Chapter 1: When Everything Broke

When my boyfriend and I broke up, it was ugly.

We shredded each other—words like knives, love twisted into something toxic. There was no graceful ending, no gentle fade-out—just rage, accusations, and the kind of heartbreak you think you’ll never survive. The memories of those last nights sometimes surface, raw and sharp as a paper cut.

The year he loved me most, I accepted the $450,000 his mother gave me, had an abortion, and betrayed him.

That was the year the world cracked open. I can still feel the envelope in my hands—the envelope was thick and heavy, the paper smooth and expensive—nothing like the bills I usually handled. That was the year everything changed for us—forever.

He knelt outside the clinic, crying and begging me not to go through with it.

I’ll never forget his voice, all choked up and desperate, echoing down that linoleum hallway as the cold air pressed against my cheeks. I didn’t want to look back. I couldn’t. If I turned around, I knew I’d never go through with it. But if I kept walking, I might never forgive myself.

He spat out, "I’ll never forgive you. Not ever."

And it felt like the world stopped turning. When the door closed between us, something inside me snapped.

Six years later, when we met again, he had found a beautiful girlfriend from a family as wealthy as his and was about to get married.

Now he wore his success like armor. She was everything I wasn’t—refined, radiant, untouched by struggle. And I was everything he’d once risked it all for, and everything he’d left behind.

And I, at my lowest point, went to him to borrow money.

It was humiliating—worse than anything I’d imagined. I had nothing left but my pride, and even that was crumbling.

He forced me to attend his wedding, wanting me to watch as he married another woman and took her home.

I could barely keep my hands from trembling as I held the invitation. I knew what he was doing. He wanted to see me break.

He asked me, "Do you regret it?"

His voice was ice—steady, but there was something beneath it, something sharp. I never answered him.

He still didn’t know—I had raised our child alone.

Every day, I looked at our son’s face and wondered what Derek would do if he knew.

That child was sick and on the verge of dying.

Every night I lay awake, counting the hospital bills, praying for a miracle, terrified I wouldn’t be able to save the only piece of him I had left.