---- Chapter 7 Eliza POV: The first few days in the hospital were a blur of visitors and forced smiles. Colleagues from the school brought flowers, their faces a mixture of pity and morbid curiosity. They all commented on how devoted Cash was, how he never left my side, how lucky | was to have a man who cared so much. The irony was a bitter pill | had to swallow with every sip of water. | tried to push him away, to tell him to leave, but he was relentlessly present, fluffing my pillows, fetching me drinks, his face a mask of tortured concern. "When are you two finally going to get married?" one of my younger colleagues, a hopeless romantic named Sarah, asked with a cheerful grin. "After all this, you have to lock him down!" The room fell silent. Before | could respond, a shriek came from the other side of the room. It was another teacher, Jessica, who was scrolling through her phone. She quickly tried to hide the screen, her face turning pale. But Sarah, oblivious, leaned over her shoulder. "What is it?" she asked. "Oh my God." ---- Her voice was a horrified whisper. "Breaking News: Tech Heir Cash Robinson Announces Engagement to Socialite Catherine Yang." The air in the room solidified. Everyone stared at me, their expressions frozen in a grotesque tableau of shock and embarrassment. | took a slow, deliberate breath. "| think | need to rest now," | said, my voice unnervingly calm. "Thank you all for coming." They scrambled out of the room, murmuring apologies, their pity now thick and suffocating. | knew then that | couldn't stay. The visitors dwindled after the news broke. The flowers stopped coming. Instead, whispers followed the nurses down the hallway, slithering under my door like poisonous snakes. The mistress. The other woman. Did you hear she lost the baby? Serves her right. | lay in bed, clutching the thin hospital blanket, and let the words wash over me until | was numb. Then, the school called. They informed me, in a tone of polite regret, that my contract would not be renewed for the following year. My "situation" was deemed "inappropriate" for their students. ---- It was time to go. That evening, the door opened and my mother walked in, carrying a thermal container. Her face was etched with worry. "I'm here to take care of you," she said simply, her voice rough. In our culture, the month after childbirth, or a miscarriage, was a sacred period of healing called 'zuo yuezi'. My mother, a woman of tradition, was here to enforce it "Mom, what about your job?" | asked. She was the head housekeeper at the Robinson estate. She waved a dismissive hand, busying herself with unpacking the container of herbal soup. "I quit," she said, her back to me. She turned around, and | saw that her eyes were red-rimmed. She shut the door to the room. "Eliza," she began, her voice trembling. "I'm so sorry. | should have... | should have done more." She then told me that for the last five years, she had been secretly paying back the money Cash had given us. Five years ago, my father had racked up enormous gambling debts, and the loan sharks were threatening our family. Cash had stepped in, writing a check without a moment's hesitation. He had saved us. It was another link in the chain that had bound me to him. "| paid off the last of it this morning," my mother said, her voice filled with a quiet pride. "| never touched the money you ---- gave me. It's allin a savings account. For you. For your future." | stared at my mother, at her worn hands and tired eyes, and | understood the depth of her fierce, clumsy love. She had never trusted the Robinsons, never believed their world was for me. And she had spent five years, in secret, breaking the financial hold they had over us. "Let's go home, Mom," | whispered, the words catching in my throat. "Let's go back to the countryside. | just want to go home." "What about him?" she asked gently. "It's over," | said, the words feeling more real, more final, than ever before. "I'm done." A look of profound relief washed over her face. She pulled me into her arms, and for the first time in what felt like an eternity, | let myself break. | buried my face in her shoulder and slept. When | woke up later, she was gone. | assumed she had gone to get groceries. The thermal container was on the bedside table, still warm. A piece of paper was next to it, her familiar, spidery handwriting listing out the ingredients for the soup. | was smiling, a real smile, for the first time in days. The door to my room flew open, slamming against the wall. Catherine Yang stood there, her face a mask of fury. "Where is he?" she demanded. ---- Before | could answer, my mother appeared behind her, a bag of groceries in her hand. "What are you doing here?" my mother snapped, her body instantly tensing, becoming a protective shield between me and Catherine. Catherine grabbed my mother's arm. "You need to talk to her," she hissed. "Tell your daughter to get out of our lives. Cash is mine. He's always been mine." She flaunted her barely-there baby bump. "She can't compete with this. She can't compete with me." My mother laughed, a short, sharp, contemptuous sound. "You're scared," she said, trying to yank her arm away. "If you were so confident, you wouldn't be here." Catherine's face twisted into an ugly, unrecognizable snarl. "You old bitch," she spat, her grip tightening. She raised her other hand, shoving my mother with all her strength. My mother stumbled backward, her eyes wide with shock. Her heel caught on the raised threshold of the doorway. She fell. It happened in slow motion. Her body tumbling backward, down the short flight of concrete stairs just outside my room The sickening crack as her head hit the landing. The bag of groceries burst open, apples and oranges scattering across the cold linoleum floor like drops of blood ---- Catherine stared, her hand still outstretched, her face frozen in a mask of horror. Her phone rang. She fumbled for it, her voice a high-pitched, panicked squeak. "Daddy? Something terrible has happened..."