CHAPTER 1: The Breaking Point

Isabella’s POV

The pregnancy test sat on the bathroom counter, the two pink lines staring back at me. 

 In the next room, my husband was laughing – not with me, never with me – but with her. The woman he actually loved.

My hands shook as I picked up the test and stared at it again. Pregnant. I was pregnant with Marcus Wei's baby. 

Three years of being invisible in my own marriage and now this. I should have been terrified but instead I felt something dangerous. 

Hope.

Maybe this would finally make him see me. Maybe a baby would turn our empty shell of a marriage into something real. Maybe he would finally look at me the way he looked at her.

I was an idiot.

I hid the test in my pocket and went downstairs to plan. 

Marcus loved Italian food, specifically his grandmother's recipe for osso buco. 

I had spent months perfecting it, learning from the old cook who used to work for the Wei family before Catherine fired her for being too friendly with me. Tonight would be perfect. 

Candles, his favorite wine, the good china that Catherine said I wasn't allowed to use. I didn't care anymore. This was important.

I spent all afternoon cooking. The meat fell off the bone exactly right. The risotto was creamy and perfect. 

I set the table in our private dining room, the one we never used because Marcus preferred eating at his desk or not coming home at all. I lit candles.

 I put on the green dress he complimented once, two years ago. I was ready by seven.

Seven came and went. So did eight.

At nine, my phone finally rang. "I'm working late," Marcus said without preamble. 

He gave no explanation or apology. Just a statement. 

"Don't wait up."

"I made dinner," I said, hating how small my voice sounded. "Your favorite."

"I already ate." He sounded distracted, like he was reading emails while talking to me. "I'll be home late. Very late."

He hung up before I could say anything else.

I sat at that table until the candles burned down to nothing. The food went cold. The wine stayed unopened. 

My hand kept drifting to my stomach, to the tiny life growing there that didn't know yet how unwanted it was.

At midnight, I made a decision. I would take the food to him and surprise him at the office. Maybe seeing the effort I made would mean something. 

Maybe he would smile at me the way he used to before the wedding, back when he was still pretending to care.

I packed everything carefully into containers and drove to Wei International. 

The building was mostly dark but Marcus's office on the top floor blazed with light. The security guard knew me and waved me through without question. 

I took the elevator up, my heart pounding. I practiced what I would say. I touched my stomach for courage.

The elevator doors opened and I walked down the hall to his office. 

The door was cracked open. I heard laughter before I saw anything. Marcus was laughing, really laughing, the way he never laughed at home.

I pushed the door open and my whole world stopped.

Marcus sat at his desk with Elena Zhang perched on the edge of it, her long legs crossed, her designer dress perfect. 

They had wine glasses. They were looking at his laptop together, their heads close. She said something and he threw his head back and laughed again. They looked happy. They looked like a couple. 

They looked like everything Marcus and I had never been.

Elena saw me first and her smile turned sharp and satisfied. She didn't move away from him. 

Why would she? I was no threat.

Marcus looked up and his laughter died. He didn't look guilty. He looked annoyed, like I was an interruption, not his wife.

"What are you doing here?" he asked.

Not "I'm sorry." Not "this isn't what it looks like." 

Just irritation that I had the nerve to show up.

I stood there holding containers of cold food like an idiot. "I brought dinner."

"I told you I ate." He turned back to his laptop, dismissing me just like that. 

Elena's smile got wider. She knew exactly what she was doing and she was enjoying it.

I left without another word. I don't remember driving home. I don't remember walking into the Wei mansion. I just remember sitting in the dark kitchen at two in the morning, staring at nothing, wondering how I had let my life become this.

I couldn't sleep. Around three, I went downstairs for water and heard voices coming from the study. Catherine and Vivian. I should have walked away but something made me stop outside the door.

"Two more years," Catherine was saying. She sounded gleeful. "Just two more years until Marcus hits the five-year mark and the inheritance is secure. Then we can finally get rid of her."

"God, I can't wait," Vivian said. "She's so pathetic. Did you see her face at dinner last week when Elena showed up? I thought she was going to cry into her soup."

Catherine laughed. "She's so desperate. She'll endure anything just to stay. It's embarrassing."

"Do you think Marcus will marry Elena after?" Vivian asked.

"Obviously," Catherine said. "That's who he should have married in the first place. Elena is one of us. That girl upstairs is nobody from nowhere. Marcus's grandfather was senile when he arranged this farce."

My chest felt tight. I couldn't breathe right. They had been planning this the whole time. Using me. Counting down the days until they could throw me away.

I was nobody from nowhere. I had always known that but hearing it said out loud hurt worse than I expected.

The cramping started right there in the hallway. Sharp and vicious and wrong. I gasped and bent over, feeling wetness between my legs. 

No. No no no..

I managed to call 911 before I collapsed. I don't remember much after that. Sirens. Lights. Strange hands lifting me.

I felt so much pain. 

At the hospital, a kind doctor with tired eyes held my hand and told me I lost the baby. 

Extreme stress and exhaustion, she said. My body couldn't handle it. I should have been resting and instead I had been slowly destroying myself trying to please people who hated me.

"Is there someone we can call?" she asked gently. "Your husband?”

I gave her Marcus's number because what else could I do. She left to make the call and came back shaking her head. "He's in a meeting. His assistant said he'll call back when he's free."

He never called back.

I found out later he was at a breakfast meeting with Elena. He couldn't be bothered to check on his wife in the hospital because he was too busy with the woman he actually wanted.

I laid in that hospital bed and something inside me died. Not the baby, though I grieved for that tiny life that never had a chance. What died was the part of me that hoped, the part that tried and believed I could somehow earn Marcus's love if I just tried hard enough.

That part was gone.

I called a lawyer from my hospital bed. I told her I wanted divorce papers drawn up immediately. I wanted nothing from Marcus Wei. I wanted no money, no property, no alimony. I just wanted out.

She tried to argue. I was entitled to half of everything according to the prenup. I could take millions. 

“I didn't care. I would rather have nothing than spend another second tied to that family,” I told her. 

The papers were ready in two days. I signed them the moment I got home from the hospital. 

My signature was steady and clear, nothing like the desperate, looping scrawl I had used to sign our marriage certificate three years ago. I left them on Marcus's desk with a single sentence: 

"I want nothing from you. Not your money. Not your name. Just my freedom."

What's the worst that could happen?