Chapter 1

"Professor Harris, about the position you've been holding for me. I've decided to accept it."

I held my phone, standing on the empty deck at the stern of the yacht. The sea wind pressed my hair flat against the side of my face, but my voice was calmer than I had expected.

The line went quiet for a few seconds.

"Evelyn, are you sure?" Professor Harris's tone carried both surprise and caution. "Two months ago you told me your partner was in New York and that you wanted to stay there. The lab kept this opportunity open because I believe in your ability, but once you sign the appointment papers this time, you can't back out again for personal reasons."

I looked down at my hands.

The pair of dark blue cufflinks had pressed two deep red marks into my palm. On the inside of each cufflink, a tiny line of engraved text: From nothing, to side by side.

Those were words Alex had said to me ten years ago, when he was first starting his company.

Back then, he couldn't afford an office, so we squeezed into a leaky attic apartment in Brooklyn. He handled the investor pitches while I organized his experimental data, revised his business plans, and reached out to clinical partners. At our poorest, we shared a single cold sandwich, and he held me and said, "When I make it, I'll make sure everyone knows you're the one who stood by me all the way."

He made it.

But everyone only knew him as the genius founder who had built everything from scratch. No one knew I had helped him build the company's earliest technical framework. No one knew that every time a project spiraled out of control, it was me working behind the scenes to patch the holes.

"I'm sure." I slowly curled my fingers shut. "I don't have a partner anymore."

Professor Harris didn't press further. He simply said, "Then come back. Boston winters are cold, but the lab will always have a place for you."

"Thank you, Professor."

I hung up. Behind me, cheers erupted again from the cabin.

"Kiss her!"

"Alex, you're finally acting like a man!"

Through the floor-to-ceiling glass, I watched Alex lean down and press a kiss to Lillian's forehead. Someone knocked over the champagne tower, golden liquid running down the white tablecloth onto the floor. Fireworks bloomed over the dark ocean, and everyone was cheering for them.

I walked to the stern alone and opened my palm.

Over ten years, I had walked beside Alex from debt-ridden graduate student to newly minted mogul with an entire Manhattan office building to his name.

The year I received Harvard's research invitation, his first funding round had just fallen through. Creditors blocked the entrance to his rental apartment, and he had broken two ribs in a fight. I carried him on my back through a blizzard for a long time before flagging down a car willing to take us to the hospital.

Lying in the hospital bed, eyes bloodshot, he grabbed my hand. "Evelyn, I have nothing right now. If you leave too, I won't make it. Please stay. Once the company stabilizes, I'll go to Boston with you."

I stayed.

Later, I got pregnant unexpectedly. The company was fighting for a make-or-break partnership at the time, and Alex had been living in the office for a month straight. I flew to Chicago on his behalf to handle the regulatory paperwork and started hemorrhaging at the airport. The doctor said the baby was gone, and because of the damage to my body, future pregnancies would be far more difficult for me than for most people.

Alex knelt by the hospital bed and swore he would never let me suffer again.

Then my mother fell critically ill. He was courting a key investor who would only negotiate with me. I closed the deal for him in the conference room. By the time I rushed home, my mother had already stopped breathing.

It wasn't that I never regretted it.

But every time I did, Alex would hold me and say we were working toward a shared future.

I believed all those sacrifices would one day earn me a family I could claim openly.

Until tonight, when he traded away ten years of my dignity with a single ring, just to make Lillian smile.

"Told you she wouldn't dare make a scene."

He was certain I couldn't leave him, certain that even after being publicly humiliated, I would go back to the apartment as always and have his soup waiting.

I walked to the edge of the deck without hesitation and uncurled my fingers.

The pair of dark blue cufflinks plunged into the sea without a sound.

Just like ten years of my youth, swallowed silently by the darkness.

I pulled my coat tight around me and walked down the gangway off the yacht. The shore was bitterly cold, the sea wind carrying the smell of salt and damp wood.

I opened a ride-hailing app and typed in the Manhattan apartment address.

Behind me, a boom shook the air as fireworks lit up half the harbor.

I didn't look back.