On the day of the company’s annual meeting, Victoria Quinn brought a man onstage and publicly announced that he was the newly appointed vice president.

All eyes in the room instantly turned to me.

Mr. Lane looked at me with undisguised mockery. “Ms. Quinn, Mr. Cabell has been with the company for so many years. How did this promotion skip over him?”

Victoria smiled casually. “Mr. Cabell is a pillar of the company. He’s most effective staying at the grassroots level.”

I knew she was certain I would not object and that I would not leave her.

When I glanced at the new vice president, I understood why. He looked exactly like her first love from college, the one who had died in an accident.

Suddenly, I felt exhausted. I ripped off my ID badge, tossed it in front of Victoria, and said, “Ms. Quinn, I quit.”

“Aaron, what do you mean by this?”

There was a trace of irritation in Victoria Quinn’s voice. Her brows were tightly drawn, but with so many employees present, she had no choice but to maintain a calm façade as she questioned me patiently.

I could clearly sense the anger brewing beneath the surface, ready to explode at any moment.

Everyone was looking at me with barely concealed delight at my misfortune. A few even laughed out loud, all waiting for the drama to unfold.

Victoria handed my ID badge back to me, and she softened her tone slightly. This was already the greatest concession she was capable of making for me.

“Having Leon here is just a formality. We’ve known each other for years. He’s only staying for a while. When the opportunity comes, you can apply for the vice president position as well. We’re all adults. There’s no need to throw a childish tantrum over this.”

However, I had long since lost all hope, and my response was unwavering.

“No, Ms. Quinn. I’m done.”

Her expression immediately darkened. She clearly did not expect me to embarrass her in front of so many people.

Leon Shane saw this and spoke up. His voice carried a hint of humility and concession.

“Ms. Quinn, Mr. Cabell truly is the backbone of the company. With me suddenly parachuting into this role, people might not say it out loud, but they probably have their reservations. I’m willing to start from the ground up and leave the opportunity to someone more capable.”

Still, instead of calming Victoria down, Leon’s restraint only made her angrier. She cut in decisively, “Leon, don’t sell yourself short. No one is more qualified for this position than you. If I put you here, it means you deserve it. If anyone has a problem with that, they can come to me directly.”

With Victoria making her stance clear, no one dared to voice any objections. One after another, they nodded and said they would follow her arrangements.

Then, she turned to me impatiently. “Aaron, I’ve said everything that needs to be said. If you’d like to keep working here, stay. If not, get out.”

I gave a faint, cold smile, letting out a bitter chuckle. I had always known that her patience with me had never matched what she showed others. It was not even as much as she would show a newly hired intern.

Before I could respond, Victoria spoke again.

“Leon, sit next to me. Let’s officially begin the annual meeting. It’s a good chance to introduce you to the heads of each department.”

At that moment, I felt like a forgotten clown, standing there with nowhere to belong. I could still feel the glances on me. Some were sympathetic while others were mocking.

I did not hesitate any longer. I took off my wedding ring, placed it on the conference table, and turned to leave.

“Aaron! If you walk out of this conference room, don’t ever come back!” Victoria’s voice rang out behind me, sharp with anger.

I did not respond. I walked straight out of the room.

The moment I stepped outside, a few colleagues hurried over, offering hollow, performative advice. They had probably heard about everything that had happened in the conference room through the grapevine.

“Mr. Cabell, at our age, isn’t the priority just staying employed?”

“Unemployment is no joke, especially for someone like you. Even fresh graduates are struggling for jobs these days. Who would dare hire you at this age? I’m just being blunt. Please don’t take it the wrong way.”

I looked at their fake smiles. Every word implied the same thing—Victoria had given me my position. Without the company, I was nothing; without her, I was even less.

I paused for a moment. The meeting behind me had ended.

Laughter erupted, and I heard them congratulating Victoria for getting rid of me, with a few people even joking that she should kick me out of our marriage.

I turned around to look at this toxic company and all these utterly hypocritical faces. A wave of exhaustion washed over me, and I let out a deep, weary sigh.

I was Victoria’s husband in name only. For years, that title had been like an invisible net, binding me tightly to this relationship, leaving me unable to breathe.

Victoria and I first crossed paths in college. I was her junior, and we were both finance majors.

My father had once been the Quinn family’s driver. He worked for them for over a decade and was practically treated like family. A few years ago, my father saved Mr. Quinn’s life during an accident. That debt of gratitude led Mr. Quinn to bind Victoria and me together on his deathbed. He wanted us to marry.

At the time, Victoria was still drowning in the pain of losing the man she had secretly been in love with for years. Her first love had died in an accident, leaving her devastated.

During her darkest days, when she was hit by both losses at once, I stayed by her side, helping her out of the shadows inch by inch.

Perhaps it was out of gratitude. Perhaps it was also out of confusion about the future. In the end, she went along with the marriage without really thinking it through.

In truth, we never registered the marriage, nor did we ever live as husband and wife. Whenever I tried to bring these issues up, Victoria would shut me down without hesitation, always using the company’s growth phase as an excuse.

I once believed that since she had agreed to this marriage, it meant she at least felt a trace of affection for me. I thought that my companionship and devotion during these years might have quietly moved her heart.

I compromised again and again. I turned down offers from major corporations and joined Victoria’s company as a technical manager right after graduating. At first, it was to help stabilize the company. Later, after Mr. Quinn passed away, it was to help her hold everything together.

The exposure of our relationship was not my intention, but it turned me into a thorn in my colleagues’ eyes.

I worked diligently at the company and was meticulous at home, hoping that through actions alone, I could slowly soften her and make her see me in a new light.

However, it was not until Leon appeared that I finally understood something. Some people’s hearts were as cold as rocks. No matter how hard I tried, I would never be able to warm them.

I packed up my things and left the company without looking back. The moment I stepped out of the office building, I pulled out my phone and submitted my resignation. The HR manager approved it without hesitation.

I could almost picture Victoria’s cold smile when she found out I had quit. Still, at this point, none of it mattered anymore.

I returned to the apartment my colleagues liked to label our love nest. In reality, it was nothing more than a place we shared. After one last look at the familiar furnishings, I quietly packed up the few belongings that were mine and prepared to leave.

On the way to my new place, I suddenly felt like drinking, so I stopped and bought a few bottles of alcohol. By the end of the night, I was completely drunk, heartbroken over how little all these years had been worth.

Even so, I raised a glass to celebrate the freedom I had finally reclaimed.

In my hazy stupor, I suddenly heard a voice.

“Oh, what happened here? Why are you lying on the floor? Are you feeling unwell?”

I rubbed my throbbing temples, sobering up a little. Someone handed me a glass of water. Only then did I see that it was a young woman. I paused for a moment, caught off guard and a little disoriented.

“Who are you?”

She seemed surprised that it was my first question. She tucked her hair behind her ear and smiled. “Didn’t the landlord tell you? I’m the previous tenant of this place. I came by today to pick up a few things I left behind. Nice to meet you. My name is Lynn.”

I frowned as I responded and pulled out my phone. Sure enough, there were messages from the landlord, along with several missed calls.

I must have already been drunk out of my mind at the time. That was why I had not seen or heard any of them.

It was only through our conversation that I learned Lynette had also just quit her job.

Her youth and spirited desire for freedom stirred a genuine sense of envy in me. When Lynette learned that I had just lost my job and ended a relationship, and saw the mess of empty bottles scattered across the floor, she spoke up at once.

“Aaron, why don’t we go see the ocean together? We get along so well, and we’re both newly unemployed. Let’s celebrate our freedom! I’ve been wanting to go to the beach, but none of my friends want to go with me. Come with me, okay?”

I looked at her face and realized I could not even remember the last time I had gone to see the ocean. Still, life was really just a handful of moments, was it not? Now that I was unemployed, what was there to be afraid of? I was not going to starve, after all.

Just like that, we went to a neighboring city to see the ocean. As the waves rolled up the shore and retreated again, a rare calm settled over me, and I found myself chatting with Lynette.

She was naturally outgoing. Perhaps that was how people were just a few years out of college. They were lively, untouched by years of workplace scheming and exhaustion.

We talked from dawn until sunset, watching the sun sink into the ocean. She had so many dreams, and every one of them filled me with quiet amazement.

“Aaron, I don’t think people should stay trapped in the past. When I first saw you, you were passed out on the living room couch, drunk out of your mind. I almost thought you were some kind of creep. You scared me!”

She went on animatedly about how she had found me. I laughed along, but my thoughts drifted back to my marriage. Looking back, every moment of it felt like being bound by shackles.

Since graduation, my life had been nothing but a straight line between two points—work and home. I was almost entirely devoted to the company and to Victoria.

I worked during the day and took care of Victoria at night, yet she never appreciated it. I constantly found myself anxious over her moods.

Not long after marrying me, she regretted it. When I asked, full of hope, when we would make it official, she shut me down on the spot. She did not want to make it official. She stayed in this relationship only because of her father’s dying wish.

At home, she filled the place with memories of the dead man she loved. Photo frames were stacked everywhere. They were painfully conspicuous.

Every time I moved something, even if it was just brushing against it while cleaning, she would explode in anger.

That constant emotional drain left me suffocating.

As I looked at Lynette’s youthful face, I let out a bitter smile and finally began talking about my life over the past few years.

I had never been good at opening up about pain. Partly because I was an adult man and partly because my relationship with Victoria was so tangled that I did not even know where to begin. I could not even say anymore what I truly felt for Victoria.

However, Lynette listened patiently from beginning to end as I stumbled through my story.

After talking with her, I suddenly felt a weight lift off my shoulders.

After the trip, we headed home and prepared to part ways. We returned to the rental apartment together. Lynette started packing up the things she had left behind. One of them was a small appliance, and dismantling it took some time.

I watched her busy figure and could not help but feel grateful that I had the chance to talk with her. However, Lynette had her own dreams and freedom to pursue. I was nothing more than an ordinary passerby—a friend—in her life.

Still, I was deeply grateful that she had listened and offered comfort.

I did not expect that the moment we stepped outside, we would find a group of uninvited guests waiting.

The man at the front was Victoria’s bodyguard. He gave me a polite nod before speaking. “Mr. Cabell, Ms. Quinn would like you to come back with us.”