In the days that followed, Chloe completely shut herself away in her dust-filled studio in SoHo.

She swapped her SIM card for an anonymous prepaid one. She survived on cheap takeout, spending most of her time with almost masochistic focus researching divorce proceedings on public library computers.


She had to rely on herself.

This thought anchored her, providing the only foothold in the stormy sea of her emotions.

She didn't think about Julian again. Or rather, she forced herself not to.


Until this afternoon, when someone pounded frantically on her studio door. Bang, bang, bang. The sound was urgent and filled with ominous portent.

Chloe froze, thinking it was the landlord coming for the overdue rent.


But the knocking grew louder, accompanied by an elderly yet familiar voice: "Miss! Miss Chloe! Are you in there? Something terrible has happened!"

It was Martha, her family's old housekeeper.

Chloe's heart sank. She scrambled to her feet and yanked open the heavy iron door.

Martha stood outside, face streaked with tears, looking distraught. "Miss… your father… he's been taken to the hospital!"

In the taxi to the hospital, an emotionally devastated Martha brokenly explained what had happened.

That morning, Mr. Carter had gone to Leo's off-campus apartment for a document. Wanting to surprise his son, he'd used his spare key. Then, he walked in on them—Daniel and Leo, the two "sons" he trusted most, engaged in unspeakable acts on the living room sofa.

The enormous shock caused Mr. Carter, who was over sixty, to collapse on the spot, clutching his chest.

It was Daniel who called the ambulance.

Chloe sat in the taxi, listening to Martha's tearful account, feeling her blood turning cold inch by inch. She didn't cry. The extreme pain and anger had left her unable to shed any tears.

She only felt that fate was the most brilliant, yet cruelest playwright.

When she rushed to the VIP floor of the hospital, the red light above the operating room was still on.

Her father's killers were playing the role of "family members," waiting outside.

Leo huddled in the corner, crying like a child. Daniel stood neatly dressed with a solemn expression, talking with the attending physician, looking calm and in control, as if he were the family's only pillar.

Seeing Chloe, Daniel immediately blocked her way.

"Chloe, you're emotionally unstable right now," he said in a seemingly caring but actually threatening tone, lowering his voice. "The doctor says Dad can't take any more stress. Leo and I can handle things here—you should go home and rest."

"Get lost," Chloe hissed through clenched teeth. Her gaze was an ice-cold knife, wishing she could slash this hypocritical man into a thousand pieces.

"You see, this is exactly how you are." Daniel shook his head in distress, deliberately raising his voice for the surrounding nurses to hear. "Doctor! Doctor! Please come over! The patient's daughter is extremely agitated—I'm worried she might interfere with his emergency treatment!"

He even called security guards and, under the legitimate pretext of "preventing the patient from being disturbed," had Chloe blocked at the end of the corridor outside the operating room.

Chloe was held by two tall security guards, one on each side. She looked at Daniel's hypocritical face twisting right into wrong, at her younger brother cowering in the corner like a turtle hiding its head, at the glaring red light above the operating room…

For the first time, she experienced true desperation—nowhere to turn, no one to help.

She was completely, utterly shut out from her own battle.

At the corridor's end, pushed away by security and excluded by Daniel's hypocrisy, Chloe finally broke down completely.

In the depths of her despair, she remembered the new phone Julian had left, which she'd tossed into the corner of her studio.

No. It's not possible. It can't be him. I can't beg him again.

If I beg him, I'm stepping back into his calculated game.

No… absolutely not…

But in that operating room was her only family left in this world.

Pride and reality waged a final, brutal tug-of-war in her heart.

In the end, her love for her father overwhelmed everything else.

Using all her strength, she broke free from the security guard's grip and, like a madwoman, rushed out of the hospital, jumped into a taxi, and frantically raced back to her studio.

She rushed to the corner and, from beneath a pile of discarded sketches and paint tubes, dug out the black phone box she'd stuffed there in disgust.

Her hands, shaking from humiliation, failed several times to open the damn package.

When she finally inserted the SIM card and pressed the power button, the phone screen lit up. On the screen was only a single, lonely contact named "J".

Chloe closed her eyes and took a deep breath, as if trying to inhale all the coldness and humiliation in the world.

Then, she pressed the call button.

The phone rang only once before being answered.

She couldn't speak, not even daring to let him hear her voice. She bit down hard on the back of her hand, only able to make suppressed, broken breathing sounds mixed with sobs.

On the other end of the line, silence fell.

That silence felt as long as a century.

Just as Chloe thought he would hang up with a "don't waste my time" like he did ten years ago—

Julian's deep voice, devoid of any discernible emotion, came through with absolute clarity.

Like God's judgment and the devil's whisper.

Just one word.

"Address."