Love's Ashes Depart the Harbor

Vivian gently helped Jason smooth out his bangs with a tender look in her eyes. "My precious Jason, whatever you say goes. I’ll listen to everything you want."

Thinking about the documents I’d left near the villa, I didn’t turn down Jason’s invitation.

On the way home, sitting in the front passenger seat, I clearly heard Vivian and Jason in the back, indulging in their passions.

While stoking the flames of lust, Jason chuckled mischievously and teased Vivian’s growing appetite. "Vivian, could you be a little more mindful of the situation? What if Ethan up front finds out?"

Vivian bit Jason’s ear with a low laugh, all while sneaking glances at me several times through the rearview mirror.

When she noticed that I was completely ignoring them and just playing on my phone, the same sense of irritation that had gripped her last night outside the bathroom door returned, when she overheard me whispering to someone else.

"Ethan, get me a tissue."

She stopped what she was doing and deliberately held her wet hands in front of me.

Without changing expression, I handed her a tissue and was about to go back to my mobile game to pass the time when I heard Vivian’s displeased voice ask me what I was looking at.

Before I could respond, she suddenly snatched my phone.

"Ethan, why did your lock screen change?"

She noticed the family photo of the three of us, which had been there for years, had inexplicably been replaced by a random system image.

For some reason, her face darkened.

Seeing that I had no intention of answering, Vivian coldly threw the phone back at me.

When the car reached halfway up the mountain, Jason suddenly said he wanted to return to the office.

In response, Vivian directly shoved me out of the car and coldly ordered me to go back to the villa first and prepare dinner for Jason.

Two hours later, with my heels rubbed raw, I finally retrieved my documents at the villa entrance.

Just as I was about to leave, a battered delivery truck suddenly appeared.

Two burly men jumped out and, without giving me a chance to resist, forcibly abducted me.

Inside a desolate mining site, barely clinging to life, I saw Jason, his eyes full of mockery.

He viciously ground my hand beneath his expensive leather shoe, but failed to get a single cry of pain out of me.

Jason curled his lips in hatred and sneered. “Ethan, why are you so damned pathetic?”

“We already have a child together and yet you cling to Vivian like a damn fly, acting pitiful, fishing for sympathy, as if she’d really take care of a useless wreck like you for the rest of your life.”

“What a joke. No matter how hard you try to seduce her, the only man she truly loves… is me. You pathetic bastard! What the hell are you smirking about?”

“I’m laughing at how you’re looking for trouble for no reason. All that effort is for nothing.”

Infuriated by my cold, disdainful attitude, Jason slapped me hard across the face twice. Then, smiling with a twisted glint in his eyes, he said, “Ethan, I bet you still don’t know why your daughter suddenly fell ill and died, do you? On her birthday, I joked with her. I told her: if she was brave enough to eat an entire snot worm, her beloved mommy would come home right away and blow out the birthday candles with her.”

"I really didn’t expect your daughter to be dumb enough to actually do it. While she was in agony from the stomach pain, she secretly called Vivian behind your back. But Vivian, just to enjoy a movie with me, didn’t even care. She told the girl to behave and go to sleep, then hung up.”

In a sudden burst of fury, I grabbed Jason by the neck, using every ounce of strength I had to drag him toward the depths of the mine, toward the area rigged with explosives.

As Jason screamed for help, his two thugs rushed over and began to beat me savagely, raining punches and kicks on me.

In the chaos, someone accidentally stepped on the detonator and the decaying mine exploded with a thunderous roar, shaking like an earthquake.

Amid the rumbling collapse, I heard a voice pierce through the dust and debris.

“Ethan!”

It was Vivian.