A fire broke out at the hospital where my mom worked. My dad and I rushed there immediately to help with the rescue. We managed to get my mom out safely, but my dad was severely injured in the process. The only person in the country who could perform the complex surgery to save him was my mom—a top-tier surgeon. I begged her to operate on him, but she scoffed and refused: "My time is valuable. Do you know how many lives I can save in the time it would take to deal with him?" "Putting aside the fact that you two are my husband and son, putting out fires is his job. He was just doing what he's supposed to do!" Desperate, I called in every favor I had and finally managed to get a renowned foreign specialist to fly in for my dad. When my mom found out, she intercepted the doctor and sent him right back to the airport: "Dr. Chen is a leading expert in the medical field! If he finds out your father is faking his injuries just to get attention, how am I supposed to show my face in the medical community ever again?" "I've spoiled you two too much. If your dad keeps pulling these stunts, I'm divorcing him!" She hung up the phone, cutting off my last shred of hope. Denied timely treatment, I watched my dad die in my arms. While I was arranging his funeral, I saw a post from my mom's "first love": "It was just a minor cold, but she stayed by my side for three days and three nights. Truly the people's good doctor!" The attached photo showed my mom in a VIP hospital suite, gently feeding him porridge, her eyes brimming with love and concern. I stared at it in silence for a long time, then liked the post and commented: "A cheater and a homewrecker. You two deserve each other forever." 1 When I walked out of the funeral home, I felt like a walking corpse. I wandered aimlessly down the street. I had already cried until I had no tears left. My phone rang abruptly. The name "Chloe" flashed on the screen. I hesitated for a moment but finally answered. "Liam! What kind of nonsense are you posting online?!" "Do you know that Ethan is having chest pains and can barely breathe because of your vicious comments?!" "Apologize to him right now!" Her furious voice blasted through the speaker. I instinctively held the phone away from my ear. When I finally spoke, I realized my voice was completely hoarse. "Apologize? Did I say a single word that wasn't true?" "You left your critically ill husband to die, but you ran around waiting on another man for a minor cold! Have you ever treated my dad like a husband? Have you ever treated me like a son?!" My mom exploded with anger on the other end of the line: "How dare you! Is this how you speak to your elders?!" "Your father ruined you! Put him on the phone! I want to ask him how he raised such an ungrateful son!" I tilted my head back, trying desperately to stop the tears from falling again. But my throat felt completely blocked, and I couldn't make a sound. After a long while, over the sound of her angry breathing, I finally forced the words out: "Dad... haha... he's dead. You killed him. You're never going to get another phone call from him." "You cold-blooded murderer! You're going to rot in hell!" After a brief, stunned silence, her furious roaring assaulted my eardrums again. I couldn't bear to listen anymore. Exhausted, I hung up, curled into a ball on the sidewalk, covered my face, and cried. Boom! Boom! Boom! Suddenly, several loud explosions startled me out of my daze. I looked up. Countless fireworks were bursting in the night sky, their brilliant colors instantly illuminating the entire city. "Wow, those fireworks are gorgeous!" "Yeah, so romantic!" I heard the amazed gasps of pedestrians around me. I stared blankly at the sky. The dazzling fireworks shifted shapes until they finally formed the outline of a man's face. A face I knew all too well. It was Ethan. The fireworks danced around his image before spelling out a massive, glowing sentence: [Happy Birthday, Ethan!] I stared at the name, the rage surging back into my heart. Before I could even process what was happening, I heard people talking nearby: "Wow, who is that guy? He's so handsome!" "Is he a movie star? Or some rich heir?" "Don't you know? That's Dr. Chloe Sterling's first love. He just got back from overseas." "Wait, Dr. Sterling? The famous surgeon? My friend's mom was in a horrible car crash, and several hospitals basically told them to prepare for the worst, but Dr. Sterling managed to pull her back from the brink of death." "Yeah, she's a legend in the medical field. I heard she's drop-dead gorgeous too. But the craziest part is how devoted she is! Her first love went abroad for over a decade, and she waited for him the whole time. Never even dated anyone else." "Yes! I heard about that! Last week, her boyfriend caught a minor cold, and she booked him a VIP suite and stayed up for three days and three nights taking care of him. She's so deeply in love with him." "She set off fireworks across the whole city just for his birthday! And all those billboards have pictures of them together." "Oh my god! That is so sweet! How can a woman be that perfect?" "I'm so jealous. It's like a romance novel come to life right in front of us!" Their words pierced my ears one by one, making me physically sick. I turned around in a daze and looked at the massive LED screen in the center of the plaza. Two familiar, smiling faces were displayed on it. My mom looked incredibly gentle, her eyes filled with love as she looked at Ethan. I had never seen her look like that. Around my dad and me, she always had a cold, stern face. She was always indifferent and heartless. Watching the slideshow of their happy photos, my mind went completely blank. Until a voice broke through: "Young man, are you okay? Are you in trouble? Do you need some help?" I snapped back to reality and realized my eyes were blurry with tears. I shook my head vigorously. It took a long time to find my voice: "No... I just... I miss my dad..." I looked down at the urn in my hands and muttered: "But I... I don't have a dad anymore..." The stranger paused, then handed me the small cake they had just bought. "Every hardship passes eventually. Your dad will watch over you from heaven." "Stay strong and keep living. Things will get better." Before I could even try to hand the cake back, they quickly said goodbye and disappeared into the crowd. Looking at the cake in my hands, the tears flowed uncontrollably again. Even a complete stranger could show me this much kindness. Why was my own mother so cruel to her husband and son? 2 For as long as I can remember, my mom was rarely around. Whether it was parent-teacher conferences or the times I ended up in the hospital sick, it was always my dad running around, taking care of everything. My mom never came to keep me company. She was absent for almost my entire childhood. And my dad wasted over twenty years of his life by her side. On countless long, quiet nights, my dad would hold me and tell me the story of how he and my mom met. When she was twenty-three, my mom suffered the double blow of losing both her parents and going through a terrible breakup. She fell into a deep depression. One night, in the middle of a breakdown, she started a fire in her bedroom, intending to burn herself and the house to ashes. It was my dad's very first dispatch as a firefighter. He literally had to drag her out of the burning building by force. Learning about the immense tragedy she had endured, my dad was overwhelmed with compassion and sympathy. He volunteered to visit her in the hospital, constantly encouraging and comforting her, helping her get through the darkest period of her life. Perhaps moved by his kindness, my mom confessed her feelings to him the day she was discharged. A young man experiencing his first crush is an easy target for a woman's gentle trap. Especially since my mom was stunningly beautiful and incredibly elegant back then. Within a month, my dad was hopelessly in love. After dating for two years, they walked down the aisle. For the first few years, they had a beautiful, happy life together. Then my mom got pregnant. To take better care of her, my dad agreed to her request to quit his job as a firefighter. When I was born, my mom barely gave me a passing glance before tossing me to my dad like an afterthought. Simply because she felt I was delaying her career progress. Later on, as her career took off, she became increasingly busy, often not coming home at all. She started despising my dad for being "useless" and constantly belittled him. My dad developed severe depression. Then, one night, my dad accidentally discovered that my mom had reconnected with her first love. All the suppressed emotions exploded. He started becoming intensely paranoid about her whereabouts. They fought constantly. But every time she threatened him with divorce, his anger would instantly extinguish. The trivialities of marriage exposed her true nature. She increasingly viewed him as a lazy good-for-nothing, a failure in every aspect. She grew colder and colder, eventually cutting off his access to the household finances entirely. With no source of income, my dad had to go back to the fire department and take a low-paying logistics job. He was single-handedly supporting all our household expenses, so he lived incredibly frugally. He washed the same clothes over and over until the cuffs were frayed, and he still wouldn't throw them away. He didn't own a single decent suit or a good pair of shoes. I tried to convince him to get a divorce more times than I can count. But he foolishly held onto the belief that she still loved us, that she was just too busy. He believed that one day, she would remember our little family. I knew he was just using the beautiful memories of their past to numb himself to the reality. That's why, when he heard a fire had broken out at her hospital, he completely ignored everyone trying to stop him. Even though he had long since been reassigned to logistics, he charged into the inferno without a second thought. He risked his life to pull her out, but he was engulfed by the flames himself, suffering severe, disfiguring burns. Yet, when I thought my mom would finally feel a shred of gratitude or sympathy for him... She looked at him, wrapped entirely in bandages, frowned in disgust, and told him to get away from her. In that moment, she felt like a complete stranger. My dad's injuries were critical; he was hovering between life and death. My mom was the only surgeon in the country with the skill to perform the complex procedure he needed. I swallowed all my pride, knelt in front of her, and begged her to save him. To save her own husband. But she remained completely unmoved. She even cruelly turned away the renowned specialist I had gone through hell to fly in from overseas, completely cutting off my dad's last chance at survival. I will never forget how he looked in his final moments. He lay weakly in the hospital bed, covered in cold, sterile tubes. He struggled to open his eyes, looked at me, and used the last of his strength to say: "Leo... don't hate your mother... You have to... live a good life..." Before he even finished the sentence, those eyes, which were always so full of resilience, dimmed forever. Even as he was dying, he was still defending her, telling me not to blame her. But Dad, not only did she kill you with her own hands, she's flaunting her love for another man while your body isn't even cold. She's a monster. I can't let go of my hatred for her, and I can't let them live happily ever after. I swear, I will drag that cheating pair straight to hell myself! 3 The moment I pushed open the front door, a blast of warm air hit me, accompanied by piercing laughter and chatter. Under the crystal chandelier, the living room was packed with people. My mom and Ethan sat in the center of the sofa, acting exactly like the lady and master of the house. On a makeshift stage, a hired entertainment troupe was performing enthusiastically. I had barely stepped inside when one of my mom's business partners grabbed my arm: "There's our little butler! Just in time! Come on, do a trick for Mr. Ethan!" Ethan, who had his arm around my mom, immediately perked up and whispered in her ear: "Yeah, yeah! Let Leo do a performance!" My mom glanced at me, frowning slightly, but said indifferently: "Fine. Do your best trick." Before I could even process what was happening, I was shoved onto the stage by a few drunk guests. Someone yelled from the crowd: "Get his dad up here too! I heard the father-son duo spent days preparing for Ethan's birthday party!" A man named Mr. Lee, standing next to my mom, smiled and patted her shoulder: "You're so lucky, Chloe. Finding a father-son butler team this capable—they clean the house, handle the clients, and now they even do tricks! Impressive!" He turned to me and shouted: "Don't just stand there! Get started! Let us see what you can do!" I froze, feeling the blood turn to ice in my veins. A father-son butler team? Is that how she introduced us to the world?! I looked at her in sheer disbelief. She was looking down, pretending to adjust her dress. She looked a tiny bit embarrassed, but she never opened her mouth to deny it. A raging inferno ignited in my chest. I grabbed a champagne flute from the table, smashed it violently against the floor, and pointed straight at Ethan, roaring: "You shameless parasite! You think you're worthy of having me and my dad perform for you?!" "And you bunch of snobs! Sucking up to a kept man, is it fun?! My dad is the legitimate husband and master of this house! Who the hell gave any of you the right to order us around?!" My sudden outburst silenced the room for a few seconds. Then, those so-called "business elites" finally reacted, pointing at me and hurling insults. "A butler's son, throwing a tantrum in front of us?! Have you lost your mind?!" "Ungrateful trash! The father and son must be desperate to climb into her bed!" They clamored, demanding my mom fire us and throw us out immediately. Everyone was bullying me, insulting my dad. And it was all because of one lie my mom told. My eyes were red as I stared directly at her: "Tell them! Am I your son, or am I your servant?!" Her expression shifted rapidly, but she ultimately said coldly: "A servant." She glanced at her business partners, who were still shouting, and added: "Alright, he's just a kid who doesn't know his place. Let it go." Then she waved dismissively at the nanny. "Lock him in his room. Don't let him out to ruin Ethan's birthday party." Mrs. Zhang, our nanny, hesitated. She looked at my red, swollen eyes, sighed, and whispered gently: "Don't be sad. Madam is just angry right now. Let me help you to your room to rest." Inside my room, I could still hear the noise from the party through the walls, as if my outburst had never happened. Separated by a single wall, my face was covered in tears. From now on, there was no one left to comfort me. 4 After the party ended and the guests trickled out, the massive mansion fell silent again. When Mrs. Zhang opened my door, I was curled up in the corner, my eyes completely swollen. My mom was standing at the top of the stairs, her face ice-cold: "You made Uncle Ethan angry today. Locking you up was to teach you a lesson." She frowned and asked: "Where is your dad? Ethan drank too much today, and his stomach is hurting. "Call him and tell him to get back here and make some hangover soup." She spoke with such entitlement, as if my dad truly was just her butler. Because my dad worried about how hard she worked and how much she had to drink at business dinners, he always prepared hangover soup for her, no matter how late or how busy he was. And now she wanted to use that to pamper Ethan! I clenched my fists so tightly my nails dug into my palms. The anger and grief boiling in my chest finally erupted: "My dad isn't your butler! Why should he?!" "You already killed him! He's dead, and you still won't let him rest!" Slap! I stumbled backward, clutching my burning cheek. My mom's hand hung in the air. A flicker of uncertainty crossed her eyes, but it was quickly replaced by cold indifference. At that moment, Ethan slowly walked down the stairs. His eyes were slightly red, one hand gripping the banister tightly. "Leo, even if you don't like me, you shouldn't curse your own father like that. "I know Arthur must have stayed away because he hates me too. "Maybe... I should just leave..." He took a step, pretending he was actually going to walk out the door. I glared coldly at his pathetic, fake-vulnerable performance. My stomach churned with nausea. My wonderful mother, predictably, grabbed his hand immediately. "This is my house. I make the rules. You stay here." When she turned back to me, her eyes were freezing again. "If your dad doesn't want to come back, fine. Let's see how long he wants to drag this tantrum out. "I'm not going looking for him. You pass a message along for me: tell him to stop throwing these fits. If he keeps this up, we're getting a divorce!" With that, she linked her arm through Ethan's and turned to head upstairs.
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