It was already deep into the night when Serena Atkins walked out of the police station.

Snow was falling outside.

People on the street kept sneaking looks at her—at the faint bruises on her face, her messy hair, the way she limped with every step.

Serena acted like she saw none of it.

Dragging her heavy body forward, she lowered her head and stared blankly at her broken phone, the screen shattered like a spiderweb.

Her fingers, streaked with dried blood, trembled as they pressed the call button and entered eleven numbers.

“Beep...”

“Beep...”

Just like the emergency call she’d made in sheer panic while being beaten, no one answered.

A snowflake landed on her lashes. She blinked once, and the icy melt slid straight into her eyes.

“Heh.” Serena curled her lips in a quiet, bitter laugh.

What a joke. She really looked pathetic.

And just as her hand dropped weakly to her side—

at the very last second, the call connected.

“What is it?”

The man’s low voice came through the phone, cool and indifferent.

Serena’s grip on the phone stiffened. A flash of surprise crossed her battered face. “Eth—”

“Mr. Mercer, Miss Holt is looking for you.”

Before she could finish, his assistant’s voice came from the other end. Then the man said flatly, “I’m hanging up.”

The words she hadn’t managed to say were cut off completely by the dead, mechanical tone from the phone.

At an empty street corner, under a towering streetlamp, snow kept drifting down in soft flurries, dusting Serena Atkins’s hair. Her slim body trembled a little in the cold.

Then, out of nowhere, a coat still carrying someone’s warmth settled over her shoulders.

Serena froze for a second. She looked up and saw it was Felix Barrow.

His gaze was heavy as he looked her over from head to toe. His face darkened. "Who the hell did this to you?"

A puff of white mist left Serena’s lips. She shook her head.

"When they were hitting me, I tore out some of their hair. There’s skin under my nails too. Once the police get the DNA, they should be able to catch them pretty fast."

Felix paused, clearly stunned.

She had been beaten into this state, and she still managed to stay calm enough to think that far ahead?

Yeah. This was Serena.

No wonder she was the person he admired most.

"We’re not letting this slide. We’ll dig all the way to the bottom of it," he said in a low voice. "It’s late. I’ll take you home first."

Serena tugged at the corner of her mouth, forcing something like a smile, then got into his car. "Chief Editor Felix, sorry to trouble you."

"Trouble?" Felix started the car and turned the wheel. "You work under me. You got attacked, and I’m supposed to just pretend I didn’t see it? No shot. Besides, everyone else was out chasing stories tonight. I was the only one left in the office."

As the car drove forward, he kept talking. "Ethan Mercer’s ex is back in the country. I heard Ethan personally went to pick Vivian Holt up at the airport. The whole newsroom’s going crazy trying to grab the first scoop."

The bloodshot look in Serena’s eyes stiffened all at once.

Her mind buzzed.

So while she was being dragged into an alley, kicked and punched, calling Ethan for help with shaking hands...

he was with another woman.

Felix clearly didn’t notice how pale and ugly her expression had become. He just kept talking to himself.

Serena lowered her head. Her blood-stained fingers dug hard into the torn flesh on the back of her hand.

No one knew.

She was Ethan Mercer’s wife.

...

She didn’t let Felix drive her all the way to her door. Instead, Serena got out near a residential complex, then hailed a cab back to Moyuan.

By the time Serena Atkins got home, she was changing shoes in the entryway when the housekeeper heard the noise and came out. The second she saw her, she froze, then rushed over in a panic.

"Ma'am, what happened to you? How did you end up like this?"

The housekeeper reached out to support her, but accidentally brushed the wound on her arm. Serena didn’t even flinch. She looked numb, like all feeling had been drained out of her, her eyes dull and empty.

"I got jumped during an undercover interview."

She said it like it was nothing, just a few light words, but the housekeeper felt her heart lurch.

She had always known social news reporting was dangerous. She just hadn’t realized it could be this brutal.

Maybe the old madam hadn’t been wrong before, always pushing Serena to quit this job.

Seeing Serena staring at the shoe cabinet, the housekeeper didn’t dare look too closely at her face. Her expression turned awkward, hard to read. "Mr. Mercer... hasn’t come back yet. I heard Ms. Holt returned to the country."

Serena lowered her head. A few loose strands of hair fell over half her face, hiding whatever was in her eyes, but the housekeeper could still feel it—she was hurting, badly.

"Maybe it’s just—"

The housekeeper tried to say something more, but Serena stopped her with a small gesture. "I’m going upstairs to shower. Bring the medicine kit to my room."

Watching her unsteady steps as she went up, the housekeeper let out a silent sigh. Still, she did as told and went to get the medicine box.

When she passed the master bedroom, she glanced inside. Sure enough, Serena wasn’t there.

She was in the room next to it.

Who would believe that after three years of marriage, Serena and Ethan Mercer were still sleeping in separate rooms?

The bathroom was thick with steam.

Looking at the mirror, at the large patches of ugly, dark bruises all over her body, Serena’s lips trembled. Her stiff, cramping fingers yanked at her clothes, tearing them off and throwing them into the trash.

Like every last bit of strength had been used up, her body gave way and she slid down to the floor.

Not long after, faint sobbing seemed to drift out from the bathroom. The housekeeper paused and listened carefully, but all she could hear in the end was the steady rush of water.

After her shower, Serena refused to let the housekeeper apply medicine for her. She sat on the sofa, dabbed some ointment onto her wounds on her own, careless and rough, then climbed into bed.

The second she closed her eyes, the scene of getting beaten came rushing back into her head, along with that man’s twisted, ugly laugh.

Even her bones seemed to ache, dull and deep.

She turned over, yanked open the bedside drawer, and reached all the way to the back. Her fingers found a bottle. She unscrewed the cap, shook out a pill, tossed it into her mouth, and forced it down dry without even taking a sip of water.

With the sleeping pill kicking in, Serena Atkins drifted off pretty fast.

But even in sleep, her brows stayed tightly knitted. Cold sweat beaded on her forehead. Her fingers clutched the corner of the blanket so hard they turned white, trembling nonstop.

"Help me..."

Caught in the nightmare, Serena’s face was paper-white. Her thin body shook uncontrollably, and tears slipped from the corners of her tightly shut eyes.

The dim, empty room gave her nothing back.

...

Serena slept straight through until the next evening before finally waking up.

The injury on her face wasn’t too obvious anymore. That special ointment had worked well enough that the marks were almost gone. But the rest of her body still hurt like hell. When she got out of bed, her legs nearly gave out and she almost crashed to the floor.

Last night, thank God, a kind passerby had shown up and started yelling that they were calling the police. That was the only reason those people stopped and didn’t keep hurting her. Otherwise... she probably would’ve gone down there to see her parents by now.

Felix Barrow had given her a few days off and told her to stay home and rest.

When she went downstairs, she passed the master bedroom and paused at the door for a second.

It was still open, just like it had been last night.

She didn’t even need to think about it to know Ethan Mercer hadn’t come back.

The housekeeper had boiled an egg and peeled it for her. Serena sat on the sofa, rolling the warm egg gently over her face to bring down the last bit of swelling while scrolling through the news on her phone.

As expected of the man in charge of the Mercer family. The top headline was still from last night, and the buzz around it still hadn’t died down.

In the photo, the man’s back looked tall and straight, like a pine tree standing firm in the night.

It was only one picture, just a back view, but the force in his presence was impossible to ignore.

The woman in the wheelchair he was pushing only showed her back from the waist up.

Vivian Holt.

Serena Atkins quietly switched off the news, but her fingers tightened by accident and crushed the egg in her hand.

She lowered her head and looked at the yolk dripping all over her clothes. Her brows slowly drew together, and her eyes started to sting red.

Pathetic.

It had already been three years. Hadn’t she figured out Ethan Mercer’s heart by now?

A moment later, she got up, went back to her room to change, then headed for the study, planning to grab a couple of books and distract herself.

Ethan Mercer’s study was neat to the point of being cold, spotless, with no extra decorations anywhere. Totally unlike hers, which was packed with blind boxes and trendy little collectibles.

One drawer of the desk had been left half open. One of the windows in the study was cracked open too, and the wind kept rustling the papers inside the drawer.

Then a sheet of paper fluttered out onto the floor.

Serena walked over and bent down to pick it up. She was just about to put it back into the drawer when her gaze froze the instant she saw what was inside.

Right there in front of her was a divorce agreement.