My Ex-husband Threw A $10,000 Card At Me While Leaving Me For A Younger Woman. Seven Years Later, I Finally Checked The Balance. Why Was There $2 Million In The Account?

“I need to sleep for a bit. Ethan is already scolding me. Goodbye, Laura. Remember to live well. I love you. I love you more than anything in the world.”

The image blurred and then went black. The video ended.

The room fell into a terrifying silence broken only by my sobs and the whirring of the laptop’s fan. I stared at the black screen, a feeling of emptiness washing over me.

He was really gone. His final goodbye, his promise for the next life, had been delivered, leaving me alone in this vast world.

I hugged the laptop, resting my face on the still-warm screen as if searching for one last trace of his heat. “Daniel, I heard you. I promise I will live well. But you have to keep your promise, too. In the next life, you have to find me. You can’t abandon me again.”

That promise of another life seemed distant and vague, but it was the only hope I could cling to. I believed that death was not the end, just a temporary separation.

Somewhere in another time and space, he was waiting for me, healthy and smiling, ready to take my hand and continue our journey.

I closed the laptop and put it back in its place. The atmosphere in the apartment felt colder after Daniel’s voice faded.

Ethan was still on the balcony. His cigarette had long since burned out, the ash falling to the floor.

He came in, looked at my swollen eyes, sighed, and sat on the plastic chair. It was time to hear the end of this tragic story—the part I feared most but needed to know.

“That night,” Ethan began, his voice low like an echo from beyond the grave, “it was pouring rain, just like the day you went to the courthouse. Thunder and lightning. The wind howled at the windows like a lament. Daniel was very weak. He hadn’t eaten anything all day, just delirious.”

I held my breath, my heart clenching. I remembered that stormy night.

I was curled up in my bed listening to the rain, feeling empty. I didn’t know that, not far away, my ex-husband was drawing his last breaths.

“Just before dawn, he suddenly woke up,” Ethan continued, his gaze distant.

“Lucid. He asked me to help him sit up. He looked out the window toward your apartment. The light in your room was already off; you were probably asleep. He stared as if to burn that image into his memory one last time. Then he turned to me and said, ‘Ethan, I’m so cold. I want to go home. But my home isn’t mine anymore.'”

That sentence was a stab to my heart. His house—our home.

He had sold it to give me the money. He wanted to go home, but he had nowhere to go.

He died in a temporary, cold, and strange rented room with no family other than his best friend. “He started to get delirious,” Ethan’s voice broke.

“He kept saying your name over and over. ‘Laura, it hurts. Laura, don’t leave me.’ He waved his hands in the air as if searching for someone’s hand. I took his hand—it was ice cold and skeletal. I told him, ‘I’m here. Ethan is here. Hold on.’ But he couldn’t hear me. He just kept saying your name.”

I covered my mouth to keep from wailing. He called for me as he was dying.

He needed me; he wanted me by his side. And where was I?

I was sleeping peacefully or dreaming of a bright future without him. My indifference was the life sentence I would have to carry for the rest of my days.

“And then he was gone,” Ethan said, his voice barely a whisper.

“He passed at dawn, just as the rain stopped. He went peacefully like a candle burning out. His eyes were still open, looking toward the window, toward your home. I had to close them several times. He asked for a simple funeral—to be cremated and his ashes left at a temple without any big ceremony, without notifying anyone, especially you. He was afraid that if you found out, you would come and see his ravaged body.”

I listened, feeling my soul leave my body. He died alone, consumed by longing and worry for the one he left behind.

He didn’t allow anyone to mourn him, to give him a proper funeral. He disappeared from this world in silence, as if he had never existed, just to protect my peace.

His death was the saddest, most silent note in the tragic symphony of our life. I insisted on seeing Daniel’s grave immediately, despite Ethan trying to dissuade me, saying it was already getting dark and that I wasn’t well after such a shock.

I couldn’t wait another minute. I wanted to see him, to touch the place where he rested, even if it was just a cold grave.

Ethan drove his old car out of the noisy city toward the desolate outskirts. The landscape changed rapidly from skyscrapers to barren fields covered in weeds.

The gray evening sky was heavy with dark clouds. The car stopped at the foot of a barren hill.

The wind howled. It was the municipal cemetery for the poor, the homeless, the families without the means to buy a plot in a private cemetery.

Ethan led me up a bumpy dirt path. The weeds came up to my knees, scratching my legs, but I felt nothing.

The pain in my heart had numbed my other senses. We stopped in a remote corner of the hillside.

Before me was a tiny grave, almost lost among the others, with no mausoleum, no polished marble—just a mound of dirt surrounded by bricks, covered in weeds and dry leaves. The cheap headstone was covered in moss, but I instantly recognized that familiar smile in the black and white photo.

Daniel was smiling that arrogant, carefree smile I had once hated; now it tore my heart apart. “Why?”

I knelt before the grave, my trembling hands caressing the cold photo. “Why are you here? You had $2 million. Why did you let yourself be buried in this desolate place?”

Ethan, behind me, spoke in a low voice that blended with the wind. “It was his wish. He said that all the money from the sale of the company was for you, down to the last cent. He said, ‘When I’m dead, it doesn’t matter where I am. A corpse is just a corpse. Why waste money on a nice spot? Let my wife use that money to live well, to live happily.’ He also chose this spot because it’s high up. From here, you can see the city lights where you live.”

I listened, and my tears fell like rain, soaking the dry earth. “Daniel, you were stingy to the extreme with yourself, even in your own death, just to be generous with me.”

“You accepted this cramped, cold place, enduring the sun, the rain, and the wind, just so I could live in a big, comfortable house.”

“Your sacrifice didn’t end in life; it continued even after your death.” I frantically pulled the weeds from his grave, my hands getting scratched and bloody.

I wanted to clean it, to make it up to him even just a little. I took the powerful black card from my bag and placed it on his headstone.

“Daniel, I brought you your money. Here’s the 2 million. Get up! Buy yourself a mansion, a luxury car. Get well! I don’t want it! I’m giving it all back to you!”

I screamed until my voice broke in the wind. But I was only answered by the deathly silence of the cemetery at dusk.

There were no miracles. The card remained motionless on the cold stone.

The figure of $2 million became absurdly insignificant. What good is so much money if the person who needed it most is gone?

What good is it if it can’t buy a single breath from the person you love? I rested my head on the headstone, feeling the piercing cold on my skin, as if he were holding me one last time with the icy arms of death.

The next morning, I took the first bus to Daniel’s hometown. The old clapboard house at the foot of a gnarled oak tree was just as I remembered it from seven years ago.

The rusty iron gate was ajar, the brick patio covered in quiet moss. I walked in, my heart pounding, guilt weighing on my shoulders.

For seven years, because of my hatred for Daniel, I had also cut off contact with his parents. I thought they were like him—cruel and self-serving—that they had condoned him leaving me for a rich woman.

“Who is it?” An old, trembling voice came from inside the house.

Daniel’s mother came out, leaning on a cane. Her hair was completely white, her back stooped.

When she saw me, she froze. The cane fell to the ground with a clatter.

Her clouded eyes widened and filled with tears. “Laura, is that you, child?”

She walked clumsily toward me, nearly tripping. I ran to support her.

“Mom, it’s me. I came to see you.” Daniel’s father came out, too.

He had aged so much, his face a roadmap of time and sorrow. They both hugged me, crying like children.

The sound of old people weeping was heart-wrenching. We went inside.

On the mantelpiece, Daniel’s photo took center stage. The smoke from an incense stick curled upward.

“Dad, Mom, how long have you known Daniel was gone?” I asked, a lump in my throat, not daring to look at his picture.

Daniel’s father wiped his tears with the sleeve of his shirt. “Since he got sick, child. He came here, knelt down, and begged our forgiveness. Said he was a bad son, that he was leaving before he could ever repay us. He gave us a bank book with $100,000 in it. Said it was from the sale of the company for our old age.”

“Then why didn’t you call me?” I reproached them, but my voice was weak.

“Why did you hide it from me for seven years? I was his wife, your daughter-in-law.”

Daniel’s mother took my hand—a callous but warm hand. She sobbed.

“It was Daniel. He forbade us. He made us swear on the ancestors’ altar that we wouldn’t tell you anything. He said if you knew you would suffer, that you wouldn’t be able to rebuild your life. He said it was better for you to hate him, even to hate this whole family, as long as you could live well. We loved you so much, child. So many times we wanted to call you, but when we remembered his last wish, we didn’t dare.”

I looked at those two white-haired heads, my heart breaking. Not only had Daniel sacrificed himself, but his parents had also endured this terrible pain in silence.

They lost their son and couldn’t mourn with anyone. And on top of that, they had to bear the reputation of being a cruel family to their daughter-in-law.

They swallowed their tears, accepted my misunderstanding and my distance, just to fulfill their son’s last wish. “He said,” Daniel’s father looked at the mantelpiece, “that he was most in debt to you. That if he couldn’t take care of you, we couldn’t bother you either. We’re old now; we’ll take this pain to our graves. But you’re young. You have your whole life ahead of you. You can’t live tormented by the shadow of a dead man.”

I buried my head in my mother-in-law’s lap, crying like never before. The generosity of this family was immense, so much so that it made me feel small and selfish.

I had lived in a blind hatred while they protected me from afar with the greatest love. “Daniel, what kind of family were you born into to be so noble? It hurts.”

Back in the city, I held the powerful black card, feeling it weigh as much as a mountain. I returned to my small rented room—the one that had been with me through my hardest years.

The room was the same—damp walls, the old fan creaking—but I was different. I was no longer the poor girl who worried about every meal, every dollar of rent.

Now I was a millionaire, but strangely I felt no joy or relief—only a terrifying emptiness. I sat on the bed looking at the card on the table.

$2 million. It could buy me a luxury mansion, a sports car, designer clothes.

But it couldn’t buy back a family dinner with Daniel’s laughter or his warm hug on cold winter nights. I remembered his words in the video.

He bet that I wouldn’t spend the money right away. He wanted me to fight for myself, to mature.

He was right, and it was cruel. The hatred he planted in me was the strongest stimulant for survival.

If I had known about his illness seven years ago, I probably would have collapsed. But out of hatred, to prove to him that I could live well without him, I gritted my teeth and worked, overcoming every difficulty.

That hatred fueled me, forged me into the strong woman I am today. But now that the truth was out, the hatred vanished, and I felt like a puppet without strings.

My goal for seven years was to get revenge on him with my success. Now that goal was pointless.