Chapter 2

2

When Audrey stepped out of the bathroom, she pulled a gift-wrapped designer tie from her designer purse and tossed it onto the sofa.

"Dress nicely this afternoon. Do not embarrass me in front of my family. Consider this your other anniversary gift."

I glanced at it and felt a bitter urge to laugh.

Whether it was the luxury watch I had tossed earlier or this repackaged silk tie, they were all secondhand hand-me-downs that Chase had discarded.

Ever since Chase entered our lives, the Audrey who used to rack her brain to give me sweet surprises had vanished.

Our anniversary gifts had turned into leftover junk from her childhood friend, handed down to me like scraps of charity.

I took a deep breath, went downstairs, and got into the driver's seat. Audrey sat in the passenger seat nursing her hangover, too drained to even pretend to care.

"Leo should like this smartwatch. Pick one out for him. Hmm, the royal blue one looks the sharpest."

I remained silent, but my mind flashed back to the video call from midnight. Chase had been wearing that exact royal blue smartwatch, and Audrey wore the matching women's version.

It was as if the three of them were the real family, wearing matching sets from head to toe.

The air inside the car felt suffocating.

Seeing my silence, Audrey frowned with deep impatience.

"Forget it. Your taste is far too outdated. Chase always picks the best gifts, and Leo loves everything he chooses."

Hearing that made me want to laugh out loud. Of course I did not know our son's preferences as well.

Even though he was my flesh and blood, I spent far less time with Leo than an outsider like Chase did.

Right after Leo was born, the Prescott family took him away to their estate.

They claimed they could not let a kid from a working-class background taint the boy with bad habits.

They insisted he had to receive the Prescott elite upbringing.

From that day on, I needed Audrey's permission just to see my own child.

Only then would the Prescotts reluctantly allow me a brief visit.

Meanwhile, Chase, with his high-society background, was welcomed with open arms every single day.

Leo even followed him around the estate, happily calling him "Daddy Chase."

How absurd that I barely had the right to hold my son, while he cuddled affectionately in the arms of another man.

The Prescotts looked down on me and despised having me as a son-in-law, yet they adored Chase.

Audrey put down her phone and glanced sideways at me.

"Be on your best behavior when you see Leo later. Do not forget that without the Prescott family, you are nobody."

A hollow chuckle escaped my lips.

Yes, the Prescotts were wealthy elites, so why would they ever respect an ordinary man like me?

Yet the cruelest irony was that despite all their wealth, my mother―Audrey's mother-in-law―died in a hospital bed because we could not afford her medical bills.

I still vividly remembered the day my mother took her final breath, wanting to see her daughter-in-law one last time. I called Audrey repeatedly, but she rejected every call because she was away on a scenic photoshoot trip with Chase.

They said I was nobody without the Prescotts, but staying in their family made me lower than a stray dog.

If it were not for my son, I would have walked away long ago.

After handling my mother's funeral in grief and despair, I sat on the curb with a bottle of cheap liquor, completely broken.

A little girl passing by saw me weeping, handed me a lollipop, and asked why I was crying and if I had a home.

I held that lollipop in silence, staring up at the gray sky to stop the tears from pouring down.

There was a time when Audrey was the perfect girl, willing to share instant noodles with me in a tiny rented studio.

She used to stand beside me at night, selling handcrafted goods by the sidewalk.

To force the Prescott family to accept our relationship, she threatened to cut ties with them, and only after she became pregnant did they reluctantly let me cross their threshold.

To make her proud, I studied tirelessly, graduated at the top of my class, and earned a position at the Prescott corporate office through my own merit.

Yet all my sweat and tears were erased by a single label: gold digger.

Ashamed of my background, the family forced me into an entry-level clerk role, where I remained stuck for eight long years.

Meanwhile, the moment Chase returned from abroad, he was instantly named Audrey's executive secretary.

That night on the curb, every sweet memory of our youth was swept away by the wind, gone forever.