chapter 5

I left the hospital as quickly as possible and returned to City A.

Those three days had given me perfect clarity. If someone could not be kept, let him go. If sand slipped through my fingers, I might as well fling it away.

The moment I returned, Song Yuan, my partner in the branch office, came to discuss work.

I had always managed the branch.

Perhaps Xie Chen and Lin Yue had found their opportunity because I was stationed there and no longer stayed constantly at his side.

It no longer mattered. Their reunion proved that both of them wanted it. I could have tied Xie Chen to my belt and they still would have found a chance.

After our business discussion, Song Yuan remarked, “You’re a genuine workaholic. Your wedding is almost here. Shouldn’t you be preparing?”

The cancellation was not yet public, but since it was inevitable, I told him, “The wedding is off.”

His head snapped up. “What happened? After all these years with Mr. Xie, don’t tell me the two of you are finished.”

Years of companionship meant nothing when a first love crooked her finger.

I did not want to expose too much emotion before a business partner. It could affect his confidence in the company.

“I’m saving you a wedding gift. Isn’t that good?”

Song Yuan looked helpless. After knowing him for more than four years, I knew he was terrible at consolation.

His favorite saying was that love-addled brains slowed down the pursuit of money. Asked to comfort a heartbroken woman, he might say, “You chose to be an idiot in love. What did you expect?”

I looked at his awkward face. “Stop standing there and disrupting my work. If you have time to gossip, ask your father whether he’ll cooperate on our next project.”

After he left, I had dinner with my parents and told them to cancel the wedding and notify every relative who had received an invitation.

Both were furious. My father rolled up his sleeves as if ready to fly to City B and run Xie Chen down, while my mother cried from rage.

Thankfully, they truly loved me. Even knowing our relatives might laugh, they insisted that I had to divorce him.

Xie Chen returned to City A the next day, and I slapped the divorce agreement down in front of him.

He still refused. He even tried to persuade me to proceed with the wedding.

“Momo, the ceremony is the day after tomorrow. If we cancel now, both families will lose face. My parents are old—”

I cut him off. “A face is a valuable thing, Xie Chen. Stop using yours like an ass.”

He had nothing to say.

“I packed everything you own and sent it to your old villa. I never want you inside my home again.”

I did not know what he told his parents.

That evening, his mother called and lectured me at length. When I remained firm, she said, “Xie Chen was wrong, but canceling at the last moment is terribly willful.”

“Besides, if you divorce him, will you ever find a better man? Everything you have, including the apartment where you live, came from him.”

I had not intended to argue, but if she wanted a fight, she could not blame me for my tongue.

“Everything I have came from my own work. Xie Chen and I built the parent company together, and I built the branch almost single-handedly. Don’t try to manipulate me.”

Before she could interrupt, I continued, “If cheating is forgivable and divorce over an affair is merely childish, I hope one day you can live under one roof with your husband’s mistress, her children, and her grandchildren.”

She began shouting abuse.

I heard only, “I never approved of your marriage, and now you dare bring this trouble to my family—” before hanging up and blocking her.

I knew exactly why she had opposed me. I was too strong-willed to obey her in everything.

When the branch office was established, she tried to install her useless relatives as managers. Xie Chen could not refuse her, so he pushed the problem onto me.

I rejected every one of them.

When Xie Chen and I began discussing marriage, she met me alone to establish her authority. She ordered me to produce a son.

When I asked what would happen if the baby were a girl, she declared, “Then keep giving birth until it’s a boy. What use is a woman who can’t bear a son?”

Every daughter-in-law bullied by her husband’s mother makes the same initial mistake: she lowers herself first. The woman is already standing on her head, and she still tries to treat her like her own mother.

I wanted to kill any dream of controlling me before it took root.

“Read more books,” I told her. “Don’t humiliate yourself before you’ve even entered high society.”

She demanded that I quit the company after marriage and become a full-time wife. A woman who constantly worked outside the home, she said, might as well be selling herself. Who knew whether I would get drunk at a business dinner, sleep with someone, and make her son a cuckold?

I laughed. “Women used to bind their feet. Somehow you managed to bind your brain too.”

She complained to Xie Chen that I had insulted her.

I asked him, “Do you think I’m deranged enough to curse my future mother-in-law for no reason?”

He understood what must have happened. After we registered our marriage, we lived in my apartment instead of with her.

It was not that he took my side. He simply did not want to mediate.

Or perhaps he knew that ten mothers like her would still be no match for my mouth.

I had believed Xie Chen and I could divorce with dignity. There was no reason for civilized people to tear each other apart.

Apparently I had overestimated him. Or perhaps I had never known him at all.

The day after I blocked his mother, he demanded that I leave the marriage with nothing. He wanted me to surrender my shares in the branch and return the City Square apartment that I had earned through my performance.

Then he said over the phone, “Momo, if you stop the divorce and let tomorrow’s wedding continue, we can renegotiate all of this.”

At least I finally understood why he refused to let me go.

A divorce would hurt the company’s stock and might cost him control of the branch. I had built it. Beyond the initial investment, he had done nothing.

We had also been preparing a second branch, again under my leadership.

He did not want to lose his most useful executive.

Still, had he lost his mind, or did he think I had lost mine?

He even tried to lecture me. “So many men in our circle keep mistresses. Some people in arranged marriages live separate lives, and their marriages continue perfectly well.”

“Are you suggesting I lower my standards and keep a handsome young lover too?”

He went silent.

After a long pause, he promised, “I’ll make a clean break with Lin Yue.”

What a hypocrite.

He would never manage it.

Days earlier, he had abandoned me because Lin Yue threatened suicide.

She polished that threat into a romantic post: “If I miss my chance with you, I will never be capable of loving anyone again.”

The squeaky wheel got the grease.

I blocked her in return. Too much exposure to that performance might have been contagious.