Chapter 3

After the last guest staggered out, the room was a warzone.

Serena, still holding onto a babbling Derek, pointed at me with disgust.

“Alex Thorne, what is wrong with you? This is a party for our son’s first month, and you’re putting on this sour face for everyone to see? It’s repulsive!”

I forced a smile, the wound in my lower abdomen aching more fiercely.

“Serena, I just got a goddamn vasectomy for you!”

“The doctor told me it’s permanent! I can never have my own biological children again, ever!”

I thought my sacrifice would earn me some guilt from her.

But she just helped Derek to the couch, then irritably ran a hand through her hair.

“So what? It’s just a damn surgery, can’t you stop being so childish?”

I was trembling with rage.

So, the decision I gambled my entire future on was just “childish” in her eyes.

“I’m childish? So, I should be like you, basking in my meticulous care while carrying another man’s baby?”

Serena showed no remorse, her tone still utterly righteous.

“Alex Thorne, Derek was just drunk. You’re actually taking a drunk man’s bullshit seriously? We have a child now. Can’t we just live a happy life as a family?”

“A happy life?”

I laughed, a bitter, breathless sound.

“Serena, tell me, what happy couple has a wife who uses the guise of 'allergies' to trick her husband into IVF, when she’s actually trying to have another man’s baby?”

I thought with each push, Serena would feel bad for me, would apologize.

But instead, she pushed back, indignant.

“Didn’t I suffer too? Wasn’t I in pain? Why are you always bringing up old shit? It’s just a surgery, is it really worth holding such a grudge?”

After that argument, my heart was thoroughly numb.

I remembered the day I agreed to her request, to get the vasectomy. She cried in my arms.

“Honey, you’re so good to me. I swear, I’ll spend my entire life making it up to you.”

Looking back now, those tears were probably for Derek.

And I, like a clueless idiot, personally sealed my own fate.

The silence in the hall was deafening, suffocating.

I kicked over a table, the crash echoing through the suffocating silence, and pointed at Serena, roaring.

“Get out!”

Serena’s hand, wiping Derek’s sweat, froze.

She twisted her head, incredulous, her eyes wide with shock.

“Alex Thorne, what is wrong with you? Just because Derek said a few drunken words, you want to kick me out? Is that all the trust you have in me?”

I laughed, a humorless bark that shook my chest.

“You don’t deserve an ounce of my trust.”

I ignored her, throwing the baby’s diagnostic report hard onto her.

“Let’s get a divorce!”

“You and your male best friend can live with the child you two made.”

With that, I turned and left without a backward glance.

I slammed the gas pedal and sped to the north side of the city, to a place I had never taken her.

I’m going to make Serena and Derek pay for what they did!