Deported His Mistress, Kept His Baby

Chapter 10: Shattered Redemption

He leaned back in his wheelchair, his fingertips lightly tapping the armrest as he recounted the twisted journey of his heart. Sunlight streamed through the floor-to-ceiling windows, casting a soft glow on his pale face, but it failed to reach the shadows lingering in his eyes.

"If you had known what kind of man I was, would you still have chosen me?" he asked suddenly, his voice barely above a whisper, as if afraid to disturb something unspoken between us.

I stared out the window at the plane tree leaves drifting in the breeze, my fingers tracing the rim of my teacup absentmindedly. "No," I answered calmly, my tone unwavering. "I couldn't save anyone."

Vincent Sinclair's lips curled into a sad smile, tears slipping down his cheeks as he nodded. He apologized—for the pain he caused, for the child who would never be born. His voice stayed low, almost reverent, as though he feared awakening some silent specter.

The divorce papers were signed quickly.

Vincent insisted on giving me two-thirds of his assets, a move that shocked the Sinclair family to its core. The elders, smelling blood like sharks, descended on the situation in a frenzy—but Vincent, even confined to a wheelchair, remained the unyielding patriarch. He crushed their attempts without a second thought.

I left most of the money to my parents. When they learned about Vincent's condition, they sighed in sympathy—but quickly moved on to arrange new blind dates for me.

"Uncle Brown's son is quite a catch," my mother said, flipping through bankbooks. "He's in his thirties, already successful."

I smiled and packed my few belongings.

After years of suffocating in the cage of marriage, I could finally breathe the air of freedom.

Later, I heard that Vincent had returned to the country. Relatives still tried to push women into his orbit, only to find themselves crushed under his merciless retaliation. He was like a beast freed from its chains, unleashing the darkness within.

Meanwhile, I set off on my own journey, exploring the world.

In the Arctic, I stood beneath the aurora borealis, watching reindeer cross the tundra.

On a cruise ship, I clinked glasses with strangers and exchanged stories.

Beneath every social media post, Vincent's silent likes lingered, like a shadowed observer from afar.

Then, one day, while standing atop the Alps, the click of a camera shutter broke the silence. I turned to find a pair of eyes as blue as mountain lakes.

"Sorry," the man holding the camera said with an apologetic smile. "You looked too beautiful standing in the sunlight."

His fluent Chinese caught me by surprise.

We sat down in a café nestled in the mountains, where he introduced himself as James Brown, an architect on a business trip in Europe.

"It's strange," he mused, tracing his finger around the rim of his coffee cup. "I feel like I've seen you before."

The alpine breeze tousled my hair as I smiled faintly. "Zoe Johnson. Nice to meet you."

In the distance, the snow-capped peaks glowed gold under the setting sun, a quiet promise of a new beginning.