"I'm telling you, that woman giving you a daughter is no big deal!" Victoria's eyes blazed. "Because I gave birth to a daughter too! Over twenty years ago, I not only cheated on you with another man—I had his child!"
Jonathan stared at his wife, numb and speechless.
"What have I endured all these years for? What did I ever do wrong after marrying you? How dare you betray me? As if you didn't even have a wife, you went and had a child with some wild woman outside?!" She suddenly burst into manic laughter, tears streaming down her face.
"How dare you trample me, humiliate me like this?! Do you think you're the only one with feelings, that the rest of us are just grass, just stone?! Emotionless machines?!" Filled with rage and injustice, Victoria interrogated her husband, word by word.
Jonathan could never have imagined that, after all these years, his wife's hatred for him had grown this deep! He tried to raise a finger to accuse her, but his hands refused to obey…
"You think I'm only getting revenge now? You think a man like you is worth twenty years of my patience?!" Victoria laughed bitterly, then locked her gaze on her husband's face and continued, one deliberate word at a time: "I hate you. I'm done with you. Hate isn't even enough to express my resentment! Yes, I resent it—being the pitiful woman betrayed by her husband!" Tears instantly flooded her cheeks. "Your daughter is twenty-four, right? My daughter is twenty-four too. They're both twenty-four, hahaha…" Victoria's laughter tore through her like a scream from the soul.
After shouting the "truth," time seemed to freeze in that instant…
"You… you, you…" Suddenly, Jonathan seemed to lose his memory entirely; he couldn't even form a complete sentence.
"You selfish man—you don't understand feelings at all. You have no heart! A man like you—if you don't taste the pain of betrayal yourself, you'll never know how much it hurts the people you've wounded!" Victoria pressed on.
Jonathan tried to lunge at her, but his legs wouldn't move… His body was ice-cold and burning at once. Staring at his wife's eerie smile, a sharp pain suddenly shot through his chest. Clutching his heart, mouth agape, he tremblingly raised his other arm, pointing at her, stammering, "You—you—, ah, ah…"
And so Victoria kept waiting for his retort, only to realize something was increasingly wrong with him…
She stumbled back several steps, hands clamped over her mouth, eyes wide as she stared at Jonathan's unnatural state.
Then Jonathan pitched forward and collapsed onto the concrete at the doorway—
Victoria's mouth fell open in shock at the sudden turn. She hurried over and saw clearly: blood trickled from the corner of his mouth, his lips were deathly pale, eyes shut tight, face darkened to a ghastly hue, brows knitted in agony, right hand clutching his heart, legs slightly curled—yet he no longer moved…
It wasn't until a swarm of servants burst from the house and frantically loaded her husband into an ambulance that she realized, with lingering terror, she was sitting outside the hospital emergency room. The surgery light had been on for nearly five hours; it was as if that single instant had erased all memory…
"Mom!" Ned hurried to his mother's side.
Ned, arriving in a rush, saw her sitting blankly outside the operating room.
"You're here?" Victoria sounded as though she had aged ten years; her voice and expression were both sluggish.
"How did Dad suddenly have a heart attack? What happened?" Ned asked.
"I don't know… I was just talking to him," Victoria turned her face away. "I don't know why he suddenly had a heart attack!"
"Were you fighting?" Ned pressed.
Victoria's face changed. "Stop asking!" She shot to her feet, avoiding her son's calm gaze. "Your father had a sudden heart attack—my mind is in chaos! C-can you please stop questioning me?"
Ned regarded his mother steadily for a long moment.
Victoria bit her lip. "I… yes, yes, we fought—so what? From the time we were young until now, who knows how many times we've argued!"
"What was it about this time?" he continued calmly.
Victoria glared at the floor, unable to utter a word.
"Why don't you go home and rest first? I'll have the driver take you back to rest." He offered.
Victoria shook her head.
"But staying here won't help anything."
She remained silent, her expression grave.
Ned slowly stood, made a call, and instructed the driver to come to the hospital parking lot.
He gripped his mother's shoulders, looked into her eyes, and said gently, "I'm really worried about you right now. Promise me you'll stay strong. Dad will be fine." He held her gaze steadily.
His comfort did nothing to soothe Victoria's unease; it only made her feel worse.
In this lifetime, who had wronged whom?
"No need to see me off. I have to pick up your father's things from the nurses' station." At the elevator, Victoria waved her son away and headed to the second-floor counter.
Besides the clothes, belt, leather shoes, and socks, she was handed her husband's wallet.
She opened it absently. Inside, besides over thirty thousand in cash, there was only a golf club membership card…
Then, in the inner pocket, she found a yellowed photograph: a beautiful mother and daughter.
At first, Victoria was puzzled by the little girl in the picture—her face felt strangely familiar…
Next, the long-haired woman beside her, with that gentle smile, also seemed eerily familiar…
Slowly, Victoria's eyes widened. Memory crept back. She finally remembered where she had seen that woman—and that girl—
A horrifying possibility slammed into her nerves, plunging her into extreme shock and panic—
She gasped, clutching her chest…
Ten minutes later, she forced down the surge of emotion, hands trembling as she pulled her phone from her purse and dialed.
"Hello? Is that you? Why aren't you speaking?" The man on the other end knew it was Victoria; they never used names.
Hearing his low, steady voice, a wave of bitterness and grievance flooded her heart… She began to sob softly into the phone.
"What happened? What's wrong?" he asked, his tone gentle and reassuring. In the eight years she had called, she had always been cold and clinical, asking only about their daughter—never like this, falling apart.
"I can't believe it… I really can't believe something like this could happen! And the worst part is—it's happening to me!" Victoria choked out between sobs, her voice shaking, her whole body trembling.
"Just now… I found our daughter." Victoria suddenly declared, her tone devoid of joy—ice-cold, rigid, verging on terror.