Bai Wanyi stepped back into the living room, stumbling slightly before steadying herself beside the sofa.
She slowly sank into the sofa, her hands gripping the armrests so tightly that her knuckles turned white. The confrontation just now had appeared calm on the surface, but now, all the emotions she had held back surged through her like a tide—anger, pain, pity, exhaustion... and a deep, overwhelming weariness.
She closed her eyes, and that name, the one she had long buried, quietly resurfaced in her thoughts.
That heavy rainy night, Li Chengyuan came home with drunk, murmuring another woman's name against her ear. She remembered the sound of his voice, the scent of his breath, but most of all, she remembered the tenderness in his eyes that didn't belong to her.
At that moment, she understood the fact.
From the start, their marriage had never been about love. It was a carefully crafted bargain, a transaction masked by affection. He hadn't entered her life for who she was, but for the vast, all-powerful Bai family behind her—a towering tree whose shadow stretched far and wide, sheltering him, and swallowing her whole.
"Junxi... he's the child of you and that woman, isn't he?" she whispered to herself, each word cutting across her tongue like a blade, drawing blood with every syllable.
She used to tell herself that since the marriage was done and her fate decided, she might as well stay and keep the family intact. But now, she could no longer fool herself.
She opened her eyes, her gaze once again steady—cold, sharp, and unwavering.
She rose and walked to the corner of the room, pulling open a hidden cabinet disguised as part of the decorative wall. From the bottom drawer, she retrieved an old backup phone and a notebook densely filled with dates, transactions, and movement routes.
She turned to a page and pressed a series of numbers with her fingertip—numbers she had long since committed to memory.
"Watch him closely," she said, her tone calm but cold as ice beneath still water. "If he touches my child, proceed with the second plan."
"Understood." The voice on the other end was crisp and precise, free of any unnecessary emotion.
She said nothing more and ended the call.
The room fell back into silence.
She sat quietly back down on the sofa, lowering her gaze to the pale knuckles of her hand. It was a long while before she finally exhaled, as if she had just walked the length of a blade.
She spoke softly, her voice so low that it sounded like a whisper to herself, but also like an oath to fate:
"I, Bai Wanyi, will rescue only my own son."
The moment those words were spoken, it was as if an irreversible line had been etched into her heart, tearing apart the last thread of compromise she still held as a "wife."
She lifted her gaze toward the window.
Night had fallen, and beyond the window, countless lights flickered across the city—like a thousand indifferent eyes watching the course of this family drama unfold. She knew this wasn't the first cruel choice she had made, and it would not be the last.
Because she knew one truth with painful certainty—in this world, power has no use for tears, and affection cannot protect blood ties.
She trusted no one. Not even her husband.