Chapter 1
908 Words
I stared down at the new text notification that just popped up on my cracked phone screen.
Philip: Babe, I got swamped with ride requests during the evening rush. I'm going to do a few more runs and put in extra hours. Don't wait for me for dinner.
And right there in the hospital ward, Philip Miller sat crisp and polished on the edge of the hospital bed.
Bright light glinted off the Vacheron Constantin on his wrist, and it seared right into my eyes.
I may be dumb, but even I know how crazy expensive that watch is. I could go under the knife a hundred more times and still never earn enough to buy it.
All the Miller family's 'deceased' relatives were gathered here in the flesh.
Right now, Nora was lecturing Zoe.
"Can't the Miller family even afford to feed you properly? How did you starve yourself so badly you ended up in the hospital with low blood sugar?"
Zoe rolled her eyes hard, clearly annoyed.
"I'm dieting! I have to control my portions to keep my fit in check!"
"Sophia's got such a willowy figure now. She'd definitely look better than me in a cami. I can't let her outshine her."
Philip laughed and chided her.
"You're such an i***t. Sophia couldn't even afford to eat properly. What are you even comparing yourself to her for?"
A sharp stone locked in my chest, and suddenly I could barely drag in a breath.
When the construction site got swamped with work, I skipped meals constantly. I developed a chronic stomach problem from it. I told myself as long as it didn't kill me, I couldn't afford to waste money on treatment.
Philip wasn't wrong. I really couldn't compare myself to Zoe.
Then Nora remembered me, and she turned to her daughter with a furrowed brow.
"This is all your fault. You had one stupid nightmare, woke up and swore it was a prophecy. It made all of us waste seven years putting on this stupid act."
"You babbled that Sophia would betray Philip within a year and run off with the security at the gate."
"That she'd drain every last cent from our family and leave us destitute and broken, our family destroyed overnight."
"Seven long years have passed. Not one single thing you said came true, has it?"
She just curled her lip, totally unapologetic.
"That's because we kept a close watch the whole time and left her no opening."
"If we let her live in the lap of luxury, who knows when she'd turn on us, right?"
Dizziness crashed over me before I could stop it. I dug my fingertips so hard into my palms my nails left bleeding crescent marks.
Disaster hit the Miller family barely two months after Philip and I tied the knot.
His parents and sister were in a car crash, the Miller family empire was torn apart and dissolved by creditors.
To pay off their mountain of debt, I took every dirty, backbreaking job I could get my hands on. I pinched every penny so tight I almost broke it just to make ends meet.
The second I opened my eyes in the morning, there were debt collection texts blowing up my phone. The second I closed my eyes at night, I heard creditors pounding on our door screaming for money.
Tens of millions in debt bore down on my shoulders. Even when I was half-dead, I was still willing to risk my life just to scrape together a little extra cash.
Last month, heavy rain flooded our basement. Our rickety bed bobbed in the water like a tiny leaf adrift on a flood.
Philip had wrapped me tight in his arms that night, swearing he'd give me a good life one day.
I snapped back to the present. The whole hospital room had gone dead silent.
Finally, Gavin slammed his palm on the table and made the final call.
"Alright. We'll take her home after the New Year. Giving her back her place as Mrs. Miller is the least we can do to make it up to her."
That was when Amelia Nash, Zoe's best friend, chimed in.
"Philip, you and Sophia have been married seven years, haven't you? She hasn't gotten pregnant at all?"
"If it were me, I'd absolutely want to have a kid with the person I love most."
"Don't get me wrong, I don't mean anything bad. We all grew up together, after all. I just... I'm scared that Sophia might not appreciate your devotion to her."
After listening to all this backstabbing nonsense, I could barely hold back a snort of bitter laughter.
'Have a kid? In that tiny apartment we're renting? You really want a kid to grow up scraping by on scraps and living hand to mouth with us?'
But Philip actually bought every word of that nonsense. He leaned in and told Amelia to elaborate.
Her voice was sickeningly sweet and soft, but every word that slipped out of her mouth was a poison-tipped dagger.
"If you ask me, why don't we test Sophia one more time? See if she can really resist temptation."
Philip's mouth opened, then closed again. He couldn't make up his mind, not even after all that.
I couldn't stand to listen or look another second. I fled the hospital in a blind panic. My palms were still stinging where my nails had dug in.
- Writer
