Chapter 4

Clara's POV

With two weeks left on my countdown, I received a text from an unknown number stating that the guardianship file was missing a signature, instructing me to come to an upscale downtown restaurant to sign it.

I arrived on time, only to find Miki sitting across from the table.

Clutching a luxury designer handbag that Ethan had bought, she greeted me with a smirk. "Ms. Clara, thank you so much for running my errands the other day."

She had recognized me the second she opened the apartment door back then.

I stared at her. "You knew who I was that day."

"Of course I did." Her manicured fingers traced the golden clasp of the bag, her grin widening. "Ethan told me you nearly died for him, so even if you found out, you’d never have the guts to leave him."

The very words I had overheard on the balcony were now being paraded in front of me by his mistress.

Ethan didn't just take my sacrifices as a guarantee that I would never walk away—he handed that guarantee over to another woman as a punchline.

I didn't take the bait, letting my gaze drift to the designer bag on the table.

Ethan had told me it was a gift for an important corporate client.

An "important client" was nothing more than an easy lie he spun for Miki.

Seeing that I remained completely unfazed, Miki grew restless. "My son is already living in the Miller house. You’d better remember this clearly: he's only calling you 'Mom' for now."

"If you're so reluctant to let him go," I said, meeting her eyes coolly, "why did you push him into my hands in the first place?"

The smirk wiped right off Miki’s face.

The waiter had just set down a pot of piping hot tea when she suddenly grabbed the handle and splashed the boiling liquid straight at me.

The scalding tea soaked through my collar, searing against my skin. Before I could even stand up, Miki slammed the pot down and dialed Ethan on FaceTime.

A second before the call connected, a triumphant sneer played on her lips; the moment the line clicked open, her voice dissolved into dramatic sobs. "Ethan, please come quickly! Someone is attacking me! Just because you’re not here, everyone thinks they can bully me!"

A sudden, morbid curiosity gripped me. I wanted to see just how biased this man could truly be.

Ethan arrived faster than I had anticipated.

Bursting through the doors, he didn't spare a glance for anyone else, immediately pulling Miki into his arms. He murmured soft reassurances, asking if she was hurt, and only after ensuring she was fine did his face darken with fury. "Who dared touch you?"

Miki raised a trembling finger, pointing directly at me while sobbing hysterically. "Her! She threw hot tea at me and hit me!"

She never once spoke my name.

And so, standing barely two feet away, Ethan looked straight at me with nothing but the ice-cold detachment reserved for a total stranger.

I was wearing a face mask. The designer clothes and jewelry I once wore had long been sold off to cover medical expenses, and my body was so emaciated from years of illness that I was skin and bones.

It turned out he had never truly recognized Clara; he only recognized the well-dressed Mrs. Miller who always waited obediently at home.

The moment I stripped away that veneer of luxury, he couldn't even recognize me standing right before his eyes.

Over those painful years, my face had hollowed out, my shoulders had grown fragile and thin, and the stylish outfits I once loved had been traded away one by one for life-saving medication.

Ethan claimed to pity my poor health, yet he had never truly looked at the physical toll it took.

He loved the version of his wife frozen in his memory—the one who would never change, never fight back, and never walk away. He didn't care about the Clara standing here today, worn down and unrecognizable from life’s cruel trials.

If I opened my mouth, Ethan would instantly recognize my voice.

But I refused to speak.

I had no desire to use the title of "wife" to beg for his mercy, and I certainly had no interest in watching him calculate which woman was worth protecting once the mask came off.

I stood up and, right in front of Ethan, slapped Miki across the face.

Miki instantly buried her face in his chest, wailing, "Look! She's hitting me right in front of you!"

Without asking for a single explanation, Ethan barked a cold order to the security guards behind him: "Drag her out. She is never allowed back into this building."

When the guards grabbed my arms, I didn't make a sound.

As I was dragged past Ethan, our sleeves brushed against each other. Yet he was busy leaning down to console Miki, not sparing me a second glance.

Over a decade of shared history, and he couldn't even tell who I was.

I was thrown out onto the curb outside the restaurant, the tea stains on my chest already turning freezing cold.

Sitting on the concrete steps, I actually felt a strange sense of relief that he hadn't recognized me.

At least from this moment on, I didn't have to be Mrs. Miller anymore.

Instead of going home, I hailed a cab to the cemetery on the western edge of the city.

Rows of headstones stood silently in the crisp wind. Here, no one demanded that another person wait forever, and no one took advantage of being loved to cruelly hurt someone else.

I picked out a plot in the most secluded corner. It faced the sun, shaded by a lone tree whose leaves rustled softly in the breeze.

I paid for it on the spot.

In life, I never had a home that truly belonged to me. At least in death, I could have a small patch of earth that I would never have to surrender to anyone else.

Buying this plot wasn't a sudden impulse to end my life.

Quite the contrary: it was my way of carefully arranging my own final destination—without needing Ethan's permission, and without conforming to anyone else's expectations.

Even a cold burial plot felt more like my own personal choice than that entire marriage ever did.

The receipt bore my maiden name.

I slipped it into my wallet next to the debit card for my new account, suddenly feeling as though my name finally belonged to me again.

As I stepped out of the cemetery gates, a sudden wave of nausea hit me, forcing me to lean against a tree for support.

I simply assumed my stomach was acting up because I hadn't eaten all day, so once the dizziness passed, I kept walking.

Three days ago, I bought myself a grave.

Three days later, two faint pink lines appeared on a pregnancy test strip.

I was pregnant.

A follow-up check at the clinic confirmed the early pregnancy, but the hormone levels were dangerously unstable. The doctor strictly ordered bed rest and told me to return in a week for another ultrasound.

The news had come far too late, arriving just after I had made up my mind to leave—as if fate had suddenly handed back the one thing I wanted most in the world, mocking me and asking if I had the courage to believe again.

Pressing the lab report against my chest as I walked out of the clinic, my plan to vanish wavered for a split second.

Not because I wanted to stay with Ethan.

I had just glimpsed another possibility: taking this baby to a new city where no one knew our names, renting a tiny apartment, and living a modest life where I would never have to wait up for anyone to come home.

Leaving had originally just been an escape from Ethan, but this tiny life gave that unknown future a real, tangible shape.

When Miki’s baby was brought into our house, I hadn't cried.

Yet thinking of the fragile life growing inside my own body, I desperately wanted to ask Ethan just one question: If you had known sooner, would you have chosen me, just this once?