Seven Years of Love, Traded for One Night

On our wedding anniversary, my wife claimed she had left an important document at her childhood home.

Without hesitation, I drove back to retrieve it. But halfway there, my phone rang; it was my mother. Her voice trembled as she told me that my father had suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and needed 300,000 dollars for emergency surgery.

Panic gripped me. My hands shook as I dialed my wife, desperate for help only to be coldly hung up.

Her childhood friend posted a photo of a cake worth 200,000 dollars with the caption on social media. [A token from my childhood sweetheart. Tonight is our exclusive sweet night.]

Fury boiled in my chest, but I decided to stay calm and dialed his number. I tried to explain my father’s condition, hoping for even a sliver of decency.

But instead, it was my wife who answered.

She snatched the phone and spoke in a voice that chilled me.

"I didn’t know you were so competitive. I spent 200,000 on Dawson, and now you want 300,000?"

"He finally came back to the country, and I can’t even come up with an excuse to send you away? Can’t you just give me some peace for once?"

Afraid I’d ruin her night, she yanked out her SIM card and powered off her phone, severing our last connection thread.

That same night, Dawson posted again. [Where the money is, the love is.]

I booked the first flight out of the country.

I gave her the peace she wanted.

——

By the time I scraped together the 300,000 and called back, my father had already been wheeled into the morgue.

My mother collapsed on the spot, and I had to handle all the funeral arrangements alone.

It wasn’t until I returned from the hospital that I saw my wife again after she had vanished for an entire week.

She frowned the moment she saw me, then lashed out without hesitation.

"I thought you weren’t coming back! Where did you take the documents? You didn’t care at all about what I said!"

Staring at the furious woman before me, my heart turned cold as stone.

We had known each other for seven years. She had always treated me kindly, never once dismissing my feelings.

I once believed this marriage would always stay warm, sweet, and lasting until Dawson Pierce appeared.

All because he once saved her life, she gave him everything without question.

I never cared about the past, but what I couldn’t forgive was that she had caused my father’s death for Dawson.

If she hadn’t sent me away just to celebrate his birthday, I would’ve never gone back to that house.

If I had still been in Roseville, my father’s condition would never have been delayed.

Seeing the frost on my face, Blair Emerson grew even more irritated.

"You’re making such a fuss just because I celebrated Dawson’s birthday?"

She placed a boxed cake on the table with a cold snort.

"Dawson still remembered you liked cake, so he asked me to bring you a piece. I didn’t expect you to be so ungrateful."

I was allergic to mango; just a single bite could stop my breathing and shock me.

And on top of that cake sat a thick slice of mango, clearly bitten into by someone else.

I let out a cold laugh, my voice dripping with disdain.

"How thoughtful of you to bring me someone else’s leftovers."

Blair’s expression froze for a beat before she lifted her chin and snapped back. "Didn’t you use to eat other people’s leftovers back when you were scrubbing dishes at the hotel? Dawson and I don’t have any diseases; why are you acting so precious?"

Her words pierced through me like a blade, sharp and ruthless. I stared at her, stunned, unable to believe what I had just heard.

My parents had always been frail. Since I was young, I worked part-time jobs to pay my way through school.

But in my sophomore year, the tuition I had painstakingly saved vanished overnight because of a single click.

The police said it was a new kind of scam. The money was gone for good.

I had no choice but to start working at a hotel. When I couldn’t afford meals, I survived on customers’ leftovers.

A classmate once caught me and mocked me, calling me garbage. I didn’t dare respond; I couldn’t risk losing that job.

It was the darkest, most humiliating chapter of my life.

When I told Blair everything back then, she cried in my arms, trembling with sympathy, swearing she'd always stand by me.

But now, she used that same memory, the one that shattered me, to cut me even deeper.