Zahn felt his throat tighten as he scrolled further down the report. Each line stabbed deeper than the last, peeling away the illusions he had clung to for years, illusions built from the words of people he trusted most.
His mother. His family. And worst… himself.
He pressed a shaking hand over his eyes, willing the pounding in his chest to stop, but the memories he had buried for convenience, out of pride, out of negligence, forced their way back like a flood.
Three years ago. Before he left for the medical mission abroad.
He had just finished a long surgery when a nurse hesitantly approached him.
"Dr. Neri… your wife is outside. She said it's urgent."
He remembered the irritation instantly rising at the mention of Lianna. Ever since his mother told him she had "become clingy" and "kept using their son to get attention," he was easily annoyed whenever Lianna appeared unexpectedly.
When he stepped out, Lianna was standing there with their toddler in her arms, eyes red-rimmed, out of breath. The boy clung to her neck, whimpering.
"Zahn… thank God, you're here. Sean suddenly had a fever and—"
"What are you doing here?" he cut her off sharply. "Didn't I tell you not to show up at the hospital unless it's important?"
Her face paled. "It is important. I panicked, his fever spiked."
"So you brought him here just to find me?" He glared, aware of the curious gazes of nearby staff. "Stop using our son as an excuse."
He still remembered the way she froze, completely stunned and confused like he had struck her.
The toddler reached for him with small trembling hands. "D-daddy…"
Zahn didn't lift him. He only stepped back, keeping a bit of distance, not wanting to pass any germs or infection to his son after just finishing surgery, though he never explained this.
Lianna bit her lip so hard she drew blood, bowed stiffly, and turned to leave.
He ignored it then.
Now it hammered inside his skull.
His stomach twisted violently and he slammed the laptop shut, unable to read another word.
Not yet.
Another blow hit him, a memory from his time abroad.
Lianna had emailed him one night.
[Zahn… I don't know what's happening to me. The doctor says I have depression. I'm trying to manage it, but some days I feel like I'm disappearing. I don't want to worry you… but I can't hide it anymore.]
He remembered staring at the message blankly, uncertain whether to believe it. So he did what he always did:
He called his mother.
And she laughed. Laughed.
"Oh please, Zahn. Depression? Do you know how often this girl exaggerates? She wants your attention, that's all. Look, look at these photos I took this morning."
His mother had sent him pictures of Lianna outside in the garden with their son, laughing, smiling gently while the boy chased butterflies, her hair messy from the wind.
"She's perfectly fine," his mother had insisted with absolute certainty. "She pulls these dramatic stunts because she can't handle the responsibility of being your wife. Am I not allowed to correct her a little? She twists black and white and plays the victim, how can someone so scheming live under our roof? Honestly, I still don't understand why you married a woman like her. Anyway, don't take her nonsense to heart. I'm your mother. Don't you trust me?"
He had believed her. He had chosen to.
Lianna was too dramatic. Overemotional. Sensitive.
And so he wrote Lianna a cold email. Asking why she had become like this. Accusing her of exaggerating, and warning her not to cause trouble.
Now, seeing the report on her therapy sessions: SEVERE DEPRESSION
The list of medications she had taken and stopped because she had "no emotional support," color-desaturation symptoms or inability to discriminate colors, the countless unrecorded visits to the hospital for stress-induced fainting… something inside him snapped.
His fist slammed against the desk. Knuckles split, blood beading instantly.
A low, cracked sound escaped him, half a groan, half a breathless sob.
Behind her smile, how many times had she cried alone?
How many times had she reached out only to be pushed away?
How many times had she stood at the edge while he looked the other direction?
How many times had he been blind, no, willfully blind?
His vision blurred.
He remembered those pictures, the ones his mother sent. The bright smile Lianna wore for their son. He thought she was coping well, adjusting, happy.
But the report stated plainly:
> Patient shows extreme effort to suppress negative emotions in front of child. Maintains cheerful façade to avoid alarming him.
She wasn't faking her depression. She was hiding it so their son wouldn't worry.
Zahn buried his face in his hands, breath shaking uncontrollably.
He wasn't the wronged party. He was the fool. The coward. The perpetrator.
A man who believed the easy lies fed to him instead of his own wife's trembling words. A man who let her drown silently. A man who, because of his ignorance, pushed her to the edge again and again.
And now she wanted a divorce.
Would she ever believe him if he said he was sorry? Would their son ever forgive him?
Zahn didn't know. His heart felt carved out, hollow and bleeding, but it was nothing compared to the years he left her to suffer alone.
All he knew was that he deserved every ounce of this pain.
Zahn's breath caught as a sudden thought slammed into him, that house, and the villa at the Sin Mille estate they lived in after marriage… both were fully equipped with CCTV.
His trembling fingers hovered over the keyboard before he forced himself to access the system. He pulled up the cameras of the residence he was currently in and clicked on a random footage from exactly a year ago.
At first, he told himself he was only checking to confirm a misunderstanding. But the more footage he opened frantically, one after another, the deeper he felt himself sinking into a bottomless, airless abyss.
Lianna was everywhere.
Not as his wife, not as the respected young madam of the Neri family but as his mother's personal servant.
She woke before everyone else, quietly preparing breakfast. Then lunch. Then dinner. The tea, the herbal tonics, every petty preference of his mother… all made by Lianna.
And every time, without fail, his mother would find an excuse to scold her, too bland, too bitter, too slow, too incompetent.
The humiliation was relentless.
His mother poked at her with sharp words, constantly reminding her she "climbed into the Neri family through unsightly means," speaking as if Lianna were some criminal who had conned her way into their lives.
There were scenes of Lianna washing laundry with her sleeves rolled up, scrubbing floors, cleaning rooms, tasks meant for servants, while the actual servants lounged around chatting.
Footage after footage. Day after day. Month after month.
Zahn felt his vision blur. His hands clenched the edge of the desk until his knuckles whitened.
A sound escaped his throat, something between a gasp and a broken laugh.
He couldn't take it anymore.
His eyes, bloodshot and wide with disbelief and rage, snapped open. In one violent motion, he shoved the study door aside and stormed out.
He found his mother in the back garden, complaining loudly to a servant about why her tea tasted "wrong" despite being prepared exactly the way Lianna used to do it.
"Honestly, how hard is it to make a simple tea?"
Zahn laughed.
A loud, sudden, unhinged laugh that froze both women in place. The servant dropped the teapot. His mother's expression twisted into confusion, and then fear when she met Zahn's gaze. His eyes were cold, sinister, almost unfamiliar.
"Mother," Zahn said, voice chillingly calm, "it seems you've had a very… hardworking daughter-in-law all these years."
His mother stiffened. "Z-Zahn? Why do you look like that? What nonsense are you talking about?"
Zahn took a step forward.
"You told me she was dramatic. Manipulative. Scheming." His voice cracked into a bitter laugh. "But the investigation report… Mother, the surveillance footage shows something entirely different."
His mother's face paled instantly.
Zahn's expression twisted, not angry, not sad, something far deeper. Betrayal, guilt, revulsion. A realization so sharp it cut straight through his chest.
"Tell me," he whispered, "at what point did you decide to turn my wife into your slave?"
"What- What do you mean?!" Madam Neri frowned, but there was a flicker of unease in her eyes.
He stepped forward, his figure looming under the back-garden pavilion lights. His eyes were bloodshot, the veins on his forehead strained as if one wrong breath would make him explode.
The servant instinctively bowed and retreated, but Zahn's mother remained standing, chin lifted with the practiced pride of a matriarch who had never been questioned in her life.
"You…" Zahn let out a shaky breath, every word trembling with rage he could barely contain. "What is wrong with your tea? Is it because my wife isn't here to prepare it for you as she always did?"
All color drained from Madam Neri's face.
"She- she must have lied to you again," she stammered. "That scheming girl—"
"Lies?!" Zahn roared.
His voice thundered through the garden, sending birds scattering from nearby branches.
"She was your daughter-in-law! Not your maid. Not your servant!" He staggered a step forward, clutching his hair with both hands.
"How could you make her do a maid's job?! Even if you didn't like her, even if you didn't get along, how could you be so vicious? How could you let others ridicule and humiliate her? Are you even human?!"
Madam Neri instinctively stepped back. "I- I only told her to do what a proper wife should. I…"
"A proper wife?" Zahn let out a strangled laugh. "This household has more servants than residents! Listen to yourself. What exactly is a 'proper wife' to you? This family never lacked the money to hire more help. What you wanted was obedience, control."
His eyes reddened further.
"Does being a 'proper wife' mean letting the servants laugh at her behind her back? Turning a blind eye to their cruelty? Treating her like she was beneath even them? Because you kept calling her a shameless, scheming woman who climbed her way into this family, did you want her to drown in everyone's judgmental spit and their blind moral righteousness?"
Madam Neri's mouth opened, but no words came.