fiction
94 My betrothed lifted the small wooden box that my mother had carried as a wedding gift and kept it on her head so that six hundred people could see it. "Let's find out what kind of poor surprise my future sister wears," Vanessa announced, smiling beneath the enormous crystal chandelier. Several people laughed before eventually opening the box. I was less than two meters away and, for the first time since I knew her, I found no one way to convince me that it was just stress. / Chapter 8 / 10

Chapter 8 - The Mirror of Reality

Ethan stared at the woman standing before him. For two years, he had twisted himself into knots trying to earn her approval, walking on eggshells to avoid her sharp tongue, believing that her condescension was just a byproduct of wedding stress.

Now, stripped of her wealth, her status, and her protective social armor, Vanessa looked terrifyingly small.

"You didn't come here to ask for forgiveness, Vanessa," Ethan said, his voice entirely devoid of anger or bitterness. "You came here because you're looking for someone else to cling to now that your gilded cage has collapsed."

Vanessa clutched at the lapel of her oversized coat, tears spilling over her lashes. "I was stressed, Ethan! The wedding... the pressure from my father... I didn't mean those things. We can start over. We can leave this house, leave the city, go somewhere new. Just use your family’s influence—talk to your father! He can stop the audit!"

"My father didn't start the audit, Vanessa. Your father's illegal corporate raiding did," Ethan replied calmly. "And as for starting over... with who? The person you pretend to be when cameras are flashing, or the person who laughs at an honest woman holding a wooden box?"

Vanessa flinched as if struck. The desperation in her eyes flickered, replaced for a split second by a flash of her old, familiar arrogance. "She humiliated us! She showed up in a rags-to-market dress to destroy my social standing! She deserved to have that stupid box thrown in the dirt!"

Ethan felt a sudden, final wave of absolute clarity wash over him. There was no remorse inside her. Even at the absolute bottom, her first instinct was to blame others, to protect her fragile ego, to demean those she considered beneath her.

"Goodbye, Vanessa," Ethan said softly.

He reached out, closed the front door firmly in her face, and turned the deadbolt with a satisfying, metallic click.

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At a family dinner, I stood up smiling and announced I was pregnant. The whole table went completely silent — then my mother-in-law suddenly let out a laugh and yelled: “She’s pretending to be pregnant just to milk money from us!” Before anyone could even react, she seized my hand and pushed me off the hotel rooftop to “prove” I was faking it. Broken and barely conscious, I came to in the hospital with my husband by my side, pale as a ghost and shaking. But the moment the doctor stepped in and opened his mouth, the words he said made the entire room freeze in utter disbelief and horror.

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Through the frosted glass of the door, he heard her gasp, followed by a frantic pounding that quickly faded into muffled, desperate weeping. Ethan didn't look back. He walked steadily down the hallway

and returned to the sunlit kitchen, where the smell of warm bread and coffee welcomed him home.

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