The Price of Discarding Me

The year my adoptive parents passed away in a car crash.

My adoptive older brother, Arthur, sensed my inappropriate, hidden feelings for him and gave me two words: You disgust me.

Shortly after, our family's company faced bankruptcy. To secure funding, he shipped me off to the Vance family in a strategic marriage, forcing me to marry their intellectually disabled son, Liam.

Three years later, Arthur's business empire expanded massively. He no longer needed the Vance family's backing. With a wave of his hand, he orchestrated their downfall and sent Liam's entire family to federal prison.

He stood in front of me and reached out his hand: "Come home with me."

I just shook my head faintly: "You must be joking, Mr. Sterling. My husband's last name is Vance. The Vance family is my home."

My finger traced the photo in my wallet, as if the person in the picture was still right beside me, as if he had never left.

Tears fell drop by drop. I quickly put the wallet away.

I couldn't let the person in the photo see me sad; it would break his heart.

A voice next to me interrupted my thoughts at the worst possible moment.

"Ms. Sterling, you've suffered in the Vance family for three years. Now the dark clouds have finally cleared. Mr. Sterling is already waiting for you. Please, just come with me."

I wiped the tear stains from the corners of my eyes, gave Arthur's assistant a flat look, and shook my head.

"I'm not going anywhere. I want to stay here."

This was the third time the assistant had tried to persuade me, and the third time I had rejected him.

Unable to complete his task and knowing he'd have a hard time explaining it to his boss, he was incredibly anxious.

"There's not a single soul left here. It doesn't make any sense for you to stay."

He was right. There wasn't a single soul left.

Even though just last month, Liam was right here in this garden, wrapping his arms around my waist, begging me to feed him oranges.

The Vance family was all here too, sitting around the garden, laughing warmly.

The person in my wallet photo was my husband, Liam.

When the federal agents arrived and arrested his entire family, Liam was terrified. I had pushed his wheelchair in a panic and managed to help him escape the chaos.

But after the dust settled, he went missing in the aftermath. I had no idea where he was, or if he was eating and sleeping well.

This single photo carried the entire weight of my worry for him.

"I can't leave. I have to wait for Liam here. What if I leave and he can't find me?" I turned my head to meet the assistant's eyes.

"Tell Arthur Sterling he doesn't need to send anyone to pick me up anymore."

The assistant sighed and dialed Arthur's number.

I've always known Arthur was busyeither negotiating deals or flying around the country for corporate dinners.

Because of that, the assistant had to call practically all night before the line finally connected.

The assistant deliberately put the phone on speaker so I could hear.

I couldn't tell exactly what Arthur's mood was from his voice, but it definitely wasn't good.

"What? Has she been out in the wild so long she's forgotten where her actual home is?"

I didn't answer, instead looking out the window into the night.

Right now, silence spoke louder than words.

After a long pause, he issued a command through the phone.

"Since she wants to stay there so badly, let her stay there for the rest of her life!"

The moment he finished, the line went dead with a rapid beep-beep-beep. He didn't want to waste a single extra word on me.

He was probably even busier now.

Busy crushing rival companies and sending anyone who posed a threat to him to prison.

Liam was one of those people.

Everyone on the news was saying the Vance family committed massive financial crimes, and that they were getting off easy if they didn't get life sentences.

But I knew the Vance family hadn't done anything wrong.

I understood Arthur's methods too well.

When he needs you, he can lower his head and abandon his pride.

But once he's squeezed every drop of use out of you, he'll turn around and sell you out without a second thought.

The night wind was freezing, but every time I thought about Liam wandering the streets out there, I couldn't bring myself to go inside and sleep.

I hadn't eaten a bite all day. I just sat there in a daze, guarding the photo in my wallet and this empty house.

Eventually, I don't even know how I fell asleep.

"Get up! Stop playing dead!"

Early the next morning, I was jolted awake by a sharp, piercing female voice.

I squinted and saw Chloe Sterling standing in front of me. I had no idea when she arrived.

Unlike my pathetic state, she was dressed in high-end designer clothes, wearing bright red lipstick, looking every bit the wealthy socialite.

Seeing me slowly sit up, she looked down at me from above, a smirk on her face.

"Haven't seen you in three years, and look at the pathetic state you're in. If anyone found out you were the adopted daughter of the Sterling family, I'd die of embarrassment."

"Anyway, Arthur specifically sent me to bring you home. If you still remember everything he's done for you, you'll hurry up and divorce that retard so you don't have to live like a widow while he rots in prison."

"I am never getting a divorce." I looked at her, letting out a cold laugh. "You're just as mean and bitter as you used to be."

Chloe is my sister. But unlike me and Arthur, she didn't grow up with us.

When she was eight, she was abducted by human traffickers.

By the time she was finally found and brought back, our parents had already passed away.

Because of that, she lacked the refined elegance typical of old-money socialites. Instead, she carried a thick, street-smart hostility and was always the first to kick someone when they were down.

A flash of undetectable anger sparked in her eyes, but she quickly suppressed it.

"So what? Do you actually think those words are enough to make me mad?"

"Also, don't think that just because you refuse to get a divorce, Arthur can't do anything about it. I'll tell you right now, he predicted you'd act like this. He sent me here not just to persuade you to come home, but to give you something."

A terrible feeling washed over me.

I watched her pull a piece of paper from her designer bag and throw it mockingly at my feet.

"Forced by your own brother to marry a retard, and now that the retard is in prison, you still want to wait for him."

"Evelyn, you are so incredibly stupid."

I ignored her taunts and quickly unfolded the paper on the ground.

With a single glance, it felt like a bucket of ice water had been poured over my head, and my ears started ringing violently.

The paper in front of me was a finalized divorce decree. I had never signed it, but my signature was right there at the bottom, mimicking my handwriting perfectly.

That meant Arthur had forged my signature to finalize this legally binding divorce. He wouldn't even let me keep the very last tie I had to Liam.

"He can't do this... how could he..." I gripped the paper, shaking uncontrollably.

My stomach suddenly churned violently.

My vision grew darker and darker.

The massive emotional shock, combined with my physical exhaustion, caused me to collapse to the ground.

My eyelids grew impossibly heavy...

Right before my eyes closed, I saw Chloe panicking. She was terrified that if I died, she'd have a hard time explaining it to Arthur.

I don't know how much time passed, but several paramedics rushed in, and I was loaded into an ambulance. And at that moment, I completely lost consciousness.

My surroundings slowly shifted, and I sank into a dream.

The dream was very long. In it, I went back to the winter when I was twenty-two.

My adoptive parents had just died in a car crash, and the company was facing a catastrophic crisis. Arthur stared at me like I was a piece of merchandise, and then...

He used me as a bargaining chip, forcing me to marry Liamthe intellectually disabled son of the Vance family who no one else wantedin exchange for their financial bailout.

At that time, Chloe had just been brought back to the family. When she found out the price for the funding was marrying a disabled man, she screamed and cried like a lunatic, leveraging the twenty years of hardship she had suffered.

And Arthur, forced to choose between his biological sister and his adopted sister, naturally chose me.

By the time I found out, Arthur had already called my future in-laws to wait at the front door to pick me up.

That night, I ran to him, crying.

"Arthur, why?! We grew up together! Does all that time mean absolutely nothing to you?!"

"You know perfectly well that marrying into that family is throwing me to the wolves! Yet you're abandoning me just to feed your own ambition! I'm your sister!"

He stood in the shadows, his expression unreadable. "Evie, give me some time. When the moment is right, I will absolutely come bring you back."

Right at that moment, Chloe ran out to add fuel to the fire.

"Evelyn, our family raised you for so many years. Didn't you always say you wanted to repay Mom and Dad? Now that you have this perfect opportunity, why are you refusing?"

"You're fighting this so hard... don't tell me you have a crush on someone?"

The moment she said that, I went dead silent.

The most humiliating thing in the world is having your deepest, most shameful secret exposed.

I instinctively looked at Arthur. When my eyes met his, my face instantly drained of all color.

His brow was deeply furrowed. He turned his head away, his expression laced with disgust.

"You disgust me."

Seeing his reaction, what else was there to understand?

Later, as time ticked away, he literally had his men tie me up, throw me into a car, and force me to get married.

As the car window rolled up, the last thing he said to me was:

"Evie, once you're married, there's no need for you to come back to visit. Mom and Dad only adopted you because they missed Chloe so much. Now that she's back, it's time for you to step aside."

His meaning was crystal clear: Don't ever contact me again.

I cried uncontrollably. It turned out he had noticed my teenage crush a long time ago. He despised me, and used this marriage as an excuse to cut all ties with me.

I looked straight at him, my heartbreak indescribable. "Then I'll just assume you're dead."

And just like that, I married Liam, a handsome man with the mental capacity of a five-year-old.

Life after marriage wasn't nearly as unbearable as I had imagined. In fact, you could even say it was incredibly happy.

Even though Liam only had the intellect of a five-year-old, he was kind-hearted, and... he loved me very much.

"Pretty lady, are you my wife? Mommy said when you get a wife, you have to protect her! Pretty lady, I'll protect you forever!"

He said this to me with absolute seriousness, and then handed me all of his most treasured candies.

In that moment, I felt like a ray of light had pierced through the total darkness of my life.

Over the next three years, true to his word, the entire Vance family treated me incredibly well, especially Liam.

We watched flowers bloom and the sun rise together. We did so many meaningful things. He never let me suffer a single grievance.

He treated me even better than my adoptive parents and the brother who used to dote on me. He would always quietly follow behind me, proudly showing off to everyone that he had a wonderful wife.

As time slipped by, moment by moment, I fell for him, sinking deeper and deeper.

But Arthur ruined all of it.

He clearly had everything he could ever want, but he simply refused to let go of anyone who had ever looked down on him when he was struggling.

He completely obliterated my happy life until there was nothing but ash left.

So I hated him.

And I refused to go back home with him.

My brother had already died in my heart three years ago.

The dream collapsed the moment Arthur arrived.

When I opened my eyes again, I was in a hospital. The person from my dream had crossed over into reality. Arthur was sitting by my bed, his gaze filled with tenderness.

I turned my head away, refusing to look at him.

He tried to act understanding, but his true goal was still to persuade me.

"Evie, since you couldn't make the decision yourself, I made it for you and divorced that Liam guy. This way, you don't have to tie yourself to a retard anymore. He's in prison anyway, so you..."

"Arthur Sterling." I cut him off, speaking every word with burning hatred. "My brother abandoned me three years ago. As far as I'm concerned, I don't have a brother."

"And my home with you was destroyed a long time ago. The only home I have left, the only one that matters, is the one with my husband."

His expression stiffened, and an inexplicable surge of anger radiated from him.

"Evelyn, do you really love that retard so much?!"

"Yes, I love him very much," I answered truthfully.

Arthur's anger intensified, his very breath feeling hot with rage.

I instinctively reached for the photo in my wallet. It had become a habita way to long for Liam during our brief separation.

Arthur caught this tiny detail.

He snatched the wallet from my hand, glanced at the photo, his expression cold and his voice dark.

"Evie, I truly never imagined you'd fall so deeply in love with him. It seems sending you to him was a mistake."

Saying that, he pulled a lighter from his pocket and, right in front of my eyes, slowly burned the photo to ashes.

All the while, he watched me out of the corner of his eye, waiting for my reaction.

I had no reaction.

It wasn't that I was okay with him destroying the object of my longing, but I knew that if I showed signs of a breakdown, it would be exactly what Arthur wanted.

If Liam were here, he definitely wouldn't want me getting angry over a photo. After all, he hated seeing me upset more than anything.

I closed my eyes, forcing back the sorrow threatening to overflow.

When I opened my eyes, the ashes had already scattered in the draft. Seeing me unmoved, Arthur grew even more irritated. He leaned in close and inexplicably dropped a sentence:

"Since you like him so much, I'll take you to see him."

What? He knew where Liam was?!

I grabbed Arthur's arm, my voice furious. "What did you do to him?!"

Even though his words made me incredibly anxious, I also felt a surge of heartbreaking sorrow.

This meant Liam had actually been captured by him and hidden away. I couldn't even imagine how much Liam must be suffering right now.

Seeing my expression, Arthur remained indifferent. He put a finger to his lips, making a "shh" gesture.

Then, he spoke slowly: "So, you better be a good girl. Otherwise, I might not be able to control my men. Right now, without my explicit orders, they're just keeping an eye on him. But if I'm in a bad mood one day, that retard is going to suffer."

"Arthur, you did this on purpose!"

Seeing his smugness, I clenched my hands into fists, wanting nothing more than to tear him into pieces.

He simply tilted his head, cracking his knuckles loudly.

"Like I said, Evie, you'd better not defy me. Right now, I'm just teaching him a little lesson. But if you remain ungrateful, it won't be so simple next time."

"I'll tell you the truth. To climb to where I am now, I've lost count of how much blood is on my hands. So, I don't mind adding one more body to the pile."

"You're a psychopath!" I screamed at him, completely breaking down.

He looked even more pleased with himself, leaving only the instruction to "think about it carefully."

After he left, I completely deflated, collapsing onto the floor, drenched in a cold sweat.

After that, I finally agreed to go home.

Naturally, I lost my freedom. I was locked in the house, and Arthur ordered several more bodyguards to stand watch outside my door day and night, terrified I might run away.

I didn't fight back. Day and night, I just watched the geese flying by in pairs outside my window, looking so lively and free.

Sometimes, Chloe would come looking for a fight, throwing insults at me, but I treated her like she didn't exist.

As for Arthur, whenever he got off work early, he would come back to see me.

Just like today. He brought me a skewer of candied hawthorn berries and handed it to me.

"Evie, you used to love these the most. Try it, see if it tastes like when we were kids."

I shook my head.

I remember the third month after I married into the Vance family. I was still trapped in the agony of being betrayed by my family. Whenever I cried from the pain, there was always a man following behind me.

I found him annoying and ignored him, but he didn't care whether I paid attention to him or not. Every single day, he brought me different sweet treatssometimes cotton candy, sometimes sugar figures.

He told me: "I don't know why you're crying, but I asked around, and everyone said Evelyn loves sweet things the most. So I'm giving these to you, hoping they make you happy."

"I don't understand all that scheming and plotting people talk about, but I know that anyone who bullies my wife is a bad person, and they need to be taught a lesson!"

His goofy, silly earnestness finally made me laugh, and I stopped crying.

But ever since Liam was taken from me, I lost my taste for sweets. The things Arthur brought couldn't even compare to a fraction of the sweetness from back then.

I don't know if it was psychological, but I suddenly felt incredibly nauseous.

Eventually, I couldn't control it and threw up all over the floor.

Arthur panicked instantly. He called the bodyguards and rushed me to his private clinic.

The doctor gave me a quick ultrasound.

What he said next shocked everyone in the room.

"Mr. Sterling, Ms. Evelyn is pregnant. Looking at the scan, the fetus is about a month old."