After He Chose His Mistress, I Terminated

Olivia struggled for a long time before she finally managed to stand up. As she descended the stairs, she twisted her ankle, causing sharp pain to shoot through her leg. She glanced at her shoes and saw that the back of her heel had been rubbed raw, bleeding slightly. It wasn't just the wedding dress that was ill-fitting; the high heels were unsuitable as well.

She had once believed that it was merely Rayan's lack of attention to detail in women's things, but now she realized that everything, from the white roses to the violets adorning the garden, had always been for Catherine. Nothing was meant for her. By the time she had walked the path through the garden to the ceremony, her feet had already been blistered by the shoes. And now, with her ankle twisted, every step she took on the gravel path was excruciating.

None of the staff paid her any mind as they rushed past her with trays of appetizers, their heads lowered. Rayan had given explicit instructions—no one was to help her; she was on her own. She resolutely took off the high heels and tossed them aside. If they weren't hers, she didn't want them. Her bare feet, pale as moonlight, were mottled with bruises as she painfully made her way to the entrance.

Taking out her phone, she attempted to call a cab to the hospital, only to find that her bank card showed insufficient funds. Dark clouds rolled in, promising a torrential downpour at any moment. How could there be no money left in her account? She earned $50,000 every month. She repeatedly logged out and checked again, but it was still zero.

The cab driver she stopped gave her a scornful look. "Don't waste my time if you can't pay."

After thinking about it for a long time, she could only come up with one answer—her freeloading family. When she needed familial support the most, they had been lurking in the shadows, ready to deliver the final blow when she was at her weakest.

She sat on the curb, knees pulled to her chest, until a notification on her phone broke her thoughts. Rayan's voice came through, condescending, as if soothing a stray cat or dog. "The ceremony's over. You can come back and take a picture with us. Wouldn't want to have nothing to reminisce about on our anniversary, right?"

"No need," Olivia wiped the rain from her face, realizing she had been drenched for over an hour.

"Olivia, I'm giving you a chance, and you don't know how to take it! What's wrong with you?"

"You don't have a penny to your name," he warned, "and if you keep being ungrateful, I won't hesitate to teach you what it's like to end up on the streets."

"How do you know I have no money?" she asked, genuinely shocked.

"Hah, thanks to your greedy parents and brother," he sneered. "They keep asking for money and treat me like a money machine. It's driving me insane. I gave them your bank card password."

"Rest assured, I can take care of you, but I have no obligation to support your family."

So it was like that; all the money she had painstakingly saved from years of hard work had been emptied by them, leaving her with nothing.

"Dragging along your whole family of leeches and a pile of useless issues. Catherine never bothers me with such things," he continued, praising Catherine's so-called grace and composure.

Really? Olivia suddenly remembered when she first discovered she was pregnant. Her parents had come asking for money, and aware of the costs she would soon face while on maternity leave, she turned them down for the first time. Furious, her brother accused her of growing a backbone after getting married and shoved her, causing her to fall down the stairs. She nearly lost the baby, and her arm was dislocated from protecting her belly during the fall.

When she called Rayan, he was busy comforting Catherine, who had run away from home after an argument with her dad. The moment he heard it was a family issue on her end, he carelessly tossed the phone aside, continuing to comfort Catherine. He even suggested that if her parents showed favoritism again, he'd have no qualms letting them face business setbacks.

Clutching her dislocated arm, she had repeatedly called him, and when he finally answered, all she got was a cold, "Handle it yourself." He had taken it upon himself to give her family her bank card password, calling it the last time he'd clean up her mess.

The call still connected, she heard Catherine's teasing, "Rayan, will Olivia be jealous if it's just the two of us in the center of the photos?"

"Doesn't matter. She brought this on herself. Even if she doesn’t join the photo, she owes you an apology," Rayan assured Catherine, but it was clearly aimed at Olivia.

She hung up silently, borrowed some money from a friend, and went to the hospital's obstetrics department to get checked in.