Chapter 4

I swallowed my anger and carefully wrote how Calvin and I had met, fallen in love, and gotten married in the comment section.

Once, those memories made me smile whenever I thought of them. Now, they all inflicted pain on me. Whenever I thought about how he had been lying to me behind every beautiful moment, I could not stop gritting my teeth.

I had just typed the last word and had not yet pressed send when my account was suddenly suspended.

Calvin's chat popped up. [Mia's emotions are getting very unstable during pregnancy. Don't take what she posted online personally. Just let her rant.]

Then, I received a notification that ten thousand dollars had been transferred to my bank account, and more texts came in. [The internet forgets fast. Stay home with Annie for a while until this blows over.]

[As long as you don't stir things up, my promise won't change. Once I inherit the company, I'll bring you both to live with me and make it up to you.]

As I stared at the notification, my fingers dug into my palm so hard that it almost bled.

When I gave birth to Annie, I had a difficult labor. The whole delivery room was filled with my screams. Yet, to maintain his carefully crafted image, Calvin refused to pay the two hundred dollars for a dose of pain medication.

But to keep me quiet for Mia's sake, he handed me ten thousand dollars like it was nothing to him.

The comments with photos of Annie and me spread fast, and my front door was splattered with red paint and rotting garbage from strangers. To protect Annie, I had no choice but to lock the doors and windows tight and draw the curtains.

Just as I was waiting in despair for the storm to pass, Calvin kicked the door open with red eyes and grabbed me by the throat. "Rose! Are you trying to kill Mia's baby?!"

I could barely breathe and struggled to follow his phone screen.

An anonymous account had posted the story of how Calvin and I got together and claimed I had been pressured and cyberbullied by the woman who was the wife of a wealthy man.

My eyes widened in shock. "This wasn't me! Someone else did that..."

Before I could finish, Calvin slapped me and cut me off. "Who else but you would stoop this low to hurt a pregnant woman like Mia?! You'll pay for what you did!"

He had Liam carry Annie away and shoved me into a car, then dragged me all the way to the hospital and forced me to kneel before Mia's hospital bed.

Mia's face was pale. "You went to all this trouble to get close to my husband… Are you satisfied now that you see me like this?"

Before she even finished, Calvin had someone set a phone in front of me, facing me as I was forced to my knees in front of Mia. "Apologize to her publicly on a livestream, or you'll never see Annie again."

My whole body trembled for a moment, then I felt as if all my strength had been drained. "You're threatening me with our daughter?"

He looked away with a dark expression on his face. "You owe her."

I faced the comments scrolling on the screen and forced out each word. "I am Rose Wilson. I shouldn't have gone after Mia's husband when she was being kind to me. I should not have deliberately made up lies and used an anonymous account to spread rumors and slander her. I apologize to everyone for my actions."

At his signal, I lowered my head to my knees. When I raised my eyes again, I saw all the edited photos from back then scrolling across the screen.

The viewers were furious.

[So she was already sleeping around all those years ago. No wonder she's so shameless.]

The edited photos Calvin had once scrubbed from the internet were suddenly posted for all to see. I looked at him in disbelief, but I no longer had the strength to ask why.

"Give my daughter back to me."

Seeing the blank look on my face, he froze. He opened his mouth, but said nothing. Instead, he had Liam lock my daughter and me in a VIP ward on the same floor.

Three days later, Calvin pushed open the door and said, "The online backlash is already under control. As long as you admit your mistake, we..."

Only an empty room remained.

At the same time, a message popped up on his phone, and Calvin's face went pale...