When Ethan returned, he found the chat records alongside a roomful of crystal antiques I had smashed to pieces.

He only raised his brow faintly.

“You have nothing to explain?”

My ragged breaths mingled with the taste of his cigar smoke.

He chuckled lightly, exhaling a ring of smoke:

“She’s just a young girl, why bother with her?”

His airy tone made it sound as if the blood and storms of his rise in New York’s elite circle hadn’t fallen on us—but on that young girl and him.

“Yes, the little girl truly doesn’t understand.”

I tossed a medical record of a miscarriage onto the table.

He immediately sat upright.

I spoke lightly:

“So I simply taught her to be a real person.”

“Sophia!”

His hands clamped onto my shoulders with such force they nearly shattered.

My back pressed hard against the wall, lips curling as I watched his reddened eyes.

In this life, he had only ever shed tears twice.

Once, in our senior year of high school, when he saw my father drag me half-naked by my hair onto the street, threatening to drown me in the Mississippi River. Ethan stabbed my father eighteen times.

The second was now, when this girl miscarried.

He gripped my shoulders and accused me of being “cruel.”

“How rare,” I sneered, “to see Mr. Shaw in a panic.”

I smiled, without the slightest trace of remorse.

“You’re a woman too… how could you do this to her?”

“You’re the one who said it—between us there’s no divorce, only widowhood.”

I leaned in close. “If Mr. Shaw can’t manage to kill me, then I’ll just have to kill both of you!”

Blood dripped onto the floor.

Only then did he notice that my hand had been cut while smashing things.

His grip on my shoulders gradually loosened.

“Good. I didn’t want that child anyway.”

He lifted my hand and gently wiped away the blood.

When the iodine stung my skin, he blew on it softly, the way he always did.

He’d long been used to treating my wounds this way.

Back when my father used to beat me black and blue, Ethan could only use alcohol to disinfect me. Even though he no longer needed to use alcohol now, he was always careful not to hurt me.

A bloody handprint marked his face.

“Stop. It’s dirty.”

His face tilted slightly, not arguing whether I meant the blood was dirty—or he was.

He simply called for Mr. Walker, the butler, and handed him the medical kit.

The girl’s name was Natalie Reed.

When I tried to investigate further, everything vanished without a trace.