Everyone in New York knew I loved Liam. Loved him for ten years. When I was adopted at seven, I followed him everywhere. Everyone just assumed I’d be his wife. But that man… he killed me once. Reborn to the night he drugged me, I didn’t cry and give myself to him again. Instead, I picked up my phone and called his precious first love, Stella. Ten minutes later, I watched Stella rush into the room and turned to leave. The shredder devoured ten years of love letters. A music box shattered at his feet. A platinum necklace disappeared down the drain. One by one, I destroyed every gift he’d ever given me. Until on his wedding day, I left a note. “Wishing you happiness, and goodbye..” He thought I was just throwing a tantrum. But when he returned from his honeymoon, he found out. I’d canceled my phone number, blocked him on all my accounts, and vanished without a trace. A year later, he knelt before me, eyes red, begging me to come back. I looked at him and smiled. “Liam, what makes you think I’d want a man who killed me once?”
Clara POV Everyone in New York knew I loved Liam Sterling. For ten years. When his family adopted me at seven, I started following him everywhere. Everyone just assumed I’d be his wife. But Liam, the very man I loved, killed me once. “Quick, say hi to Stella.” His hot breath on my neck, his voice rasping close to my ear. I opened my eyes. In my vision, Liam’s eyes were bloodshot, his desire fueled by drugs, spiraling out of control. He gripped my wrist so hard I thought my bones might shatter. The familiar hotel room. The familiar man. The familiar opening line. I was reborn. Memories of my gruesome death flashed back instantly. The suffocatingly cold basement. The oxygen slowly draining. The searing pain in my lungs. My fingernails scraping against the walls in desperation. Until finally, complete suffocation. The icy grip of death crept from my spine to the top of my head, leaving me cold all over. Liam pulled me harder into his embrace, his body scorching hot, muttering incoherently. “I feel awful…” In my past life, I pitied him. I cried and offered myself to him, becoming his desperate release. In this life… I looked at his dazed face, but I felt nothing. With my other hand, I picked up my phone from the nightstand. Stella was the first contact in my phone book. I tapped “dial.” The call was answered almost instantly. “Hello?” There was a flicker of hidden tension in Stella’s voice. I wasted no words, directly stating the address. “Cloud Nine Hotel, Room 1808.” With that, I hung up. Liam seemed to sense my withdrawal. His grip tightened, trying to pin me completely beneath him. I pulled away from his hand, rolled off the bed, and stood up. I straightened my slightly disheveled collar, then turned to face the man on the bed, tormented by desire. “Liam, your woman will be here in ten minutes.” I said, then walked towards the door. “Clara!” From behind me, his name ripped through his clenched teeth, filled with uncontrolled fury. I didn’t look back. My hand found the doorknob, twisted it, and pulled the door open. The door slammed shut, cutting off that consuming gaze. I didn’t leave. Instead, I leaned against the wall next to the door, waiting quietly. Ten minutes, precisely. The elevator doors opened, and Stella, dressed in a white dress, hurried out. Seeing me standing at the door, she paused, then her eyes, like searchlights, scanned me from head to toe. She stopped in front of the door, then turned her head to look at me. It was the scrutiny of a woman claiming her territory, laced with contempt and dismissal. “You can go now.” Stella’s voice was soft, filled with disdain. “You’re not needed here.” She finished speaking and pushed open the door to Room 1808. Inside, the man’s heavy breathing and a woman’s stifled gasp immediately reached my ears. The door closed again. I turned and walked to my own room. Room 1809, right next door. I didn’t turn on the lights, sitting down in the darkness. The muffled sounds from next door came intermittently, suppressed and unleashed, intertwined, announcing the start of their affair. I listened quietly, my mind calmly replaying the events of my past life. In my past life, I had become Liam’s desperate release. A month later, I was pregnant. Liam gave me a grand wedding. But on our wedding day, he received news of Stella’s death in a car accident. From then on, I became a sinner in his eyes. He believed I had used the child to drive Stella away and caused her death. He started drinking heavily, staying out all night. Each time he returned, reeking of alcohol and longing for another woman, he would look at me coldly, his eyes filled with a hatred that could kill me. Even so, I endured. I thought, once the baby was born, everything would get better. But I never saw that day. On the eve of giving birth, Liam locked me in the basement of the Liam family’s old estate. That place I feared most since childhood – dark, damp, windowless. Through the door, he said to me in a sinister tone. “Clara, Stella is terrified of the dark. Go keep her company.” Then, he drained the oxygen from the basement. I suffocated to death in endless darkness, along with the unborn child. The sounds from next door had stopped at some point. Footsteps echoed in the hallway, the click of heels, then the opening and closing of the elevator doors. Everything returned to silence. I let out a long breath. The suffocating tightness in my chest finally eased. I knew that in this life, everything would be different.
Clara POV The next morning at breakfast, when I came downstairs, Stella was already sitting next to Liam. My seat was now Stella’s. The atmosphere at the dining table was pleasant; the staff served with smiles. Liam took a sip of coffee, tapped his fork against his glass. The sound wasn’t loud, but everyone fell silent. His gaze swept across the room, finally resting on me. His tone was casual, as if announcing a minor detail. “From now on, Stella is my girlfriend.” He paused, then added, “I’m going to marry her.” My hands, holding the fork and knife, didn’t stop. I continued to cut my fried egg. He pointed his fork in my direction, his voice sharpening with a warning. “Especially you, Clara. Be polite to my future wife. Don’t cause me any trouble.” Future wife. My knife scraped the plate, a sharp, grating sound. I looked up and nodded. “I understand, Liam.” I finished everything on my plate, put down my fork and knife, and prepared to leave. “Liam…” Stella, beside him, suddenly had tears welling up in her eyes. Her voice was soft, a tearful sob filled with grievance. “Clara… she… she doesn’t welcome me, does she? If she doesn’t like me, maybe I should just leave…” As she spoke, tears clung to her lashes, as if she’d suffered some great injustice. This, of course, infuriated Liam. “Sit down!” He barked at me, his voice dripping with undisguised fury. “Who told you to leave?” I sat back down as ordered. “Is that how you behave?” He stared at me as if inspecting a flawed product. “Is this how I taught you? Stella will be the lady of this house from now on. Don’t you even know basic etiquette?” I lowered my eyes, saying nothing. I ate this breakfast slower than ever. Half an hour later, my room door was abruptly thrown open, hitting the wall with a loud bang. Liam stormed in, carrying a chill. He slammed the door shut behind him, approaching me step by step, his eyes dark. “Why are you avoiding me?” He stood before me, looking down, “What was that attitude at the breakfast table?” I looked up. “I wasn’t.” He let out a humorless laugh, grabbing my chin and forcing me to look up. “Are you upset? Because of Stella?” His tone held a hint of pathological pleasure, as if my jealousy satisfied some secret vanity of his. I remained silent. My silence completely infuriated him. He let go of my chin, turned to my desk, and roughly pulled open a drawer. He pulled out a thick stack of letters, scattering them across the floor with a flick of his wrist. They were love letters I had written for ten years but never sent. His leather shoe stepped on a letter, the sole grinding over my handwriting. “Clara, you truly disgust me.” He humiliated me word by word, his voice cold as ice. “You know Stella is the only one in my heart, yet you secretly write these things. Do you think I don’t know your intentions? Your secret, hidden love disgusts me!” I looked at the letter under his foot. I had written it when I was sixteen, with a crude drawing of a small figure and “Happy Birthday, Liam” beside it. Liam bent down, leaning close to my ear. His breath brushed my ear, his voice barely a whisper, meant only for us to hear. “Luckily,” he said, “It’s a good thing you didn’t offer yourself to me as an antidote yesterday, or I’d be disgusted for life.” He straightened up, giving me one last look, his eyes filled with undisguised contempt. “You’re not worthy.” He slammed the door shut. I stood there for a long time. Then, I picked up the scattered letters from the floor, one by one. I didn’t read them. I just neatly stacked them and fed them into the shredder under my desk. The shredder hummed, turning ten years of my love into unrecognizable confetti. After doing all that, I reached under my bed and pulled out a dusty handbag. It opened to reveal seven items lying silently inside. I took out the first one. It was a pen, engraved with my initials, his sixteenth birthday gift to me. I gripped both ends of the pen, using all my strength. Snap. I snapped the pen cleanly in two. I let go, and the two broken pieces dropped into the nearby trash can.
Clara POV I started preparing to leave. I turned off all the lights in my room, leaving only a desk lamp, and quietly looked up procedures for studying abroad and transferring assets on my tablet. The trust fund my parents left me was my only security. I needed to disappear completely, and quickly, before Liam and Stella got married. To avoid unnecessary trouble, I started coming home late. I would stay at the school library until closing time, then take the last bus home. That day, I returned to the villa and walked towards my room as usual. Pushing open the door, I stopped short. Someone had moved things around in the room. There was an unfamiliar perfume in the air. I took out my phone and saw that Stella had posted an update an hour ago. It was a selfie. In the photo, she lay on a bed, a blanket pulled up to her collarbone, her face flushed. The bedside lamp and wallpaper in the background were all too familiar. It was my room. The caption read: “A million-dollar mattress really is something. I mentioned I wasn’t sleeping well, and he had it replaced for me right away.” I turned off my phone and stood still. Liam emerged from the shadows of the hallway. He seemed to have been waiting for a long time. “You’re back?” His tone was flat, as if speaking of something insignificant. “Stella’s a light sleeper, so I gave her your mattress.” I’d injured my back, and it ached on rainy days. This mattress, he had specially ordered for a million dollars from Germany last year when my back pain flared up. “Anyway, your back pain is gone,” He added lightly. “Anyway, your back doesn’t hurt anymore.” I looked up at him and said nothing. “Mm.” After a long pause, I simply acknowledged him. He took a step closer, his tall figure looming over me, his gaze scrutinizing and suspicious. “You’re suddenly so well-behaved?” He looked down at me. “Don’t you hate it when I’m good to other people? Are you secretly plotting something?” I didn’t back away. I just looked at him. “No.” “I’m warning you, Clara.” He reached out, his index finger almost poking my forehead. “If you dare cause Stella any trouble, I won’t go easy on you!” I looked at him and smiled. Liam snorted coldly and turned to leave. I walked into my room and sat on the bed. The mattress beneath me was cheap; I could clearly feel the uncomfortable springs. I sat there in silence for a long time. Then, I took out a crystal music box. One year, Liam brought it back for me from a business trip to Athens. He said Athens was the city of music, and he hoped my world would always have music. I took the music box, walked to the window, and pushed it open. Below, on the cobblestone path, Liam was walking towards the garage. I let go. The crystal music box arced briefly through the air, then plummeted. A sharp crack echoed in the night. From downstairs, Liam’s angry roar. “Who the hell is throwing things!”
Clara POV A month later, Stella was pregnant. Liam was overjoyed, and the entire Liam household was abuzz with celebration. The staff moved with an air of cheer, their faces beaming with eager smiles. Liam hired the best nutritionist and family doctor, on call 24/7. I left for school and returned on time each day, trying to minimize my encounters with them. That day, I left class early and came home. As soon as I entered the living room, I saw Stella directing the staff to decorate the nursery. “Move that cabinet a little to the left… yes, just like that.” Stella, her belly not yet noticeably large, was bossily giving orders. Her gaze swept over the cabinet in the entryway, where a photo frame sat. “Oh dear.” She gasped. The photo frame slid off the cabinet, falling to the floor, the glass shattering. My steps halted. It was the only photo I had of my parents together. When Liam picked me up from the orphanage at age seven, I was clutching this photo frame. I walked over to pick up the frame. Stella saw me and immediately adopted a startled expression, her eyes instantly reddening. Just then, the front door opened, and Liam walked in. “Liam!” Stella, as if seeing a savior, threw herself into his arms, tearfully accusing Clara. “I… I didn’t mean to… Clara, she deliberately put the photo there to be in the way. I just glanced at it, and it fell on its own… It scared me, and it scared the baby too…” Liam gently soothed Stella in his arms, then looked up at me, his eyes icy cold. He didn’t ask what happened, nor did he look at the shattered photo frame on the floor. His eyes only held anxiety for Stella and the child in her belly. “Stella is pregnant, don’t you know that?” He chastised me sharply. “Apologize to her now!” My fingers tightened around the frame, shards of glass digging into my skin, drawing beads of blood. I looked at Liam. The man who, in this moment, would condemn me without question for another woman and her unborn child, despite my loving him for fifteen years. I nodded. “I’m sorry.” I said to Stella in his arms. “I scared you.” Liam seemed not to have expected me to apologize so easily and froze for a moment. Stella, in his arms, flashed a subtly triumphant smirk. I didn’t look at them again, turning and taking the damaged photo frame upstairs. Back in my room, I tended to the wound on my hand. Then I took out some tape and sat at my desk, meticulously, little by little, repairing my parents’ photo. The man and woman in the photo smiled gently, as if looking at me. Once repaired, I placed the frame back on my nightstand. After doing all that, I opened the handbag and took out the third gift. It was a platinum necklace, with a tiny four-leaf clover pendant. On my eighteenth birthday, Liam had personally put it on me, saying he hoped I’d always be lucky. I took the necklace and walked into the bathroom. Standing by the toilet, I let go of the necklace and pressed the flush button. The swirling water carried the necklace away, deep into the pipes.
Clara POV My preparations for studying abroad went smoothly. I used the trust fund my parents left me as a deposit for my overseas education. I thought I had done everything perfectly. Liam pushed open my room door without warning, a document in his hand, his face somber as he stood in the doorway. “You touched the money your parents left you?” He slammed the document onto my desk. It was a screenshot of an email from a lawyer. My heart sank. I had forgotten that Liam was the trustee for the fund. “A deposit for studying abroad?” Liam stared at me, his eyes sharp. I said nothing. Seeing my silence, Liam suddenly snorted, his tone full of arrogance and mockery. “What, I’m getting married, and you’re so upset you’re running off to ‘clear your head’ abroad?” Liam never once considered that I might be leaving permanently. In his world, I couldn’t live without him. Seeing that I still wouldn’t speak, the mockery slowly faded from Liam’s face, replaced by a softer expression. He walked over, pulled out the chair next to me, and sat down, playing the role of the benevolent guardian. “Clara, stop being difficult.” His tone softened, even carrying a hint of imperceptible coaxing. “Ever since Stella arrived, you’ve been so cold to me. But she’s the woman I love, the wife I’m going to marry.” Liam paused, reaching out to touch my head, but I subtly avoided his hand. His hand froze in mid-air, then he awkwardly withdrew it. “If you truly love me,” He looked at me, saying something that made me feel utterly disgusted. “You should love my wife too.” My stomach churned. Liam’s gaze fell on my desk, where a few small gifts he had given me were displayed. He walked over, as if surveying his spoils of war. He picked up a doll, the first gift he had given me when I first arrived at the Liam household. “See? You’ve kept all these things so well.” He held up the doll, shaking it at me as if showing off. “And you still say you don’t love me?” I looked at the object in his hand, saying nothing. His tone suddenly shifted, the warmth on his face instantly vanishing, becoming cold and stern. “You should put all these things away.” He tossed the doll back onto the desk, his voice impatient. “Stella is pregnant now, her emotions are sensitive. Seeing these things might make her overthink, might upset her.” He looked at me, word by word. “I wouldn’t want anything to happen to my wife and son.” I finally looked up at him. “Mm.” I acknowledged him. Then, right in front of him, I picked up the gifts he had given me that were still on the desk, the doll, the remains of the music box, and other odds and ends, one by one, and, without a trace of hesitation, threw them into a storage box in the corner. My movements were decisive. Not a hint of reluctance.
Clara POV Seeing me treat those gifts so roughly, Liam, instead, got anxious. He lunged forward, grabbed my wrist, and snatched a little rabbit hairpin from the storage box. “Clara!” He growled, a tension in his voice he didn’t even realize. “Can’t you be gentler? You broke the little rabbit!” That hairpin was a gift from him on my tenth birthday. I’d cherished it for years. I even still wore it sometimes. I looked at him, at his absurdly angry expression, and found it utterly laughable. He himself told me to put them away. I did exactly that. And now he was furious. Liam seemed to realize his own irrational behavior. He lashed out in embarrassment, letting go of my hand, and began to attack me with even more venomous words. “Are you a drama queen?” He sneered, his eyes full of contempt. “You’re clearly crazy about me. Who are you putting on this act for now?” He stared at me, as if trying to find a single crack in my composure. “Clara, I’m telling you, if you actually manage to forget me, I’ll change my name!” I ignored him. To prove how generous he was, and to remind me who was in control, Liam pulled out his phone and transferred a hundred thousand dollars to me. “Take the money and visit a few countries.” He shoved his phone screen in my face, his voice dripping with condescension. “Come back in a month. By then, Stella’s pregnancy will be stable.” I looked at the “transfer successful” notification on my phone and said nothing. Liam seemed to have finally regained some sense of control. He even thoughtfully gave me a few tips for traveling abroad, which areas had poor security, which seasons had unpredictable weather. Finally, Liam looked at me and said meaningfully, “Have a good time abroad. Don’t miss me too much.” He paused, as if emphasizing his new status. “I’ll be a married man now. You’ll have to adjust.” With that, he turned and left the room. After Liam left, I looked at the storage box. Inside, piled up, were the gifts I had discarded, the ones Liam had then “rescued.” It felt incredibly ironic. I took out the fourth gift. It was a rare poetry collection, with Liam’s signed dedication on the flyleaf: To my love, Clara. I carried the book to the window. Page by page, I tore out the leaves, then let them go. The pages drifted out the window, scattering across the garden below. Next, I took out the fifth gift. It was a brass compass. Liam gave it to me, saying he hoped I’d always find my way home. I took a small hammer from my desk drawer. I placed the compass on the floor, raised the hammer, and smashed down. Again and again. The glass cover cracked. The needle bent. The brass casing was battered beyond recognition. Until it became a pile of unrecognizable pieces. I no longer needed to find my way back to this home. This was never my home.
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