."

"Alright, today I'll do whatever you want."

Then, right there on the street, they kissed—long and deep—before finally pulling apart.

I sat in the car, silently watching as the Bentley disappeared into the distance.

The driver glanced at me through the rearview mirror and asked cautiously. “Do you want me to follow them?”

I shook my head. “No. Just take me home.”

…

It didn’t take much effort to track down Dolly’s social media using the phone number I saw in Pierse’s messages.

She hadn’t bothered to hide their relationship at all.

Hundreds of posts chronicled every little moment between them.

"Had another fight with my roommates. Such a bunch of morons. My mom just tells me to reflect on myself, but Pierse? He immediately got me a luxury apartment. Being loved feels amazing."

A memory surfaced in my mind.

Back in college, I refused to help my roommates cheat on an exam, and things had never been easy between us after that.

They would even lock me out of the dorm when I went to shower, just to make things harder for me.

Pierse wanted me to move out, to get a place off-campus so I wouldn’t have to deal with them.

But back then, we were just broke students.

Even a simple studio apartment was more than we could afford, something we had to carefully consider.

And now, he could rent a high-end apartment for Dolly without a second thought.

I had turned down the idea of moving out back then.

We even fought about it.

"I can just call the dorm supervisor to handle it. There’s no need to waste money on an apartment."

Pierse pressed his lips together, watching me intently. "I just want you to have a better life."

I sighed softly. "I know how hard you work to make money, and I just want to make things easier for you too."

In the end, he didn’t say anything else—just pulled me into his arms, his eyes turning red.

…

"I really wanted to go to Disney, and the moment I mentioned it, Pierse booked the tickets right away. Full VIP access, no lines, no hassle. Just imagining my mom sweating in line with her brat while I got the royal treatment makes me feel amazing."

I gripped my phone tightly, the sudden wave of pain doubling me over.

I thought of that summer when I was fifteen—the rare time my parents weren’t fighting.

They locked me at home and took my little brother to Disney.

Pierse showed up that day and took me to a small amusement park in a nearby city instead.

The roller coaster cost three dollars a ride, the carousel two dollars a turn.

The rides were old and worn, but I still had the time of my life because no one had ever taken me anywhere like that before.

Pierse stood off to the side, watching me the whole time, his eyes gradually turning red.

On the way back, we walked under the moonlight, and I heard him say, "Eva, one day, I’ll take you to Disney too."

"You can stay as long as you want."

Then we graduated and got married.

The last time we planned to go to Disney, something urgent came up at work, and we had to cancel.

Pierse looked at me, full of guilt, but I just gave him a reassuring smile.

“It’s really not that important. Pierse, I’m not a kid anymore. Missing a trip to an amusement park isn’t going to upset me. You don’t have to feel bad about it.”

He stared at me for a long, long time before finally nodding.

And after that, he never brought up Disney again.

Now I knew why because he had already gone with Dolly.

…

I kept scrolling through Dolly’s posts, reading far more than I should have.

By the time I reached the bottom, a deep, suffocating ache spread through my chest, making it hard to breathe.

I didn’t want to see any more.

Wiping my tears away, I moved to exit her profile.

But just as I did, a new post popped up.

Posted just three minutes ago, it was a photo of Dolly in skimpy lingerie, with a man's hand barely visible at the edge of the frame.

There was a fresh red kiss mark on her collarbone.

"Someone has some… unique ways of making it up to me. My back is killing me, my throat is sore, and he’s acting like nothing even happened."

In the comments, an account with a matching couple avatar replied:

"Try calling me an old man again and see what happens."

It was Pierse.

Dolly pouted in response. "I was wrong, okay? My sweet Pierse."

A violent wave of nausea surged up my throat.

Stumbling to the bathroom, I barely made it in time before doubling over the sink, gagging uncontrollably.

But since I hadn’t eaten anything all day, there was nothing to throw up.

The room swayed before me, light and shadow blurring together.

Holding my stomach, I sank onto the cold bathroom floor.

…

Pierse didn’t come home until the following evening.

The moment he walked in, he pulled out a small box and handed it to me.

His face was filled with guilt. “Eva, I had my assistant look for it, but they couldn’t find the wedding ring I lost.

“It wasn’t anything special anyway—we didn’t have much money back then. So, I figured I’d just replace it with something better.”

I looked down at his open palm.

Resting on a black velvet cushion were two gleaming platinum diamond rings, so dazzling that their worth was obvious at a glance.

His gaze was steady, sincere—so utterly convincing, as if his devotion had never wavered, not even for a second.

I stared at the rings for a long time before finally lifting my head.

"You didn’t come home last night. Where were you?"

He hesitated for half a second before answering.

“After the dinner, it was already late. I had been drinking, and I didn’t want to risk driving, so I stayed at a hotel nearby—"

He suddenly stopped mid-sentence because across from him, I was already crying.

Tears streamed down my face as I curved my lips into a bitter smile, my vision blurring again.

From the moment I discovered his affair with Dolly, the thought of divorce had been simmering in my heart.

But I couldn’t say it.

From twelve to twenty-eight, Pierse had been a part of my life for as long as I could remember.

This wasn’t as simple as ending a relationship.

Our lives had grown together, seamlessly intertwined.

Ending it now felt like cutting off a part of myself—painful, excruciating, leaving behind nothing but raw, bleeding wounds.

I replayed the past over and over, searching for where it all went wrong—wondering if I hadn’t been enough, if that was why he strayed, why he chose someone else.

"Eva, you—"

Pierse reached for my hand, his voice filled with shock and concern, but his fingers only brushed against mine before the world suddenly lurched.

For a second, I couldn’t process what was happening.

Then—

“An earthquake!”

The massive crystal chandelier above us swayed violently before the chain snapped, sending it crashing down.

Without hesitation, Pierse threw himself over me, shielding me with his entire body.

His familiar yet unfamiliar scent surrounded me, overwhelming and suffocating.

Through the swirling dust and debris, I caught a glimpse of the two shimmering rings—rolling across the floor, disappearing into the wreckage.