Chapter 2

When I got home, it felt like I was coughing my lungs out.

Cheap painkillers could last four hours. I took three pills a day.

That was enough to hold on until I paid off the remaining cost of the grave beside my adoptive mother's.

I rode too fast today. My stomach ached like a dull knife was turning inside. I struggled to reach for the medicine bottle.

The door opened.

Caitlyn stood there. She looked around the room with a frown on her face.

"Even if you want to put on an act, there's no need to make yourself suffer like this.

"What happened back then was complicated. I had no other choice.

"Mason saved my life. He donated one of his kidneys to me."

I suddenly looked up. It sounded like the funniest joke in the world. I was about to speak.

The next second, someone peeked out from behind her.

My heart jolted. It was Nelly Sheppard.

It had been five years.

The day she was born, she could barely breathe.

After leaving the hospital, I went to every church in the city and prayed.

It was the third day of the new year, and the streets were packed with people. I crawled forward on my knees the entire way. My knees were worn raw.

I opened my mouth. My throat felt dry.

Nelly looked around my shack and frowned.

"Mom, you transferred me to his old school just to find him. Now you're bringing me to the slums after class to visit?"

Caitlyn covered her mouth.

"Nelly, we found your dad."

Nelly glanced at me. Her eyes were filled with disgust.

I smiled bitterly and forced myself to stand while ignoring the taste of blood in my mouth.

I turned around, took several wrinkled bills from a metal box, and handed them over.

"You gave me a hundred. Here's your change of 78. We're even now. Leave."

Caitlyn slapped my hand away. She kicked over the plastic stool beside her.

"Ian, we haven't seen each other for five years! The first thing you say after seeing me is about returning a few dollars? What's the point of keeping score?"

I helplessly turned toward Nelly and held the money out again.

Nelly looked at the oily bills. She pushed my hand away.

"You may not have received the same education as Mason growing up, but you were still a fireworks designer. Even if you weren't impressive, at least you had a respectable job."

Her gaze swept over the plastic bags hanging on the wire, the cardboard boxes stacked in the corner, and the half-empty medicine bottle on the table.

"To put on an act, you even pick up medicine bottles? Disgusting."

Caitlyn raised her hand. A slap landed across Nelly's face.

The protective look in her eyes made me lose focus for a moment.

Back then, after returning to Sheppard Manor, I missed home. I cried as I climbed onto the rooftop. I then sat in the corner and drew fireworks designs.

Every page was stained with tears, but I never dared call my adoptive mother.

When I was eighteen, my seriously ill adoptive mother told me she wasn't my biological mother. She had never wanted to abandon me. She was also afraid her own son had already died.

Later, when I found the Sheppard family, she could finally relax, but her illness worsened.

I cried until I had no strength left. Then I pulled a bun out of my pocket and took huge bites.

A group of people passing by laughed at me.

A hand suddenly reached out from the corner.

"The food at the banquet hall is getting boring.

"Give me half. I want to try something different."

Only later did I learn that she was Caitlyn, the woman the Sheppard family had arranged for me to marry.

The fireworks on that rooftop, and her face beneath them, stayed in my memory forever.

We got married and had Nelly.

It wasn't until the day Mason Sheppard graduated and returned home. Caitlyn went to pick him up and got into a car accident.

I went to take care of her, but then I saw the two of them together on the hospital bed.

"Ian, I'm tired of this. I want something different."

I left the marriage with nothing.

Later, when my adoptive mother needed money for treatment, Caitlyn suggested we remarry. I agreed.

She filled the villa with my fireworks designs. She even promised to arrange a meeting between my adoptive mother and Mason.

I thought the betrayal had only been a mistake.

But that night, Mason burned everything I had.

When I woke up, my face had been replaced.

By the time I got out, my adoptive mother had become nothing more than a gravestone.

The blood in my throat could no longer be held back.

I spat it onto the ground.

Caitlyn's expression changed. She bent down to help me, but Nelly grabbed her sleeve.

"First he cries, then he throws a tantrum, and now he's coughing up blood. He hasn't even gotten home, and he's already trying to cause trouble for Mason."

Nelly cocked her head, looked at me, and smiled.

"Seriously, if you're going to cough up blood, could you do it a little more? When you're completely dead, Mason can become my dad."

She turned around and left without looking back.

Caitlyn was about to speak, but a tiny silhouette charged inside.

"Dad, the code officers came. I was worried about you, so I came home early from school–"