She waved her phone at me. The screen showed a picture of her and Jonathan, cuddled together on a trip abroad.
"It was because I had a beauty treatment appointment that day and Jonathan said my face was more important than that old man's life."
I slapped the phone out of her hand. She screamed and shoved me hard. I stumbled back into a bookshelf. A delicate antique vase crashed to the floor and shattered.
Right at that moment, the ground began to tremble violently.
"An … an earthquake!"
Wendy's face turned deathly pale. She turned to run but was blocked by a fallen bookcase.
Thick smoke started rising at the end of the hallway and a short circuit sparked a fire.
My body was still weak from just being discharged from the hospital and quickly gave way. I collapsed onto the broken glass scattered on the floor.
"Daphne!"
I heard Jonathan's voice coming from afar, followed by the housekeeper's dissuasion, "Mr. Zander! It's too dangerous!"
"Get out of the way!"
The sound of footsteps grew closer. Jonathan rushed into the smoke-filled room.
The first thing he saw was Wendy huddled in a corner, sobbing.
"Jonathan! I'm so scared." Wendy reached out her arms.
Jonathan picked her up without hesitation. When he turned around, he finally saw me lying on the ground.
Our eyes met. His lips moved, but in the end, he said nothing. He carried Wendy as they disappeared into the smoke.
The earthquake quickly subsided, but it took the firefighters an hour to extinguish the fire.
Jonathan asked repeatedly, but no one said they had seen me.
Neither in life nor in death was my body found.
At the airport, after I mailed out everything I needed to, I clutched my chest and prepared to board my flight.
My phone rang again. It was Jonathan.
I calmly pulled out the SIM card and tossed it into the trash.
Jonathan, from this day forward, you and I have absolutely nothing to do with each other.
"Stop messing around with me. I know you're not dead. I'll accompany Wendy for a prenatal checkup at nine o'clock tomorrow morning. Return to me immediately and I'll take you to a physical checkup."
Jonathan stared at his phone screen for a long time, waiting for a reply that never came. Frustrated, he tossed his phone across the room.
The following day, at a private hospital VIP ward.
"Jonathan, is the baby, okay?" Wendy gently rubbed her slightly rounded belly, eyes brimming with tears.