At 8:47 the next morning, I arrived at the Civil Affairs Bureau.

Jiang Hao Ming wasn’t there.

I wasn’t surprised.

At 8:58, my phone rang.

“Hao Ming.”

“Ngu Yen, don’t go inside.”

His voice sounded exhausted.

“We need to talk.”

“We talked last night.”

“No. You accused me and walked away.”

“Then you have eleven minutes to explain a twelve-week pregnancy.”

Silence.

Finally he whispered:

“Vu Vi and I made a mistake.”

I laughed.

Twelve weeks had suddenly become a mistake.

“Where are you?”

“Outside.”

I turned.

Jiang Hao Ming stood across the street.

And beside him was Lam Vu Vi.

She wore the same fragile expression she’d brought into my office.

But something had changed.

There was no triumph left.

Only panic.

Hao Ming crossed the road.

“Ngu Yen, I will sign.”

“Good.”

“But I need three days.”

“No.”

“Just three days.”

“The waiting period already gave you thirty.”

His face tightened.

Then Vu Vi stepped forward.

“Lawyer To, please.”

I looked at her.

She lowered her voice.

“The baby may have a problem.”

For a moment, I said nothing.

Whatever she’d done, the unborn child had nothing to do with our conflict.

But Hao Ming immediately reached for her shoulder.

That instinctive gesture told me everything I still needed to know.

“Go with her to the hospital,” I said.

He looked at me hopefully.

“Then you understand?”

“Perfectly.”

I handed him a pen.

“Sign first.”

His face froze.

“Ngu Yen.”

“You can become the most attentive father in An City after our divorce is finalized.”

He stared at me for several seconds.

Then he signed.

At 9:36, five years of marriage officially ended.

I expected sadness.

Instead, when the clerk handed me the certificate, I felt lighter.

Outside, Hao Ming followed me.

“Ngu Yen.”

I stopped.

“What?”

He looked at the certificate in my hand.

“Are you really not going to ask for anything?”

“What should I ask for?”

“The apartment. Savings. Compensation.”

“The apartment is mine.”

His face stiffened.

“The savings?”

“We kept separate accounts.”

“And compensation?”

I smiled.

“You’ve overestimated your market value.”

I walked away.

For the next week, I heard nothing from him.

Then my assistant entered my office holding a folder.

“Lawyer To, there’s something strange.”

“What?”

“Mr. Jiang requested copies of several documents from your firm’s corporate registration archive.”

I looked up.

“Which documents?”

“The original partnership agreement.”

That got my attention.

My law firm had been founded two years before my marriage.

I owned sixty percent.

The remaining forty percent belonged to two senior partners.

Hao Ming had no connection to it.

“Did we give him anything?”

“Of course not.”

“Then why was he asking?”

My assistant hesitated.

“He claimed he was one of the firm’s early investors.”

I almost laughed.

“He invested nothing.”

“I know.”

She placed another document before me.

“But he has this.”

It was a photocopy of a capital contribution agreement dated six years earlier.

Investor:

Jiang Hao Ming.

Amount:

Five million yuan.

My signature appeared underneath.

I stared at it.

“That isn’t my signature.”

“I thought so.”

“Where did you get this?”

“Someone anonymously sent it to Accounting.”

My first instinct was obvious.

Hao Ming.

But something bothered me.

If he intended to use a forged agreement, why send us a copy first?

It was almost like someone wanted me to discover it.

I called him.

He answered immediately.

“Ngu Yen?”

“Did you send a capital contribution agreement to my firm?”

“What agreement?”

“Don’t act.”

“I’m not.”

His confusion sounded genuine.

Then he said:

“Wait. Five million?”

I became silent.

“How do you know the amount?”

Now he was silent.

“Hao Ming.”

He exhaled.

“Because Vu Vi showed me the same document.”

My fingers tightened around the phone.

“When?”

“The night before we finalized the divorce.”

“Why?”

“She said you had secretly transferred part of the firm’s ownership into my name years ago.”

“That makes no sense.”

“I know that now.”

Now.

That word mattered.

“What did she want?”

Hao Ming didn’t answer.

I stood.

“What did Lam Vu Vi want you to do?”

Finally he said:

“She wanted me to delay the divorce.”

A chill traveled down my spine.

“Why?”

“She said if we remained married for another month, she could prove the firm was partly marital property.”

I almost smiled.

“That isn’t how marital property works.”

“I know.”

“No, you didn’t. Otherwise you wouldn’t have asked me for three days.”

Silence.

Then Hao Ming said something unexpected.

“Ngu Yen, Vu Vi disappeared.”

I frowned.

“What?”

“She left the apartment yesterday.”

“What does that have to do with me?”

“She took everything.”

“Then call the police.”

“I did.”

His next sentence changed the conversation.

“She also took my company laptop.”

I stopped.

Hao Ming worked as finance director for an investment company.

That laptop contained far more than emails.

“What was on it?”

“Client information. Acquisition files. Internal accounts.”

“Anything related to my firm?”

He didn’t answer.

“Hao Ming.”

“Your firm is one of our company’s external legal advisers.”

My blood cooled.

That was true.

But Hao Ming had never personally managed our account.

“At the beginning of this year,” he continued, “my company started preparing an acquisition.”

“Of what?”

“Three medical technology companies.”

I waited.

“One of those companies is represented by your law firm.”

Now I understood why he sounded frightened.

If confidential legal documents had crossed between his laptop and our systems, the consequences could be enormous.

“Come to my office,” I said.

Thirty minutes later, Hao Ming arrived.

For the first time in seven years, he looked like a stranger.

Not because we were divorced.

Because I was finally looking at him without love filling in the missing pieces.

He placed his phone on my desk.

“These are the messages Vu Vi sent before disappearing.”

Most were ordinary.

Then I reached one from two weeks earlier.

“Baby, after the divorce, will Ngu Yen still have access to your company’s acquisition information?”

Another:

“If her firm has conflicts with your company, could she lose her partnership?”

I looked up.

“You didn’t find these questions strange?”

“I thought she was jealous.”

“You thought everything was about romance.”

His face tightened.

Fair enough.

So had I.

We’d both been watching the affair while something else was happening underneath it.

Then I saw a photograph in the chat.

Vu Vi had sent Hao Ming a picture from our wedding house.

On the table behind her was a black folder.

I enlarged it.

My law firm’s logo was printed on the corner.

“That file shouldn’t be in your apartment.”

Hao Ming leaned closer.

“What is it?”

“A confidential client due-diligence package.”

His face changed.

“How did she get it?”

“I don’t know.”

Then I remembered the day Vu Vi came for her “divorce consultation.”

She had spent almost forty minutes inside my firm.

She had been escorted directly to my office.

But before entering, she’d waited alone in reception.

I called security.

“Pull footage from the day Lam Vu Vi visited me.”

Twenty minutes later, we watched the recording.

Vu Vi entered at 12:04.

At 12:07, my assistant left reception to collect coffee.

For ninety-two seconds, Vu Vi was alone.

She didn’t approach the filing room.

She didn’t touch a computer.

Instead, another person appeared.

A junior associate from my corporate department.

He handed her the black folder.

My stomach dropped.

I knew him.

Chen Kai.

I’d personally recruited him three years earlier.

Hao Ming whispered:

“You have an internal leak.”

“No.”

I replayed the footage.

Chen Kai wasn’t nervous.

He behaved as though the exchange were routine.

“This is bigger than one employee.”

That afternoon, I ordered an internal audit.

What we discovered by midnight made Hao Ming’s affair look almost insignificant.

Twenty-three confidential files had been copied during the previous six months.

Several involved mergers.

Two involved criminal investigations.

And five related to companies whose stock prices had moved dramatically days after confidential negotiations began.

Someone had been trading on information stolen from my firm.

Estimated profit:

More than eighty million yuan.

I sat inside the conference room staring at the report.

My assistant whispered:

“If regulators connect this to us…”

“I know.”

My entire firm could collapse.

Then security called.

“Lawyer To, we found something else.”

They sent me footage from our underground parking garage.

Vu Vi appeared three months earlier.

The same week her pregnancy would have begun.

She entered a black sedan.

A man waited inside.

The camera captured his face when he lowered the window.

Hao Ming, standing beside me, suddenly stopped breathing.

“You know him?”

He nodded.

“That’s Chairman Zhou.”

“Your chairman?”

“Yes.”

My stomach tightened.

The head of Hao Ming’s company.

The man controlling the acquisition.

The man who would benefit from confidential information about every target company.

Then another thought struck me.

“Why would his chairman meet your secretary secretly?”

Hao Ming looked sick.

I opened Vu Vi’s hospital photograph again.

Twelve weeks pregnant.

Then the intimate photograph she’d sent from my wedding house.

Matching pajamas.

His hand around her waist.

Everything had seemed designed to humiliate me.

Almost too perfectly.

“Hao Ming.”

He looked at me.

“When did your relationship with Vu Vi actually begin?”

“Four months ago.”

“And when did she become your secretary?”

“Seven months ago.”

“Who assigned her?”

His face slowly changed.

He already knew the answer.

“Chairman Zhou.”

My phone rang.

Unknown number.

I answered.

Nobody spoke.

Then a woman’s voice came through.

“Ngu Yen.”

Lam Vu Vi.

Hao Ming lunged toward the phone.

I raised a hand, stopping him.

“Where are you?”

She laughed softly.

“You really divorced him.”

“You seemed very invested in making sure I did.”

“I needed you angry enough to stop looking at your husband.”

I glanced at Hao Ming.

His face turned white.

“Why?”

“Because men like Hao Ming are useful when they’re guilty.”

“What did you use him for?”

Silence.

Then she said:

“Check the acquisition authorization submitted yesterday.”

My assistant immediately opened the corporate database.

A document appeared.

Hao Ming’s electronic signature authorized a transfer of 120 million yuan.

He stared at it.

“I never approved this.”

I asked Vu Vi:

“Where did the money go?”

“You’re still asking the wrong question.”

“Then give me the right one.”

Her voice became almost gentle.

“Ask why Chairman Zhou needed your divorce finalized yesterday.”

The call ended.

We searched the authorization.

Attached to it was a legal opinion supposedly issued by my firm.

My name appeared at the bottom.

My digital signature.

My professional seal.

All forged.

And then I finally understood.

The fake investment agreement.

The affair.

The pregnancy.

The stolen files.

Even Vu Vi coming into my office and provoking me.

Someone had spent months connecting Hao Ming and me to the same financial crime.

If the scheme collapsed while we were married, investigators would see a husband authorizing money and a wife supplying legal approval.

A perfect conspiracy.

But we had divorced one day earlier than they expected.

And that had broken something in their plan.

My assistant suddenly whispered:

“Lawyer To…”

“What?”

She pointed at the transaction timestamp.

The 120 million had not moved yet.

It was scheduled for release at midnight.

We still had forty-seven minutes.

Hao Ming grabbed his phone.

“I’ll call the bank.”

“No.”

He stared at me.

“Why?”

“Because if Chairman Zhou realizes we know, he’ll cancel whatever evidence is left.”

“Then what do we do?”

I looked at the forged legal opinion carrying my name.

For thirty days, Hao Ming had pretended our marriage could still be saved while secretly living with another woman.

For seven years, I’d believed his betrayal would be the worst thing he could ever bring into my life.

I was wrong.

I picked up my coat.

“We let them believe the transfer is happening.”

His eyes widened.

“And then?”

I looked at the clock.

11:14 p.m.

“Then we find out who’s waiting for the money.”

At 11:58, the bank’s fraud team froze the funds without changing the transaction’s visible status.

At midnight, someone accessed the receiving account.

Security traced the login.

Not to Chairman Zhou.

Not to Lam Vu Vi.

Not even to China.

The account had been accessed from Singapore.

And the registered beneficiary made me stare at the screen for several seconds.

Because I knew the name.

Everyone at my law firm did.

It belonged to the senior partner who had founded the firm with me.

The man who had mentored me for ten years.

The man who had congratulated me that morning on finally divorcing Hao Ming.

My phone vibrated.

A photograph from Vu Vi.

She was standing in an airport.

Beside her was Chairman Zhou.

Underneath were four words:

“Now you understand half.”

Then another message arrived.

“Want to understand the rest?”

A final photograph loaded.

I stopped breathing.

It showed my senior partner handing a folder to Hao Ming.

The timestamp was from five years earlier.

Our wedding day.

And written across the folder were the words:

CONFIDENTIAL — TO NGU YEN.

I slowly turned toward my ex-husband.

His face had lost all color.

“Hao Ming.”

He stepped backward.

I held up the photograph.

“What did he give you on our wedding day?”

For the first time that night, Hao Ming looked more frightened of me than of prison.

And that was when I realized his affair with Lam Vu Vi wasn’t the first secret he’d kept from me.

It was only the newest one.