1 My best friend, Sienna, and I transmigrated into the worst kind of high-society melodrama—the sacrificial-muse edition. In the original script, she was cast as the alluring young stepmother to Bennett Lindell, the fragile, emotionally shattered second male lead. I was dropped into the role of Corinne Summers, the adoptive stepsister and captive fixation of Gage Mercer, the ruthless corporate kingpin who ran the city’s underground with an iron fist. Our purpose in this universe was deceptively simple, yet cruel: make these men fall irrevocably in love with us, and then, right when their devotion bordered on madness, rip ourselves out of their lives without looking back. We were the designated collateral damage—the ghosts meant to break them so thoroughly that only the saintly true female lead could piece them back together. Sienna and I lived in adjacent high-rises in the upper-tier district. To the outside world, we were strangers who barely shared an elevator nod. In reality, we spent our evenings on burner phones, tearing our respective assignments to absolute shreds. “Bennett set a new personal best today,” Sienna would grumble over cheap takeout on my balcony. “He said ‘Please don’t ever abandon me’ a hundred and one times. I swear, the man produces more tears than an open fire hydrant.” “Gage only managed ‘If you ever leave, I’ll end you’ a hundred times flat,” I’d counter, blowing out a cloud of cigarette smoke. “He’s slacking. Needs to work on his stamina.” To keep our sanity and ensure our paper trail stayed clean, we kept a shared leather-bound ledger. Under two bold headings—PLEASE and I’LL END YOU—we tracked their obsessive breakdowns with neat little tally marks. The moment we caught wind that Harper Ward, the story’s destined heroine, was about to enter the picture, we didn’t hesitate. We liquidated our secret stash of cash, packed our duffels, and vanished into thin air. For three glorious months, we lived the dream: bottomless mimosas, private villas, and zero brooding billionaires breathing down our necks. Until this evening. We were heading down a cobblestone alley toward a dimly lit jazz lounge when six burly men in tailored black suits stepped out of the shadows, blocking our path with military precision. I reached up, ready to slide down my oversized designer sunglasses and deliver a blistering lecture on personal space, when one of the guards stepped aside. Bennett Lindell stood directly in front of Sienna. He wore an all-black trench coat, his jaw dark with heavy stubble, his expression frozen in cold, lethal fury. “Kneeling at your feet wasn’t enough, Sienna?” Bennett’s voice was dangerously low, stripped of every ounce of his former softness. “You really have ice in your veins. Don’t expect any mercy from me from this point on.” My heart jumped into my throat. I reached out to shove Sienna behind me, preparing to scream for help, when a slow, familiar drawl drifted from the darkness directly behind my ear. The sound sent a visceral chill cascading down my spine. “Ren,” Gage whispered, his fingers lightly brushing the nape of my neck. “I promise I’ll never say I’ll end you again. Just come home with me… please?” It all started on an ordinary Tuesday three months ago, when I was waiting for Sienna at a corner café while she was still stuck playing emotional therapist to Bennett. How much longer? I had texted her, staring blankly at the condensation pooling around my iced Americano. Our coffee dates had been delayed like this at least fifty times. Bennett’s emotional weather was notoriously volatile. Still, I could never wrap my head around how my best friend—a woman who historically got a migraine if a toddler cried within a fifty-yard radius—managed to sit through Bennett’s endless weeping sessions with a straight face. Almost there. Give me five minutes, she’d replied. Five minutes turned into thirty. When Sienna finally pushed through the café doors, she looked like she’d survived a Category 5 hurricane. “What set him off this time?” I asked as she slid into the booth opposite me. “The guy cries so much he should quit real estate and audition for daytime soap operas.” Sienna waved down the waitress, ordered an oat latte with a double shot, and rubbed her temples. “Don’t ask. He accidentally found his late father’s revised will this morning. Realized just how little the old man thought of him, buried his face in my lap, and wept like a Victorian widow. It was exhausting.” I narrowed my eyes at her across the table. “Rule number one of this gig: don’t fall for the mark. Tell me you aren’t catching feelings.” Sienna scoffed, tossing her hair over her shoulder. “Please. If his family didn’t sit on half the commercial equity in the metropolitan area, I wouldn’t have the patience to hand him a tissue. You know I can’t stand men who leak from their eyes.” When her latte arrived, she took a long, restorative sip before turning her sharp gaze on me. “What about your domestic terrorist, Gage? You’ve been asking to hang out a lot lately. Did he finally find a hobby?” “He’s abroad,” I said, stirring my straw. “Some rival syndicate tried to take a shot at his convoy last week. It failed, so he flew to their headquarters overseas to handle the bloodline personally.” Sienna whistled, genuinely impressed. “You have to admire a man who handles his own dirty work. That ruthless streak is kind of hot.” “Want to trade?” I offered with a dry smirk. “I wouldn’t mind trading a walking homicide risk for a delicate boy with red-rimmed eyes.” “Rule number one,” Sienna threw back at me, her dark eyes glinting with amusement over the ceramic rim of her cup. “Never fall for the mark. Your words, darling.” That was the thing about Sienna: she never missed a beat. According to the original plot progression, Harper Ward was scheduled to make her grand entrance in three months. Before that happened, Sienna and I had to deliver our respective emotional coup de grâce to Bennett and Gage. The narrative demanded that we shatter them completely so the main storyline could take flight. We were trapped in an old-school, unapologetically toxic romance novel. It had all the classic tropes: forced proximity, dark family vendettas, amnesia, car crashes, and terminal miscommunications. Fortunately, none of the catastrophic bodily harm was meant for us. As the designated ‘white moonlight’ predecessors, our screen time was short. We were merely the catalyst for the second lead’s moral descent and the villain’s full descent into madness. The redemption arc belonged entirely to the heroine. All the suffering, the kidnappings, and the emotional torture would fall squarely on Harper Ward’s shoulders. Sucks to be her, honestly. 2 Even though Sienna and I currently enjoyed the protective aura of the “first love” trope, we knew our place. Against the sheer, unyielding plot armor of the actual protagonist, our roles were paper-thin. The second Harper stepped into the frame, any bond we had forged with these men would disintegrate into dust. That was the absolute tyranny of the main character’s gravitational pull. Which was why we made a pact the moment we woke up in this world: the instant the heroine appeared, we ran. Sienna had it relatively easy. Bennett Lindell, despite his billionaire privilege and bottomless angst, was ultimately a law-abiding citizen. But Gage Mercer? If I stayed within Gage’s reach after the script flipped, there was a very real chance I’d end up at the bottom of a harbor in a concrete overcoat. The man didn’t just ignore the law; he treated it like a rough draft. We split up after coffee and took separate cabs back to our respective estates. The second I opened the heavy double doors of the Mercer penthouse and stepped into the primary suite, a faint, metallic scent hit my nostrils. Fresh iron and rain. Gage was back. The master bathroom door was ajar, the rhythmic hiss of the shower echoing off Italian marble. A moment later, Martha, the head housekeeper, hurried upstairs to collect a heap of dark, blood-stained clothes from the floor. I took a slow, measured breath, schooling my features into the exact shade of frosty defiance the role required. When Gage finally emerged, steam billowing behind him, he wore only a dark slate towel slung low on his hips. Droplets of water trailed down his sharp collarbones and traced the defined lines of his abdomen. I swallowed hard, forcing my gaze to remain completely detached. I sat on the edge of the king-sized bed with my back turned toward him, staring out the floor-to-ceiling windows at the bruised twilight sky, radiating pure misery. A heartbeat later, warm, bare arms slid around my waist from behind. I gave a token, shuddering squirm, but his grip instantly hardened, pulling my spine flush against his chest. “Don’t move,” Gage rasped against my ear. “Just let me hold you for a second.” I could feel the frantic, heavy thud of his heart against my shoulder blades, radiating intense heat. I kept my mouth shut, refusing to give him an inch. Gage grabbed my chin with calloused fingers, forcing my face around until our eyes locked. His dark irises were stormy, flecked with exhaustion and cold adrenaline. “You went out today, Ren,” he murmured, his thumb pressing lightly into the soft flesh of my jawline. “Who were you with?” I switched on the panic instantly, letting my voice shake with bitter indignance. “You’re having me followed again?” Gage’s expression darkened, the temperature in the room dropping several degrees. “And what if I am? I told you, you don’t exist outside my line of sight.” Right on cue, my defenses collapsed. Tears welled up in my eyes, spilling over my lashes in a delicate, desperate plea. “Gage, please… when is this going to end? Just let me go. I’m begging you.” My voice broke into a choked sob. Gage, however, didn’t possess an ounce of conventional tenderness. He clamped a hand around the nape of my neck and crushed his mouth down on mine. It was a punishing, possessive kiss, tasting faintly of mint and violence. I brought both hands up against his bare chest, pushing weakly against him, but he caught my wrists in one broad palm and pinned them effortlessly above my head against the pillows. When he finally broke the kiss, breathing hard, his gaze was dark and venomous. “I told you,” he snarled, his voice vibrating with raw menace. “If you ever try to leave me, I will end you.” He leaned closer, his lips brushing my ear. “You stay here. You endure this. Every single debt the Summers family owes mine, I’m taking out of your hide, inch by inch.” Then, abruptly, he let go of my wrists, shoved himself off the bed, and stormed back into the bathroom, slamming the door so hard the glass fixtures rattled. The shower turned back on. I rolled my eyes and sat up, smoothing down my silk blouse. Typical. He loved to push things right to the edge, only to go freeze himself under cold water because his twisted sense of morality wouldn’t let him cross the final line. In this novel’s backstory, Corinne Summers and Gage Mercer were childhood friends before their families went to war. Corinne’s father had swindled Gage’s father in a massive private equity scheme, bankrupting the Mercers overnight. While on the run from loan sharks, Gage’s parents died in a fiery highway collision. Gage was taken in by the Summers household as a charity case, enduring years of quiet humiliation. In secret, he built a ruthless underground syndicate, systematically dismantled the Summers empire, and threw the original Corinne into a black-market detention ring for three agonizing years. Yet, seeing her refuse to break, his hatred twisted into a suffocating, possessive obsession. He dragged her back into his penthouse, forcing her to live under the facade of his “ward” and “stepsister.” He hated her because of his dead parents, yet loved her to the point of insanity. A classic toxic paradox. Fortunately for me, I transmigrated after the dark-web torture phase was already over. I skipped the trauma and inherited only the luxury confinement and the dramatic monologues. When the bathroom door opened again, Gage didn’t spare me a single glance. He threw on a charcoal shirt and walked out of the penthouse suite, the heavy mahogany door clicking shut with finality. I shrank back against the headboard, maintaining my tearful, traumatized posture until his footsteps faded down the hall. To be completely honest, his touch lingered on my skin longer than I wanted to admit. Gage never took things to the very end—he always claimed I was “tainted” by my father’s bloodline. But we both knew that while Corinne was in that syndicate ring, he had executed anyone who even looked at her the wrong way. A man trapped in his own web of self-righteous hypocrisy. He truly deserved the endless angst heading his way. My phone buzzed on the nightstand. I picked it up. Sienna’s voice came through the speaker, tight with urgency. “We have a massive problem. The heroine showed up early. I just saw her by the front gates of the Lindell estate, handing out missing-person flyers for her deadbeat brother.” According to the original text, Harper Ward’s life spiraled out of control when she went looking for her gambling-addict brother, crossed paths with Gage’s enforcers, was saved by Bennett Lindell, and got dragged headfirst into their high-stakes drama. “What do you mean, early?” I sat up straight. “We were supposed to have three months! My offshore account isn’t fully funded yet, and I haven’t finalized the fake passports!” “Something glitched in the timeline,” Sienna hissed. “We can’t follow the original schedule. If Harper crosses paths with Gage and Bennett right now, our ‘tragic muse’ status expires immediately. The system will rewrite us into jealous, screeching villainesses.” That was the cardinal rule: we could not exist in the same frame as the true heroine once the main plot triggered. “What’s the play?” I asked, gnawing on my thumbnail. “I booked four international flights under different burner aliases,” Sienna said. “The second it gets dark, we rendezvous at the north exit of your district. Handle your man, give yourself a clean break, and buy us enough runway to vanish.” “Got it.” I hung up, paced the bedroom for two minutes, and made my decision. If I was leaving tonight, I needed to detonate this dynamic completely. I slipped into a deep-V emerald silk nightgown, let my hair fall in soft waves around my bare shoulders, and walked down the hall to Gage’s private study. I knocked once. “Enter,” his voice came through, clipped and frosty. I pushed the door open, immediately angling my posture to catch the soft amber glow of the desk lamp—chin tucked, collarbone highlighted, looking like a shattered porcelain doll. The forty-five-degree tilt: my signature weapon. Gage was reviewing financial ledgers. When he looked up and saw me, his pupils flared, his breath catching in his throat. “What is it?” he demanded, trying to sound indifferent. I didn’t answer. I walked across the plush Persian rug, stepped between his parted knees, and climbed onto his lap, straddling his waist. Before he could speak, I leaned down and pressed my mouth to his. Gage stiffened for a fraction of a second before his arms locked around my waist, pulling me ruthlessly against him. The kiss was deep, intoxicating, and dangerously electric. I could feel the tension vibrating through his entire frame. When I felt the heat rising between us, I slowly pulled back, letting my lips brush his jawline before meeting his dark, dilated eyes. “Gage,” I whispered, my voice dripping with fragile hope. “Can you let it go? The feud, my father, all of it… Can you forget the past and just love me?” The atmosphere in the room turned instantly glacial. The warmth in Gage’s posture vanished. His fingers clamped around my jaw with bruising force, his eyes blazing with sudden, violent fury. “Forget the past?” he hissed, his voice trembling with rage. “Who the hell do you think you are to ask me for peace? You think crawling into my lap wipes clean what your family did to mine? You’re delusional, Corinne.” I opened my mouth, tears spilling down my cheeks right on cue, letting out a choked, “Gage, please—” He shoved me off his lap with enough force to send me staggering against the leather armchair, pointed a shaking finger at the door, and roared: “Get out!” Perfect. I covered my face with my hands, let out a gut-wrenching sob, and sprinted out of the study. The second I crossed the threshold into my bedroom, the tears vanished. I threw on a black hoodie, dark cargo pants, and combat boots, shoved my cash, burner phone, and essentials into a sleek sling bag, and bolted out the service stairwell, wailing loud enough for the hall cameras to capture my “heartbroken flight.” Normally, when Gage and I fought, he didn’t lock me in a cell; he just had a rotating detail of private security tail me at a discreet distance. All I had to do was lose his men. I slipped out the rear gates of the residential complex and darted into a dense, unlit municipal park I had mapped out weeks ago. Every twist, every blind spot behind the stone pavilions and overgrown willow trees was etched into my memory. Dressed in head-to-toe black, I melted into the shadows. Behind me, I could hear the muffled shouts and heavy footsteps of Gage’s security team scrambling in the dark, their flashlight beams sweeping uselessly across empty bushes. Once they were thoroughly turned around, I slipped through a break in the perimeter fence, hopped into a waiting rideshare Sienna had coordinated, and sped toward the airport. 3 When I slid into the back seat of the cab, I noticed Sienna’s eyes were slightly red, as though she’d just been crying. I reached over with my sleeve and casually rubbed her cheek. “What’s meant to be will be, darling,” I said, putting on my best philosophical voice, half-worried she was actually mourning Bennett. “You can’t force fate.” Sienna smacked my hand away with a dramatic eye-roll. “Save the poetry. I’m yawning because I spent forty minutes idling in the cold waiting for you. Five more minutes and I was going to drive a rental car through Gage Mercer’s front gates.” “Why did you get the easy assignment anyway?” I grumbled, sinking into the leather seat. “A tearful rich kid who begs for validation, while I got a homicidal syndicate boss who threatens to execute me three times before breakfast?” Sienna smirked. “Timing, babe. I got here first. The system gave me options.” I sighed, staring out the window at the blurred streetlights. She wasn’t lying. When the transmigration prompt first appeared to Sienna, the system had laid it out plainly: Do you want the forbidden stepmother trope or the dark childhood-sweetheart captivity trope? Sienna hadn’t hesitated for a second: “Stepmother. Give me the scandalous, high-society taboo every single time.” What she hadn’t anticipated was that being a stepmother to Bennett Lindell meant being an unpaid full-time emotional support animal. When our cab pulled up to the airport terminal, Sienna didn’t even grab our bags. Instead, she dragged me across the departures lane and shoved me straight into a secondary, unmarked town car waiting by the curb. The flight tickets were purely a digital decoy to tie up Gage’s cyber teams and Bennett’s private investigators. Our real escape route was ground transit toward a quiet coastal enclave four hundred miles south. We later found out that on the night we vanished, Gage Mercer and Bennett Lindell turned the entire metropolis inside out. The moment Gage’s head of security reported that I had evaded surveillance, Gage tracked my last known coordinates, pulled the municipal traffic feeds, and spotted me getting into a vehicle registered under the Lindell estate’s secondary holding company. Without a word, Gage drove a customized armored SUV straight to the Lindell manor. When Gage kicked down the front doors of the estate, Bennett was still kneeling on the living room rug, staring at the floor in a state of absolute ruin. Only twenty minutes earlier, no matter how desperately Bennett had wept, no matter how low he had bowed, Sienna had looked down at him with utter disdain. She told him that the only reason she had ever tolerated his presence was out of lingering devotion to his late father, Arthur Lindell. “I loved your father,” Sienna had told him, her voice ice-cold. “Now that he’s gone, you’re nothing more than a reminder of what I lost. Know your place, Bennett. Don’t cross the line between mother and son.” Bennett knew she was lying. He had felt the heat in her eyes, the electric tension when she adjusted his tie in private—that was never maternal affection. Before he could process the heartbreak, Gage Mercer stormed into the foyer, grabbed Bennett by his lapels, and slammed a heavy right hook across his jaw. “Where is she?” Gage snarled, his eyes bloodshot. “Where did your family hide my Ren?” Bennett spat blood onto the polished hardwood, his grief instantly mutating into raw, lethal fury. He lunged forward, tackling Gage into a mahogany console table. “Who the hell hid your girl?” Bennett roared, throwing a punch back. “Your attack dog lost her, so you come crying to my house?” To the world, Bennett Lindell played the role of a refined, fragile heir. But anyone who dealt with the Lindell conglomerate knew Bennett was every bit as ruthless as Gage when it came to defending his territory. “She got into your stepmother’s car,” Gage barked, pinning Bennett against the wall with an arm across his throat. “If Corinne has so much as a scratch on her, I will burn your family’s empire to the ground.” Bennett froze, his breathing turning ragged. “What does Sienna have to do with this?” “Your stepmother abducted my sister,” Gage spat. “They’re probably on a private jet out of the hemisphere by now.” Bennett’s face went completely pale. The defiance drained out of him, replaced by a hollow, sickening despair. The only person in the world who had ever looked at him with genuine warmth had walked out the door—not because of high-society scandal, but because she had chosen another woman over him. Seeing that Bennett was genuinely clueless, Gage released him, spun around, and mobilized every resource under his command. That night, both the corporate elite and the underworld mobilized. Every highway toll, private airstrip, and train terminal was locked down. Naturally, none of it mattered to Sienna and me. Let them tear the city apart. The moment Harper Ward made contact, their narrative programming would kick in, their obsessions would transfer to the true heroine, and our memory would be wiped clean from their minds like a bad dream. 4 All we had to do was survive in the shadows for three months. Sienna and I burned through her offshore reserves, hopping across borders every few weeks. We treated Europe like our personal playground—coastal villas in Portugal, boutique lofts in Florence, late-night dinners in Prague. We avoided paper trails, used pre-paid international debit cards, and stayed one step ahead of any automated surveillance flags. Before we knew it, the ninety-day window had nearly closed. Assuming Harper Ward had already embedded herself into their lives and our roles had officially expired, we finally let our guard down. On a warm Mediterranean evening, we were walking down a stone alleyway toward a tucked-away cocktail bar when six tall figures in matching dark suits materialized from the shadows, blocking the street in front of us. My first instinct was to pull down my sunglasses and curse them out for ruining our night. Then, a cold premonition seized my chest. Gage ran private security networks across the continent. These weren’t local street thugs; their posture was too rigid, their spacing too precise. I slowly took a step back, instinctively using Sienna’s shoulder as a shield. Sienna squeezed my wrist, signaling me to stay calm. The front rank of the men parted. A tall, broad-shouldered man stepped into the warm glow of the streetlamp, stopping three paces from Sienna. “Bennett?” Sienna and I gasped in unison. The delicate, polished boy with the tear-stained cheeks was completely gone. In his place stood a hardened, broad-framed man with sharp cheekbones, a shadow of dark stubble, and eyes that held the chilling stillness of deep water. Bennett stared directly at Sienna, his jaw clenched tight. “You really are heartless, Sienna,” he said, his voice a low, gravelly rasp. “I got on my knees and begged you to stay. You wouldn’t even look at me. And you threw me away… for her?” His gaze shifted to me, cold and assessing. Realizing Gage wasn’t in front of us, my panic subsided slightly. I stepped out from behind Sienna, planting myself firmly in Bennett’s line of sight. “What if she did leave you for me?” I challenged, lifting my chin. “She was never meant to be trapped in your family’s gilded cage as some ornamental widow. We’re in love, Bennett. Take a number and get in line.” As I talked trash, my left hand was behind my back, furiously gesturing for Sienna to turn around and run. Sienna didn’t run. Instead, she yanked my arm back. “Ren,” a velvet-dark voice purred from the shadows directly behind my shoulder. “Since when did you and Lindell’s stepmother become soulmates? Why wasn’t I informed?” A sudden frost settled over my skin. I didn’t dare turn around. Unbelievable. When it rains, it pours. Gage stepped into my peripheral vision. He reached out with gloved fingers, lightly catching a lock of my newly permed, honey-brown curls, winding it slowly around his index finger. “Ren,” he murmured, his tone eerily gentle, laced with a terrifying undercurrent of desperate restraint. “I promise I’ll never say I’ll end you again. Come home with me… please?” I froze, my mind spinning into overdrive. How is this possible? Did the heroine’s plot armor fail? Why do they still remember our names? Sienna and I locked eyes for a split second. We had one card left to play. The nuclear option. “What about Harper Ward?” Sienna fired directly at Bennett. Bennett flinched, his expression tightening as if struck. Harper was the destined heroine. According to the timeline, she should currently be serving as Bennett’s executive assistant while simultaneously crossing paths with Gage’s supply chain. “We may have left the country,” Sienna continued, her voice dripping with calculated disdain, “but I still keep tabs on the Lindell estate. Ever since Harper entered your life, you’ve changed completely. Even Harrison, your head butler, told the staff he hadn’t seen you smile like that in years.” Bennett remained dead silent, his eyes darkening. Seeing the tactic land, I pivoted immediately toward Gage. “And you, Gage,” I said, putting on a face of wounded dignity. “I know I have no right to negotiate with you, but I deserve some basic human respect. Now that you have Harper in your heart, let me go. For the sake of whatever childhood we shared, give me some dignity and leave me alone.” Gage’s expression went utterly grim, the faint warmth in his eyes vanishing instantly. Just as we thought: no matter how much the narrative deviated, the protagonist’s shadow was an absolute, paralyzing force against secondary characters.
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