Love given in vain, no turning back

After the car accident, with a fractured wrist and bleeding knees, I sat by the curb and waited fifteen minutes for Frank Zhuang. When he finally arrived, his first words were not of concern, but an accusation—asking why I hadn’t called him first. The very next second, he rushed toward another woman. He personally massaged her foot and bought her flat shoes, abandoning me, covered in injuries, right by the side of the road. My heart went completely cold, and I resolved to leave the husband with whom I had weathered years of hardship. Little did Frank know, I was no helpless orphan with nowhere to go. Thousands of miles away in Paris, my family had already prepared the inheritance papers, merely waiting for my return to claim it all. He thought I could never leave him. He didn't realize that this time, I truly was done with him. Laura Nie POV Frank and I were a couple who had clawed our way up from nothing. In our early days, I crammed into a drafty rental room with him, eating instant noodles. I stayed by his side through every hardship until we finally had a house, a car, and a company running on track. When the car accident happened, I sat on the pavement for a full fifteen minutes. Frank’s car screeched to a halt at an angle against the curb. He slammed the car door shut with a loud bang. Striding over, he scanned me from head to toe. "Something this major happens, and your first reaction wasn't to call me?" I didn't stand up. My right wrist was swollen like a loaf of bread. A large patch of my jeans at the knee was shredded, the dark red flesh mashed together with the fabric. I had thought he would crouch down first and gently check the limp wrist hanging at my side. Instead, the moment he opened his mouth, he came at me with an interrogation. People in our social circle loved to praise Frank for being a devoted husband. Both of us had lost our parents when we were young. We were orphans who had tumbled together out of the mud in an unfamiliar city. Later on, Frank often said that the kind of wife he wanted was one who never made a fuss and kept the house spotless. I hadn't been that kind of woman in the past. Back then, I could send him twenty messages a day. If a croissant from a roadside bakery tasted bad, or if a stray cat was lying on someone's car hood, I would take a photo and send it to him. If he came home half an hour late at night, I would press him three times about his schedule. Later, I became the person he wanted me to be. I stopped asking about his itinerary, stopped touching his phone, and stopped sharing the mundanities of my day. Frank boasted at dinner tables that his wife had finally grown sensible. He never stopped to think about how a person could suddenly turn so quiet in just two weeks. It was the complete numbness of a dying heart—too tired to even let out a whimper of pain. The truck driver responsible for the crash was crouching beneath a streetlight smoking, his fingers trembling so violently that he couldn't align the cigarette with his lips. A passerby had helped me call the police and an ambulance, then picked up my purse from the asphalt and tucked it back into my arms. I pulled my swollen wrist back into the sleeve of my trench coat. "The traffic police were faster than you." "I asked you why you didn't call me," Frank said in a low voice, his brows knit tight. "Who am I to you?" "My husband." "Then why didn't you call?" I lifted my eyes to look at him. "I did." Frank’s Adam's apple bobbed up and down. Using my left hand, I unlocked my phone with its cracked inner screen and held the topmost entry of the call log right before his eyes. I had dialed the moment of the crash. It had rung until it automatically disconnected. "I was in a board meeting," he defended himself. "I know." "You knew, and you still called?" "If I hadn't made that call, you'd be using a different script right now." My tone was completely flat. Frank snatched the phone and tossed it back into my lap. "I rushed over the second the meeting ended. How dare you sit here letting people gawk at you like a circus monkey?" "I can't get up." "If you can't get up, couldn't you have asked a passerby to take you to the hospital?" "I was waiting for you." That single sentence cut him off completely. Frank's fingers clenched and unclenched, his expression darkening further. "You're always like this. Enduring everything on your own. Who are you putting on a show for?" I cast my eyes down and said nothing. In my heart, I took back the words "waiting for you." From now on, whether going to the ER or the crematorium, I would hail my own cab and register my own name. The car pulled up outside the gates of the private hospital. Frank walked around to the passenger side and pulled the door open. Just as my foot in its high heel touched the ground, a woman's voice drifted down from the steps of the outpatient clinic.Laura Nie POV "Mr. Zhuang!" Cecilia Xiang was carrying a stainless steel insulated thermos. Just as she took two steps down the stairs, her foot mysteriously twisted, and she pitched straight forward. The car door slipped from Frank's grip. He lunged forward instantly. The thermos crashed onto the concrete, creamy mushroom soup spilling into the cracks between the stone steps. Without even glancing at the puddle, Frank kicked it aside and caught Cecilia securely in his arms. "Where are you hurt? Does it hurt? Let me see," he asked softly, bending down. Shrinking into his embrace, the corners of Cecilia's eyes reddened. "I just wanted to bring you some soup, Mr. Zhuang... There are so many people watching. Please let go of me first." Frank didn't let go at all. Instead, he dropped to one knee and rolled up her pant leg. He massaged her slightly flushed ankle in circles twice, then pulled off his gloves, pressing his bare palm against the top of her foot to check its warmth. I held onto the passenger door, standing barely two paces away. My right wrist throbbed sharply, and the wounds on my knees stretched, oozing fresh blood. It was only by leaning my left arm against the car door that I kept myself from collapsing. I measured the distance in my mind. Two paces. So Frank did know how to love someone. It wasn't that he was incapable. These gestures came to him so naturally, yet he had never once offered them to me. Leaning against his shoulder, Cecilia darted a glance toward me and spoke timidly, "Mrs. Zhuang, I really didn't mean to. My foot just slipped." As if only just remembering someone was still standing by the car, Frank turned his head toward me. "Laura, you..." "She sprained her ankle," I said, shutting the car door behind me. "Take her to orthopedics first." "What about you?" "I'll wait in line myself." I didn't enter the hospital lobby. Holding onto the guardrail of the green belt, I shuffled forward two hundred meters and hailed a taxi at the intersection. The driver asked where I was going. "Circle around the front gates of the hospital," I said. Catching sight of the blood on my pants in the rearview mirror, the driver didn't pry and turned the steering wheel back around. As the car glided past the entrance of the emergency building, I rolled down the window just a crack. Across the street, the curtain of a 24-hour convenience store parted, and Frank hurried out. In his left hand, he held a bottle of warm water with the cap unscrewed; in his right, a pair of freshly bought soft flats. He was running with even more urgency than when he had gotten out of his car earlier. Cecilia had taken off her shoes and was sitting on the curb. Frank crouched down, cupping Cecilia's foot to slip it into the flat shoe, then warmed her ankle with both hands. I watched the scene through the car window. I leaned back quietly against the seat, almost patiently waiting for that familiar, dull ache to rise in my chest. In the past, whenever he returned from business dinners with stray foundation smudges on his collar, that dull pain would push all the way up into my throat, suffocating me and keeping me awake all night. In the past, I would keep vigil over a table of food reheated three times, ironing his white shirt for the next day while inventing a dozen excuses in my head to justify his actions. I waited through a red light that lasted half a block. My chest remained entirely still. As smooth and undisturbed as stagnant water. I had almost hoped I would feel a pang of sorrow. Feeling pain meant that I still cared about this person, that this marriage might still have a chance of being saved. Now that my body didn't even produce a flicker of pain, I saw everything with absolute clarity. If I kept wallowing in this mire, there would be nothing left for me. I thought back to the day of my miscarriage last year, the day I was wheeled into the operating room. The fluorescent lights on the ceiling were blinding, retreating row after row overhead. Clutching the circulating nurse's rubber glove, the last question I asked was how close he was. When the anesthesia wore off and I woke up, there was only a nurse on duty by the nightstand checking the IV bag label. From that day on, I completely broke myself of the habit of asking, and all those excuses I had made for him shattered into dust. I raised my hand to roll up the window, glancing down at my swollen, disfigured wrist. The hospital gates were left far behind in the car's wake. I gave the driver the address of another private clinic. Sitting on a hard bench in the treatment room, the elderly doctor clamped my wrist with splints, wrapping high-elastic compression bandages around it layer by layer. Pushing up his reading glasses, the doctor said the bone wasn't broken, but the periosteum and soft tissue were severely bruised; it absolutely could not touch water this week. I gave a faint hum of acknowledgment, took out my phone, and scanned the payment QR code on the wall. Just as the bandage was secured, the phone in my purse began to buzz. On the screen was an overseas long-distance number with an undisclosed location. I switched to my left hand to answer. A middle-aged man's voice came through the receiver: "Is this Ms. Laura Nie?" "Speaking." "I am Mr. Lin's private legal counsel. Are you comfortable with French? The cross-matching report for the parentage blood test just arrived, and Mr. Lin has already reviewed it." I tightened my grip on the phone. "What did he say?" "Mr. Lin only asked one thing: when will you return to Paris?" The only sound in the treatment room was the creaking of the ceiling fan overhead. The nurse secured the end of the bandage with medical tape, the pressure sending a dull ache through the injury. "Ms. Nie? Are you still there?" "I'm here," I said, clearing my dry throat. "Please, go on." "The inheritance documents for the family trust and overseas equity have all been prepared. You only need to set your schedule; the private jet is on standby at the airport at all times." " "No need for a private jet." "Mr. Lin gave strict instructions. Someone must be sent to meet you right at the gate." I turned my head, staring out at the dreary, gray asphalt. "Wait until I've handled the mess on my hands here. Don't rush me. Once I have the flight details, I'll send them over." "Understood," the lawyer paused for half a second. "There is one more matter—your legal husband, Mr. Zhuang. Does our legal department need to step in and handle him in advance?" I chewed over that phrase in my mind. "No," I said calmly. "When the day comes, I'll sign everything that needs to be signed, and I'll fly over with only my own documents." Hanging up, I laid the phone face down on my knees. The vintage wall clock ticked down, second by second. I would sign whatever needed signing myself, and as for how to resolve this mess, I already had my answer. After all these years, for the first time, I didn't need to ask for anyone's permission before burning my own bridges.Laura Nie POV Back at the villa, the house was as pitch-black as a dry well. I didn't turn on the entryway light, relying on muscle memory in the dark to drop my bag onto the shoe console. The splint on my right wrist knocked against the cabinet's brass handle, sending a sharp throb of pain through me that made me gasp, though I swallowed the groan back down. This single-floor penthouse was massive; my solitary footsteps echoed across the hardwood. Holding onto the handrail, I went up to the second-floor study. Pulling open the bottom solid-wood drawer, I retrieved a blue velvet box from beneath a stack of documents. Holding the box, I sat on the edge of the master bed, lifting the lid in the glow of the streetlight filtering through the window. Inside lay a vintage mechanical watch. That was from many years ago. When Frank closed the studio's very first deal, after deducting the upfront pay for the workers, he was left with just a thin stack of cash in his pocket. He dragged me along to browse department store counters all afternoon, finally buying an entry-level couple's watch set. He slipped the one with scuffs along the casing onto his wrist right there on the spot, declaring that a man doing business needed a proper watch. The matching women's watch was packed into the box and handed to me. From that day on, the watch on Frank's wrist never came off. Even later, when he upgraded to a Rolex, that old timepiece remained locked in the top tier of his office safe. I took out the women's watch, grazing my thumb across the pristine, unscratched sapphire caseback. I had once treated this watch as a beacon of hope. Enshrined in a dark drawer for all these years. Waiting for the day he might remember, so we could wear them together for a proper, decent dinner. An identical pair of watches. One person wore his as a lucky charm all the way to becoming a prominent figure, while the other let hers collect dust at the bottom of a drawer. This was our ending; there was no need to confront him face-to-face about anything anymore. Neither of us had anyone to lean on growing up. Before he turned sixteen, Frank lived crammed in a storage room at his aunt's house. For six years, I hauled slop buckets at my uncle's place in a remote town. It was pouring rain the day we met at the labor market. With empty pockets, we leaned over the same damp plywood table, filling out job registration forms. Later, that eighty-square-foot room became our nest. When it poured outside, it drizzled indoors, and I placed basins on the floor to catch the drips. Frank would hold up a torn sheet of plastic above my head, his own tank top soaked through on the left side. During our harshest winter, Frank rode a beat-up electric scooter halfway across the city just to deliver blueprints. When he returned in the dead of night, a thin frost dusted his eyelashes. Unzipping his down jacket, he pulled out a piping-hot bundle tucked against his chest. Doughnuts. Sniffling, he grinned, saying he had waited in line to buy them and kept them pressed against his bare skin the whole ride back so they wouldn't get cold. I unwrapped one and took a bite, tears welling up from how hot it was, asking indistinctly if he had eaten yet. Rubbing his chilblained knuckles, he shook his head vigorously. "Not hungry. You eat. It's all for you." Back then, when he said he wasn't hungry, his eyes burned like fire. Later, once the books turned a profit, he secretly saved his cigarette money for four whole months to buy that leather purse in the department store lobby—the one I had stopped to look at three times. It wasn't a crazy expensive luxury brand, but when he pushed the paper bag into my arms, he puffed out his chest and said, "Laura, from now on, we won't have to envy what other people have." Every single one of these moments was etched into my mind. And then, more and more women began appearing around him. At first, I didn't believe it. Whatever half-hearted excuse he offered, I took at face value. Until late one night, when I caught a sharp, fruity-floral perfume on the collar of his discarded white dress shirt. He claimed clients dragged him to a club to entertain, and the hostess threw herself at him—he couldn't dodge in time. I tossed the shirt into the washing machine that very night, without asking a single follow-up question. After that, his phone calls grew shorter, his arrivals home grew later, and whenever he walked through the door, his phone was always placed face down on the table. In my heart, I kept a running ledger of every single slight. Once, I got up in the middle of the night to grab water from the kitchen. The side of the master bed beside me was stone cold. In the corner of the living room, a faint glow from a screen reflected off the sofa. Frank was hunched over his phone, the corner of his lips curled into a boyish, smug grin—an expression I hadn't seen in years. I stood leaning against the doorframe for two minutes, not disturbing him, and crept quietly back under the covers.Laura Nie POV Then Cecilia Xiang appeared at the company reception desk. The first time I saw her at the anniversary gala, I froze. Cecilia's slightly downturned doe eyes, along with that tiny habit of curling her lip downward when speaking, looked just like me in my early twenties. He was looking for twenty-year-old Laura Nie in Cecilia. As for the wife in front of him, whose rough edges had been ground down by life, the one who suffered through the lean years with him—he was thoroughly tired of looking at her. Late into the night after I regained consciousness in the emergency room. That overseas call came in for the first time. The person on the other end spoke French, saying they had been searching for me for nearly thirty years, and that all biological markers matched. Back then, I thought it was a telemarketing scam and hung up without thinking. The next morning, I went downstairs to buy breakfast. I happened to catch Frank's car parked at the intersection. He was reaching out, gently tucking a stray strand of Cecilia's hair behind her ear as the morning breeze ruffled it. Standing behind the doorway, I backed away, step by step, and headed upstairs. It took me three full days to sort through decades of memories. Over those three days, Frank didn't send a single text. It was as if he had completely forgotten there was an injured patient with a torn ligament at home. On the evening of the third day, Frank suddenly pushed the door open right at dinner time. I ladled a bowl of creamy mushroom soup and set it at the head of the table, just like usual. Tossing his briefcase aside, Frank scrolled through spreadsheets on his tablet, barely touching his silverware. Sitting beside him, I spoke up as if in passing, "The company's early founder shares were funded through our joint account back then. Now that the business has scaled up, it's time we sorted that out." I paused, keeping my tone level. "I hate to bring up bad omens." Frank didn't even look up. "What is it?" "I've been dealing with insomnia lately," I said, plating a piece of duck liver for him. "Neither of us had any family to fall back on growing up. If something ever happens to one of us out of the blue, and the survivor doesn't have an agreement in hand, the board will probably descend into chaos." Frank let out a vague hum, his gaze still glued to the financial graphs. "Stop scaring yourself," he scoffed dismissively. "I'm in great shape. With me holding the fort, nothing's going to happen to you." I pulled open the sideboard drawer, drew out a drafted A4 document, and slid it beside his elbow. "Just sign," I said, handing him an uncapped Montblanc fountain pen. "Once you sign this, I'll finally be able to get a decent night's sleep." Frank glanced carelessly at the heading—Postnuptial Property Division and No-Fault Addendum Agreement—presumably assuming it was routine household property notarization, without bothering to flip through the detailed clauses below. "Since when did you get so petty?" Smirking, he put pen to paper and scribbled his signature across the grantee confirmation line. I watched that familiar flourish settle onto the page. For the first time in my life, I had used my wits to protect myself against him. Without a word, I pulled the document back, folded it neatly, slipped it into a manila folder, and zipped up my purse. Frank devoured that meal in a rush. After a couple of bites, he answered a business call, grabbed his jacket, and headed out the door—never once asking about the brace wrapped around my wrist. Over the next two weeks, he rarely came home at night. After packing up my remaining belongings from the villa, I remembered that old shared studio apartment in Boston. We had bought the property years ago and kept it listed for rent through an agency. The agent had texted yesterday, saying a client working with redevelopment planning liked the location and scheduled a reinspection for this morning. With the manila folder carrying the agreement tucked into my bag, I followed the agent and buyer up the concrete stairs to the third floor. Old, abandoned bicycles and coal ash from neighbors piled up in the stairwell landings, while the damp, blistered whitewash flaked off the walls whenever a draft blew through. Reaching the door of Room 302, I froze in my tracks. The battered green security gate wasn't locked; it was left ajar by a couple of inches. Voices drifted out from inside, laced with a woman's cooing laughter. I knew both voices all too well. One was Frank. The other was Cecilia. Cecilia spoke with a nasal whine, "Mr. Zhuang, this place is such a dump. Why did you bring me all the way out here?" Frank's voice filtered through the rusted wire mesh: "This is where Laura and I stayed when the business was just starting out. Cecilia, I wanted to show you my past." I stood frozen in the hallway, as if my feet were nailed to the floor. Over the years, all of his care and concern had been generously given away to others. What I had been desperately clinging to was nothing more than an old ledger of the hardships we once shared. It was the very last shred of dignity and leverage I had left in this marriage that existed in name only. And now, he had stripped away even this final piece of dignity, turning it into cheap foreplay to flaunt before his mistress. My hands were completely empty. Beside me, the agent urged impatiently, "You have the key, don't you? Why don't we unlock it and take a look inside?" I raised my left hand, but just as my fingers were about to brush the doorknob, I pulled back. Through the crack in the door, Cecilia was still giggling. Frank's low chuckle pierced through the thin door panel, sending a dull, throbbing ache straight through my head. Instinctively, I pulled the shoulder bag holding the agreement behind my back. I looked down at the slightly yellowed brace on my right wrist, then glanced once more at the ajar door. Today was not the time for a showdown.Laura Nie POV I didn't push the door open. Taking half a step back, I turned to the agent and the buyer with a faint smile. "Today isn't very convenient," I said. "Why don't you come back another day to view the place? I'm quite busy these couple of days." The buyer started to say something, but the voices inside suddenly cut off. Frank pulled the door open and stepped out, sweat beading on his forehead from panic, his shirt sleeves rolled up. "Laura?" he asked in a hushed voice. "When did you get here? Did you... hear all that just now?" "Just passing by." I shifted my bag to my other hand. "The agent set up a viewing, so I walked up to take a look. I didn't go in." "You didn't go in?" "No." He stared at my face for a long, heavy moment. The knuckles of his hand gripping the doorframe tightened, bit by bit. Cecilia followed him out, lingering right behind him, one hand still clutching his sleeve. "Ms. Nie, please don't misunderstand. Mr. Zhuang and I just came up to take a look. He said this place..." "I'm not misunderstanding anything," I cut her off. I didn't even spare Cecilia a second glance. Cecilia's fingers twisted tighter around his sleeve. "Go ahead and look," I said. "I'm leaving." Frank didn't move out of the way. "Wait a second." He took half a step forward. "What happened to your wrist?" Only then did he catch sight of the brace on my hand, his expression instantly tightening. "I took a fall." "When did this happen? Why didn't you tell me?" "If I had told you, would you have had the time to care?" He had no answer for that. His Adam's apple bobbed. It took him a long time to squeeze out, "I only brought Cecilia up here because I suddenly remembered this place and wanted to show her around. That's all." "Okay." "Don't be like this." "Like what?" I asked so flatly. His face looked even worse than when he had first pulled the door open, as if he would rather I threw a massive scene right then and there. In the past, even if I merely scraped my knee, I would call him three times in a row. He was probably waiting for that version of me. That version of me had vanished the second he arrived at that intersection and uttered his very first sentence. "Cecilia's ankle is still sprained. I'm going to take her home first," he said. "You should hurry to the hospital and get that checked out, too." "All right," I replied briskly. He froze for a second. From the far end of the hallway, a faint cracking sound suddenly echoed. This building had been classified as unsafe for a long time. Dilapidated wooden planks from demolitions were piled up in the hallway corners, and the peeling plaster flaked off with the slightest touch. Downstairs, an old scavenger had glanced up earlier and yelled, "Watch out up there!" but no one had taken it seriously. The wind howled through the window frames missing their glass panes, whipping up dust devils that swirled through the entire corridor. The wall groaned again. Immediately following that, a fissure cracked open across the partition wall above our heads with a sharp snap, showering down chunks of plaster and debris. "The wall is collapsing!" the agent screamed. Before anyone could even react. Frank lunged forward almost purely on instinct. He swept Cecilia into his arms, rolling his entire body over her and using his own back to shield her from the collapsing wall. Bricks and concrete slabs rained down mercilessly, slamming against his back and the arm he used to shield her. Cecilia shrieked, cowering tightly against his chest. A thick cloud of dust billowed up in an instant, filling the hallway with the suffocating, metallic stench of dirt and blinding everyone. Standing two steps away, I had no time to dodge. A half-broken wall collapsed entirely, burying me along with my bag beneath it. A searing, excruciating pain ripped through my leg, and I crashed sideways onto the floor. I heard a soft, sickening snap from inside my calf. After that sound, the leg no longer belonged to me. Blood seeped through my pant leg, staining the gray dust beneath me into a dark, spreading stain. Broken brick shards slashed across my arms and cheeks, leaving trails of blood streaming down. "Laura!" Frank finally turned his head. His own arm had been gashed open, blood dripping down his sleeve, but he didn't even look at it. Shielding Cecilia, he scrambled out of the rubble. The moment he saw me pinned beneath the wall, all color drained from his face, and he scrambled over in a frenzy to haul the bricks away. But right then, I couldn't clearly hear what he was shouting. Half my body was trapped under the wall, my leg was immobile, and my ears were ringing violently. I could hear people running up and down the stairs; I could hear someone screaming for an ambulance. Yet in my mind, those two fleeting seconds remained crystal clear. When the wall groaned, he had been two steps away from me, and one step away from Cecilia. He had lunged toward Cecilia. The day of the crash, when I sat by the roadside waiting for him for over ten minutes, I had still believed in one thing: when push came to shove, at the critical moment, he would always pull me out first. That collapsing wall had crushed that belief into dust. From this point on, I had nothing left to wait for. The brace wrapped around my right wrist for days was burning hot under the pressure of the bricks, its edges already soaked in blood. Right before I lost consciousness, a thought suddenly struck me. The kraft paper envelope containing the signed agreement was inside my bag. When the wall crashed down, the bag had slid away, landing on a pile of rubble two steps away. That was the only way out I had quietly secured for myself over the past six months. I couldn't let it stay crushed there, and worse, I couldn't let him see it and suspect anything. Gritting my teeth, I braced myself with my unpinned arm and dragged myself forward, inch by agonizing inch. Jagged brick shards tore through my palms and scraped against my knees until they bled. My entire body trembled, my vision blacking out in waves of sheer agony, but I kept crawling. I crawled through the thick dust, crawled over the sharp debris biting into my flesh, crawled past the sound of him screaming my name, all the way to the bag. I pulled the envelope out and clutched it fiercely against my chest, gripping it so tightly that my knuckles turned white. Only when it was securely held did I finally let out that breath. "Laura! Laura, look at me!" Frank had already shoved half the bricks off me, frantically trying to gather me into his arms. I parted my lips, wanting to say something, but darkness swallowed my vision. As Frank reached for me, my instinct took over, and I pressed the envelope even tighter against my chest. He scooped me up and dashed down the stairs, blowing past Cecilia, who was still standing in the hallway, without pausing for a single second. In his arms, my hand remained locked over my chest. My final thought was: as long as it's safe, that's all that matters.