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Chapter 5: The General’s Wrath

Liam had tried everything. He hired private investigators. He hacked hospital records. All was in vain. In the end, he had only one person left to turn to.

He called his father, General Hayes.

Hearing the news that Hazel had vanished, General Hayes immediately flew back from his deployment in the middle of the night. As soon as the imposing, terrifying older man entered the house, he exploded with the anger he had been suppressing for years.

“I was busy deployed overseas! What kind of evil things were you doing to her behind my back?!” the General’s voice boomed like thunder, shaking the walls.

Sarah, the beautiful military doctor, tried to step forward to calm the old man. “General, please, Liam didn’t do anything—”

“Shut your mouth!” General Hayes turned and pointed directly at Sarah, his hand trembling with absolute rage. “What right do you have to speak in this house? You clearly knew my son was a married man, yet you still clung to him like a parasite! Are you even worthy of wearing a military uniform?!”

Sarah burst into tears, her face flushing bright red with humiliation.

The General turned his furious, chilling gaze to his son. “If it weren’t for Hazel risking her life to donate her kidney to you, your grave would be overgrown with grass by now! She saved you! She loved you! And you drove her away!”

With a vicious swing of his arm, the General slapped Liam, the son he had once loved most, hard across the face. The harsh, cracking sound echoed like a death sentence.

“Get out,” the General snarled at Sarah. “Get out of my house right now. Never appear before me again.”

Sarah opened the door and ran out into the night, weeping. She kept looking back, but Liam didn’t turn around to comfort her. He just stood there, staring at the floor, his cheek red from the slap.

The anger made General Hayes’s heart ache. He clutched his chest and slumped into the armchair, his face pale, sweat beading on his forehead.

Liam panicked. He quickly ran to the kitchen and grabbed the packets of traditional Chinese medicine that I had left on the table.

As Liam opened the packet to brew the tea, a small, white envelope fell out. It had my neat, elegant handwriting on it.

General Hayes, This is the last time I will call you father. Thank you for all these years of love and care. My relationship with Liam has completely ended; there is no need to force it anymore. The only thing I still regret is leaving you. Please take care of your health. Don’t look for me. Don’t remember me. — Hazel

The General held the letter, his scarred hands trembling, his eyes reddening with tears. The daughter-in-law he loved had truly left their lives forever. No resentment. No hatred. Just a gentle, absolute, decisive release.

What remained was a desolate, broken family. A silent, horrified husband, and a child crying in his room because he missed his mother’s warm meals. That invisible woman had silently shouldered everything for them, but when she finally turned her back and walked away, she left no trace at all.

General Hayes tremblingly raised his hand and threw the letter forcefully at Liam’s chest.

“See for yourself,” the General wept. “See the good deed you’ve done.”

Liam bent down, his hands shaking violently as he picked up the letter. His dark eyes followed my handwriting. His long eyelashes trembled, a glint of wet moisture forming in the corners of his eyes.

He clutched the letter tightly in his hand. And then, with a heavy thud, Liam fell to his knees on the hardwood floor.

Liam was a proud, arrogant war hero. He had never bowed to anyone, much less knelt weeping before his own father. His entire life’s success was based on the iron will of a man who never submits.

But at that moment, he knelt very low, his voice choking with agonizing sobs.

“I know I was wrong,” Liam wept, begging his father. “I beg you. Please help me find her. I want to see her. I want to apologize in person. I need her to forgive me.”

From that day on, Liam mobilized every possible military connection. He called generals, intelligence officers, and federal agencies. But the result was always a vast, terrifying emptiness.

Finally, Liam humbled himself and called his former superior, a high-ranking intelligence director.

“Sir, I need to find my wife,” Liam begged over the secure line.

There was a heavy, somber silence on the other end, like a thunderclap waiting to strike.

“Liam,” the director said softly. “You couldn’t even find her security clearance level if you had a presidential warrant. Do you understand what that means?”

At that exact moment, Liam finally understood.

The woman named Hazel was now a classified phantom. She belonged to another world entirely.

Liam dropped the phone. He searched the entire house like a madman, looking for any physical trace that once belonged to me. Finally, in the dusty, forgotten storage room, he found a tattered old cardboard box.

Inside were my acceptance letter to a prestigious Ivy League university, my gold medal from the International Mathematical Olympiad, and a series of brilliant academic awards I had won before I met him.

It turned out that the quiet, “boring” girl he always considered unremarkable had once been a brilliant, shining genius. I had given up everything—my sparkling light, my future, my health—just to take care of a home for him.

And yet, he was the one who drove me into a bottomless abyss from which I would never return.

Chapter 6: The Phantom’s Reunion

Five years later.

Deep in an allied nation, a highly classified underground research base was suddenly infiltrated by armed mercenaries. The government immediately dispatched its most elite, lethal Special Forces team to assist with the emergency evacuation of the scientists.

I was standing in the chaotic laboratory, calmly burning classified data drives, wearing a crisp white lab coat.

Suddenly, the heavy steel doors were kicked open. A team of operators in full tactical gear rushed in, securing the perimeter.

The lead operator pulled off his helmet.

It was Liam.

He looked older, harder, and covered in the dust of battle. His dark eyes scanned the room rapidly. And then, his gaze pierced through the crowd and locked onto me.

He froze completely. The assault rifle in his hands dropped an inch.

“Hazel?” he whispered, his voice cracking, entirely forgetting the gunfire outside.

He rushed forward, his strong hand suddenly grabbing my arm, tightening its grip as if he were terrified I would vanish into thin air again. His eyes were red, shining with a desperate, agonizing hope.

“Hazel! My god, you’re alive!” he choked out, trying to pull me into a crushing embrace.

The heavily armed security agents standing next to me immediately stepped forward, shoving Liam back aggressively. “Stand down, Captain! Do not touch Dr. Red Falcon!”

“What are you doing?!” Liam roared at the guards, fighting them. “She is my wife!”

A desperate light flashed in Liam’s eyes, as if he had finally found his soul after five years of wandering in the dark.

But then, my words hit him like a freezing shower of ice water, permanently extinguishing that fragile hope.

I looked at him. My eyes were cold, sharp, and completely devoid of any love or recognition. After five years of rigorous intelligence training, I was no longer the shy, desperate girl who waited for him in the rain.

“Look again, Captain,” I said, my voice smooth and perfectly flat. “I don’t know you. We have never met before.”

Liam stared at my cold, confident face. He saw the sharp, unyielding intensity in my eyes that couldn’t be faked. I truly, fundamentally did not care about him anymore. He was nothing to me but a soldier doing his job.

After a long, agonizing silence, Liam finally lowered his eyes. His broad shoulders slumped, his whole body drained of its life force.

“I’m sorry, Doctor,” Liam whispered, a single tear cutting through the dirt on his face. “I mistook you for someone else. I just… I missed my wife so much.”

Before my security detail escorted me to the extraction helicopter, his gaze lingered on my every step.

In my previous life, I had always stood on the porch, watching him leave me behind. In this life, he helplessly watched me turn my back, watching me gradually disappear from his sight forever. Helpless. In pain. And completely unable to do anything to stop it.

Chapter 7: The Final Letter

I heard that afterward, Liam volunteered to participate in the most suicidal, extremely dangerous combat missions available.

During his battles, he transformed all the agonizing regret and remorse in his broken heart into a lethal strength. He fought like an invincible war god, unstoppable and fearless, trying to outrun his own memories.

But a man can only outrun ghosts for so long.

Two years later, during a highly classified raid, Liam took a fatal bullet to the chest to save his squad. Even until the very last moment he fell on the bloody battlefield, his men reported that his lips never stopped whispering my name.

He left no will for his wealthy family. He left no money for his son. He only left a single, blood-stained farewell letter addressed to me, delivered to my secure facility by the Defense Department.

To my wife, Hazel,

Are you doing well out there? I miss you so much. Seven years have passed, and the more I try to forget, the more I can’t stop thinking of you. When I eat, when I march in the dark, every breath I take reminds me of you. You once gave me a piece of your own body to save my life, and then I hurt you so deeply. I hate myself. I wish I could give my whole life back to you to make it right. I have a disease that can never be cured. Every memory of you haunts me to the point where I don’t want to wake up anymore. The day we met again in that bunker… in that moment, I thanked God for bringing you back to me. But when you looked at me with dead eyes and refused to recognize me, I finally understood. What I had broken could never be repaired. Perhaps only death is my end.

Sacrificing for the country is my destiny now. If you read this letter, perhaps I will have turned to dust. But wherever I am, I will always be by your side, protecting you. Forever your husband, Liam.

I finished reading the letter in my sterile, white laboratory.

I picked up a lighter, struck the flint, and lit the corner of the paper. I watched the bright orange flames gradually consume each desperate, apologetic word. It was like burying old, useless memories—fragments of a past that no longer held any value to my heart.

I respect him as a brave soldier who ultimately sacrificed himself for his country. But as my husband—the man who once broke my heart while I bled for him—I will never forgive him.

Later, through intelligence briefings, I learned the fate of the others.

Since the day I vanished, Liam had completely, violently cut off all contact with Dr. Sarah. Sarah had originally intended to use my son to continue clinging to the family wealth, but Liam was so heartbroken and enraged that he banished her completely.

A year later, Sarah was expelled from the military for a serious medical malpractice offense. With a dishonorable discharge ruining her record, she was refused employment by every hospital she applied to. Desperate and broke, she married a wealthy man who turned out to be a violent, abusive addict. She suffered beatings every day, her life a miserable nightmare.

My son, Leo, grew up in boarding schools. As he got older, he finally understood what he had lost. He occasionally mentioned his mother to his teachers, his words always filled with bitter regret and remorse for how he treated me.

Liam’s mother fainted at her son’s military funeral. The shock caused a stroke, and she was diagnosed with permanent, partial paralysis, confined to a wheelchair for the rest of her bitter life.

But all of that tragedy no longer concerned me.

I swept the ashes of the letter into the trash bin and turned back to my holographic monitors, burying myself in the beautiful, complex data.

I will continue to live peacefully in my own, brilliant world. From now on, I dedicate my heart and my genius solely to my country, devoting all the years of my life to the future.

THE END