Chapter 2 His Other Family

Left with no other choice, I always had to swallow my discomfort and clean up after him.

Even when our son was born, Silas had been clumsy and useless. The moment he held the baby, the child would start crying. He didn't know how to mix formula either, couldn't tell water temperature apart, and even now, the faint burn scar remained on our boy's lips.

That was the man who couldn't do anything in front of me. And yet, in front of another woman and another child, he moved with ease, calmly putting together a proper home-cooked dinner.

I felt as if an invisible hand was clenching my heart, squeezing until I could barely breathe.

Without thinking, I reached for the car door, ready to storm upstairs and confront him. Then the surveillance footage flickered and abruptly switched to live feed.

On the screen, Silas set the final dish of spicy stew on the table and spoke with a sigh of satisfaction. "I've finally gotten Ariana and that little rascal out of the house. Thanksgiving should be spent with just the three of us."

Iris smiled sweetly, wrapped her arms around Silas' waist, buried her face in his chest, and spoke in a voice so sugary it was cloying. "Of course. We're the real family."

What a family.

I had been married to Silas for seven years. Our child was five. With my parents' support, he had established himself in Portwell, and I had met every single one of his relatives. And in the end, he and Iris were the family. So what did that make my son and me?

I let out a short, bitter laugh.

I downloaded and saved every bit of the surveillance footage, then called my brother—Silas' direct superior and the heir to Collins Ltd. "Eli, help me look into Iris—when was her child born, which hospital, who's the father. I want everything."

There was a brief pause on the other end, followed by the sharp sound of a pen hitting a desk. "Why are you checking on her? Did she offend you?"

"Yes," I answered plainly, staring at the lights glowing upstairs, my voice steady to an almost chilling degree. "She's seeing Silas. They have a child. Eli, I want a divorce. I want Silas and her to have no place left in Portwell."

My brother moved fast. In less than half an hour, his assistant reached out to me directly and sent over a full five gigabytes of evidence and records. I opened the files. Besides Iris' public social media posts, there was also a parent–child account filled with videos—more than a hundred of them. In every single one, Silas appeared in some form.

The pinned top post was Iris' labor record. From the first contractions to entering the hospital, a full 21 hours, Silas never left her side.

The day my water broke, Silas had been working overtime at the company. I had been in so much pain I couldn't even stand. In the ambulance, I had begged the nurse to call my husband. I was terrified.

When the call connected, Silas was silent for a long time. Then he told me his project was at a critical stage, that he was about to go into a meeting, that all his colleagues were waiting, and he couldn't leave.

He promised that once the meeting ended, he would come to the hospital immediately and told me to be strong. I lay on the operating table for three hours that day, but Silas never showed up.

My parents had been furious on my behalf, cursing him endlessly, demanding to know what kind of project could matter more than his wife and child. They wanted my brother to strip Silas of his position and force him to come back. My brother, eyes red with urgency, had even told his assistant to rush back to the company and drag him out.

But I stopped them. I'd said Silas hadn't meant it, that he didn't want things to turn out that way, that he loved me. Only now did I realize the truth—there wasn't any meeting at all that day. Iris' second pinned video recorded everything, clear as day.