Chapter 3

Going purely from memory, I drove back to the Whitlaw family's estate.

When everything had been liquidated in the bankruptcy, Alistair bought the house. He had told me it was where he first met me and that it meant the world to him.

Now the iron gate was rusted, and withered vines covered the courtyard walls. The rose garden I had once loved most was so overgrown that the weeds stood taller than the flowers.

He had not kept up the place at all. It seemed it did not mean the world to him after all.

Perhaps, to him, this house was just like me. Once he had gone to all that trouble to get it, he stopped caring.

My phone rang. It was Alistair.

His tone was fairly gentle. "Where'd you go? Are you still mad?"

I pushed aside the dead branches in my way. "Why do you care?"

The line went quiet for a moment.

"Eden Whitlaw, have I been spoiling you too much?"

I said nothing.

His patience quickly ran out. "I'm waiting for you at the harbor. You have one hour. If you don't show up, you'll regret it."

I hung up on him.

I had not even been afraid of dying. Why would I be afraid of regret?

The glass door was locked, so I picked up a flowerpot beside it and hurled it through. The glass shattered with a crash.

I stepped over the broken shards, climbed the stairs, and went back to my old bedroom. I pulled the dust cover off the bed and lay right down.

The mattress had stiffened and smelled of mildew, yet it felt more comfortable to me than the king-size bed on the island.

My phone kept ringing. I switched it to silent and closed my eyes.

There was no fighting it. Ever since I got pregnant, I had been sleepy all the time.

When I woke up again, it was already daylight. My phone showed dozens of missed calls and unread texts, along with a news alert.

[Scarlett Delacroix Goes Public, and Her Boyfriend Is the CEO of Graves Group]

I tapped on it.

She had posted a whole set of photos. There was a candlelit dinner, a kiss on the beach, and their fingers laced together.

The caption was a single line: [Thank you for always choosing me.]

The comments were full of congratulations.

I looked at it for a few seconds, then backed out and opened Alistair's messages.

[Have you seen the news? If you come find me now, it's not too late.]

I could not help but laugh.

He was waiting for me to see the announcement and come running to him in tears, begging him not to love anyone else and not to throw me away.

The version of me without my memories must have been far too soft these past five years, calling him whenever there was a thunderstorm. He had truly come to believe I could not survive without him.

I raised a hand and rested it on my stomach. If I did not make a clean break now, I would only suffer for it later.

I opened my phone and booked an appointment with a doctor to end the pregnancy.

Then I dug up the number of Gerard Pell, a lawyer I had not spoken to in years, and called him.

"Mr. Pell, it's me. Eden Whitlaw."

The man on the other end paused. "Ms. Whitlaw? Where have you been all these—"

"I'm back."

I gazed out the window at the neglected garden and asked softly, "Is the trust my grandfather left me still intact?"

"It is. Every annual distribution has been held in a separate account for you."

I heard him flip through some files.

"Oh, and before your grandfather passed, he made one more arrangement. If your marriage ends in divorce, you can apply for a special distribution of around 50 million dollars to start your life over."

The tears fell before I could stop them.

Grandpa had truly loved me. It broke his heart that I had lost my parents and been left to run the family business on my own. and had to carry the entire family business on my own, so he had prepared a way out for me long ago.

Mr. Pell was still waiting for me to speak. I wiped away my tears and asked, "I need that money now. What do I have to do?"

"You'll need to provide proof that your marriage has been dissolved."

I looked at the wedding ring on my finger and pulled it off without hesitation. "All right. Then could you also draft a divorce agreement for me?"