Chapter 1

By the time my wife, Claire, came home, my mother had already been reduced to a box of ashes.

She merely glanced at my mother’s memorial portrait, then proudly told me, “Honey, I saved a young man’s life!”

I said nothing, my gaze cold.

In the past, whenever she came home from a night shift at the hospital and said that to me, I would kiss her forehead with both pride and tenderness and say, “My wife is the best!”

But the life she had saved this time had been exchanged for my mother’s life.

During the days I spent handling my mother’s funeral arrangements, I asked myself again and again: I had devoted myself to treating Claire well all these years, but what had my mother, the woman who gave birth to me and raised me, ever received from me?

When she saw my reaction, Claire immediately pouted.

“Ethan! Aren’t you proud of me? Don’t you love me anymore?”

My voice was cold. “Where did you get the lifesaving medicine, Doctor Claire?”

A flash of guilt crossed Claire’s face, but she quickly composed herself and said frankly, “If you weigh the pros and cons, saving an elderly person is obviously less worthwhile than saving someone young!”

My eyes instantly turned red.

My mother had spent all these years working tirelessly to take care of Claire at home. In her old age, she had been tortured by illness, and Claire had actually treated her life as something to be weighed against the pros and cons.

I slammed my palm against the table and roared, “Claire, that was my mother! There are so many patients in the hospital, including children. Why didn’t you save one of them?”

Claire froze.

She had never seen me lose my temper before.

Flustered, Claire walked over and reached out to hug me.

I instinctively stepped back.

Her hands were stained with my mother’s blood.

Claire’s expression shifted slightly. “Honey, I know you’re angry. I understand how every family member feels after losing someone. But your mother was already sixty. Why waste medicine that cost $1.2 million?”

Hearing that, all I could feel was how cold and heartless the woman in front of me was.

She was comforting me like I was an ordinary patient’s family member, as if my mother’s death had not disturbed her in the slightest.

Maybe in her heart, Julian was the one she truly loved.

Seeing that I remained agitated, Claire finally softened her tone.

“All right, all right. You’ve always wanted a child, haven’t you? I agree.”

I looked at her perfunctory expression, and the pain in my heart deepened. “Forget it. I accepted an invitation from a news magazine. I’m about to start traveling for work long-term.”

Claire’s brows drew together when she heard that, and anger crept into her voice. “Ethan, what do you mean? When we got married, we agreed that you would fully support my career. Now you want to travel for work? What’s going to happen to this family?”

This family?

When I had won the photography world’s highest award, news organizations had competed to recruit me, enough to make my colleagues jealous.

But for Claire, I had decisively given up my career while it was at its peak and devoted myself to taking care of her.

What had I gotten in return?

When she saw that I did not answer, her voice rose.

“The dead are already dead. Do you really have to keep making the living suffer?”