Chapter 2

I wasn’t ready for it, and my lower back hit the counter hard.

A glass near the edge fell, and the broken pieces cut across my palm. Blood started pouring out right away, and the pain made me gasp.

Mom heard the noise and looked back. When she noticed the blood on my palm, I thought she would walk over to me.

But she just frowned. “Vienne is pregnant. Stop upsetting her. You already hurt her once before. Wasn’t that enough?”

After saying that, she quickly hurried after them.

Kairo held Vienne in his arms, while Mom stayed close beside them. The three of them soon vanished behind the elevator doors.

I stood there with broken glass scattered all over the floor, while blood fell from my palm one drop at a time.

Only then did I realize that three years ago, maybe I was the only one who actually died.

I went to the hospital and needed four stitches.

Once the wound was treated, the nurse told me to sit in the hallway and wait for the observation results.

I had barely sat down when I heard someone behind me call out with some doubt, “Mrs. Simpson?”

I looked back. It was Doctor Sanchez, the doctor who treated me three years earlier.

She looked at me for a long moment before she was sure it was really me. “It really is you?”

She looked at my bandaged hand. “Why are you back at the hospital? How have you been feeling? Your miscarriage hurt your body badly back then. I was worried you might still have some problems afterward.”

The hallway suddenly went quiet.

I looked up.

At some point, Kairo had shown up a short distance away. He still had Vienne’s examination report in his hand.

“What miscarriage?”

Doctor Sanchez froze.

I stayed quiet.

Kairo quickly walked over. “You were pregnant?”

I looked down at the gauze wrapped around my palm.

The memories from three years earlier suddenly came back to me.

Seven days after Kairo “died,” I threw up badly in the bathroom.

When I saw two red lines on the pregnancy test, I sat on the floor and cried for a long time.

For the first time since his death, I felt like I still had a reason to keep living.

I even visited his grave and placed the ultrasound report next to the tombstone. “Kairo, I’ll have this baby. When he gets a little older, I’ll bring him here to see you.”

Later, people online discovered my address. Some waited outside my building and called me a murderer, while others followed me around to record videos.

The day someone shoved me down, the blood on my dress just wouldn’t stop.

I lay in the emergency room and called Mother seventeen times, but she didn’t answer even once.

In the end, the baby still couldn’t be saved.

Kairo looked at me. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

I looked at him.

“Tell who? You on the tombstone?”

His face went pale right away, as if he wanted to say something.

But Vienne suddenly called out from the hospital room. “Kairo.”

Kairo turned around without even thinking.

It was only one small move, but all the feelings that had just come up inside me slowly faded away again.

Mom walked out of the hospital room.

Kairo looked at her and asked, “Why didn’t anyone tell me?”

Mom replied coldly, “You were already gone at the time. What good would telling you have done? Besides, something happened to Vienne back then too. I couldn’t look after her.”

I looked at her. “So now Vienne only has some fetal instability, and you’re already this worried.”

Mom frowned. “She’s not the same as you.”

I paused for a second. “What makes her different?”

She didn’t reply.

Kairo, though, looked over at me.

A second later, Vienne called out his name from the hospital room again.

He still turned away and went back inside.

I watched him walk away and didn’t stay any longer.

As I walked out of the hospital, my phone suddenly started ringing.

It was an unknown number. “Miss Aurelia.”

The man on the phone spoke very politely. “Everything for your return has already been arranged. Just as planned, we’ll come pick you up in seven days.”

I stopped walking. Behind the glass doors, Kairo had already gone back into Vienne’s hospital room.

“Understood.”

“Sir and Madam have also been waiting for you.”

I stayed quiet for a moment.

“See you in seven days.”