Chapter 3

I lay on the cold floor, blood still seeping out from beneath me.

Julian Thorne's gaze fell on my lower abdomen, his Adam's apple bobbing, as if a flicker of reluctance had crossed him.

But that reluctance lasted less than half a second before he looked away, his voice turning cold again.

"Clara, it's not that I'm heartless; you have to think about me."

"Seraphina has been on the operating table three times for this baby. Each egg retrieval was painful enough to make her cry, yet she didn't ask for a single penny in compensation and even comforted me not to be stressed."

"She's given up so much, not even asking for a title, so I can't let her child be wronged, can I?"

He knelt down, finally meeting my gaze.

"Our Thorne family only has one male heir this generation, and my mom has been longing for a grandson for years. You know that."

"Just be reasonable, stop making a scene, okay?"

Reasonable.

Those two words pierced my heart like needles.

I thought of the past decade and more, how I gave up the chance to study design abroad to stay home and help him manage the company, all for the sake of being "reasonable."

For the sake of being "reasonable," I bit my tongue and remained silent when Martha insulted me for being barren in front of relatives.

For the sake of being "reasonable," I endured the intense pain of IVF, lying on the operating table again and again.

It turned out my "reasonableness" meant nothing to him, only brought out as a bargaining chip when he needed me to compromise.

I wanted to laugh, but as my lips twitched, it pulled at the pain in my lower abdomen.

The sharp pain made me gasp, and tears welled up again.

Seeing me like this, Julian didn't reach out to help me. Instead, he frowned.

"Don't act so wronged. You've always had trouble conceiving, and this was only successful after over thirty attempts. How good could the embryo quality be?"

"Last time during the prenatal screening, didn't the doctor say the risk was high? What if this child was born with cerebral palsy or Down syndrome, or developed a congenital heart defect later? Am I supposed to hand over the Thorne Corporation's legacy to a defective person?"

He actually used "defective person" to describe *our* child.

All the blood in my body seemed to freeze at that moment. I couldn't even feel the pain anymore, only a chilling emptiness.

I stared at that face, which had once made my heart race countless times, and now it felt terrifyingly alien.

He continued to ramble, as if searching for more excuses for his cruelty.

"Actually, I'm doing this for your own good. Think about it, your body is so weak, even if you carried this child to term, you might not be able to raise it properly."

"Now it's fine, you don't have to suffer the pain of childbirth, and you'll still have a son to dote on. Seraphina is generous; she won't mind."

I had lost my own child, but he expected me to accept another woman's child as my son, and to gratefully accept his charity.

I couldn't take it anymore. Clutching my lower abdomen, I mustered my last ounce of strength to sit up from the floor.

The pain persisted, but my heart was already dead.

"I used to think that if I just held on a little longer, if I could just get pregnant, you'd go back to being the man I loved."

"Now I know how wrong I was. How incredibly wrong."

I slowly moved to the bedroom and pulled out a divorce agreement from the very bottom of a dusty old box – the one he'd given me when we first got married.

Back then, he said that if I ever felt he wasn't good enough for me, I could use this agreement, which he had already signed, to regain my freedom.

I signed my name and placed the agreement in front of him.

"We're done."