Yunhai City Psychiatric Hospital.
Evelyn Mercer lay in a dark, damp room. The filth under her had already mixed into a mess of urine and feces, and the whole place reeked so badly it was almost suffocating.
After years of being forced to take injections that caused muscle atrophy, she was now wasted down to a terrifying state, barely looking human anymore. She had been lying there for so long that bedsores had already formed on her body.
She tried with everything she had to turn over. Again and again, she failed. Her teeth were clenched so hard they hurt, and sweat poured down her face.
Thud.
At last, clutching the edge of the bed, she managed to roll over.
But she rolled straight onto the floor.
Then two pairs of shoes stopped right by her face. A woman’s disgusted voice followed at once. "So gross. Ugh, seriously? I just bought these Prada shoes, and now they’re dirty."
Evelyn slowly lifted her head and saw her husband, Roland Kingsley, standing there with one arm wrapped around her best friend, Chloe Dalton, both of them looking down at her like she was trash.
The second she saw them, hatred exploded in Evelyn’s eyes.
Her fingers dug hard into the leg of the nearby table. Her nails had already cracked, blood running out, but she still forced herself upright little by little, as if doing that could save the last shred of her dignity and stop her from looking too pathetic in front of them.
Roland frowned slightly. "Evelyn Mercer, don’t look at me like that. I prefer the way you used to look at me, all love-struck."
Evelyn suddenly burst into laughter. It was sharp, broken, and full of tears. "You treat me like this... and you still expect me to keep loving you?"
"Isn’t love supposed to be unconditional?" Roland said coldly, his tone calm in that infuriating way. "Just because I didn’t give much back, you stop loving me? Evelyn Mercer, so this is all your love ever was."
"So this is all..." Evelyn murmured. She slowly closed her eyes.
Only she knew how deeply, how stupidly, how completely she had loved Roland once.
They had met in college and fallen in love there. His family had been poor, and during all the years they dated, she never let him spend a cent. Meals, trips, daily expenses—she covered everything. Even his living costs had been paid by her.
Even the apartment her father had gifted her—just because Roland once said he didn’t want people calling him some kept man—she transferred it into his name without hesitation. Then he moved his mother and sister in. To keep peace with them, to play the good wife before marriage even happened, she had practically become a full-time maid for his mother and sister.
After graduation, she had received an offer from a Fortune Global 500 company.
But Roland said he wanted to start a business. He didn’t want to work for anyone. He didn’t want to be "just another office drone."
So she stayed beside him and fought with him from scratch.
To secure one project for him, she drank with clients until she had gastric bleeding. To finish proposals for him, she stayed up so many nights her days and nights got completely flipped.
To help him hold on to a client, she had no idea how many cold stares she had endured, how much sarcasm, humiliation, and sabotage she had swallowed whole.
She had even gone on a business trip for one of his projects. Her father died while she was away, and she didn’t make it back in time.
For Roland, everyone called her unfilial. Called her heartless. Called her an ungrateful daughter, a total white-eyed wolf. She had almost ended up abandoned by everyone around her.
And now?
He had forgotten all of it. Every last bit.
Yet he still had the nerve to stand there and say that her love for him was nothing special.
What a joke.
"Enough. Drop the dying act. Just sign the share transfer agreement. After that, stay home and do design drafts for Chloe Dalton like a good girl. I’m telling you, your life from here on out will be just fine," Roland Kingsley said.
Evelyn Mercer let out a bitter little laugh.
Just fine?
Looking at herself now, wrecked to this point, what part of this looked like she could still live "just fine"?
And besides...
She slowly lifted her eyes to Roland Kingsley, her gaze turning icy. "That twenty percent of the company was earned by me, with my own blood and sweat. Why should I hand it over to you? And why the hell should I keep drawing for Chloe Dalton, so she can get famous, so she can shine, so she can have it all? On what grounds?"
