After My Marriage Was Scored Zero, I No Longer Want Him

When we got married, Duncan said his only requirement for me was that I spend all fifty million in one year, without a single cent left over.

Because I'd gone through too many poor days with him.

Living in a basement, drinking tap water.

In our poorest year, I earned the money for my abortion by doing food deliveries myself.

After Duncan made it big, he often felt he owed me.

He kept pushing me to break my bad habit of being frugal.

Until Narelle, his childhood sweetheart who worked as a marriage coach, came back from overseas.

Narelle said we weren't equal, and gave our marriage a score of zero.

She told Duncan: love can't be sustained by money.

So Duncan cut off my black card.

He canceled the honeymoon trip I'd been looking forward to for so long.

He even wiped out the prenatal checkup fees the hospital had on prepaid deposit for me.

He said he didn't want me getting used to always taking from him.

Pregnant, I had no choice but to dig out that secondhand electric scooter from five years ago and earn money on my own.

I never expected to fall off it in the rain.

The doctor said the pregnancy needed to be saved and pushed me to pay the fees, so I had no choice but to call Duncan.

He rushed over and held me, his heart aching for me.

But Narelle, standing to the side taking notes in a notebook, reminded him:

"Duncan, don't throw away your principles just because Winona's playing up how pitiful she is. Love needs to be fair. I suggest you only pay half the fee."

Hearing that, Duncan immediately let go of me and said helplessly:

"Winnie, did you hear that? Acting cute and pitiful won't work today. You'll have to cover the other half of the cost yourself."

After they left.

I saw on Narelle's social media that Duncan had just bought her a pink diamond worth tens of millions.

It was a gift that was originally meant for me.

I wiped my tears and quietly did the math.

The half Duncan paid.

Was just enough for the abortion.

......

The abortion was scheduled for tomorrow afternoon.

After confirming it, I rode that electric scooter home again.

It was only when I pushed the door open that I noticed a pair of small high heels by the entrance.

Narelle, in a bathrobe, sat lazily at the dining table.

Seeing me come back, she moved her pen, muttering as she wrote:

"Winona did no housework today and earned no money. Her economic value, labor value, and emotional value are all zero."

Duncan, carrying dishes out of the kitchen, explained in a low voice:

"To better solve our marriage problems, Nari's going to stay at our place for now."

"The things she's pointing outyou need to remember to change them."

I opened my mouth to refuse, but he cut me off.

"Enough, come eat first. Whatever it is, we'll talk after the meal."

Duncan pulled me to the table, leaving no room for argument.

I sat down in silence.

In front of Narelle were foie gras and steak.

But Duncan pushed a plate of plain shredded potato side dish in front of me and said,

"I made this especially for you."

I didn't pick up my chopsticks.

Narelle wore a look that said she'd seen it coming.

She shrugged and said:

"See? She's already used to measuring your relationship by money."

"The potato dish is cheap, so she looks down on itbut she forgets you made it with your own hands."

"I told you long ago, all that frugality she used to put on was just fear that you'd throw her away once you got rich."

"Just a gold-digger's early investment. Now she's forgotten where she came from."

Duncan's face went cold.

"Nari was right after all. You've become materialistic."

He'd forgotten that once, in that cramped basement.

We always bought two dollars' worth of potatoes and fried up a big plate of shredded potatoes.

Until one time, I went cheap and bought some that had gone moldy and bad. I ate it and threw up all night.

After that, the sight of the shredded potato dish left me faintly nauseous.

After Duncan's fortune reached the hundreds of millions.

He never let that dish appear in front of me again.

Every meal, he had the chef make eight exquisite dishes.

Japanese cuisine, Cantonese cuisine, French cuisinenever the same twice.

I found it wasteful and urged him to be more frugal.

But he ruffled my hair and said:

"The only reason I make money is to spend it on my wife. You have to break this frugal habit of yours."

But now, because of a single sentence from Narelle.

I, who wouldn't eat the shredded potatoes, had become a byword for materialism.

This Duncan felt like a stranger to me.

"Don't forget to split the cost of the food."

Narelle finished her last bite of foie gras and reminded me.

"Three thousand four hundred and five."

Duncan flipped through his phone and sent me the bill.

"How much?"

I was stunned.

"Caviar and foie gras, thirteen hundred; steak, twenty-one hundred; potatoes, five. No problem."

Narelle confirmed.

"I didn't eat a single bite of the caviar or the steak..."

"That's enough."

Duncan frowned and cut in, his voice impatient.

"Why do you have to figure everything out so exactly with Nari? She's a guest."

Narelle sighed.

"Never mind. This one's on me, sweetie."

"But remember, people shouldn't be too greedydon't actually treat Duncan like a sucker."

With that, she transferred the money to Duncan.

It was refunded in a second.

Duncan smiled helplessly.

"Come on, Nari, if I took this little bit of money from you, what would that make me?"

Narelle didn't press it, and reminded me again:

"Oh, and one more thingsince Duncan cooked, you're responsible for washing the dishes."

I looked at my hands.

I'd fallen hard this morning.

Both palms had bled a lot and were wrapped in bandages.

But there was no pity in Duncan's eyes. He just said flatly,

"It's not that serious. Stop playing pitiful."

"Go wash them. That's only fair."

I couldn't help finding it funny.

Fair?

Those years Duncan spent building his company.

I ached for him, and never once let him touch a chore.

And I never spent a cent of his money.

I gave him everything I had.

And this was what I got in return.

The dishes and chopsticks stayed in the kitchen.

I didn't touch them. I turned and went back to my room.

The next morning, I decided to tell Duncan for real.

I was giving up this baby and divorcing him.

"Duncan, I want to talk to you about the baby."

Instead, Duncan crossed his arms and let out a cold laugh.

"Nari was right. The second I cut off your black card, you'd use the baby to threaten me."

Narelle shook her head and sighed.

"Because she knows that apart from her ability to give birth, she has nothing to offer you."

"Before you use the baby as a threat, think it through carefully."

"Plenty of women would love to give Duncan a child. If you won't, there's no shortage of others who will."

I looked at Duncan's cold, distant expression.

I demanded,

"Duncan, is that what you think too? Have you forgotten how much I went through for this baby?"

Five years ago, the cheap abortion pills I bought online damaged my body.

During my recovery I was out delivering food in the rain every day, and it left me barely able to conceive.

For this baby.

I went through boxes and boxes of ovulation injections.

The day the test came back positive, Duncan held me and cried like a child.

In the middle of the night he'd pull out the ultrasound and stare at it over and over.

His eyes flickered, like he wanted to say something.

But Narelle cut in, her face full of disapproval.

"It's because you're in poor health. You shouldn't blame Duncan for the suffering you went through."

"Since we're on the subject, let's settle it properly."

"Duncan, I'll send her the payment request for you."

I checked my phone. The pending charges were listed one by one:

over a hundred ovulation injections, over sixty doses of herbal medicine to regulate my body, every exam after I got pregnant.

Everything I had once done for this baby.

Reduced to a cold bill of twenty-seven thousand.

I stared at him blankly, my heart full of disappointment.

"Duncan, you forgot, you cut off my card. I don't have that kind of money right now."

Narelle just scoffed.

"No money? Don't act. You've been married to Duncan this long, you must have skimmed off plenty. Who's going to believe you don't have a secret stash?"

Duncan pinched the bridge of his nose.

"Nari's right. All you can think about now is money. You'll say anything."

"I've given you so much, and now you won't even split a bill of twenty thousand."

I was about to argue back.

My phone rang.

It was my mom.

"Winnie, Mom fainted last week. The doctor says I need heart surgery..."

I accidentally hit speakerphone.

Duncan froze for a moment, looking a little tense.

"Mom's sick?"

But Narelle suddenly burst out laughing, gasping for air.

"Oh my, Duncan, how can you be so easy to fool?"

"You cut off her card, so of course she has to find a new angle."

"A sick mom is a gold-digger staple. Next step, she asks you to lend her money!"

The next second.

Mom said, timidly,

"It costs eighty thousand. Mom's managed to scrape together fifty thousand. Could you lend Mom thirty thousand...?"

Duncan's face darkened at once.

"Winona, if you're using Mom to trick me, I won't give you a single cent."

But thirty thousand wasn't even enough for him to open a bottle of wine.

Mom, on the other end, seemed to hear, and said in a flustered voice,

"Winnie, what's wrong? It's fine. Mom doesn't have to have the surgery. You two are just starting out, you have so many things to spend money on."

"Whatever you do, don't fight with Duncan over me, okay?"

Because she knew how poor Duncan and I used to be.

For the first three months of our marriage, every time I tried to spend money on my parents,

they flat-out refused.

They didn't grasp that Duncan was already worth hundreds of millions.

They just didn't want to be a burden to us.

This was the first time Mom had ever asked for money.

A sharp pain shot through my chest, and I said quickly,

"Mom! What are you talking about! You can't cut corners on the surgery!"

"I'll transfer you the rest."

After I hung up.

I finally couldn't hold it in, and my voice broke into sobs.

"Duncan, when you were at your lowest, my mom lent you money, knitted you sweaters, loved you like her own son. How could you say something like that?"

Seeing me like this.

Duncan reached out and wiped my tears, softening his tone.

"All right, Winnie, stop crying. You're pregnant."

"It's just a few tens of thousands. As long as you don't lie to me and keep being my good wife, I'll give you an allowance."

But Narelle shook her head to stop him.

She held up her notebook and read out what she'd written.

"Winona is exploiting your sympathy, getting her way through deception."

"Uses tears and emotional blackmail at the slightest excuse. Credibility score: zero."

"My advice is not to feed this habit. Deception should be punished."

Duncan looked at the notebook, densely covered in zeros.

His eyes gradually went cold again.

"Winona, when did you get so scheming?"

All at once I lost every desire to explain.

I nodded wearily.

I took a taxi to the hospital alone, and had the abortion.

When I got home, there was a dull ache in my lower abdomen.

But then I thought of how my mother urgently needed the money for her surgery.

I bore the pain and dug all the jewelry and luxury goods out of my closet.

I took them to the largest secondhand luxury store.

Luckily, before Narelle came back to the country, Duncan had still been very generous to me.

It should be enough to cover the surgery.

But after the clerk looked them over, she rolled her eyes and laughed in an exaggerated way.

"Don't waste our time. All of these are fake."

"And the cheapest kind of obvious fake, at thatthey don't even count as decent replicas."

My mind roared blank.

How could that be?

The other clerks were whispering among themselves too.

The way they looked at me was full of scorn.

"So you really are here."

A voice came from the doorway. I turned around.

The ones who had followed me were none other than Narelle and Duncan.

Duncan's eyes were full of disappointment and confusion.

"Every gift has a special meaning, and now you want to sell them all."

"If it weren't for Nari, I never would have imagined you could do something like this."

A mocking glint flashed in Narelle's eyes.

"I told you, she doesn't care at all about the gifts you give hershe only cares about money."

"If I hadn't swapped them out ahead of time, the presents you picked out so carefully would have been sold off."

"Now you've lost the bet."

"So, as we agreed, all of these gifts of the boss's wife's belong to me now. At least I won't take them off to a secondhand shop."

She had my luxury handbag on her shoulder, and the necklace around her neck was once a gift of mine too.

I could let all of that go.

But when I saw the bracelet on her wrist, my eyes went red.

"Narelle, give me back my bracelet."

That one wasn't bought by Duncan.

It was left to me by my late grandmothermy premarital property.

Even in the hardest times, I never once thought about selling it.

"Yours? What single thing on you doesn't belong to Duncan?"

She slid the bracelet off slowly, deliberately.

And waved it back and forth, the way you'd tease a dog.

"Take off all the clothes Duncan bought you and give them back to him, and I'll give you this junk bracelet."

Under everyone's watching eyes,

my whole body went rigid.

Duncan said flatly,

"Enough. Your sister-in-law's just teasing."

But he didn't deny it, and he didn't speak up for me either.

I looked at Duncan in disbelief.

He knew perfectly well where that bracelet came from.

The chatter around us grew louder, and a lot of people raised their phones.

Every last bit of my patience was gone.

I lunged and grabbed Narelle's wrist,

trying to snatch back the bracelet.

But Duncan stepped in front of her first and shoved me away hard.

I fell to the ground.

The glass counter toppled over and came down on top of me.

In an instant, the dull ache in my lower abdomen grew sharp and severe, and blood ran down my forehead.

Duncan panicked for a moment and reached out to pull me up.

"Winnie, are you okay? Is the baby all right?"

Only now did he remember the baby.

But he didn't know that the baby had already left us long ago.

I coldly pushed him away and finally said it.

"Let's get a divorce."

Duncan's face changed, his gaze going heavy.

"Are you threatening me with a divorce?"

"Nari, you were right again."

Narelle patted him, her face full of certainty.

"Don't worry. She says divorce, but it's just retreating to advance. She'll never bring herself to let go of youher cash cow."

"For now you need to leave her be for a while, let her calm down."

"Come on, let's go back and get our luggage and start our Maldives trip."

The honeymoon that had been canceled on me was to the Maldives.

After they left,

I limped home.

I had a lawyer help me draw up a divorce agreement.

I didn't want anything extra.

But the share that belonged to methat I was going to take, no matter what.

The day of my mother's surgery was closing in fast.

I gritted my teeth and took a job as a server at a high-end club.

Finally, I scraped together thirty thousand.

I had just gotten to the hospital when my phone started buzzing like mad.

It turned out Narelle had posted a video of me working at the club online.

"Let's talk about just how shameless a taker in a marriage can be."

"Already married to a billionaire CEO, and still not satisfied."

"The moment he cut off her card, she lied that her mother was sick to get money."

"And she seizes the chance to go to a high-end club to hook her next sucker."

"Contact us to book a consultation. Nari will teach you how to avoid being taken advantage of and stay away from trashy women."

That wasn't all.

That secondhand luxury store posted a video too.

"This woman came to my store to resell secondhand goods, and her husband caught her in the act."

"She wrecked our display counter, fifty thousand in damages, and she still hasn't paid."

The comments were all lining up to judge me.

Saying I was a gold-digger who'd married up, mocking my ugly face, telling me to pay back my debt.

I stood outside my mother's hospital room, hands and feet ice cold.

"Duncan, we came up from nothing together. Why won't you help me fight back?"

Duncan spoke calmly.

"They're just comments online. They don't matter that much."

"You threatened me with divorce, then made a scene about going off to work at a club. Shouldn't I teach you a lesson?"

"Don't worry, as long as you behave, I won't throw you out."

"Be a good girl and write a ten-thousand-word apology and post it. Once you're home, I'll transfer you a hundred thousand in spending money."

The call cut off.

A sharp snap came from inside the ward.

My heart lurched hard.

"Mom, what's wrong?"

I pushed the door open. Mom's phone was on the floor.

On the screen was the video attacking me online.

My face was clear as day in it.

"Winnie, why are they all cursing at you?"

Mom said, crying.

"Where's Duncan? He's been so good to youwhy isn't he helping you?"

"Just a few days ago he even mailed me cordyceps to build up my health."

"No, I'm going to call and ask him."

I tried to stop her, but I was too late.

The call connected, and Narelle's mocking voice came through.

"Coming to beg for money? Wasn't it a heart condition? How are you not dead yet?"

"Married barely three months, and you two, mother and daughter, can't wait to show your true colors and start sucking him dry?"

"Who are you? Why are you with my son-in-law!"

My mother's voice was shaking:

"How dare you say such things about my Winnie!"

Narelle gave a cold snort.

"Who am I? With your son-in-law at this hourtake a guess?"

"Ma'am, I suggest you teach your daughter how to be a proper wife."

"Instead of a shameless bitch who only cares about money!"

I quickly hung up the phone.

"Mom, don't listen to her!"

But the next second, my mother's chest heaved violently.

The monitor let out a piercing alarm.

Her grip on my hand went slack.

She was rushed into the emergency room.

I don't know how much time passed.

The doctor came out and shook his head.

"Too much emotional swing in too short a time."

I sank to my knees, all my strength gone, tears streaming down my face.

Seven days later, my mother's funeral ended.

I saw that Narelle had started a livestream while the story was still hot.

The Maldives sand was pure white, the water crystal clear.

She asked with a smile:

"Mr. Henson, how many points would you give this marriage management service?"

Duncan stood at her side.

He answered with a tender expression.

"Full marks. You made me see the true nature of marriage, and understand my wife far more clearly."

"Under your guidance, she's learned to behave. She hasn't thrown a tantrum in a whole week."

"She even transferred back every cent of the spending money I'd sent her."

Numb, I exited the livestream.

I posted on social media.

I put out all the little moments Duncan and I once shared in the basement.

Along with my mother's death certificate and the recording of my call with Narelle.

Then I picked up my suitcase.

And flew to Crestwood, two thousand kilometers away.

The livestream was still going.

A comment asked:

"But wouldn't his wife be disappointed by this and file for divorce?"

Duncan froze for a moment, but Narelle didn't hesitate at all:

"Impossible. She'll even hand-write a ten-thousand-word apology letter this week and post it publicly. Don't believe me? Stick around and watch!"

"She used her own mother's illness to deceive people. She has to apologize."

Suddenly, someone in the livestream said:

"Mr. Henson's wife just posted on social mediago look, quick!"