All Chapters of Breaking My Back Abroad, She Had Her Second Child: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

The restaurant door swung open.A middle-aged couple in their fifties walked in with warm smiles on their faces.“Austin, hard at work in the restaurant again?”“Mom, Dad? What brings you here?” Austin immediately went over to greet them.“We brought you some soup.”The woman set the insulated container on the table and took Austin’s hand. She examined him as though he were her most precious treasure.“Just look at you. You lost even more weight. I told Sophia not to make you work so hard.”Her husband added, “Sophia is too thoughtful. She bought us imported health supplements yesterday, too. What a waste of money.”The woman nodded in agreement, then her voice softened with sympathy. “Sophia had such a hard life before. She married the wrong man and suffered terribly at the hands of that gambling-addict ex-husband of hers.”Gambling addict? Ex-husband?My hand jerked around the glass of water. Warm water spilled across the back of my hand, yet I felt nothing.So this was wh

Austin’s phone rang on the table and broke the silence.The word flashed across the screen: [Honey]Austin seemed so accustomed to the call that he did not even glance at me before he tapped the speakerphone button.The moment the call connected, Sophia’s syrupy voice filled the room.“Honeyyy…” She drew out the last syllable in a singsong whine, sounding like a woman trying to coax her husband.“I feel awful. My belly feels so heavy, and my whole body aches.”Austin’s voice softened instantly. “Is the baby kicking you again?”“Mmm…” Sophia murmured on the other end. “I’ll be home soon.”“Come on, get over here and eat. I’ll feed you when we’re done.”“Okay, I’ll be right there. Love you, honey.”The call ended. Throughout the entire conversation, Austin made no effort to hide the tenderness and happiness written across his face.My own phone vibrated in my pocket the very next second.I pulled it out without changing my expression.A text from Sophia glowed on the screen:

“What did you just say?”Austin was startled for a moment. He grabbed Sophia by the shoulders, and his eyes turned bloodshot as he roared at her.“Is it true? Sophia. Answer me, damn it.”Sophia trembled violently. In the very next second, she burst into tears and threw herself into Austin’s arms.“Honey, don’t listen to him. He’s a fucking lunatic. He used to hit me and abuse me. I barely managed to escape him, and now he’s come after me again.”She sobbed hysterically, as though she had suffered some unimaginable injustice.It felt like a performance.If I had not lived through it myself, I might have believed her.Still crying, Sophia lifted her head from Austin’s chest and shot me a look filled with contempt.“Leonard, I’m warning you. You can throw all the tantrums you want, but you’re not getting a dime out of me. Whatever gambling debts you racked up overseas are your problem, not mine. Everything I have now, I earned with my own two hands.”“Your hands?” I let out a c

At the front of the group stood a middle-aged man wearing gold-rimmed glasses.He walked up to me, stopped, and bowed at a perfect ninety-degree angle.“Mr. Ashdown, our apologies for keeping you waiting.”The black-suited professionals behind him bowed in unison. Their movements were perfectly synchronized, and their presence was overwhelming.The smile on Sophia’s face finally froze completely. She stared at the scene that looked like something out of a movie. Her face turned pale white, yet she still tried to hold her ground.“Leonard, well done… How much did you pay for all these extras? A few hundred dollars? I have to admit, they’re pretty convincing.”The lead attorney slowly straightened up and adjusted his glasses. He did not spare Sophia a single glance.He took a leather cardholder from inside his jacket, opened it, and displayed a gold-embossed identification card.“Jonathan Howard, senior partner at Grandall Law Firm. The people behind me are my legal team. We hand

A few months later, the court delivered its verdict.Sophia was convicted of bigamy, fraud, embezzlement, and several other offenses. She was sentenced to twenty years in prison, stripped of her civil rights for life and ordered to forfeit all her personal assets.Austin, convicted as an accomplice for bigamy and profiting from the illegal scheme, received an eight-year prison sentence.The Chase family was also forced to surrender all their ill-gotten gains. Overnight, they went from the envy of everyone around them, the respectable city folk, back to what they had once been, indebted farmers from the countryside. With their tails between their legs, they left the city.At last, everything had been settled.Before Sophia was transferred to prison, she requested one final visit with me.Separated by a thick pane of bulletproof glass, she sat in her prison uniform. Her face looked gaunt and haggard. The charm she once possessed had vanished.“Leonard.” She picked up the phone, an