Chapter 1

I reported my wife, Eunice Latour’s disappearance to the police. They spent an entire month searching for her while I had even gone as far as to speak to the freight transport drivers I knew to collect intel because I was starting to suspect Eunice had fallen victim to a human trafficking scheme.

After countless turmoil, I finally found out that she had been ambushed by her enemies and ended up suffering a second bout of amnesia. This time, she regained her memories before she met me, remembered she was the CEO of a prestigious tech company, and ran off with the male lead of the story. But she forgot everything about me.

I looked at Eve, our child who was only one and a half years old.

The child was busy chewing on the drawstring of my hoodie, completely unaware of the mess she had made by drooling all over it.

Almost three years ago, I found Eunice unconscious and critically wounded in the alleyway behind a modest bar I ran.

After that, I drained my savings amounting to eight hundred thousand dollars to pay for her surgery.

When she woke up, she claimed to have forgotten everything because of amnesia. Since she had nowhere to go, she insisted on sticking by my side, and that was the story of how we got married.

We had lived together for more than two years and even had a child. And yet, after all the money and time I had spent on her, she just up and left!

The barrage of comments continued to swarm the screen. It was clear that they had something against me.

Some claimed Bruno had generously given the person who saved Eunice two million dollars as repayment for their efforts. It was said that after taking the money, the Samaritan left and no longer bothered them.

I knew for a fact that I had never received a single cent.

Could someone else have claimed the money in my place?

I looked down and gently caressed Eve’s soft, wool-like hair. When she slept, her cheeks became flushed with pink, and it occurred to me that her prominent eyelashes looked just like Eunice’s.

She seemed to be dreaming about something, for she smacked her lips and mumbled, “Mama…”

I slowly reached for the drawer and grabbed three items from within.

The first item was the receipt for the eight-hundred-thousand-dollar surgery, whose edges had turned a sallow yellow because of age. The official stamp of the city hospital verified that it was dated from the fall season almost three years ago.

It was the fateful day when I found Eunice collapsed and covered in blood on the steps behind my bar. I had hoisted her on my back and brought her to the hospital, where I paid for her surgery with every penny I had to my name at the time.

The second item was a crumpled IOU penned in Eunice’s shaky handwriting when she was still recovering from amnesia. It read, “I owe Julian Vance eight hundred thousand dollars for the surgery. Signed, Eunice Latour.”

The final item I retrieved was a stack of pictures we took during the time we lived together. One of the pictures was Eunice holding Eve, who was smiling from ear to ear, revealing rows of still-growing baby teeth.

I tucked the items into my old bag, whose color had faded from the number of times it had been washed. Then, I helped Eve get dressed in her favorite dinosaur onesie.

I took her in my arms before telling her gently, “Let’s go look for your Mommy to get child support.”

The comments section lambasted me mercilessly.

[How dare he still have the guts to ask for more money! I have never seen anyone more shameless than he is!]

[I can't wait to see him getting tossed out of Carter Corporation lobby by the security guard!]

Soon, I arrived outside the thirty-eight-story glass tower owned by Carter Corporation with Eve in my arms. A gust of evening breeze whipped up a pile of leaves and sent a chill up my spine.

When I entered and went to the reception desk, I found a man in a suit and bow tie whose attention was fixed on the video playing on his phone.

Upon hearing the sound of approaching footsteps, he looked up briefly to scrutinize the way I dressed.

After noticing my worn-out pants and the child in my arms, his lips turned downward in what seemed like a scowl. Then, he turned his attention back to the screen without acknowledging me.