Chapter 1

On our wedding night,Damian Moretti climbed off me.

He tossed the used condom into the trash and gave a cold laugh.

"Before the wedding,you suddenly asked me to raise the premarital trust to five hundred thousand dollars.I told you the docks were shut down,the family accounts were frozen,and I couldn't get the cash."

"I was lying."

He opened his phone and pointed to the blue diamond necklace around my friend Lillian's neck in the photo.

"She spent one night in my bed.The next day,I had someone take this photo.Five million dollars."

Pain cramped through my lower belly.I propped myself up with difficulty and stared at him in disbelief.

Damian's voice only grew colder.

"Don't think I don't know you only wanted to use this to climb into the Moretti family.Spending one more cent on you makes me feel filthy."

After he left,I looked at the death notification from St.Mary's Hospital on my phone.

I cried until I could barely breathe.

The white wedding dress beneath me slowly turned red with blood.

Damian did not know that the five hundred thousand dollars for the premarital trust was actually the money that could have saved my mother's life.

On the night of my wedding,I lost the four most important people in my life at once.

My only family left in the world.My new husband.The friend I had known for more than ten years.

And the child in my belly.

...

By the time I reached the hospital,my mother had already been moved to the chapel of rest,her face as pale as the white sheet covering her body.

I held her hand as it slowly went cold,kneeling on the floor while tears kept falling.

The wedding dress I was wearing was the one Mom had personally helped me choose two days ago.

Her greatest wish was to see me get married with her own eyes,to see me be happy.

But she still left me on my wedding night,and I did not even make it in time to see her one last time.

All she left me was a phone call from the hospital and a death certificate.

A transfer notification suddenly popped up on my phone.

The next second,Damian called.

"The five hundred thousand dollars has been transferred."

"But Elena,that's all you're worth."

His tone was full of mockery.

But in the past,he could not even bear to speak one harsh word to me.

A month before the wedding,Mom had suddenly been diagnosed with a serious illness.

I sold my apartment,but I was still five hundred thousand dollars short for her treatment.

That was the first time I ever asked Damian to lend me money.

Even now,I still remember how quickly his expression turned cold.

"Something happened with the dock business.I don't have cash either."

"Elena Weiss,if you're with me for the Moretti family's money,then get out now."

So I worked three jobs a day,raising money for my mother's surgery while helping him fill those so-called cash gaps after his accounts were frozen.

I was even afraid of adding to his pressure,so I hid how serious Mom's condition was.

But today,he told me it had all been a lie.

The docks had not been shut down.He had not truly been forced into a cash-flow crisis.

And he had already taken my best friend to his bed.

Now,Mom was gone.

And I did not want his late five hundred thousand dollars anymore.

"No need.I'll send the money back."

As soon as the transfer went through,I heard Lillian's coquettish laugh from the other end of the line.

"I won!I told you she would definitely return the money."

"A bet's a bet.That yacht is mine tonight.And you,Don,are mine too."

Soon,the sound of an intimate kiss came through the phone.

Then the call was quickly cut off.

A violent pain tore through my lower belly again,and cold sweat soon soaked through my clothes.

I could not hold myself up and collapsed to the floor.

Blood gradually dyed the wedding dress red.

Originally,tonight,I had planned to tell Damian the good news that I was pregnant.

But before I could say it,he took me roughly.

No kisses.No foreplay.

At first,I thought it was because the pressure from the family was too much for him.

Later,I realized he had only treated me as something to vent on.

My vision gradually blurred.

I reached weakly toward the direction where Mom lay.

But in the end,before I could touch her hand,I lost consciousness completely.

When I opened my eyes again,I was already lying on an operating table.

With tears streaming down my face,I signed the surgical consent form.

After the surgery ended,I was wheeled into a hospital room.

In the end,the child could not be saved.

Just like my marriage to Damian,it had only been my own expectation.

In the end,nothing was left.

The anesthesia seemed to have stopped working,and waves of pain surged up from deep in my lower abdomen.

Tears soaked into the bedsheet one drop at a time.

I thought of how good Damian had once been to me:cooking for me,taking me traveling,smiling countless times as he told me he loved me.

In the end,that smiling face twisted into his cold,disgusted one.

"Gold digger."

That one sentence ended the three years we had loved each other.

I stared blankly out the window and suddenly felt that disappearing from this city right now might not be so bad after all.

Just then,two girls'admiring voices suddenly reached my ears.

"Look,the Moretti godfather bought an entire yacht just to make his Donna happy."

"That's not the Donna.I heard the Donna is a gold digger,and he wasn't even home on his wedding night.It was the woman on the yacht who was his true love."