Author: Momo Chan

1 Anna is twenty-six years old, yet she insists on referring to herself as “Baby.” She calls my boyfriend “Daddy” and refers to my future mother-in-law as “Nana.” “Baby wants the pink Barbie doll. Daddy needs to buy it for me.” “Baby wants dinosaur chicken nuggets. Nana needs to make them for me.” My boyfriend’s entire family coddles her. Whatever she wants, she gets. Until the day she threw a tantrum about wanting to celebrate Children’s Day. My boyfriend agreed without missing a beat, then turned to comfort me. “You know Anna has that Little Girl Syndrome. Don’t overthink it.” I gave a soft chuckle and plucked his car keys from his hand. “I’m a preschool teacher. Nobody understands babies better than I do. I’ll be the one spending Children’s Day with her.” I drove her straight to my preschool. I made her play games with toddlers, perform on stage, and line up for a lollipop. She was absolutely furious. Her sanity finally snapped, and she screamed at the top of her lungs. “Hannah, do you really think I’m a three-year-old? I’ll kill you!” Her hands were wrapped tightly around my throat when the heavy velvet curtain was suddenly yanked back. Everyone was standing in the doorway. In a fraction of a second, the adorable little “Baby” had transformed into a twenty-six-year-old assailant. … Anna had posted on Instagram again. “Three days left until Children’s Day!” She tagged my boyfriend, Liam. “Baby wants a super huge celebration this year! Is Daddy ready?” Attached was a selfie of her wearing a frilly lace nightgown, her hair styled in twin pigtails, flashing a peace sign at the camera. I set my phone face down on the table and glanced at Liam, who was eating his breakfast across from me. His fork paused in mid-air. He let out a dry cough. “You know how Anna is. She’s got that Little Girl Syndrome.” I knew exactly how she was. Liam and I had been together for three years. We were at the stage of discussing marriage. He always told me he was an only child. I never expected him to come with a precious “Baby” sister attached. Anna was the exact same age as me. But she didn’t work. She lived in Liam’s family home, and she had been living there for twelve long years. She spoke in a sickeningly sweet, high-pitched voice, always starting her sentences with “Baby wants” or “Baby feels.” She demanded to be spoon-fed at dinner. She needed her hand held when walking. She required endless coaxing whenever she threw a fit. As an early childhood educator, I handled over a hundred actual toddlers every single day. Not a single one of them acted quite like her. My phone buzzed again. This time, it was a group chat notification. The chat was named “The Smith Family plus Hannah.” Anna was the one who came up with that name. “Daddy, Baby wants that limited-edition designer bag for Children’s Day. Then a trip to the amusement park in the afternoon, and French cuisine for dinner. Baby has it all planned out!” Another message popped up immediately after. “Auntie Hannah won’t mind, right? Baby just loves Daddy so much and wants to spend more time with him.” I lifted my gaze to look at Liam. A helpless, fond smile tugged at the corners of his mouth as his thumbs flew across the screen. “Alright, whatever Baby wants.” He typed those words without even bothering to look up at me. I placed my fork down. “Liam, I want to celebrate Children’s Day too.” He finally raised his head. “Huh?” “I’m a preschool teacher. I deal with kids from dawn to dusk. I want to be a baby for a day too. Why don’t you spend the day with me?” He clearly hadn’t anticipated my request. He stared at me in blank surprise. “Look how old you are. Why are you trying to copy Anna?” Look how old I am. Anna was four months older than me. I didn’t say another word. I stood up and began clearing the plates. Liam seemed to sense my sour mood. His tone softened. “Hannah, don’t read too much into this. How about I get you a gift too?” I wasn’t reading too much into it. And I didn’t want a gift. I was simply thinking. Thinking about how, or even if, he and I could keep going like this. Later that night, Anna sent another text. “Daddy, come coax Baby to sleep, please? Baby can’t sleep alone. Baby needs Daddy’s hugs to fall asleep.” Liam happened to be in the shower. I saw the notification light up his lock screen. A moment later, the screen illuminated again. “Has Daddy finished putting Auntie Hannah to sleep yet? Baby has been waiting forever.” “If Daddy doesn’t come right now, Baby is going to cry. And Baby is very hard to comfort when she cries.” I rubbed my temples, sinking into deep thought. Three years. Every Christmas, the check Liam’s mother wrote for Anna was twice the amount of mine. Whenever Liam’s father returned from a business trip, Anna got first pick of the souvenirs. I got the leftovers. Even when the three of us went out for dinner, Liam would always place the best cut of meat onto Anna’s plate first. The excuse was always the same. “Anna is a poor thing. She lost her dad when she was little. Just be the bigger person and let her have her way.” I had no choice but to yield. Because Anna’s father was a firefighter. Fifteen years ago, during a horrific apartment fire, Mr. Davis pulled Liam and his parents from the blazing inferno. But he never made it back out. That debt of gratitude was a crushing weight, a mountain pressing down on the shoulders of everyone in the Smith family. Twelve years ago, Anna’s mother passed away from a severe illness. From that day on, Anna moved into the Smith household and officially became their eternal “Baby.” If I hadn’t firmly insisted that Liam move out into an apartment with me, they would probably still be living under the exact same roof, breathing the same air day in and day out. The bathroom door clicked open. Liam walked out, drying his hair with a towel, and instinctively reached for his phone. “Go to her.” My voice cut through the silence. Liam froze, then quickly forced a laugh. “Anna is just joking around. Don’t say things out of anger.” “You know exactly whether she’s joking or not.” I walked into the bedroom and locked the door behind me. In the end, Liam didn’t go. He sat on the living room sofa for the entire night. But I knew the truth. He didn’t stay because he wanted to. He stayed because he lacked the courage to face my wrath. Early the next morning, my phone rang. Anna’s voice came through the speaker, thick with fake tears. “Auntie Hannah, are you mad at me?” “Please don’t fight with Daddy. Baby won’t call him Daddy anymore. Baby will be good. Baby will behave.” Her tone was so sugary sweet it made my stomach churn. I forced my voice to remain completely steady. “I’m not mad. Didn’t you say you wanted to celebrate Children’s Day?” Excitement instantly spiked in her voice. “Are you going to help me celebrate, Auntie Hannah?” “Exactly. I’m a preschool teacher. Nobody understands babies better than I do.” “Really? You’re the best, Auntie Hannah!” She cheered through the receiver. “Baby loves you! Mwah!” “I’ll pick you up at seven in the morning on the holiday.” “Okay! Baby will be waiting!” She hung up, her voice brimming with absolute joy. Liam looked at me, hesitating, as if wanting to say something but swallowing the words. I tossed the car keys in my hand and flashed him a smile. “What? You don’t trust me?” He paused for a long moment. “Just don’t push her too hard. She’s emotional. She can’t handle being stimulated.” “I know.” I patted him on the shoulder. “You and your parents can come by later. You’ll see for yourselves whether I bullied her or not.” “That’s not what I meant.” Liam tried to explain. I waved my hand, cutting him off completely. “Liam, take these next few days to really think things through.” “Think what through?” I looked him dead in the eye, enunciating every single syllable. “Think about whether we are still getting married or not.” He stared at me in stunned silence, rooted to the spot. 2 On the morning of the holiday, I pulled up to the Smith family home right on time. Anna was dressed in a puffy princess gown, a crystal tiara pinned in her hair. She looked as meticulously styled as a porcelain doll in a shop window. “Auntie Hannah, why didn’t Daddy come with you?” Her eyes sparkled as she peered into the empty backseat of my car. I held the passenger door open for her. “He’ll be here later.” She slid into the seat, buckled up, and chattered non-stop the entire drive. “Baby wants to ride the carousel today. And eat cotton candy. And Daddy has to buy Baby a giant balloon.” She clapped her hands together, then suddenly turned to look at me. “Auntie Hannah, you aren’t jealous, are you? Baby is just a little kid. You’re an adult with a big heart, so you won’t hold a grudge against Baby, right?” “Of course not.” I smiled. “I’m a preschool teacher. Why would I hold a grudge against a baby?” We drove for forty minutes. She scrolled through her phone for a while before finally glancing out the window. “Wait, this isn’t the road to the amusement park.” “Of course not. We aren’t going to the amusement park.” The color drained from her face. “We’re here.” I parked the car right in front of the preschool gates. It was my workplace. A massive red banner flapped in the morning breeze. It read: “Happy Universal Children’s Day!” “Auntie Hannah, why did you bring me to a preschool?” Panic made her voice pitch even higher. “To celebrate your holiday.” I unbuckled her seatbelt and tilted my head to look at her. “Didn’t you want the most authentic Children’s Day experience? Is there anywhere on earth more authentic than a kindergarten?” Her expression instantly froze. “I don’t want to go to preschool! I want to go to the amusement park!” She was shrieking now. “I want Daddy! I’m calling Daddy!” “Liam and his parents will be here soon. Don’t worry, they won’t miss your performance.” “What performance?” I stepped out, walked around to her side, and pulled her door open. I leaned in with a bright, professional smile. “Every baby has to perform on stage today. It’s the holiday pageant. Come on, hop out. Teacher will take you inside.” She didn’t move an inch. I held out my hand and waited with infinite patience. Three seconds. Five seconds. Ten seconds. Her lower lip jutted out. Her eyes pooled with red, looking like she was on the verge of a genuine sobbing fit. “Hannah, are you trying to humiliate me?” “Humiliate you?” I put on my best face of mock surprise. “Why would I do that? Didn’t you say you wanted to celebrate the holiday?” I nudged my hand closer to her. “Come on. Be a good baby.” She bit her lip, holding my gaze in a silent war for three brutal seconds. Finally, she surrendered and placed her hand in mine. I reached into the backseat, grabbed a small item, and pinned it directly to her chest. She looked down. It was a standard-issue name tag. It read: Senior Class, Anna. I dragged her toward the main gates. “Today, you are the newest student in the Senior Class. You are the cutest little Baby, so I just know you’re going to love it here.” She dragged her feet, muttering something vicious under her breath as she followed me. I didn’t catch what she said, and I didn’t care to. Because I knew the real show was just getting started. 3 I pushed open the door to the Senior Class. Twenty-five toddlers were sitting obediently in their tiny plastic chairs. “Boys and girls, we have a brand new classmate joining us today to celebrate the holiday. Let’s give her a big round of applause.” A smattering of confused clapping filled the room. Anna stood in the doorway, her face twisted in pure agony. Twenty-five pairs of wide, innocent eyes locked onto her. “Whoa!” A little girl in the front row dropped her jaw. “That’s a really big baby.” “That’s a grown-up! Why is a grown-up coming to preschool?” A little boy stood up and inspected Anna with absolute seriousness. “Are you a teacher?” Anna let out a strangled, awkward laugh. “No, big sister is just here to…” “She is a new student.” I cut in smoothly, patting Anna on the shoulder. “Her name is Anna. She is… three and a half years old. She just transferred from another school. Everyone play nice with her, okay?” Anna whipped her head toward me, opening her mouth to protest. I leaned in close, dropping my voice to a harsh whisper. “I thought you were a baby? Don’t tell me you’re backing out now.” Her mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water. I assigned her a seat. Our classroom furniture was built for toddlers. A fully grown adult woman cramming herself into a tiny plastic chair meant her knees were practically shoved against her chest. She looked like a tangled knot of limbs. The kids’ gazes swept over her like searchlights. “She’s so huge.” “Can she even fit?” “Is she going to break the chair?” A little girl with pigtails trotted up to her, tilting her head back to stare at Anna’s face. “Big sister, do you not want to be in preschool? My mommy says babies who don’t want to go to school are bad babies.” Anna’s eye visibly twitched. “Big sister doesn’t hate it.” “Then why do you look so grumpy?” The little girl tilted her head the other way. “You need to smile. You only look pretty when you smile.” The surrounding toddlers nodded in unison. “Yeah! You have to smile!” Anna forced out a smile that looked more painful than weeping. The first period was arts and crafts. I taught the class how to make origami frogs, handing out a square of colored paper to everyone. The kids launched into action. Within five minutes, the floor was littered with colorful, deformed paper shapes. Three minutes into the activity, Anna’s piece of paper sat perfectly untouched on her tiny desk. “What’s wrong?” I walked over. “Does Baby not know how to fold it?” She kept her voice low, her words grinding out through clenched teeth. “Hannah, what the hell are you trying to do?” She wasn’t even calling me Auntie Hannah anymore. “Teaching you how to grow up.” I kept my voice equally low, my bright smile never wavering. “If Baby doesn’t know how, Baby has to learn.” She glared at me, seething in silence. I picked up the paper and physically guided her hands to fold it. She remained entirely rigid, letting me manipulate her fingers like a lifeless wooden puppet. Twenty minutes later, a horribly mangled origami frog sat on her desk. “Ew, it’s so ugly.” The little boy next to her delivered the brutal truth without an ounce of hesitation. Anna’s face flushed an ugly shade of dark red. The second period was recess. I directed the kids out to the playground to use the slides. Anna stood stiffly by the fence. “I’m not playing.” “Why not?” “This is for little kids to play…” The sentence died in her throat. I kept my beaming smile in place and amplified my voice to address the playground. “Boys and girls, our new classmate says she’s too scared to go down the slide. Let’s cheer her on, shall we?” Twenty-five toddlers chanted in unison. “Go Anna! Go Anna! Go Anna!” Their high-pitched voices echoed across the entire yard. Anna’s face cycled rapidly between red and pale white. Finally, a couple of overly enthusiastic kids shoved her toward the steps of the play structure. She stood at the very top, peering down. The plastic slide was built to the exact width of a toddler’s hips. For an adult woman, it was physically impossible. “I can’t go down.” Her voice was weak, trembling. “Yes, you can! Be brave!” I yelled from the bottom, backed by twenty-five pairs of highly expectant eyes. She took a deep breath, shifted her weight, and slid down an inch. She immediately wedged tight in the opening of the tube, stuck completely fast like a cork jammed into a wine bottle. The kids instantly began whispering. “She’s stuck.” “I’ve never seen anyone get stuck on a slide before.” “That’s so embarrassing.” Anna was practically suffocating from sheer mortification. She looked like she wanted the earth to swallow her whole. In the end, it took me and another teacher physically hauling her by the armpits to pop her out of the slide. The moment her feet hit the ground, her face was completely scarlet. She shot me a look of unadulterated, venomous hatred. 4 At three in the afternoon, the Children’s Day Pageant officially commenced. The audience was packed with eager parents. Liam and his parents had arrived and taken their seats. The second Anna spotted them in the crowd, her eyes welled up with thick, dramatic tears. “Daddy.” She opened her mouth to cry out to him, but I grabbed her arm in a vice grip. “Hold on. It’s your turn to go on stage.” She froze. “On stage?” “Every student has to perform. You are the star of the Senior Class today. You’re our grand finale.” Her expression twisted into ugly outrage. “Why? You didn’t tell me this beforehand.” I gave a light chuckle. “It’s just a simple nursery rhyme. Do you really need to rehearse?” I paused for effect. “If you do a good job, there’s a huge prize waiting for you.” Anna furrowed her brows, clearly calculating the odds in her head. Before she could form a counterargument, I shoved her toward the backstage curtain. Five minutes later, her name was called. As she stepped out under the bright stage lights, Liam’s family immediately broke into loud applause. “You can do it, Anna!” Anna gripped the microphone, taking a deep, dramatic breath. She chose to sing “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.” A song any breathing human could manage. “Twinkle, twinkle, little star…” The first line was somewhat on key. By the second line, she was drifting. By the third line, she was screeching in a completely different galaxy. The expressions on the parents’ faces in the audience morphed from polite anticipation, to profound confusion, to people desperately biting their lips to hold back laughter. Anna clearly knew she sounded terrible, but she didn’t care. Halfway through the verse, she suddenly twisted her ankle with a loud “Ouch!” and dramatically collapsed onto the stage floor. Her eyes turned glassy. Fat tears hung on her lashes as she looked pitifully down at Liam in the front row. I knew that look entirely too well. I had been forced to watch it for three years. Liam’s heart immediately bled for her. He gripped the armrests of his folding chair, his body lifting to rush the stage. I was faster. I stepped out and blocked his path. “It’s perfectly normal for babies to make a little mistake on stage. As adults, we need to give them the space to grow.” I turned to address the bewildered crowd, keeping my professional smile perfectly intact. “Parents, we have to trust that our kids can stand back up on their own, don’t we?” The thoroughly confused parents nodded along. One father started clapping, and soon the entire auditorium erupted into supportive applause. “You can do it! Stand up and finish the song!” “It’s okay, sweetie! You’ve got this!” Anna lay sprawled on the floorboards, sheer disbelief plastered across her face. Her carefully orchestrated damsel-in-distress routine had completely imploded. Taking my cue, Liam slowly began to clap. Mr. and Mrs. Smith joined in, offering encouraging nods. “Come on, Baby Anna! You can do it!” Anna bit her lip so hard it nearly bled. She awkwardly dragged herself off the floor, gripped the microphone stand, and choked out the final two lines of the nursery rhyme. Her singing, much like her entire existence in that moment, was utterly pathetic and completely ridiculous. The pageant finally wrapped up, leading right into the award ceremony. I stepped to the podium holding a cheap paper certificate and a single strawberry lollipop. “And for Anna from the Senior Class, who showed immense bravery during today’s performance, we present the Ultimate Encouragement Award!” The audience clapped politely. Anna stomped onto the stage, a dark, thunderous cloud hanging over her face. She snatched the certificate and the lollipop from my hands, glaring down at them. “This is it? This is the huge prize you promised?” “Honor is the greatest gift of all.” I smiled brightly and pointed toward the front rows. “Look how happy all the other babies are.” Every toddler in the room was holding an identical lollipop and an identical cheap certificate, grinning from ear to ear. Anna looked like she was going to throw up. Her entire body was vibrating with unfiltered rage. She barely managed to wait until the curtain dropped before sprinting directly into the backstage area. “Hannah!” She crumpled the paper certificate into a tight ball and hurled the lollipop violently at the wall. “How dare you play me like this!” The backstage area wasn’t empty. A few toddlers were still milling about. But Anna didn’t care. She lost her mind, shrieking without a single shred of dignity. “I told you, I wanted the limited-edition designer bag! I wanted French food! I wanted the amusement park! Are you completely deaf?” I dropped my smile entirely. I stared at her with dead, cold eyes. “Those are things adults ask for. Don’t tell me… you aren’t actually a baby?” A little boy standing nearby nodded vigorously. “Yeah. My mommy asks for designer bags and fancy dinners. Babies don’t even know how to use forks and knives.” “And she just called Teacher Hannah by her first name. She didn’t say Auntie.” “She’s just a grown-up. She’s really bad at pretending to be a baby.” Anna’s chest heaved. The last remaining thread holding her sanity together violently snapped. “So what if I’m faking it?!” She lunged forward and shoved me hard in the chest. “You dared to mess with me, Hannah. I’ll kill you!” She took another step, her hands flying up to wrap aggressively around my throat. Right at that exact second, the heavy velvet curtain to the backstage area was yanked back. A row of people stood in the doorway, staring in absolute horror.

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1 When I was eighteen, I used my heart’s blood to save Terry after he was shipwrecked, binding us in a three-year tribulation contract. But on the day of our ninth wedding attempt, Terry backed out again. Instead of arguing as I had in the past, I calmly proposed, “Let’s just call it off.” He frowned, his tone carrying a mix of exasperation and blame. “Don’t throw a temper tantrum. Amara isn’t doing well right now. This trip is very important to her. It’s just a one-week delay. We’ll get married the moment we get back.” I remained quiet for a moment, then finally nodded. Amara’s custom ringtone went off. Before leaving, he smiled and ran his fingers through my hair. “Be good. I promise, this is the last time. When I get back, I’ll transfer that beach house you love into your name.” I forced a tight, painful smile. There wouldn’t be a next time. Terry didn’t know that I was the last mermaid left in the world. If he didn’t choose me completely, I would dissolve into nothingness beneath the next full moon, exactly six days from now. “Bang!” The front door slammed shut, sharp and final. I stood alone in the center of the silent room, a dull, familiar ache beginning to throb beneath my skin. I quickly made my way to the bathroom. Under the running water, a faint, barely visible shimmer rippled across my skin, like a fading signal. After some time, the burning pain finally subsided. My limbs felt stiff, taking me back to the day I first stepped ashore. Back then, walking on the sand felt like treading on glass. Every step was the reminding price of survival. And in the end, despite bleeding for him, I still couldn’t win Terry’s heart. Just as I went to step out, the lock clicked. Terry walked back in, carrying the faint, unmistakable scent of medicine. It was the scent of his fragile, sickly adoptive sister, the girl he always had to protect. I stepped out of the bathroom, cold and dripping with water. He paused, not coming any closer. He raised an eyebrow. “A cold shower? Was your temper really that flared up?” My face was pale, and I didn’t answer. He didn’t care. He spoke casually. “Amara was worried you’d be bored here alone. Pack your bags tonight. We’re leaving tomorrow, and you’re coming with us.” I froze, looking up at him. Terry brushed his thumb gently against the corner of my eye, a soft laugh slipping from his lips. “You’re always jealous of me spending time alone with Amara. This should make you happy, shouldn’t it?” My body went rigid. He quickly withdrew his hand to check his phone. Without looking up, he added, “By the way, we’re heading to the desert. Amara has always wanted to see the night sky there.” My pupils contracted, my fingers trembling. “I… Can I stay behind?” “You know I can’t handle the heat, and my dehydration condition…” Terry looked up from his screen, his expression hardening. He let out a cold scoff. “Dehydration condition? You’re just being dramatic.” Before I could explain, his gaze turned icy. “Amara is in much worse health and she didn’t complain. She wanted to include you out of kindness, and this is how you repay her?” The blood drained from my face, leaving me speechless. Terry stared at me for a few seconds, letting out a weary sigh. “Neri, I don’t want to fight with you right before our wedding.” My body remained stiff as I looked into his warm yet unyielding eyes. “Don’t make me repeat myself.” Under his heavy gaze, I finally whispered, “Okay.” Terry smiled, satisfied. He tapped his screen a few times, and the ticket confirmation popped up before my eyes. This was the ninth time he had used our wedding as a bargaining chip to force me to yield. Even though I knew the inevitable outcome, I still found myself stupidly hoping. The door opened and closed. Terry left with a light step, eager to return to Amara. I looked out the window, watching the moon grow fuller in the night sky. 2 The desert was more brutal than I had imagined. The air was dry enough to leach every drop of moisture from a human body. Even wrapped up tightly, my skin burned fiercely. Just as I unscrewed a bottle of ice water to drink, Amara backed up and bumped into me. The bottle slipped and crashed onto the sand. The water sank into the dry ground instantly, leaving only a dark, fleeting stain. Amara looked apologetic. “I’m so sorry, Nerissa. Here, you can have my water…” Terry stepped in, pulling her back by the hand. “You’re too weak to go without water.” Then he glanced at me carelessly. “Just hold on. We’ll have water once we reach the camp.” I struggled to breathe. Beneath my layers of clothing, my skin was already starting to crack. The sun grew harsher. Amara suddenly touched her forehead and whimpered, “Terry, the sun is so bright. I feel dizzy.” Terry stopped immediately. His eyes swept over my heavily bundled figure, and without a shred of hesitation, he said, “Neri, give Amara your coat and sunglasses.” My body shook. I looked at Terry with pleading eyes. “I can’t. I’ll…” Terry’s patience wore thin. “Amara is sick. She needs them more than you do. It’s just a little sun, what are you so afraid of?” Seeing me shake my head frantically, his patience evaporated. He grabbed my wrist, tearing the protective wrap from my body. “Neri, don’t be ungrateful.” The harsh sunlight beat down directly on my face and neck. Instantly, a horrifying rash of red burns and tiny blood blisters flared across my skin. When we first started dating three years ago, Terry had noticed my fear of the sun. He had silently taken off his jacket to shield my head for an entire afternoon, never mentioning that his own shoulders had blistered and peeled from the heat. He still knew how to care for someone. It was just that the person he cared for was no longer me. I bit my lip hard, refusing to let out a cry of pain. Amara gasped and took a step back. Terry covered her eyes, frowning with disgust as he looked at me. “What did you touch to break out like that? It’s hideous.” Without another word, he wrapped his arm around Amara and turned to leave. I stood alone in the heat, my hands shaking as I reached into the depths of my bag for a small bottle. It was filled with seawater I had brought with me. I opened the cap, but before I could spray it onto my burning skin, a hand snatched it away. Terry had doubled back. He stared at me, holding the bottle tightly. “Is this trash what you’ve been spraying on yourself to cause this reaction?” “Give it back!” My voice cracked with absolute terror. “Please, Terry, give it back. That’s seawater, it’s not trash…” Terry blinked, momentarily taken aback. He had probably never seen me lose my composure like this. But his expression quickly turned cold, and he tossed the bottle far out into the desert. I reached out, but I could only watch as the bottle landed on the sand, rolling a few times before being buried by the shifting wind. “Stop buying this useless junk,” he said coldly. “Neri, you should see what you look like right now. If you don’t care about your own appearance, at least don’t scare Amara.” His voice was swallowed by the desert wind. I stared at the sand, my eyes dry and burning, but my body could no longer produce a single tear. By the time we reached the camp, I could barely stand. A guide helped me to a chair and handed me a bottle of room-temperature water. But I didn’t even have the strength to open it. Terry was making a call nearby, his voice sounding tense and anxious. Through my blurring vision, I saw Amara leaning against him, looking fragile and pale. When he finished the call, he scooped her up in his arms. As he passed my chair, his footsteps paused. But the next second, Amara whimpered, “Terry…” Terry didn’t wait. He walked away with large strides. Their figures grew smaller and smaller until they vanished. My lips parted, but my throat couldn’t form a sound. As my vision faded into black, the last thing I saw was the sand dunes outside the tent, dyed blood-red by the setting sun. They looked like a burning sea. 3 I was awakened by my phone ringing. By the time I opened my eyes, the ringing had stopped. I was in a crude medical facility with an IV drip of saline hooked to my hand. I picked up my phone to find seven or eight missed calls from Terry. I stared at the screen for a moment before calling back. He answered almost instantly. “Neri, why didn’t you answer? Do you have any idea how worried I was?” My eyes welled with tears, my throat raw as sand. “I passed out from dehydration…” “Amara isn’t doing well right now. She needs a blood transfusion,” Terry interrupted, his voice frantic. “Your blood type is rare and matches hers. I already booked your flight back. Get to the airport immediately.” My limbs went numb. The phone slipped from my fingers, clattering onto the bed. Not hearing a response, Terry’s voice grew stern. “Nerissa, did you hear me? Don’t waste time, Amara can’t wait.” I licked my dry, cracked lips and finally managed a raspy whisper. “Okay.” The screen went black, reflecting a haggard face I barely recognized as my own. When I walked into the hospital, my steps were unsteady. The nurse took one look at my damaged skin and frowned. “Your veins are too collapsed from severe dehydration. You aren’t fit to donate blood.” Before I could speak, Terry walked in, his tone leaving no room for argument. “Do it anyway.” As the needle pierced my skin, I closed my eyes. The blood flowed through the plastic tube, carrying my remaining life with it. The first time I met Terry on land, he had been lying in a pool of his own blood. I had sliced open my wrist to let my mermaid blood flow into his mouth to save him. When he woke up, he held my hand and swore, “My life belongs to you now. I will cherish you forever.” He had promised to keep my secret. Now, he was draining my life to save his adoptive sister. “Mr. Drake, Miss Amara’s condition has stabilized. We can stop the transfusion now.” The voice sounded like it was coming from a great distance. I couldn’t hear clearly. I only saw Terry look at me, a sudden look of shock freezing his features. But he quickly looked away, his voice still tense. “Keep drawing. Just in case.” The moonlight seeped through the blinds. It wasn’t the full moon yet, but I could hear the sea drying up inside my veins. When it was finally over, I pushed myself up from the chair. My legs buckled. The skin on the back of my hand peeled away, exposing grey, dead tissue underneath. But no one noticed. Terry let out a sigh of relief, his gaze softening as he looked at me. I didn’t look back. I forced myself to walk out, concentrating every ounce of my energy just to keep from collapsing. Near the exit, I ran into Amara. She gave me a weak smile. “Thank you, Nerissa. Terry told me your blood is special and could save me. He’d do anything to keep me safe. I’m sorry for causing so much trouble.” Terry held her up, murmuring, “Why aren’t you resting in bed?” I bit my tongue to keep myself conscious. Ignoring them, I dragged myself back to the villa alone. I turned on every faucet in the bathroom and tumbled into the tub. Only then did the rapid drain on my life slow down. Looking at my reflection in the water, I saw cracks running across my skin like a dry riverbed. My eyes were sunken, my skin grey and dull. I tried to cover it with my hair, but clumps of it broke off from the roots, floating away in the water. A wave of panic seized me. I scrambled out of the tub and threw on every layer of clothing I could find, wrapping myself completely to hide my decaying body. Hours later, Terry returned with Amara and a few of his friends. Seeing the heavy curtains drawn, blocking out all light, one of his friends joked, “Is your girl putting on a surprise for you, Terry?” “Or maybe she’s playing hide-and-seek. The wedding is tomorrow, after all!” Terry’s face darkened as he threw open the doors. Finally, in the last room, they found me curled into a tight ball in the corner. “What are you doing now?” he snapped, walking over to tear the heavy layers of clothing away. When my body was exposed to the light, Terry froze. The room fell into a dead silence. 4 Dry, shriveled skin, thinning hair, hollow eyes… Everyone gasped in horror. No one spoke. Terry’s brow furrowed deeply. “You…” Amara suddenly let out a soft laugh. “Is this a cosplay, Nerissa?” “The makeup is so realistic, it actually scared me.” The others laughed along. “Terry, your fiancée is pretty creative. Is there going to be a performance at the wedding tomorrow?” “This special effects makeup is incredible. It looks so real.” Terry’s expression grew even more annoyed. He stared at me for a few seconds, his irritation turning into disgust. “Nerissa, what are you trying to accomplish?” “Did you make yourself look like a monster just to disgust me? To embarrass me in front of my friends?” My fingers trembled. I avoided their gazes, grabbing my coat to cover myself up again. Amara spoke softly. “Terry, don’t be mad. She was probably just playing a joke.” This only made him angrier. “Go wash that trash off your face, or don’t expect me to show up at the altar tomorrow.” He took Amara’s hand and turned to leave. I reached out, my fingers catching the hem of his coat in a silent, desperate plea. “Terry…” My grip loosened. Terry instinctively took a step back, distancing himself from me. But a sudden, inexplicable anxiety flared in his chest. He paused, pushing down the uneasy feeling. “Leave her. Let’s go.” At the door, he stopped and threw a cold look back. “Remember what I said. Clean yourself up. Don’t embarrass me tomorrow.” The friends chuckled and followed him out. “Alright, let’s get back to the bachelor party. No sleep tonight!” The door clicked shut. The room was plunged back into silence. Only the ticking of the clock remained, counting down my final hours. As the moon climbed higher, memories of his proposal flashed through my mind. He had knelt on the beach, his hands shaking as he opened the ring box. The fearless Terry had actually been nervous. His eyes had reflected only me and the setting sun. “Neri, I’ve never begged anyone in my life. But I’m begging you to wait for me, okay?” “Please wait for me. I will give you the grandest wedding in the world.” Back then, I truly believed our love would last forever. But I couldn’t wait any longer. Meanwhile, in the VIP lounge, a drink was offered to Terry, but he pushed it away distractedly. The liquor spilled onto the floor. Amara looked hurt. “Terry?” He didn’t answer. A heavy, suffocating weight seemed to press down on his chest, as if something precious was slipping through his fingers. He couldn’t take it anymore. Just before midnight, he raced back to the villa. He found me curled up by the window, motionless. He rushed over and pulled me into his arms, but the dry, brittle feel of my body made his heart stop. He finally realized this wasn’t makeup. “Neri? Neri?!” Through my hazy vision, I saw his frantic, terrified face. “What’s happening to you?” He was shouting, his lips moving, but my ears were filled with the roar of the ocean. I couldn’t hear him. The clock struck midnight. The bright moonlight poured through the window. Under his horrified gaze, I could no longer maintain my human form. My legs transformed into a long, shimmering fish tail, glowing with a brilliant silver light before fading rapidly. My scales fell away one by one, leaving my skin dry as bone. Terry stared, his mind unable to process the sight. In his pocket, the phone was vibrating with Amara’s ringtone, but he didn’t move. I looked up at him and smiled softly. “Terry, can you hear it?” I whispered, my voice barely a rustle of dry leaves. I pressed my withered, bark-like fingers against his chest. “My blood is flowing inside you. And it’s telling you…” “I am dying.” Terry’s pupils contracted in sheer horror.

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1 It was our first time attempting the high-altitude, single-hand throw lift during pairs training. My partner, who also happened to be my boyfriend, Tristan, failed to catch me. I plummeted straight onto the razor-sharp edge of his skate blade. The impact severed my Achilles tendon instantly. He held me on the ice as I bled, sobbing hysterically. In the weeks that followed, guilt kept him awake night after night, leaving him too terrified to even step back onto the ice. So when Coach Helena approached me, begging me to convince Tristan to resume training for the upcoming Winter Olympics, I didn’t hesitate. I rolled my wheelchair straight toward the rink. But as I approached the locker room, I overheard a conversation between Tristan and my alternate, Mika. “Keira is done. She will never step onto the ice again, Tristan. Your partner is me now, and it can only be me.” “Hold me, please?” Tristan’s voice was thick with hesitation. “I can’t do this to her.” “You already have. Those newly sharpened, altered blades, you’re the one who secretly disposed of them, aren’t you?” Mika’s voice turned into a soft, venomous purr. “Just admit it, Tristan. You’ve fallen for me.” Watching their silhouettes melt into an embrace through the cracked door, the physical agony of my severed tendon paled in comparison to the sudden, icy void opening in my chest. It felt as though I had been plunged naked into a frozen lake. I wheeled myself back to our apartment, my mind a chaotic blur of the scene I had just witnessed. Mika wanted my spot on the Olympic team, so she had sabotaged Tristan’s skates with dangerously sharpened blades, knowing what the impact would do to me. And my boyfriend, the man I trusted with my life, had realized it immediately. While everyone was frantic over my bleeding ankle, he had quietly destroyed the evidence. During my weeks in a wheelchair, he had knelt at my feet every single day, weeping and begging for forgiveness for his careless mistake. He had said, “If you never walk again, Keira, I’ll never skate again either.” Injuries are part of the sport, so I had never blamed him. Instead, I spent my days comforting him, hiding my own despair to soothe his guilt. Now, looking back, I wondered what he had actually been thinking during those quiet moments. Was he hoping for my recovery, or was he just relieved that his precious Mika’s crime remained buried? The click of the front door broke the silence. Tristan walked in, his expression tense and unnatural. Following closely behind him was Mika, looking equally solemn. He managed a weak, rehearsed smile. “Hey, sweetheart. You must be hungry. I brought takeout from that Italian place you love.” At the dinner table, the air was thick with unspoken words. They kept glancing at each other, waiting for me to make the first move, to ask the questions they were dying to answer. But I kept my eyes on my plate, silently chewing, refusing to grant them the easy way out. Finally, Mika couldn’t take the silence anymore. “Keira, Coach Helena wants me to partner with Tristan. The Winter Olympics are only a few months away. Do you… do you hate me for taking your place?” They had already made their decision. This performative guilt was just a pathetic attempt to ease their own consciences. They wanted me to bless their union so they could skate without looking like monsters. I looked up, my voice flat. “The competition is what matters. Besides, you’ve trained hard for this, haven’t you?” They exchanged a quick look, a visible wave of relief washing over both of them. After dinner, as Tristan went to clear the table, Mika smoothly took the plates from his hands. “Let me handle this, Tristan. Go sit and talk to Keira.” She moved around our kitchen with practiced ease, tossing my favorite yellow peonies into the trash and replacing them with a fresh vase of lilies of the valley she had brought with her. Her movements were so seamless, so natural, as if she were already the mistress of this house. I told them I needed to use the restroom. As Tristan went to stand, Mika quickly intercepted him, grabbing the handles of my wheelchair. “I’ve got her. It’s a bit awkward for a guy to help with this anyway.” Tristan offered her a soft, grateful smile. “Thanks, Mika. I don’t know what I’d do without you.” They had their own silent understanding. Neither of them seemed to realize how absurd it was that my own boyfriend of nearly twenty years would find it awkward to help me to the bathroom. Whether by accident or design, as she went to help me transfer from the chair, her grip suddenly went completely limp. I lost my balance, collapsing heavily onto the floor. My healing ankle slammed hard against the sharp edge of the bathroom step. A sharp, blinding agony tore through my leg, and a scream ripped from my throat. Hearing the commotion, Tristan rushed into the hallway. But before his hands could reach me, Mika let out a sharp cry of her own. She held up her hand, where a broken fingernail was oozing a tiny bead of blood. “Oh my god, it hurts so much! I don’t know why, but Keira suddenly pushed me! I tried to catch her, and my nail snapped! It hurts, Tristan!” My forehead was slick with cold sweat. “Tristan, take me to the ER,” I choked out, clutching my throbbing ankle. My Achilles tendon could not survive a secondary rupture. Mika whimpered, looking at me with tear-filled eyes. “Keira, are you doing this because you’re angry about the Olympic partnership?” Tristan, who had been taking a step toward me, froze. He looked down at me, his gaze suddenly hardening with disappointment and blame. “This was the athletic association’s decision, Keira. You shouldn’t let your personal jealousy get in the way of national glory.” With those words, he turned away from my bleeding leg, lifting Mika in his arms, and walked out the door without looking back. I watched their retreating figures, too exhausted to even cry. My only thought was that I couldn’t let my leg be ruined forever. Clawing my way from the cold bathroom floor to the living room couch, every inch of movement felt like a hot knife slicing through my flesh. It took me nearly twenty minutes of agony just to reach my phone and call for an ambulance. By the time Tristan finally showed up at the hospital, I had already undergone emergency corrective surgery. The surgeon’s words still echoed in my ears: one more trauma to this tendon, and I would walk with a permanent limp, never to skate again. I looked up at Tristan from the sterile hospital bed. “Do you know what I was thinking when they wheeled me into surgery?” He didn’t answer. “I was thinking that if I can never step on the ice again, I’ll have nothing left to live for.” Since we were children, I had always told him that figure skating was my religion. I would give everything for it, including my life. Back then, Tristan had looked at me with adoration and said, “I just want to be the one standing beside you in your sanctuary.” He wasn’t naturally gifted. But to earn the right to stand next to me, he had pushed himself to the absolute limit, risking career-ending injuries just to hear the coach say he was worthy of being my partner. I had cherished him just as much as I cherished the sport. I truly believed we would glide through life together until our hair turned gray. Tristan reached out, his hand trembling as he took mine, his eyes swimming with guilt. “I’m so sorry, Keira. I had no idea it was this bad. Mika told me you were just trying to pick a fight to make her look bad.” “She feels incredibly guilty, too. She was too ashamed to face you. And her hand was injured…” I looked him dead in the eye. “Tristan, if I told you she dropped me on purpose, would you believe me?” His eyes flickered, shifting away from mine in a stiff, awkward motion. “Keira, Mika can be a bit impulsive and blunt sometimes, but you shouldn’t let your bitterness turn into slander. You’re better than this.” Mika. Not my alternate. Not the rookie. Just Mika. Looking at this man whom I had loved for nearly two decades, a profound sense of exhaustion washed over me. I slowly turned my back to him, refusing to say another word. He stood there awkwardly for a long time until his phone rang with a call from the training center. Before leaving, he hesitated near the door. “Next week is our first public exhibition as a pair. Mika wants you to be there to guide her. It’s for the national team’s reputation, Keira. Please don’t let your stubbornness ruin this.” I stared at the pale wall. “Tristan, how long have we been together?” “Next week… it’ll be twenty years.” Twenty years. A lifetime. We had been inseparable since we first learned to tie our laces. And now, he brushed off Mika’s malicious sabotage as mere impulsiveness, while treating my pain as malicious jealousy. What a pathetic excuse for a partner. But I still went to the exhibition. Sitting in my wheelchair at the edge of the rink, I watched the two of them glide in perfect harmony. For a fleeting second, I saw a ghost of my former self on the ice. I remembered the first time I met Mika. She was just a little girl huddled in the corner of a public rink, crying because her family couldn’t afford proper coaching. She had raw talent, a natural grace that made her look like she owned the ice even when her form was clumsy. I couldn’t bear to see that potential go to waste. I had walked over, extended my hand, and said, “Come with me. I’ll teach you how to fly.” Back then, she had looked up at me with starry eyes, calling me her idol. I never could have imagined that the sweet girl I rescued would eventually tear my life apart. A hand gently rested on my shoulder, breaking my reverie. My senior mentor and coach, Helena, sat down beside me. “What do you think?” she asked softly. “She’s good,” I replied. “Her jumps are clean, and her extensions are sharp. She has a real shot at the podium.” Helena shook her head, her gaze fixed on the ice. “Don’t you think she looks too much like you?” “Or rather, she is trying her absolute best to recreate you, to copy every single detail.” Watching Mika, I realized Helena was right. Even the precise angle of her arms during her transitions was an exact replica of my own style. “She’s been asking me for your old training footage for three years now,” Helena whispered. Three years. That was only a year after I brought her to the national training center. So she had been plotting to replace me from the very beginning. As the swelling crescendo of the music filled the arena, I finally understood what Mika wanted me to see. A triple axel, followed by three successive leaps, transitioning into a sweeping black swan glide across the ice, before finally collapsing like a sleeping child against Tristan’s knee as they spun. It was a sequence that required an insane amount of core strength, with only a single point of balance at the waist. It was my signature sequence. The routine that had won Tristan and me our world championship titles. Almost instantly, the eyes of everyone in the arena shifted toward me. Some held pity, some shock, and others a sick sense of amusement. When the music died down, Mika glided gracefully toward the barrier, stopping right in front of my wheelchair. “How did I do, Keira?” she asked, her voice sweet yet dripping with triumph. “You did well,” I murmured. Helena stood up, her tone sharp and demanding. “Mika, when did you learn that sequence?” Before Mika could open her mouth, Tristan stepped in. “There’s nothing wrong with learning techniques from other elite skaters, Coach. It’s common practice.” While skaters often study each other’s mechanics, copying an entire signature sequence step-for-step was a blatant insult. It was Mika’s way of marking her territory, telling me that I had been completely erased. I reached out and patted Helena’s hand. “It’s fine, Helena. If a routine can be so easily copied, then it was never truly unique to begin with.” But in reality, that sequence had taken me months of grueling practice and countless falls to perfect. More importantly, it required an absolute, instinctive connection between partners. You couldn’t practice it alone. Mika’s execution was too seamless to be a recent development. Which meant she and Tristan had been practicing my routine behind my back for months, perhaps even years. Even if the accident hadn’t happened, Tristan would have eventually found another excuse to put her in my spot. I asked Helena to wheel me out. But as we turned, Tristan called out after me. “Keira, wait!” I looked back. “What is it?” “Wait for me to finish this afternoon’s session. I’ll take you to your physical therapy appointment.” He looked desperate, as if trying to prove that even if my routine could be stolen, he couldn’t be. Catching the subtle darkening in Mika’s eyes behind him, I offered a faint, empty smile. “Sure.” Deep down, I knew he wouldn’t make it. But I stayed in the arena lobby anyway, staring at the white sheets of ice through the glass. I wasn’t sure what I was waiting for. Maybe I just didn’t want my twenty years of dedication to end so abruptly. Or maybe the ice was the only place that still offered me some semblance of peace. During the afternoon break, Tristan came out. He wheeled me onto the ice, pushing the chair at a thrilling speed, gliding backward while keeping his eyes locked onto mine. He smiled, the familiar warmth returning to his face. “As long as I can skate, Keira, I’ll keep dancing with you on the ice. You will always have me.” It was the same promise he whispered before every major competition. “Tristan is forever devoted to Keira. Trust me.” He reached into his pocket and slid a ring onto my finger. “I should have given this to you sooner. If it weren’t for the accident, we would already be married.” I looked down at the ring. The diamond setting was shaped like our first gold trophy, with two tiny figures skating together engraved along the band. It was beautifully, meticulously designed. “Let’s get married next week, Keira. Let’s start our next twenty years together, okay?” His eyes were bright, filled only with my reflection. For a second, I couldn’t tell if this was born of lingering guilt or genuine devotion. My fingers tightened around the band. But just as I opened my mouth to speak, a sharp, agonizing shriek echoed from the locker rooms. It was Mika. Without a single second of hesitation, Tristan let go of my wheelchair. He turned and ran toward the sound, his sudden movement jolting my chair so hard it nearly tipped over. My arm slammed violently against the metal armrest. It throbbed with pain. By the time Helena wheeled me to the scene, a crowd had gathered. Mika was sitting on the bench, her bare feet covered in blood, with shards of broken glass scattered around her skate bag. She was sobbing hysterically as Tristan knelt before her, gently wiping away her tears. Seeing me enter, Mika looked up, biting her lip with an expression of profound betrayal. “Keira… why would you do this to me?” I stared at her, genuinely baffled. “What are you talking about?” “Just because I skated your sequence, you wanted to ruin my feet?” she cried, her voice trembling. “You wanted to destroy me!” A dry laugh escaped my lips. “And what makes you think I did this?” “Only you have the spare key to my locker! If it wasn’t you, did I put the glass in my own skates?” Her words were sharp, painting me as a bitter, vengeful monster. When she first joined the training center, she had been lost and dependent on me. I had looked after her, even keeping her spare key because she constantly misplaced things. Now, my kindness had been twisted into a weapon against me. “It wasn’t me,” I said simply. “I know I shouldn’t have taken your spot or your partner,” Mika sobbed, looking around at the murmuring onlookers. “But even if you hate me, could you have at least waited until after the Olympics? I just wanted to skate for our country…” I raised my voice, trying to stay calm. “I told you, I didn’t do it. You can check the security cameras, I haven’t been near the locker rooms today…” “Enough!” Tristan’s voice cut me off, loud and harsh. “Keira, you’ve disappointed me beyond words.” He scooped Mika up in his arms. As he brushed past my wheelchair, I reached out and grabbed the edge of his jacket. “The question you asked me on the ice,” I whispered, staring up at him. “Do you still want my answer?” He didn’t even look at me. Shucking off my grip, he carried Mika down the hallway, leaving me behind for the second time. I stared at my empty hands, then slowly pulled out a crumpled business card that a European scout had slipped into my pocket weeks ago. I dialed the number. “Hello, this is Keira. I’m ready to accept your offer.” Before leaving for good, I needed closure. I wheeled myself to the hospital where Mika had been admitted. But as I reached her room, Tristan’s muffled, strained voice drifted through the door. “We can’t do this, Mika. I just proposed to Keira.” Mika’s voice was thick with tears. “But we are the ones who belong together now. She only makes you chase her. When you skate with me, you’re actually happy, doesn’t it feel that way?” A long, heavy silence followed. It was the only answer she needed. Finally, Tristan spoke. “Keira has waited for me for so long. Other than skating, I’m all she has left. We already took away her career. If I abandon her now, she won’t survive.” He knew. He knew exactly what they had stolen from me, yet he had still chosen to protect her because she was the one who mattered. His proposal on the ice wasn’t a promise of love; it was a pity prize to keep me from falling apart. I looked down at the ring on my finger, slipped it off, and dropped it into a nearby trash can. There was no need for a dramatic farewell. I turned my wheelchair around and left. But the drama followed me. Someone had snapped photos of Tristan and Mika in the hospital corridor and posted them online. Within hours, the internet erupted in fury. The golden couple of pairs skating was dead. The public was outraged, pointing out that Keira was still in a wheelchair while they flaunted their affair. People began to suspect the breakup had happened much earlier, and some even questioned if Keira’s injury had truly been an accident, wondering if they had sabotaged her to take her spot. Mika was bombarded with demands to leave the team. Amid the storm of public condemnation, my phone rang. It was Tristan. There was no apology, no explanation. Only panic. “Keira, you need to release a statement to the press right now. Mika is crying her eyes out. She is young, she can’t handle this kind of cyberbullying.” “What do you want me to say?” I asked, my voice deadly quiet. “Just tell them your injury was a freak accident during training. That it had nothing to do with us.” “And the photo of you two kissing in the hallway?” “I’ll explain that to you later. Mika was just having a panic attack, and I didn’t push her away in time. Besides, if you hadn’t put glass in her skates, none of this would have happened!” Our betrayal had somehow become my fault. “How do you want me to spin it?” “I’ll post a statement saying we broke up a long time ago, and that I’m dating Mika now. You need to back it up so she doesn’t look like a homewrecker. We can put the wedding on hold for a bit. Once the drama dies down, we’ll get married.” His words were so casual, so dismissive of the ruin he had brought upon me. “Tristan, you two made this mess,” I said. “You’re the ones who owe me an apology.” I hung up. But Tristan was faster than I anticipated. He released a public statement shortly after. “Keira and I ended our relationship a long time ago. My relationship with Mika is completely normal. Keira’s injury was a tragic training accident that has nothing to do with anyone else.” But the internet didn’t buy it, pointing out the suspicious timing of the announcement right after the hospital photos leaked. Tristan replied directly to the skeptics, claiming he had wanted to protect my dignity, but since they insisted, he alleged we broke up because my jealousy had led me to bully my younger, more talented teammates. Mika immediately followed up by posting a picture of her bandaged, bleeding foot alongside her blood-stained skates, claiming she was only being comforted at the hospital because someone had put shattered glass in her boots. The narrative began to shift. The final blow came when the national athletic federation’s official social media account liked Tristan’s post and leaked a carefully edited security clip of Mika sobbing in the locker room, accusing me of sabotaging her. Suddenly, the tide of public hatred turned entirely on me. I became the bitter, crippled villain who had tried to sabotage her country’s Olympic chances. When I went to the clinic for my checkup, strangers spat insults at me in the streets. During all of this, Tristan never reached out once. Sitting in the departure lounge at the airport, I received two text messages. One was from Helena. It was simple: “I’m sorry.” I understood. Between a crippled skater who might never walk again and a rising star destined for the Olympics, the federation had made the logical choice to protect their investment. The second text was from Tristan: “Keira, this was the only way to handle things quickly. I’ll make it up to you, I promise. We’ll get married right after the Winter Games.” I didn’t reply to either. I dropped my phone into the trash can next to the boarding gate, turned my back on the country that had abandoned me, and boarded my flight to Europe.

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1 Before the wedding, Sebastian sent an Excel sheet with three hundred and sixty-five rows of Wife Code of Conduct. Rule 12 banned male likes on Instagram. Rule 87 limited weight fluctuation to two pounds. Rule 203 required chore photos by 10:00 PM daily. I thought it was his quirky way of building a life. After marriage, he turned it into an app scoring me daily. Below ninety meant his calm remark, “I am not punishing you, I am helping you improve.” Seven months pregnant, I scored eighty-seven for a three-minute delay to a prenatal appointment that “disrupted the family’s time management schedule.” He canceled my clinic ride. I took a cab, hemorrhaged en route, and heard a nurse scream, “We lost her blood pressure!” When I woke, his email glowed with the same spreadsheet and a voice memo: “Babe, here’s our marriage blueprint. Take a look.” I replied, “I read it,” and blocked him permanently. “Jennifer, I will only tolerate this childish ghosting game once.” A faint shadow fell over my head. I didn’t bother looking up, keeping my eyes fixed on my computer monitor. A freshly printed piece of standard printer paper was slapped hard next to my keyboard, completely covering the marketing proposal I was editing. “This is your preliminary performance review for the month. Your current score is negative five.” Sebastian pulled out the chair opposite my desk and sat down, crossing his legs in a posture of complete leisure. “Because you refused to reply to my voice memo last night and unilaterally cut off our communication channels, you violated Rule 42: Never let a conflict last overnight.” His voice was completely flat. He sounded like a heartless judge reading a verdict. A few colleagues in the open office space were already sneaking glances our way. I slid the printed paper right back to him. “Mr. Wright, we are on the clock. Please remove your personal garbage from my desk.” Sebastian frowned, clearly displeased with my strictly professional attitude. “Jennifer, do not bring your emotional baggage into the corporate environment.” He tapped his knuckles against the desk. “I spent an entire week tailoring those three hundred and sixty-five rules specifically for you.” “I am doing this to help you strip away your laziness. I am molding you into a woman worthy of being the lady of the Wright household.” I stared at his arrogant, self-righteous face, feeling my stomach violently churn. The perfect lady of the house. In my past life, I actually swallowed that toxic gaslighting. To reach that perfect score of one hundred, I wound myself up like a tight clock every single day. Once, I was running a hundred-and-two-degree fever and passed out on the living room sofa. I missed the 10:00 PM “chore completion photo check-in.” Sebastian remotely changed the passcode to our smart lock while I was asleep. I woke up confused and locked out. I froze in the winter hallway for half the night. When he finally opened the door the next morning, he just handed me a template for an apology letter. He told me, “If you cannot manage basic time management, you do not deserve to walk through this door. Go write a three-thousand-word reflection essay. Make sure your handwriting is perfectly neat.” That bone-piercing cold was something I remembered vividly right up to the moment I died. “I do not need to be tailored by you.” I hit the save shortcut and closed my proposal. “What kind of attitude is that?” Sebastian’s face finally darkened. “You threw a tantrum and blocked me last night, and I let it slide. I took the initiative to come see you today. How long are you going to keep throwing this fit?” “I am not throwing a fit. I do not accept your spreadsheet, and I do not accept you.” My phone began to vibrate on the desk. The caller ID flashed “Mrs. Wright.” Sebastian caught a glimpse of the screen and a cold, arrogant smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth. “Answer it. Let us hear what my mother has to say.” I swiped to answer. I didn’t put it on speaker, but Mrs. Wright’s shrill voice was piercing enough to bleed through the earpiece. “Jennifer, you think you are so tough now, do you? You actually dared to block my son?” “Mrs. Wright, we are no longer a good fit.” “What do you mean, no longer a good fit? A girl from an ordinary background like yours should be thanking her lucky stars that the Wright family even looked in your direction.” The voice on the other end grew even more venomous. “Sebastian is setting rules for you to train you properly. Look at yourself. You are a total workaholic who does not even know how to cook a decent meal. How are you supposed to serve my son in the future?” “Why on earth would I serve your son?” “Because that three-million-dollar penthouse you two are moving into was secured by Sebastian’s down payment!” Mrs. Wright let out a sharp sneer. “If you still want to marry into this family, you will come over to my house tonight and recite all three hundred of those rules to my face. If you get a single word wrong, you will not be getting any dinner.” I hung up the phone right in her face. Sebastian looked at me, his eyes brimming with a sickening, high-and-mighty sense of pity. “You heard her. My mother is highly dissatisfied with your current state.” “That sounds like a personal problem for her.” “Jennifer.” He lowered his voice, lacing it with an obvious warning. “Do not mistake my indulgence for a free pass to act however you want.” Indulgence? Treating a human being like a show dog to be graded and trained. He actually called that indulgence. “Sebastian, you can keep that spreadsheet and memorize it yourself.” I stood up, grabbing my mug to head to the breakroom. He reached out and grabbed my wrist with a crushing grip. “If you insist on using these pathetic tactics to get my attention, I will strip you of the Southside Resort project.” I stopped in my tracks. The Southside project was my absolute baby. I had pulled endless all-nighters for three months and done countless site visits to secure that core campaign. “You have no right to do that. I am the lead director on that project.” “I am your direct supervisor.” He released my wrist and casually adjusted his cuffs. “Since you cannot even learn the basic duties of a wife, you certainly lack the energy to manage a project of this magnitude.” He stood up, towering over me. “I am giving you one day to reflect on your behavior. Email an apology letter to my inbox, and I might consider giving the project back to you.” … The next morning, the moment I scanned my badge and walked into the department conference room, I noticed my seat was taken. A girl with a short bob haircut, wearing a casual designer hoodie, was spinning in my chair. Daisy. Sebastian’s childhood best friend. She had been parachuted into our department three days ago as an “intern.” She was the classic “guy’s girl” he was always raving about. “Morning, future wifey.” Daisy spun a pen between her fingers, smiling at me with sickening sweetness. “Seb said you’ve been a little emotionally unstable lately, and that you haven’t even memorized your pregnancy prep spreadsheet yet. So, I’ll be taking the Southside project off your plate.” She heavily emphasized the words “future wifey” with a condescending lilt. The other colleagues in the room immediately buried their heads in their documents. Nobody dared to make a sound. I walked straight up to her and pointed at the chair. “That is my seat. Get up.” Daisy pouted, staying perfectly glued to the spot. Instead, she looked past me toward Sebastian, who had just walked into the room. “Seb, look at her. Her temper is still so explosive. I’m just trying to be a good friend and lighten her workload, but she is completely ungrateful.” Sebastian walked to the head of the table and sat down, knocking his knuckles against the wood. “Jennifer, stop being unreasonable in the office. Daisy taking over the project was my executive decision.” “I poured my blood and sweat into this. Why are you handing it over to an intern who cannot even read basic architectural blueprints?” I glared at Sebastian, forcing down the fiery rage burning in my chest. “Because your priorities should not be focused on meaningless corporate climbing.” Sebastian clicked a button, and the projector flared to life. My personal performance review spreadsheet was plastered across the massive screen. The score was highlighted in bright, glaring red. “Excel Rule 45: A wife’s energy must not be scattered on meaningless socializing or excessive career ambitions. Her core focus must be building the family.” He was actually displaying this psychotic document in front of the entire department. “Look at your performance over the past few days. Consecutive overtime, highly irregular meals. With your current physical state, how are you supposed to breed a healthy next generation for the Wright family?” The conference room was so dead silent you could hear a pin drop. Daisy let out a loud, mocking giggle. “Seb, your standards for her are way too high. But honestly, Jennifer, Seb is just looking out for you. Don’t bite the hand that feeds you.” I stared at the utterly absurd clauses glowing on the projector screen. In my past life, this exact scenario played out in this exact room. Back then, terrified of starting a public fight with him, I swallowed my humiliation and handed the project over. And the result? Daisy used my flawless proposal to skyrocket up the corporate ladder, earning rapid promotions and massive bonuses. Meanwhile, I spent my pregnancy with zero personal income and zero social life, completely crushed under Sebastian’s control. “Sebastian, if your brain is rotting, I suggest you seek medical help.” I looked at him with ice in my veins. “Give me back what is mine, or I have absolutely no problem escalating this directly to the CEO’s office.” Sebastian’s eyes instantly turned frigid. “Escalate to the CEO?” He looked at me like I had just told a hilarious joke. “Why don’t you open your employee portal right now and see if you even have the security clearance to email the executive floor?” I instantly pulled out my phone and logged into the company intranet. My account status read: Suspended. “You privately revoked my access?” “It is called workplace correction.” Sebastian leaned back in his leather chair, steepling his fingers together. “You disobeyed a direct order from a superior and displayed a hostile attitude. As your director, I have the full authority to place you on administrative leave for reflection.” Daisy chimed in, eagerly adding fuel to the fire. “Come on, Jennifer, just swallow your pride and apologize. Seb stayed up until midnight yesterday just to draft that new spreadsheet for you. If you keep acting like a psycho, nobody is going to put up with you.” I looked at the two of them. They were truly a match made in hell, and I found the entire situation incredibly laughable. “Since I am suspended, that means I do not need to be at work, correct?” Sebastian assumed I was finally backing down. His expression softened slightly. “I added a new rule, Rule 366: Talking back to your husband results in a one-month project suspension. You can go home and reflect now.” “Remember to clock in your daily chore progress photos on time. If your score drops below a ninety, the wedding will be postponed.” I nodded slowly, turning on my heel and walking straight toward the conference room doors. “There is no need to postpone it.” I stopped at the threshold and looked back over my shoulder. “The wedding is completely canceled. You can give your spreadsheet to someone desperate enough to memorize it.” Sebastian’s brow instantly furrowed, but before he could speak, the sound of measured footsteps echoed down the hallway. We both froze and turned toward the sound. A man in a sleek, tailored black trench coat was walking slowly toward us, flanked by two towering bodyguards in dark suits. The man was tall and striking, his features sharp and strikingly cold. Behind his gold-rimmed glasses, his eyes radiated an aura of absolute, unapproachable frost. Gabriel Sinclair. The youngest, most legendary cardiothoracic surgeon at Trinity Medical Center. And also the doctor who, in my past life, fought like hell to save me on the operating table. The man who gripped my blood-soaked hand with red, devastated eyes when my heart finally stopped. Sebastian obviously had no idea who Gabriel was. He eyed the newcomer with extreme impatience. “Who the hell are you? This is a private corporate floor. Get out.” Gabriel completely ignored Sebastian. He walked straight past him and stopped right in front of me. His gaze swept over my face. There was a deep, restrained emotion in his eyes that I could not quite read. “Ms. Jennifer, we meet again.” He finally turned to face Sebastian. His voice was perfectly level, yet laced with a chilling cruelty that made the hairs on my arms stand up. “I am Dr. Gabriel Sinclair from Trinity Medical Center. I am the attending physician for Ms. Jennifer’s mother.” Sebastian was taken aback for a second, but then he let out a harsh sneer. “Just a damn doctor, and you think you can stick your nose in my business? Do you want me to make one phone call and get your license revoked?” Gabriel’s lips curved upward into an incredibly icy smile. “Her mother’s medical expenses will be entirely billed to the Sinclair family account.” He raised a single finger. One of the bodyguards immediately stepped forward, handing him a sleek, matte-black business card. Gabriel casually tossed the card directly at Sebastian’s chest. It fluttered off his suit jacket and landed softly on the floor. “As for you.” Gabriel didn’t even bother looking at the dropped card. “Stay the hell out of my hospital. And while you are at it, tell your executives that all funding from the Sinclair Consortium is officially terminated as of today.” … After leaving the corporate building, I drove straight back to my apartment. This was the “three-million-dollar penthouse” Sebastian was always bragging about. Yes, he had paid the initial down payment. But the subsequent seven hundred thousand dollars spent on custom renovations, fully integrated smart appliances, and the imported Italian leather sofas were paid entirely out of my own pocket, draining five years of my hard-earned savings. In my past life, after I died, Daisy had lounged on that exact Italian sofa while flirting with Sebastian. When I reached the front door, I habitually punched in my passcode. “Beep. Incorrect passcode.” The robotic female voice echoed in the quiet hallway. I paused, assuming I had mistyped, and re-entered my birthday. Incorrect again. My phone buzzed in my pocket. It was a text from Sebastian. “I changed the lock passcode. It is now Daisy’s birthday.” “This is a minor punishment for publicly disrespecting me in the conference room today. Rule 88 states: A wife must memorize the important personal details of her husband’s close friends and family.” “Stand out in the hallway for thirty minutes and think long and hard about what you did wrong. Once you figure it out, you can ask me for the passcode.” I read the text on the screen and actually let out a genuine laugh. Without a single second of hesitation, I googled a local locksmith and dialed the number. The technician arrived incredibly fast. Twenty minutes later, the screeching sound of a heavy-duty power drill echoed through the corridor. Just as the lock cylinder was about to give way, the elevator dinged and the doors slid open. Sebastian and Daisy walked out, shoulder to shoulder. Seeing the locksmith actively drilling into the door, Sebastian’s face turned a violent shade of purple. “Jennifer, have you completely lost your mind!” He sprinted forward and violently shoved the locksmith out of the way. “What the hell are you doing? Who gave you permission to break into my house?” “Your house?” I glared at him with pure ice. “Every single piece of furniture and appliance inside these walls was bought with my money. What gave you the right to lock me out?” Daisy immediately shrank behind Sebastian’s back, clutching her pearl necklace like a frightened little bird. “Jennifer, please don’t be so aggressive. Seb was just playing a harmless little joke on you. He just wanted to test your memory.” “Who the hell are you that I need to memorize your birthday?” I fired back without a shred of mercy. Daisy’s eyes instantly welled with dramatic tears as she gripped Sebastian’s sleeve. “Seb, look at how she is treating me.” Sebastian shielded Daisy with his body, looking down his nose at me with utter disgust. “Jennifer, look at the way you are behaving. You look like a hysterical street vendor!” “Daisy was kind enough to take over your heavy workload, and not only are you ungrateful, you are verbally abusing her. And now you are hiring thugs to drill out my locks?” The elevator dinged a second time. Mrs. Wright stormed out in her designer heels, radiating toxic energy. She was clutching a thick stack of legal documents in her hand. “Sebastian, I told you this woman was an ungrateful gold-digger, but you insisted on protecting her!” Mrs. Wright marched right up to me and shoved the documents directly into my face. “Look at this. It is a prenuptial agreement.” “Our family paid the down payment for this property. You do not own a single square inch of it. Even if you paid for the renovations, consider that your entry fee for marrying my son.” “Sign the papers. From now on, this house belongs solely to Sebastian. Do not even dream of getting your name on the deed.” I stared at the thick stack of notarized papers. The memories of my past life wrapped around my throat like a venomous snake. It had been pouring rain that day. I came home ten minutes late because the line at the grocery store was long. Sebastian and his mother locked the door on me. Through the wood, Mrs. Wright had sneered, “Rules are rules. If you have no concept of time, you can stand in the rain until your head clears.” I stood in the freezing downpour for two hours until a pool of blood washed down my legs. My first child died right there on the welcome mat. And when Sebastian finally opened the door, he just frowned at the mess and said, “You stained the porch. That is a twenty-point deduction.” I took a deep, shaky breath, dragging my consciousness back to the present. “Sir,” I said, looking at the locksmith. “Keep drilling. I will pay you double.” The technician hesitated for a split second, but money speaks loudly. He raised his drill again. “You ungrateful little brat!” Mrs. Wright raised her hand, aiming a vicious slap right at my cheek. I caught her wrist in mid-air and violently shoved her arm away. “Keep the damn house. You can pay the mortgage yourselves. As for everything inside, I am hiring a demolition crew to smash it all to pieces by tonight.” I turned my gaze to Sebastian. “The wedding is off.” Hearing my words, Sebastian did not look angry. Instead, he laughed. He adjusted his silk tie, looking at me like I was a toddler throwing a tantrum in a toy aisle. “Jennifer, do you really think you can just throw around words like ‘canceling the wedding’ and I will actually take you seriously?” He took a menacing step forward, trying to suffocate me with his presence. “Did you conveniently forget that your mother is currently lying in a VIP suite at Trinity Medical Center?” My heart dropped like a stone. “What are you implying?” Sebastian let out a cruel, triumphant sneer. “That VIP suite costs fifteen hundred dollars a day. Not to mention the imported targeted therapy drugs she is pumped full of every morning.” “Every single one of those medical channels was secured through my personal connections.” He reached out and flicked an imaginary speck of dust off my collar. “If you actually try to break off this engagement right now, I guarantee you, by tomorrow morning, your mother will be tossed out of that hospital for unpaid bills.” “And it will not stop there. Not a single private clinic in this entire city will dare to take her in.” Mrs. Wright cackled with wicked delight. “Exactly. Without the Wright family, your mother will not even have a clean bed to die in. And you dare to act tough in front of us?” Daisy eagerly stepped forward, hooking her arm through Sebastian’s in a sickeningly sweet display. “Jennifer, just stop being so stubborn. Seb is only doing this for your mother’s sake. Just apologize to him, sign the prenup, and we can all go back to being one big happy family.” I clenched my fists so tightly my manicured nails dug bloody half-moons into my palms. The suffocating helplessness of my past life flooded my veins. This was exactly how he operated. He always found the perfect leverage to force my head down, forcing me to compromise until I became that soulless puppet governed by his spreadsheet. “What is wrong? Cat got your tongue?” Sebastian stared down at me like a god observing an insect, holding out the prenup once more. “Kneel.” He spat the word out with terrifying calmness. “Sign the agreement, and then apologize to Daisy for scaring her with this locksmith stunt. Do that, and I will make sure your mother’s medication continues.” He was absolutely intoxicated by this power trip. He thrived on the high of pushing me to the absolute brink, watching me swallow my pride to survive. The air in the hallway felt completely depleted. Every breath I took felt like crushed glass in my lungs. Just as the suffocating stalemate reached its breaking point, a voice echoed from the corner of the corridor. It was cold, deep, and dripping with an unquestionable, terrifying authority. “I hear someone is trying to cut off my patient’s medication.”

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1 Stella enforced extreme boundaries. For three years, I never entered her apartment or touched her phone. At dinners, she seated me far away. I believed she feared intimacy. On our wedding eve, she sent a live location pin. Thinking she was finally opening up, I went to her apartment. The door was unlocked. Inside, a man lounged on her couch in sweats, his feet in her lap, laughing as he begged for a massage. Stella looked startled, then cold. “Wrong person,” she said. “That pin was for Dylan. Carter, stop acting like a desperate dog. You’re suffocating me.” I stayed silent, amused. She was entangled with another man yet demanded privacy from me. I opened my phone and accepted my regional director’s transfer offer. If I suffocated her, she could have all the space she wanted. Space where I no longer existed. The screen loaded, displaying a brief confirmation text. [Relocation Term: 3 Years. Destination: London Branch. Departure: This Saturday.] Today was Wednesday. There were exactly three days left until the wedding, and three days left until I left the country forever. Seeing me staring silently at my phone, Stella furrowed her brows in deep annoyance. “Carter, I am talking to you.” I locked my screen and looked up at her. “Yeah. I heard you.” She clearly had not expected me to be this calm. The harsh reprimand she had prepared got stuck in her throat, making her expression turn even uglier. Dylan finally decided to pull his legs off her lap. He tugged at the fabric of his hoodie, a matching oversized piece identical to the one Stella was currently wearing. He looked at me with a sheepish, awkward smile. “Stell, this is Carter, right?” Stell. I had been dating her for three years, and I almost exclusively called her by her full name. When we first got together, I asked if we could use pet names. Stella hated the idea. She said overly affectionate nicknames made her skin crawl and made her highly uncomfortable. It turned out she was not uncomfortable with pet names at all. It just depended on who was saying them. Dylan gripped the armrest of the sofa and stood up. “Bro, please do not get the wrong idea. I twisted my ankle playing basketball, so Stell was just rubbing it out for me.” I looked down at his feet. He was wearing fuzzy blue dog slippers. The glass of milk resting on the coffee table was a novelty cartoon mug. The cushion he had been leaning against was a limited edition gaming pillow. None of those things belonged to Stella. And none of them belonged to me. A bitter sense of irony washed over me. This was my very first time standing inside my fiancée’s apartment, yet I felt like a trespasser invading a cozy little love nest she shared with someone else. Seeing my silence, Dylan’s innocent smile began to falter. “Bro, Stell and I were born in the same year. We grew up together. We have always hung out like this, so we do not really have a lot of boundaries with each other.” I shifted my gaze to Stella. She was frowning slightly, completely unfazed by the blatant absurdity of Dylan’s excuse. Yet throughout our three year relationship, her demands for boundaries with me were so severe they bordered on absolute cruelty. I was banned from her apartment. I was banned from touching her phone. I was kept entirely isolated from her inner social circle. Once, I accidentally bumped into a decorative air freshener in her car, and she instantly scowled. “Carter, I really hate it when people touch my things.” Every single rule and restriction she had meticulously drafted for me was completely non existent when it came to Dylan. I let out a soft chuckle and looked at the man standing next to her. “Dylan. I have heard a lot about you.” Stella’s face darkened. “Carter, what is with the sarcastic tone?” I looked at her, genuinely surprised she interpreted it that way. I was not being sarcastic at all. I really had heard his name brought up time and time again. The first time was on my birthday. I had booked a reservation at an upscale restaurant half a month in advance. But at the very last minute, Stella called to cancel. She said Dylan had watched a horror movie and was too terrified to sleep, so she needed to go over and coax him. The second time was when I ran a hundred and three degree fever and had to go to the emergency room. I called Stella, hoping she could drive me. She told me Dylan was throwing a massive fit over wanting artisanal donuts from a specific bakery across town, and if he did not get them immediately, he was going to cry. The third time was the day we were supposed to try on our wedding attire. She showed up two hours late. I sat alone on the velvet sofa outside the dressing rooms in my suit, waiting until my eager anticipation curdled into sheer humiliation. When she finally rushed in, her white blouse was stained with spilled iced coffee. She casually explained that Dylan had lost his cat and was devastated, so she spent the entire morning scouring the neighborhood for it. During every single one of those incidents, I never actually got angry. Because I always assumed the person capable of making someone as cold and distant as Stella break her own rules over and over again must be a helpless, immature little kid. I even promised myself that after we got married, I would treat Dylan well if he was truly that dependent on her. Stella did not have many close friends. I never wanted to put her in a difficult position. But seeing him in the flesh today, the truth slapped me across the face. Dylan was not some little kid. He was the exact same age as Stella, making him two years older than me. Dylan bit his lower lip, his eyes instantly turning red and watery. “Stell, I do not think Carter likes me.” He reached down to grab his denim jacket off the sofa. “Maybe I should just leave. I do not want you guys getting into a huge fight because of me.” Before his hand could even touch the fabric, Stella reached out and grabbed his wrist. “Why should you be the one to leave?” “The person who showed up completely uninvited is the one who needs to get out.” A sharp sting hit the back of my nose. I forced the corners of my mouth up into a dry, hollow smile. “Alright.” “I will leave.” I turned around and walked out the door. As I stood in the hallway waiting for the elevator, a quiet realization settled over me. This was my first time visiting Stella’s apartment. And it would undoubtedly be my last. 2 By the time I unlocked the door to my own apartment, it was nearly eleven at night. I bought this place entirely on my own. Stella had never stepped foot inside it. Not even once. Months ago, I suffered from stomach cramps so severe I could barely stand straight. I called her, practically begging her to drop off a box of painkillers. She just replied over the phone with chilling indifference. “Carter, we are not legally married yet.” “A man and a woman alone in an apartment at night sends the wrong message. It will ruin your reputation.” Back then, I was foolish enough to be touched by her words. I actually believed she respected me and was fiercely protecting my image. It took seeing Dylan draped over her couch in a matching outfit, resting his legs on her lap and begging for a massage, to finally wake me up. All those pristine boundaries were just convenient excuses to keep me at arm’s length. I shook the thoughts out of my head, opened my suitcase, and started packing my life away. Halfway through folding my shirts, my knuckles brushed against a heavy garment bag shoved into the very back of the closet. I froze. Inside was the custom tailored tuxedo I had paid for in full. During our wedding preparations, Stella had been completely hands off with the planning, but she was incredibly generous with her credit card. She booked the most exclusive five star hotel in the city. She secured a fleet of luxury vintage cars. She spared absolutely no expense on the catering menu. Even her wedding dress was a bespoke gown crafted by an elite Italian designer. But when it came to my tuxedo, she simply said, “Just rent one.” “You are only going to wear it for a few hours. There is zero point in wasting money on it.” On the day of our fitting, after keeping me waiting for two agonizing hours, she breezed into the boutique, pointed lazily at a random rack, and said, “That one is fine. Stop dragging this out.” But I refused to compromise. I did not want to look back on the most important day of my life with the woman I loved and feel a shred of regret. So the following week, I went to a high end menswear boutique alone and purchased the most elegant, expensive tuxedo they had. Now, it was completely useless. I took a clear photo of it and listed it on a popular second hand marketplace app. [Brand new custom tuxedo. Never worn. Selling for cheap.] The moment I hit publish, a banner notification dropped down from the top of my screen. It was a new friend request on Instagram. I opened the app. The profile picture was a shot of a guy standing on a beach, facing the ocean. At first glance, it just looked vaguely familiar. But when I noticed the specific angle of the waves in the top right corner, it hit me like a ton of bricks. It was the exact same beach from Stella’s profile picture. I used to tease her for being an old soul, picking a boring landscape photo as her avatar when she was still in her twenties. Now I knew the truth. It was never a landscape photo. It was just the cropped out half of a matching couple’s picture with Dylan. I hit accept. A second later, a direct message popped up. [Bro, really sorry about everything today. I hate that I made you misunderstand the situation.] [Let me treat you to dinner tomorrow to make up for it.] My thumbs hovered over the keyboard. I typed out “No need,” but before I could hit send, he dropped a location link. [This is my absolute favorite spot in the city. Tomorrow at 5 PM. Do not leave me hanging!] I stared at the address on the screen, feeling entirely hollowed out. It was the exact restaurant Stella always insisted on taking me to for date nights. I never really liked the place. The food was way too sweet for my taste, and the ambient lighting was frustratingly dim. But Stella suggested it every single time we went out. Over the last three years, we had eaten countless meals in that dim dining room. Most of the time, we just sat across from each other in total silence. She would be glued to her phone dealing with work, and I would quietly cut my steak. Occasionally, I would glance up at her and convince myself that this quiet companionship was its own kind of romance. Looking back on it now, the irony made me sick to my stomach. I could not help but ask the ghost of her in my head. Stella. Whenever you sat across from me at that table, who were you actually picturing in your mind? In the end, I decided to go. The next afternoon, I walked into the restaurant right on the dot. As soon as I stepped past the host stand, I spotted them in a booth by the window. Stella and Dylan were sitting shoulder to shoulder on the same side of the table. I walked over and slid into the empty booth seat across from them. Dylan stuck his tongue out in a playful, boyish manner. “Sorry about this, bro.” “I was planning on coming alone, but Stell was too worried about me. She insisted on tagging along.” Worried? What was there to be worried about? Did she think I was going to throw a drink in his face? Hearing that triggered a memory from our second year of dating. My firm had a female client who was notoriously touchy feely with the single guys whenever she had a few drinks. Every time we had a corporate dinner with her, my colleagues’ girlfriends would wait outside in the parking lot to escort them home. I casually brought it up to Stella once. She did not even look up from her laptop. “I trust you.” “You are a brilliant professional. I am sure you can handle a minor inconvenience like that.” Love, it turns out, is entirely measured in double standards. She could not even trust me to eat a simple dinner with Dylan without acting as his bodyguard. But she was perfectly fine leaving her own boyfriend to fend for himself against a predatory client because she “trusted” me. 3 The food had been ordered before I even arrived. Seeing that the table was full, the waiter began bringing out the dishes. Halfway through the service, a heavy realization sank in. Almost every single plate was seafood. Steamed coral grouper, butter and cheese baked lobster, braised sea cucumber with scallions. It was a near identical replica of our finalized wedding banquet menu. When we were selecting the catering options, I had specifically asked her about it. “I have a severe shellfish allergy, and you hate seafood. Why did you pick so many ocean dishes?” She did not even lift her eyes from the brochure. “The guests like it.” I was so blinded by love I did not think twice about it. Now the truth was staring me right in the face. Her vague “guests” was entirely singular. She catered our entire wedding menu to Dylan’s palate. I barely touched my fork the entire meal. I picked at a few pieces of boiled bok choy, chewing them like flavorless cardboard. Dylan, on the other hand, was having the time of his life. He cheerfully peeled shrimp with his bare hands while endlessly chattering about childhood memories he shared with Stella. Right in the middle of a laughing fit, he naturally reached over and dropped a large piece of crab meat directly into Stella’s bowl. “Stell, try this. It is so fresh.” My hand froze over my plate. Stella had scolded me countless times for doing that exact same thing. “Carter, focus on your own food. Stop talking while we eat.” “I hate it when people put food on my plate. It is unsanitary.” But right now, she did not push his hand away. Instead, she leaned down slightly and ate the crab meat straight off his chopsticks. A suffocating wave of isolation washed over me. I was a completely irrelevant outsider intruding on their date. I set my chopsticks down cleanly on the napkin and stood up. “Take your time. I have things to handle, so I am going to head out.” Stella finally looked up at me. “Carter, what kind of tantrum are you throwing now?” I did not bother giving her an answer. I turned my back and walked straight out of the restaurant. The moment the cold evening wind hit my face, the heavy, suffocating knot in my chest finally loosened. I pulled out my phone and drafted a text to Stella. [Let’s cancel the wedding. I am going to the hotel at 10 AM tomorrow to void the venue and catering contracts. You can come along if it is convenient.] I hit send, flagged down an Uber, and went straight back to my apartment. By the time I went to bed, she had not replied. I did not wait up for one. I spent the evening organizing my relocation paperwork, took a hot shower, and fell fast asleep. The next morning, I arrived at the hotel lobby right on time. I sat on a velvet armchair for nearly half an hour. Stella never showed up. I dialed her number. It rang twice before she picked up. Before I could say a word, her deeply annoyed voice came through the speaker. “My mom told me to bring you over to the house today to finalize the last details for the wedding. I am already here. Just grab a cab and come over.” I gripped my phone, silence hanging in the air for a long moment. She clearly had not seen my text. Or maybe she did see it, and just dismissed it as another one of my empty bluffs. After a long pause, I gave a quiet reply. “Alright.” Fine. If she wanted an audience, I would cancel the wedding right in front of everyone. The Davis family shared Stella’s obsession with strict boundaries. Even with the wedding literally days away, I could count the number of times I had been invited to their house on one hand. Every time I visited, Mrs. Davis would politely pour me a cup of tea while Mr. Davis sat silently in the corner reading his newspaper. We were supposed to be merging our families, but it always felt like there was an impenetrable pane of bulletproof glass between us. But today was entirely different. The moment my Uber pulled up to their driveway, I could hear loud, echoing laughter spilling out of the living room windows. I pushed the front door open, immediately realizing Stella had not come alone. Dylan was sitting right next to Mrs. Davis on the plush sofa. He was practically hanging off her arm like a spoiled toddler. “Godmother, you need to tell Stell to back off.” “I wanted to wear my vintage shorts today, but she threw a fit and forced me to change into these jeans.” Mrs. Davis laughed so hard the wrinkles by her eyes crinkled. She affectionately tapped him on the forehead with her index finger. “I am on Stella’s side for this one.” “Those shorts are way too short. You are absolutely forbidden from wearing them out.” “I will take you to the mall this afternoon and buy you a whole new wardrobe.” Dylan’s eyes crinkled into bright crescents. “You are the best, Godmother.” My own mother passed away when I was very young. When Stella and I first got serious, I genuinely wanted to treat Mrs. Davis like a second mother. I bought her lavish gifts for every holiday. I brought back expensive local specialties every time I traveled for work. I cautiously invited her out for lunch or shopping trips to bond. But she never once wore the silk scarf I bought her. The luxury skincare sets I gave her were quietly passed down to their housekeeper. As for my invitations, her answer was always a polite, “Maybe next time,” or “Let us see how my schedule looks.” Back then, I naively believed she was just a busy woman. Now, the brutal truth was undeniable. When someone actually wants to see you, they will give you a specific time and place. They do not brush you off with a vague “next time” to keep you at a comfortable, permanent distance. The laughter in the room instantly died the second they noticed me standing in the doorway. Mrs. Davis seamlessly slipped back into the polite, distant mask I was so accustomed to. “Carter, you made it. Come sit down.” I walked over and chose a single armchair placed as far away from them as possible. I looked directly at Stella. “Did you not see the text message I sent you last night?” Stella frowned, looking genuinely confused. “What text message?” She pulled her phone out of her pocket. “If you have something important to say, why can’t you just say it to my face instead of texting…” Her voice trailed off abruptly. 4 “The entire chat thread is completely gone. What happened?” Dylan immediately scrambled off the sofa and jogged over. He clasped his hands together, flashing Stella a guilty, highly exaggerated smile. “Stell, my bad!” “I borrowed your phone last night to play a mobile game and accidentally swiped left and deleted Carter’s chat. It shouldn’t be a big deal, right?” Stella let out a fond, exasperated sigh. “If it is deleted, it is deleted. It is not the end of the world.” “You accidentally factory reset my phone a few months ago and I did not even yell at you for that, did I?” Dylan giggled mischievously and darted back to the safety of Mrs. Davis’s side. I sat frozen in my armchair, feeling the blood slowly drain from my fingertips. The woman who treated her phone like classified government property, refusing to let me even tap the screen to check the time, casually handed it over to another man to play video games. Even when he wiped her entire data history, she brushed it off with a gentle smile. Stella turned her attention back to me. “What did you text me last night? Just tell me now since we are all here.” I suddenly changed my mind. For three agonizing years, she had never given me a single ounce of the respect a fiancé deserved. Why was I trying so hard to give her a formal, respectful notice? It was pathetic. I lowered my eyes and kept my voice perfectly flat. “Nothing. It was not important.” Stella’s frown deepened, but she did not press the issue. Instead, Mrs. Davis chimed in with a warm smile. “Carter, how is the groomsmen situation looking?” “Do you think you can clear a spot for Dylan in your party?” She patted the back of Dylan’s hand, her tone dripping with affection. “He and Stella stayed up all night picking out the most gorgeous custom suit for him.” “He really wants to show it off on the big day.” My fingers curled tightly into my palms. Stella could not spare ten minutes of her day to help me select my wedding tuxedo. But she was perfectly happy to stay up all night styling a bespoke suit for him. Since there was not going to be a wedding anyway, what did it matter who stood at the altar? I did not argue. I just gave a quiet nod. “Sure.” I paused, then added, “My boss needs me back at the office. I am heading out.” Mrs. Davis gave a curt nod of dismissal. She did not even offer a fake pleasantry to ask me to stay for lunch. I walked out the front door, flagged another cab, and went straight to the hotel. When I told the events manager I was canceling the wedding, the color completely drained from his face. “Mr. Carter, your date is literally this Saturday.” “If you void the contracts now, we will not be able to refund the vast majority of your deposits.” I gave a firm nod. “I am well aware.” “Keep whatever cancellation fees you need.” He looked at me standing alone at the reception desk, choosing to swallow whatever questions he had. After all, no sane family plans a luxury wedding where the bride and her parents refuse to show their faces, leaving the groom to handle all the grueling logistics entirely by himself. By the time I initialed the final termination clause, the sky outside had turned pitch black. I handed the luxury pen back to the manager and walked through the revolving glass doors. My phone buzzed in my pocket. It was a notification from the second hand marketplace app. [Hello! Is this tuxedo still available? I would like to purchase it immediately.] I opened the app. The buyer had already wired the full asking price. A few seconds later, a long paragraph popped up in the chat. [I am so sorry if this is overly personal.] [My fiancé and I have been together for three years, and we are getting married this Saturday.] [My salary is not great, so I could not afford to buy him a nice suit. We were just going to rent a cheap one.] [He kept telling me it did not matter, but I know deep down he was disappointed.] [When I saw you listed this for such an incredible price, I had to buy it. I want to give him a real surprise.] [Thank you so much.] I stood on the curb under the harsh glow of a streetlamp, reading those words over and over until a hot sting pricked the back of my eyes. The exact same three years. The exact same Saturday wedding. Someone out there was completely broke, yet still desperately trying to give the man they loved a beautiful, dignified surprise. Meanwhile, someone with an unlimited budget would rather burn thousands on vintage cars than buy her fiancé a proper suit. I typed out a quick reply. [Happy wedding day.] She instantly replied with a smiling emoji. [Thank you! Wishing you a lifetime of happiness too.] I stared at that blessing for a long time. Finally, a genuine, soft smile broke across my face. I will be. But my happiness would have absolutely nothing to do with Stella ever again. When I got back to my apartment, I pulled the tuxedo out of its heavy garment bag. The dark, luxurious fabric pooled across my bed, catching the warm amber light of my bedroom lamp. It truly was a stunning piece of tailoring. It was so beautiful that I used to genuinely believe the day I wore it to walk down the aisle toward Stella would be the absolute peak of my existence. Now, I was just incredibly grateful. Grateful that I had never tainted it by putting it on. The courier arrived twenty minutes later. I handed the pristine garment box over to him and watched the elevator doors slide shut. The moment the lock clicked into place, my apartment felt remarkably empty. I did not waste another second. I grabbed the heavy suitcase I had packed days ago, flipped the light switch, locked the front door, and walked out of the building. My Uber was already idling at the curb. The driver popped the trunk, helped me heave the luggage inside, and glanced at me in the rearview mirror. “Where to, my man, this late at night?” “The airport.”

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1 My heart beats with corpse-like steadiness. Fever, blood loss—nothing changes it. At eighteen, the Heustons locked me in their penthouse ICU. Not for love. Cindy’s one-of-a-kind bio-neural heart needed my rhythm as its core frequency. My steadiness kept her alive. Three months ago, a nurse bumped a monitor patch. Five minutes later, Cindy’s heart stopped cold in Europe. By morning, the agency was bankrupt, staff blacklisted. The penthouse elevator ran silent after that. Then Cindy left for Europe. Garrett Montgomery, her fiancé, took over. He slammed down my nine-figure medical bill. “Millions for this? A useless parasite?” He tore off my patches, killed the sync lines, and shoved me onto a treadmill. “Ten miles. Fail, and you’re out.” I gripped the rails. My heart hammered—first time ever. He killed the alarm instantly. He didn’t know. Twelve time zones away, Cindy’s heart was spiraling with mine. … Within three seconds, the treadmill belt went from a slow walk to a sprint. Two security guards grabbed my arms, pinning me to the handrails. The spot on my chest where the patch had been ripped off burned like fire. “Crank the speed up.” Garrett stood behind the glass wall, arms crossed, watching coldly. The nurse paled. “Mr. Montgomery, he cannot engage in strenuous exercise…” “The Heuston family spends a hundred million a year to maintain his heartbeat,” Garrett sneered, his eyes narrowing. “Let’s see just how precious it actually is.” The speed climbed to level ten. My knees slammed against the edge of the belt, and my vision went dark. Alarms screamed through the intercom: “Mother frequency lost. Remote synchronization risk rising.” I gripped the handrails, my knuckles turning white, my voice shredded by gasps. “Don’t… don’t cut the synchronization cable.” Garrett stepped in, leaning down to look at me. “Still acting?” He slapped a stack of annual bills against my face. Maintenance for the climate-controlled chamber, salaries for the medical team, imported drugs, dedicated servers: the numbers were staggering. He picked up a page and read it aloud. “One hundred and thirty million a year.” “What value do you bring to the Heustons?” “Nothing. You just lie there and breathe.” Cold sweat poured down my forehead, and my heart felt as though it were being squeezed by a giant fist. It wasn’t that my heart was weak; it was that if my heart rate spiraled, Cindy’s artificial heart across the globe would collapse with it. “Mr. Montgomery,” I gasped, the words catching in my throat, “stop this now… while you still can.” He slapped me across the face. The metallic taste of blood filled my mouth. A young nurse, Gwen, rushed forward to grab a spare monitoring patch. “Asher can’t run anymore!” With a flick of Garrett’s finger, the guards dragged Gwen away. The patch was tossed into the trash. “You’re suspended,” Garrett barked. “Say one more word, and you’ll never work in medicine again.” Gwen froze, terrified, unable to move. When the treadmill finally ground to a halt, my legs gave out, and I collapsed onto the floor. The pressure in my chest grew heavier, but the alarm suddenly cut out. Garrett had switched off the display. The room fell silent, save for my ragged breathing. He glanced toward the penthouse and smiled. “Go search his room. I want to see what kind of garbage the Heustons have been funding all these years.” Two legal consultants and guards stormed the penthouse. By the time I was dragged back up, my room was in ruins. The climate chamber was open, vials of rare medication were scattered across the floor, and the safe by my bed was forced open. A lawyer handed Garrett a stack of papers. “We found these, Mr. Montgomery.” Garrett scanned them, a slow, victorious smirk spreading across his face. “Kickback agreements with medical equipment suppliers.” He pulled out another page. “Offshore bank transfers.” He looked down at me. “What do you have to say for yourself, Asher?” I stared at the papers, a dry laugh bubbling in my throat. They weren’t mine. But I didn’t even have the strength to stand, let alone defend myself. Garrett had already written my sentence. “Colluding with suppliers, embezzling Heuston medical resources, and falsifying medical records to steal special funds.” He slapped the papers against my cheek. “As of right now, Asher’s penthouse privileges are revoked. Transfer him to a standard observation ward.” I forced my head up. “No.” The penthouse environment could not be broken. The temperature control, the silence, the servers, the patches; they were all vital. But Garrett only saw my desperation as fear. “What? Can’t survive without your luxury suite?” He knelt, gripping my jaw. “Then go ahead and die.” As they dragged me out, the central monitoring screen in the facility flashed a violent red. “Mother Frequency Lost.” “Remote Artificial Heart Synchronization Failure.” “Emergency Contact: Cindy Heuston.” Garrett looked at the screen, expressionless. With a click, he turned off the entire alarm system. At that exact moment, in a high-rise conference room in Europe. Cindy was leaning over to sign an acquisition treaty. Her pen suddenly scratched violently across the paper. In the next second, the artificial heart inside her chest let out a shrill, warning shriek. The standard ward on the third floor was loud and lacked proper climate control. I lay curled on the bed, fingers digging into the sheets, the pressure in my chest making it impossible to breathe. The door was kicked open. Dr. Alistair rushed in, his white coat unbuttoned, his face pale with panic. He was Cindy’s primary physician, the only doctor who knew the full truth. Seeing my bare chest, he turned on Garrett. “Who authorized the removal of his monitoring patches?” Garrett was lounging on the sofa, flipping through my chart. “Dr. Alistair, I am the temporary director of this facility.” He pushed a board authorization letter across the desk. “With Cindy away, I call the shots.” Alistair didn’t even look at the paper. He rushed to my bedside. “Asher can’t be in this room.” As he reached for a portable synchronizer, two guards blocked him. “Move!” Alistair roared. Garrett stood up. “Why so protective? He is a fraud, and yet you treat him like he’s more precious than Cindy herself.” Alistair clenched his jaw. He couldn’t speak. The mother-frequency connection was a closely guarded Heuston secret. If leaked, Cindy would become an immediate target in the financial markets. He forced the words out: “His synchronization cannot be interrupted. If anything happens to him, Ms. Heuston will die.” Garrett laughed. “If Asher gets hurt, Cindy dies? Dr. Alistair, I didn’t think a respectable physician like you would help a con artist spin his lies.” I tried to speak, but my lungs felt like they were filled with cement. Alistair’s face drained of color. “Mr. Montgomery, this is my final warning. Stop this now, and we can still salvage her status.” “Salvage?” Garrett’s smile was freezing. “What we need to salvage are the millions he stole.” He pointed at Alistair. “Confiscate his ID badge.” The guards pinned Alistair and dragged him out. “You’ll regret this, Garrett! You’ll kill her!” Garrett ignored the screams, turning to the IT director. “Is the backup server in the penthouse still active?” The IT director trembled. “Mr. Montgomery, we cannot shut that down. It carries the remote calibration parameters for Ms. Heuston’s artificial heart. If we cut it…” “Cindy again.” Garrett’s eyes darkened. “Every single one of you uses her name to threaten me.” He raised his walkie-talkie. “Shut it down.” The IT director lunged forward, but a guard kicked him to the floor. A moment later, the lights in the entire building flickered and dimmed. The monitor beside my bed screeched with static. My heart rate line went completely erratic. I clutched my chest, arching off the bed in violent convulsions. Outside, Alistair was pinned to the floor, veins bulging on his forehead. “Garrett! She’s going to die! Cindy is actually going to die!” Garrett stood over me, watching me convulse without moving a muscle. “Then let her.” His phone rang. An encrypted number from Europe. He answered. His assistant’s voice was frantic: “Mr. Montgomery! Ms. Heuston collapsed during the meeting! Her artificial heart has gone into emergency safe-mode! Is something happening at the facility?” Garrett’s expression flickered. He looked down at me, taking in my cold sweat and ragged, shallow breaths. Then, the hesitation vanished, replaced by cold cynicism. “They’re really playing the part well, aren’t they?” “Mr. Montgomery? Can you hear me?” the assistant screamed. Garrett hung up, turned off his phone, and threw it into his bag. “Cindy is surrounded by Europe’s finest medical minds. She doesn’t need a con artist to save her life.” I lay on the cold mattress, listening to my heartbeat slow down, beat by agonizing beat. By the time I was wheeled into the examination room, my fingers were shaking uncontrollably. The electrodes pressed against my skin felt ice-cold, and the waves on the monitor remained wild and chaotic. Dr. Alistair was pinned outside the door, his clothes covered in dust, his eyes fixed on me. “Asher, hang on!” I tried to smile, but the muscles in my face wouldn’t cooperate. It felt as though invisible wires were tightening around my chest, squeezing the life out of me. Dr. Kingsley, the chief of medicine, rushed in holding a tablet. He showed Garrett the split-screen data: my chaotic heart rate and Cindy’s remote cardiac logs. The timestamps, the spikes, and the moments of instability aligned perfectly. “The moment you ripped off his patch, her heart destabilized,” Kingsley said, his voice trembling. “When you cut the server, she collapsed. Now his heart is failing, and her artificial heart is entering critical shutdown.” Garrett smiled. “Data can be falsified. Everyone in this facility answers to Cindy. If you wanted to spin a lie to protect him, it would take you five minutes.” “Garrett, this is a human life!” Kingsley pleaded. “Which is why we are getting to the bottom of this.” Garrett forced a pen into my shaking hand. “Sign it.” I looked down. It was a voluntary confession of medical fraud and embezzlement. I managed a weak, raspy laugh. “Garrett… you aren’t punishing me. You are destroying her heart with your own hands.” His expression turned icy. “Still trying to threaten me?” “I’m not threatening you,” I whispered. “I’m trying to save her.” Garrett grabbed my wrist, forcing the pen down, scratching the paper and my finger. “You’re trying to save her? You’re just a parasite plucked from an orphanage.” He turned to the nurse. “Inject the stimulant.” Kingsley tried to stop him. “No! His rhythm is already fractured! A stimulant will trigger a complete cardiac collapse!” Garrett grabbed the syringe himself and drove it into my vein. My heart felt as though it had been dropped into boiling oil. The monitor shrieked. I slipped from the chair, knees hitting the floor, my vision fading. In the darkness, I remembered the first time Cindy met me. She was pale, hooked to machines, asking gently, “Are you willing?” I had asked what would happen if I said no. She said, “Then we won’t do it.” But I had stayed because she didn’t force me. Now, someone else was forcing me to die. At that moment, in the European ICU, Cindy opened her eyes, ripped off her oxygen mask, and gasped, “Prepare the jet. We’re going home.” By the time Garrett convened the board hearing, I couldn’t even stand. I was wheeled into the main auditorium. The room was packed with board members, lawyers, and legal advisors, their eyes filled with pity, suspicion, and disgust. Garrett stood at the front, his suit pristine. “Today, we are here to expose a massive fraud that has drained Heuston resources for years.” He projected the forged agreements onto the screen. “Asher, an orphan with no affiliation to the Heuston Group, has occupied our top-tier medical suite for years. We have reason to believe he colluded with suppliers to embezzle millions.” The room erupted into quiet whispers. Garrett turned to the nurses. “Tell everyone what Asher does in the penthouse.” The head nurse stood up. “He doesn’t participate in any research or treatment. He just rests while we cater to his every need.” Gwen tried to shout from the back of the room. “That’s because his monitoring data is directly connected to Ms. Heuston’s!” But the guards quickly dragged her out. Garrett smiled, satisfied. I looked up, committing their faces to memory. Not for revenge, but because if I died, someone needed to remember what they had done. The doors opened, and a bruised Dr. Alistair was brought in. Garrett pointed to my chest. “Dr. Alistair, you claimed Asher has a core proprietary chip implanted near his collarbone?” “That chip was authorized by Ms. Heuston herself,” Alistair spat. “It cannot be removed!” Garrett smirked. “An unauthorized civilian harboring proprietary Heuston technology. This is corporate espionage.” He stepped up to me. “Extract the chip. Send it to legal for analysis.” I panicked, struggling against the chair. “No… Garrett, don’t. She is on her way.” “Even if she returns, she will thank me for disposing of a leech.” I was pinned to the operating chair. No anesthesia. The scalpel sliced into my skin, and blood immediately soaked my shirt. The forceps reached in, grabbing the synchronizing chip near my collarbone. The main monitor flashed a violent red, warning of a complete communication failure. Garrett didn’t care. He pulled the forceps back, ripping the chip out. Just as darkness claimed me, the heavy double doors of the auditorium were blown open. Cindy, pale as a ghost, collapsed from her wheelchair directly at Garrett’s feet, her artificial heart alarm blaring at maximum volume.

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1 My wife, Wendy, was a titan of Manhattan’s elite finance. She had an adopted younger brother, Jackson, a brilliant but volatile hacker who existed only to cause chaos. For seven years, they had a very public dynamic: he would tear the world apart, and she would write the checks to rebuild it. Until he tampered with my car’s brake system, sending me over a cliff and leaving me hanging by a thread. As she signed the surgery consent form in the sterile hospital corridor, she offered only a weary sigh. “Don’t be angry with Jackson, Reid. He just thought it was a game. He didn’t actually mean to kill you. He knew I had secured the best medical team in the city for you; he was just trying to scare you.” Before the ink on her signature could even dry, her assistant reported that Jackson was being bullied by some rivals at a nightclub downtown. Wendy dropped the pen and ran. She left in such a frantic rush that she didn’t even notice she had checked the wrong box for my blood type. At that moment, the long-dormant system in my mind chimed. “Dying at the hands of the female lead will immediately complete your mission. Death by mismatched blood-type hemolysis is imminent. Do you accept this exit protocol?” I looked at the bag of blood the nurse was hanging, smiled weakly, and whispered, “Do it.” … “Mr. Beckett, this is Type A blood. Are you absolutely certain you want us to start this transfusion?” The male nurse held the IV bag, the veins on the back of his hand bulging slightly. His eyes were wide with hesitation, even a touch of panic. “Hang it,” my voice was flat, devoid of any emotion. “My wife signed the consent form herself. How could there be a mistake?” The nurse bit his lip, let out a slow sigh, and unpacked the sterile tubing. The thick needle slid cleanly into the vein on the back of my hand. The dark red liquid slid down the clear plastic line, dripping slowly into my bloodstream. The system’s cold, synthesized voice chimed in my head. “Mismatched blood type accepted. Fatal hemolytic reaction countdown initiated. Remaining time: seventy-two hours.” I closed my eyes, feeling the first quiet tremors of poison spreading through my organs. Within thirty minutes, a sharp, grinding ache flared in my lower back, as if a dull, rusty chisel were digging into my spine. My body began to shake with uncontrollable chills. I pulled the heavy hospital blanket tight, but my teeth still rattled violently. The heavy door was thrown open. Wendy stormed into the room, bringing a suffocating cloud of cheap liquor and cigarette smoke with her. The hem of her expensive designer dress was dusted with gaudy, colorful sequins from the club. Behind her stood Jackson, completely unharmed. He wore a sequined shirt, his eyes slightly pink as he clutched her sleeve like a frightened puppy. “What kind of tantrum are you throwing now, Reid?” Wendy stood over my bed, arms crossed, her brow furrowed with sheer annoyance. “The doctor said you only have minor abrasions. Who are you putting on this shivering act for?” I gritted my teeth against the mounting agony in my spine, cold sweat dripping down my temples. “I’m freezing.” Wendy scoffed, irritably tugging at her silk scarf. “Freezing? The thermostat is set to seventy-eight degrees. Stop acting.” She turned to Jackson, her voice instantly softening. “Jackson, go turn off the AC so your brother-in-law doesn’t have another excuse to complain.” Jackson nodded obediently and flicked the switch. He turned to me, looking timid and tearful. “Reid, I’m so sorry. I really didn’t mean to mess up your brakes. I just wanted to test my new exploit program. Wendy already chewed me out. Please don’t be mad at me, okay?” Big tears rolled down his cheeks. Wendy immediately pulled him behind her, shielding him from my gaze. “That’s enough, Jackson. You don’t owe him an apology. He’s lying here in one piece, isn’t he?” She glared at me. “Reid, Jackson was almost assaulted at that club tonight. He was terrified, yet he still rushed over here to apologize to you. You can’t even offer him a decent look. Don’t you think you’re being incredibly petty?” I stared at her self-righteous face, a dry chuckle bubbling in my throat. My brakes had failed on a winding mountain road, sending me crashing through the guardrails. I was dragged out of a crushed, bloody metal heap. And her only concern was whether her precious adopted brother got his feelings hurt at a bar. “He was terrified?” I rasped, my throat raw. “He was out drinking and partying at a club. You call that terrified? What about me? I almost burned alive in that car. What does that count as?” Wendy’s annoyance grew. “Can you stop talking about death? I hired the best trauma surgeons in the state for you. Besides, your car has a top-tier safety cage. Jackson calculated the physics; he knew you wouldn’t die.” Calculated? I glanced at the dark red blood dripping into my vein. The toxic, mismatched cells were already attacking my organs. He calculated it, alright. He calculated exactly how to end my life. “Wendy,” I said, my voice barely a whisper. “What if I actually die?” She froze, then her expression hardened into disgust. “Are we doing this again? Every time Jackson makes a minor mistake, you play the victim and threaten me with your death. Don’t you get tired of being this pathetic, Reid?” She pulled up a chair and crossed her legs. “Stop the drama. If you’re really hurting, I’ll have the nurse bring you some painkillers. Jackson is shaken up, so I’m staying with him tonight. Take this time to reflect on your attitude.” I remained silent. My temperature was climbing rapidly, and my vision began to blur. My chest felt like a furnace, every breath searing my lungs. These were the classic early symptoms of acute hemolysis. My red blood cells were rupturing in mass numbers. “Is Reid really okay, Wendy?” Jackson murmured, peeking from behind her. “His face is so red. Is he running a fever?” Wendy glanced at me dismissively. “It’s not a fever. He’s just throwing a tantrum because I didn’t drop everything to stay by his side.” She stood up, looking down at me with cold warning. “Reid, I’m warning you for the last time. Drop these pathetic jealousy games. Jackson is my brother, and I will protect him. If you keep pushing this, don’t expect me to keep tolerating you.” I offered her a pale, empty smile. “Fine. You go ahead and protect him.” Wendy sneered, taking Jackson’s hand. “Let’s go. Leave him to his self-pity.” The door slammed shut. I looked at the near-empty blood bag and closed my eyes. “System, dial the pain blocker to maximum.” “Pain-blocking protocol at one hundred percent. Have a peaceful journey, Host.” The sound of leather shoes echoed in the hallway. The door clicked open again. Jackson was back, and Wendy wasn’t with him. The timid, tearful mask had vanished, replaced by an ugly, malicious sneer. I ignored him. The fever was leaving me entirely limp, and the scent of iron filled my throat. Jackson walked over to the bed, idly flicking the IV tubing. “Tsk, tsk. Look at you. Pathetic.” “You know what Wendy said in the hallway? She called you a dramatic, exhausting drag. She said you don’t even compare to a single hair on my head.” I forced my heavy eyelids open. “Are you done? Get out.” Jackson chuckled, completely unbothered. “You still have quite the attitude, Reid. But don’t worry, you won’t be talking like that for long.” He pulled out a compact, palm-sized netbook from his bag. His fingers flew across the keyboard as the screen cast a pale blue glow on his face. “Wendy thinks you’re faking, but I think you look a little too peaceful. Why don’t I help make your vitals look a bit more… realistic?” The moment his finger hit enter, the multi-parameter monitor beside my bed let out a deafening screech. The red warning light flashed violently. My heart rate jumped to 180 on the display, while the blood pressure readings crashed below critical thresholds. The alarm echoed down the sterile hallway. I watched him calmly. He wasn’t just a hacker; he was a sociopath with no concept of boundaries. Footsteps thundered outside. “What’s happening?!” Wendy was the first to burst in, her face pale. A swarm of panicked doctors and nurses followed closely behind. Jackson had already tucked the netbook back into his bag with practiced ease. He stumbled back, covering his ears, trembling like a leaf. “Wendy! I don’t know what happened! I didn’t touch anything! The machine just started screaming! It’s terrifying!” He buried his face in her chest, sobbing hysterically. Wendy held him tight, gently rubbing his back. The attending doctor, Dr. Collins, rushed to my bedside, checking the sensors. “This makes no sense. His pupils are normal, and his pulse feels steady. Why is the machine reading a cardiac arrest?” She rebooted the monitor. The readings instantly returned to normal. Wendy’s face turned dark as thunder. She calmed Jackson down, then spun around to glare at me with pure venom. “Reid, is there no limit to your desperation?” “You’re tampering with hospital equipment now? Just to force me to stay? Do you have any idea how many actual patients need these resources?” I lay there, staring at her furious face. “You think I did this?” I didn’t even have the strength to lift my arm, let alone hack a hospital network. Wendy let out a harsh laugh. “Who else could it be? You’re so consumed by your pathetic jealousy that you’ll do anything to frame him!” She marched to the bed and violently ripped the blanket off me. “Get up! Apologize to Jackson right now!” A wave of cold air hit my burning body, and a violent fit of coughing shook my chest. The metallic taste of blood filled my mouth, but I swallowed it down and looked up at her. “Wendy,” I said, my voice dead. “Are you out of your mind?” She froze. In our seven years of marriage, I had never spoken to her like this. I had always been patient, gentle, and yielding. “What did you just say to me?” she hissed. “I called you an idiot.” I reached out with the last of my strength and ripped the power cord of the monitor from the wall. The screeching alarm died instantly. “The next time you two want to play this pathetic game, leave me out of it,” I whispered, turning my back to her. “It’s disgusting.” Wendy clenched her fists so hard her knuckles cracked. “Fine. You want to act tough, Reid? Let’s see how long you can last.” She grabbed Jackson’s hand and stormed out. “Let’s go, Jackson. Leave this lunatic to himself.” I closed my eyes and swallowed another mouthful of blood. “System, how much time do I have left?” “Remaining time: sixty hours.” “Good,” I murmured. “Almost there.” The hospital television was on, the volume low. A breaking news report flashed across the screen. “Vanguard Holdings’ smart-driving system, Aegis, has suffered a catastrophic security breach. Multiple vehicles equipped with the system have reportedly lost control on major interstate highways. At least ten pile-ups have been reported, with numerous injuries.” I leaned back, wiping the thin trail of blood from my lips. My vision was double now, the hemolysis systematically dismantling my internal organs. Wendy was standing by the window, screaming into her phone. “What is the PR department doing?! I don’t care how much it costs, bury the story! Find a subcontractor and blame the code on them!” She tore off her scarf and threw it onto the sofa, breathing heavily. Jackson sat in the corner, staring at his hands with a practiced look of innocence. “Wendy, I’m sorry. I just thought the core logic of the system was boring, so I added a little backdoor exploit. I wanted to surprise them, I didn’t think it would cause actual accidents.” He shrugged, entirely devoid of genuine remorse. Wendy sighed, walking over to smooth his hair. “It’s fine, Jackson. I’ll handle it. Just don’t be so reckless next time. The media loves to blow things out of proportion. It’s just a few fender-benders, we can settle it with money.” Listening to her dismiss those human lives so casually made my stomach turn. I reached under my pillow, pulling out my slim laptop. The tactile feel of the keys brought a brief moment of clarity to my fading mind. My fingers flew across the keyboard. Wendy would do everything in her power to scrub Jackson’s digital footprint, so I had to act fast. I needed to package every bit of raw data proving his culpability before my body gave out entirely. The progress bar crawled forward. I was blind-typing now, relying entirely on muscle memory. “What are you doing now?” Wendy’s sharp voice cut through the room. She marched over and slammed my laptop shut. “The company is facing a crisis, and you’re lying here playing games on your computer? Do you even have a conscience, Reid?” I looked up at her frantic, angry face. “A conscience?” I let out a dry, rattling cough, spitting a dark glob of blood onto the floor. “Wendy, you are harboring a criminal who has endangered public safety, and you want to lecture me about a conscience?” Her expression turned dark and dangerous. “Watch your mouth, Reid! Jackson is just a kid, he didn’t know any better! Don’t think that just because you sit at home all day, you understand how to run a conglomerate!” Jackson smirked, leaning against her. “Reid, are you going to report me to the police? You don’t have any evidence. Wendy already had the server logs wiped. No one will believe you.” I pushed the laptop screen back open. “Is that so?” I tapped the enter key. An encrypted archive was instantly generated. It contained not only the files proving his sabotage of the Aegis system, but a comprehensive log of his cybercrimes over the past seven years, including corporate espionage and server intrusions against Wendy’s competitors. “Reid, don’t you dare!” Wendy lunged to grab the laptop. I pulled it back, staring at her coldly. “Relax. I’m not calling the police. I’m just writing my will.” Wendy’s hand froze. She looked at my deathly pale face, then let out a sharp, mocking laugh. “A will? For a few scratches? You are completely out of your mind.” She grabbed Jackson’s arm. “Let’s go. Let him play his pathetic games.” The door closed, and I fell back against the pillows, my strength entirely depleted. The scheduled transmission was locked. The payload would deploy automatically three days after my death. “System,” I whispered, my breathing shallow. “How long?” “Remaining time: twelve hours. Multi-organ failure has commenced.” I watched the light fade from the window. “Let’s end this.” The room grew dark. Every breath felt like swallowing shards of glass. My kidneys had shut down, and my lungs were filling with fluid. Outside, the distant boom of fireworks echoed through the sky. The system projected a virtual screen in my mind. Wendy had rented out the city’s largest amusement park for Jackson. Under a sky filled with brilliant colors, Jackson wore a custom diamond crown, smiling like a prince while Wendy looked at him with absolute adoration. “Congratulations on getting through this, Jackson,” her voice was incredibly gentle. “If you want to play with software, I’ll buy you an entire tech firm next week.” A soft alarm chimed as the male nurse burst into my room, his flashlight catching my grey face. “Doctor! We need help in Room Three! The patient is in shock!” Panicked shouts filled the corridor. A crash cart was wheeled in, and the blinding procedural lights flared above me. “Heart rate is dropping! Blood pressure is unreadable! Push epinephrine, now!” “Where is the emergency contact? Get the spouse on the line for a critical notice!” The nurse frantically dialed Wendy’s number. On my mental screen, I saw her phone vibrate in her pocket. She pulled it out, frowning at the caller ID: “St. Jude’s Memorial Hospital.” Jackson glanced at the screen, rolling his eyes. “Wendy, he’s playing the boy who cried wolf again. He’s just mad because you’re with me.” Wendy scoffed and swiped to decline the call. The nurse dialed again, but this time, the line was dead. She had blocked the hospital’s number. “I can’t get through! She blocked us!” the nurse cried. The doctor gritted her teeth, delivering chest compressions. “Keep going! Don’t stop!” I looked at their futile efforts, and issued my final command. “System, release the files.” “Command confirmed. Scheduled package locked. Deployment in seventy-two hours.” “Host, your vitals are flatlining.” I took one last look at the dark window. The final firework bloomed and died, leaving only empty darkness. Beside me, the erratic line on the monitor stretched into a single, flat green line. A sharp, continuous tone pierced the silence of the room. I felt my consciousness detach, rising slowly toward the ceiling. “Congratulations, Host. Mission completed. Exit protocol initiated.” Looking down, I saw the medical team slowly step away, pulling the white sheet over my face. “Time of death: two-fourteen AM.”

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1 On my eighteenth birthday, burning with a fever of a hundred and six degrees, I lay alone on the freezing concrete floor of my tiny apartment. On my phone, notifications from the family group chat were lighting up the screen like fireworks. A five-tier custom cake. Ninety-nine red roses. My father was holding her, my mother was kissing her forehead, and my brother was raising a glass to toast her. The girl they were celebrating was Molly, the adoptive daughter who had been raised in my place. I was the biological daughter of the Prescott family, lost for fifteen years. They found me and brought me back three years ago, yet I had never truly managed to step inside their front door. I called Dad seven times, but nobody answered. I messaged my brother, but he left me on read. I called Mom, and the first thing she said when she picked up was, “Maeve, can you stop causing trouble?” Then the line went dead. I lay on the floor, next to a cheap strawberry cupcake that cost me under ten dollars. The candle on top was crooked, never having had the chance to be lit. I closed my eyes and made the exact same wish I had made for the past eighteen years. I hoped someone would remember today was my birthday. I hoped someone would say those two simple words to me: Happy Birthday. I had made this wish for eighteen years, and not once had it ever come true. And this time, it would be my last. … On the night of my eighteenth birthday, my fever spiked to a hundred and six degrees. I curled up on the cold floor of my rented room, waiting for the end. The room was barely seventy square feet, with no heating. The bitter November wind whipped through a cracked windowpane, cutting into my skin like tiny knives. I huddled into a tight ball, my bones feeling as if they were roasting in a furnace. Every cough felt like shards of broken glass scraping through my lungs. My phone screen lit up. It was the family group chat. Dad had sent a sixty-second voice note. My trembling finger tapped it, and a flood of laughter and music poured from the speaker. “Come on, everyone! Our darling Molly is eighteen today! Raise your glasses. Happy birthday to our little princess!” My brother Tristan’s voice followed immediately after. “Happy eighteenth to the sweetest little sister in the world!” A stream of photos flooded the chat. A heart-shaped wall of ninety-nine red roses, a five-tier custom fondant cake, and a glittering crystal chandelier. Dad, Mom, and Tristan stood in the center, their smiles brighter than the lights. Molly, the center of their universe, wore a pink gown shimmering with diamonds, her makeup flawless, her smile radiant. Three years ago, a DNA test had rewritten our destinies. I was the biological child the Prescotts had lost fifteen years ago, and Molly was the girl who had been accidentally swapped at birth. But three years later, the Prescotts kept Molly and left me out in the cold. “Molly grew up with us. It would be too cruel to force her to leave,” they had told me. “Just live on your own for a bit to adapt, and we’ll bring you home when the time is right.” Three years had passed. Three years of renting a room alone, working part-time, and going to school. What I got in the end was not a ticket home, but a steady stream of family portraits in the group chat, each one more lively than the last, and none of them featuring me. Mom sent another message, just three words: “My precious girl.” It was paired with a selfie of her kissing Molly’s forehead. My tears fell onto the hot, glowing screen. Today was my birthday too. Molly and I shared the exact same birthdate. Yet the entire group chat, the cakes, the flowers, the warm embraces, were all for her. Nobody remembered it was Maeve’s birthday too. I desperately dialed Dad’s number. The first call rang eight times and went to voicemail. The second call rang twice before being declined. The third, the fourth, the fifth… By the seventh try, his voice finally came through. But he wasn’t speaking to me. “Hey, stop it, Molly! Don’t cut the cake yet! Let me take this call… Hello? Who is this?” “Dad… it’s me, Maeve…” Laughter bubbled up on the other end, someone shouting for her to make a wish. “Maeve? What’s going on? I’m busy right now, let’s talk tomorrow…” “Dad… I’m sick… my fever is so bad…” Before I could finish, a sweet, high-pitched voice erupted through the receiver. “Dad! The ice cream cake is going to melt! Hurry up!” “Coming, sweetie! Maeve, take some medicine and go to sleep. I have to go.” Beep. The line went dead. The phone slipped from my weak fingers and hit the floor with a dull thud. I turned my head, my eyes scanning the suffocating space of my apartment. Cheap instant noodles were stacked like a mountain in the corner. Two faded shirts hung on the drying line, and the broken window was sloppily patched with plastic wrap and tape. Finally, my gaze landed on the old cardboard box at the foot of my bed, tied neatly with a ribbon. Those were the gifts I had saved up all year to buy. Just hang in there, Maeve. Once you give them these gifts, they’ll want you back. I dragged myself up, leaning against the wall to search for fever reducers. The nightstand was completely bare. I was certain I had left the bottle on top of the cabinet yesterday. Molly had come by yesterday afternoon to return some keys, and the medicine was there. She had claimed her stomach hurt and asked to use my bathroom, staying for about five or six minutes. When she left, she had given me a sweet smile. “Take care of yourself, Maeve. Drink plenty of water.” Where was the medicine? I bent down, searching under the cabinet, the bed, the table. Nothing. My head felt like it was splitting in two, and there was no time to think. I dragged my shaking legs toward the door. I grabbed the knob and twisted. It didn’t budge. I twisted harder, putting all my weight into it. The lock remained completely frozen. I couldn’t open it from the inside. This lock worked perfectly last week. Why was it suddenly… I banged on the door, kicked it a couple of times, but the solid wood only gave a muffled thud. The hallway outside was silent and empty. Pressing my back against the door, I slid down to the cold floor. The phone buzzed again. A video was uploaded to the group chat. Molly was sitting on the leather sofa in the middle of the living room, surrounded by beautifully wrapped designer boxes. She opened the first one and squealed dramatically, “Oh my gosh! Tristan, the limited-edition journal! Thank you so much!” Tristan sat beside her, gently ruffling her hair. The room was bathed in golden light, the crystal chandelier casting a warm glow over their happy faces. I watched the video three times. On the third run, my eyes locked onto the corner of the living room, onto the empty chair beside the piano. During the brief two weeks I was allowed to stay with them three summers ago, that was where I sat every day. I had been too terrified to reach for food at the dinner table, too scared to speak loudly, too timid to touch the fruit on the coffee table. I had just watched them from afar, quietly, thinking that simply being in the same room was enough to make me happy. But then Molly had wept into Mom’s arms. “Mom, she wants to steal my family. I don’t want her here!” That very night, Dad had the driver take me back to my rented room. They didn’t even let me pack my things. I dialed Tristan’s number. It was my second call of the night. It rang three times before he picked up. “Maeve?” Tristan’s voice was laced with irritation, the background music deafening. “What is it?” “Tristan… I have a fever, a really bad one… and the door is locked from the inside… could you…” “Hold on.” In the background, Molly’s voice floated over, dripping with sweetness. “Tristan! Come take a picture with me! Mom wants to post it on social media!” Tristan’s tone shifted instantly, turning soft and indulgent. “Coming! Maeve, you do this every time. Every single time Molly has a birthday, you have to start drama. Just take some medicine and go to sleep. Stop acting out.” Beep. Call ended. Total duration: 23 seconds. He didn’t even listen to what I had to say. My phone screen reflected my shattered image, pale-faced, with dry, cracked lips bleeding slightly. I dialed Mom’s number for the very last time. It rang twice and connected. “Maeve? What’s wrong?” It was Mom’s voice. The voice of the woman who had given birth to me but never raised me for a single day. Tears spilled over my cheeks. “Mom… Mom, I feel so sick… I have a fever… the lock is broken and I can’t get out… Mom, can you come see me? Just for a minute… please…” A second of silence on the other end. Then, a slight scuffle over the phone, followed by Molly’s low but crystal-clear voice. “Mom! Who are you talking to? We’ve tried taking the family photo three times already, we’re just waiting for you!” Then, Molly’s voice rose, her sweet facade barely concealing the cold calculation beneath. “Maeve! If you’re not feeling well, you should sleep early. Make sure to drink plenty of water! Mom is really busy right now, so we can’t talk!” Beep. The call ended. It wasn’t Mom who hung up. It was Molly. I heard her laugh in the final second before the line went dead. A light, brief snicker. But that laugh carried a chill that turned my blood to ice, even through my hundred-and-six-degree fever. The floor was freezing. The chill brought a fleeting moment of relief to my burning skin, but it was immediately followed by a wave of violent shivering. I curled up by the door, my limbs spasms uncontrollably. My coughs grew heavier, leaving a metallic taste of iron in my mouth as warm blood dribbled from the corner of my lips. My vision blurred with tears. Looking up at the yellow water stain on the ceiling, I hallucinated that it was a moon. The moon of my eighteenth year. I only wanted to celebrate my birthday. No cake, no gifts, no parties. Just a single phone call, just a simple “Happy Birthday.” But the entire world was celebrating Molly, while I burned away in a dark corner. With the last of my strength, I reached for the cracked phone, unlocking it after three attempts. My call history showed: Dad, seven missed calls. Tristan, one call connected, 23 seconds. Mom, one call connected, 47 seconds. With trembling fingers, I dialed the final number: 911. “911, what is your emergency?” “I… fever… can’t get out… door is locked…” “What is your address?” “7… Cooper Lane… Apt… 3B…” “Understood, we are dispatching a unit. Can you open the door?” Open the door. I stared at the brass knob that refused to turn. The final ounce of life slipped from my fingers. “Can’t… can’t open…” “Stay on the line, we will contact you when we arrive.” The operator’s voice grew distant, muffled as if traveling through thick layers of cotton. The phone slipped from my grasp, the screen splintering further. Through the cracks, a new notification from the family group chat flickered: a family photo. Dad, Mom, Tristan, and Molly, all smiling perfectly. There was no fifth chair. There was no need for one. I collapsed onto the floor, my eyes taking a final look at the ribbon-tied cardboard box, then at the cheap strawberry cupcake under the bed. The crooked candle remained unlit. Forget it. I’ll just wish in my heart. I closed my eyes. “I hope in my next life… someone will say Happy Birthday to me on my birthday…” Eighteen years. The same wish every year. Not once had it been granted. My consciousness receded like a retreating tide, draining from my fingertips, my toes, my heart. In my final moments, I heard the wind howling through the broken window. The bitter November wind, weeping for someone.

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On the exact day of our anniversary, Declan wired fifteen thousand dollars to his first love. In the six years we had been together, he had never once transferred a single cent to me. Grief and a suffocating sense of injustice flooded my chest. For the first time in my life, I lost my mind. I screamed. I cried hysterically. Desperate to shut me up, he panicked and delivered a sharp, stinging slap across my face. “Are you done throwing a fit?” I spent the entire night sitting on the freezing hardwood floor, clutching my swollen, throbbing cheek in a dead daze. Outside the window, the streetlights flickered on, then died out. First thing the next morning, I packed my bags and walked out of the tiny apartment we had shared for six years. Three months later, the man who had never once bowed his head to anyone was kneeling at my door, begging for forgiveness. Only to watch me come home with my new husband. 1 A cold, damp chill hung in the air of the apartment. The elaborate anniversary dinner I had spent hours cooking sat on the table, completely untouched. Today was our six year anniversary. He had promised to come home early to celebrate with me. Instead, he made a last minute detour to his first love Lauren’s art studio, making a massive spectacle of wiring her fifteen thousand dollars. He had even opened our fridge, taken the anniversary cake I baked that afternoon, and casually justified it to me. “I know you don’t really have a sweet tooth anyway. Better not let it go to waste. I did you a favor.” Lauren had immediately posted a picture of my cake alongside a screenshot of the bank transfer on her Instagram story. The caption was a blatant flex. [No boyfriend for the holidays, but someone still sent me money and a cake hehe~] It was not that I disliked cake. It was that in our six years of dating, I, his actual girlfriend, had never even received a birthday cake from him. Let alone a random wire transfer of fifteen thousand dollars. The only time I ever asked him for money was when I maxed out my own paycheck buying groceries and household supplies for the both of us. I had to swallow my pride and beg him for help. Ever since then, he rigidly transferred me exactly five hundred dollars a month for “household expenses.” Compared to the fifteen grand he threw at Lauren without a second thought, my allowance was a joke. A sharp, burning cramp seized my empty stomach. I hunched over the dining table, breaking out in a cold sweat from the pain. That was exactly when Declan walked through the front door. He noticed me doubled over, his brows pulling together in a tight frown. He poured a glass of lukewarm water and set it near me. “Didn’t I tell you to eat first if you were hungry? Why wait for me?” I looked up at him. A bitter, numb sensation spread through my chest like poison. He had completely forgotten our plans. He had forgotten today was our anniversary. The only thing he remembered on this special day was to prepare a surprise for Lauren. My phone screen lit up with a direct message from Lauren. A pure provocation. “You do know, right? If Declan hadn’t made that promise to your conservative parents back then, he would be standing next to me right now.” “Harper, he only feels a sense of duty toward you. You have to be smart enough to see that.” I had received plenty of blunt messages like this from her over the past few months. I had always brushed them off. But this time, I could not find a single word to fight back. The fragile string holding my meticulously maintained relationship together suddenly snapped. Lauren was not wrong. Declan and I getting together was the result of a drunken accident. He never actually confessed his feelings to me. The morning after our messy, alcohol fueled mistake, my parents had shown up unannounced. They were old school, traditional folks. They sat him down at the square dining table and demanded he swear an oath. He had to marry me. He had to take responsibility. Deep down, I knew my parents had their own selfish motives. Declan was exceptionally handsome. Through casual conversation, he had revealed his wealthy background and his prestigious career as a surgeon. And me? I was painfully ordinary. The kind of girl who blended entirely into the background of any crowd. I fundamentally believed I was not good enough for Declan, yet I harbored this toxic, desperate hope. I hoped he would eventually fall in love with me. Declan did not let my parents down. He swore right then and there that he would eventually make me his wife and take full responsibility. Six years had passed, and he had kept his word. No matter how many arguments we had, he never once uttered the words, “Let’s break up. We aren’t working out.” But Lauren should never have known about that private promise. There was only one possible explanation. Declan had told her himself. I did not want to overthink it, but my mind was spiraling out of control. Did he also believe that all these years spent with me were just the heavy chains of a drunken mistake? A dense, suffocating pain radiated from my heart. I looked up at him, my eyes red, and asked a very serious question. “Have you ever loved me?” The silence that followed was agonizing. My heart pounded against my ribs. I had instinctively asked if he ever loved me, not if he loved me now. I had already subconsciously accepted the reality that Declan felt nothing for me anymore. A heavy, stifling atmosphere settled over the room. Declan frowned deeper, his voice laced with annoyance. “Can you stop being so dramatic? Fine, I’ll come home earlier next time.” Truth be told, for the past six years, Declan had been a homebody. He was always busy with the hospital, rarely going out. But lately, his schedule had shifted. The GPS history in his car showed that his most frequented destination was Lauren’s art studio. Some things were impossible to ignore, no matter how hard I tried to play dumb. I stood up, willingly tearing open this bloody wound. “I know Lauren. I know you went to see her today. I saw her Instagram.” I was never supposed to know Lauren. It happened one day when I was scouting pieces for a gallery exhibition. She looked at me with her bright, wide eyes, her face lighting up with pleasant surprise. “Oh! You’re the girlfriend Declan has been dating for six years, right? I’m his first love. He talks about you sometimes.” I was entirely average looking. Barely five feet tall with a softer, fuller figure. I was quiet, introverted, and terrible at making conversation. But Lauren was the exact opposite. She was radiant, sunny, and completely unapologetic. She could stand there and openly declare she was his first love without a shred of guilt. She made my insecurities feel like glaring spotlights. Later, scrolling through her social media, I discovered that the rigid, unromantic Declan who never planned surprises for me was actually a hopelessly romantic man in her world. He bought her gifts for every minor holiday. He sent her random cash drops just to make her smile. He took her to trendy restaurants she casually mentioned in passing. They looked perfectly happy. Perfectly in love. Even the way he looked at her in those photos held a soft tenderness he had never once directed at me. My heart felt like someone was taking a dull knife to it. I could not help but wonder. If my parents had not forced his hand back then, would we have broken up years ago? Because Declan had never treated me that well. He had never looked at me with that kind of warmth. Six years. Not once. Declan did not answer my question. His frown deepened into a scowl. “What Instagram post?” He was still playing dumb. I grabbed my phone and shoved the screen in his face. The woman’s gentle, victorious smile was right there. Anyone could feel her overflowing happiness through the pixels. My eyes brimmed with tears. I broke down, demanding an answer. “Why?” Why treat her better than me? Why send her money, plan surprises for her, and even ditch me on our six year anniversary for her? He glanced away from the screen, his tone completely indifferent. “Oh. I didn’t know she posted that.” Seeing my furious silence, he casually pivoted the conversation, brushing it off like dust on his shoulder. “It’s just fifteen grand. I wanted to give it to her, so I did. Do you really need to make such a big deal out of this?” Tears spilled out of my eyes, dropping heavily onto the cold, coagulated food on the table. “You think I shouldn’t make a big deal out of it? Everything you’ve given her these past six years… have you ever given any of that to me?” I swept a dinner plate off the table. It shattered against the floor, slicing through the dead silence of the room. Declan glared at me, his patience entirely evaporated. “Can you stop acting crazy? You’re ruining a perfectly good holiday.” I lowered my head, letting out a self deprecating laugh. “So you did remember what today was.” Honestly, I really hadn’t minded before. My father was a practical engineer, and so was Declan in his own medical way. My mother had raised me on the belief that men were the pillars of the household, and women were meant to be quiet, supportive wives behind the scenes. So during our years living together, I had grown used to giving everything and expecting nothing. I got used to his blunt, unromantic nature. I never cried. I never argued. I never demanded more. I silently took over all the household chores. I cooked every meal. I washed every dish. Even if he never bought me gifts or planned dates for the holidays, I thought it was fine. My dad was the same way. I assumed Declan was simply cut from the same cloth. But then Lauren’s social media proved me entirely wrong. Declan, the man who was supposedly as rigid and unmovable as a mountain, could easily be moved by a woman like Lauren. Just never by me. Outside, a torrential downpour began to pound against the windows. The chill in the apartment thickened. I looked at Declan, realizing for the first time just how fundamentally different we were. I finally woke up to how pathetic, subservient, and exhausted I had become in this relationship. I stood up, ignoring the violent churning in my stomach. I began screaming at him, desperate to drag every hidden resentment out into the light. I wanted to resolve it. I wanted to fix it. But as the words tumbled out, my overwhelming grief took over, and I started sobbing uncontrollably. Declan had probably never seen me like this. He was frantic to make me stop. In his blinding irritation, he swung his hand and slapped me across the face. “Are you done?” Clear. Loud. It hurt like hell, but it woke me up.

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The housekeeper called the cops and accused me of horrific abuse. She told them I dragged her into my basement and locked her in the dark for three days and three nights. On the witness stand, she cried until her voice went hoarse. The bruises on her skin, the terrifying audio recordings, the eyewitness testimonies. The evidence was absolutely ironclad. The courtroom gallery cursed me, calling me a monster. The internet demanded I be locked away forever. My tech company was on the verge of being burned to the ground by angry mobs. Through it all, I did not say a single word. I waited patiently until the judge finally looked down at me and asked if I had any final statements. I slowly reached into my suit jacket and pulled out a single sheet of heavy parchment paper. “Your Honor, this is the official structural blueprint of my property, filed and stamped by the city planning department.” “My house is a single story ranch. I do not even have a crawlspace.” So I would really love to know. Where exactly is this pitch black basement she claims I locked her in? 1 I had been alive for thirty two years. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would end up sitting at a defendant’s table. The charge was kidnapping and severe assault. The plaintiff was my housekeeper, Brenda, a forty six year old woman. At this exact moment, she was sitting in the witness box, sobbing as if her entire world had collapsed. Tears and snot smeared her face. Faint purple bruises peeked out from around her neck. Her arm was wrapped in white gauze, her shoulders trembling violently with every breath. “He dragged me down into the basement,” she choked out, her voice shivering and broken. “He locked me down there for three days. Three whole days.” A collective gasp echoed from the courtroom gallery. Several older women practically jumped out of their seats. “You absolute monster!” “Lock him up and throw away the key!” The bailiffs had to rush over to force them back down. I sat at the defendant’s table with a completely blank expression on my face. I was not trying to look cold or intimidating. I genuinely just had no expression to give. Mostly because my mind was currently occupied with a very specific problem. I was wondering if I could still get a refund for the fifteen dollar teriyaki chicken bowl I ordered for lunch. Do not underestimate that fifteen dollars. My reputation was completely destroyed, my company was hemorrhaging investors, and the funds in my bank account might soon be frozen. Every single penny had to be stretched. “Your Honor, please look at this.” Brenda carefully rolled up her sleeve and extended her arm toward the judge. The edge of the white gauze lifted slightly. The dark bruising, the scraped skin, the angry red swelling. It was an awful sight. Another wave of unrest rippled through the gallery. Someone yelled that I was human garbage. Someone else yelled something much more graphic. A heavy set guy in the back row actually hurled a plastic water bottle at my head. He missed. The bottle flew about two feet wide. I stared at the plastic rolling on the floor and thought to myself that with an arm like that, the guy could not even make a high school junior varsity team. Sitting next to me, my defense attorney, Simon, looked physically ill. He leaned in, his voice a furious whisper. “Arthur, what the hell is your problem? You need to say something!” I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye. “What is the rush?” “What is the rush?” His hands were literally shaking. “Look at the gallery! Look at this courtroom! The entire world wants your head on a spike! If you don’t speak up right now, the judge is going to buy every word of this!” I leaned back comfortably in my heavy wooden chair. “Let her finish her story.” Simon stared at me for three agonizing seconds. His lips moved silently. Finally, he squeezed his eyes shut, took a deep breath, and scribbled a furious line on his legal pad. I peeked over his arm. “Client is experiencing severe psychotic break.” Fair enough. He could write whatever helped him cope. Up on the stand, Brenda’s wailing grew even louder. “He did unspeakable things to me in that dark room! I screamed for three days and nobody came to help me!” She curled her body into a tight, defensive ball, acting out the perfect picture of pure trauma. People in the gallery were openly weeping with her. My eyes drifted down to her feet. Wow. Brand new shoes. Designer Gucci sneakers. Twelve hundred dollars retail. She supposedly gets locked in a pitch black dungeon for three days, escapes by the skin of her teeth, and her very first priority is dropping over a grand on luxury footwear? Her mental resilience was vastly superior to mine. Truly fascinating. 2 The prosecuting attorney was a man named Pierce. He was in his early forties, lean, sharp, and wore thin gold rimmed glasses. In the city’s legal circles, he had a terrifying reputation. Rumor had it the man had never lost a criminal prosecution in his life. The moment he stood up, the gallery instantly went dead silent. The way he looked at me was identical to a scientist examining a dead butterfly already pinned to a corkboard. Absolute, condescending certainty. “Your Honor, I would like the court to hear our first piece of critical evidence.” He pressed play on his laptop. A disturbing audio recording echoed through the courtroom speakers. “Do not touch me! Please, let me go!” It was Brenda’s voice. Filled with pure terror, desperation, and soul crushing agony. “No! Please, stop!” The recording abruptly cut to static. The courtroom felt like a graveyard. A few young women in the gallery covered their mouths in horror. I stared blankly at the ceiling tiles. I knew about this recording. The production value was honestly pretty decent. But if you listened closely, there was a very strange noise buried in the background static. Faint, but definitely there. It sounded exactly like a DoorDash driver knocking on a door and yelling about a food delivery. Whoever edited the track got sloppy in post production. “This audio,” Prosecutor Pierce said, adjusting his gold glasses, “was extracted directly from the victim’s mobile device. Independent forensic analysts have confirmed the timestamps align perfectly with the days of the kidnapping.” Beside me, Simon’s hand was shaking so badly he could barely take notes. Pierce did not miss a beat before dropping his second bombshell. The official medical evaluation. “Extensive bruising concentrated on the arms, neck, and lower lumbar region. The distribution of these injuries is entirely consistent with violent dragging and prolonged physical restraint.” He read the report clearly, emphasizing every single syllable. Every word felt like a rusty nail being driven into the ears of the jury and the gallery. The verbal abuse hurled at me grew louder. Someone actually started clapping. They were applauding the prosecutor. In the middle of a criminal trial. The judge had to slam his gavel three times to restore order. The corner of Pierce’s mouth twitched. It was a highly controlled micro expression. But he could not hide the sheer arrogance radiating off him. “Our third piece of evidence is a sworn witness testimony.” A middle aged man wearing a faded plaid shirt was called to the stand. He claimed to be my neighbor. “It was late that night, probably around two or three in the morning.” He swallowed nervously, looking at the jury. “I heard a woman screaming coming from the defendant’s property.” “It was a horrible, bloodcurdling sound. It kept starting and stopping.” “It went on for at least ten solid minutes.” Pierce leaned on the podium. “Are you absolutely certain the sounds originated from the defendant’s house?” “Positive,” the man nodded vigorously. “It was definitely the house next door. The walls were literally vibrating.” I almost burst out laughing right then and there. Because my actual next door neighbor was Mrs. Higgins. She was an eighty three year old widow who lived entirely alone and had been completely deaf since birth. The loudest noise she could possibly generate at three in the morning was the creak of her orthopedic mattress. The walls were vibrating? What was Mrs. Higgins doing over there, hosting an underground CrossFit class? But I kept my mouth shut. It was not time yet. Simon noticed the slight upward curve of my lips. The poor lawyer looked like he was about to have a stroke. He scribbled another furious sentence on his legal pad and shoved it into my chest. “If you laugh right now, I am quitting on the spot. That is not a threat. That is a promise.” I slowly pushed the notepad back toward him, adding my own messy handwriting to the bottom. “Relax. We are ending this today.” He read it, and his expression perfectly translated into three simple words. You are insane. 3 To understand how this circus started, we have to rewind exactly one month. My name is Arthur Kingsley. Thirty two years old. Founder and CEO of a tech startup called Sentinel AI. We build advanced, artificial intelligence integrated security systems. We secured our Series B funding last year and were preparing for a massive public offering by the end of the winter. I was not a billionaire, but I had built a very comfortable life in this city. I bought a sprawling property in Crestview Estates. A massive, open concept house. Almost four thousand square feet. No basement. No attic. No hidden cellars. Just one massive, flat level of glass and steel where you could see from one end to the other in a single glance. A month ago, my mother forced me to hire a live in housekeeper. “You live alone in that giant glass box and survive entirely on takeout,” she nagged over the phone. “Mom, I have a state of the art dishwasher, a smart laundry system, and three robotic vacuums.” “Can a robot cook you a hot pot of beef stew after a fourteen hour shift?” Fine. You can never win an argument with a stubborn mother. That was how Brenda entered my life. She was forty six, a local woman with over a decade of domestic work experience. She came highly recommended by a premium agency, with glowing reviews from all her previous employers. Diligent, quiet, and an incredible cook. She really was excellent at first. The house was spotless, the meals were fantastic, and her beef stew was genuinely amazing. But there was one very specific thing she did that caught my attention. She had a habit of wandering through my house with her smartphone out. She would stroll from the living room to the guest bedroom, then from the guest bedroom into my private home office. Whenever she walked, the camera lens on the back of her phone was always facing outward, scanning the room. At first, I assumed she was just filming TikToks. Everyone wants to be an influencer these days. But one night, I came home from the office much earlier than usual. She was standing in the kitchen, whispering frantically into her phone. She did not hear the garage door open. “Do not worry, Vic, I memorized the layout. Yes, I know what to do.” Her voice was hushed, almost completely silent. The second she heard my dress shoes hit the hardwood, she killed the call instantly and spun around with a warm, grandmotherly smile. “Mr. Kingsley! I kept your dinner warm on the stove.” Her smile was flawless. But the speed at which she hung up that phone was completely unnatural. That night, while she was busy scrubbing the kitchen sink, I locked the door to my study and booted up my laptop. I accessed the backend of my home’s security grid. I run an AI security company. The camera network installed in my own house is the absolute pinnacle of our unreleased prototype tech. There were high definition lenses hidden in every single corner of the property. Twenty four seven cloud backups. Military grade voice print recognition. I scrubbed through the footage from the past two weeks. I found a few extremely fascinating details. First, Brenda received a phone call every single afternoon at exactly two o’clock. The calls always lasted between fifteen and twenty minutes. Second, she really was wandering through my house with her camera, but she was never filming herself. She was meticulously mapping the structural layout, documenting the blind corners, the window locks, and the hallway dimensions. Third, the moment she finished filming, she would text the photos to a specific contact on her phone. The contact name was simply “Vic.” I did not confront her. Instead, I quietly logged into the master controls, boosted the recording frame rate to maximum, and changed the cloud backup deletion cycle from seven days to permanent storage. Then I picked up my phone and called Simon. I asked him to run a deep background check on one specific man. Victor. My former business partner. Three years ago, Victor tried to secretly bundle our company’s core algorithm data and sell it to our biggest corporate rival. I caught him red handed. I had all the digital evidence. I did not call the police. I simply forced him to resign and stripped him of all his equity. I gave him a quiet, dignified exit. He did not appreciate the mercy. He hated me. He hated me down to the very marrow of his bones. A few days later, Simon called me back with the results. “Victor has been in constant contact with a premium domestic staffing agency for the last month. He wired several large sums of cash. One of the receiving bank accounts belongs to a woman named Brenda.” I sat in my office chair in total silence for a long time. Finally, I gave Simon his orders. “Do not spook them. Let her keep working. Let him keep plotting.” Simon panicked. “Are you out of your mind? They are obviously setting you up for something massive!” “If they want to destroy me, they have to make a move first,” I said calmly. “I need them to play their hand entirely so I can crush them all at once.” What happened next played out exactly as I predicted. Half a month later, Brenda vanished into thin air for three days. When she finally reappeared, she was sitting in a police interrogation room. Covered in horrific bruises. Sobbing until she was choking on her own breath. She pointed a trembling finger at my photo and accused me of viciously assaulting her and locking her in the dark basement of my house for three consecutive days. Four uniformed officers showed up at my front door. I opened it. “Arthur Kingsley?” the lead officer asked. “That is me.” “You need to come with us.” Before I stepped out into the cold night air, I turned back and took one long look at my house. One single level. A perfectly flat, modern piece of architecture. A small laugh escaped my lips. Victor. You want to frame me for a horrific crime, and you did not even bother to check if my house actually had a basement? Did you do absolutely zero homework? 4 The news exploded across the internet ten times faster than I could have ever imagined. By the afternoon of my arrest, the media had completely lost its mind. The headlines were clickbait gold. “Famous Tech CEO Arrested for Horrific Abuse of Housekeeper! Held Hostage in Basement!” “Monster in a Suit! Sentinel AI Founder Exposed as Violent Predator!” “Victim Speaks Out: He Dragged Me Into the Dark. I Did Not See Sunlight for Three Days.” It was the number one trending topic on every single platform. Pinned to the top of every feed. Going completely viral. The comment sections were an absolute bloodbath. “Give him the chair! Lock him up forever!” Over eighty thousand likes. “Rich scum like this do not deserve to breathe our air.” Over sixty thousand likes. “Everyone boycott Sentinel AI immediately! The CEO is a psychopath!” Over fifty thousand likes. Protesters organized a massive rally outside my corporate headquarters. They held up giant banners screaming for my head. Someone threw buckets of bright red paint across the floor to ceiling glass doors of my lobby. My security guards were physically assaulted trying to keep the crowd back. A college intern was recognized walking to his car, and a group of people ripped his backpack off and threw it into a dumpster. As for the company stock, it was a total massacre. The lead investor from our Series B round called my CFO in the middle of the night, his voice like absolute ice. “If these allegations against Arthur are proven true, we are pulling every single dime of our funding immediately.” And while all of this chaos was burning the world down. I was sitting quietly in a sterile holding cell. They had confiscated my phone. I could not see the news. I could not hear the outrage. When Simon came to visit me for the first time, the man looked like he had aged a decade in three days. “Do you have any idea what is happening out there?” he asked, rubbing his temples. “I can guess.” “You are the number one villain in the country right now.” “Makes sense.” “Your corporate lobby looks like a slaughterhouse from all the red paint.” “Unfortunate.” “Your biggest corporate rivals are poaching your elite engineering team while the ship is sinking.” “Expected.” “And your old buddy, Victor.” Simon paused, his jaw clenching. “He went on national television.” I raised an eyebrow at that. “He did an exclusive sit down interview with a prime time news network, playing the role of the deeply concerned former business partner.” Simon mocked Victor’s overly dramatic tone perfectly. “I am absolutely heartbroken by Arthur’s actions. When we worked together, I always noticed severe flaws in his moral character, but I never imagined he was capable of this level of depravity. My heart bleeds for the victim.” Simon finished his impression and stared at me. I let the silence stretch for a few seconds. Then I nodded. “His acting is honestly not terrible.” Simon looked like he wanted to jump across the metal table and strangle me. “Arthur! Your life is completely ruined and you are giving him a review on Rotten Tomatoes?!” “Did you get the information I asked you to find?” I asked, cutting through his panic. Simon sighed heavily, pulling out a thick manila folder. “Victor wired a total of forty seven thousand dollars to Brenda over the last three months using three separate shell accounts. Also, exactly one week before the alleged kidnapping, Victor booked a luxury suite at the Ritz for her. Room 1208.” “Good.” “I also got the official architectural blueprints you wanted. Stamped by the city zoning department. Original copies.” “Perfect.” “Arthur.” Simon leaned forward, looking desperate. “When do we drop this?” “During the trial.” I looked him dead in the eye. “Bring every single piece of paper in that folder to court.” “Make absolutely sure you do not forget a single document.” He swallowed hard. “When exactly do you want me to present it?” “At the very end.” “I want them to say every single lie they have prepared. I want them to empty their entire arsenal.” “Then, I will speak.” Simon stared at me in silence for a very long time. Finally, he nodded his head. “Alright. I trust you.” While Simon was stressing himself into an early grave, my best friend’s reaction to the news was an absolute masterpiece of chaotic loyalty. When I finally got my phone back days later, I read Jax’s text logs in chronological order. 2:17 PM: “Bro are you okay????” 2:18 PM: “Is the stuff on the news actually real?” 2:19 PM: “There is no way man no freaking way” 2:22 PM: “I believe you! You are not that kind of guy!” 2:23 PM: “But just in case it is real you gotta tell me right now so I can pack your bags” 2:24 PM: “Just kidding just kidding” 2:25 PM: “But seriously if we need to flee to Mexico I have a van full of gas” 2:30 PM: “Why are you not answering?? Did they lock you up already??” 2:31 PM: “We are so screwed” 2:45 PM: “Hold up I just read the full article they said you locked her in a basement???” 2:46 PM: “Wait a minute” 2:46 PM: “You don’t even have a basement????” 2:47 PM: “You live in a flat one story house!!!!!” 2:47 PM: “I was just there last month! You don’t even have a decent closet! I tried to hide your birthday keg and couldn’t find a spot!” 2:48 PM: “This whole thing is a massive setup!!!!!” 3:00 PM: “Arthur do not worry your boy is on the case” 3:01 PM: “I am driving to your office right now to beat the hell out of those people throwing paint” 3:15 PM: “Just got here tried to talk some sense into them” 3:16 PM: “They swung first so I swung back currently sitting in the back of a police cruiser” 3:17 PM: “My eye is swollen shut but I feel great” 3:18 PM: “Worth it.” That was Jax. A six foot three wall of muscle. Not the sharpest tool in the shed. But his heart was pure gold. A very violent, fiercely loyal block of gold. 5 The second day of the trial began. Prosecutor Pierce strolled into the courtroom wearing an expression of absolute, guaranteed victory. His strides were longer and more confident than yesterday. Today was the day he pulled the net tight. He called a new witness to the stand, a man claiming to own the local convenience store down my street. “The defendant did not leave his house to buy groceries, nor did he order any food deliveries during those three specific days. For a wealthy bachelor living entirely alone, this total lack of activity is highly suspicious.” The man spoke with absolute conviction. I thought to myself, well obviously I did not buy anything locally. I was on a business trip in Chicago during those exact three days. I could not exactly reach my arm across the country to buy a bottle of water. Pierce then called a young woman who claimed to be Brenda’s close friend. “Brenda told me weeks ago that her boss was acting really creepy toward her. He would say things that were highly inappropriate. She was just too terrified to report him.” When the woman spoke, her eyes darted around the room constantly. Her fingers nervously picked at the seams of her jeans. Pierce looked incredibly satisfied with his theatrical production. Once the witnesses stepped down, he walked to the absolute center of the courtroom floor. It was time for his closing statement. “Your Honor, members of the jury.” He elegantly pushed his gold glasses up the bridge of his nose. “The facts of this case are undeniable. The evidence is mountainous.” “The victim’s harrowing personal testimony, the certified medical reports detailing her brutal injuries, the terrifying audio recording, and the corroborating statements of three separate witnesses. Every single piece of evidence points directly to one inescapable truth.” He turned slowly on his heel and pointed a perfectly manicured finger directly at me. “The defendant, Arthur Kingsley, abused his position of power to inflict unimaginable physical and psychological torment on a helpless woman, illegally holding her captive in the dark for seventy two hours.” His eyes were freezing cold. “Throughout this entire proceeding, the defendant has remained completely silent. He has offered absolutely no defense. In a court of law, silence of this magnitude is the loudest confession of guilt.” The gallery erupted into furious, vindicated applause. The bailiffs had to shout and physically intervene to quiet the mob. Pierce turned back to the judge, offering a crisp, respectful bow. “The prosecution rests. We beg the court to deliver the maximum possible sentence for this monster.” He casually walked back to his table and took a seat. He unscrewed the cap of his expensive bottled water and took a slow, victorious sip. His posture screamed that the guilty verdict was already printed, just waiting for the judge’s signature. The judge nodded solemnly, turning his heavy gaze toward my table. “Arthur Kingsley.” “Do you have any final statements before this court moves forward?” The entire room went completely dead. Hundreds of eyes locked onto my face. The angry citizens in the gallery glared at me, looking like they wanted to drag me out into the street and hang me from a streetlamp. Next to me, Simon took a massive, shuddering breath. He placed his hands firmly on top of the bulging manila envelope. A full week of meticulous, undeniable proof was stuffed inside. I stood up. I slowly adjusted the cuffs of my tailored suit. I took my time. I moved so slowly that the entire courtroom began to vibrate with impatient rage. Someone in the back yelled for me to stop stalling and just confess already. A bailiff barked for silence. I ignored all of it. I lifted my chin and looked directly into the judge’s eyes. “Your Honor.” “Yes, Mr. Kingsley.” “Before I begin, I would like to ask the court to officially verify the core details of the plaintiff’s sworn statement.” Prosecutor Pierce raised a skeptical eyebrow. “The plaintiff explicitly stated,” I paused, letting the silence hang, “that I dragged her down into a basement and locked her there for three days and three nights. Is that correct?” The judge flipped open the massive binder of trial transcripts. “That is correct. The plaintiff’s exact recorded words were, ‘He dragged me into the basement. There were no windows, and it was so pitch black I could not see my own hands.’” “Excellent.” I nodded slowly in approval. “A basement. Three days and three nights. No windows. Pitch black.” “She is absolutely certain those were her exact words?” “It is recorded in black and white under penalty of perjury,” the judge stated flatly. I turned my head and looked directly at Brenda. She was still crying into her hands. But I noticed her fingers suddenly dig viciously into her knees. Her knuckles went completely white. I turned back to the bench. “In that case.” I gave Simon a tiny nod. Simon ripped open the manila envelope and pulled out a massive, folded piece of architectural drafting paper. He unfolded it with a sharp snap and handed it to the bailiff. The bailiff passed it up to the judge’s elevated desk. “What exactly is this?” the judge asked, frowning. “That is the official architectural blueprint of my residence, registered with the city zoning and planning department,” I said, my voice projecting clearly across the silent room. “It includes the original structural layout tied to my property deed. It bears the official city seal, the lead developer’s signature, and is dated from the exact year of construction.” The judge flattened the heavy paper and began studying the lines. Prosecutor Pierce’s brow furrowed into a tight knot. But he did not object. He clearly thought this was just the desperate, pathetic flailing of a dying man. It did not matter. The judge stared at the blueprint for about fifteen seconds. His hands suddenly stopped moving. He pulled his reading glasses down to the bridge of his nose, stared closely at the paper, then pushed the glasses back up and read it a second time. Slowly, he lifted his head and looked down at me. “Defendant.” “Yes, Your Honor.” “This official structural blueprint indicates a specific architectural design.” The judge paused, his voice turning incredibly heavy. “Your residence is a single level slab on grade property.” “That is correct.” “There is no basement.” “That is correct.” “There is no subterranean level, no sunken storage room, and absolutely no structural enclosure below the ground elevation line.” “That is exactly correct,” I said. My voice was calm, but it echoed like a gunshot through the massive room. The silence stretched for two seconds. Then three seconds. Then five seconds. From across the aisle, I could clearly hear Prosecutor Pierce’s hand freeze on his water bottle. The faint, scraping sound of the plastic cap twisting shut abruptly stopped. Click. His hand just hovered there, completely paralyzed.

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