Episode 1

Chapter 1: Eleven Years of Betrayal

Albert's phone lit up just as Liana was closing the last lunch box.

The kitchen of the Phua family home in BSD City had gone quiet. The clock was creeping toward midnight, but the scent of ginger chicken and garlic still hung in the air. On the dining table, three packed meals sat in a neat row. One for Albert. One for Jason, who sometimes came home without warning. The last she had prepared out of sheer habit, as though there were still a family waiting for her touch.

Liana was about to wash her hands when the phone screen at the edge of the table flared again.

Albert never left his phone unattended. He took it with him even into the bathroom. Tonight, exhaustion must have won. He had come home from campus, complained of a headache, and fallen asleep with his breathing heavy and labored.

Liana had no intention of looking.

She only wanted to turn the screen off to save the battery.

But one line in the notification stopped her fingertips mid-air.

Honey, Jayden asked when Dad is sleeping over again.

Her body went cold.

The small pot she was still holding nearly slipped from her grip. She set it down gently in the sink, but metal against ceramic still rang too loud in the silent kitchen.

Honey.

Dad.

Jayden.

Those three words could not exist on their own. Not on her husband's phone. Not after thirty years of a marriage she had tended like old cloth, patching it over and over so the tears would never show.

Liana stared at the master bedroom door. No sound from inside. Only the hum of the air conditioner and the ticking of the wall clock.

Her hands trembled as she picked up the phone.

She knew Albert's passcode. Not because she made a habit of checking -- Albert often asked her to reply to messages from junior lecturers or look up student numbers while he was driving. That night, the screen demanded a fingerprint.

Liana stood motionless for several seconds, holding her breath. Then she carried the phone into the bedroom.

Albert lay on his side, one hand draped limply over the blanket. His face was calm -- too calm for a man who had been harboring a storm inside his own house.

Liana lifted his thumb, slowly.

Click.

The screen unlocked.

Her heart hammered so hard she was afraid Albert would wake from the sound alone.

The contact name in WhatsApp was not Yuni Yap. Not any woman's name. Albert had saved it as Campus Documents.

But the profile photo showed a young woman with shoulder-length hair, smiling in front of an apartment mirror. Behind her stood a boy in an elementary school uniform.

Liana opened the conversation.

She did not need to scroll far to understand everything.

There were dinner photos. Flirtatious messages Albert had answered with words he had not spoken to his wife in years. Monthly transfers. School fee receipts. A photo of a birthday cake with a candle shaped like the number ten.

Jayden turns ten today. You have to come, Albert.

Eleven years, Liana thought.

Her fingers moved on their own, scrolling upward, far past months and years. The photos changed, the dates shifted, but the lies never broke. One message after another surfaced like needles driven slowly into her skin.

I miss you.

When can you stay with me?

Liana doesn't suspect anything, does she?

Albert had replied: She's too busy with the house. She'll never find out.

The room tilted.

Liana leaned against the wardrobe, the phone still in her hand. Her throat had gone dry. All this time, she had blamed age for the way Albert had changed. She had told herself his coldness was the toll of work, academic ambition, the grind of running a university department.

The truth was simpler. She was just the woman left at home to keep up appearances.

Thirty years she had risen before everyone else. Thirty years she had cooked meals, washed clothes, managed Kim Hwa's medications, deferred her own wants, swallowed every barb from the Phua family -- all because she believed a marriage was something you fought to preserve.

The first five years, she had learned to be a good wife.

The next ten, she had learned to be a daughter-in-law who never complained.

The last twenty, she had learned to live with a hole in her chest after Dede vanished -- her own son, the child she still searched for in her prayers.

And for eleven of all those years, Albert had kept another home. Another woman. Another child.

Liana opened the conversation's photo gallery. Albert embracing Jayden in front of a small Christmas tree. Yuni leaning her head against Albert's shoulder inside an apartment. A short video of a boy blowing out candles, shouting, "Dad, look over here!"

Liana covered her mouth.

Tears rose, but she refused to let them fall. Not now. Not in front of the sleeping face of the man who had betrayed her for this long.

She took her own phone from the nightstand and photographed the screen, one capture at a time. Conversations. Account numbers. Transfer receipts. Photos. The name of the apartment that appeared again and again in shared locations.

Golden Crown Apartments.

The amounts transferred were not small. They were larger than the monthly household budget Albert had always scrutinized in that cold voice of his.

Liana remembered how, just last week, Albert had reprimanded her for buying extra vitamins for his mother.

"Don't be wasteful. Money doesn't grow on trees."

She had said nothing. She had even felt guilty.

Now that guilt transformed into something hot and sharp.

"What are you doing?"

Albert's voice made Liana turn.

He was already awake. His eyes narrowed, then went wide when he saw the phone in her hand.

For the first time in years, Liana saw fear on her husband's face.

Only for a moment.

Then his expression hardened.

"Give me back my phone."

Liana did not move. "Eleven years?"

Albert swung his legs off the bed. "I said, give it back."

"Eleven years, Albert?" Liana's voice was quiet, but every word left her mouth with precision. "That boy is ten years old. Which means you were with her while I was still up every night taking care of your mother."

Albert's jaw clenched. "You went through my phone?"

Liana almost laughed. Not because anything was funny, but because the question was beneath contempt.

"That's what worries you?"

"You have no right to touch my personal property."

"And you had the right to keep another family?"

Albert scrubbed a hand down his face. He paced beside the bed like a lecturer who had lost his notes in front of the class. "You don't understand the situation."

"Then explain."

Albert stopped. "Yuni doesn't make demands."

The name was finally out in the open.

Yuni.

The woman in the photo had a name. The woman who had been receiving his money, his time, his attention, his body.

"She doesn't make demands?" Liana held his gaze. "What have I ever demanded, Albert? Did I ask for a mansion? Did I ask for a new car? I dropped out of college because your mother said family came first."

"Don't bring my mother into this."

"Why not? You're allowed to bring another woman into our lives, but I can't mention your mother -- the woman I took care of for ten years?"

Albert pointed at her face. "Lower your voice."

"There's no one left for you to fool tonight."

"Liana!"

That bark used to be enough to silence her. She would have bowed her head, apologized without knowing what she had done wrong. She used to be afraid this house would crack if she answered too loudly.

Tonight, the cracks ran all the way down to the bone.

Liana set Albert's phone on the vanity table. She untied the apron still hanging from her body, folded it once, and placed it on the chair. The movements were deliberate, almost too composed, but inside her chest something had already severed.

"I want a divorce."

Albert froze.

For several seconds he only stared at her, as if the woman in front of him had turned into a stranger.

Then he let out a short laugh. "Divorce?"

"Yes."

"You're speaking out of emotion."

"I'm speaking because I've finally woken up."

Albert stepped closer. The smell of his hair oil and the remnants of his campus cologne hit Liana's nose. That scent used to feel familiar. Now it felt like something foreign in her own home.

"Listen carefully," Albert said, his voice dropping low, laced with pressure. "At fifty, what exactly do you think you'll become after a divorce?"

Liana met his eyes without blinking.

"You don't have a job. You don't have an income. You've spent thirty years doing nothing but keeping house. You think the world out there is waiting for a woman like you?"

Every sentence was chosen to strike the softest place inside her.

She could feel the wedding ring on her finger. The metal suddenly felt tight, pressing into skin that had carried the weight for far too long.

"I'd rather be nobody than stay the wife of a man who lied to me for eleven years."

Albert's eyes flashed with anger. "Watch your mouth."

"You're the one who should have watched your marriage."

"I'm a man, Liana. There are things that aren't as simple as you think."

"Betrayal is perfectly simple. You made a choice."

Albert's face went red. He reached for his phone on the vanity table, but Liana had already copied enough evidence. He must have realized it, because his hand stopped in midair.

"What did you send to your phone?"

Liana said nothing.

"Answer me!"

"Enough to remind myself not to forgive you just because I'm afraid of going hungry."

Albert glared at her, then let out a bitter laugh. "You think that evidence will help you win? This house is in my name. The savings are in my name. The car is in my name. Everything you've used all these years came from my money."

Liana felt her thumbnail dig into her palm. That small pain kept her head clear.

"You also used thirty years of my life, Albert."

"Don't be dramatic."

"I'm not being dramatic. I'm collecting what's owed."

Albert closed the distance by one more step. This time, his voice turned glacial.

"If you dare take this outside, I'll make sure everyone knows you're a failed wife. Couldn't keep her husband. Couldn't even keep her own child -- Dede disappeared on your watch. And then where will you go? Jessy's house? How long do you think she can put up with an old woman without a cent to her name?"

The mention of Dede hit Liana's chest like a fist.

For twenty years, that loss had been a wound that never fully dried. And tonight, Albert wielded it like a blade.

Liana held her breath. She did not cry. Precisely because she wanted to cry, she forced her spine to stay straight.

"Don't say Dede's name with the same mouth you use to call that woman's child sweetheart."

Albert fell silent.

For a moment, the bedroom held nothing but the drone of the air conditioner and the weight of their breathing.

Liana pulled the wedding ring from her finger. The skin beneath it was paler, like a part of the body that had gone too long without air.

She placed the ring on the vanity table, right beside Albert's phone.

"Starting tonight, I am done serving you."

Albert looked at the ring, then at her. There was no trace of loss on his face. Only the fury of a man who had just realized something he had always considered his property was beginning to move on its own.

"You'll regret this."

"Maybe." Liana picked up her own phone and gripped it tight. "But I'd regret it more if I stayed."

Albert's lips curved into a thin, cruel smile, heavy with certainty.

"You go ahead and file for divorce. I'll make sure you don't get a single cent. Remember, Liana. Everything in this house is in my name."

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