Chapter 3

Ethan's POV

I sat alone in the living room the entire night. Only when dawn broke did I finally get up and open the drawer. Inside was the prenuptial agreement, its pages yellowed with age.

Tracy's signature was still there, bold and unmistakable. My fingers brushed over the bottom corner of the document. The date on it was set for next month.

In the days that followed, neither Tracy nor Harry came home. I had more than ten surgeries lined up back to back. I didn't want to return to that barren house anyway, so I rented a place and stayed there.

I contacted a divorce attorney and asked him to draw up the papers. Honestly, I should've done this right after Mom passed away. Alas, I had been too attached to the idea of a family, to Tracy.

Letting go, it turned out, wasn't nearly as hard as I'd once thought it would be. I believed everything would proceed smoothly from there.

Then, a month later, things took a turn.

I was the speaker at an academic lecture. The hall was so quiet one could hear a pin drop. Suddenly, the doors were violently shoved open.

Max stormed in with red-rimmed eyes, shoving past the security guards trying to stop him. He rushed onto the stage and grabbed me by the collar. "If you're angry, take it out on me like a man! Why did you go after Tracy's baby?"

His furious voice boomed through my microphone and spread across the hall. Whispers broke out among the audience. Cameras flashed as television crews kept snapping photos of me.

My face drained of color.

I had barely made sense of the situation when Max grabbed my throat and roared, "You inserted yourself into our relationship, and I let it slide. But that was my baby! How could you do this? Because of you, Tracy lost our baby!"

He broke down crying, then suddenly dropped to his knees before me. "Please, I'm begging you, let Tracy go. Stop holding on to her and destroying our family!"

My mind went blank as I stared at his theatrics, confused.

"Wait… so Dr. Lowe is a homewrecker?" someone in the crowd muttered, and the hall erupted.

I instantly snapped my head up to deny it. "No. I'm Tracy Montgomery's legal husb—"

Unfortunately, the chaos in the room swallowed my voice. People surged forward. One hurled a spare microphone at me. Others pointed and shouted obscenities. Even my colleagues looked at me with disgust.

Amid the chaos, Tracy finally arrived. She walked over and pulled Max to his feet, soothing him. "Hey, pull yourself together. It's just a misunderstanding…"

Someone in the crowd recognized her and immediately started seeking confirmation. "Is that Ms. Montgomery? The CEO of Montgomery Group?"

"No way. Dr. Lowe got himself involved with a billionaire CEO?"

"Ms. Montgomery, Ethan Lowe just claimed he's your legal husband. Is that true?"

Tracy, who had been out of the loop, finally understood what was happening. She snapped her head up at me. I clenched my fists and stared at her, but she avoided my gaze almost immediately.

"I have a baby with Max," she said evenly. "Dr. Lowe is just my OB-GYN"

Something inside me snapped. Tracy wouldn't look at me. She grabbed Max's hand and dragged him out of the hall, abandoning me to weather the full storm of hostility and humiliation on my own.

Naturally, the lecture was ruined. The dean said I had brought shame to the hospital and suspended me from my position. Even my training slot abroad was reassigned to someone else.

In five years, I had lost my mother, my family, and now, my career. Because of Tracy, I was left with nothing.