"How could you have the audacity to claim that you're not after Tess' money? If it weren't for her, you wouldn't be able to afford such a nice place to live in.

"Tess, I think you should stop renting this next month. You can't let outsiders keep taking advantage of you. Alternatively, you can tell Ethan to write you an IOU. That would be fair."

If it wasn't illegal to hit people, I would have slapped Tessa and Zeke. But if I did that, they would definitely find a way to scam me out of my money.

Rich people with no morals loved malicious games like that. I had played along with them for seven years.

It was more than enough. I wasn't going to do it any longer.

"I won't write an IOU. If you want money, then sue me. We'll see who's the loser. Also, I refuse to stay in this place any longer.

"Since you want to stay for a night, Mr. Palmer, remember to pay Tess the rental fee. Otherwise, you'll be considered a leech too."

I was about to leave when Tessa grabbed hold of me. The playful expression she had had earlier was gone, replaced by a reproachful anger.

"Ethan, must you go this far? Zeke and I were just joking. I advise you to think this through. Once you leave, you won't be able to stay in such a nice place any longer."

I had made a terrible, ridiculous mistake.

I shouldn't have given up on the idea of breaking up with Tessa when I found out that she was one of the heiresses in Jetland's upper class, just because she had persuaded me.

Whenever Tessa felt that I was greedy for her money, she would keep talking about equality in love and that we should not let money control us. I never should have believed her.

The only thing I had in mind back then was during the coldest time in winter, she had let me warm my hands on her stomach. When I had a headache, she would massage my head gently with her warm hands.

We had once been in love, and we had once been sweet together. However, we should not have let money taint our love.

"Tessa, let's break up." Once I said the words, Tessa's tantalizing smile finally dropped. There was a tinge of panic in her expression.

"Break up? Ethan, are you actually breaking up with me? I won't agree to it! What right do you have to dump me? Even if you're throwing a tantrum, you should know your limits."

Tessa had always acted as if she were superior. It was as if she were doing me a favor by dating me.

I merely looked impassively at her.

"I'm not throwing a tantrum. Since you keep thinking that I'm a leech who's out to get your money, you'd better find someone who has the same status as you so that you can have an equal relationship."

I did not want to say a single word more. I turned around and went back to the bedroom to continue packing my things.

After about half a minute, I heard Tessa scream angrily, "Don't regret this, Ethan!"

I ignored her threats and did not care when she left with Zeke, slamming the door behind her.

I had persisted in our relationship for seven years, even though I had been treated like a leech while doing so.

I did not blame Tessa for the fact that I had been unable to save my mother's life.

It was true that she was not obligated to lend me money.

However, at the time when I needed help the most, she had ignored me and even called me a leech. I had even gone down on my knees with an IOU and begged her to save my mother.

I had completely lost hope in her and our seven-year relationship.

…

Late that night, I walked along an empty street with all my luggage.

Jetland was huge, but there was no place for me there. I no longer had any reason to stay.

My mother was gone, and I had parted ways with the woman I loved.

Every further second I spent there would just make me feel more grief.

I had nowhere to go, so I sat in the lobby of a nearby hospital for the whole night.

When I went to work the next day, the first thing I did was to resign from my job.

My superior looked shocked when she received my resignation letter.

"You're resigning? Has Ms. Seinfeld agreed to let you do so?" my superior asked.

"By the way, you won't get much of a bonus for this month if you resign now. I'll transfer the rest of your salary to your account."

I frowned. There was too much information, and it took me a while to process everything my superior said.

What did she mean by transferring it to my account? Since when did I receive bonuses?

More importantly, why had she mentioned Tessa?

When my superior saw how confused I looked, she looked equally puzzled.

"Aren't you dating Ms. Seinfeld? She was the one who gave the finance department special instructions to pay you your salary separately.

"You were given your basic salary, but any bonuses and salary increments were put in a different account. She said you needed to save money.

"I didn't expect you to still be so frugal with someone like Ms. Seinfeld as your girlfriend. That's rare to see."

That was why I had only received my starting salary for so many years.

I had requested again and again for an increase in my salary, to no avail. It turned out that it wasn't because I wasn't diligent enough at my job. It was because Tessa had transferred all of it to a different account.

When I went to the finance department to request my payroll records, I saw "two thousand dollars" written in bold letters in the box that indicated the amount of my expected bonus.

A few days ago, I had been one day late in paying the hospital because I had been scrambling to find the last two thousand dollars that I needed.

As a result, my mother passed away before she could get her operation.

What was even more laughable was that the total amount of the bonuses I should have received over the past seven years, which Tessa had withheld, would have been more than enough to treat my mother's condition.

I had been a complete fool.

I had been so foolish that all I had done was to work hard. I had been terrified of being fired and losing my means of making a living.

I had been such a fool that I had not realized Tessa's deception.

I had never spent her money so that she wouldn't think of me as a leech, but she had been the one who had transferred away all the fruits of my labor.

I had actually persisted for seven years in a relationship that was full of nothing but lies and humiliation.

I was on my way to find Tessa with my payroll records so that I could settle the score with her when she strutted up to me.

"Ethan, all we had was a minor argument, and you left home? You even resigned! I think you're becoming more and more hot-tempered."

Zeke was behind her, looking gleeful at my discomfiture.

He walked over and said insincerely, "Ethan, you really have no conscience at all. You spent Tess' money and lived in the place that she rented for you. Without her, could you even survive in Jetland?"

He was so thick-skinned that he could lie with a straight face.

I laughed out of sheer anger. I was about to defend myself when Tessa interrupted me.

"Zeke's right. If I hadn't been around for the past seven years, you'd have starved to death long ago. I'll just think of today as you throwing a tantrum, and you can have the day off. Come home with me. I won't dock your pay for not going to work today."

…

The more I saw Tessa's true colors, the more I wondered how blind I had been over the past seven years.

People around me began to point and mutter amongst themselves. Since Tessa did not stop them, their voices became louder.

"Ms. Seinfeld hid her identity because she didn't want Ethan to feel insecure. She also told us to keep it a secret, which shows just how much she cares about him."

"He lives off Ms. Seinfeld, and yet he's losing his temper with her?"

"If he wants to go from rags to riches, he should reflect on whether or not he's capable of doing so. He'd be nothing without Ms. Seinfeld."

The more the people around us speculated, the more triumphant Tessa was.

Zeke kept egging them on and heaped a pile of false accusations on me. "Ethan, didn't you lie because you wanted two thousand dollars from Tess? You even said that your mother was about to die and needed the money to survive."

"You want money, yet you also want to create a good image for yourself. You can't have your cake and eat it too," said Zeke.

Upon hearing him, an uproar broke out around us. Everyone looked contemptuously at me, and I could hear a relentless stream of insults being hurled at me.

I looked at Tessa, who still looked completely unfazed. In fact, she even appeared slightly aggrieved, as if Zeke had just described how she felt out loud.

The corners of my mouth twitched, and I smiled incredulously. I was just about to open my mouth when Tessa grabbed hold of me casually.

She tried to sound magnanimous by making peace between us. "Forget it. The past is in the past, and I don't need the money.

"If you want money in the future, just be honest about it. There's no need to make so many excuses."

After hearing what Tessa had said, everyone in the office looked even more indignant. They all felt that I was being too greedy.

"Exactly. Ms. Seinfeld's so rich. He should just say so if he wants money."

"It's despicable of him to curse his mother for the sake of getting money."

"I didn't know Ethan was like that. I used to bring him things to eat because he always seemed to be so frugal."

"People like him deserve to get dumped by Ms. Seinfeld. He won't be able to stay in Jetland any longer."

I looked at a colleague whom I had once been on very good terms with, yet he was stepping all over me just like the others right now.

I thought again about what Tessa had done. Suddenly, everything seemed meaningless.

I was planning to leave anyway. Even if I slammed down my payroll records in front of Tessa right now, she and Zeke would still say all sorts of ridiculous things to make everyone keep humiliating me.

I quietly put my payroll records back in my pocket. I looked up at Tessa and smiled. "We've been together for seven years. You can work out how much of your money I've spent.

"If you can't list out what you spent on me, then please pay me back the hundreds of thousands that you owe me. Otherwise, I'll be suing both you and this company of yours."

She always talked about how money should not be mentioned when it came to relationships, yet the issue of money was omnipresent between us.

She was an heiress in the upper class of Jetland, and everyone thought that she spent lavishly, but she had been spending the money that I had saved up to save my mother's life.

Tessa thought long and hard, after which there was a flash of panic in her eyes.

Of course, she could not remember what she had spent on me, because she was the kind of person who had even made me split the bill with her when buying rubbers.

I had thought about it, and I knew that it wasn't because she was stingy. The truth was Tessa didn't think I was worth spending a single cent on.

Perhaps she wanted to protest, but I no longer wanted to hear it.

When I turned around to leave, Zeke suddenly pushed me. I stumbled and fell to the floor.

"Ethan, don't try to distort the facts. Why would Tess owe you money? Aren't you afraid that we'll call the police? We can get you arrested if you dare to make up rumors.

"If you go to prison, no one's going to take care of your mother, who's lying in the hospital and waiting for you to earn money. Hurry up and apologize to Tess!"

Zeke still thought that he could threaten me. However, nothing was holding me back any longer.

At that moment, my superior happened to pass by. When she saw Tessa, she squeezed into the crowd. She was holding an application form.

"Ms. Seinfeld, Ethan's mother passed away a few days ago, and you still haven't signed to approve the employee condolence payment.

"I've also followed your instructions and withdrawn the application that Ethan made for an advance payment of two thousand dollars.

"It's a pity, though. I heard that Ethan's mother just needed that exact amount to get enough money for the operation."