Chapter 2

Connor’s eyes flickered, and his voice stiffened slightly. “I did send her out of town, but her mother fell critically ill recently and was on the brink of death. As a daughter, is she not supposed to come back and take care of her? That’s her mother, for goodness sake.”

Eliza found it completely absurd. “So you tacitly allowed her to come back, allowed her to get close to our children, and even… allowed them to call her Mommy? Connor, do you take me for a fool?”

“Don’t make it sound so bad!” Connor’s brow furrowed even more. “I was the one at fault. I failed you, I was unfaithful to our marriage, and I caught feelings for Sofia. Sofia didn’t do anything wrong. The kids have a great relationship with her because she’s working as a piano teacher right now.

“When we were picking a piano teacher for Leo and Maya last time, they picked Sofia themselves from a stack of teacher profiles. After I promised you I’d return to the family, I cut off that kind of relationship with her. We haven’t done anything out of line. We’re just ordinary friends now.

“You’re the one being overly sensitive and paranoid. Why do you have to target her like this?”

Looking at how eager he was to clear his name while subtly defending her, Eliza felt her heart break.

She recalled being sixteen and standing by the basketball court. Connor, a boy in a white shirt, had walked toward her under the bright sunlight.

With flushed ears but gleaming eyes, he had told her, “Eliza, I have feelings for you. Let’s be together.”

She recalled university, when he had skipped a major lab class, climbed over the campus wall to get her a warm drink, and stood waiting below her dorm for an hour just to make sure she was okay.

She recalled the night he proposed. On the campus track where they first met, he had laid out the candles in a massive heart shape.

Down on one knee, he said, his voice choked with emotion, “Eliza, marry me. You’re the only one I love, and that will never change.”

She recalled when she had just given birth to the twins. Holding the babies with red eyes, he had whispered to the frail her, “Honey, thank you for everything. From now on, we will be a family of four, and I’ll protect you all with my life.”

Those sweet promises made the betrayal feel more agonizing.

He had admitted right to her face that he had caught feelings for another woman, and now, he was even blaming her for being paranoid and targeting the very woman who had broken up her family!

“So,” Eliza said, her voice raspy and broken, filled with a sense of calm bordering on despair, “in your eyes, all you see is me targeting her. But have you ever thought about my heart breaking when I heard my own children call another woman their mommy? Have you ever, even for a single second, tried to see things from my perspective?”

Looking at her bloodshot eyes and her trembling figure on the verge of collapse, Connor hesitated and said, “I…”

Eliza closed her eyes and took a deep breath. When she opened them again, there was nothing left in her eyes but a cold resolve.

“Connor Hall, I’m giving you two choices. One, fire Sofia right here, right now, and make her disappear from my life and my children’s lives forever.

“Two.” She paused, every word sounding as if it took all the strength left in her body, “We get a divorce.”

She had finally brought up divorce again. Yet, unlike the panic from last time, Connor’s expression was terrifyingly calm.

“No! The kids have gotten used to Sofia, and she’s a great teacher. Since I’ve promised you, I won’t cross any lines with her again. I have no reason to fire her for no cause.”

He looked at her with a subtle trace of contempt as he continued firmly, “Eliza, you don’t have to use divorce to threaten me all the time. I know you won’t actually go through with a divorce for the sake of the kids.”

For the sake of the kids…

Those words crushed Eliza’s heart.

That was right. Last time, it was precisely for the sake of the children that she gave him another chance and that she chose to be patient. She never thought that that very weakness would become the bargaining chip he used to manipulate and walk all over her.

Seeing the devastation in her eyes as she stared at him, he pressed his fingers to his temples in frustration. Then, he softened his tone, speaking dismissively, as if trying to sweep things under the rug.

“Alright, I know the kids crossed a line today too. I’ll have them apologize to you. Let’s just drop this matter. Stop dwelling on it, okay?”

He turned around and waved at the two children standing not far away. “Leo, Maya, come over here and apologize to your mother.”

The two children dragged their feet over, looking reluctant.

Leo pouted. “We did nothing wrong–”

“Leo!” Connor’s tone hardened.

Only then did Leo reluctantly murmur, “I’m sorry.”

Maya, too, mumbled softly, “I’m sorry.”

Eliza found their insincere apologies ironic, and it filled her with nothing but sadness.

Stepping out of the station, Connor’s car was already waiting at the curb. He had Sofia take the two children into the car first before walking over to Eliza.

“Get in.” His tone returned to its usual indifference, as though the intense argument earlier never happened.

Eliza said nothing and quietly sat in the backseat.

In the car, the atmosphere was suffocatingly tense. The two children clung to Sofia on either side, chattering happily away. Sofia responded gently, occasionally wiping the sweat off Maya’s forehead with a tissue.

Connor sat in the passenger seat, turning back now and then to join their conversation. He asked the twins what they learned at preschool today and Sofia about her mother’s condition. The four of them laughed and chatted happily, as if they were a real family.

Meanwhile, Eliza sat like an out-of-place bystander cut off from their world. She watched the streets go by outside the window as the void inside her grew larger and colder.

Was this the family she had sacrificed herself and worked so tirelessly to maintain? How absurd.

Just as the car was at an intersection, a sedan across the street suddenly lost control, ran a red light, and slammed straight toward their vehicle.

As the crash echoed with a bang, Eliza felt her body being thrown into the air and then crashing back down. Intense pain radiated from her forehead and all over her body as a warm liquid blurred her vision.

After some time, the sharp wail of an ambulance siren approached, and she heard the paramedics' voices.

“Over here! The injured need to be rushed to the hospital immediately!”

It was the sound of a gurney approaching, but in the very next second, it was blocked by two small figures.

“Save Sofia first!” It was Leo’s voice, crying yet fiercely insistent. “She’s bleeding so much! She passed out!”