Chapter 6

Daisy POV

The plane touched down at San Francisco International Airport.

During the entire flight, I hadn't slept a wink. My tears had dried, fallen, and dried again.

Chloe pulled me into a soft hug. "Hang in there, Daisy. Tianchen has everything lined up. You can finalize your onboarding this afternoon."

I took a deep breath, determined to bury the bleeding hole in my chest under mountains of work.

Yet, when Chloe and I arrived at the North American tech headquarters, the receptionist gave me a bizarre, guarded look.

"Ms. Daisy Vance, please wait here."

A senior director, Robert, strode over with a grim look on his face, holding a smartphone out toward me.

Ethan was sitting on a plush couch, looking haggard, his eyes rimmed with red. He was livestreaming on TikTok.

"My wife has been suffering from severe postpartum depression. She's been emotionally volatile ever since the pregnancy. I did everything in my power to care for her and guide her, but after our sweet baby passed away, she completely snapped."

He lowered his head, pressing his thumb into the corner of his eye to wipe away a tear.

"She set fire to our home and vanished. But I don't blame her. I know her heart hurts even more than mine. I just want to say one thing to her: Daisy, please come home. I’ll keep waiting for you. No matter what happened, I will never give up on you."

The comment section was flying at lightning speed:

[Ethan is such an incredible, devoted husband. Where do you even find a man like this?!]

[Daisy is a literal psycho! She killed her own baby and then burned down the house?!]

[My heart breaks for him. Imagine being married to a lunatic.]

[Call the cops and get her committed to a psych ward before she hurts someone else!]

My fists clenched so tightly my skin went white. "Robert, every single word he's saying is a lie."

Robert looked at me with cold indifference. "We're gearing up for a massive product launch. Everything we do is under heavy media scrutiny. I'm sorry, Daisy, but with your current public image, you're a liability."

"He is defaming me! I am completely sane!"

"The public doesn't care about the truth, only the optics. Settle your domestic drama first, then we can talk about your employment..."

"Robert."

A calm, deep voice cut through the air, freezing Robert instantly in his tracks.

I turned around.

Tianchen was walking toward us, wearing a charcoal-gray dress shirt with the sleeves rolled casually up to his forearms.

His dark eyes were sharp as a straight razor.

Robert’s arrogant tone vanished, replaced by an eager, groveling posture. "Mr. Vance, I was just thinking about the company's PR..."

Tianchen’s face was stone-cold. "Daisy is the lead architect I personally recruited. Nobody else in this building has the clearance or the skill to run the North American rollout. If you think you're qualified, by all means, step up."

Robert swallowed hard, shrinking back into the corner without another word.

I didn't waste time on pleasantries. Looking at Tianchen, I said, "I need a private room with high-speed uplink. Right now."

Tianchen didn't ask a single question. "The executive boardroom on the nineteenth floor is open. If anyone dares step foot inside, tell them to take it up with me."

Chloe grabbed my hand, and we sprinted for the elevator.

The moment the boardroom doors clicked shut, I flipped open my laptop, my fingers dancing across the mechanical keys with lethal speed.

Within three minutes, I breached the backend of Ethan’s livestream. He was still playing the martyr.

"I know a lot of people are angry at my wife," Ethan sniffled, dabbing his eyes. "Please, don't attack her. She's a victim of mental illness..."

With a dark expression, I hit Enter, forcibly hijacking his broadcast and overriding his feed with a two-way split-screen.

The chat froze for a fraction of a second, then detonated.

[WHAT THE HELL??? IS THAT DAISY???]

[Wait, she’s in California?!]

[What is going on right now?!]

Ethan’s face went dead white. Before he could utter a sound, my voice cut through the stream, clear and chilling.

"Ethan. Weren't you begging for me to come back? I'm right here."

"Why don't you tell everyone watching what you actually did?"

His Adam’s apple bobbed nervously. "Daisy... don't be reckless..."

I cut him off without mercy. "You put a hidden camera in our master bedroom to film me breastfeeding and changing clothes, and then you uploaded those videos onto a paid forum for thousands of sick men to watch."

The chat erupted into pure pandemonium.

[WHAT THE FUCK?!?!]

[A hidden camera?! A paywalled forum?!]

"The username was 'WifeWatcher,'" I continued coldly. "You deleted the posts, but you still collect a monthly payout from the site administrators. Do you want me to project your bank statements on the screen right now?"

Ethan looked like he was about to vomit.

He parted his lips to stammer out a defense, but my words hit like rapid-fire artillery.

"And what about the apartment downtown? You've been living there with your mistress for nearly six months. The night our daughter was dying of acute liver failure, while I was running through the pouring rain trying to beg a cab to stop, where were you? You abandoned your dying child to comfort your mistress because a rat scared her."

The narrative completely flipped on its head.

The comments that had been tearing me apart turned their fury straight at Ethan.

[Are you out of your fucking mind, Ethan?!]

[Your daughter was dying and you went to your mistress?!]

[Spycamming his own wife?! That's a federal crime!]

Ethan bolted out of his chair, roaring, "Daisy, stop spreading these disgusting lies!"

I tilted my head, the corner of my lips curving into a razor-thin smile.

I engaged screen-share. Bank transfers, GPS travel histories, forum server logs, and the original camera metadata were displayed in pristine, unassailable order for hundreds of thousands of viewers.

Ethan stood frozen on camera, his expression warping from pure rage to raw terror.

The viewer count spiked from twenty thousand to a hundred thousand, then half a million.

Breaking headlines surged onto social media feeds within seconds:

#ProfessorEthanExposed

#HusbandSpiesOnWife

Ethan let out an animalistic roar and ripped the power cord straight from the wall, killing his feed.

Slowly, I released my grip on the mouse, only then realizing how hard my hands were shaking.

As a tear rolled silently down my cheek, my daughter's face filled my thoughts.

How I wished I could hold her just one more time. But I wasn't finished.

This was only the beginning.