Chapter 4

The storage room door lock was broken—I should have remembered this place didn't even deserve a proper lock.

I avoided his knife-sharp gaze.

"To Zurich for some time away." I calmly closed my laptop, though my heart pounded like a drum.

I knew that once a "tool" like me tried to leave its designated track, the entire Martini family would spare no effort to drag me back—or erase me.

Luca was silent for a moment. "I'll have Antonio take some men with you."

I looked at his perpetually calm, impassive face. The blood from five years ago seemed to rise back to my throat.

I curved my lips. "Bodyguards? I think the woman outside needs that kind of thing more."

His brow furrowed slightly, his voice dropping. "Isabella, you're my wife—"

"Luca?" Camilla appeared like she had monitoring devices on us, always interrupting at the perfect moment. "The doctor's here. Says he needs to discuss the baby's condition with you."

Luca's gaze flickered briefly between me and the door before he turned away.

The door closed again.

I sat in the dim light, staring at the flight confirmation on my screen.

Ha. His wife? The kind who lives in a storage room and gets thoroughly ignored?

A few minutes later, the offer from the Zurich institute arrived.

Four years of full funding, an independent laboratory, a future that belonged to "Dr. Rossini," not "Mrs. Martini."

I clicked "accept" without hesitation.

I was really leaving. The scene from seven years ago suddenly replayed in my mind.

That day I'd stood beside him in a wedding dress, naively believing this marriage contained at least a little love.

Until now, watching Luca spend an entire day circling around Camilla and her child, I finally understood—

This was the difference between love and a transaction. And it took me seven years to tell them apart.

To avoid further humiliation, I began packing what little I had in the storage room.

Shockingly little. A few everyday clothes, a few professional books.

The only personal item was a leather photo album buried at the bottom of my suitcase—filled with pictures I'd forced him to take with me over the years.

In every photo, I smiled too hard, while he always angled slightly away, his gaze falling somewhere beyond the camera lens, as if waiting for the performance to end.

The album made a dull thud as it hit the bottom of the trash can. Even the recycling bin wouldn't want this false memorial.

Over the next two days, I buried myself in lab data and paper revisions, barely thinking about Luca.

Two days until my flight to Zurich.

I was in an oddly good mood. After years of not visiting convenience stores, I found myself stopping at a shelf, picking up a bag of dried hawthorn.

I hadn't eaten this in years, but lately, for some reason, my blood seemed to be crying out for something sour.

Also, my period was two weeks late.

The pregnancy test results sent me into freefall.

"About twelve weeks pregnant." The doctor looked at the ultrasound screen, her tone routinely cheerful. "The fetus appears quite healthy."

Twelve weeks. Right around the time before Camilla moved in, the last time Luca and I had been together. After that accident five years ago, fate had played another vicious joke.

My hand trembling, I dialed Luca's number. The waiting tone in the receiver overlapped with a phone ringing in the corridor behind me.

I turned around. Twenty meters away, Luca was carefully draping his suit jacket over Camilla's shoulders. She looked up at him, saying something that made him smile—a relaxed smile I hadn't seen in ages.

I ended the call and ducked into the nearby emergency stairwell.

Through the slightly open door came the doctor's instructions: "...the first three months require special care. Avoid any strenuous activity."

"I'll take care of her." That was Luca's voice, carrying a solemn tenderness I'd never heard from him.

Just then, the exam room door opened.

"Isabella?" Luca saw me, his brow immediately furrowing. "You followed us to the hospital. What for?"

Camilla held onto his arm, her voice soft but knife-sharp.

"Don't blame Isabella. She can't have children—maybe she followed us here to see our baby?"

As she spoke, she pulled an ultrasound printout from her purse and held it out to me.

"Look here. Even though it's still tiny, the doctor says his nose looks just like Luca's..."

Every sentence emphasized that this was her and Luca's child.

Yet the pitying glances directed at me reminded everyone that I was Luca's wife.

This disconnect made my head throb, my heart ache. No—I shouldn't be hurting.

"Enough!" I swatted away the paper she held out. It fluttered lightly to the floor.

The air instantly froze. Luca's expression turned ice-cold.

I took a deep breath, and in a moment of reckless impulse, I pulled my own examination results from my pocket and slapped them against Luca's chest.

"Yes, I'm here for something." I heard my voice shaking but forced my spine straight. "I came to show you... tomorrow's our anniversary celebration plan. I worked on it all night. Want to take a look?"

Luca's eyes dropped to the paper that had fallen into his hand.

"Isabella," he raised his hand to rub his temples, his tone full of exhaustion and distance, "when will you learn to prioritize the bigger picture?"

After saying this, he casually crumpled the ultrasound printout and threw it forcefully to the ground.

My heart still broke. I thought I couldn't anymore.

Because I knew—if he'd just opened it, just one glance, he would have discovered we were about to have a family.

But instead, he violently destroyed it all, letting it fall like a piece of trash, landing lightly on top of Camilla's ultrasound.

Then he put his arm around Camilla's shoulders. "The doctor's still waiting. Let's go."

I stood there, watching their backs disappear around the corridor corner, watching those two overlapping papers on the floor—two fates, worlds apart.

Tears mixed with the cold draft lashing my face like countless icy slaps.

In my backpack, the acceptance letter from the Zurich institute weighed heavy—once my only ticket to a new life.

Now, beside that ticket sat a secret I couldn't handle alone and couldn't tell him about.

My hand gently covered my abdomen. Still flat and quiet, but I knew—some paths had been completely blocked.

For the first time in my life, I stood at a crossroads and found myself—

With nowhere to go.