That day, the police called to bring me a news: my wife was caught red-handed in a prostitution raid.
I was completely bewildered.
The moment I arrived at the police station and saw the man sobbing beside Jocelyn Spencer, I suddenly felt quite bored.
I walked over her.
She instinctively stepped in front of the man, Alexander Russo, wanting to explain, but I slapped her on the face.
“Jossy.”
“You’re so filthy.”
——
The slap sounded crisp and left everyone in the police station stunned. Even the police officers who were about to continue explaining the situation to me were stunned. I saw Jocelyn covering her face and still not reacting. I raised my hand to slap her more, but the man who was holding her suddenly rushed up to block it for her and the slap landed on his face.
Tears fell from his eyes and he said, “How dare you hit someone!”
He sobbed, his voice choked with emotion.
“How dare you hit Jocelyn?”
His eyes were red, glaring at me stubbornly. “You don’t even ask her what was going on and start beating her. What gives you the right to do this?”
Seeing Alexander’s expression, I found it laughable—so laughable that I didn’t even want to waste a single word. Just as I raised my hand to hit her again, Jocelyn finally snapped out of it and grabbed my wrist. “Enough!”
“Phillip.” Her gaze turned icy and her tone grew stern. “This isn’t your playhouse.”
“Can’t you stop being so reckless without considering the situation?”
The woman, who was none other than my wife, forcefully pushed me away.
Caught off guard, I stumbled and bumped my lower back into the corner of the table. A dull pain shot through me, making me wince, then a flicker of guilt flashed Jocelyn’s eyes as she reached out to help me.
However, Alexander stepped forward first and cried as he tried to explain to me. “Phillip, there’s nothing between Jocelyn and me. She just felt sorry for me and wanted to help me, but she was framed for soliciting prostitution. You’ve been with her for so many years, shouldn’t you know what kind of person she is?”
His voice grew louder and louder and he sobbed more and more, as if he had truly suffered a great injustice.
“If I were you, I would never let my wife lose her face in public. Even if something happened, shouldn’t you talk about it at home? Why did you have to make her lose her face in front of everyone? Don’t you know that she cares most about her reputation?”
His sobs moved my wife. The heartache and hesitation in her eyes vanished, into coldness.
She defended the man, her face full of reproach as she stared at me. “There was never anything between Alexander and me.”
“I’ve explained this to you so many times,” she said, protecting Alexander, “You don’t care about what was going on with me, you see everything as dirty!”
To be honest, before I came here ….
I really, really thought something serious had happened to her. And I considered the actions I should take if she had been framed up by someone else, a competitor or a hater, kind of-to destabilize the company.
But I never once considered, it was because of Alexander … and Alexander again.
He was the nightclub host who Jocelyn suddenly met half a year ago, the one Jocelyn often brought up absentmindedly and the one Jocelyn believed herself to be the God in the redemption story.
She was so desperate to save his life to lead to countless fierce arguments between us.
She always absentmindedly defended him. She believed I was the aggressive and the wrong one.
Until, I couldn’t take it anymore and brought up divorce.
Only then did she quiet down.
She said, “I promise, Alexander will never between us.”
“Choosing you or Alexander, how could I not understand?”
She cried, declaring her love and begging me to give her a chance.
Sad to say, my heart softened.
I thought we had weathered the storm and gotten her sweetheart out of our lives, but I thought wrong. In just a month, he came back before me in this kind of situation.
Seeing Jocelyn completely side with him, a wave of fatigue instantly spread through my limbs, dragging me down so much that even the air felt suffocating.
“Forget it,” I said in soft and calm voice.
She froze and asked, “What did you say?”
“Phillip, what did you just say?”
“I said forget it.” I tried my best to stay calm. I didn’t want to let this kind of thing affect my mood anymore, so I told her, “I can sign the bail and I can let you continue to be with your sweetheart.”
“But ….” I ignored the secretly gloating man beside me and smiled at Jocelyn’s astonished face. “Let’s just call it quits.”
“Jocelyn.”
“Let’s get a divorce.”
With that, I left the police station.
The atmosphere remained tense.
Jocelyn refused to agree to a divorce, so she stubbornly got into my car and even pulled Alexander into the back seat. He remained silent, while Jocelyn sat in the passenger seat and explained. “There really is nothing between Alexander and me.”
“Today I had a get-together with Mr. Collins and the others,” she said, suppressing her temper. “After dinner, we decided to go sing karaoke and I never expected to run into Alexander.”
“You know his life is tough, with parents to support and kids to raise, all rests on him. I saw those men drag him into the car and follow him to the hotel. If it weren’t for me—” Jocelyn’s words were interrupted with a whimpering voice in the back seat.
It was none other than Alexander’s.
“Phillip ….”
“I never intended to take anything from you,” he said hoarsely, gasping for breath, “I’ve had a tough time getting to where I am today. My ex-wife abused me and our son, that’s why I divorced her.”
“If only I didn’t have that burden!”
“If I were also innocent.” He suddenly stopped crying, looking at my wife with deep affection. “I would fight and struggle for her!”
“Because she’s Jocelyn!”
“Because she’s a good person!”
“Because she—”
I slammed on the brakes.
The Porsche screeched to a halt. I turned to look at Alexander’s choked face and Jocelyn’s moved expression, then laughed.
“Since that’s the case…” I pressed the unlock button and rolled down the window. “We’ve arrived at the hotel just in time.”
“How about I grant your wish?”
“You must have enough money for a room,” I sneered, meeting Jocelyn’s gloomy expression. “This time, you’ll have my blessing—her legal husband’s consent.”
“Go ahead.”
“No one will call the police to drag you to the station.”
“As for whether you want to create another burden.” I glanced at the man. “That’s your business.”
Inside the car.
The cheap perfume stung my nose, like a wild vine growing on my heart, suffocating the air around me, making even breathing difficult. My tone wasn’t pleasant and I tried my best to restrain myself, but I still managed to hurt Alexander’s pride.
As he got out of the car, he yelled at me. “Phillip! You’ve gone too far!” Then he slammed the car’s door.
Jocelyn couldn’t stop ranting me.
“I never imagined you have no heart!” She grabbed my wrist. “Alexander has no relatives or friends in this city. Where is he going alone so late at night?”
“How dare you hurt an innocent person like him!”
“Phillip! Come down with me and apologize!” She ordered me as she grasped my wrist tight.
Looking at the woman who used to have nothing but me in her heart, I no longer had feeling or hope for her and I slapped her on the face.
“You want me to apologize?” I looked at her bewildered face.
“Dream on!” I unbuckled her seatbelt, pointed to the car door and said, “Get out!”
I watched as she glared at me with an incomprehensible look, then threw out a sentence. “You’ll regret this!”
A second after, she slammed the door and left.
Through the car window, I could still see her chasing after him, grab his hand tightly and see him struggle a few times before finally burying his face in Jocelyn’s arms and crying uncontrollably. I felt like my heart was being torn apart, with countless stabs.
The pain was so intense that even my hands gripping the steering wheel trembled. When I drove past two people embracing in the cold wind, I clearly saw Alexander giving me a defiant look, silently declaring something to me: this battle — he won.
Jocelyn and I were in a cold war and all her friends have come to mediate and advise me.
“Phillip, Jossy just feels sorry for that guy—she’s not even in love. Don’t overthink it,” our mutual friends all said.
“It wasn’t easy for you two back then. she was calling your name when she was drunk last time. She said seeing Alexander always reminds her of you from the past and she wants to make up for all the hardships you went through.”
I listened to my friend talk about our past.
It reminded me of how we both started from scratch.
I remembered our childhood, fighting with vicious dogs for food together.
I remembered the day our parents went on a trip, they both died in that accident, leaving us orphans. Our older relatives seized all our property, turning us from orphans into homeless children.
It was Jocelyn who hugged me tightly and said, “Phillip, I will definitely give you a home.”
Back then, home was a distant concept.
Amidst countless lights.
No lamp belonged to us and every brick and tile of the city was exorbitantly priced. Yet, Jocelyn had me living in the most upscale high-rise apartment in Hillsther. She filled the apartment with memories belonged to just the two of us. Even the corners and edges were covered with soft bump strips, as she feared I might bump into them.
She always said to me, “Phillip, in my heart, you’ll always be a child.”
“I want you ….”
“To be the happiest prince in the world.”
“My little prince.”
Now.
A friend told me, “Which woman can be pure? She has already done everything she could—she doesn’t gamble, engage in prostitution, or have an affair. She devotes herself wholeheartedly to you, Phillip, so stop causing trouble.”
I understood.
She was Jocelyn’s intermediary, a way for me to back down. If I went along with it, we could pretend nothing had happened, just like before when we had our arguments and move on.
But suddenly, I refused.
I was stubborn, so stubborn that when I saw Alexander’s latest social media update—a picture of him with his child on a Ferris wheel, all smiles—with the caption:
[My son told me, “Even if she isn’t my biological mom, as long as she loves me, we’re family.”]
In the corner of the photo.
I couldn’t help but recognize a beautiful, fair hand.
I had touched and looked at those hands for almost thirty years. That ring—I designed it myself, Jocelyn had it custom-made—it was our wedding ring.
My heart was in so much pain, to almost numb, almost feeling like it had lost all feeling, when Alexander sent me a video.
In the video.
Alexander’s son, Alden Russo, hugged Jocelyn and asked her affectionately, “Aunty, can you be my mom?”
“Can I call you mom?”
The little boy tugged at her arm and said, “I think you’re the best aunt in the world, you’re my mom.”
“I really like you and I really want a mom like you.”
“Please be my mom, okay?”
Alexander laughed and called out to him, “Alden, stop being silly.”
Jocelyn scolded him. “Alex, why are you saying such a word to him?”
She bent down to be at the child’s eye level, her eyes incredibly gentle and asked the little boy, “Do you like me?”
Alden nodded.
“Do you want me to be your mom?”
He even nodded in excitement.
She then responded, “Okay.”
“Then call me Mom and I’ll be your mom, okay?”
Alden’s happy voice echoed in the video and Alexander sent me a voice message.
“Phillip.”
“What makes you think you can compete with me?”
“You might as well just give up.”
I listened to his voice repeatedly as I looked at my childhood friend, Renee Ryder, sitting beside me with a worried expression.
“Phillip, about the child, are you really not planning to tell Jocelyn?”
She said, “If you say the embryo transfer is successful and you two will have a child, I believe Jocelyn will come back.”
“No, I don’t want it anymore.” I looked at the photos the hospital sent.
In a small petri dish.
It was the child of Jocelyn and me, the continuation of our love that we had longed for for so many years. But now, suddenly, I didn’t want to be a father anymore. I didn’t want my child to grow up with the same broken childhood trauma as me.
I told Renee, “From the moment she chose Alexander, from the moment she agreed to be his son’s mother–”
“She no longer deserves to be the mother of my child.”
I had just come out of the doctor’s office when I saw Jocelyn, who had accompanied Alden to the hospital. She saw me, instinctively letting go of Alden’s hand and calling out to me.
“Phillip!”
“What are you doing here?”
She saw the test result in my hand and questioned me as she was about to come closer.
“Are you sick?”
“Where do you feel unwell? Why didn’t you tell me?”
However, before I could answer, Alexander immediately gave his son a push and he cried as he grabbed Jocelyn’s hand.
“Mommy.”
“My tummy hurts,” Alden said, pulling hard on her to stop her from coming closer, “Waaah, my tummy hurts so much.”
I watched as hesitation flashed in her eyes and finally, she picked up the child, struggling to look at me.
“Honey, things have priorities, you should understand.”
She turned to leave.
I just found it ridiculous.
Renee, holding the payment slip, saw this scene and, in a fit of rage, rushed over and started yelling.
“You bastard!”
“You dare show your face here!”
“Shameless!” Renee lunged to grab Jocelyn. “Too busy for your husband but got time for a bastard, huh?”
She grabbed Jocelyn and shouted. “Don’t go! Do you even know what Phillip is—”
“I’m not a bastard!”
Alden struggled to get down from Jocelyn’s arms and rushed towards Renee. Renee couldn’t dodge in time, but I pulled and pushed her away forcefully. I was hit in the stomach by his hard head and the pain spread throughout my body. My back hit the wall and I fell to the ground, trembling with pain.
Alden, however, persisted, stomping on my stomach.
“You bastard!”
“It’s all your fault, you bastard!”
“You seduced my mother!”
“You bastard!”
A crowd gathered around.
They all turned on me, convinced I was a nuisance in other people’s marriage and screamed at me, calling me shameless and disgraceful!
Jocelyn stood outside the crowd, looking down at me, as if waiting for me to admit my mistake, as if waiting for my attitude, but I was weak enough to find it difficult to speak out.
“Jo–”
“Jossy.”
I struggled to speak, trying to get her to call a doctor, but the little boy cried even harder, rolling on the floor and screaming that his stomach hurt. I watched as a struggle flash in her eyes, but in the end, she picked up the little and told me before leaving.
“Phillip.”
“You really need to reflect on yourself.”
After check-up, Jocelyn, still holding Alden, remained absent-minded. My weak, pale face kept replaying in her mind. She walked out of the doctor’s office anxious and heard someone say something.
“That man was in such a terrible state! He was covered in blood from the impact!”
“It’s terrifying to even look at!”
Jocelyn’s heart skipped a beat, remembering my face, a wave of immense fear overwhelmed her.
She suddenly pushed Alden away, who was clinging to her affectionately and rushed towards the corridor like a madwoman. But upon seeing a pool of blood on the floor, she froze completely.
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