Michael wanted to ask about Grace's resignation process, and given Alexander's cold and almost disgusted attitude towards her, she likely wouldn't need to come to work tomorrow. He could arrange that soon.

But then he remembered when Grace first joined, Alexander had said that Grace's matters didn't need to be specially reported to him and everything should simply follow company procedures. Even though they were married, Alexander wouldn't get involved no matter what happened.

And that's exactly how it had been all these years. At the company, Alexander treated Grace like a stranger and never actively inquired about her.

Seeing Michael's hesitation, Alexander frowned, "What is it?"

Michael snapped back to attention and quickly said, "Nothing, boss."

Since Alexander already knew about Grace's resignation but hadn't brought it up himself, it clearly wasn't important to him. Michael thought he could just process her resignation following standard procedures.

Seeing Michael had nothing else to say, Alexander ended the video call.

*****

At noon, a coworker suddenly tapped Grace's shoulder.

"What are you thinking about?" she asked.

Grace came back to reality, smiling and shaking her head. "Nothing," she said.

Her coworker persisted, asking, "Aren't you calling your daughter today?"

"No, not today," Grace said quickly.

She usually called her daughter twice a day - once at 1 AM and again around noon. Everyone in the office knew about this. What they didn't know was that her daughter's father was their company's big boss.

After work that evening, Grace went online to check news about the upcoming tech expo.

Once, she had been a star in her professional field, but she gave up her brilliant career for Alexander, only to end up with nothing. Now, she thought it was time to return to her profession.

Grace made a phone call: "Please save me a ticket for next month's tech expo."

"Are you sure?" came the cold response. "The last two times you asked for tickets, you never showed up. Those precious tickets that so many people dream of getting went to waste."

When their company was just starting up, she had chosen to get married, have a child, and leave the company to focus on family. This had completely disrupted their company's development plans, causing them to miss many opportunities.

The annual tech expo was a major event in the tech industry and a vital opportunity. Not everyone could get tickets. Many elite professionals wanted to attend, making each spot extremely valuable.

"I'm sure," Grace said.

The person on the other end hung up without another word. Grace knew this meant they agreed. Now, she had been out of the loop for too long and needed to start over. In the following days, Grace worked at Sterling Group during the day, waiting for her resignation to be processed, while working on her own matters after returning home from work. She didn't actively contact her daughter or Alexander.

Of course, they didn't contact her either.

*****

In the Kingdom of Aldovia, Sophia had developed a habit of calling Claire every morning after she woke up.

That day, she called Claire first thing after waking up, but before they could talk much, she burst into tears because Claire had just given her terrible news.

"Auntie Claire is going back home to Silver City!" she wailed.

Sophia was heartbroken. Since her dad was rarely home, she planned to call him soon to cry about this bad news. But to her surprise, her dad was right there next to Auntie Claire. Alexander said, "Come on, stop crying."

Sophia hugged her little pink pig stuffed animal and kept crying, "Daddy, why didn't you tell me Auntie Claire was going back to Silver City when you already knew? I don't want Auntie Claire to leave! If Auntie Claire isn't here, I don't want to go to school here either. I want to go back to Silver City too!"

Alexander replied coolly, "It's already being handled."

Sophia didn't understand, "W-what do you mean?"

"We're going back to Silver City with Auntie Claire next week."