Chapter 2

3.

Back at the company, I told Legal to set aside its current work and spend the night reviewing our prenuptial agreement, joint investments, and all unsettled projects between the two families.

I wanted a divorce.

Easy enough to say. In a marriage binding two business families, those words dragged shares, financing, joint guarantees, and dozens of interlocking contracts behind them. The lawyers listed the possible losses one by one. I did not change my decision. I only asked for the fastest, cleanest exit they could devise.

They first asked whether I would be willing to maintain the marriage a little longer to minimize those losses. As long as we had not openly broken with each other, several construction projects between our families could still be settled smoothly.

I turned through the contracts and confirmed the worst-case outcome for each. I could pay penalties for breach. I could withstand a temporary swing in share prices. What I could not accept was letting Gu Yanshen keep sharing my resources as my husband just to save a little money.

The head of Legal warned me that ending our cooperation could put Gu Group under immediate financial pressure. Outsiders would also ask why.

“Prepare the facts. Don’t publicize private matters unprompted, but don’t cover for anyone either,” I said. “List the business losses clearly. I can bear them.”

This was not a fit of anger. From the moment I saw the post, I knew I could no longer live with him. Tonight’s meeting merely turned an emotional decision into steps we could actually take.

It was after nine when we finished.

Rain poured outside. Reflected in the downpour, the lights in the underground parking garage looked pallid white. The driver opened the rear door for me. Only then did I discover Gu Yanshen was already inside.

As though nothing had happened, he smiled and took my laptop bag.

“Mrs. Gu is working late. I came to pick you up.”

I got in and told the driver, “The waste disposal site north of the city.”

Gu Yanshen looked puzzled.

“What for at this hour? It’s pouring. That place is filthy and stinks. Whatever it is can wait until tomorrow.”

“No.” I looked out the window. “I’m going tonight.”

A little over twenty minutes later, we stopped at the entrance.

I lowered the window. Rain drove the stench of rotting rubbish into the car. Gu Yanshen covered his nose almost immediately, his face turning green.

“Wantang, what on earth are you doing?”

I raised my left hand and slipped the wedding ring off my middle finger. As his eyes followed its gleam, I flung my hand out toward the mountain of rubbish.

“Go and find it.”

His pupils contracted.

“Are you mad?”

“If you haven’t found the ring by morning, we’re getting divorced.”

His breathing quickened. For the first time, unmistakable panic appeared in his eyes.

“You threw your ring into a rubbish heap because Lin Yin ate one meal at our table? You know how severe my cleanliness problem is, and you’re using divorce to force me to dig through garbage?”

I opened the screenshots and tossed my phone into his lap.

The screen stopped on that photograph of his profile.

As he read, the color slowly drained from his face.

“Wantang, let me explain.”

“Explain what?” I asked. “That you never cleaned her up? That the children she gave birth to have nothing to do with you? Or that you live under the same roof, but the man she calls her husband is someone else?”

He gripped the phone until his knuckles whitened.

“The children aren’t mine.”

“Then you did clean her up.”

He avoided my eyes.

I laughed softly. “You have to wipe your mouth after kissing me. You disinfect things after touching my belongings. Yet you could clean up after her when she lost control of her bladder and bowels. Apparently your obsession with cleanliness is selective, Gu Yanshen.”

“The circumstances were unusual. She’d just given birth, and Auntie Lin wasn’t there—”

“I didn’t ask why.”

I cut him off.

“Get out and find the ring. If you really think this marriage is worth saving, show me it’s worth getting your hands dirty for.”

He was silent for a long time. His voice grew hoarse.

“If I find it, you won’t mention divorce again?”

“That’s right.”

Before getting out, he turned back. “Wantang, I only did those things for Lin Yin because she had no one to look after her. She’d just given birth. It was urgent. I couldn’t stand by and do nothing.”

“Were there no nurses in the hospital?”

“She’s afraid of strangers.”

“So she would only let a married man touch the most intimate parts of her body, and you thought that was perfectly reasonable.”

His face darkened. “Must you make helping someone in an emergency sound so filthy?”

“Helping someone isn’t filthy. Letting her call you her husband afterward is. And when you learned I’d seen the post, the first thing you did was tell her to deactivate her account.”

His eyes changed at once.

The account disappeared just after I finished taking screenshots. That could not be a coincidence. Before he came home, Gu Yanshen had already received a message from Lin Yin. Perhaps even his assurances had been prepared in advance.

“I didn’t tell her to deactivate it.”

“Save that explanation for the lawyers.”

Rain blew through the open car door onto his spotless leather shoes.

He looked down at the marks and still did not get out.

I remembered our first month of marriage. At a family gathering, I had accidentally spilled red wine on him. He changed his entire outfit in front of everyone and had them throw away even the handkerchief I used to wipe the stain. He apologized afterward, saying his obsession was an illness, not disgust at me. I believed him. I even explained it to the elders on his behalf.

Now the same man could kneel beside another woman’s bed to clean up her mess.

So his illness knew whom to make exceptions for too.

“You don’t have to go,” I said. “If you don’t, we end this now.”

He took a deep breath and pushed the door open.

Rain instantly soaked his shirt. He turned to ask the driver for an umbrella. The driver glanced at me in the rearview mirror and said there wasn’t one.

There were two in the trunk.

Gu Yanshen had no choice but to head toward the rubbish in the rain.

I leaned back and reminded him with a smile, “No need to shelter from the rain. You’ll be covered in garbage soon. It can rinse some of it off.”

The door closed. I told the driver to take me home.

In the mirror, that immaculate, distinguished man grew smaller and smaller until the rain and darkness swallowed him.

Slowly, I opened my right hand, which I had kept clenched.

My real wedding ring lay quietly in my palm.

What I had thrown was only a glass stone pried from an ornament in the car.

He could turn over the entire mountain of rubbish. He would never find my ring.

Just like this marriage. Once it was dirty, it could never return to what it had been.

4.

At home, I showered, switched off my phone, and slept through the night.

The next morning, I had just finished my coffee when I heard a disturbance downstairs.

Gu Yanshen stood at the living-room entrance, looking as though he had been hauled out of muddy water. His expensive shirt had lost its original color. Rotten vegetable leaves clung to his trousers. His wet hair stuck together in strands, and his eyes were bloodshot.

Even from halfway across the room, the sour stench reached me.

The housekeeper struggled against her disgust and raised the disinfectant. He swept it aside and walked straight toward me.

“I found it.”

He took a ring from his pocket. Small cuts from a night of searching marked his palm.

“Wantang, you promised. If the ring came back, we wouldn’t divorce.”

I covered my nose and stepped away.

The gesture hurt him. The hope in his eyes wavered, but he stubbornly held the ring closer.

“Look. Same design, same size. I really found it.”

I did not take it.

“Are you sure it’s mine?”

“Of course.”

I opened my right hand.

In the morning sunlight, the real wedding ring shone clean and bright, our wedding date engraved inside the band.

Gu Yanshen stared at my palm, then down at the ring in his own hand. He went rigid.

He had found nothing at the dump. Afraid I would really divorce him, he had arranged for someone to buy an identical ring after daybreak, hoping to pass it off as mine.

A few seconds later, humiliation and anger surged into his face.

“Su Wantang, you played me?”

His voice was raw from the rain and shouting.

“You made me search garbage all night, and you never threw the ring at all!”

“Our agreement was that we wouldn’t divorce if you found the ring I threw away.” I closed my fingers. “That isn’t mine. So, under the agreement, we divorce.”

“Marriage isn’t a toy for you to throw a tantrum over!”

He shook all over.

“Do you know how many joint projects tie our companies together? How many directors and shareholders are watching? You think you can just end it? Have you asked the board? Have you asked your father?”

I set down my coffee and looked up.

“You’re the one who owes the board an explanation. Not me.”

“I am the Su family’s sole heir. I hold enough shares to decide the fate of any joint project. When we married, I chose to take on the responsibilities of the alliance. Now I no longer want them. No one has the right to force me to continue.”

“You depend on this marriage to protect your interests, Gu Yanshen. You have to calculate the board’s reaction to everything you do. Don’t assume I’m in your position.”

His anger slowly drained into pallor.

“What gives you the right to judge me like that?”

“I only looked after Lin Yin. Her mother saved my life.”

“When I was little, I passed out with a high fever. Auntie Lin found me and carried me to hospital. Without her, I might have died years ago.”

“Does repaying a debt require pretending to be your benefactor’s daughter’s husband?”

“I never slept with her! The children aren’t mine!”

“Whose children they are doesn’t change the fact that you crossed a line.”

I laid the agreement drafted by my lawyers on the table.

“She could have had doctors, carers, her own mother. Instead, you appeared in her maternity records as her husband, let her live in the Gu house, let her embrace you, and let her call you her husband online. Any one of those things goes beyond repaying a kindness.”

He stared at the agreement without reaching for it.

“You’ll regret this.”

“Then we can talk when that day comes.”

I turned and went upstairs. Behind me, he roared in anger he could no longer contain.

“Su Wantang, who do you think you are? Sooner or later, you’ll pay for being so high-handed!”

I did not look back.

“I’ll be waiting.”

5.

For several days Gu Yanshen did not appear. He kept refusing to sign the divorce agreement.

Year-end work was piling up. I left the matter to the lawyers for the time being.

A week later, my mother-in-law came to the company herself.

She brought several insulated food containers. As soon as I entered the reception room, she smiled and took my hand.

“Wantang, I made some of your favorites. Haven’t you been eating properly? Your face has grown thin.”

Inside were oil-braised shrimp, squirrel-style mandarin fish, and tofu in crab-roe sauce, a dish I had once casually praised.

She had never remembered my tastes before. At the old house, she had fobbed me off with one spicy dish amid a tableful of postpartum food. Now that she wanted me to turn back, she had remembered everything overnight.

I withdrew my hand and sat opposite her.

“Mrs. Gu, I’ve eaten.”

The change in address stiffened her smile.

“We’re family. Why be so formal? Have you quarreled with Yanshen? What couple doesn’t have disagreements? Once you calm down, it will pass.”

“It isn’t a quarrel. It’s a divorce.”

She paled, but tried to maintain a kindly elder’s manner.

“Don’t speak in anger. There really is nothing between Yanshen and Yin. Besides, in families like ours, men can hardly avoid a few women who don’t know their place. As long as he knows to come home, you remain the rightful Mrs. Gu. No one can go above you.”

“Wanting that kind of life as Mrs. Gu yourself doesn’t mean I want it.”

At last, her expression cooled.

I continued. “I won’t accept my husband cleaning up another woman’s messes, or that woman giving birth and recovering in my in-laws’ home. The Su family doesn’t need this marriage to raise its standing. And I certainly don’t need to swallow my disgust for a title.”

Mrs. Gu was silent for a long time, as though finally deciding to play her last card.

“Yin had twin boys.”

She lowered her voice and watched my face.

“You’ve never wanted to be pregnant. If you don’t divorce, we can register both children as yours and Yanshen’s. One can take the name Gu and inherit the Gu family business. The other can take Su and take over yours. You won’t have to endure ten months of pregnancy, and both families will have heirs.”

She spoke as though it were obvious. As though she were offering a thoughtful gift.

“You needn’t worry about household registration or their identities,” she continued. “Yin has agreed to leave the city as long as the children have a good future. You’ll be their only mother. Once they’re grown, who will care who gave birth to them?”

“What about Lin Yin’s posts?”

She paused. “What posts?”

“She publicly called Gu Yanshen her husband. She recorded how he cared for her during childbirth and cleaned her body. Will you let her leave with those records, or tell the children their birth mother was only your housekeeper’s daughter?”

She clearly had not known I saved the posts. For the first time, panic showed in her eyes.

“Young girls like showing off. A few careless words, that’s all. I’ll make her delete everything. Both children are healthy boys. The Gu family needs an heir, and the Su family will too. Why give up the most convenient arrangement over a few words?”

“In your eyes, husband, wife, mother, and child are all interchangeable positions. It doesn’t matter who gives birth or who raises them, so long as the Gu bloodline and interests survive.”

I looked at her. “But my life isn’t a vacancy in the Gu family. You can’t just put a child there and force me into the role.”

Looking at her, I suddenly understood why Lin Yin had dared to post from the old house.

From the moment she became pregnant, she had known the children would enter the Gu family. My mother-in-law had cleared the way. They were only waiting for me, the lawful wife, to nod and stamp their unspeakable scheme with respectability.

“I don’t want it.”

“Don’t refuse so quickly. Raise a child from infancy, and it’s no different from your own—”

“Is that how you comfort yourself too?”

Her voice stopped.

I watched her pupils contract and spoke slowly.

“Gu Yanshen isn’t your biological son. He’s the child Mr. Gu brought home from an affair. You clung to the shell of a marriage and raised a child who wasn’t related to you. So now you think I should accept the same life. Is that it?”

Only the air conditioner could be heard in the reception room.

This was the Gu family’s most closely guarded secret. Without Lin Yin’s affair, I would never have had them investigated again or learned the truth of Gu Yanshen’s birth.

Mrs. Gu’s lips trembled. The gentleness she had so painstakingly maintained shattered.

She sprang up and hurriedly packed the containers.

“I won’t argue over whatever gossip you’ve heard. We’ll talk again when you’ve calmed down.”

“Mrs. Gu.”