Author: Momo Chan

Ten days before I was supposed to move into my college dorm, I finally broke down and texted the family group chat. “So, when are we leaving for that Miami graduation trip we talked about?” A full day passed. Silence. Then, at six in the evening, my sister’s profile picture flashed on the screen. “Emergency! Need cash for concert tickets right NOW!” The family chat, dead for twenty-four hours, exploded instantly, burying my message beneath a avalanche of notifications. Within seconds, Mom and Dad sent a thousand-dollar Zelle transfer. “Get four tickets, sweetie. Take your brother too. Whole family goes.” Tony immediately chimed in with a whine. “Who wants to go to some stupid pop concert?! I want a new iPhone!” “Besides, when her high school entrance exam scores came out, I already had to drag myself to Miami with her! Why do we have to compromise for her again?!” I stared at the glowing screen, my mind going completely blank. All summer—for two agonizing months—I had been waiting, counting down the days for our family trip. And they had already gone? Without me? “When did you go?” I typed, my fingers trembling. “Why didn’t anyone tell me?” The moment I pressed send, my text was swallowed by Mom’s reply to Tony. “Fine, fine, we’ll upgrade your phone tomorrow, but you’re still coming to the concert.” “We do things as a family. Everyone stays together. No one gets left behind.” No one left behind. Except me. Again. My message was filtered out like spam, pushed up the screen until it disappeared entirely into the abyss of their plans. A small, quiet laugh bubbled up from my chest. If their world had no room for me, I was done trying to squeeze through the cracks. I opened a travel app and bought a one-way Amtrak ticket to Boston. When the trip was over, I would go straight to campus and check into my dorm. For the rest of my life, the road back to this house would no longer feature me. … The screen flashed with a confirmation: “Ticket Booked Successfully.” I tapped back to the family group chat. In less than two minutes, the unread count had surged past ninety-nine. Piper had proudly posted a screenshot of her confirmation email. “Got the tickets! All four of them!” “I don’t care what anyone has going on that night, you clear your schedules for me!” Mom and Dad replied immediately. “Aye, aye, Cap! Schedules cleared. Just waiting on orders from our little princess.” Even Tony dropped a dutiful “1” in agreement. In this chat, no matter who spoke, everyone responded instantly. Except when it was me. My eyes drifted to the title at the top of the screen: “Welcome Home, Cathy.” Dad had created the group three years ago, the day they brought me back from my grandmother’s house in the countryside. He told me that if I ever needed anything, I just had to ask in the chat, and the family would be there for me. Yet, whenever I texted to ask for the Wi-Fi password, or which bus line took me to my new high school, the chat remained dead silent. When I finally confronted them, Mom offered a smooth, practiced explanation: they were used to being a family of four. Adding a fifth person took time. They needed to adapt. But wasn’t I the one who had to adapt? Three years. The “family of four” they kept on the tip of their tongues never expanded to include me. Even my legal name—Cathy Payne—was something my high school guidance counselor had forced my parents to register at the town hall during freshman orientation. My grandmother had been illiterate and registered me under my childhood nickname, “Birdie.” To save time, my parents tossed together syllables from my siblings’ names—Tony and Piper—to forge “Cathy.” It felt less like a name and more like an afterthought. I almost preferred “Birdie.” A text popped up from Tony. “Chick-fil-A for dinner?” Three “1”s flooded the screen in under five seconds. The fast-food place was right at the entrance of our gated community, less than a ten-minute walk. My stomach let out a hollow growl. I stood up, preparing to head out with them. Then Mom’s private text popped up. “Dad and I are taking Tony and Piper out for burgers. There are leftovers in the fridge. Heat them up for yourself.” I opened the fridge. The only thing inside was a small bowl of vegetable soup that had been sitting there for three days, covered in a thin, greenish film. I took a picture and sent it to her. I waited half an hour. No reply. An hour later, the front door clicked open. They were home. Tony walked in, his nose glued to his shiny new iPhone, heading straight for his room without looking up. Piper followed, both hands laden with colorful boutique shopping bags, humming as she went to try on her new clothes. I stayed on the couch, staring blankly at the TV, unmoving. Mom glanced at me, her brow furrowing in instant irritation. “What’s wrong with you? Your brother and sister come home, and you can’t even say hello?” My eyes fell to her phone, sitting casually on the coffee table. My throat felt like it was coated in dust. “You guys went to Miami. You didn’t say hello to me either.” Mom’s expression froze. A flash of genuine confusion flickered across her eyes. She turned to Dad, exchange a bewildered look. “Didn’t you tell her?” Mom asked. Dad frowned, scratching his chin as if trying to pull a vague memory from thin air. “Wait… she didn’t come with us that weekend?” My knuckles turned white around my phone, then slowly loosened. All summer, I had waited. Every time I brought up our graduation trip, Mom and Dad would say work was too crazy, that we needed to wait a little longer. They waited until they left without me. I picked up my phone and sent Mom an emoji on WeChat. A few seconds passed. Her phone screen on the coffee table stayed pitch black, silent as a grave. For Tony and Piper, my parents had enabled emergency notifications. Whenever the two of them texted, Mom’s phone would chime repeatedly and vibrate like an alarm until she picked it up. Mom waved her hand in front of her face, exasperated. “So you didn’t go. Big deal. There’s plenty of time for trips in the future.” Dad chimed in, stepping closer to point a scolding finger at me. “Cathy, you’re the older sister. Stop competing with Tony and Piper over every little thing. You’re making things difficult for no reason.” I looked up at them, my voice flat. “I wasn’t competing. You promised me a trip if I scored above a 1500 on my SATs.” “If I hit that goal, we’d go together. As a whole family. No one left out.” Mom picked up Piper’s jacket, which had been tossed carelessly onto the floor, and carefully brushed off a specks of lint. She didn’t look at me. “And what did you score, exactly?” The words caught in my throat. The very second my test results came out, I had posted a screenshot in the family chat. Fearing they had missed it, I had even sent it to them individually in private messages. Dad caught my silence and scoffed. “Too ashamed to say it out loud? Look, with those terrible grades of yours, the family didn’t bring it up to protect your self-esteem.” My eyes wandered over to the wall in the dining room, covered in Piper’s academic ribbons and certificates. Yes, I had failed a test once. It was my very first practice exam after moving back here—a new city, a elite private school, a blistering curriculum I couldn’t keep up with. I failed before I even learned where the cafeteria was. At the parent-teacher conference, the look of sheer embarrassment on my parents’ faces became the fuel that drove my desperate, relentless studying for the next three years. I thought that if I became as exceptional as Piper, my messages would finally be answered. It wasn’t until Tony brought home an F on his algebra mid-term—and Dad simply laughed, signed the paper, and took him out for ice cream—that I finally understood. There are a thousand excuses for neglect, but they all boil down to the same brutal truth: you simply aren’t loved. I didn’t bother defending my SAT score. Silently, I turned and walked back into my room—a narrow, windowless space that used to be the house’s storage closet—and began packing my life into a suitcase. My train was the day after tomorrow. I hadn’t managed to get a sleeper car; it would be a grueling twenty-hour ride in a standard seat. The next afternoon, I went out to buy travel toiletries and sunscreen. When I returned, Mom was coming out of my room, pushing my duffel bag and hard-shell suitcase onto the balcony. “Great, you’ve already packed your stuff. That saves us a ton of work,” she said, dusting off her hands. “Cathy, you’ll just have to sleep on the couch for the next few days.” I stared at her, stunned. “Why?” “Because I’m turning your room into a gaming suite for Tony!” Tony poked his head out of his doorway, a triumphant grin plastered on his face. “Come on, Cathy, you’re moving into a college dorm anyway. Leaving the room empty is a total waste.” My fingers tightened around the plastic bag in my hand. My throat burned. “And where am I supposed to stay when I come home for holidays?” Mom carried my comforter out and tossed it onto the balcony floor alongside my bags. “For short breaks, you can just crash on the couch or use an air mattress. For winter break, we’ll just book you a room at a hotel nearby.” She let out a small, relieved sigh, as if she had finally managed to check off a tedious item on her to-do list. “Don’t worry, we won’t abandon you.” She sounded like a landlord finally clearing out a squatter. I bent down and picked up my acceptance letter, which had slipped out of my backpack onto the floor. Once, this piece of heavy cardstock was my ultimate bargaining chip, my desperate plea for their pride and affection. Now, it was the only lifeboat I had left. The doorbell chimed. Delivery workers swept in and out of the foyer, stacking large cardboard boxes in the living room. Dad called out enthusiastically, “Piper! Tony! Come here, quick! The frames and photo albums are here!” The largest package was unboxed to reveal a massive, gallery-wrapped canvas portrait of the family, designed to hang in the center of the living room. I wasn’t in it. It was just like when I was a child living with my grandmother. My parents would print the prettiest photo of Tony and Piper to hang in their living room, updating it every single year. During my first year back, when I heard they were booking a family photo shoot, I was so excited I couldn’t sleep all night. But the next morning, they told me the package had been pre-booked for four people and couldn’t be altered, telling me to wait until next year. The second year, I finally stood in the studio with them. But when the physical album arrived, I was missing again. Only later did I find out that after I left the studio that day, they had taken a second set of photos without me. When picking the final edits, they simply discarded every frame I was in. And this year’s shoot? I hadn’t even known it happened. Noticing me staring silently at the massive frame, Mom pulled a small, loose print from an envelope and shoved it into my hand. “Alright, don’t look so sour. Look, you’re in this one.” I looked down at the photo. There were indeed five people. But the girl standing on the edge was wearing a faded school uniform, completely out of place against the crisp, color-coordinated beige outfits the other four wore. They had taken my senior class photo from the school portal, cropped my head out, and photoshopped me in. I looked at the grand family portrait on the wall, and then at the Frankenstein photo in my palm. It was suddenly so absurd, so utterly pathetic, that I felt nothing at all. I turned, walked into the kitchen, tore the photo into tiny, irrecoverable shreds, and dropped them into the trash can. After dinner, I gathered my comforter and prepared to lay down on the couch for the night. Piper suddenly stepped in front of me, crossing her arms. “My friend is coming over to stay for two nights. How is it going to look if she sees you sleeping on the couch like a beggar?” I stared at her. “She’s your friend. Why would it matter to me?” Piper pursed her lips, sneering. “Because people will talk! They’ll think my family abuses you or something!” “So you “know” it’s unfair,” I said quietly. Piper choked on her words. Her face flushed red with rage, and she turned around to call for backup. “Mom! Dad!” My parents rushed out of the master bedroom, immediately laying into me without asking a single question. “Piper is just thinking about this family’s reputation! Why do you always have to be so confrontational?!” “Cathy, are you even a part of this family or not?!” For three years, I had been an outsider in this house. Now, when they needed me to compromise and swallow my pride, suddenly I was family. I looked at Piper calmly. “Where is your friend sleeping?” “In my room, obviously!” she snapped. “And where am I supposed to sleep?” Mom and Dad answered in unison: “We’ll get you a hotel room.” That was my true weight in their minds. Less than a guest. Less than a stranger. This time, I didn’t argue. “Okay.” I turned toward the balcony, packed my comforter into my duffel bag, and slung my backpack over my shoulder. My train was tomorrow afternoon. Once I checked out of the hotel, I could go straight to the station. I would never have to step foot in this house again. Mom forwarded the hotel reservation details to my phone, her eyes lingering on my heavy luggage. “It’s just two nights. Why are you dragging all your bags with you?” “It was making the balcony look cluttered,” I said casually. Dad opened his mouth to ask something else, but Tony burst out of his room, grabbing their arms. “The interior designer sent over two different concepts for my gaming room! Come help me pick!” I watched the four of them huddle tightly around Tony’s phone screen. I turned and walked out the door. As the front door clicked shut behind me, a strange wave of vertigo washed over me. It felt like three years ago, when I first left my grandmother’s house, holding a suitcase and wearing a backpack. Back then, I was terrified, yet full of fragile hope for the new life awaiting me. Now, all I wanted was to get as far away from them as humanly possible. The roadside motel was located right outside our subdivision. The moment I swiped the keycard and opened the door, a thick, suffocating smell of damp mildew hit my nostrils. I rushed to open all the windows, but the stench lingered, heavy and stale. Looking at the peeling wallpaper and the stained carpet, an uneasy anxiety began to twist in my gut. I remembered the horror stories I’d read online about cheap motels. Following a guide I had seen on social media, I turned off the lights and began checking the room with my phone camera. In the bathroom, behind the plastic vent cover directly above the shower, I saw a tiny, reflective glass lens. A hidden camera. A cold sweat broke out across my back, and a paralyzing terror instantly swallowed me whole. My hands shook violently as I pulled out my phone and instinctively dialed Mom. No answer. I dialed again. Nothing. On the third try, she finally picked up. “Mom…” my voice trembled, raw with panic. “This motel isn’t safe. I found a hidden camera in the bathroom…” The background noise on her end was deafening—music, laughter, chatter. I wasn’t even sure if she could hear me over the noise. Before I could repeat myself, Mom cut me off, her tone dripping with annoyance. “Then call the police! Piper’s throwing a welcome party for her friend right now, and I am up to my neck in host duties.” “Cathy, you’re an adult now. Learn to handle your own problems instead of dumping them on us.” “Click.” The line went dead. The rhythmic “beeep-beeep-beeep” of the disconnected call sounded like a dull blade, severing the very last thread of delusion I held toward them. It took me a long moment to gather my breathing. Then, I dialed 911. I didn’t dare stay in the room. I unlocked the door and stood out in the dimly lit hallway, trembling. Those ten minutes waiting for the officers felt like an eternity. The police arrived, inspected the scene, gathered evidence, and took me to the station to file a report. By the time I finished signing the paperwork, it was nearly midnight. I stepped out of the precinct into the pitch-black night, the terror still clinging to my chest. Seeing my pale face and trembling hands, the officer on duty asked if I needed a ride home. I shook my head. That place was no longer my home. “Officer… could you drop me off at the train station instead?” I spent that night sleeping on a hard metal chair in the station’s waiting hall. It was loud, cold, and uncomfortable. Screaming toddlers, loud snorers, and the smell of stale instant noodles filled the air. Yet, strangely, I slept deeper than I ever had in three years. When I woke up, I bought a bottle of water and a snack from a vending machine. There were two hours left before my train. I pulled up the family group chat: “Welcome Home, Cathy.” The unread count was back to 99+. They were chatting casually about things that had nothing to do with me. This time, I didn’t scroll up to read. I didn’t try to decipher their moods or search for a gap to join in. I tapped “Settings”, scrolled to the bottom, and permanently left the group chat. Then, one by one, I pulled up the contact profiles for Mom, Dad, Tony, and Piper, and added every single one of them to my block list. It felt as though a massive boulder, weighing on my chest for three long years, had finally tumbled into the sea. A middle-aged woman sitting beside me offered a warm smile. “Heading out on vacation, sweetie?” “Something like that,” I smiled back. “Are you local? How long are you going to be away?” I looked toward the boarding gates as the announcement chimed over the speakers. “I’m not coming back.” Never again. Five days later, at the Payne residence. Piper’s friend had left, and Tony’s new gaming room was completely finished. Mom smoothed out the throw pillows on the living room sofa. “Alright, tell Cathy she can come back home now. She actually has a place to sleep this time.” Dad pulled out his phone and dialed my number. “The number you have dialed is currently unavailable…” He blinked, confused. He tried again. The same automated message played. Mom huffed, opening her messaging app to type out a text. “Cathy, have you completely lost your mind out there? Answer your phone!” She hit send. A harsh red exclamation mark popped up next to the bubble. “Message failed to send. You are no longer in this user’s contact list…” The shock on Mom’s face instantly twisted into pure rage. “She blocked me?! How dare she!” Tony, lounging on the recliner, smirked. “Told you. She’s throwing a tantrum because Piper wouldn’t let her sleep on the couch.” Piper glared at him. “If she’s mad, it’s because you stole her room and kicked her out!” “I didn’t steal anything! Before she came back, that room was supposed to be mine anyway! I just let her stay there as a guest!” “Enough! Both of you, shut up!” Dad shouted, rubbing his temples to soothe a pounding headache. He turned to Mom, his tone surprisingly dismissive. “Cathy has always been sensible. She won’t hold a petty grudge over something like this. Besides, the hotel she’s staying at is right at the neighborhood entrance. Let’s just walk over and see what’s going on.” The two of them walked down to the main street. When they arrived at the motel, they froze. The glass doors were sealed shut with heavy police tape, stamped with an official government seal. Mom stood frozen on the sidewalk for several seconds before frantically grabbing the owner of the flower shop next door. “What happened here? Why is this place shut down?” The shopkeeper eyed her up and down. “Shut down? The owner is going to prison for a long time.” “You haven’t heard? That scumbag installed hidden cameras in every single room. Heard he was selling the footage on dark web sites. Pure evil…” Mom stopped hearing the words. Her body went completely rigid as she stared at Dad, her eyes wide with terror. Her throat choked up, and her voice came out as a raspy, trembling whisper. “I… I think I got a call from Cathy the other night… saying she was in danger…”

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My husband walked into our living room with his ex-girlfriend trailing a step behind him. Seconds later, both of them dropped to their knees on the polished hardwood floor. “Laura, please,” Brian begged, his eyes glistening with unshed tears. “Amber’s been diagnosed with acute leukemia. You’re the only bone marrow match in the regional donor database. I’m begging you—donate to her. It’s a simple procedure. It won’t hurt your body at all.” My mother-in-law, Patricia, rushed over, dabbing her tear-stained cheeks with a tissue. “Amber is like a daughter to me! You have to save her, Laura! Where is your heart?!” I felt a sudden, dangerous flicker of pity and was about to nod when a streak of neon-red text flashed sharply across my vision, levitating in the air right before my eyes: [RUN! Do NOT get on that operating table! She doesn’t have leukemia—she’s in end-stage renal failure!] [Your husband is trying to kill you! That donor match report is completely forged. The moment you’re under anesthesia, the crooked doctor they bribed is going to harvest your kidney!] [When you wake up, Brian and Amber will have gutted your company and left you to starve to death locked in a basement! Your parents will die in a staged car crash on their way to look for you!] I stared at the kneeling couple. Cold sweat drenched my spine, freezing the blood in my veins. “I can’t,” I blurted out, my voice raspy and flat. “I just tested positive for Hepatitis B. I’m legally barred from donating.” … Silence descended on the living room like a heavy, suffocating shroud. Patricia’s weeping stopped instantly. Her face contorted into ugly, raw fury. “Hepatitis B?!” She scrambled to her feet, pointing an accusatory finger at my face. “It’s just a bone marrow pull! It’s not going to kill you!” She spat the words at me, screeching, “Amber has no one else in this world! She finally gets a matching donor, and you’re going to be this wicked? You’re just going to sit there and watch her die?!” I narrowed my eyes, holding her glare. “Do you even understand basic medicine, Patricia? Injecting marrow or transferring fluids into someone who is severely immunosuppressed means an infection could be fatal.” “Are you trying to save her, or accelerate her death?” Amber chimed in right on cue, letting out a fragile, shuddering cough. A single tear hung poetically on her chin. “Mrs. Rodney, don’t blame Laura… it’s just my cursed fate…” She looked up at Brian with big, pathetic eyes, then gave me a meek, trembling glance. “Laura is so lucky to have a husband like Brian. I’m already envious enough. I wouldn’t dare ask her to risk her life for mine.” Brian cupped Amber’s face gently, his heart visibly bleeding for her. Then he spun around to face me, his brow heavily furrowed. “Babe, Hepatitis B is manageable. We can just run a quick blood panel to check your viral load,” he pressed, his tone dripping with desperate affection. “If your counts are normal, you can still save her. You rescue stray cats off the street, Laura! This is a living, breathing human being. You can’t just turn your back on her!” Patricia snorted, folding her arms over her chest. “Selfish, that’s what she is! Making up pathetic excuses!” “Enough,” I interrupted, my tone icy cold. “My body belongs to me. If I say I’m not donating, I’m not donating.” Another line of glowing text drifted lazily across my field of vision: [Good. Don’t listen to them—they’re guilt-tripping you.] [Do NOT drink the water Brian is about to hand you. It’s spiked with liquid Midazolam. He plans to knock you out and haul you straight to an underground chop shop!] [He already changed the beneficiary on your $20 million accidental death policy to his name this morning.] I dug my fingernails deep into my palms until the sharp sting of pain kept me anchored in cold, calculating reality. Seeing my unyielding posture, Brian’s rigid expression suddenly softened into practiced tenderness. “Okay, honey, don’t be mad,” he said, taking a step back and sounding contrite. “I was just overly anxious. I didn’t stop to consider your health.” He turned and walked over to the water dispenser, filling a tumbler with lukewarm water before walking back to stand over me. “Drink some water and relax. We’ll figure out the marrow situation tomorrow.” “Fine,” I said, staring up into his soft, devotion-filled eyes. I took the glass and pretended to take a long, deep gulp. The second he turned his back to comfort his mother and Amber, I pulled a crumpled paper napkin from my coat pocket, spitting every drop of liquid straight into it under my breath. I purposely left a tiny residue of water at the bottom of the glass. When five minutes passed and I showed no sign of slipping into unconsciousness, a shadow of suspicion flickered across Brian’s eyes. But as I sat there calmly, he eventually excused himself with his mother to drop Amber off at her clinic for her “medication.” The instant the heavy front door clicked shut, I bolted it from the inside. I didn’t cry. I didn’t break down. Confronting him now would only blow my cover. I pulled out my phone and dialed my best friend, Rachel, a senior partner at the city’s top litigation firm. “Rachel. Bring your most ruthless investigator and come to my apartment right now.” “What happened?” I stared at the smudged glass sitting on the coffee table. “Someone is trying to murder me.” When Rachel arrived with her team, I carefully sealed the tumbler into a clear evidence bag and handed it over. “Take this to the top toxicology lab in the state,” I instructed coldly. “Rush order. I need to know every chemical compound in this glass.” Rachel took in my pale face and gasped. “Brian did this?” “Yes.” I opened my laptop, logged into my company’s enterprise network, and pulled up Brian’s entire financial approval history. “I need another favor, Rachel. Subpoena or pull his personal bank records from the last six months, plus our corporate ledgers. Look for off-the-books wire transfers to illicit medical clinics or offshore entities.” Rachel’s expression grew grave. “You think he’s embezzling?” “Worse,” I laughed bitterly. “I think he’s using my money to bribe corrupt surgeons to harvest my kidney.” That night, the toxicology report came back. When Rachel emailed me the encrypted PDF, her voice was shaking over the speakerphone. “The residual fluid contained high-concentration Midazolam—a medical-grade surgical anesthetic. Anyone who drank that would be completely unconscious within ten minutes! Is Brian insane?!” I stared at the chemical compound listed on the screen. The last lingering ember of affection I held for my husband died right then and there. I saved the report to an encrypted cloud drive. “He’s not insane. He just thinks I’m stupid.” The next morning, Brian returned home and handed me a thick folder. “Honey, I felt terrible all night,” he said softly, leaning over my chair. “I haven’t paid enough attention to your health over the years. I set up an appointment at a private clinic—if you sign these intake forms, you can skip the waitlist for a full executive health checkup today.” I took the clipboard. A row of bright red neon text flared before my eyes: [DON’T SIGN! It’s a trick! Tucked between the intake forms is a fake ‘Organ Donation Consent Form’!] [If you sign, once you’re inside the black-market clinic, they’ll use it as legal cover to say you voluntarily surrendered your kidney!] [Flip to page three and hold it up to the light! Look for the watermark from ‘Crestview Medical’!] My fingers tightened on the pen. I turned to page three, angling the paper toward the morning sunlight streaming through the window. Sure enough, faint, dark watermark seals from the illegal clinic bled through the back of the page. I sneered. “I’m not signing this. I just had a comprehensive physical last month.” Brian’s face turned pale. Panic flashed in his eyes before he snapped, raising his voice defensively: “Laura, what is your problem?! I stayed up all night begging specialists for this appointment, and you throw it back in my face? Have you been keeping secrets from me this whole time?!” His eyes reddened with manufactured hurt. “Amber is hanging by a thread! I just wanted to check your liver and see if there was any way to save her… I’ve been married to you for years, and I’m only now realizing how heartless you are!” Patricia jumped out of her armchair, screeching, “Exactly! Act like a checkup is gonna kill you! Amber is dying in the hospital while you sit here making excuses! You evil woman!” The same old moral blackmail. “Say whatever you want,” I said softly, dropping the papers back onto the table. “I’m not signing a single line.” The following morning, Brian acted as if nothing had happened, making breakfast and bringing a plate of scrambled eggs and milk to me with an anxious, gentle look. “Babe, I was too hasty last night. I’m sorry. But if you have Hep B, getting treated is urgent. I reached out to a contact at an elite private hospital—ultra-discrete, with specialists trained overseas.” The floating text burst onto the screen violently: [DON’T GO! That private clinic, ‘Crestview Medical,’ is an illegal chop shop he secretly bought shares in last year!] [They already have the OR set up and the organ transport box prepped! The second you step inside, they’ll put you under and cut out your kidney!] I took a sip of milk and looked up. “A private hospital? No.” Brian froze. “Why? Their equipment is top-of-the-line—” “I only trust top-tier public academic medical centers,” I said, wiping my lips with a napkin. “For infectious diseases, if a private clinic isn’t fully compliant, I run the risk of surgical malpractice.” A flicker of panic crossed his eyes. “Honey, public hospitals are packed. You’ll wait for hours. And what if we bump into someone we know…?” “So what if we bump into an acquaintance? Is being sick something to hide?” I locked eyes with him. “Or does this private hospital of yours have something to hide?” His throat bobbed violently as he swallowed hard, forcing a tight smile. “Of course not. I was just thinking about your comfort. If you prefer the university hospital, then we’ll go there. I’ll drive you.” I nodded, my defenses fully raised. At three o’clock that afternoon, I got into Brian’s car. I quietly flipped the switch on the voice recorder hidden in my coat pocket and shared my real-time GPS location with Rachel. Halfway through the drive, Brian glanced at the navigation screen, his brow furrowing deeply. “Babe, there’s a multi-car pileup on the highway. We’re going to miss our appointment at the medical center. Let’s just pivot to that private facility. The specialists there are incredible.” “No,” I snapped, my tone icy and resolute. “If we miss it, we reschedule.” Seeing my unwavering stance, the last remnant of Brian’s hypocritical warmth shattered. “You don’t get a choice anymore!” With a sharp click, Brian locked all the doors and windows from the master control. Simultaneously, a pungent, sweet-smelling vapor began pouring from the AC vents! The floating text screamed: [HOLD YOUR BREATH! IT’S HIGH-CONCENTRATION ANESTHETIC SPRAY!] [YOU’RE IN DANGER! THIS ROAD IS A DEAD ZONE WITH NO CELL SIGNAL! RACHEL CAN’T TRACK YOU!] “Brian! Unlock the doors!” I slammed my hands against the window, but my head immediately began to spin, heavy and numb. Brian watched me through the rearview mirror, his soft eyes now black with cold cruelty. “Stop fighting it, Laura. Amber can’t wait any longer. If she doesn’t get a transplant now, she’s dead. Don’t worry… once I take your kidney, I’ll take real good care of you… if you survive.” When my consciousness slipped away, the car pulled into the loading dock behind the illegal clinic. Corrupt doctors swarmed the vehicle, pulling my limp body onto a gurney. “Get her to the basement OR! Prepare full anesthesia!” When I woke up, strapped to a cold metal operating table, my eyes burned red with rage. I roared through gritted teeth, “Brian! This is murder!” Brian leaned down, patting my cheek with an eerie, dark smile. “Murder? Don’t use such dramatic words. The insurance company and the police will only hear that a loving wife bravely risked her life in a private procedure to save her husband’s ex… and tragically died on the operating table.” Amber walked out from the shadows in hospital scrubs, her face glowing with triumphant malice. “Thanks for the kidney, Laura. When you get to the other side, don’t hold a grudge against Brian and me.” They wheeled me into the freezing OR. The surgical lights flashed on, blinding me with brutal brilliance. A disgraced doctor stepped forward, holding a long, heavy syringe filled with clear fluid, advancing toward my neck. “Prep the ice container. Commencing nephrectomy.” The floating text flashed violently one last time: [IT’S OVER! THE OR IS LOCKED FROM THE INSIDE! ONCE THAT ANESTHETIC HITS YOUR BLOODSTREAM, YOU WILL NEVER WAKE UP!] [THE BUILDING IS SURROUNDED BY BRAVO-LEVEL MERCENARIES HE HIRED! THIS IS A DEAD END!] The needle hovered centimeters from my carotid artery. I could feel the sharp tip nicking my skin— BOOM—!!! The heavy reinforced steel door of the underground OR was blown off its hinges with a deafening blast!

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My husband, Scott, suffered from selective amnesia. Conveniently, he only ever managed to forget the things I said. On our third wedding anniversary, after placing the final dish on the dining table, I leaned in and whispered softly to him, “My stomach’s been acting up again. I made an appointment for an endoscopy tomorrow morning. Could you drive me?” He looked up at me, his eyes blank and bewildered. “Huh? What did you just say?” Beside him sat his childhood best friend, Taryn. She let out a small, quiet laugh that sounded entirely like a deliberate provocation. She cleared her throat with an exaggerated cough. “Oh gosh, I think I’m coming down with something.” Scott instantly turned to her, his posture tight with concern. “A cold? Did you kick off your blankets again last night?” Then, as if suddenly remembering my presence, he turned back to me with a look of practiced remorse. “I’m so sorry, Cassie. You know how my brain is. I just can’t seem to retain anything you tell me.” I didn’t say a word. I simply stood up and quietly left the table. The next morning, I went to the hospital alone. The diagnosis wasn’t a stomach issue. It was a threatened miscarriage. Sitting on the cold paper of the examination table, I dialed Scott’s number. “The doctor says I might lose the baby.” His voice came through the line, smooth and effortless as always. “Huh? What did you just say?” Before I could answer, Taryn’s giggles echoed from his end of the line. He hadn’t bothered to mute the call. “Shut up, that’s hilarious,” Taryn was saying, her voice dripping with amusement. “Is she seriously making up stories now just to get your attention?” “I swear,” she added with a snicker, “I bet she’ll go her whole life without realizing this is all just a game.” … Then came Scott’s voice, warm and laced with quiet amusement. “It really is the perfect excuse. Remember when her mom was in the hospital? I took you to Disneyland for the weekend, came home, told her my amnesia flared up and I forgot, and she didn’t even get mad.” Taryn couldn’t stop laughing. “Next time she has her period, hand her a glass of ice water and tell her you forgot! God, I would pay to see the look on her face. Hahaha!” I gripped the phone, a bone-deep chill spreading through my chest until my whole body went numb. A game? Shortly after we got married, Scott told me he was diagnosed with intermittent amnesia. He would forget things I told him, forget my birthday, forget my severe seafood allergy. We visited countless specialists across the state, but none of the scans showed any structural damage. The head of his department at the hospital eventually sat me down, looking grave, and explained it was likely a rare, stress-induced psychological condition. I had been terrified. Panicked, even. I abandoned my plans for graduate school so I could stay home full-time to manage his routine, carefully curating his daily life, tracking his meals, walking on eggshells every single day. And all of it… was just a game to them? I didn’t make a sound. I pulled the phone from my ear and quietly tapped the red button to end the call. A single tear slipped down my cheek and splashed onto the back of my hand. The OB-GYN quickly pulled a tissue from the box on her desk and handed it to me. “Oh, honey, don’t cry just yet. A threatened miscarriage doesn’t mean it’s over. If you get plenty of bed rest and follow the treatment plan, there’s still a really good chance we can save the pregnancy.” I stared at the doctor, forcing my lips to curve into a pale, hollow smile. “No, thank you, Doctor.” “Please schedule the surgery. I don’t want this child.” When I stumbled out of the clinic, I had to lean against the cold hallway wall. My stomach twisted into sharp, violent cramps. To get pregnant with this child, I had spent two grueling years suffering through medical intervention. My stomach had been bruised black and blue from daily hormone injections. I had swallowed bitter herbal concoctions until my taste buds went numb, spending half my mornings hunched over the toilet bowl dry-heaving. The fertility treatments destroyed my immune system. I suffered from chronic stomach pain and nighttime migraines that kept me awake for hours. On so many late, dark nights, I had curled into a tight ball on the mattress, tears soaking the pillow. I used to shake Scott awake, gasping, “My head hurts so bad… Could you please just get me a glass of warm water?” He would simply roll over, turning his back to me, his voice heavy with sleep. “What did you just say?” His amnesia was acting up again. Every time he had one of his “episodes,” he wouldn’t just forget my words—he would become impossibly short-tempered. I would grab his arm, sobbing, begging him through the pain. “I’m suffering so much… I just asked if you could get me some water…” He would yank his arm out of my grip and pull the comforter over his head. When the sound of my weeping finally became too loud to ignore, he would sit up, glaring at me with utter annoyance. “Can’t you be a little more mature?” he would snap. “The doctor specifically said you need to keep your stress levels low while trying to conceive! You throwing these hysterical fits every night—who do you think is going to suffer if it affects the baby?” “You know I have a condition! If you keep keeping me awake and my health gets worse, who do you think is going to end up taking care of me?” Back then, I swallowed the agony. I endured it all for the sake of the baby, and for him. And to think, from beginning to end, it was nothing more than an inside joke. Since he chose to forget, then there was no longer any need for me to speak. I opened my phone and sent a short text to my former university advisor: [Dr. Bowen, is that East African field research position still available? If so, I’d like to accept.] By the time the procedure was over, evening had fallen. I unlocked the front door and stepped inside. Laughter and loud chatter spilled out from the living room. Scott and Taryn’s entire circle of friends were gathered in our house. They had all gone to middle school together and had been an impenetrable clique for over a decade. Years ago, when Scott’s “doctor” suggested he spend more time around familiar faces to help stimulate his memory, I made them feel as welcome as possible. To support his recovery, I let them turn our carefully decorated home into their personal clubhouse, coming and going as they pleased. At the sound of the front door closing, every head turned toward me. A series of knowing, shared glances passed between them. Taryn intentionally cleared her throat, letting out a bright, sugary laugh. “Speaking of which, Scott and Cassie have been married for three years now, haven’t they? Since someone’s amnesia never seems to get any better, why don’t I help jog your memory a bit?” Scott popped a mandarin orange segment into her mouth. “Jog my memory about what?” “About how ridiculously sweet you used to be to her!” Taryn covered her mouth, giggling. “Back in the day, you were so eager. You used to drive across town every single evening just to pick her up from work, and you’d wait in line for half an hour at that bakery just to buy her those hot almond pastries.” Scott looked at Taryn, his expression morphing into blank confusion. “Huh? What did you just say?” The game had started again. Taryn widened her eyes in exaggerated disbelief. “No way! You seriously don’t remember any of that?” He shook his head slowly, looking utterly baffled. “Not a clue. Did I really do shit like that for her? Man, I must have been so pathetic.” I stood at the threshold of the entryway, watching him. A tight, suffocating knot pulled tight around my chest. To think that the love and thoughtfulness he had once shown me—the genuine effort he had put into our early days—was now casually dismissed by his own mouth as a embarrassing joke. His friends finally finished laughing before one of them called out to me lazily. “Hey, Cassie, you’re finally back! Where’s the takeout Scott asked you to pick up?” “Yeah, where are my street tacos?” another chimed in. “Did you get the sourdough from that bakery downtown? You didn’t forget, right?” I stood there, silent. I thought back to how I used to view these people. I thought they were coming over out of genuine concern for Scott’s health. I had tried so hard to win their approval, bending over backward to do whatever they asked. I had noticed it before, of course—how Scott’s amnesia only ever seemed to strike when he was dealing with me. When Taryn had a mild cold, Scott would remember to remind her to wear a scarf a whole month later. When his buddies wanted specific favors, he never once forgot. So why was it that when I was hospitalized with severe pneumonia, he couldn’t even remember my room number? When I had asked him about it back then, he had looked at me with eyes so full of guilt and sorrow, whispering, “Cassie, I’m so sorry. I’m trying so hard to get better. Please don’t give up on me.” Later, as if to prove to me that his condition was unpredictable, he started playing out his “episodes” in front of his friends, too. I remembered one afternoon while I was chopping vegetables in the kitchen, listening to the chatter from the living room. “Honestly, I don’t get what Scott sees in her,” one of his friends had sneered. “She’s so bland and overly sensitive. Always walking around with a long face like some tragic martyr.” “Right? And zero sense of style,” another added. “That dress she wore to the dinner last week looked like something out of a thrift bargain bin.” Scott had just sat there, smiling casually, saying nothing. Only when he noticed his friends looking at him expecting a response did he slowly blink and ask, “Huh? What did you guys just say?” He “forgot” those insults, too. He conveniently “couldn’t hear” them belittling his wife. It was all a game. A game crafted specifically to isolate me, humiliate me, and mock my presence. “Hey, Cassie! I’m talking to you, did you hear me?” a guy named Chad yelled out, his voice sharp and aggressive. “Where’s the beer we asked for? Why are you standing there empty-handed?” I lowered my head numbly and pulled out my phone. Scott had indeed sent me a text two hours ago—a laundry list of errands and food orders. At that exact moment, I had been lying on an operating table, feeling the quiet, agonizing void as a three-month-old life was surgically scraped from inside my body. “I didn’t see the message,” I said softly. Scott’s face darkened instantly. “You didn’t see it?” “You carry your phone around like a prop! Everyone’s been sitting here starving, waiting on you for hours, and all you have to say is ‘I didn’t see it’? Can you do “anything” right?” Right on cue, Taryn pressed a hand to her chest, letting out a sharp, dramatic gasp as if she were about to faint. Scott panicked immediately, leaning over her. “Taryn? What’s wrong?” “It’s nothing…” she murmured weakly. “I think… I think my blood sugar just dropped because I haven’t eaten in so long…” Scott’s expression hardened with panic. He stood up, marched over to the dining room sideboard, and pulled out a decorative gift box from the bottom shelf. It was a box of artisanal, hand-crafted nougat—a specialty gift my former professor had brought back for me, something I had been saving for a special occasion. Instinctively, I took a step forward. “Please don’t open that.” “It was a gift from my advisor. I have regular fruit candies in my purse—” “What does it matter who gave it to you?” He glared at me, his voice sharp with hostility. “Because you couldn’t be bothered to pick up food, Taryn is practically passing out! Severe low blood sugar can be dangerous, don’t you know that?” He tore open the packaging without hesitation, unwrapped a piece of candy, and delicately fed it to Taryn’s mouth. I stood frozen, watching him. Dangerous? So he “did” know that low blood sugar could be dangerous. Yet, during the months I was taking aggressive fertility medication, my stomach was so torn up that I couldn’t keep food down for days. One night, I woke up drenched in a cold sweat, shaking violently from severe hypoglycemia, sobbing as I begged him to go to the kitchen and grab me a piece of candy. What had he done back then? His amnesia had conveniently flared up. He had squinted at me through half-lidded eyes in the dark, murmuring, “What did you just say?” I watched as the decorative box was ripped apart, the friends laughing as they passed my specialty candy around like party favors. Taryn looked up at me, her eyes wide with innocent distress. “Cassie, please don’t be mad at me. My blood sugar really dropped, I didn’t mean to take your candy… I’ll buy you another box to make it up to you, okay?” Scott patted her head gently. “Why are you explaining anything to her? Her heart is the size of a needle’s eye.” His friends chimed in with easy agreement. “Seriously, Cassie, you’re being way too petty. It’s just a box of candy, how much could it possibly cost? It doesn’t even taste that good anyway.” “Taryn isn’t feeling well, and as the host, you don’t show an ounce of care.” “Scott, you really need to get your wife under control. That sour face of hers is an absolute buzzkill.” Feeling his authority challenged in front of his peers, Scott cleared his throat with a stiff frown. “Alright, that’s enough. She’s pregnant, so her mood is unpredictable. Don’t hold it against her.” He turned to the guys. “Give me a minute, fellas. I’ll drive her out to grab some food, and then we’ll come back and drink properly.” Without waiting for my response, he grabbed my arm and dragged me toward the door. A dull, tearing pain throbbed in my lower abdomen. I stumbled from the sudden movement, but he roughly shoved me into the passenger seat anyway. As he slammed the car into drive and yanked the steering wheel, he began a relentless tirade: “Cassie, are you trying to humiliate me on purpose?” “Taryn and the guys come over to help me work through my condition! Would it have killed you to pick up a few errands?” “Those are my closest friends. You married me—is showing a little basic hospitality to my friends really that much to ask?” I kept my eyes fixed on the dark road ahead, saying nothing. He really was deeply committed to this game of his. I knew why he was acting like this. Within his social circle, Scott occupied the very bottom of the food chain. Taryn was the golden center—wealthy, attractive, and surrounded by people constantly vying for her attention. The rest of the guys all came from prominent, well-off families. Scott was the only one who had tagged along behind them since middle school, accustomed to playing the desperate court jester just to stay included. Deep down, he was consumed by an overwhelming insecurity. And to curry favor with them—to prove to them that he was a man of importance—he established his dominance by mistreating me. He wanted to parade me in front of them: “Look, my wife obeys my every command. I hold absolute authority in my house.” “Say something! Are you mute?” Scott yelled, slamming his hand against the steering wheel when I remained silent. “Where the hell were you all afternoon anyway?” I took a quiet breath. “I had surgery today.” He hit the brakes at a red light, his brow furrowing. “Surgery? You mean the endoscopy?” “God, stop being so theatrical. Taryn had an endoscopy last year and she didn’t throw a dramatic fit over it.” I turned my head to look at him. “You remembered?” He froze for a fraction of a second, realizing he had slipped up. But his ego quickly took over, and he sneered defensively. “Yeah, I remembered. That’s how my condition works. Besides, isn’t it a good thing that I remembered? It means my brain is actually recovering.” I looked away and didn’t utter another word. The day Taryn had her endoscopy was my birthday. He had forgotten my birthday entirely to stay by her bedside for twenty-four hours straight. When he finally came home, he had used that same remorseful look to tell me he couldn’t remember. I followed him quietly through the grocery store as he picked up takeout and snacks. When we reached the apartment building lobby, I instinctively reached out to take one of the heavy bags from his hands. Scott pulled his arm back. “Forget it. You’re pregnant, don’t go lifting stuff. I’ve got it.” Hearing those words, an overwhelming sense of irony washed over me. I suppose that was the single crumb of pity he had left for me—or rather, for the child he thought I was carrying. When he pushed open the apartment door, the living room was thick with a haze of cigarette smoke, empty beer cans littering the rug. Seeing us return, Chad immediately raised his voice. “Hey! Drinking on an empty stomach is boring. We want homemade dumplings!” Scott grinned easily. “No problem. Cassie can whip some up.” He turned to me, his tone commanding. “Go on into the kitchen. Make a few different fillings—make sure to do a separate batch of shrimp ones for Taryn, she loves those.” I walked into the kitchen without arguing. The local anesthesia from the procedure had completely worn off. A sharp, twisting pain radiated through my lower belly, sending cold sweat dripping down my back. I gripped the chef’s knife, forcing myself to chop the vegetables, but my vision began to blur into dark spots. “Thump.” The blade slipped, slicing deep into my left index finger. Crimson blood surged out instantly, dripping onto the wooden cutting board. I stared at the wound in a dull daze. Strange. I didn’t feel any pain in my finger at all. Perhaps when a person is hurting badly enough somewhere else, a minor cut no longer registers. I stepped out of the kitchen, intending to grab a bandage from the hallway cabinet. But as soon as Taryn saw the blood on my hand, she suddenly let out a sharp, dramatic squeal. “Ouch! That hurts!” Scott rushed to her side first, taking her hand in his with frantic concern. “What happened? Did you get a splinter?” He looked down at her faintly pink fingertips with immense heart-wrenching worry, then whirled around and screamed at me: “Cassie! When you brought out the wooden chopsticks earlier, couldn’t you have rubbed them down first to smooth out the splinters?” “Taryn has delicate skin! She’s not built coarse and tough like you!” Only after he finished shouting did his eyes finally land on my blood-soaked hand. His brows pulled together in deep irritation. “Why are you so uselessly clumsy? How do you manage to slice your hand wide open just chopping vegetables?” “Go clean it up right now. Don’t get blood in the dumpling filling—how is anyone supposed to eat that?” I stared at him. His attention had already returned to Taryn’s finger. The rest of the group crowded around her, some offering tissues, others blowing gently on her hand to soothe her. I pulled out a small bandage, wrapped it tightly around my finger, and turned back into the kitchen. They ate the meal with loud, boisterous delight. After dinner, they lounged across our couch. Someone casually suggested, “Now that we’re full, Scott, how about we help you jog a few more memories from the past?” Taryn giggled softly. “Oh, I love this! Who’s going first?” Chad glanced at me, deliberately raising his voice so it echoed across the room. “I’ll go!” “Scott probably doesn’t know this, but a while back, I saw some explicit videos online that looked just like his wife.” “You know why she was willing to marry you despite your brain issues, Scott? Because she was out sleeping around, and a dumbass like you wouldn’t even know the difference!” Laughter erupted around the room, growing louder and more unrestrained as they all turned to look at Scott. This game had likely started as a private joke between Scott and Taryn to mock me. But over time, the group had discovered a far more malicious way to play. Under the rules of the game, Scott had amnesia. That gave them the perfect cover to hurl cruel, degrading insults at me under the guise of “helping him recover.” If I cried or got angry, they would laugh it off, calling me overly sensitive, reminding me that the “doctor” said aggressive stimulation therapy was good for Scott’s brain. Back then, because Scott was a medical professional himself, I had never doubted them. I had forced myself to swallow the humiliation, plastering on a fake smile to play along. But I wasn’t going to swallow it anymore. I stood up, my voice entirely flat. “I’m not feeling well. I’m going to sleep. You guys can keep helping him remember.” Seeing that I refused to play my part, Chad slammed his hand onto the coffee table. “Go to sleep? Everyone’s having a good time, who are you giving attitude to?” “Don’t think just because you’re pregnant we all have to bow down to you. Unless you’re planning on popping out a kid for every single one of us here, shut up and sit down! Hahaha!” Feeling his authority challenged in front of his friends, Scott joined in, barking at me: “Cassie, did you take the wrong meds today? Sit back down!” “You’re three months along, well past the delicate stage! I’m the doctor here, don’t you think I know what’s safe?” I looked at the face of the man I had once loved with everything I had. Without a word, I reached into my bag, pulled out the official hospital discharge summary and surgical consent form, and laid it flat on the glass coffee table. Under the stunned glares of the room, I kept my eyes locked on Scott. “The baby is gone.” “When I said I had surgery today, I meant an abortion.” “Scott, I want a divorce.”

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My little garden was completely decimated by bugs. In a sheer panic, I texted my long-distance online boyfriend for help. “Babe, disaster. I wasn’t careful and my little garden got infected. Bugs everywhere. What do I do?” The “typing…” bubble on my screen danced for a solid ten minutes before his reply finally popped up. “Babe, I’m clean. Just use mine from now on, okay?” A second later, an image loaded. It was a photo of his bare torso, a black lace ribbon tied strategically around his… anatomy. I stared at my phone, absolutely petrified. Turned to stone. Ever since that day, my online boyfriend made it his daily mission to send me an endless stream of unhinged, heavily curated thirst traps. It was a routine I had almost gotten used to—until my older brother, Darren, dragged me to an off-campus pub with his friends, and I laid eyes on a man so stunningly gorgeous it felt like a personal attack. When he leaned over to pull out a chair, a silver chain slipped from beneath the collar of his Henley. I froze. Wasn’t that the heavy-link collar I took off my Golden Retriever and mailed to my online boyfriend? I couldn’t help myself. I clicked my tongue against the roof of my mouth in two sharp, familiar bursts. Without missing a beat, the gorgeous man subconsciously let out a low, breathless, “Woof…” 01 I couldn’t shake the feeling that I knew this guy from somewhere. It was the mole on his hand that gave him away. The exact same placement, the exact same long, elegant fingers as the hands I’d watched for hours on video calls as my online boyfriend built custom mechanical keyboards. Darren noticed me staring a hole into the guy’s skull and leaned in, offering some well-meaning brotherly advice. “Don’t let the brooding Abercrombie model look fool you, Quinn. He’s a total headcase.” Darren took a swig of his beer. “His online girlfriend cheated on him a while back, and now he spends his days trying to win her back by sending her dirty photos. If it were me, I would’ve dumped a girl like that eight hundred times over.” I choked on my ice-cold Coke, nearly spitting it across the table. Darren thumped me on the back. “Jesus, Quinn. You’re twenty years old, learn how to swallow a beverage.” I finally caught my breath, wiping my eyes, only to find his roommate looking at me with a sharp, suspicious glare. A memory slammed into me. The first time my online boyfriend had ever sent me a faceless video, I had choked on my drink exactly like this. My stomach plummeted. Something was terribly, impossibly wrong. Beneath the table, I pulled out my phone and texted my online boyfriend: “Thought you said you were going out with the guys tonight?” A split second later, the roommate’s phone lit up. My heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped bird. I stared at him, unblinking. He picked up his phone, his thumbs flying across the screen. Almost instantly, my phone buzzed in my lap. “Babe, don’t worry. There’s no other girls here, just my roommate’s little sister.” “I’m a good boy. You know I don’t go to parties with other girls.” “Babe… are you missing me?” I went entirely rigid. My intensely devoted, borderline-obsessive online boyfriend was my brother’s roommate. If my memory served me right, Darren only had one roommate. Judson Wright. The same Judson Wright who Darren constantly complained about because they were always neck-and-neck for the top spot in their engineering cohort. The same Judson Wright who was notoriously adored by half the female population on campus. Rumor had it he never so much as looked at another woman, maintaining a strictly enforced, ten-foot perimeter around anyone with a pulse and a Prada bag. But online? He had a girlfriend he worshipped like a religion. And as it turned out, I was the religion. We had been dating for nearly two years, and he had never once shown me his face. I’d always assumed it was because he was insecure about his looks. Now, sitting across from a face carved from marble—a sharp jawline, a high, aristocratic nose, and lips that looked entirely too soft—I felt my brain short-circuit. He was wearing a loose white button-down slung casually over a fitted ribbed tank top, the thin material doing absolutely nothing to hide the heavy contour of his chest. I’d seen it all in photos, sure. But having the flesh-and-blood reality sitting mere feet away from me was entirely different. I swallowed hard. My fingers twitched. God, I wanted to touch him. 02 “Daddy, I want to sleep with you.” I rested my chin in my hand and typed out the text, a sudden, wicked surge of adrenaline taking over. I blamed the unhinged romance novels I read; they had thoroughly corrupted me. Across the table, I watched Judson’s ears turn a violent, violent shade of red. He snatched up his water glass and practically inhaled half of it, his Adam’s apple bobbing sharply with the frantic swallows. It was a deeply distracting sight. Yet, when he lowered the glass, his face was a mask of utter, infuriating indifference. My phone buzzed. “Babe, behave. I’m out in public.” I bit the inside of my cheek, fighting a smile. “But I wanna see your abs, Daddy.” Judson stared down at his phone for a long, agonizing minute. His thumbs hovered, tapped, deleted, and tapped again. Finally, two words came through: “Tonight. Promise.” I let my eyes drift over him again. He was looking down, his dark, thick lashes casting faint shadows over his cheekbones. He wasn’t even doing anything, yet that aura of cold, untouchable restraint was intoxicating. It made you want to reach out and snap the wire, just to see what he looked like when he lost control. “No. I want to see them now.” Judson abruptly pushed his chair back and stood up. His voice was tight, the fraying edges of his composure barely concealed. “I need to use the restroom.” Two minutes later, my phone buzzed. It was a photo. In the dim, fluorescent lighting of the dive bar bathroom, he had the hem of his shirt caught between his teeth. His belt was unbuckled, the leather loose, revealing the sharp, downward V of his obliques disappearing into the waistline of his denim. And his hand—the veins thick and prominent against his pale skin as he gripped his phone. I actually gulped. “Babe, is this okay?” “I’m afraid if I have to hold back much longer, I might actually cry.” All the blood in my body rushed to my face. My ears felt like they were on fire. Darren frowned at me. “What is wrong with you? Why is your face the color of a stop sign?” I quickly turned away, frantically fanning myself with a cocktail napkin. “N-nothing. It’s just stuffy in here. They need to fix their AC.” With trembling fingers, I slowly typed back to Judson: “It’s okay.” 03 It took Judson twenty minutes to emerge from the bathroom. When he finally returned, he looked completely refreshed. There were still damp droplets of water clinging to the ends of his hair and his fingertips. He had slipped perfectly back into his untouchable, icy persona. His spine was ramrod straight; he moved through the crowded bar like royalty parting the sea. I watched him approach, a hysterical little voice in my head screaming: “How on earth does this man toggle between these two personalities without suffering whiplash?” “Have you stared enough?” I blinked, suddenly realizing I had been tracking his every move for far too long. He was looking down at me, and his eyes were laced with pure, unfiltered disdain. I quickly averted my gaze. “I have a girlfriend,” he said, his voice cold and flat. “Don’t even think about it.” Before my brain could even process the audacity, the phone in my pocket vibrated. “Babe, my roommate’s little sister hasn’t taken her eyes off me all night. She’s definitely into me.” “But don’t worry, babe. I shut it down. I told her straight to her face that I have a girlfriend.” “Aren’t I a good boy, babe?” “Babe, I’m highly coveted on the market. When are you finally gonna lock this down?” I stared at the endless stream of “babes” filling my screen. Then I looked up at the man sitting across from me. My brain felt like it was melting out of my ears. Was the wildly needy, desperate golden retriever on my phone truly the same person as this glacial, arrogant prick sitting at the table? As the night wound down and people started grabbing their coats, Judson leaned over to push his chair in. That was when the chain slipped out from his collar again. I stared at it. It was the literal dog chain I had mailed him. Months ago, his insecurity had spiked. He was constantly begging me to make it official, demanding to know when I was going to give him a title. I had lied, telling him my parents were strict and wouldn’t let me date. He had been relentless, begging for a physical token—something to prove he belonged to me. I had been staring at my dog’s spare collar at the time. In a moment of sheer, chaotic impulsivity, I tossed it in a padded envelope and shipped it to his P.O. box. The day he received it, he had been borderline euphoric. He kept texting me, saying he had no idea I was “into that sort of thing.” He had spent the entire night sending me voice memos of him barking. I had never in a million years imagined he would turn it into a necklace and wear it under his clothes. As the group funneled out the door, I hung back, unable to resist the urge to mess with him. I clicked my tongue again. The exact same command I used for my dog. Right on cue, Judson’s breath hitched, and he let out two low, conditioned barks. He immediately whipped his head around, eyes wide, but the hallway was empty. I was hiding behind the heavy oak door, pressing my hand over my mouth to keep from laughing out loud. A second later, my phone vibrated. “Babe, I miss you so much I think I’m hallucinating. I just heard your voice.” 04 After we left the pub, Darren suggested we hit up the street fair set up near the campus green. The night market was packed shoulder-to-shoulder. Darren practically had me in a headlock, terrified I was going to get swept away by the crowd. Judson, on the other hand, maintained a rigid, three-yard distance from me at all times. I secretly smiled to myself. “Look at him, keeping his boundaries. I’ll have to reward him for this tonight.” But that fond thought was instantly obliterated a second later. I had stopped at a vendor’s table, my eyes landing on a vintage, pastel Sanrio keychain. I reached for it, but another hand shot out and snatched it first. The moment our fingers brushed, Judson recoiled like he had just touched a hot stove. He practically jumped back. He glared at me, his brow furrowed in deep annoyance. “Excuse me. I saw this first. My girlfriend loves Hello Kitty.” He had my love for Sanrio carved into his DNA. The very first gift he had ever sent me was a pink care package tied with a lace ribbon, overflowing with Hello Kitty merchandise. “Whatever,” I thought reasonably. “He’s buying it for me anyway. Considering how fiercely loyal he’s being, I’ll let him have it.” I was actually grinning as we walked away. Until my phone buzzed. “Babe, my roommate’s sister might actually be mentally unstable.” “I explicitly told her I was taken, and she just tried to grope my hand at a vendor stall.” “I’m so disgusted. I wouldn’t touch a desperate fangirl like her if she were the last woman on earth. I only have eyes for you, babe.” “Don’t worry, babe. As soon as I get back to the dorm, I’m sanitizing my hands ten times.” “Babe, I’m only yours to touch…” “Babe, what if I wear the black silk tonight so you can look?” I saw red. My fingers flew across the keyboard. “Touch my ass! We are DONE. We’re breaking up.” Ten feet ahead of me, Judson tripped over his own feet and nearly face-planted into a churro stand. His spine curved, his shoulders instantly hunching as they began to shake. He looked utterly, devastatingly pathetic. Darren rushed forward and grabbed his arm. “Whoa, man, you good? What the hell just happened to you?” Judson sniffled, his voice cracking with a very real, very audible sob. “My girlfriend… she just dumped me…” Darren frowned, his face twisting in disgust. “Bro, I told you, that girl is for the streets. She’s probably playing five other dudes right now. You’re the only idiot treating her like royalty.” Judson’s head snapped up. His eyes were bloodshot and feral. He shoved Darren backward. “Don’t you ever speak about my girl like that!” I was already vibrating with rage, and seeing him defend me while simultaneously calling me a stalker in my DMs pushed me over the edge. I marched up and punched Darren square in the arm. Darren clutched his bicep, looking at me like I had lost my mind. “What the hell was that for?!” I planted my hands on my hips, chest heaving. “We are no longer speaking!” 05 When I finally got back to my apartment, I couldn’t stop myself from opening the app. “99+ Unread Messages.” “Babe, what did I do? Tell me what I did wrong.” “I reported everything to you tonight! I was so good!” “Babe, please don’t ignore me…” “Babe, is it the black silk? Do you hate the black? I can wear the white!” “Babe, we are not breaking up. I refuse.” “Babe, it’s been two hours, 45 minutes, and 6 seconds since you looked at me.” “Babe, are you busy?” “Babe, please answer me. I’m begging you…” I stared at that last message, a traitorous wave of affection washing over me. “Is your roommate’s sister pretty?” I typed. “I don’t know, probably ugly.” “Does she have a good body?” “Not interested. Didn’t look.” “Did you feel even a tiny spark when you saw her?” “I feel absolutely nothing for anyone on this earth except you.” “If someone forced her to be your wife, would you do it?” “I’d rather they shoot me in the head.” “You are going to deeply regret everything you just said.” “I have no regrets, babe. You’re the only woman I’m ever going to marry.” Naturally, he never saw my reply to that, because I blocked his number and deleted the app. Not ten minutes later, a text from Darren popped up on my screen. “Holy shit, you know what? Judson actually got dumped!” “But he doesn’t even seem that sad this time. He’s been furiously online shopping for the past hour. Buying nothing but lingerie and toys!” They broke up, why was he buying all that? Was he planning to use them for his “crafts”? He always was a bit too enthusiastic about that stuff. “I bet his ex dumped him because he was too boring in bed,” Darren texted. “He’s probably gearing up to impress the new girl!” Wait, what? “What new girl?” I typed back furiously. Darren replied instantly: “Who else? His new prospect! His parents set him up on a blind date last week. Apparently, she’s drop-dead gorgeous.” “He was just talking about taking her to the movies tomorrow.” Last week? Last week, he told me his younger cousin had just gotten accepted into our university, and he was taking her out for a celebratory dinner. He went on a blind date?! That absolute bastard. He was playing me this whole time, keeping me on the hook while he entertained other women in the real world! 06 The next evening, I stood in the lobby of the local multiplex. Sure enough, I spotted Judson standing by the concession stand with a beautiful brunette. He was holding a massive tub of popcorn and chivalrously carrying her designer purse. He looked attentive. Perfect. When the girl excused herself to the restroom, he stood dutifully near the corridor, waiting for her. My eyes burned, hot tears threatening to spill over. I had never experienced this version of him. I only ever got him through a glowing screen, feeding me pretty words and empty promises in the dark. Suddenly, he turned around. He spotted me. His brow instantly furrowed, his expression morphing into pure, unadulterated disgust. “What are you doing here? Are you following me?” I flinched at the harshness of his tone. I sniffled, crossing my arms over my chest. “Do you own this theater? Am I not allowed to buy a ticket?” He raised an eyebrow, a cruel, mocking smirk twisting his perfect mouth. “Don’t think I don’t know exactly what you’re doing.” He took a step closer, his voice dropping. “How long have you been standing there, creeping on me?” My throat closed up. I couldn’t find a single word to defend myself. I just glared at him, my eyes shining with unshed tears. My silence only made him more arrogant. “Struck a nerve, didn’t I? I’ve dealt with desperate, obsessive girls like you before.” He looked at me like I was something scraped off the bottom of his shoe. “I’m already taken. So do yourself a favor and drop the pathetic fantasy. Out of respect for your brother, I won’t cause a scene. Now leave.” It was the second time he had called me desperate and obsessive. My entire body was trembling with rage. His mouth was so incredibly venomous. I opened my mouth to tear him a new one, but before I could make a sound, the shrill, deafening shriek of the fire alarm tore through the lobby. Panic erupted instantly. The crowd surged, morphing into a chaotic stampede. Someone slammed into my shoulder, and I lost my footing, crashing hard onto the carpeted floor. On pure instinct, I reached a hand out toward Judson. His gaze swept over me, clinical and precise, and didn’t linger for even a fraction of a second. It was as if I were nothing but a smudge of dirt on the floor. I watched as he sprinted toward the women’s restroom. The strobe lights of the fire alarm flashed violently overhead, bathing the panicked faces of the crowd in harsh, strobing red light. It painted Judson’s retreating back in a cold, unforgiving hue. I scrambled to get my hands under me, but before I could stand, another panicked moviegoer plowed into me. This time, I went down hard. My temple slammed into the sharp edge of a display stand. My vision went black for a terrifying second. The acrid, chemical smell of smoke invaded my lungs, and I started to cough violently. Tears streamed down my face, entirely out of my control. I couldn’t see anything. I was just crawling forward on my hands and knees through a forest of trampling legs. Through the blur of smoke and tears, I saw Judson emerge from the hallway, holding the brunette tightly against his chest, shielding her from the crush of the crowd. He walked right past me. His stride didn’t even break. In that moment, for the very first time, I felt the physical sensation of a heart breaking. All those books and movies that described heartbreak as a suffocating, physical agony—they weren’t lying. The girl in his heart was her. So what did that make me? Just a digital distraction for his lonely nights? Just one of a dozen girls he kept in his phone to feed his ego?

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Ever since Aaron first picked up a scalpel, he had operated less like a man and more like a calibrated machine. I learned early on never to complain to him. Not about the depressing cafeteria food, not about sudden downpours, and certainly not about the hollow ache of living under the same roof while feeling like complete strangers. His logic was absolute: “Next to life and death, everything else is background noise.” “Cheryl, stop being so dramatic.” So I adapted. I handled everything on my own, burying my feelings where he couldn’t see them. Until the night my older sister, Nicola, called me late from New York, sobbing through a breakdown about work stress and how much she missed Mom’s slow-braised short ribs. The commotion woke Aaron. The next morning, Nicola’s usually abandoned Instagram feed lit up with a rare update: [Dr. Christian… you’ve always been my ultimate safety net.] In the photo was the hand that held human lives in its grip every day—the hand that had refused to wear a matching band with me because he claimed any metallic sensation would compromise his tactile sensitivity in the operating room. That exact same hand was holding a pair of chopsticks, dropping a tender piece of homemade braised beef into Nicola’s bowl. Eight hundred miles away. In that quiet second, the truth finally crystallized for me. It wasn’t that he found emotional needs “dramatic.” He just found “mine” pathetic. And after all, I was never the only girl he had grown up with. 01 Looking back, it’s almost funny. Right before I saw Nicola’s post, I had been on the phone with a friend, making excuses for him: “Forget it. Long distance is just too brutal.” “He’s a trauma surgeon. He gets called into the OR at all hours. If I take that job transfer in another city, we’d barely see each other once a month. That’s not a real relationship anyway.” Every flimsy excuse I had crafted for him withered and died in an instant. My thumb moved involuntarily, refreshing her profile over and over. A mutual friend had commented: “That beef looks burnt! Dr. Christian cooked that? Terrible chef skills.” Nicola had replied seconds later: “Hey! Cut him some slack—those hands are meant for saving lives!” Right. Aaron’s favorite line: “In the OR, there is zero room for error.” Because of that, I had treated his hands like sacred glass. He insisted that wearing a ring created an unnatural sensation that messed with his precision, so I never asked for couple’s bands. I took over every single household chore, guarding the kitchen like a fortress to keep him away from knives and hot oil. I lived in constant fear that a stray burn or cut might ruin his career. When you do all the heavy lifting, you get hurt. Whenever I scraped a palm or cut a finger, Aaron would pull out his medical kit to clean and dress the wound. His fingers were long and elegant, his movements unnervingly steady and meticulous. The way his fingertips pressed against my skin felt like a pianist touching keys. I used to sit there, watching him like a fool, smiling through the sting. “What’s so funny?” he’d ask. “Dr. Christian’s surgical skills are so good,” I’d whisper, “I don’t even feel the pain.” And his sharp, aloof face would soften into a look of quiet exasperation. “Silly girl,” he’d murmur. I thought that was his highest form of tenderness. I never imagined that the distance I treated like a insurmountable monster—the eight hundred miles from Chicago to New York—was nothing more than a minor inconvenience when it came to Nicola. It dwarfed every single step he had ever taken toward me. My hands shook as I hung up on my friend and dialed Aaron’s number. He answered on the third ring, his voice clipped and cool. “What’s wrong?” “Where are you?” I asked, cutting straight through. A brief silence hung on the line. Then, “You saw.” My throat locked up. He let out a quiet sigh. “I caught a flight right after my afternoon conference. It was a last-minute decision, so I didn’t get a chance to text you. I have a major procedure scheduled for eight tomorrow morning, so I’m dropping off some things for her and heading straight back to the airport.” “Cheryl, don’t overthink this. Be good.” His voice was terrifyingly candid. And that honesty was the very thing that broke me. In that split second, I found myself praying that he would lie. I wanted him to tell me he was stuck at the hospital doing emergency rounds. At least a lie would mean he felt a flicker of guilt. A shred of remorse. Instead, there was nothing. A laugh bubbled up in my chest—sharp, hollow, echoing off the bare walls of our empty apartment. “Cheryl…” Aaron hesitated, but before he could finish, Nicola’s voice drifted through the receiver from somewhere nearby. It was low, smoky, and laced with her signature effortless charm. “Who’s calling this late, Aaron? Little Cheryl?” Aaron’s breath caught, barely noticeable. “…No. Just a colleague.” My grip on the phone tightened until my knuckles turned white. “He lied.” Just not to me. “Another hospital emergency? God, you’re insufferable,” Nicola teased in the background. “You finally come to town and you won’t even stay a day? Take a couple of days off! I’ll show you around Manhattan.” “I have surgery in the morning.” “So what?” She laughed, breezy and reckless. Aaron was a dedicated doctor. He should have reprimanded her flippancy. He should have delivered his usual stern lecture about how a surgeon never gambles with a patient’s life—the way he had lectured me for fifteen years. Instead, all he said was, “Alright, stop pouting.” His tone was soft, almost paternal, coaxing a spoiled child. Then, the line went dead. I looked down at the dark screen of my phone. My reflection stared back at me, ghostly and drained of blood. 02 Booking a last-minute, same-day round trip usually leaves you with the worst red-eye flights imaginable. Aaron was a total germaphobe who had never voluntarily flown budget economy in his life. By the time he walked through the door early the next morning, he was exhausted, his hair messy, his brow furrowed in irritation. I didn’t get up to greet him like I usually did. Instead, I sat on the couch, slowly tearing open a bag of lime tortilla chips. The loud crunch of the plastic wrapper caught his attention immediately. Aaron’s jaw tightened. “How many times have I told you not to eat on the sofa?” A strange wave of disorienting nostalgia washed over me. Since we started dating, he had established an endless list of ground rules. “Don’t call me before I text you first. Don’t reorganize my desk items. Don’t let your phone screen light up the dark room after I’ve closed my eyes.” Subtle, precise commands. But this specific rule—”don’t eat on the sofa”—was the very first command a fifteen-year-old Aaron had given to a thirteen-year-old me. Even back then, his youthful face carried the heavy, unyielding severity that would come to define his adult life. “Crumbs fall into the cushion seams,” he had scolded. “They’re impossible to vacuum out, and eventually, they attract pests.” To my thirteen-year-old self, Aaron’s words were scripture. I had scrambled to pull the chewed cap of my pencil out of my mouth, stammering, “I’m sorry…” “And stop biting your pen—it’s filthy—” “God, Aaron, you’ve only been tutoring her for ten minutes and you’re already barking at her?” Nicola had strolled into the living room back then, holding a bowl of fresh grapes, flopping onto the couch with effortless grace. She had just gotten back from a date, her cheeks flushed, looking radiant. Nicola was stunning, charismatic, and always surrounded by a court of adoring boys. “Cheryl might be a little slow, but if you’re mean to my little sister, you’ll have to answer to me!” The moment Nicola entered the room, Aaron’s eyes had locked onto her, dark and unreadable. Desperate to impress him, I had piped up back then: “Nicola, Aaron said we shouldn’t eat on the couch…” Aaron had cut me off before I could finish. “Forget it,” he had said quietly. “Cheryl, look back down at your math sheet.” From age twelve to twenty-seven. It took me fifteen years to understand the true meaning of that phrase: “Forget it.” My eyes stung with sudden heat. I quickly lowered my head. “You should go wash up,” I said softly, my voice tight. “It’s just for today. I wanted to watch a show while I—” Aaron stepped closer, reached out, and pressed the power button on the TV remote. The apartment fell dead silent. He stared down at me, his voice entirely flat. “Are you jealous?” I met his gaze. “No.” “Liar.” His response was prompt, absolute. “Cheryl, I’ve explained this to you a dozen times. If there were ever going to be anything between Nicola and me, it would have happened years ago. Every man who cheats is hunting for novelty—without exception. And between Nicola and me, there is zero novelty left.” He set a small, elegant paper bag onto the coffee table. The heavy thump echoed in the room. It bore the logo of a luxury French bakery in Midtown Manhattan—the exact place I made a point to visit every time I went to New York for work to buy their signature chestnut Mont Blancs. Once he set it down, he didn’t give me another glance, turning on his heel and heading toward the bathroom. He left me standing in the middle of the living room, cold to the marrow. He slapped me down for having feelings, then tossed me a treat from his high horse. A slap and a sugar cube. Like training a dog. And now he was waiting for me to go to him, to apologize, to admit that I was being dramatic, petty, and paranoid. Except… Nicola was the only one who knew how much I loved those chestnut pastries. Aaron despised sweet foods. Years ago, whenever I craved them, Nicola would wink at me and say, “It’s okay, little sister. I’ll help you hide them from him.” 03 When Nicola called me two days later, her tone was entirely casual. It was as if she hadn’t posted that photo, as if she hadn’t deliberately kept it visible to me. “Cheryl, New York is just moving too fast for me right now,” she sighed over the speaker. “I’m thinking about quitting my job to reset, but I really don’t want to go back home and listen to Mom nag me. Do you guys have a spare room? Is it okay if I crash with you in Chicago for a bit?” I paused, then said, “Sure.” I added, “Aaron will be really glad you’re staying.” Two minutes later, she sent back a cute, blushing emoji. No text. I set my phone down just as my supervisor walked over to my cubicle. “Hey, if you’re definitely accepting the corporate transfer, make sure you get all your paperwork finalized,” she said warmly. “You’ll have a month to wrap up your current accounts here, and then you’ll head out to lead the Denver branch. This is a huge step for your career, Cheryl. Go make us proud.” I nodded, my voice firm. “I will. Thank you.” Aaron’s schedule had always been chaotic. He was rarely home. To take care of him and to maximize the tiny pockets of time we might share, I had turned down three different promotion opportunities over the last few years. My boss had always thought I was crazy. At the time, I thought I was being a good partner. I believed that counting every compromise in a relationship was too transactional. It felt natural that one person might give a little more than the other at different stages. But now, with a branch manager title and a substantial raise waiting for me in Denver, I no longer had a reason to stay. One month. After knowing him for fifteen years, I just had to endure thirty more days, and then our paths would diverge forever. When Nicola sent me her flight details, I took a half-day off work to pick her up at O’Hare. She looked as stunning as ever, the fast-paced energy of New York giving her an effortless, glowing polish. When she pulled me into a hug, a crisp, familiar fragrance filled my senses. It was Aaron’s signature cologne. I acted completely oblivious, gently patting her back. “Welcome to Chicago. I made your favorite braised short ribs for dinner.” She pulled back, buckling her seatbelt in my passenger seat. “You are a lifesaver, sweetie! You have no idea how abysmal airline food is—” As she spoke, she pulled a small tin of butter cookies out of her handbag. I reflexively spoke up. “Nicola, don’t eat in the car. Aaron…” “Oh, I know, it’s his new baby, right?” She giggled, unbothered. “When he was shopping for cars last month, he called me constantly because he couldn’t decide. I knew he’d end up picking this exact trim. Don’t worry, if he yells at you, I’ll yell right back at him. As long as I’m here, he won’t bully you!” She had packaged it so neatly, turning my boundary into a joke. I forced a faint smile and didn’t push it further. “Right. Thanks, Nicola.” 04 For the first two days of Nicola’s stay, Aaron didn’t come home at all. She leaned against the kitchen counter, crunching on chips, and asked, “Is he always like this?” “He has overnight shifts,” I replied calmly. “When he has back-to-back surgeries scheduled, he just sleeps in the hospital’s call room.” Nicola chewed thoughtfully. After a pause, she sighed. “How pathetic.” My hands froze mid-motion over the sink. I couldn’t tell if she meant Aaron—or me. On the third evening, Aaron finally came home. He didn’t come home to see us; he came to interrogate me. The front door slammed shut with alarming force. His voice was icy. “Did you eat in my car?” I was wearing an apron, holding a dish towel, frozen in the hallway. “It was me,” Nicola said, stepping out from the kitchen. “Cheryl warned me not to, Aaron. Don’t be mean to her.” Aaron’s eyes widened slightly. The furious aura radiating off him vanished instantaneously, deflating like a punctured balloon. “…When did you get to Chicago?” he asked, his tone shifting entirely. “That’s not important,” Nicola said, stepping in front of me and placing her hands on her hips playfully. “Hey, do you always talk to Cheryl like that? You haven’t changed a bit since we were kids, have you? I’ll Venmo you fifty bucks so you can get the car detailed. It’s a bag of cookies, Aaron—is it really worth barking at your girlfriend over?” Aaron’s jaw flexed. His expression flickered through a chaotic wheel of emotions. “You…” Finally, he pinched the bridge of his nose, exhaling heavily as if forcing his temper down into his chest. “Forget it.” He looked at her. “Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?” Nicola smiled, like a woman who knew with absolute certainty that his anger could never touch her. She stuck her tongue out. “It was a surprise!” Aaron walked past me without looking at my face. Then, he paused, turning his head slightly. “What are you standing there for?” Just seconds ago, he had accused me, losing his temper over a mistake I hadn’t made. And yet, there was no apology. Not a single word. I stood motionless on the hardwood floor, my fingernails digging into my palms until it hurt. Suddenly, I felt a strange, detached confusion. I looked at the man I had loved for half my life, and I genuinely couldn’t remember why I had spent so many years enduring it all. 05 I used to wish, every single year on my birthday, that Aaron would come home for dinner. It was a quiet prayer I carried for a decade. And now, I was watching that wish come true with terrifying ease. Because Nicola was here. Aaron liked to say that in front of a doctor, every human life was equal. But standing there as an outsider looking in, I realized how painfully obvious the difference was between loving someone and merely enduring them. That night, Aaron lay beside me in the dark, his arm draped over my waist, his breathing rhythmic and steady. I couldn’t sleep. He knew my body better than anyone; he could feel the unnatural stiffness in my spine. “What’s wrong?” he murmured, his voice thick with sleep. In the pitch-black room, I asked him softly, “Why did you decide to be with me, Aaron?” It was a pathetic, insecure question. I expected him to ignore it, to tell me to go to sleep. Perhaps he felt how quiet I had become since Nicola arrived. After a long pause, he pressed his forehead against the back of my hair and let out a tired breath. “Cheryl, you’re the easiest to deal with. You never give me trouble.” “You’re the easiest.” The realization settled over me like frost. “So,” I whispered, “you didn’t end up with Nicola simply because she wasn’t ‘easy’ enough for you.” His grip on my waist tightened instantly, hard enough to bruise. “This is between you and me. I am telling you one last time, Nicola and I have nothing—” “I know,” I cut him off smoothly. Because we both knew the truth. Nicola would never mold herself to fit his tidy, rigid world. I had asked for an answer tonight only because… I had suddenly forgotten how I fell in love with him in the first place. I remembered a birthday years ago. A friend had recommended a charming little bistro downtown, and I had been bursting with excitement, inviting my favorite boy and my older sister to go with me. Nicola had giggled. “Oh, Cheryl, sweetie… Aaron and I went there months ago.” My smile had frozen on my face. It hadn’t just been the bistro. The trendy bubble tea shop, the quiet corner of the library after school, the abandoned rooftop where we watched the sunset—they had already been to all of those places. Just the two of them. Looking back now, it wasn’t a tragedy. But to my teenage self, it felt as though I were an intruder trying to elbow my way into a story that had already been written. An outsider stealing someone else’s memories. “What’s the big deal?” teenage Aaron had spoken up, breaking the awkward silence. “We’ll just go again.” He had looked down at me, his gaze focused and serious. “Cheryl, what do you want to eat?” That single sentence had made my heart race wildly in my chest. In the shadow of my radiant, popular sister, my teenage self had been a dull, awkward duckling. I didn’t know how to dress, my grades weren’t top-tier, and I was too shy to say clever things. My mother used to say, “You’re neither a boy nor as impressive as your sister.” Aaron was the only person who actually “saw” me. Except I had gotten one fundamental detail wrong. It was only because I was constantly trailing behind Nicola that the people looking at her naturally caught me in their field of vision. Nothing more. Thankfully, the strange, suffocating equilibrium of our three-person dynamic didn’t last much longer. A few days later, Aaron’s mother arrived. 06 Mrs. Christian had never liked me. Her reasons were virtually identical to my own mother’s, with one added grievance: she firmly believed that if Aaron hadn’t gotten stuck with me, he could have found a much better partner. Someone like Nicola. The moment she stepped into our apartment, she grabbed Nicola’s hands, holding them warmly as she showered her with affection. “When you graduated from college, I told your mother that a girl living all the way in New York with no one to look after her was going to suffer,” Mrs. Christian said smoothly, patting Nicola’s cheek. “Now that you’re visiting Chicago, if you need anything, you tell Aaron or me. We’ll make sure you’re taken care of.” Nicola smiled, looking charmingly demure. “Mrs. Christian, I really need to go on a diet.” “Nonsense! Aaron’s a doctor—ask him! Do you look like someone who needs a diet?” Aaron said mildly, “From a clinical perspective, we only recommend weight loss for patients classified as overweight. You look fine as you are.” I couldn’t stomach another second of it. I stood up and turned toward the hallway to head into the bedroom. Behind me, Mrs. Christian’s voice rose, thick with disgust. “Look at that. The adults have been sitting here for an hour and she hasn’t said a single word of greeting.” She sneered, lowering her voice slightly, though not enough. “I still don’t understand why your mother felt the need to have a second kid. A complete disappointment.” I stopped dead in my tracks. I turned around, gripped the glass water tumbler on the console table, and slammed it onto the hardwood floor with every ounce of strength in my body. A violent, deafening CRASH echoed through the apartment. Shards of thick glass erupted outward in every direction. Mrs. Christian shrieked, jumping backward. “You—you crazy bitch! Are you out of your mind?!” “Cheryl!” Aaron took two long strides, stepping over the shattered glass to reach my side. His face was thunderous, darker than I had ever seen it. Even I was stunned by my own explosion. When Aaron’s fingers clamped down hard around my wrist, my entire body flinched violently. I recoiled, pulling back as if I expected him to strike me. Aaron’s dark eyes flickered. His hand froze in mid-air. “…Cheryl,” he muttered, his voice dropping an octave. “You’re bleeding.” I followed his gaze down to my bare leg. A flying piece of sharp glass had sliced a shallow cut into my skin. Small crimson beads were gathering, coalescing into a thin red line that trickled down toward my ankle. Aaron dropped to one knee, reaching out with unsettling gentleness to cup my heel. “Don’t move. Let me clean it.” “Don’t touch me!” I yanked my leg away from his grip, taking a deep, shaky breath. “…I know where the first-aid kit is.” “I’m going to clean it myself. Excuse me.” As I turned my back, Mrs. Christian’s hysterical screaming ripped through the air behind me. “Look at her! Look at her!” “Where in the world do you find… such an ungrateful, malicious woman?!”

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I have always lived my life at a sprint. The day the Hastings family reclaimed me as their long-lost biological daughter, I stepped through the front gates of their estate and immediately committed four unpardonable sins against high-society decorum. First, I scaled a stone wall to tackle the gardener who had stolen my father’s emergency heart medication. Second, I crashed my eldest brother’s board meeting to redline a predatory acquisition contract that would have bankrupted the family firm. Third, I dived heels-first into the infinity pool to drag my drowning third brother out of the deep end. Finally, I snatched a box of severe allergens out of my younger sister’s hands and jammed Mother’s forgotten epinephrine auto-injector into her palm instead. My father survived his cardiac arrest. Derrick kept his company. Tyler didn’t drown. And Mother didn’t go into anaphylactic shock. Yet, nobody praised me. Instead, Bella—the daughter they had adopted to replace me—looked at me with brimming, tear-filled eyes and whimpered, “Is Kelly doing all this because she’s afraid we won’t love her? Does she really have to steal every moment to prove herself?” Mother decided I was an unrefined embarrassment, a feral stray who lacked the stoic elegance of a true Hastings. Within forty-eight hours, she shipped me off to Blythewood Academy—a notoriously strict, private behavioral institute designed to scrub the chaos out of wealthy, rebellious heiresses. At Blythewood, they taught me that a lady never rushes. A lady never interrupts. And above all, no matter how dire the crisis, a lady must pause and count to ten before reacting. Three months later, I graduated at the top of my class. On the day I was released, my luggage hadn’t even been loaded into the trunk before the Hastings family’s town car pulled away from the curb, leaving me standing alone on the cobblestones. The old me—the girl terrified of being abandoned—would have sprinted down the driveway, desperate not to be left behind. This time, I stood quietly by the wrought-iron gates of the academy and ordered an Uber. It took Mother thirty minutes to realize I wasn’t in the back seat. When her name flashed on my screen, I answered, but I didn’t speak immediately. I waited the full ten seconds required by my instructors before pressing the phone to my ear. “Kelly?” Her voice was laced with frantic agitation. “The driver didn’t notice you weren’t in the car. Why didn’t you run after us?” I smoothed the crease of my pleated skirt and replied in a soft, measured monotone, “Mother.” “What?” “You always told me that a true lady never chases after anyone.” … Silence stretched across the line. It took Mother a long time to find her voice. “The driver wasn’t paying attention. Don’t throw a temper tantrum.” “I am not angry, Mother,” I replied, my voice perfectly flat. “Then get back here right now. The driver is turning around, but it’s going to take twelve minutes.” Her panic gave way to annoyance. “What happened to you? You used to be incapable of waiting for anything.” I lifted my wrist, watching the digital display on my behavioral tracking band count down the seconds. “I’ve learned how to wait now.” My Uber arrived forty minutes after the Hastings’ car had already returned home. When I stepped into the grand living room, the entire family was seated in a solemn circle, as if waiting for a execution. Mother stood up the moment she saw me. “Why didn’t you let the driver go back to pick you up?” “He was operating a motor vehicle,” I said evenly. “Distracting a driver with calls is a safety hazard.” Derrick, my eldest brother, pinched the bridge of his nose, his brow furrowing. “You couldn’t have called me?” “You told me never to bother you with trivial matters while you were working.” “Being left thirty miles away in the middle of nowhere is a trivial matter?” I considered his question for a precise five seconds. “Blythewood taught us that a refined woman never makes a scene over minor inconveniences.” Derrick opened his mouth, but no words came out. He looked at me as if I were speaking a foreign language. Bella quickly rushed forward, reaching out to wrap her arm around mine. “Kelly, everyone just forgot for a second. Please don’t hold a grudge.” I took a deliberate step backward, creating space between us. “In public and private settings, please maintain a distance of at least half an arm’s length.” Her hand froze in midair. Within seconds, her eyes welled with tears. Tyler, my third brother, couldn’t stomach it any longer. He slammed his glass onto the coffee table. “Kelly, are you done being dramatic? The family made an honest mistake. Do you really have to be so passive-aggressive?” I didn’t offer an explanation. When I was seven years old, my foster mother told me she was going to buy a bottle of water and asked me to wait for her at the bus station. I waited from noon until dark. The only people who came for me were the police. My instructors at Blythewood, however, made it clear: past trauma is not an excuse to emotionally manipulate those around you. So I smiled, gave a polished head tilt, and bowed slightly. “I apologize. Next time you forget me, I will handle it quietly on my own.” The living room fell into a heavy, suffocating quiet. I couldn’t understand it. They had finally gotten the well-mannered, obedient daughter they paid a fortune for, yet their expressions grew darker by the second. At dinner, Mother had the chef prepare my old favorite: slow-braised short ribs. In the past, I would have cleared my plate in under three minutes. Back then, Mother would look at me with disgust and say, “‘You eat like a starving feral animal. Nobody is taking it from you. Why are you rushing?’” Now, I chewed every bite exactly twenty times. By the time I touched the meat, it was cold and congealed. I ate barely two bites. Mother cleared her throat, unable to hide her restlessness. “Kelly, aren’t you hungry?” “I am.” “Then eat faster.” I glanced at the grandfather clock ticking in the corner of the dining room. “There are still thirteen minutes remaining for the dinner block. Leaving the table early results in a demerit.” Mother’s expression turned rigid. Tyler grunted and shoved his prescription bottle across the marble table toward my hand. In the past, he always forgot his daily inhaler and heart stabilizers. I used to chase him down three times a day to force him to take them. He used to complain about how nagging I was, but he never bothered to set an alarm himself. “Hey,” Tyler muttered, looking away. “Did I take my meds today?” “I don’t know,” I said softly. Tyler blinked, stunned. “Don’t you keep track of my schedule better than I do?” I slid the pill bottle back toward his side of the table. “Without explicit authorization, I am strictly forbidden from interfering in the personal routine of an adult.” “Well, I’m giving you permission now.” “Then how may I be of assistance to you, sir?” The formal ‘sir’ hit him like a physical blow. His face darkened immediately. “Forget it. Do whatever you want.” He jammed the pills into his pocket, unconsumed. Bella let out a soft, nervous chuckle, trying to smooth things over. “Kelly just got back, so she’s still in boarding school mode. Give her a few days, and she’ll be chasing Tyler around with his medicine again.” I kept my eyes fixed on my plate and said nothing. I wouldn’t. On my nineteenth day at Blythewood, I had snuck into the administrative office to use the landline to call Tyler and remind him about his dosage. The headmistress caught me. As punishment, I was forced to stand outside in the freezing rain until midnight. When Mother was informed of my infraction, her only response had been: “‘He’s a grown man. Is he going to die without her?’” That night, I was forced to copy a single phrase two thousand times onto heavy parchment: “Do not overestimate your own importance.” I remembered the lesson perfectly now. When dinner ended, Derrick placed a thick leather binder onto the glass coffee table. “The Hastings Foundation is hosting our annual charity gala tomorrow night. You and Bella will be attending together.” “Understood.” “Aren’t you going to review the itinerary and the sponsorship disclosures?” “That is your corporate documentation, Derrick.” Derrick pushed the binder an inch closer to me. “I am telling you to look at it.” I opened the folder, flipped through two pages, and immediately noticed that the final line item on the lead venue contract had an extra zero tacked onto the end of the wire transfer amount. In the past, I would have jumped out of my chair, furiously pointing out that the vendor was taking advantage of the family empire. This time, I closed the binder with a soft click. “I have reviewed it.” Derrick waited, leaning forward slightly. “No notes?” “You instructed me to look at it, not to offer my opinions.” He exhaled heavily through his nose, his voice tight. “Kelly, do you really have to talk to me like I’m a stranger?” “Blythewood stresses the importance of executing orders with exact precision.” “You are not a machine!” I waited the mandatory ten seconds before replying. “You were the one who personally requested the headmistress to scrub away all my impulsive, opinionated habits.” Derrick choked on his next word, his mouth snapping shut. Father set down his crystal whiskey glass with a dull “clink”. “Enough. She just got home. Don’t turn the house into a battleground.” He reached into his coat pocket, pulled out the digital monitoring band Blythewood had sent back with my file, and placed it on the table in front of me. “There will be high-profile guests tomorrow. Put this on for the evening. Whatever happens, report it first and wait for family approval before taking action.” I picked up the band and fastened it tightly around my wrist. Bella suddenly looked up, her voice sweet and innocent. “Dad, what if someone is in real danger?” Father looked at me, his gaze cold and weighted with meaning. “The Hastings family hires top-tier security detail and private medical staff. Waiting ten minutes won’t cause the sky to fall.” I nodded respectfully. “Understood.” That was a favorite phrase of my instructors at Blythewood, too. The next morning, Tyler left the house without his medication. The pill bottle was sitting right on the console table in the foyer. I saw it. He turned back and looked at me, standing near the staircase. Neither of us said a word. He walked out the door, leaving the pills behind. … The charity gala was hosted at the Hastings’ private mountain estate. To project the image of a united, loving family to the press, Mother insisted that Bella and I stand together at the entrance to greet arriving donors. Ten minutes before the doors opened, the seam at the back of Bella’s designer gown suddenly split open. She grabbed the lower small of her back, tears instantly welling in her eyes. “Kelly! What do I do? My dress is ruined!” The old me could have summoned a seamstress, sourced emergency tailor’s tape, and brought a backup dress from the dressing room in under five minutes. This time, I turned to ask Mother for permission first. Mother was currently deep in conversation with the wife of a state senator and didn’t bother looking at me. Bella grabbed my wrist, panic creeping into her voice. “Just cover for me! Stand in front of me!” I lifted my arm, looking at the glowing red timer on my wristband. “Please wait seven minutes.” “My dress is literally falling off! What are you waiting for?!” “I have not received authorization to alter our designated positions.” In the end, a housemaid noticed the commotion and brought a cashmere shawl to wrap around Bella’s shoulders. Bella kept her head lowered, tears dripping silently onto the marble floor. When Mother found out afterward, she pulled me into a side corridor and lost her temper with me for the first time since my return. “She is your sister! Would it have killed you to raise a single finger to help her?!” I reminded her softly, “You previously stated that my worst flaw was my obsession with making decisions for others.” “Is that the same thing?!” “How is it different?” Mother opened her mouth to berate me, but no sound came out. She used to hate me for being overly intrusive. Now she hated me for being detached. The rules of high society were far more chaotic than the exams at Blythewood. At least at the academy, the rubrics had clear, unambiguous answers. Once the gala began, Tyler’s complexion began to deteriorate rapidly. I noticed him constantly reaching into his suit jacket pocket. It was empty. He had forgotten his inhaler and his emergency pills. Following protocol, I walked over to Father, standing quietly at his side until he finished speaking with a hedge fund executive. My wristband showed that eight minutes had passed since I noticed Tyler’s symptoms. “Father,” I whispered calmly. “Tyler appears to be experiencing medical distress. He may require the estate physician.” Father glanced across the ballroom at Tyler, who was standing near the bar. “He’s standing on his own two feet. Stop being so dramatic.” Bella, who was standing nearby, giggled softly. “Yeah, Kelly. Tyler was just dancing with me a few minutes ago. You’ve only been back from school for a day—are your old paranoid habits flaring up again?” Several nearby guests turned to look at us, murmuring softly behind their champagne glasses. Father’s expression curdled. “Return to your assigned post.” “Yes, Father.” Two minutes later, Tyler grabbed the edge of a mahogany table, his knuckles turning white, and collapsed hard onto his knees, gasping for air. The ballroom instantly descended into panic. By the time the private doctors rushed in with an oxygen tank, Tyler’s face was turning blue, his chest heaving violently. I stood outside the ring of panicking guests, carefully remaining behind the designated perimeter line. After receiving an epinephrine injection and stabilization meds, Tyler opened his eyes. The very first word out of his throat was a strained breath: “Where’s… Kelly?” Mother summoned me over, her eyes red and furious. “You noticed he wasn’t feeling well earlier! Why didn’t you step in and help him directly?!” “I reported it to Father.” “And when he told you to drop it, you just stood there?!” I paused for a precise ten seconds. “Obeying the head of the household is the foundational rule of a well-bred daughter.” Tyler’s eyes widened, bloodshot and filled with sudden pain. He reached out an unsteady hand to grasp mine. I took a polite, measured step backward, letting his fingers brush empty air. Before anyone could say another word, Bella suddenly gasped, clutching her hand to her collarbone. “Oh my god… Mother, the diamond brooch Grandma gave me… it’s gone!” That brooch was a historical family heirloom worth tens of millions—and it was supposed to be the grand finale item for the night’s charity auction. Derrick’s face darkened immediately. He motioned for security to lock down the exit gates. Bella searched her clutch, then turned her wide, tear-filled eyes toward me. “Kelly… you were the only one who went into my private lounge earlier.” All eyes in the room instantly snapped to me. I picked up my clutch, unzipped it, and held it open. Sitting inside was an empty velvet jewelry box. Bella began to sob quietly. “I know Kelly wouldn’t steal it! She probably just wanted to look at it and forgot to put it back…” Derrick stepped forward, his voice cold and commanding. “Where is the brooch, Kelly?” “I did not take it.” “Then go find it.” Bella snuffled, offering me a brass keycard. “I… I think I saw something shiny near the west glass conservatory earlier. Kelly is so fast—could you run over and check for me?” I didn’t move. I turned to Father to seek formal approval. Father, still seething from the scene Tyler had caused, waved his hand dismissively. “Go. And don’t come back into this ballroom until you find it.” My wristband chimed. The mandatory ten-minute delay timer began counting down. I waited until the digital numbers reached 00:00 before walking out the rear exit toward the west conservatory—a massive structure that had been closed off for renovations for over six months. When I reached the heavy iron doors, a yellow warning banner was taped across the frame: “HAZARD: DO NOT ENTER.” I took a photo of the sign and texted it to Derrick. “‘This area is condemned and locked down.’” His reply was almost instantaneous: “‘Stop using rules as an excuse for your spiteful attitude. If you don’t bring the brooch back, you can spend the night reflecting on your actions outside.’” I tapped the brass keycard against the electronic lock. The heavy iron door unlocked with a loud click, and as soon as I stepped inside, it slammed shut behind me with an echoing thud. The glass greenhouse was completely stripped of flowers. Rows of metal scaffolding were covered in thick plastic sheeting. The air smelled sharp, metallic, and heavily chemical. Before I could take five steps, an automated mechanical voice chimed from the ceiling speakers: “Automated chemical fumigation sequence initiated. Zone clearance in progress. Complete seal in ten minutes.” I immediately turned back toward the door and pushed the handle. It was locked from the outside. I pressed the emergency release button. Nothing happened. I picked up a heavy brass fire extinguisher and slammed it against the glass pane three times with all my strength. It was reinforced industrial glass. It didn’t even show a scratch. This time, I didn’t sit quietly. I pulled out my phone and dialed the estate security office, giving them my exact location and the keycard number. The guard on the line sounded bewildered. “Miss, the west conservatory was decommissioned months ago. Power to the automated keypads was cut. Nobody could possibly be inside.” “The door is locked, and the automated sprayers are turning on,” I said calmly. “Miss, please don’t pull pranks on the security team during an active event.” “Click.” He hung up. A dense, white chemical mist began pouring from the ceiling nozzles, filling the vast glass space. I pulled off my evening jacket, wrapped it tightly around my mouth and nose, and sent my exact GPS pin to the family group chat. “‘I am locked inside the west conservatory. The agricultural chemical fumigation system has activated. Please contact the facility administrator immediately.’” Father replied: “‘You can stop acting now. Fake emergencies won’t get you out of finding the brooch.’” Derrick added: “‘You refused to help Tyler earlier, and now that you’re in trouble, you expect us to jump? Grow up.’” Bella sent a tearful voice note, her voice trembling: “Kelly, if you’re mad at me, just say it! Why do you have to scare everyone with your safety just to get attention?” Mother sent the final message: “‘Kelly, count to ten and calm down. We will talk when you’ve learned how to behave.’” I looked down at my wristband. It buzzed obligingly, starting a fresh ten-minute countdown. The pesticide mist grew thicker, stinging my eyes and burning my throat. I found an emergency tool cabinet in the corner, grabbed a small steel safety hammer, and began swinging at the door hinges. Once. Twice. A dozen times. The skin on my palm split open, blood staining the metal handle, but the heavy iron frame didn’t budge. Following my training, I sent a status report to the group chat every ten minutes. “‘Door lock mechanism unresponsive.’” “‘Safety hammer failed to breach the frame.’” “‘Respiratory distress beginning. Chemical inhalation active.’” Every message showed as ‘Delivered.’ Not a single person responded. … Back in the main ballroom, Tyler had recovered enough to stand, and he insisted on finding me. Derrick held him back by the shoulder. “The doctor said you need to rest.” “Where is Kelly?” Tyler demanded, his voice raspy. Bella gently placed the missing diamond brooch back into its velvet box on the display table, saying softly, “Kelly was probably feeling hurt, so she went out for a walk.” Tyler glared at her. “The brooch was under the lounge sofa the whole time. Did you notify her?” Bella hesitated. “I… I assumed she had already come back inside.” Mother pulled out her phone to check the time, only to realize the family chat had nine unread notifications. One every ten minutes. The last one had been sent twenty minutes ago. “‘Visibility zero. I can no longer see the exit. I will maintain my composure as instructed. When you are finished with the gala, please remember to unlock the door.’” Mother’s phone slipped from her hand, shattering against the marble floor. “She… she’s still in the west conservatory?” Derrick immediately dialed my number. “The subscriber you are reaching is unavailable…” The estate general manager, overhearing the commotion, went pale. “The west conservatory? We scheduled a industrial-grade permethrin and sulfur spray for insect control tonight! Anyone inside without a hazmat suit would—” Father grabbed the manager by his collar, his eyes wild. “Get that damn door open right now!” “The master override key is in the maintenance shed! I’ll call them—” Tyler snatched the brass keycard off the table. Taped to the back of it was a tiny label with Bella’s name. “Why did Kelly have your keycard?!” Bella turned ghost-white. “I… I picked up the wrong card! I just wanted her to look for the brooch!” Derrick yanked the security tablet from the guard’s hands and pulled up the footage from two hours ago. The video clearly showed Bella sliding the diamond brooch into the sofa cushion, tearing down the hazard tape from the conservatory door, and handing the keycard directly to me. She had even stood near the courtyard window, watching me walk inside before turning around with a smile. Mother raised her hand and struck Bella across the face with a deafening “slap”. “That is your sister!” Bella collapsed to the floor, sobbing uncontrollably. “I didn’t know they were spraying chemicals tonight! I just wanted her to stay outside for a little bit! Whenever she’s around, everyone looks at her!” By the time the maintenance team breached the outer iron doors with a buzzsaw, thick, toxic white fog billowed out into the night air. The radio comms on the lead guard’s chest crackled with panicked shouts: “We have a victim down! Northwest corner! She’s on the ground!” Mother’s legs gave out, and Father caught her before she hit the grass. Derrick tried to charge into the fog, but two firefighters pinned his arms back. “Sir, back off! The toxic density is too high!” A few seconds later, the radio crackled again, heavy with grim urgency: “Victim secured. Female, late teens. No pulse. Repeat, no pulse!”

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “560127”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

The year Viola lost her legs in a horrific car crash, falling overnight from boxing royalty to a broken shell of a woman, I sold my grandfather’s brownstone and spent eight years working double shifts as a night guard. I did it to pay for her astronomical experimental surgeries, and then I spent every waking hour pushing her through rehab until she reclaimed her world championship title. At the victory gala, she stood under the dazzling lights, holding her championship belt with tears in her eyes. “I owe everything to my partner, who stood by me through the darkest years,” her voice trembled into the microphone. “May we spend the rest of our lives together.” My eyes welled with tears. Standing up from my table, I breathed a quiet sigh of relief, thinking the endless hardship had finally paid off. But the blinding spotlight swept right past me. It landed on Dan, her lead physical therapist. I froze in place, the roar of the crowd turning into a dull, rushing din in my ears. All I could hear was the frantic pounding of my own heart. On the giant screen behind the stage, a slideshow titled “A Champion’s Journey to Healing” began to play. The photos featured my handwritten notes—the gait training programs I’d drafted at three in the morning, the muscle reaction logs after hours of massaging her numb legs, the strategy breakdowns I’d drawn up line by line. And then came the final slide. It was a crisp, high-resolution photo of a marriage certificate between Viola and Dan, registered five years ago. Before I could process the blow, Viola’s hand clamped down hard on my shoulder. Her fingers dug into my coat—her grip carried a silent plea, laced with a cold, implicit warning. “Jesse, please,” she whispered, her voice barely audible over the applause. “The public needs a narrative. They want the fairy tale—the world champion falling for the brilliant doctor who cured her. A night guard’s background won’t pass muster with my sponsors.” She leaned closer, her eyes glittering with desperate urgency. “If you make a scene right now, nobody will believe you anyway. Why ruin my biggest night over a moment of pride? I’ll buy your grandfather’s brownstone back for you. I promise.” I felt as though a bolt of electricity had shot through me. I stared at the woman before me, completely numb. Eight years of giving her every drop of my blood, sweat, and soul—and in the end, it was nothing more than a embarrassing secret she needed to keep hidden under the rug. Ten minutes later, I walked out of the roaring banquet hall into the crisp night air. With trembling fingers, I pulled up my phone, looked at an email containing an overseas job offer from an adaptive sports institute, and tapped “Confirm”. “Mr. Gilbert, your flight and work visa will be finalized in three days. Welcome to the team!” … I went straight to my supervisor at the security firm, telling him a family emergency had come up and asking if I could settle my wages for the month early. He counted out a stack of bills and passed them over, his eyes heavy with quiet sympathy. He’d seen me work myself to the bone for years. It was two in the morning when Viola finally came back to our rented apartment, reeking of expensive bourbon. Seeing me sitting quietly on the edge of the bed, her brow furrowed slightly. “It’s late, Jesse. Why aren’t you sleeping?” She stepped closer, and her gaze caught the raw, blood-stained scrapes on my knees—injuries from moving heavy equipment at work earlier that week. A flicker of genuine guilt and pain softened her sharp features. Just like she used to do when she was bedridden, she instinctively grabbed the first-aid kit, knelt on the floor, and lifted my leg to clean the wounds. “If a client gives you a hard time at work, you don’t just stand there and take it,” she murmured softly. “Why didn’t you patch yourself up?” Her tone was light, imbued with that familiar tenderness I had cherished for nearly a decade. When the cotton swab pressed against the raw skin, I let out a sharp breath. She immediately lightened her touch, leaning down to blow gently on the sting. “Dan standing up on that stage tonight… it was just for the press and the corporate sponsors,” she said quietly, without looking up. “A champion’s brand can’t handle a night-guard partner, Jesse. It would kill my upcoming endorsement deals.” She spoke with such matter-of-fact confidence, as if she were simply explaining an obvious truth that any reasonable adult should understand. I stared down at her lowered head, feeling an icy chill spread from my chest straight to my fingertips. Eight years of round-the-clock care. Selling the only inheritance my grandfather left me to cover her medical bills. The endless, tear-stained nights of physical therapy. All that devotion was only fit to exist in the shadows of her private life. She unpinned the small gold commemorative medal from her championship belt and pressed it into my palm. “This title belongs to you just as much as it does to me, Jesse. In my heart, I know that.” I lowered my eyes to the polished gold emblem. “Viola,” I said softly, “since you’re already married, let’s end this.” Her hand froze over my knee. Avoiding my gaze, she stood up and snapped the first-aid box shut with a sharp click. “Jesse, where else would you even go?” she asked, her voice tight. “You don’t have any family left. You sold your brownstone for my surgeries. Don’t let your temper get the best of you. Dan and I aren’t what you think.” She stepped closer, placing a hand gently against my chest. “In my heart, you are my only real husband.” She turned toward the closet to pull out her outfit for the next day. “I have an exhibition match overseas in two days,” she continued, her voice slipping back into its usual commanding rhythm. “Pack my gloves and spare wraps tomorrow. Dan is coming along as the team physician, so make sure his medical files are packed in my luggage, too.” She rattled off her instructions naturally, expecting full compliance. When I didn’t move, her hands paused on the buttons of her jacket. After a heavy silence, she walked back over and wrapped her arms tightly around my waist, burying her face into my chest. “Jesse, I haven’t forgotten what I promised you,” she whispered. “You want a place of our own. You want your grandfather’s brownstone back. I remember every word.” Pressed against her, the faint scent of a man’s cologne drifted off her lapel. I stood entirely rigid, my hands hanging cold at my sides. “I already bought the brownstone back,” she added softly, pulling back to look at me. She reached into her inner pocket and pulled out a tarnished brass key. “The paperwork is still clearing, but I was planning on giving it to you tomorrow as a birthday surprise.” She placed the key in my hand. “Take tomorrow off. I’ll take you home.” “Home.” What a beautiful, cruel word. My fingers tightened around the cool metal until my knuckles turned white. “Okay,” I rasped out. Viola offered a satisfied smile, kissed my cheek, and walked into the bathroom. The next morning, I stood before the familiar red wooden door of my grandfather’s old house. My eyes stung with an unexpected wave of heat. But just as I raised the key, the door swung open from the inside. Dan stood in the entryway, dressed in a midnight-blue silk loungewear set and leather slippers. Seeing me, he showed no surprise at all. Instead, he flashed a smooth, flawless smile. “Hey, Jesse,” he said, waving a designer interior concept book in his hand. “Help me pick. Do you think the living room would look better in champagne silk or slate blue?” I froze on the porch, my eyes locked on the domestic ease of his clothes. I turned slowly to look at Viola, who had just walked up behind me. She avoided my gaze. “Champagne,” she said quietly. “It makes the space look brighter.” In the far corner of the brick courtyard wall, there was a series of faint, faded notches—height marks my grandfather had carved into the brick year after year as I grew up. “This old wall is hideous,” Dan sneered slightly, checking his manicured nails. “Smells like mold. I hired a crew; they’re repainting the whole yard tomorrow.” He pointed toward a weathered wicker chair resting under the oak tree. “And that junk chair. Throwing it out with the rest of the trash.” My nails bit into the flesh of my palms. When Viola was paralyzed, her rage had been explosive. She had smashed every glass, every dish, every frame in our old apartment. It was on that very wicker chair that I had held her trembling body for hours, wiping her tears, promising her again and again that she would walk again. Now that she could stand, the chair was just garbage. “Viola,” I said, my voice thick and dry. “Why is he here?” Viola stepped toward me, reaching out to take my hand. I pulled back, stepping out of her reach. She let out a helpless sigh, lowering her voice. “Jesse, I did buy the brownstone back. But… the deed is temporarily under Dan’s name.” I whipped my head around to stare at her, unable to comprehend what I was hearing. “He and I are legally married on paper,” she explained, her tone laced with practiced patience. “Putting it under his name right now avoids a massive amount of tax complications as marital property. Once my international match wraps up next month, I’ll have him transfer the title to you.” My voice shook, stripped of all control. “This was the only thing I wanted back in this world. You’re worth millions now, Viola—are you really telling me you’re hurting for tax money?” Viola frowned, reaching out to pat my arm in a placating gesture. “Jesse, I’m under a lot of pressure right now. Besides, a name on a piece of paper doesn’t change anything. You can move in whenever you want. Dan lives downtown anyway; he won’t be here to disturb you.” Dan leaned casually against the doorframe, letting out a soft chuckle. “Exactly, Jesse. Besides, I’m planning to convert the second-floor master bedroom into Viola’s trophy room. We’re building a floor-to-ceiling glass display case for her championship belts.” I stood in the middle of the courtyard that used to be my entire world, watching them plan a future that had no room for me. I felt like a stranger given a five-minute tour of someone else’s life. On the drive back, Viola pulled over to buy a bag of roasted chestnuts from a street vendor—a treat I used to love when I was a kid. She peeled one carefully and held it to my lips. “Don’t be mad. Once I get back from the tournament, everything will go back to normal. Tonight, I’ll cook your favorite—spicy poached fish.” While Viola was in the kitchen chopping vegetables, her phone buzzed on the nightstand. It was a text from a high-end real estate agency: “Ms. Gilbert, your husband’s property transfer paperwork for the brownstone is fully finalized.” Impelled by a morbid curiosity, I picked up the phone and swiped the screen. Her passcode was still my birthday. I opened the attached confirmation document. Printed clearly at the top was the official date of transfer: three months ago. It was Dan’s birthday. The kitchen door opened as she carried a steaming dish to the table. Right then, her phone rang again. It was Dan. She listened for a moment, looking torn. Hanging up, she grabbed her coat and keys. “Dan twisted his wrist,” she said quickly, her eyes filled with apology. “I need to go check on him—we have a live rehabilitation demonstration and interview tonight. Jesse, go ahead and eat. Just bring my custom gloves and mouthguard to the broadcast studio green room later, okay?” I sat alone at the dining table. I had never liked fish. The strong, oily smell had always made me nauseous, but years ago, when we had no money, fish was the cheapest protein I could buy to cook for her recovery. The metallic smell hit my throat. I couldn’t take it anymore. I stood up, scraped the entire feast into the trash bin, and left. At the broadcast studio, the grand interview was underway. The reporter held a microphone toward Viola, her voice dripping with admiration. “Viola, you and Dr. Dan are truly the ultimate power couple in the sports world. We heard that during your years of paralysis, Dr. Dan made immense personal sacrifices behind the scenes?” Dan, dressed in a tailored suit, smiled warmly. Viola leaned gracefully against his arm. “Those years were dark,” Dan said, leaning into the mic. “But as husband and wife, there was no obstacle we couldn’t overcome together.” He emphasized the words “husband and wife” with deliberate weight. Backstage, my fingers tightened around the heavy gear bag until the canvas burned my skin. Suddenly, an eagle-eyed photojournalist in the front row pointed toward the wings. “Wait a minute! Isn’t that the guy who stood up at the victory gala?” In an instant, every camera lens swung around, flashing blindingly in my face. Sensationalizing the story instantly, a reporter rushed over and shoved a microphone toward Viola. “Viola! Who is this man to you? Rumors are circulating online that he was the one who actually stayed by your side during your darkest years and managed your rehab. Is that true?” The studio fell dead silent. Every eye bounced back and forth between Viola, Dan, and me. I looked at Viola on the stage. Those few seconds of silence stretched like an eternity. Deep down, a pathetic, foolish ember of hope still flickered in my chest. I thought that even if she couldn’t publicly call me her partner, she would at least say I was the person who carried her through hell. Viola looked at me. Her eyes flickered with a brief hint of panic. Then, she slowly raised her microphone. “Jesse Gilbert is the orderly who took care of my basic daily needs during my recovery,” her voice rang out crystal-clear through the studio speakers. “He was a very hard worker, very dutiful.” She turned her gaze back to Dan, her expression softening into pure devotion. “But Dan is my legal husband. He is the true, irreplaceable miracle behind my return to the ring.” Thunderous applause broke out across the studio. I stood anchored to the floor, holding her gear bag as a cold numbness spread through my veins. Breathing felt like dragging broken glass through my lungs. “An orderly.” Eight years of selling my home, working night shifts, sweating blood over her broken body—in her eyes, it was nothing more than a well-executed domestic service. The moment the broadcast ended, the studio descended into chaos. Someone had pulled up my security guard registry photo and splashed it across social media. Furious fans gathered at the venue exit, blocking my path. “So he was just a glorified attendant trying to clout-chase his way up?” “Disgusting! She has a husband, who the hell does he think he is?” “Having a guy like this around Viola ruins her image!” Vicious taunts rained down around me. Someone shoved my shoulder violently from behind. My grip slipped, and the heavy gear bag crashed onto the concrete steps. Custom gloves, mouthguards, and wraps spilled everywhere. I knelt down to gather them, but another harsh shove sent me tumbling sideways down the flight of stairs. My elbow scraped raw against the jagged concrete, blood seeping through my sleeve, and a sharp, blinding pain shot through my ankle. I gasped, pinned to the ground by the agony. Ripples of cruel laughter broke out in the crowd. Viola caught sight of the commotion. She took a step toward me, but Dan instantly caught her elbow. “Viola, the press is waiting for our couple photos, and the sponsors are watching.” The flicker of concern in Viola’s eyes died out. She looked away, calling out coldly to the guards, “Security, clear the area. Don’t let unauthorized people disrupt the event.” Years ago, when she couldn’t walk, if I was even ten minutes late coming back from the market, she would crawl to the front door, sweating and crying, terrified that I had abandoned her. Now her legs were healed. And as I lay bleeding at the bottom of the stairs, she turned her back and walked away. “Sir, you need to leave!” I dragged my swollen, throbbing ankle to the emergency clinic down the street, handing my ID to the receptionist. The nurse typed into her computer, and her demeanor instantly shifted. She shoved my ID back across the counter, her voice cold. “I’m sorry, Mr. Gilbert. We cannot treat you here.” I stared at her, blood dripping from my elbow onto my jeans. Without another word, the nurse hit the security buzzer under her desk. Two large guards flanked me, grabbed my arms, and dragged me out into the street. I sat on the cold curb, my hands trembling violently as I pulled out my phone and dialed Viola’s number. It rang for a long time before someone picked up. “Hello?” It was Dan’s voice. He intentionally put it on speaker, the background humming with the chatter of reporters. “Jesse, you know I’m Viola’s husband. Why do you keep calling to harass her?” he announced loudly, ensuring everyone around him heard every word. I gripped the phone, my knuckles white. “I gave her eight years of my life.” I bit my lip until I tasted copper, asking the final question burning in my chest. “I sold my home. I worked security for eight years. Now that I’m hurt, I can’t even get her to pick up the phone?” Silence stretched over the line for a moment. Then, Viola’s exhausted voice came through. “Just hang up, Dan. Don’t argue with him.” She didn’t even ask if I was okay. “You don’t need to lower yourself to deal with him,” she added coldly. “Just give him a lesson so he learns his place.” The line went dead. The screen turned black. Sitting on the curb, I let out a dry, breathy laugh at the sheer absurdity of my life. Dragging my foot, I made my way back to my small rented apartment. When the elevator opened, I found my clothes, old books, and personal belongings scattered all over the hallway carpet. My landlord stood outside my door with a fresh lock set in his hand. Avoiding my eyes, he pointed at the mess. “I’m sorry, Jesse. I’m refunding your deposit. Just pack your stuff and go.” In the trash chute near the elevator, my handwritten notebooks—hundreds of pages of muscle recovery logs and rehab routines—had been shredded into tiny pieces. “Ding.” The elevator doors opened again, and Viola stepped out, breathless. Taking in the mess in the hallway and the blood dried on my arm, her forehead creased tightly. She pulled a black credit card from her purse and shoved it toward me. “Jesse, can you please stop making a scene?” Her tone was heavy with annoyance. “When I get back from the tournament, I’ll find you another place. The money on this card is your compensation.” I didn’t take the card. I just raised my head and looked straight into her eyes. “You have a legal husband, yet you expect me to stay hidden in your shadow,” I said quietly. “Viola, what exactly am I to you?” Her face paled slightly, her eyes wavering. “I told you, I’ll explain everything when I get back! Can’t you just be sensible for once?” She checked her gold watch. “My flight leaves in an hour. I have to go. Find a hotel for tonight.” She turned, stepped back into the elevator, and never looked back. That night, in a cheap motel, two police officers knocked on my door. Someone had filed a report backed by a forged audio recording, accusing me of attempting to extort a world champion athlete. The credit card Viola had tried to give me was listed as key evidence. I was cuffed and placed in detention. … Seven days later, Viola returned in triumph from her overseas match. She tried calling my phone, but the line was disconnected. Her messages went unanswered. Panicked, she rushed to the brownstone, only to find the brass key sitting quietly inside the mailbox. It wasn’t until a mutual acquaintance told her about my arrest that she rushed to the police station. The officer at the desk handed her the black credit card. “Mr. Gilbert posted bail two days ago and left.”

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My wife has intermittent amnesia. At least, that was the story. On our third wedding anniversary, I set the final dish down on the dining table and sat across from her. “My chest has been feeling tight lately,” I said softly, watching her face. “I want to get it checked out at the clinic tomorrow. Will you come with me?” Nicole looked up, blinking with mild confusion as she tilted her head. “Huh? What did you just say?” Beside her, Cody—her childhood best friend who lived three doors down and practically moved into our apartment—smirked, taking a slow sip of his wine. He let out a theatrical, dry cough. “Man, I think I’m coming down with a fever.” In an instant, Nicole’s confused haze evaporated. She turned toward Cody, her hands fluttering over his forehead with sharp concern. “A fever? Did you stay up all night playing video games again? I told you to stop doing that.” Then, as if suddenly remembering my presence, she glanced back at me, offering a well-practiced, remorseful sigh. “I’m so sorry, Sam. You know how my memory just… slips. What were you saying?” I said nothing. I quietly pushed my chair back and left the table. The next morning, I went to the hospital alone. The diagnosis was straightforward: acute, severe anemia brought on by chronic physical exhaustion and long-term systemic stress. Panic surged through me. “That can’t be right, doctor. My wife is sick—she has a rare neurological condition. I’m supposed to donate bone marrow to her in a few weeks.” The doctor shook his head, looking at my charts with grave concern. “In your current state, a bone marrow harvest would put you in intensive care. Your body is running on empty. You are in no condition for any kind of surgery.” Sick with worry, I stepped into the noisy hallway and dialed Nicole’s phone to explain the situation. The line picked up, but the background noise was deafening—clinking glasses, background chatter, and loud music. “Huh? Sam?” Nicole’s voice sounded muffled. “What did you say? It’s so loud in here—” She didn’t hang up. She simply pulled the phone away from her ear, forgetting to end the call. Through the receiver, Cody’s sharp, triumphant laughter bled clearly into my ear. “God, that’s hilarious!” Cody wheezed. “Sam actually thinks you losing your train of thought is a real medical disorder! He buys it every single time!” “So, is the bone marrow thing locked in?” Cody continued, his tone shifting to greedy excitement. “The patient in my department’s ward is filthy rich. He promised me fifty grand under the table if I secure a matching donor for him!” … Nicole’s voice came through next, light and amused. “Relax, Cody. Sam will do anything for me. I’ll just tell him the marrow transplant is the only breakthrough cure for my amnesia. He won’t ask questions. He’ll hand it right over to your department.” Cody chuckled. “Isn’t that a little cold, Nico?” “It’s just bone marrow. It’s not like he’s going to die,” she replied carelessly. “Your medical residency and your career are way more important than his discomfort. Besides, he’s my husband. Isn’t he supposed to make sacrifices for me?” “And honestly, this whole amnesia game is a lifesaver,” she added with a giggle. “Remember when his mom was in the hospital and I went to Cabo with you instead? When I got back, I just pulled the ‘I don’t remember you telling me’ card, and he didn’t even yell at me.” Standing in the sterile hospital corridor, the phone pressed hard against my ear, my blood turned to ice. A game? A game. Shortly after we got married, Nicole came to me in tears, claiming she had been diagnosed with an atypical form of intermittent amnesia. She would forget my words, my birthday, and my severe shellfish allergy. We visited top specialists across the state, but brain scans yielded no answers. Then her college classmate—a neurology resident—sat me down with a grim face and explained it was an ultra-rare, untreatable neurological phenomenon. Panic-stricken, I turned down a prestigious overseas fellowship program I had spent four years earning. I stayed local, taking on grueling freelance tech contracts to pay her medical bills while cooking three tailored meals a day to keep her stress low. And it was all a cruel, coordinated joke. I didn’t make a sound. I silently ended the call. I leaned my back against the cold tiled wall as the hospital ceiling whirled above me. Vertigo washed over me in sickening waves. To afford her treatments, I had worked myself into the ground. Two solid years without a single weekend off, pulling eighty-hour workweeks, drinking black coffee like water until my hands trembled and my heart fluttered erratically in my chest. Frequent fainting spells. Chronic, blinding migraines that kept me awake for nights on end. When she told me three months ago that a bone marrow transplant might finally reset her neural pathways, I seized on it like a drowning man grasping at a lifeline. I scraped together every penny I earned. I remembered nights curling into a tight ball on our bed, my head throbbing as if gripped by a vise. I’d gently shake her shoulder: “Nico… my head hurts so bad. Could you please get me a glass of warm water?” She’d roll over, turning her back to me, her tone heavy with sleepy irritation: “Huh? What did you just say?” Her “amnesia” flared up whenever I was weak. And with it came a quick, razor-sharp temper. I had reached out to touch her arm: “Please… just a glass of water…” She shoved my hand away, pulling the comforter over her head. As I whimpered in pain, she sat up, glaring down at me with cold disgust: “You’re a grown man, Sam! Can you stop being so pathetic and dramatic? Don’t you know I’m sick? If I don’t get sleep, my condition gets worse! Do you want me to end up in an asylum?” I had bitten my lip until it bled, swallowing the pain. I endured it all—for her, for our future, for our home. And from start to finish, it was nothing more than an elaborate scam. If she chose to pretend she couldn’t hear me, then I had nothing left to say. I opened my phone and pulled up a text thread with my former boss, Victor. “Is that co-founder position in your tech startup still open?” … That evening, I pushed open the front door of our apartment. Laughter filled the living room. Nicole and Cody were surrounded by their old middle-school clique. They had been an insular, tight-knit group for over fifteen years. Back when her “neurologist friend” advised us that being around familiar childhood friends would stimulate her memory retention, I willingly welcomed them into our home. They turned my meticulously decorated place into their personal lounge, treating our living room like a mid-tier motel. As the door shut, the conversation died. They all turned to look at me, exchanging silent, knowing glances. Cody cleared his throat with a playful smirk: “Speaking of which, Nico and Sam have been married three full years now. Since somebody’s memory keeps failing her, why don’t I help you two take a trip down memory lane?” Nicole popped a potato chip into Cody’s open mouth. “Remind me of what?” “Remind you of how obsessed you used to be with him!” Cody laughed behind his hand. “Remember how eager you were back in college? Waiting outside his lab after work every night? You even dropped a month’s salary to buy him that high-end graphics card!” Nicole tilted her head, looking at Cody with exaggerated confusion: “Huh? What are you talking about?” The game began again. Cody widens his eyes: “No way. You don’t remember that?” She shook her head, looking bewildered: “Not at all. Did I really do something like that? Was I actually that desperate?” I stood in the doorway, staring at her as a tight, suffocating pain gripped my chest. The quiet tenderness and affection she once showed me—moments I had cherished as the foundation of our marriage—were now re-framed in front of her friends as a humiliating, pathetic disgrace. Her friends erupted into laughter. Once the giggles subsided, one of them called out to me: “Hey Sam, you’re finally back! Where’s the gourmet roasted chicken Nicole told you to pick up?” “Where’s my takeout barbecue?” “You didn’t forget the ten artisanal iced lattes from that downtown cafe, did you?” I stood motionless. I recalled how, in the past, I genuinely believed these friends were visiting to support her recovery. I had bent over backward to cater to their demands, playing the dutiful host, eager to please. Yet, deep down, the signs had always been there. Nicole’s “amnesia” only flared up when it involved me. When Cody caught a mild cold, she remembered a month later to text him about wearing extra layers. She never forgot a single item her friends asked for. So why was it that when I was hospitalized with severe pneumonia last year, she couldn’t even remember my room number? When I used to ask her, she would look at me with eyes swimming with tragic remorse, whispering: “I’m so sorry, Sam. I’m trying so hard to get better. Please don’t give up on me.” Later, as if to prove her condition was impartial, she began staging her “flare-ups” in front of her friends. I remembered washing dishes in the kitchen one evening while her friends sat in the living room: “God, I still don’t get what Nicole sees in him. He’s such a dull wallflower.” “Right? Total killjoy. Always sitting there with that stiff, serious face like the world owes him money.” “And his style is tragic. That jacket he wore to the party looked like a thrift store donation.” Nicole had sat there, smiling passively. Only when she noticed her friends looking at her did she drawl softly: “Huh? What did you guys just say?” She couldn’t “remember” them mocking her husband, either. Because it was all a game. A systematic, cruel game designed to isolate, humiliate, and mock me. “Hey! Sam! Are you deaf?” a woman named Kelsey snapped, raising her voice from the couch. “Where are our drinks? Why did you walk in empty-handed?” I pulled out my phone without emotion. Two hours ago, Nicole had sent a laundry list of errands. At that exact time, I was sitting with a trusted friend in hospital administration, verifying her medical records. My friend had confirmed what I already suspected: there was no record of any such neurological disorder. And certainly no medical basis for a bone marrow transplant. “I didn’t see the text,” I said quietly. Nicole’s expression instantly darkened: “Didn’t see it?” “Is your phone just a useless paperweight? My friends have been waiting here starving for hours, and all you have to say is ‘I didn’t see it’? Why can’t you get a single simple task right?” Cody clutched his chest at that exact moment, slumping dramatically against the sofa cushion. “Oh man…” Nicole’s eyes widened with instant panic: “Cody! What’s wrong?” He spoke in a weak, breathy voice: “It’s fine… just haven’t eaten in a while. My blood sugar is crashing…” Nicole snapped into action. She leaped up, marched over to the pantry cabinet, and reached for a wooden box on the top shelf. It was a box of specialty smoked prosciutto my father had cured and shipped from our family farm back home—a gift I had been saving for a special occasion. Instinctively, I stepped forward: “Please don’t open that.” “My dad sent that from home. I have a box of unopened crackers in my bag—” “Who cares where it came from?” She glared at me with sharp venom. “Because you failed to bring food back, Cody is having a hypoglycemic attack! Do you know how dangerous that is?” She tore open the decorative packaging, sliced the cured meat roughly on the counter, and set the plate in front of Cody. I stood anchored to the floor, watching her. Low blood sugar can be dangerous? So she “did” know. Yet when I worked three consecutive days on less than ten hours of total sleep, shivering and covered in cold sweat from severe hypoglycemia at three in the morning, begging her to bring me a piece of candy from the kitchen—what did she do? She had an “amnesia flare-up.” “What did you just say?” she had mumbled, rolling away. I watched her friends laugh and dig into my father’s gift. Cody offered me an apologetic look through a mouthful of meat: “Hey man, don’t be mad. My blood sugar really tanked. I didn’t mean to eat your stuff… I’ll buy you another box to replace it.” Nicole affectionately patted Cody’s head: “Why are you apologizing to him? His heart is smaller than a pinhole.” Her friends chimed in: “Seriously, Sam, you’re a grown man. Don’t be so stingy over a piece of meat. It doesn’t even taste that great anyway.” “Cody isn’t feeling well. As the host, you should show some basic sympathy.” “Nicole, you really need to put your husband in check. That sour face of his ruins the whole room.” Feeling her social standing threatened, Nicole cleared her throat, trying to regain control: “Alright, alright. He’s been stressed with work lately, don’t pay him any mind.” “Just wait here, guys. I’ll take him out to grab food, and we’ll be right back.” She grabbed my arm with a harsh, unyielding grip and dragged me toward the front door. A sharp ache shot through my lower back, making me stumble, but she yanked me out into the hallway without looking back. In the car, Nicole gripped the steering wheel, her mouth moving in a relentless stream of scolding: “Sam, are you trying to humiliate me on purpose?” “Cody and the group come over here to help me heal! Would it kill you to run a simple errand for them?” “They’re my friends! You married me—is showing them basic hospitality really that much to ask?” I remained silent, looking out the passenger window. She really played this game with absolute commitment. I knew exactly why she acted this way. Within her social circle, Nicole had always occupied the lowest rung. Cody was the undeniable sun around which everyone orbited—wealthy, handsome, effortlessly charming. The others all came from prominent, established families. Only Nicole grew up as the insecure outsider, earning her place by playing the eager clown, desperate for approval. Deep in her bones, she was terrified of being cast aside. And to impress them, to prove she was someone of importance, she used me as her footstool. She displayed me to them like a well-trained pet: “Look, my husband obeys my every command. I am the absolute authority in my house.” “Say something! Are you deaf now?” Nicole barks, slamming her palm against the steering wheel. “Where were you earlier today, anyway?” I took a slow, quiet breath: “I went to the hospital today.” She cut me off before I could finish: “Oh, because of your little chest tightness?” “Can you stop being so fragile? Cody actually suffers from cardiac arrhythmias, and he doesn’t whine like he’s on his deathbed.” I turned my head to look at her: “You remembered that?” She froze. Her eyes flickered as she realized her slip. Yet she quickly hardened her tone: “Yeah, so what? My memory comes and goes. Isn’t it a good thing I remembered? It means my brain is getting better.” I lowered my head, saying nothing more. On the day Cody went for his heart checkup, it was my birthday. She had forgotten completely, spending twenty-four straight hours by his side at the clinic. When she returned home, she gave me that same mournful look, claiming she had lost track of time because of her condition. I followed her into the night market, quietly helping her carry the bags of takeout food. At a street food stand, she suddenly stopped and bought a warm, cinnamon pretzel—the kind I used to love during our college days. She handed it to me with a soft smile: “Here. Don’t be mad anymore.” “I bought this just for you. I won’t give them a piece.” Looking at the pretzel in my hand, a wave of profound bitterness washed over me. This pathetic crumb of affection was likely the last remaining shred of tenderness she had left for me—and for our entire marriage. When we pushed open the front door, the apartment was thick with cigarette smoke, empty beer cans rolling across the hardwood floor. Kelsey looked up from the couch and immediately complained: “Ugh, takeout without real comfort food is boring! We want homemade ravioli from scratch!” Nicole smiled warmly: “No problem. Sam will make it.” She turned to me, her voice casual and commanding: “Go on, head to the kitchen. Roll out some dough and make a few different fillings—Cody likes the shrimp and ricotta mixture, so make a separate batch for him.” I walked into the kitchen without a word. My body was hollowed out, weak from lack of food, my muscles aching with a low throbbing. Cold sweat slicked my back. I forced myself to chop the herbs and vegetables for the pasta fillings, but my vision suddenly blurred. The heavy chef’s knife slipped, slicing deep into my left index finger. Crimson blood welled up instantly, dripping onto the wooden cutting board. I stared at the stain, dazed. Strangely, I felt no pain at all. Perhaps because the ache inside me was so overwhelming that a physical cut barely registered. I stepped out of the kitchen, intending to grab a band-aid from the hallway cabinet. Cody caught sight of the blood on my hand and suddenly gasped, pulling back his own hand: “Ouch…” Nicole didn’t even look at me; she rushed straight to Cody, inspecting his hand with intense worry: “What happened? Did you get a splinter?” She gazed tenderly at his slightly reddened finger, then spun around, her face twisting into rage as she screamed at me: “Sam! Are you blind? Can’t you inspect the wooden kitchen utensils for splinters before setting them out?” “Cody has delicate skin! He isn’t coarse and thick-skinned like you!” Only after her outburst did her glance briefly land on my dripping, blood-stained hand. Her eyebrows pulled together in deep annoyance: “Why are you so clumsy? It’s just chopping herbs—how do you manage to cut yourself?” “Go wrap it up! Don’t get blood in the pasta dough or the filling, or how is anyone supposed to eat?” I stood silently, watching her. Her attention had already shifted back to Cody’s finger. The rest of the group crowded around them, offering tissues and blowing soft breaths onto his hand. I found a band-aid, wrapped it tightly around my finger, and returned to the kitchen. The dinner was loud and raucous. They devoured every last piece of handmade ravioli. Afterward, sprawled across the living room furniture, someone lazily suggested: “Man, I’m stuffed. Hey Nico, why don’t we play another round of ‘Memory Lane’?” Cody smirked: “Sounds great. Who wants to go first?” Kelsey glanced at me, her voice ringing out intentionally loud: “I will!” “You know, Nicole… the other night, I saw your husband outside a nightclub downtown.” “But he wasn’t there as a customer—he was selling himself!” “Want to know why he stays with you despite your illness? Because he does nasty, desperate stuff on the side to make money!” Raucous laughter exploded through the room. Every pair of eyes turned to land on Nicole, waiting for her reaction. In the beginning, this game was meant solely for Nicole and Cody to manipulate me into donating bone marrow for fifty thousand dollars. But along the way, the group had discovered a new form of entertainment. Under the guise of “amnesia therapy,” they could hurl the vilest insults and cruelty at me, disguised as playful jokes. If I ever showed anger, they would laugh in my face, claiming I had no sense of humor, reminding me that the neurologist recommended “emotional stimulation” for Nicole’s recovery. Back then, because Nicole was a medical professional, I swallowed every shred of humiliation, forcing a tight smile, pretending to play along. I will not endure it for another second. I stood up, my voice dead calm: “I’m not feeling well. I’m going to sleep. You can continue helping her remember.” Seeing that I refused to perform, Kelsey slapped her palm on the coffee table: “Sleep? We’re all having a great time! Who are you giving that attitude to?” Nicole quickly jumped in to smooth things over: “Forget it, guys. He’s saving up his strength to donate bone marrow for my treatment. He needs his rest. Let him go to bed.” I looked at the face of the woman I once loved with every fiber of my being. I reached into my leather bag, pulled out a crisp white diagnostic report, and laid it flat on the coffee table between the empty beer cans. Under the stunned, silent stares of the room, I looked Nicole directly in the eye: “I went to the hospital today. You are completely healthy.” “You don’t need my bone marrow.” “Nicole, I want a divorce.”

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “560125”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

At the sip-and-see party for the newborn twins, someone suggested a game of “Never Have I Ever”. Selena was the first to raise her glass. “Never have I ever carried a baby for ten months, only to realize I was carrying my husband’s child with another woman.” The room plunged into dead silence. A heartbeat later, my husband, Dave, slid his glass of juice across the marble table, stopping it right in front of me. “She’s telling the truth,” he said, his voice flat, devoid of any hesitation. “Drink up, Julia.” I stared at him, my breath catching in my chest. “Both babies belong to Selena,” Dave continued smoothly, as if discussing the quarterly budget. “Her health is fragile; she can’t carry a pregnancy to term. I promised to help her fulfill her dream of becoming a mother. Be generous about this, Julia. Don’t make a scene.” My adoptive mother, Victoria, chimed in, squeezing my shoulder with fake sympathy. “She’s right, sweetie. Honestly, I knew all along. I just didn’t want to ruin your postpartum recovery by telling you sooner. I was actually at the fertility clinic the day of the embryo transfer.” A cold, sickening horror bloomed behind my ribs. The children I had nearly died to bring into this world… weren’t mine. Everyone in that room knew. Every single one of them. I was the only idiot kept in the dark, treated like a tragic punchline. Gathering every ounce of strength I had left, I handed the sleeping infants to the nanny. I turned on my heel, walked out toward the quiet courtyard, and dialed a number I hadn’t called in years. “I’m ready,” I said into the receiver, my voice trembling but sharp as broken glass. “I’ll take over the family business.” “Good,” the voice on the other end answered seamlessly. “What do you need?” “Tomorrow morning, I want the Ellington and Barrington companies under the Primo name. All of them.” … As the party wound down, relatives lingered, offering their suffocating version of “comfort.” “Don’t take it to heart, Julia. Honestly, Dave marrying you in the first place was a blessing. Selena is the real Ellington heiress, and she’s not even forcing a divorce. What is there to throw a tantrum about?” “Exactly. It was all for the good of the family. Just be sensible.” “You just finished your postpartum month. Don’t ruin your health over this. You still have two babies to raise, after all.” The sheer, agonizing absurdity of it made me want to laugh out loud. Even now, at this exact moment, they still expected me to be the sweet, sensible girl. To be magnanimous. To keep playing the dutiful fake heiress, raising someone else’s children, fulfilling someone else’s dream. I looked down at the twin babies sleeping soundly in the nanny’s arms, their tiny fists clenched tight against their cheeks. I carried them for ten grueling months. I endured a seven-layer abdominal incision during an emergency C-section. I laid in the ICU for three days, hooked to monitors, floating between life and death. The IVF treatments before that had been a slow, quiet hell. Hormones bloated my body; long, terrifying needles left a galaxy of deep purple bruises across my stomach. The sterile, bleached ceiling of the clinic and the sharp bite of antiseptic still lingered in my memory like a fresh wound. And yet, the babies I bled for didn’t carry a single drop of my blood. I swallowed hard, taking a deep breath, but I didn’t even have the energy left to shake. While the hosts were distracted entertaining the remaining guests, I slipped upstairs to my bedroom and locked the door behind me. The first thing I did was open my phone and search for top-tier divorce attorneys. My fingers moved across the glass screen with a chilling, detached precision. I didn’t shed a single tear. I methodically compared trial success rates, taking screenshots and saving them to a secure folder. When I finally unlocked the door and stepped out into the hallway, Dave was waiting. He stepped forward, carefully placing a soft cashmere beanie on my head. “You just got out of recovery,” he said softly, his touch mimicking tenderness. “You need to stay warm. Don’t catch a chill.” I took a step back, my movement mechanical, entirely numb. He let out a quiet sigh. “Look, Selena was out of line downstairs. I already gave her a stern talking-to.” “Did you reprimand her in front of everyone?” I asked, staring straight into his eyes. Dave paused, his brows knitting together in irritation. “Why do you always have to take things so far? Selena’s health is delicate; she can’t handle intense stress. You two are different—” “Different how?” I cut in, my voice deadpan. “Do I have an extra set of arms and legs?” Dave’s face darkened instantly. “That’s enough!” He clearly hadn’t expected me to bite back. After all, we had grown up as childhood sweethearts. I had spent my entire adult life bending over backward for him. Years ago, when his startup was on the brink of collapse, I was the one who drank myself into alcohol poisoning at business dinners just to secure his first major investment. For him, I gave up my acceptance to an Ivy League master’s program, staying by his side through the mud and the grit. My reward? A signed marriage license and a pair of beautiful twins… that didn’t belong to me. My eyes burned, but I nodded slowly. “You’re right. It “is” enough.” In this relationship, my conscience was completely clear. And this was where it ended. He blinked, caught off guard by my sudden, eerie calm. His tone softened slightly, condescending as ever. “I couldn’t even give her a proper wedding license, Julia. Is it so wrong to let her vent a little? You just had a baby; your hormones are driving your emotions. I don’t blame you for acting out.” He reached for my arm. “Just don’t push it too far.” A cold, bitter laugh echoed silently in my head. Years of devotion. Risking my life on an operating table. And it was all reduced to: “Don’t push it too far.” Victoria came hurrying up the stairs, breathless. “Dave! Selena locked herself in her room and she’s sobbing uncontrollably! She won’t open the door for anyone!” Dave turned instantly, stepping around me without a second thought. “I’ll go check on her.” I watched his back disappear down the hall. Then I went downstairs, grabbed my car keys, and drove straight to the office. The lights in the accounting department burned late into the night. While I had been stuck at home on bed rest, Dave had quietly transferred property titles, offshore investment funds, fine jewelry, and international bank accounts over to Selena. The grand total was well into the eight figures. Staring at the darkened monitor, a sharp, metallic ache settled deep in my chest. My senior financial manager, whom I had called in for an emergency audit, approached my desk. Her voice trembled softly as she spoke. “Vice President… there’s also this.” She handed me a stack of hotel expense reports. Top-tier luxury penthouse suites. The dates matched the exact forty-eight hours I was screaming in labor and lingering in the ICU. Dave’s signature was scrawled at the bottom in his signature, arrogant flourish. While I was torn open on an operating table, he was wrapped in high-thread-count sheets with Selena. I reached up, wiping away an invisible tear from the corner of my eye. Pulling out my phone, I typed a brief message to the contact I had spoken with earlier: “I agree to the terms. But I have one condition.” “By tomorrow morning, I want Ellington and Barrington under the Primo name.” I locked the screen, leaned back into the leather office chair, and closed my eyes. …… The next morning, inside the executive boardroom of Barrington Corp. Dave pushed the double doors open and froze. I was sitting in his leather chair at the head of the conference table. He recovered quickly, a practiced smile sliding onto his face as he took the adjacent seat, acting as if nothing was amiss. “Julia just had the babies, everyone. Her mood has been a bit unstable lately, so please be patient with her moving forward.” With a single sentence, he labeled every future word out of my mouth as the ramblings of a hysterical woman. Anything I said would be rendered meaningless. Selena walked in right behind him, gliding into the empty chair on Dave’s other side as if it were her birthright. Dave raised a hand, addressing the room. “Selena will be stepping in to lighten Julia’s workload starting today. She has extensive experience, so I expect full cooperation from all departments.” “Lighten my workload.” I nearly burst out laughing. It wasn’t workload sharing; it was an execution of power. By the time I was expected to return from “taking care of the babies,” my title, my network, and my authority would be completely erased and handed to her on a silver platter. I tilted my head, looking directly at Dave. “Did the board of directors vote on this?” Dave’s voice remained smooth, indifferent. “Company policy regarding parental leave doesn’t require a board vote. It’s standard procedure.” He leaned in close, lowering his voice so only I could hear. “You wouldn’t bring personal household drama into the workplace, would you, Julia?” I looked at him, remaining silent. I knew exactly what was running through his head. He was gambling on my silence. Gambling that I would hide the family disgrace to protect our reputation, swallowing the broken glass just like I always had. When the meeting adjourned, my assistant brought lunch to my office. A heavy, lukewarm bowl of pork trotter soup sat on the tray, thick with a layer of congealed fat—the classic, suffocating meal forced on nursing mothers to boost milk production. I frowned. “Who ordered this?” “Mr. Barrington,” the assistant murmured nervously. “He insisted that you drink every last drop.” My jaw tightened. He truly viewed me as nothing more than a wet nurse for his mistress’s children. I opened my laptop, trying to pull up a quarterly operations file, when my phone vibrated rapidly with dozens of notifications. “You have been removed from the group chat.” “You have been removed from the group chat.” I blinked. I had been systematically purged from every single corporate communications channel. Not a single group was left. The sharp click of designer high heels echoed against the hardwood floor. “Sister,” Selena purred, leaning against the doorframe. “Dave is doing this for your own good. You just finished your recovery; you shouldn’t be stressing yourself out with business.” She stepped closer, her voice dropping to a venomous whisper. “Now that the real heiress is back, an imposter like you should just go home and nurse my children. Once they’re older, I might even let them call you ‘Auntie.’ Consider it a reward for your three years of service.” “Auntie.” I stared at her, genuinely baffled by her delusion. Did she truly believe I was going to stay and raise her kids? I pointed a firm finger toward the hallway. “Get out of my office.” “It’s going to be my office soon anyway,” she smirked. “Then why stop there?” I replied coldly. “Why don’t you take Dave’s seat too and play CEO yourself?” The heavy oak door swung open with a loud slam. Dave stood in the doorway, his face pale with anger, his tone laced with suppressed rage. “Julia! I provide your clothes, your food, your whole life—and you’re already plotting to usurp my position?” I looked at the man standing before me, suddenly realizing how terrifyingly stranger-like he had become. He seemed to have completely forgotten that this company only survived because of me. Three years ago, I was the one kneeling at corporate dinners to secure the funding that pulled him out of bankruptcy. I was the one who gave up an Ivy League education to wade through the dirt with him. I was the one who spent ten months growing children in my body to keep his domestic life whole. And now, he was asking if I wanted to usurp him. A small, bitter smile touched my lips. “Dave… did you forget? You offered me the Managing Director position years ago. I was the one who turned it down.” His face flushed a mottled red, entirely caught off guard. He immediately pivoted, trying to regain control. “Your mother called. She said the babies are hungry. Go home and feed them.” I chuckled softly. “You two really put on a coordinated performance, don’t you?” He snapped his briefcase shut, frowning. “You’re in a terrible mood. I’m not going to argue with you.” Without another word, I gathered my personal belongings, stood up, and walked out. When I arrived at our estate, the smart lock at the front door let out an abrasive electronic screech. “Fingerprint not recognized.” On the third failed attempt, a security alarm chimed, and the door opened from the inside. The housekeeper stood there, looking at me with nervous, shifting eyes. “Miss Julia… Mr. Barrington deleted your biometric access from the system. He… he also asked me to tell you that you should stay indoors from now on. There’s no need for you to go out.” Soft house arrest. It was so ridiculous it was almost funny. A grown woman, locked out of her own life. Stepping into the foyer, the subtle shifts in the house hit me immediately. The grand canvas of our wedding portrait hanging in the living room was gone. In its place hung a fresh, framed family portrait: Dave, Victoria, and Selena, holding the twins between them. I was nowhere in the frame. I pushed open the door to the primary bedroom. The crisp, minimal linen bedding I preferred had been completely stripped. In its place were heavy, gaudy satin sheets embroidered with layered red peonies. Selena’s favorite. Victoria walked up behind me, her voice light and careless. “You won’t be sleeping in this room anymore, Julia. Move your things down to the nanny’s quarters on the first floor.” She paused, offering a tight, unbothered smile. “It’s just more convenient for taking care of the babies at night.” My fingers tightened around the strap of my handbag, my nails digging deep into my palms. I knew why she hated me. She blamed me for “stealing” her biological daughter’s luxurious life for twenty-seven years. She resented me for holding onto Dave. But for those twenty-seven years, I had truly loved her as my mother. A dull, aching pain throbbed in my chest. I knelt down beside the trash can in the corner of the room. Settled at the bottom was a framed photograph of Dave and me from college, the glass shattered. Over twenty years of being childhood sweethearts. From school uniforms to a wedding dress. From rock bottom to a publicly traded company. It couldn’t even survive three years of a shiny new distraction. That night, Dave and Selena walked through the front door laughing and chatting, looking for all the world like a glowing, happily married couple. I sat at the dining table, picking at a plate of spicy crawfish. Before the fork reached my mouth, Dave slammed his palm onto the table with a deafening bang. “You’re breastfeeding! Why are you eating spicy food?” “My milk dried up,” I said calmly, taking another bite. “I can’t feed them anymore.” He froze, his voice dropping. “What? Why?” “The doctor said severe emotional distress cuts off lactation,” I replied, looking him straight in the eye. He opened his mouth, but no sound came out. When I was pregnant, he had obsessively researched every pregnancy book, compiling lists of foods and habits that could affect lactation. Back then, I thought it was proof of his overwhelming love for me. Now I realized the truth: he didn’t care about me at all. He only cared about the nourishment of his and Selena’s biological children. I set my fork down. “Enjoy your dinner.” I turned and walked into the study, pulling out my personal document binder to retrieve our marriage certificate. When I opened the leather folder, my fingers went completely rigid. My side of the marriage certificate had been viciously charred. My face was scorched black by a lighter, rendered entirely unrecognizable. I stared at the burnt paper, a cold, creeping shiver slithering up my spine. This home was officially a crime scene of a dead marriage. At 2:00 AM, my phone buzzed incessantly. I had been added to a massive group chat titled “Barrington Corp Watercooler”. Someone had dropped a candid photo into the chat. It was a shot of me in the boardroom yesterday—eyes red, standing up to confront Dave. The angle was intentionally grotesque, making my face look twisted, unhinged, like a lunatic on the verge of a breakdown. “Guys, did you know? The Vice President is actually the fake heiress.” “I heard she forced Mr. Barrington to marry her years ago! Used her business connections to blackmail him, otherwise he would’ve been with the real Ellington daughter all along.” “She must have severe postpartum depression. She lost her mind in the office yesterday and almost pushed Ms. Selena down the stairs!” I scrolled up, my thumbs stiffening against the glass. The rumors were written with terrifying detail. Anyone reading them without context would instantly believe I was a unstable monster. Even several senior executives whom I had personally hired and mentored were dropping agreeing emojis in the thread. I checked the group settings. The admin was Selena. She wasn’t even trying to hide it anymore. Taking a slow, deep breath, I turned off the screen. Her strategy was glaringly obvious: paint me as a hysterical, postpartum lunatic in front of the entire company, giving them a righteous excuse to strip my authority, cast me out of the business, and purge me from both the Ellington and Barrington families. The next morning. Dave walked into the dining room and slid a legal document across the table toward me. “Sign it, Julia. It’s for your own good.” He pulled out a fountain pen. “This stock transfer agreement ensures you get a generous lump-sum payout. Given your awkward position right now, having this cash means you won’t suffer down the road, no matter what happens.” I looked up at him, a faint, bitter curve touching my lips. I had lived a smooth, privileged life for twenty-seven years. If it weren’t for him and Selena, I wouldn’t be suffering a single ounce of pain today. Seeing me remain silent, he nudged the pen closer. I recognized that pen instantly. It was a vintage Montblanc I had spent months sourcing for his twenty-fifth birthday. Back then, he held it like a sacred artifact, calling it his “lucky charm” after using it to sign his first ten-million-dollar contract. Now, he was handing it to me so I could sign away my life’s work. “Fine,” I said softly, picking up the document. “I’ll sign. On one condition.” Dave’s brows furrowed tightly. I paused, letting the silence stretch between us. “I want this pen back.” He visibly blinked, entirely stunned. He had clearly braced himself for a massive financial demand, or perhaps an ultimatum forcing Selena out of the estate. He never expected me to ask for an old pen. Without a second thought, he handed the cap over. “Sure. It’s yours.” I gripped the cold metal of the pen, feeling the crushing weight of the irony. I was just like this pen to him. Irreplaceable when useful; completely disposable the moment something shiny came along. I signed my name cleanly at the bottom of the document, capped the pen, and slipped it into my pocket. “Since you’re giving me a gift,” I murmured, “I should prepare a grand gift for you in return.” Dave smiled, a smug, knowing look settling over his features. “Tomorrow is the official merger ceremony between Ellington Group and Barrington Corp. Your blessing is enough.” He smoothed his tie. “However, you’ll need to publicly announce your retirement from company operations at the event. It’s better for everyone’s image.” I smiled, nodding gently. “Don’t mention it. I’ve been preparing this gift for a very long time.” Dave left the room entirely satisfied. I watched his retreating figure through the glass doors, the smile on my face slowly chilling into ice. He, Victoria, and Selena… if none of them could tolerate my existence, then I had no reason to offer them a shred of mercy. I went upstairs, pulled out a secure burner phone, and dialed a number. “Is the portfolio ready?” “Everything is locked and loaded,” a smooth, steady male voice replied through the speaker. “And the conditions you requested for tomorrow will be executed down to the last detail.” …… The following afternoon, the grand ballroom hosting the Ellington-Barrington Merger Ceremony was packed with press and high-society figures. I arrived dressed in a sleek, tailored black suit. The moment I stepped through the doors, every eye in the room pivoted toward me like sharp needles. The Marketing Director—a man I had personally promoted twice—was the first to jog over. His face wore a wide, practiced grin. “Vice President! Right this way, please. We reserved a special seat for you.” He led me past the velvet-draped VIP tables, guiding me all the way to the farthest back corner of the room—a tiny, wobbly table set up directly beside the maintenance and janitorial closet. Soft snickers erupted from the surrounding tables. At the front row, Selena glided in, her arm wrapped tightly around Dave’s as she took the seat that used to belong to me. Dave adjusted his lapel, stepped up to the podium, and cleared his throat into the microphone. “Today marks the official merger of Ellington Group and Barrington Corp,” his voice boomed over the speakers. “Furthermore, I have one important announcement to make—due to health reasons, Ms. Julia Ellington will be stepping down from all operational roles within the firm, effective immediately.” The crowd fell silent for a beat before erupting into polite applause. Several senior executives near the stage immediately seized the opportunity to throw mud. “Remember that international tech investment two years ago?” one manager loudly chimed in. “Julia’s impulsive decision cost the company nearly ten million dollars!” The head of marketing nodded fervently. “Well… what do you expect from a…” He intentionally dragged out the words, “…knock-off heiress? Her vision was always limited.” A wave of cruel laughter rippled through the room. Yet I remembered that deal vividly. Dave was the one who insisted on pushing the contract through against my warnings; when it tanked, he quietly shifted the paper trail to put my signature on the loss. “With Ms. Selena taking over, things will finally run smoothly,” another director added. Selena sat in the front row, covering her mouth as she let out a delicate giggle, the triumphant malice in her eyes impossible to hide. Victoria sat beside her, completely motionless, allowing the entire room to drag me through the dirt without uttering a single word of defense. My hand dipped into my pocket, my fingers closing tightly around a sleek silver USB drive. My nails dug into my palm until it throbbed with pain. Good. Pain was useful. Pain kept my memory sharp so I would remember every single face, every snicker, and every word spoken in this room. I took a firm step forward. My voice wasn’t loud, but it cut through the microphone chatter with eerie clarity. “Are you finished?” I asked, looking up at the stage. “Because it’s my turn.” Dave saw the flash drive in my hand, his expression subtly shifting. “Julia, what are you doing?” I put on a picture-of-innocence smile. “I just felt so sentimental about leaving the company. I put together a quick slide deck as a little farewell keepsake.” Dave relaxed slightly, lowering his tone. “Look, as long as you behave yourself today, I’ll make sure you’re taken care of financially.” Without waiting for his permission, I walked directly to the technician’s AV station and plugged the drive straight into the master console. The massive LED screen behind the podium flickered to life. Dave’s pupils contracted violently. He spun around, frantically reaching to yank the drive from the computer. “Julia! Are you out of your mind?! Why are you casting private photos of Selena and me?!” I dodged his reach effortlessly, my smile growing cold. “Don’t be impatient, Mr. Barrington. I promise the next slide won’t disappoint you.” The screen flickered again. A high-resolution image of an official marriage certificate filled the massive display. In the photo, Selena was wearing a white dress, her arm linked with a middle-aged, unfamiliar man. The registration date stamped at the bottom was from three years ago. Dave whipped his head around toward Selena, his eyes suddenly bloodshot, pulsing with red veins. A heavy, suffocating silence gripped the ballroom—followed immediately by Dave’s deafening roar.

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In the quiet dark of our bedroom, right in the middle of a whispered promise from my husband, the door was slammed open. His non-biological sister stood in the doorway, tears spilling down her cheeks like shattered beads. “Trevor… my skin is on fire again. You’re the only one who can make it stop…” The hand Trevor had resting against my waist went rigid. A second later, he threw back the duvet, shifted away from me, and wrapped Jill in his arms. “It’s her touch starvation,” he said softly, keeping his eyes on her as he smoothed her hair. “When it flares up, her whole body aches. Don’t be upset with her, Naomi. She can’t control it.” He spoke in the low, crooning tone you’d use on a frightened toddler, holding a twenty-two-year-old woman against his chest. This wasn’t the first time. At our engagement party, she had announced to the entire room that her skin felt raw, insisting she couldn’t stand unless she was pressed against his arm. At the movie theater, she’d squeezed into his seat, resting her cheek against his knee and complaining that her body was burning up, and he had spent the whole film absentmindedly rubbing her calves. Every single time, I forced myself to be understanding. I told myself to be the bigger person, to empathize with someone struggling with a genuine psychological condition. But right now, in the faint amber light filtering from the hallway, I saw it. Buried against the crook of his neck, Jill’s mouth curved into a small, triumphant smile. A sudden, hollow exhaustion washed over me. If they enjoyed playing this devoted, co-dependent farce so much, then it was time for the third wheel to step out of the picture. … When I woke up the next morning, Trevor’s side of the mattress was cold and smooth. He had spent another night in the guest room, soothing Jill. She had moved in three months ago under the guise of taking a brief vacation. Within three days, her condition flared up—her skin turning blotchy and red, her arms crisscrossed with bloody scratch marks from her own fingernails. Trevor took her to the medical center downtown, and when they came back, his mind was made up. “The dermatology clinic here is one of the best in the state,” he had told me. “She needs to stay here for treatment. The care back home just doesn’t compare.” At first, Trevor set up a folding cot for her in the living room, claiming it was just for a few days. But on the third night, she had another episode. She curled up on the cot, trembling, sobbing out, “Trevor, my skin is so hungry, please touch me.” Trevor had practically leaped out of our bed and rushed to her side, holding her for hours. His hands had moved in slow, rhythmic strokes over her back and arms until she finally drifted off. The following morning, dark circles framed his tired eyes as he told me, “That cot is too small. I can’t comfort her properly when she’s having a severe episode. Let’s move her into the guest room. It’s closer to us.” He didn’t wait for my response. He had already turned toward the linen closet to pull out fresh sheets for her. Last week, during her follow-up appointment, the specialist indicated her therapy would take at least four more months. When Trevor brought it up with me that evening, he framed it as a conversation. “She’s been dealing with this flare-up for years without any real progress,” he murmured. “The doctor feels confident about this treatment plan. I want her to finish it before she goes back.” He paused, adding in a softer voice, “Don’t worry. The moment she’s healed, I’ll take her back home myself. Just bear with it a little longer, okay?” When he said “I’m sorry for putting you through this,” his eyes were soft, his tone tender. But when he said “I want her to finish it before she goes back,” it wasn’t a request. It was an announcement. I lay in bed for a long time before finally getting up to wash my face. A new line of products sat neatly on the marble bathroom counter. Medical-grade barrier creams, soothing ceramide sprays, prescription steroid ointments… all belonging to Jill. My night cream had been shoved into the furthest corner of the mirror cabinet, its lid askew. I applied my cream, then pulled out a small plastic bottle from the medicine cabinet and swallowed a single prenatal vitamin. We had been married for three years and actively trying to conceive for two, yet nothing had happened. Last night had fallen right in the middle of my ovulation window. I had tracked the dates carefully and mentioned it to Trevor days in advance. And then, right in the middle of our intimacy, Jill had opened the door. An ovulation window only lasts a few short days. Once missed, you have to wait another month. I exhaled slowly, gathering a manila folder from my desk. Inside was my recent fertility workup from the clinic. “Results: All metrics within normal parameters. Fallopian tubes clear, hormone levels balanced, follicle development healthy.” Everything was fine on my end. The day I picked up the report, I had texted him a picture of the summary page: “I’m completely healthy. Why don’t you schedule a visit to get checked, too?” It took him forty minutes to reply: “Sure. I’ll get to it one of these days.” Later that afternoon, while I was revising a proposal at work, my phone buzzed. It was a text from Trevor—a comparison grid of four different barrier repair creams. “Jill’s skin is acting up again. Which of these ingredients looks gentler to you?” He couldn’t find an hour to book a routine checkup, but he had plenty of time to research skin repair formulas for Jill. When I arrived home that evening, Trevor was sitting on the living room sofa, carefully dabbing ointment onto Jill’s inner arm. She was wearing a silk tank top, perched on the armrest, her fair skin splotched with patches of pink irritation. “Trevor, it stings,” she whimpered. “Hold still, honey. Just a little more.” His fingertips traced the edge of the flare-up, applying the cream with agonizing slowness. I walked over and sat down on the opposite armchair. “Trevor, my fertility window ends in two days.” His fingers paused for a fraction of a second. “Not tonight, Naomi. Jill’s skin is still burning.” “What about after you’re done?” He didn’t answer, resuming the gentle circles on her arm. Jill lifted her head, looking at me with small, bitten lips. “Naomi, I’m so sorry… I keep coming between you two.” “Don’t apologize, Jill. You didn’t ask for this flare-up,” Trevor interjected seamlessly, his voice completely natural. He finished applying the last dab of ointment before finally glancing up at me. “Tomorrow. I’ll come home early tomorrow, I promise.” He leaned down and whispered something to Jill. I didn’t bother listening. I simply stood up and walked back to the bedroom. Closing the door behind me, I leaned my back against the wood, staring blindly into the dim room. The truth was, over the past three months, it wasn’t that we hadn’t tried. Last month, Jill had a good week—three days in a row without an episode. That night, I put on a silk nightgown and sat beside Trevor on the bed. We were just beginning to kiss when a muffled thump echoed from the guest room. Then came Jill’s tearful voice calling his name. Trevor froze, whispering that he should go check on her. I waited in bed for an hour, listening to his low, rhythmic murmur coming from across the hall as he coaxed her back to sleep. Eventually, I realized it wasn’t just our intimacy that was being broken up. At dinner, Jill sat right next to him, her plate nudging his. Watching TV, she leaned her head against his shoulder, and his arm naturally slid around her. Over the weekend, when I suggested the two of us take a short walk just to get some air, Trevor glanced toward the guest room and said, “I don’t feel comfortable leaving her alone.” So the three of us went together. When we crossed the street, he held her hand to guide her over the curb, while I trailed a pace behind them. I wasn’t sure if Trevor even realized it. Our private life hadn’t just been interrupted. It had ceased to exist. I pulled the blanket up to my chin and closed my eyes. “Just wait a little longer,” I told myself. “Maybe her treatment will end next month. Maybe next month, it will just be the two of us again.” … My prenatal vitamins were running low, so I took half a day off work to pick up a refill from the hospital clinic. After leaving the obstetrics department, I paused outside the dermatology wing and knocked softly on the door of Consultation Room 3. Dr. Adler looked up from his desk, momentarily startled. “Mrs. Vaughn? Trevor’s wife?” “Yes,” I said, walking in. “I wanted to ask about Jill’s progress.” Dr. Adler gestured for me to sit down. “What specifically would you like to know?” “How much longer her program is going to take.” He flipped through her digital chart on his monitor. “Based on her current metrics, about four more months. Though that largely depends on whether physical contact can be systematically reduced.” I frowned. “What do you mean?” “Her primary treatment protocol clearly states that we recommend minimizing reliance on physical soothing from others. We’re supposed to be guiding her toward self-desensitization using tactile tools, like weighted pressure blankets.” I leaned forward, checking the date on the corner of his screen. “When was this protocol established?” “Three months ago. During her intake evaluation.” Three months ago. From her very first day here, the doctor had outlined this requirement. Dr. Adler hesitated slightly before continuing. “I’ve brought this up with Mr. Vaughn several times. But he insisted that the patient resists synthetic tools, and that direct physical soothing from family members yields better emotional stability.” He chose his words carefully. “From a clinical perspective, however, this approach creates an unhealthy tactile dependency. It’s actually prolonging her recovery.” Standing on the sidewalk outside the clinic, the afternoon sun felt strangely cold on my face. The doctor had advised reducing physical touch three months ago. Trevor hadn’t been ignorant of the medical advice; he had actively chosen to ignore it. At six that evening, Trevor walked through the front door. He reached out, wrapping an arm around my waist and resting his chin against the top of my head. “I’m all yours tonight, Naomi. No distractions. I’m making up for yesterday.” I didn’t lean into his touch, but I didn’t push him away either. “I went to the hospital today.” His arm stiffened slightly. “Why? Are you not feeling well?” “I went to get my prescription refilled. And while I was there, I spoke with Dr. Adler about Jill’s protocol.” Trevor’s arm slowly slid off my waist. He walked over to the kitchen island and picked up a glass of water. “Dr. Adler recommended minimizing physical soothing right from the start,” I said, my voice steady, almost detached. “He said he brought it up with you multiple times. He urged you to use weighted desensitization blankets instead, but you refused.” My fingers tightened around the edge of my purse. I waited for his answer. “Every patient is different,” he said, taking a sip without looking at me. “You’ve seen her flare-ups, Naomi. She scratches herself until she’s bleeding! If a weighted blanket actually worked, do you think I’d let her suffer like that?” His tone spiked with defensive irritation before he quickly forced it back down. I stared at the tight line of his jaw, and a quiet, bitter amusement washed over me. For three months, whenever Jill’s name was mentioned, every single nerve in his body coiled tight in defense of her. “You don’t understand her condition,” he murmured, glancing instinctively toward the hallway. “I’ve watched her struggle with this since we were kids.” He lowered his voice. “I know you feel neglected, and I’m sorry I haven’t been as present lately. Just hold on a little longer. Just four more months.” “Hold on a little longer.” The words sounded like a request. The look in his eyes made it clear it wasn’t. … At nine that night, Trevor and I went into the bedroom. He locked the door behind us and gathered me into his arms from behind. “No interruptions tonight.” I leaned back against his chest, remaining still. His fingers pulled gently at the hem of my silk top, his lips pressing against the sensitive skin beneath my ear. I didn’t want to talk, nor did I want to break the momentum. I just wanted to get this over with—to check off the box for the month. Just as things began to heighten, a light knock sounded against the wooden panel. “Trevor?” We both froze. “Trevor, are you awake?” He swallowed hard, exhaling a heavy breath. “What is it, Jill?” “I think the essential oil diffuser in my room is broken. It’s leaking water everywhere, and I don’t know how to turn off the valve…” Trevor looked down at me. I looked at the ceiling. His hands slid off my waist as he swung his legs out of bed. “Wait there. I’ll take a look.” The bedroom door opened and clicked shut. Through the panel, I heard Jill’s soft, apologetic voice. “I’m so sorry, Trevor… I just didn’t know what to do…” “It’s fine. Let me check the seal.” Then came the sound of rustling, water dripping onto the hardwood floor, and Trevor asking her to grab a towel from the bathroom. I lay flat on the mattress, staring up at the white plaster overhead. It wasn’t a major emergency. A leaking diffuser could easily be unplugged and wiped up with a rag. But she had knocked, and he had gone. Five minutes later, the door squeaked open, and he stepped back inside. “Fixed it. Just a loose valve.” He climbed back into bed, his hand reaching across the sheets toward me. I turned onto my side, facing away from him. “Not tonight.” “…Why?” “I’m not in the mood anymore.” A heavy silence settled over the dark room. “Tomorrow then?” I didn’t answer. He didn’t press further. He simply turned onto his side, facing the opposite wall. Before long, the rhythmic sound of his slow, steady breathing filled the room. I lay awake, staring at the dark ceiling, unable to close my eyes until dawn. … Early the next morning, my mother texted, inviting us over to my parents’ house for Sunday lunch. I handed the phone to Trevor. “Sounds good,” he said, checking the digital thermometer in his hand. Jill was sitting beside him at the breakfast bar. “36.5. Normal.” He paused, looking at me. “I don’t feel comfortable leaving Jill home alone for hours. Should we bring her along?” I stared at him. “To my parents’ house? For Sunday dinner?” “Well, what else are we supposed to do? What if she has an episode while we’re gone?” I opened my mouth to say that she would be perfectly fine on her own for a three-hour afternoon, but he had already turned away, telling Jill, “Go grab a sweater, sweetie. You’re coming with us.” I swallowed the words back down. As we gathered our things by the front door, a heavy, suffocating cloud of perfume struck me. I turned toward Jill, wincing slightly. “Jill, could you please go wash that off? My mother has severe, reactive asthma. Strong fragrance triggers her airways immediately.” Jill bit her lower lip, her eyes instantly brimming with unshed tears. She shrank back slightly behind Trevor’s broad frame. “I’m so sorry, Naomi… It’s my first time visiting your parents, and I just wanted to make a good impression. I didn’t know your mom was sick… I’ll go wash it right now.” Trevor’s forehead creased into a deep frown. He immediately stepped in front of her, his tone laced with sharp reprimand. “It’s just a light mist, Naomi. We’ll keep the car windows rolled down on the drive over, and the scent will dissipate in the air. Stop picking on her every chance you get.” Looking at the defensive, guarded stance he took against me, my throat felt as though it were stuffed with cotton. I turned away and said nothing. Forty minutes later, we arrived at my parents’ suburban home. The moment we walked through the foyer, the heavy, sweet scent Jill wore filled the hallway. Though my mother’s eyebrows twitched slightly, she smiled warmly and welcomed them inside. At the dining table, Jill took the seat right beside Trevor. Halfway through the meal, Jill suddenly set her fork down with a sharp clatter, leaning her entire body weight heavily against Trevor’s side. “Trevor… I feel terrible. My skin is burning,” she whimpered, her voice tiny and laced with panic. Without a second thought, Trevor dropped his utensils. Completely ignoring my mother and father sitting directly across from them, he turned in his chair and wrapped his arms firmly around her. “It’s okay. I’m right here,” he murmured into her hair. He stroked her back, his arms locked tight around her shoulders. Jill buried her face completely into the crook of his neck, her hands clutching at the waist of his shirt. My father’s face instantly darkened. He set his silver fork down onto his napkin with a heavy, deliberate thud. My mother froze, her expression a mix of shock and tightly suppressed outrage. A suffocating, unnatural silence blanketed the dining room. Trevor seemed to have completely forgotten whose house he was in. He seemed to forget that three other adults were sitting at the same table. I lowered my head, forcing small bites of roasted chicken into my mouth. It tasted like cardboard. As the two of us pulled and shifted against each other, the heavy perfume clung to the air in the enclosed dining room, growing thicker by the second. Suddenly, my mother broke into a violent, racking cough. In a matter of seconds, her face drained of color, turning a terrifying, ghostly white. A harsh, wheezing gasp echoed from her throat as she reached uselessly for her chest. An acute asthma attack. “Mom!” Panic surged through me as I threw my chair back and rushed to her side. “The… the inhaler… it’s in the bedroom nightstand…” My father’s hands were shaking so violently he could barely push himself up from his seat. I sprinted toward the master bedroom, frantically pulling open every drawer in the nightstand, but the spare inhaler wasn’t there. Tears of frustration and fear burst from my eyes. I ran back out to the hallway, shouting toward the living area: “Trevor! Help me search! Check the media console in the living room! Quickly!” But when I tore into the living room, Trevor was still sitting on the dining bench, his arms locked securely around Jill. Jill’s eyes were shut tight, her body trembling dramatically as she sobbed, “Trevor, I’m scared… please don’t leave me, it hurts so bad, hold me tighter…” Trevor kept his hands clamped tightly over her shoulders. He glanced up at me, his eyes filled with a helplessness that made me sick. “Naomi, your mom’s coughing terrified her—she’s spiraling right now. I literally can’t untangle her from me. Try searching the hallway closet, or just dial 911!” Looking at him—watching him wrap his arms tightly around another woman while claiming he couldn’t spare a single hand to help save my mother—my heart dropped into a dark, bottomless abyss. The woman suffocating on the dining room chair was my mother. And my husband refused to reach out a single finger to help because he was busy holding someone else. I didn’t utter another word to him. I tore through my mother’s purse, found her rescue inhaler, and pressed it to her lips before dialing emergency services with trembling fingers. When the paramedics arrived and wheeled my mother out on a gurney, Trevor did not come with us. Because Jill was “having a severe panic attack and couldn’t be left alone.” … In the quiet observation room at the hospital, after hours of monitoring and nebulizer treatments, my mother finally drifted off to sleep under a gentle flow of oxygen. By late afternoon, she woke up. Seeing me sitting by her bedside, my eyes bloodshot and swollen, a deep sorrow crossed her pale face. She reached out a fragile, trembling hand, pressing her cold palm against my cheek. “Naomi,” she whispered weakly, her voice thin. “Whenever you want to come back home… your room is always ready for you.” In that moment, the mountain of grief, indignity, and quiet suffering I had carried for three agonizing months shattered completely. I buried my face into the edge of her hospital mattress and wept until I had no tears left. … It was pitch black by the time I returned home. The apartment was cold and silent, not a single light turned on. My phone vibrated in my coat pocket. A text from Trevor. “Is your mom okay?” I stared at the glowing screen, my thumb hovering over the keypad. Before I could type a single letter, a second text popped up immediately after. “Jill’s in really bad shape tonight. I have to stay in here and soothe her until she falls asleep. Go ahead and get some rest without me.” Looking at those two lines, my eyes felt completely dry. I couldn’t even manage a single tear. It turned out that when disappointment accumulates to a certain threshold, even anger becomes entirely redundant. I didn’t text him back. I walked quietly into our master bedroom, opened the walk-in closet, and dragged out my large hard-shell suitcase from the back corner. The moment the zipper clicked closed around my packed clothes, an unimaginable wave of release washed over me. As I rolled the suitcase down the hallway, I passed the guest room. The heavy oak door was pulled ajar, leaving a crack of light. I paused, looking through the sliver of space. Jill was curled up peacefully in Trevor’s arms, sleeping deeply. Trevor’s eyes were closed, his chin resting gently on the crown of her head, his broad hand moving in slow, rhythmic strokes down her back. I pulled my gaze away, lifted my suitcase off the hardwood, and walked out of the apartment without looking back.

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