Chapter 2

I ignored the doctor’s explicit warning and walked straight out of the emergency ward.

The café’s employee medical insurance and extended leave paperwork required only one signature to be valid—Noah’s.

There was no other choice. With my body still reeling from persistent cramps, I headed straight for the upscale bar where the entire team was celebrating their after-party.

I pushed open the private booth’s door, and a wave of deafening laughter crashed over me in an instant.

“Noah, what the hell happened with Irene today?”

Liam, our oldest friend and one of the café’s earliest founding partners, twirled the whiskey glass in his hand and asked casually.

“It’s our fifth anniversary. For her to vanish halfway through the biggest event of the year… you don’t think she’s actually hurt, do you?”

I froze in the shadow of the doorway, my fingers tightening until they crumpled the already-wrinkled diagnosis slip clutched in my palm.

Leaning lazily against the plush leather sofa, Noah’s tie hung loose and unkempt around his collar.

He did not even bother to lift his eyes toward the door, his tone laced with dismissive mockery.

“An accident? Come on, Liam. You know her better than anyone. She’s just being dramatic.” He let out a cold, humorless scoff.

“The second another younger, prettier woman outshines her at work, she starts spiraling, convinced her place is being stolen. This little stunt is nothing but her usual emotional manipulation. Mark my words—tomorrow morning, she’ll act like nothing ever happened, staring at me with that pitiful, manufactured look, waiting for me to coddle her. It’s exhausting, honestly.”

The booth erupted into another round of lighthearted laughter, every single chuckle piercing my skin like shards of broken glass.

I bit down hard on the tip of my tongue, the sharp metallic taste of blood grounding my frayed sanity. I forced my stiff legs forward and stepped into the room.

The laughter died abruptly.

Noah’s head snapped toward me. The lazy nonchalance on his face faded in a split second, replaced by a dark, stormy scowl.

“What are you doing here? Are you stalking me now?”

He surged to his feet, his towering frame casting a suffocating shadow over my smaller figure.

I brushed past the blatant disgust swirling in his eyes and held out the stacked documents in my hands, my voice steady and flat despite the agony gnawing at my abdomen.

“The doctor said my condition is critical and highly unstable. I need to be hospitalized tomorrow without delay. These leave and insurance forms need your signature. I won’t be able to handle any café business for the foreseeable future.”

Noah did not spare a single glance at the papers. He raked his eyes over my trembling figure from head to toe and let out a mocking, bitter chuckle.

“Hospitalization? Even when you’re faking an illness to guilt-trip me into coming home, could you at least come up with a halfway believable excuse?”

He swatted the documents out of my hands with a brutal flick of his wrist, sending sheets of paper scattering across the carpeted floor.

“You’re standing right in front of me, perfectly fine. How much longer are you going to keep this up? Do you plan on draining every last bit of my peace just to satisfy your paranoia? Why can’t you act like a mature adult and stop centering your entire life around me?!”

“I’m your wife. I’m carrying your child—”

“Enough!”

Before I could finish my sentence, a soft, honeyed voice cut through the rising tension.

Selena materialized out of thin air, sidling up to Noah’s side and pressing herself closely against his arm. She heaved a feigned, sympathetic sigh, her tone sickeningly saccharine.

“Don’t be too harsh on her, Noah. Irene’s complexion looks terrible. She might genuinely be feeling unwell.”

She tilted her head toward me, her words masked as concern yet laced with subtle poison.

“I know you’ve been emotionally unstable lately, Irene. Truth be told… you messed up the entire ledger for our highest-grade Blue Bottle bean inventory this afternoon. I saw how drained you were, and I was afraid Noah would scold you, so I stayed overtime late into the night to fix all your mistakes on my own. No one faults you for needing sick leave, but throwing a scene on such an important night really does put Noah in an awkward position.”

“You’re lying. I finalized and sent over that exact set of ledgers yesterday evening—” I shot her a sharp, furious glare, my blood beginning to boil.

“Shut your mouth, Irene!”

Noah slammed his whiskey glass hard against the tabletop, the crystal rim cracking under the brute force of his rage.

“Not only do you plague me with your petty personal tantrums, now you’re sabotaging company inventory behind my back? Have you lost all sense of decency? Keep your messy personal issues out of the workplace, and don’t you dare ruin everyone’s mood on a night like this. Get out. Right now.”

A suffocating silence blanketed the private booth.

Every investor, friend, and staff member seated around the table stared straight at me, their gazes brimming with thinly concealed amusement and condescension—as if I were nothing more than a hysterical, unreasonable shrew throwing a childish tantrum for no reason.

The public humiliation stung sharper than any physical slap, shattering the last fragile sliver of hope I’d clung to for years.

I stared up at Noah’s face, contorted with unbridled fury, and a strange sense of numbness washed over me. Memories crashed into my mind uninvited.

Five years.

Five years ago, we’d shared a roach-infested basement apartment in the slums of New York. We’d been so broke we could never afford to turn on the heating during brutal winter nights.

Landlords had banged relentlessly on our door at midnight, threatening to throw us out onto the freezing streets.

Back then, Noah had planted himself firmly in front of me. Even when the landlord’s men pinned him to the frozen snow and beat him until his face was covered in blood, he’d gritted his teeth and screamed for everyone to hear: No one touches my girl.

Back then, if a single customer so much as raised their voice at me inside our tiny original café, Noah would strip off his apron without a second thought, ready to sacrifice an entire day’s profits just to force that rude stranger to apologize to me.

He’d once trusted me unconditionally. Protected me from every harm, big and small.

But now? Ever since Selena walked into our lives—young, vibrant, and eager to worship the ground he walked on—the man I’d loved for a decade had turned into the executioner, shooting daggers directly at my heart.

Another sharp cramp twisted deep inside my lower abdomen. Yet for the first time that night, I felt eerily, unnervingly calm.

“Fine. I understand.”

I uttered those two words plainly.

Amid the collective stunned stares of everyone in the booth, I turned on my heel and walked out of the private room without a single backward glance.

I sealed the door shut behind me, locking away all their mocking laughter—and every miserable, wasted second of my ten years loving him—for good.

……

By the time I stumbled back to our apartment, my body was so weakened by blood loss and persistent pain that I could barely stand on my own two feet.

My phone screen lit up abruptly. Two missed calls, both from Noah.

Once upon a time, I would have dialed him back instantly, typing out paragraphs upon paragraphs of tearful explanations, desperate to make him understand how hurt and wronged I was.

But as I stared at the blinking cursor in our empty message thread, my expression remained completely vacant. I selected every old message, deleted them all in one click, and pushed the phone aside.

I pulled open my laptop without a shred of hesitation. If Selena was willing to fabricate lies and tamper with ledgers to frame me, I would dig up every single record and expose exactly who the real liar was.