Chapter 1

　　The day before Kay Henson was to go home and pay her respects at her father's grave, the plane ticket she had booked was suddenly canceled.

　　She hesitated for a long while before finally asking her husband, Silas Delgado, if she could borrow his private jet.

　　Silas gave her a long, searching look and said quietly,

　　"Kay, if there's something you want, you can just tell me. There's no need to lie about it."

　　Kay opened her mouth to explain, but Silas cut her off.

　　"That flight of yours is running on schedule. Why would your ticket, of all people's, be the one that got canceled?"

　　"I know you want to fly back on a private jet to show off, to let those country folks of yours see how well you're living now. But you don't have to go about it like this."

　　Kay froze for a moment, then hurriedly pulled up the refund text on her phone.

　　"That's not it. My flight really was canceled."

　　But Silas only spared the booking on her screen the barest glance.

　　"Your photo-editing skills keep getting better."

　　"Besides, even if your booking got canceled, that's your own mistake. Why should I be the one to pay for your slip-up?"

　　"Do you have any idea how much money and resources one flight on that jet burns through? The Delgados aren't doing well right now. I'm not asking you to help me, but you can't be this wasteful either."

　　"Your father is already dead. When a person dies, that's the end of it. Whether you go see him or not makes no difference."

　　"Is all this fuss really worth it for a dead man?"

　　Silas's words drove into Kay's heart like blades of ice, and she couldn't stop her hands from curling into fists.

　　"Silas, that's my father. Are you telling me I can't even go home to pay my respects to him?"

　　Silas's brows knit tight, and he pressed his temple as though his head ached, as if the woman in front of him were nothing but a great nuisance.

　　"It's not that you can't. It's just that you shouldn't waste my resources and the Delgados' over something this trivial."

　　Kay's eyes stung, reddening.

　　She knew the gap between herself and Silas. From the day they'd been together, she had never once asked him for anything.

　　This was the first time she had ever asked him for a favor, and she'd never imagined he would refuse her in a tone this harsh.

　　For the first time, she began to doubt the love Silas claimed to have for her.

　　Silas seemed to realize he'd gone too far, and he pulled her gently into his arms.

　　"I'm sorry, Kay. Business has been bad lately, and I'm a little on edge…"

　　Something in Kay's chest wavered, and her clenched hand loosened just a little.

　　"It's all right. I'll figure something out on my own."

　　That night, Kay called in favor after favor from every friend she had, and only just managed to get a standing-room ticket for a twenty-hour train ride, from Ashford City all the way to Rosedale, a thousand miles away.

　　Early the next morning, she had barely stepped off the train when a video arrived from an unknown number.

　　On a luxurious private jet, Silas and Rose Pruitt, the woman he had always carried a torch for, were lounging and joking on a sofa without a care in the world.

　　An attendant respectfully brought them dessert and drinks.

　　That single glass of red wine alone would have covered the cost of a round trip to Rosedale on that jet.

　　In Rose's arms was a snow-white fox dog. Her voice was thick with grief, yet her eyes were full of provocation.

　　"Silas, thank you for being willing to come with me to bury Snowy."

　　"Its favorite place in the whole world was the open prairie. It'll be so happy to rest in Monroe City."

　　"I just feel awful about making you use your private jet~"

　　Silas soothed her softly.

　　"It's only a plane. It hardly costs anything. I know how much you can't bear to part with Snowy. I'll give it a grand funeral."

　　"Don't be sad. From now on, I'll come back with you every year to visit it, all right?"

　　Rose threw herself happily into Silas's arms.

　　"Really? Thank you, Silas. I always knew you were the best to me."

　　Silas paused for the briefest moment, then wrapped his arms around her tightly.

　　Kay shut off the video with trembling hands. Rosedale was warm with spring blossoms, yet she felt as though she'd been dropped into a blizzard, her whole body trembling faintly.

　　It's only a plane. It hardly costs anything?

　　Yet last night Silas had accused her of being wasteful, all because she'd wanted to borrow that same jet just once.

　　He said he would come back every year to mourn Rose's dog.

　　But in the two years since Kay's father had passed, Silas had never once come home with her.

　　Even on the seventh day after her father's death, when she had begged him to come see her father off one last time,

　　Silas had refused her, his expression cold and remote.

　　"Kay, I don't understand why you'd cry so hard over a mound of dirt."

　　"Your father is already dead. Is he going to come back to life just because I go kowtow at his grave?"

　　Back then she had thought Silas was simply cold by nature, unable to understand her feelings.

　　After all, his own father had told her that Silas had been emotionally detached since childhood, that it was just his nature, that it didn't mean he didn't truly care for her.

　　Otherwise he never would have proposed to her.

　　She had believed it, and after that she never again brought up asking Silas to visit her father's grave with her.

　　Now she saw it clearly. He had tenderness in him after all. He had simply given all of it to another woman.

　　In his heart, even Rose's dog mattered more than her father.

　　Kay stared at the darkened screen for a few seconds, then dialed Norman Delgado's number.

　　"You once said that within three years, so long as I still had no child, I would be free to leave whenever I wished."

　　"I'd like to ask you to let me repay the debt of gratitude another way."

　　Years ago, Kay's father had saved Norman's life. To repay that debt, Norman had wanted Kay to become the future matriarch of the Delgado family.

　　She had meant to refuse, but then Silas had suddenly confessed to her, telling her he loved her, begging her to stay.

　　And Kay, over their time together, had already come to love Silas, so the two of them married as a matter of course.

　　She had thought they were a match made in heaven, until Rose returned to the country last year. Only then did Kay learn that Silas had been hiding a first love in his heart all along.

　　At first she had been so confident in what lay between her and Silas. It wasn't until today that she finally saw his true heart for what it was.

　　If that was how things stood, then she was not the sort who couldn't take a loss.

　　This man, she didn't want him anymore.