Zhonghai was under a pounding rain.
Inside the Holden family courtyard, voices rolled like boiling water. The whole place was alive.
Today was Patrick Holden’s housewarming feast. The head of the Holden family had just moved into a villa at Tangchen Yipin. It was a grand occasion, so he invited guests from all sides and laid out a rich banquet.
The people who came to offer congratulations filled the hall with nonstop chatter. Joy hung everywhere in the Holden residence.
“Moving from old branches to tall trees, swallows flying into a high hall. I present one bolt of fine silk, and wish Master Holden rising fortune after fortune.”
“A lucky home on blessed ground, purple light upon the new beam. This old man offers Master Holden a pair of golden canaries…”
Gifts came in one after another. Blessings did too.
Patrick Holden and his wife, Beatrice Holden, stood in the middle of it all with smiles spread across their faces. Husband and wife basked in the glow of the moment. The whole hall looked smooth, warm, and full of cheer.
Then the door was shoved open.
A man stumbled into the main hall. He was soaked through from head to toe. Rainwater dripped from his hair, ran down his face, and soaked his clothes tight against his body. He looked miserable, almost broken. The minute he came in, he raised his voice and begged like a man with nowhere left to go.
“Dad! Mom! Melissa! My mother was in a carriage accident. She’s got bleeding in the skull. She needs surgery right now, or she could die!”
“Please—please lend me three hundred thousand!!!”
The man stood there drenched, breathing hard, eyes fixed on Patrick Holden and Beatrice Holden in the main seats.
The hall went still for a beat.
Then laughter burst out.
“Who’s this supposed to be? Borrowing money on a day like this? Has he got no sense at all?”
“Hair all over the place, soaked like that... don’t tell me he’s some lunatic?”
Some people stared at him, baffled.
But those who knew him curled their lips and laughed coldly.
“Who else could it be? The Holdens only have one daughter. He’s calling them Dad and Mom. No need to guess. This has to be the Holden family’s live-in son-in-law, Marcus Whitfield.”
The moment that was said, everyone understood.
The Holden family’s live-in son-in-law was no secret in Zhonghai.
Two years ago, under the old master’s hard hand, the Holden family’s daughter, Melissa Holden, had been forced into marriage with a man named Marcus Whitfield.
They all said Marcus Whitfield came from nothing. No family name. No backing. No skill, no worth.
And worst of all, he was spineless.
That was why the Holden family had never looked at him straight. In their eyes, this live-in son-in-law was less than a man.
Even Melissa Holden, the only daughter of the family, could not stand this useless husband of hers.
Their marriage had long since turned into an empty shell. Husband and wife in name only.
Now that everyone saw him in person, the rumors did not miss by a hair.
This was Marcus Whitfield, all right.
Soaked through. Filthy. Miserable from head to toe.
And he had actually barged right into the banquet looking like that.
The moment Beatrice Holden saw him, her face darkened on the spot. She sprang up like a cat with its tail stepped on and shrieked, “Marcus Whitfield, are you tired of living? Do you even know how much this carpet costs? If you dirty it, can you afford to pay for it? Get out. Right now!”
Melissa Holden was sitting on the sofa. She frowned at once, her pretty face full of disgust as she looked at him, as if one more glance would soil her eyes.
Marcus stood there dripping rainwater. His clothes clung to his body. His hair was plastered to his forehead. His face was pale, and his lips trembled.
“Mother-in-law,” he said, voice hoarse, almost begging, “my mom is in the hospital right now. Please, save her. Three hundred thousand. Just treat it as a loan to me, alright?”
His face was full of pleading. It was the look of a man driven to the wall, with nowhere left to go.
“Three hundred thousand?” Beatrice Holden’s voice shot up sharp enough to pierce the room. “Heavens, listen to yourself. You want me to hand you three hundred thousand? Marcus Whitfield, do you take me for a fool?”
She strode over and pointed straight at his face, fierce as a knife. “Since you love money so much, why don’t you go rob a bank?”
The guests around them looked on with strange smiles, their eyes full of ridicule.
Beatrice Holden did not hold back in the slightest. She sneered, “My Holden family has money, yes. But what are you? A live-in son-in-law. What right do you have to spend Holden family money?”
She jabbed a finger at the soaked floor beneath his feet and barked, “Get out! Let me tell you this—this carpet alone costs more than three hundred thousand. Can you pay for it?!”
The more she looked at Marcus, the more disgust rose in her chest.
If the old master had not insisted back then on bringing Marcus into the family, she would have kicked this piece of trash out long ago.
Now the old master was lying in the hospital himself, gravely ill, barely hanging on.
No one was left to shield Marcus anymore.
Marcus’s expression turned bleak.
For two years after marrying into the family, he had kept his head down and endured everything. He cooked, washed clothes, cleaned the house, did every chore he was told to do. He had never done a single thing to wrong the Holden family.
But even so, in their eyes, he was never a person.
At best, he was a dog they kept by the door.
His fists slowly clenched. The veins on the backs of his hands stood out. Pain burned in his face, and the rainwater dripping from his sleeves tapped softly onto the floor.
At last, he lifted his eyes and looked at his wife, Melissa Holden.
There was bitterness in his gaze. There was also one last thread of hope he could not bear to cut.
“Melissa,” he said in a low, aching voice, “I know you’ve never liked me. But for the sake of the time we were husband and wife... help me this one last time. Will you?”
His face was full of pleading. He had humbled himself all the way into the dirt.
But Melissa Holden rose to her feet as well. She looked at Marcus Whitfield and laughed, light and sharp.
“Marcus, my mother is right. You eat off the Holden family, you live off the Holden family. We don’t owe you a damn thing. Why should we lend you three hundred thousand? Just because you’re my cheap husband?” She gave a cold sneer. “Don’t make me laugh. If my grandfather hadn’t gone senile, do you think I would’ve married trash like you?”
Every word was like a needle, driving hard into Marcus’s heart.
His fists clenched tight. His nails bit straight into his palms until blood seeped out.
Thud!
Marcus dropped to his knees in front of them.
“I’m begging you… please save my mother.”
He bit through his own lip. A streak of glaring blood ran from the corner of his mouth.
A man’s knees carried gold.
If it were not for his mother, he would rather die than kneel to the Holden family.
The guests saw it and burst into mocking laughter.
“So this Marcus really thinks the Holden family is some money vault. He opens his mouth and asks for three hundred thousand. Does he think silver falls from the sky?”
“Exactly. This bastard is no good at all. I bet his mother isn’t even that sick. He’s obviously trying to swindle the Holden family out of money.”
“Miss Holden really got the short end of it, marrying such a useless parasite who eats and does nothing.”
“If it were me, I’d have kicked this waste out a long time ago!”
The poison in those words spread through the hall like smoke.
Marcus’s face went pale. He bit his lip so hard more blood came out.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Right then, a man in a fine suit walked into the villa hall under everyone’s gaze, holding a bouquet of roses.
He was well-dressed, straight-backed, and handsome enough to draw every eye the moment he stepped through the door.
The crowd stirred at once.
“Isn’t that Ethan Mercer, the young master of the Mercer Group?”
“What’s Young Master Mercer doing here?”
“Was he invited by the Holden family too?”
“He’s carrying roses... what for? Is he here to confess to someone?”
Under a hall full of stunned eyes, Ethan Mercer strode straight through the crowd and stopped in front of Melissa Holden.
Without a shred of hesitation, he dropped to one knee. He held the flowers up in both hands, looked straight at Melissa, and spoke in a voice full of heat.
“Melissa, I’m sick of sneaking around like thieves in the dark. I came here today for one reason.”
He drew a breath and raised his voice so the whole hall could hear.
“I want everyone here to know it plain.”
“You, Melissa Holden, are my woman.”
“We love each other. That’s the match heaven meant.”
“As for that trash Marcus Whitfield, he isn’t worthy of you.”
His words were hard, sharp, like a knife scraping across stone.
“Melissa, from this day on, will you stand by me openly and be my woman in the light?”
The hall went dead silent.
Then the shock spread like a gust of cold wind.
No one had expected this. Not a soul.
The grand young master of the Mercer family had not come for the housewarming, nor for Patrick Holden’s face.
He had come for the Holden family’s daughter.
A man like Ethan Mercer, with status, wealth, and a name people feared to offend, had publicly come to claim Melissa Holden.
Marcus Whitfield stood there drenched in humiliation, staring at the scene in front of him. In an instant, the color drained from his face. It turned white as paper. Then, just as fast, a savage fire rose in his chest.
His fingers tightened bit by bit.
His heart felt like it had been smashed with a hammer.
“I’m willing.”
Melissa nodded and answered without the slightest pause.
That one sentence hit Marcus like thunder cracking over his head.
His mind exploded with a buzz. For a moment, he could not even think. He stood frozen, as if all the blood in his body had turned to ice.
“Melissa, you...”
His lips trembled.
Even in his worst dreams, he had never imagined this.
His own wife.
Standing right in front of him.
Accepting another man.
The thought slashed through his head, and his eyes suddenly widened.
Could it be... they had already—
Melissa turned to him. Her face was cold, almost impatient, as if she had finally thrown away something she had long despised.
“Marcus Whitfield, your guess is right.”
“I’ve been with Ethan Mercer for a long time already. Two years. We got together two years ago.”
She did not hide it. She did not feel shame. If anything, her voice carried relief, as though she had finally said what she had wanted to say all along.
“But I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.”
“In my eyes, you were never my husband.”
Every word landed clean and cruel.
No softness. No mercy.
“The only man I have ever recognized—”
Melissa leaned slightly toward Ethan Mercer, her eyes steady.
“—is Ethan Mercer.”
Those words hit Marcus Whitfield like a thunderbolt.
His face went white in a flash. His body swayed, and he nearly dropped flat to the ground.
“Marcus Whitfield, didn’t you say you need three hundred thousand to treat your mother?”
“As long as you divorce me right now, I’ll transfer the three hundred thousand to you at once!”
Melissa Holden stared straight at him and spoke in a cold, hard voice.
Marcus’s face was bloodless. But after that first blow, something inside him went still.
A woman like Melissa Holden was not worth clinging to.
Not worth grief.
Not worth longing.
Not worth one more breath of hope.
“Fine,” Marcus said through clenched teeth. “I’ll divorce you.”
Not one person there thought Melissa Holden had done anything wrong.
After all, compared with Marcus, that useless live-in son-in-law, Ethan Mercer stood tall and clean-cut, with looks, money, and standing to match.
Those two together looked right.
A proper pair.
A match made by fate.
As for Marcus?
In their eyes, he was nothing but a toad dreaming of swan flesh.
…
After the banquet, the group went straight to the marriage office and got the divorce papers.
The moment the certificate landed in her hand, Melissa Holden was so thrilled she could barely hide it. The gloom that had sat on her face for years was gone clean, replaced by naked relief.
She turned to Marcus and said with open hatred, “Marcus Whitfield, I put up with you for two whole years. Now I’m finally free.”
“From this day on, I have nothing to do with trash like you.”
Marcus’s face turned dark as iron. His jaw tightened, and there was a chill in his eyes.
“The divorce is done,” he said in a low voice. “Where’s the money?”
He swallowed every scrap of humiliation and forced himself to stand there.
Right now, he wanted only one thing.
The money.
That was his mother’s life.
“Money? We’re divorced already, and you still dare eye my money? Do I owe you anything?”
Melissa Holden stood there with a cold sneer all over her face, her eyes sharp and hard, not a shred of warmth in them.
Beatrice Holden curled her lip too, her voice full of mockery. “You ate at the Holden house and lived under our roof for two whole years. I’d be generous enough not to make you pay us back. Three hundred thousand? Why don’t you keep dreaming?”
The moment those words fell, the few of them burst out laughing.
That laughter was harsh, shrill, like needles scraping bone. Every sound was packed with contempt.
“Bastards! I’ll kill you!”
Marcus Whitfield’s head roared.
Something inside him snapped clean in half.
His whole body blew up with rage. Veins stood out on his neck, his face twisted savage, and he lunged at Melissa Holden like a maddened beast, all reason gone.
But Ethan Mercer had been waiting for it.
With one clean kick, he slammed Marcus to the ground.
“Bah. Trash like you thinks he can fight me for a woman?” Ethan spat, his face dark with vicious pleasure. “I’ve wanted to stomp you to death for a long time.”
Then he drove his foot into Marcus’s head again and again, each kick heavy and ruthless.
Bang. Bang.
Marcus’s body jerked across the floor.
Only then did Ethan stop. He gave Marcus one last cold look, then turned and left with Melissa Holden and the others, as if they were stepping over a dead dog.
Blood ran down Marcus’s face and seeped into his eyes.
The world before him turned red, a thick, choking red.
His mind grew dimmer by the breath. The noise around him drifted far away, as if sinking underwater.
“Mom... Mom... I’m sorry... your son failed you...”
His fingers clawed and scraped across the ground without stopping, nails splitting, skin tearing, smearing out streaks of blood as he struggled to push himself up.
He wanted to stand.
He had to stand.
But his body would not listen anymore.
At last, darkness slammed over his eyes.
He collapsed completely and fainted on the spot.
No one saw it.
At his chest, the white jade hanging there suddenly gave off a pure white glow.