Chapter 13
His words were like a rusty, dull knife, twisting repeatedly in my already shattered heart, and then suddenly breaking off.
If we're talking about acting, my image as a good wife and mother these past two years was the real performance.
I looked at him, at this man I had loved for so many years.
I looked at the doubt and coldness in his eyes, and suddenly I laughed.
My laughter was dry, tasting of blood, echoing through the dining room, more unbearable than crying.
"Acting? James, you think I'm acting?" I stopped laughing, staring at him with empty eyes, my voice soft but carrying a deathly calm.
"Yes, I played your wife for two years. I'm so tired of it."
I took a deep breath, that breath carrying a tearing pain from my chest, going straight to the root cause that had troubled us for two years and destroyed my two years.
"So now I'll tell you the truth about that night you keep obsessing over, the night you're convinced I 'deliberately planned' to sleep with you!"
My voice suddenly rose, carrying too much pent-up resentment and humiliation: "That night, I was drunk. Someone helped me back to my room. When I woke up, I was already lying in bed with you."
I finished this sentence in one breath, with blood and tears. "I was the victim, James. I don't know who set all this up or what the purpose was, but it definitely wasn't something I deliberately arranged!"
I stared at him hard, watching as cracks finally appeared in the cold mask on his face. Shock, doubt, and a kind of confused emotion flashed quickly through his eyes.
Amelia's face instantly turned pale, and she instinctively grabbed James's sleeve tighter. "Sophia, it already happened, and you married James anyway, didn't you?"
She was adding fuel to the fire here, but really trying to cover something up.
I just didn't have solid evidence; otherwise, I would definitely throw it in James's face.
Let him see the true face of this Amelia he's been protecting.
But I didn't care about his reaction anymore.
This truth that had weighed on my heart for two years, left me unable to defend myself, and kept me from ever holding my head up in front of him. I had finally spoken it.
However, the moment I said it, I felt no relief at all, only endless exhaustion and desolation.
Too late, it was all too late.
My child had already paid with their life for this belated truth.
"Believe it or not, up to you." I straightened my back. Although my lower abdomen still sent waves of dull pain and my body was so weak I could collapse at any moment, I forced myself to stand straight.
"Tomorrow morning at eight, courthouse entrance."
My voice was calm and flat, leaving no room for discussion, just announcing an established fact.
After speaking, I turned around and walked upstairs step by step, as if walking on air, without looking back.
Every step I took felt like stepping on knife blades. The cramping pain in my abdomen and the faint warmth below constantly reminded me of the trauma I had just experienced.
But my spine remained straight, as if I wanted to leave all the past humiliation and degradation behind me.
At night, I lay in the cold bed, my body feeling like it had been taken apart and put back together, pain and weakness screaming from everywhere.
My eyes were dry and gritty, but I couldn't shed a single tear, as if all my tears had dried up during the day.
Outside the door, steady footsteps approached.
The footsteps stopped at the door, hesitated for a moment, and then the door was gently pushed open.
I didn't turn around, didn't even open my eyes.
James walked in. He didn't turn on the light, just stood in the shadows by the bed.
The room was dead silent, only our barely audible breathing.
After a long time, so long I thought he would stand there until dawn, he finally spoke.
His voice was no longer cold and furious like during the day, even carrying a tone I had almost forgotten.
"Sophia." He called my name, without the usual disgust and sarcasm. "Let's talk."
In two years, this was the first time he spoke to me in this tone.
Though it was far from the gentleness he showed Amelia, the old me would have been grateful for even this.
But when I had tried countless times to explain to him, to communicate, all he gave me was his cold back and hurtful words.
For James, this was probably a rare, almost "gentle" concession in our two-year marriage.
Too bad I didn't need it anymore.
I kept my eyes closed, motionless, not even changing my breathing pattern, as if I had fallen asleep.
I could feel his gaze lingering on me, examining, carrying some complex emotion I couldn't understand.
He was waiting for my response.
However, all that responded to him was awkward silence filling the room.
Time passed minute by minute.
Finally, I heard his breathing grow heavier. That barely maintained calm tone instantly disappeared, replaced by suppressed anger and the irritation of being ignored.
"Sophia!" He raised his voice.
I still showed no reaction, as if truly dead asleep.
The next second, a loud bang.
He slammed his fist on the nearby cabinet or wall, making a terrifying sound, followed by the door-slamming noise that almost shattered the frame.
He left.
Taking his charity-like gentleness and his unvented anger, he slammed the door and left.
In the darkness, I slowly opened my eyes, staring at the blurry outline on the ceiling, the corner of my mouth curving into a cold, humorless arc.
Early the next morning, just after dawn.
I struggled out of bed. My body was still weak and painful, but my mind was unusually clear.
I walked down the stairs. The living room was empty, no sign of James, no sign of Amelia's nauseating presence either.
Only the servants were busy preparing breakfast in the dining room.
"Where's James?" I asked casually, my voice still a bit hoarse.
The nanny looked up, and seeing it was me, a flash of unease crossed her face. She answered quietly. "Mr. Smith left early this morning with Ms. Martinez. He said there was something very important, going to meet someone called 'ZeroSpecter,' said it was about a major company project."
Hearing this name, I almost instinctively pulled at the corner of my mouth, showing a bone-chillingly cold, mocking smile.
What irony.
He probably never dreamed that the person he valued so much, was so eager to meet, was his wife, whom he had neglected for two years.
Fine then.
I said nothing more and turned to go back upstairs.
I returned to that cold, completely warmthless bedroom.
Without any hesitation, I opened the closet and took out the suitcase from the very back corner.
I didn't take anything James had bought me, whether expensive clothes or jewelry.
I only packed a few of my own simplest belongings, took my laptop, my documents, and those B-ultrasound report fragments that I had carefully pieced together and hidden away; proof that my child had once existed.