I signed the document, and the cremation proceeded.

There was no need to inform my mother. My parents had already divorced, and my father never remarried. My grandparents were too old for news like this.

During the process, a colleague sent me a screenshot of Lucinda's latest status. It showed two three-day passes to a famous theme park.

I searched the social media site, only to discover that she had blocked me.

A message popped up in the chat: [Brianna, do you know Mr. Mitchell's taking Lucinda on a trip?]

I tightened my grip on my phone. The message wasn't sent out of concern for me. It was just another one of Lucinda's lackeys doing her dirty work. She had no shortage of toadies eager to provoke me and fish for a reaction.

I turned off the screen and carried my father's urn with me to the courthouse.

Our divorce agreement had already been prepared the month before. Lance had signed it without hesitation.

Back then…

Watching him approve it without even checking the contents prompted me to ask, "Are you sure you don't want to read what's written there?"

He set down his pen and pushed the document back toward me.

"Why? I trust you enough!" he said impatiently.

The Lance I knew in the past would never have relied on trust alone. No matter how meticulous I was, he always reviewed my reports himself to ensure everything was up to standard.

None of that applied to Lucinda. Every document she submitted passed without review. I had voiced my concerns before, but he was completely unfazed.

"The document is complicated. I might end up requesting amendments that make things worse because I made mistakes while reviewing it."

"If a complicated document could confuse you, why wouldn't it confuse Lucinda?" I argued.

He chuckled. "She's my secretary. Of course I trust her."

…

At the time, I thought he had simply changed. Then I watched him draft three different project proposals for Lucinda as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world, and I realized it wasn't trust that had made him stop reviewing documents and reading the fine print. He simply had something more important to him.

A month had passed since we submitted our divorce agreement. It was time to make it official.

The clerk handed me a form and said, "We need Mr. Mitchell to be here and sign this personally before it can be finalized. Where is he?"

I checked Lance's flight details. "He's taken his new girlfriend on a trip."

The clerk paused and looked at me sympathetically. "I see. Still, we need at least a verbal confirmation from Mr. Mitchell to proceed if he cannot be here in person."

I nodded and called him.

It took three attempts before he finally answered at the end of the third call.

"How dare you call me when you still haven't deleted that comment like I told you to?! She's still waiting for your apology! If you're not going to do those things, then we're never retrieving your father's body from the hospital!" he barked the moment he answered.

It was his favorite tactic. Whenever I refused to do what he wanted, he resorted to threats. He was especially fond of using them whenever the issue involved Lucinda. If she felt upset, he would immediately assume that I was at fault and demand an apology, regardless of the truth.

One time, I needed surgery after a serious injury, and a direct family member had to sign the consent form. He told me I had to apologize to Lucinda or he would refuse to sign it. If my condition worsened to the point that I had to lose a leg, all the better. It would be a lesson I would never forget, he had said.

After that, he hung up.

I tried calling again, but he had already switched off his phone.

"This tells you his position on the matter, right?" I asked.

The clerk nodded and continued processing my paperwork while I waited for more than 20 minutes with my father's urn resting on my lap.

Many people in the hall noticed me and looked at me with pity.

I brushed my fingers lightly through his ashes.

Then, suddenly, Lance called.

"Where are you?! Why aren't you at the company?!"

I stared out the window in silence. He didn't ask any further questions. He never really cared where I was.

"Wherever you are, go to Lucy's house and feed her goldfish. Also, clean and tidy her room while you're there," he demanded.

"No, let's not ask Brianna to do that. She's already busy enough as it is!" Lucinda said worriedly from the side. "I can just hire a cleaning service."

Lance wasn't the least bit fazed.

"If she were really busy, she'd be in her office instead of coasting on past achievements and wasting valuable work hours scrolling through social media!" he snarled. "She didn't even apologize to you. In fact, she had the nerve to throw a tantrum over some well-deserved criticism!"

I clenched my fist.

The company's success was the result of both our efforts. My projects had consistently generated returns on our investments over the years. Yet instead of showing gratitude, he repaid me by systematically stripping away my authority within the company.

I had let it slide time and again because, at the end of the day, this was the man I had married and promised to spend the rest of my life with.

However, he didn't stop there. Instead, he used his authority as CEO to promote Lucinda and grant her powers and privileges that no secretary could, or should, possess. He had deliberately silenced anyone who spoke out against it.

One time, Lucinda forgot she had an entire proposal to draft. The client was so furious that the deal nearly fell through.

Lance still wanted to protect her, so he blamed me and demanded that I take responsibility.

"Do you know how wrong you are, Brianna?!" he snarled.

I nodded to myself. "I sure know how wrong I was now."

This marriage had lasted a decade. I couldn't believe I had been blind for so long, trapping myself in this torment for all those years. I was ridiculous.

He seemed pleased with my answer. Even his tone softened. "Then you should make amends. You can start by feeding her goldfish before cleaning her room. And I do mean putting in some elbow grease."

I could almost hear my bones creak as I clenched my fists tighter. "Not a chance."

His voice rose sharply. "What did you just say?!"

I hung up before he could launch into another torrent of verbal abuse.

The clerk handed me a notice. "The review process takes three days. Please be patient."

I nodded. Three days was enough time. Lance should be back by then.

…

The first thing I did after getting home was arrange a memorial service for my father.

I wrote and posted his obituary on my account: [I've lost another person who truly loved me today.]

The post immediately drew skepticism.

One commenter wrote: [What a high-level narcissistic attention-seeker. Is she using her dad to get Mr. Mitchell's attention now?!]

Many of my online "friends" were actually employees and colleagues I had once supervised, but most of them were close to Lucinda. Very few believed me when I said my father had passed away.

…

My father had opposed our marriage at first. After seeing how much I wanted to be with Lance, he softened his stance and finally gave his blessing.

But the experience had left a wound on Lance's ego that never healed. Over the past ten years, he had never once shared a meal with my father. He had never even referred to him as his father-in-law. I had explained why my father had been reserved at first, but Lance never listened.

Then one day, I overheard a conversation between him and Lucinda. Apparently, he had never wanted to acknowledge my father because he was originally "just a backwater bumpkin." In Lance's eyes, my father was beneath him. He mocked him and treated him like garbage.

At the same time, though, he called Lucinda's father "Dad." That man was nothing more than a construction worker!

The room originally reserved for my father had been forcibly converted into a storage room. Lance was that opposed to my father's presence. Every time my father came to visit me, he had to stay in a hotel. A millionaire forced to stay in a budget inn every single visit. No one would have believed it if I told them.

…

A group gathered at the door. They were my relatives from my father's side of the family, so I welcomed them inside and served refreshments.

"Brianna, dear... I'm sorry for your loss," one of them said. "You were all he had left."

Laura, one of my distant relatives, arrived in an elegant dress. She scanned the room and asked, "Where's Lance?"

Not a single one of them even glanced at my father's photo.

"No way. So the rumors are true? You're just using your dad for clout?"

"I can't believe you! No wonder Lance ended up with his secretary. How much of a failure does a wife have to be to lose her own husband to another woman?"

"I was hoping to introduce him to my niece. Everyone knows the best son-in-law is a rich one!" Laura admitted.

My knuckles turned white. All they cared about was how wealthy Lance was. I had naively believed they came because they still cared about their relative and wanted to pay their final respects. But no one gave a damn about my father or me, after all.

I pointed at the door and shouted, "Get out!"

The crowd froze in shock.

Laura tried to salvage the situation by guilt-tripping me, but I wasn't having it. When no one showed any sign of leaving, I grabbed the nearest floral spray and started swinging it at them until they fled.

"Get out! All of you, get out!" I yelled before slamming the door shut in their bewildered faces.

They ranted and whined on the porch for a while before finally leaving.

It was just me and my father again.

"I guess I'm the only one here to say goodbye. I hope you don't mind," I muttered as I tidied the room and picked up the urn to place it in a columbarium.

…

My eyes were puffy and sore when I showed up at the office the next day.

I came with only one goal: to hand in my resignation letter.

Idle chatter was already underway when I stepped into the HR office. Apparently, Lance had moved Lucinda into an office of her own, and the company was even renovating it for her.

"Mr. Mitchell really dotes on her, huh? She has her own office now, and he's paying to get her into a new home!" a woman said. "I wish I had a CEO boyfriend like that..."

Someone noticed my arrival and hushed, "Ms. Carter!"

The woman pursed her lips and greeted me reluctantly, "Good morning."

I handed over my resignation letter. "I'm leaving today."

They were stunned. The department head, Monique, responded reflexively. "You can't resign immediately. You need to wait for two weeks—"

"I can. I have the right to resign whenever I want. Mr. Mitchell signed a document granting me that right."

It was an agreement I had made with him a month earlier. I would take the blame and be held responsible for the losses caused by Lucinda's forgetfulness. In exchange, he would allow me to quit whenever I wanted and give me the freedom to compete against him in the same industry.

He had sneered from his luxurious chair, "I'll sign if you agree to take this shit off Lucy's hands. But do you really want to quit? I doubt it. No other company out there would be willing to give you so many benefits. You won't find a position this good anywhere else, I guarantee it.

"Don't do anything rash just because you're itching to throw a fit. I'm only helping Lucy because I feel sorry for her, that's all. You don't have to be so dramatic over nothing."

He had assumed it was an impulsive decision. He couldn't have been more wrong. I had planned to resign the moment Lance abused his authority as CEO to promote Lucinda to chief secretary and give her the power to hire and fire employees.

"Just sign it. I'll take the blame," I had said.

…

After verifying my documents, the HR department got to work.

As I waited, I could already hear the gossip spreading.

"She sure has a lot of tricks up her sleeve."

"She knows she can't get Mr. Mitchell to look at her, even after turning her father's death into a melodrama, so now she's moving on to her next backup plan. It's pathetic."

I ignored them and let the gossip continue. Once I received my formal discharge letter, I left without giving the company a final glance.

…

Three days passed.

I arrived at the courthouse early to receive my divorce decree.

I had also managed to see all the posts Lucinda had shared on social media. She must have unblocked me.

They all appeared to have been posted within those three days.