My Husband Made Me Carry Coffins Five Years for a Pointless Test

Chapter 2

"It is getting late," I muttered without looking up. "I am heading home."

Yet he insisted on walking me to the door.

Joel's eyes sharpened like knives. "What is with the cold shoulder toward Lucian today?" he asked.

I softened my voice. "The journey drained me," I said. "Besides, I reek of funeral incense and damp wood. It is better not to let Lucian near me."

His brow twitched as he flicked imaginary grime from his cuff. "Then go to the apartment and rest," he said. "Shower first. You are filthy."

Even someone as oblivious as me could not miss the disdain in his eyes now.

How many times had I spun that disgust into devotion? I had even blushed under his glare.

Then came the final blow. "Cut Xiaozhi some slack next time," Joel tossed out, his voice like ice. "After all she has done for us." He added, "Do not scowl at her like you did today."

I froze. His shameless bias tore through me like shrapnel. I had no more doubts.

My gaze dropped to his wrist. "Joel," I said. "Where is the watch I gave you?"

"The mainspring broke," he replied. "I sent it for repairs."

A muscle jumped in his jaw. That was his classic tell. I had seen that watch in the trash. It had been tossed out like last week's leftovers. That watch represented my worth, and I had lost all of it.

Noticing my reddening eyes, he dragged me against his chest. His arms were stiff, and his pats felt absent. "Sorry," he said. "I was too harsh earlier."

I swallowed the tears and pushed away. "It is fine," I said. "I am leaving."

He stared at me. I did not grab his sleeve. I did not nuzzle into his collarbone. I told no dramatic tales of carrying coffins.

Blind as ever, he chalked it all up to exhaustion.

Five minutes after I left, their voices of victory spilled through the door.

"High five, Dad!" Lucian shouted. "She totally bought it!"

"Miss Wilde," Lucian added, "I want you and Daddy to tuck me in tonight!"

Lucian's voice unleashed the agony. Five years of splintered wood gouging my shoulders made the pain detonate like dynamite.

On the other side of the door, I crumpled to the floor. I muffled my screams into my knees while the tiles bit into my skin.

I fumbled for my phone and dialed a number I had not called in years. "Can you dig up someone for me?" I asked.

The reply was razor sharp. "Name."

My friend hesitated for a moment. "Sylvia," she said, "there is no record of anyone named Joel."

She continued, "The ID number traces back to someone else. His name is Julian Chase."

I mouthed the name silently, and each syllable stung like salt in a wound. The dossier my friend sent me laid bare every detail of his privileged life.

He was a silver-spoon prince raised in the heart of the capital. Of course Tessa had called him Julian so casually. That had been his childhood pet name all along.

So the love had been staged. His identity had been fabricated. Even our marriage license was just a prop in this charade. The only truth was the knife in my back.

"When are you coming home?" my friend asked. "I will be there."

I shot back my flight details for two days later.

Back at the apartment, I yanked out the property deed. When Joel—no, the fraudster—had married me, he had grandly insisted that the apartment stay solely in my name. "Your safety net," he had crooned like some romantic hero.

How pathetically I had swallowed his lies. I had burned bridges with my parents, and I had even staged a dramatic exit from home. For five years, I had broken my back hauling coffins to pay our son's medical bills. I had weathered everyone's sneers with deluded pride.

Now the scales fell from my eyes. That cramped eighty-square-meter shoebox? He had never wanted it. A hovel like this would embarrass a man of his standing.