Author: Momo Chan

I am the protagonist of a torture-porn tragedy. The rules are simple: once my Misery Index hits 100, I get to wake up. I get to go back to the real world. My wife, Elena, had me strapped to a sterile surgical table in a private clinic. The scalpel in her hand was steady, cold against my skin. “Jonah was burned, Gavin. He needs a skin graft.” Her voice was devoid of emotion, clinical and detached. “He has a low tolerance for pain. He can’t handle the harvest. It has to be yours.” Without waiting for a response, she pushed the plunger, sending the anesthetic burning through my veins. When I woke up, the room was empty. My phone, resting on the bedside table, buzzed incessantly. It was a text from Jonah. Elena is incredible. You really fed her well before I got here. I stared at the taunt. A bitter, self-deprecating laugh bubbled up in my throat, pulling painfully at the fresh stitches across my chest. The pain bloomed like a dark flower. [Current Misery Index: 90/100] 1 Elena didn’t show up until the dead of night. By then, the anesthesia had worn off, leaving me thrashing in a sweat-soaked haze of raw nerve endings. “Still awake?” She placed a hand on my forehead. Cool, soft. A lie. As she leaned over to check my temperature, the neckline of her silk blouse shifted. I saw it—the fresh, bruising mark of a hickey on her collarbone. “Good. No fever,” she murmured, pulling up a chair. “I’ll stay with you tonight.” She sat down, eyes cast downward. I searched her face for a flicker of guilt, a trace of the infidelity I knew was there. There was nothing. Just a smooth, marble mask. The silence in the VIP suite was suffocating. Eventually, Elena couldn’t handle the quiet. “Jonah has a coagulation disorder,” she said, her voice tight. “Taking skin from his own body wasn’t an option.” She stared at me, waiting. Waiting for the explosion. The jealousy. The screaming match. I just stared at the ceiling. “Mm.” My indifference seemed to irritate her more than my anger ever did. “Gavin, don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing,” she snapped. “I know you hate him. I know you’re jealous. But you owe him this.” Her eyes narrowed. “Heal up. And don’t even think about retaliation.” I swallowed the bitterness rising in my throat and gave a small nod. I owe him? I was the one bleeding. I was always the one bleeding. Jonah was a scholarship student Elena’s family foundation supported. For years, I couldn’t understand why the entire world seemed to bend to his will, why logic dissolved whenever he was in the room. Then I realized the truth. I was a character in a book. A “sacrificial husband” archetype in a dark romance novel. The plot demanded I suffer. Only through my destruction could Elena and her true love, Jonah, achieve their twisted happy ending. Halfway through the night, a single phone call from Jonah summoned Elena away. She didn’t hesitate. The next day, I discharged myself. I pulled into the driveway of our estate, stitches pulling tight, only to find Jonah standing on the front porch. He was holding a bouquet of white chrysanthemums—flowers for the dead. “Gavin,” he smiled, a sickly sweet expression. “Thanks for the skin. It fits perfectly.” He waved his right arm. I walked past him, too exhausted to engage. Suddenly, a shriek tore through the air. Elena rushed out of the house, my parents close behind her. They found Jonah sprawled on the pavement, clutching his arm. Blood was seeping through his bandages. He bit his lip, offering Elena a brave, teary smile. “I… I tripped. It’s my fault. The wound opened up. It has nothing to do with Gavin.” “Gavin!” Elena screamed, turning on me like a viper. “How can you be so vindictive?” “Don’t blame him,” Jonah whimpered, shrinking back as if terrified of me. “You don’t need to protect him,” Elena cooed, cradling his injured arm. My mother stepped forward, her face a mask of disappointment. “Gavin. When are you going to learn?” I looked at them. I offered no defense. I knew the script. Anything I said would be twisted into an admission of guilt. My father grabbed me by the collar. He dragged me to the “Quiet Room”—a soundproofed space in the basement they claimed was for my rehabilitation. It was built to “correct” my jealousy. When the electricity hit me, I heard my teeth chatter. It was a mechanical sound, like dice rattling in a cup. My jaw clamped shut so hard I thought the bone would snap. The cattle prod dug into my side. Muscles seized. Heat flooded my lap. I had lost control of my bladder. The humiliating warmth soaked my trousers, the scent of urine mixing with the damp, moldy air of the basement. Jonah stood in the doorway, hand covering his nose, eyes dancing with amusement. “Gavin peed himself,” he said, his voice dripping with faux concern. “Maybe stop? He needs a change of clothes.” Elena lowered the prod, looking at the puddle with sheer disgust. “Apologize to Jonah. Now. Have you no dignity?” “Still playing dead?” My father sneered. “Look at Jonah! You frame him, you hurt him, and he still defends you. Do you have any remorse inside that sick head of yours?” He kicked me in the ribs. I didn’t flinch. I felt something crack—a rib, maybe puncturing the spleen. “Mom, Dad, Elena… please,” Jonah said softly. “Stop. Gavin is just… he cares about Elena too much. That’s why he hates me. I’ll move out tomorrow. I don’t want to break up this family.” It was always the same routine. When I was half-dead, he would call for mercy. When I was locked in the freezer, he would “sneak” me food. When Elena ignored me, he would “accidentally” remind her of my past failures. And every time, I was beaten harder for being ungrateful. My mother stormed over, her manicured finger jabbing the air inches from my face. “He’s still defending you! Gavin, is your heart made of stone?” “We’ve told you a thousand times,” she whispered, her voice trembling with fatigue. “Jonah is a guest. A charity case. Why can’t you just get along?” I looked at her. Before today, I loved her. I loved them all. I used to tell myself they were just puppets controlled by a sadistic author. When Jonah claimed I pushed him into the pool and Elena locked me in the industrial freezer, resulting in severe frostbite and surgery to remove part of my intestine, I didn’t blame her. But the cycle never ended. Jonah escalated. I defended myself. They ignored the truth. I watched Elena dial up the voltage on the stun baton, her eyes colder with every shock. Jonah reached for Elena’s hand, then pulled back as if remembering his place. His eyes welled up. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have accepted the scholarship. I’ll leave…” 2 “No!” My mother screamed. “Jonah, you aren’t going anywhere! The only one leaving is this monster!” I slowly pushed myself up from the concrete floor. My legs were shaking uncontrollably, urine dripping down my pant leg. Elena looked away. Jonah couldn’t hide the smirk in his eyes. I looked at the corner of the room. There was an old, exposed fuse box from when the house was rewired. The casing was off, copper wires naked and lethal, connected to the old industrial grid. “Okay,” I said. My voice sounded like sandpaper dragged over stone. “My fault.” The room went still. For the first time in a year, I had admitted guilt. Relief washed over my parents. Jonah narrowed his eyes. Elena frowned, sensing a shift in the atmosphere. “I know I was wrong,” I continued, swaying as I stood. “I shouldn’t have been jealous. I shouldn’t have framed him. I shouldn’t be alive.” I summoned every ounce of adrenaline left in my broken body and lunged for the fuse box. “Gavin!” Elena realized it first, panic finally cracking her voice. Too late. My hand closed around the rusted lever. I looked back at them one last time. Elena’s eyes were wide. For the first time, she wasn’t looking through me; she was looking at me—at the filth, the blood, the ruin she had made. I yanked the lever down. ZZZT—! The short circuit was immediate. Sparks showered onto a pile of old drop cloths nearby. The fire moved like a living thing, a hungry snake coiling up my arm, consuming me. The smell of burning meat overpowered the smell of urine. “Ah—!” My mother’s scream pierced the air. “Help him! Do something!” My father roared, but his feet were nailed to the floor. My skin was melting. Fat was rendering. But I held onto the lever. I didn’t let go. As the flames licked my face, I saw Elena. She stood frozen, trembling, her face as white as paper. I woke up in a hospital room. Again. The door opened. Elena walked in first, the click of her heels sharp against the tile. Jonah and my father trailed behind her. “You’re awake? The doctor said you can speak.” Elena looked at me—swathed in bandages like a mummy—with pure annoyance. I didn’t answer. I just watched the ceiling. My father walked to the bedside, his tone softer than usual, but still carrying that lecture-hall cadence. “We’ve decided not to punish you for this stunt. Just recover.” “Don’t be stupid again.” Elena chimed in. “As long as you behave and get along with Jonah, we can go back to how things were.” I forced air through my ravaged throat. “Okay.” Elena looked startled. She searched my eyes for the usual defiance. She glanced at Jonah. Taking the cue, Jonah leaned in and placed a hand on Elena’s chest—intimate, possessive, yet disguised as comfort. Elena didn’t flinch. She let him touch her, her eyes locked on mine, daring me to react. In the past, I would have broken his nose. This time, I turned my head away. “Gavin,” Jonah said, his voice dripping with faux sincerity. “Let’s start over. No more fighting.” He wanted me to snap. I gave him nothing. Elena’s patience evaporated. “What is this attitude? Jonah is talking to you. Are you mute now?” I turned my head back stiffly. The movement tore at the scabs on my neck. Blood seeped through the gauze. I bit down on my tongue. Hard. I clamped my jaw until I felt the muscle sever. I spat the piece of flesh onto the pristine white sheet in front of Elena. Elena screamed, stumbling back in horror. I closed my eyes. 3 “The patient is unstable. No more agitation.” I was wheeled out of surgery. They had reattached my tongue. My parents rushed in. My mother grabbed Elena’s shoulders. “Why is he in the ICU? What happened?” Elena looked at me, the words caught in her throat. “It’s my fault,” Jonah sobbed, wiping tears from his cheeks. “I said something wrong. I upset Gavin, and he… he hurt himself to punish me.” “I should just leave.” He turned to go. Elena grabbed his wrist. “He’s just petty. It has nothing to do with you.” “Gavin,” she hissed at my unconscious form. “I thought you changed. But you just learned new tricks. The pity card? Really?” I stared at her, awake now, unable to smile. “Elena, he almost died,” my mother whispered, teary-eyed. “He wouldn’t go that far just to frame Jonah.” “Mom, this isn’t the first time!” Elena shouted. “Remember the glass in his water? He hates Jonah!” My mother hesitated. Jonah seized the moment, rolling up his sleeve to reveal the bandages from the skin graft. “Don’t yell at Elena, Mrs. Landers. I’ll apologize to Gavin.” Jonah dropped to his knees by my bed. My mother and Elena immediately rushed to pull him up. “Gavin,” my father sighed, heavy with disappointment. “Why do you hate him so much? Why destroy yourself just to hurt him?” I lay there, numb. I just wanted to die. I didn’t want to spend another second in this wretched world. “I had the kitchen make some soup. Your favorite.” Elena walked in with a thermos. She had been coming every day, playing the role of the dutiful wife. Her eyes were calm, her voice soft. For a second, it felt like the old days, before Jonah. She cranked the bed up and sat beside me. “Jonah made this stock for you. Look how much he cares.” “Why can’t you just let go of the prejudice?” The spoon pressed against my lips. Steam hit my face. I smelled the ocean. Clams. Elena kept talking about Jonah’s kindness, preaching forgiveness. She seemed to have forgotten that I was deathly allergic to shellfish. I didn’t refuse. I opened my mouth. Elena smiled, relieved. She fed me, spoonful by spoonful. I felt my throat tighten, my blood vessels dilate. By the time Elena realized I was turning blue, I could no longer breathe. 4 I woke up to blinding white light. Voices argued in the distance. “Elena, I’m so sorry! I forgot Gavin was allergic to seafood!” “I just wanted to make him something rich, to help him heal… I didn’t mean to…” “It was an accident, Jonah. Don’t blame yourself. I should have reminded you.” “Stop crying, Jonah.” A few minutes later, Jonah pushed the door open. Elena and my parents followed. “Gavin, I’m so sorry.” His eyes were red, his voice thick with tears. He cried so hard you’d think I had beaten him. I didn’t react. “Gavin,” Elena sighed, impatient. “It was a mistake. He apologized. Just forgive him.” I opened my eyes heavily. It was comical. Jonah almost killed me, and a simple “oops” was enough. Yet when I once swore at Jonah, they forced me to drink acid because I “needed discipline.” My throat burned. I was curled in agony. But they couldn’t see it. They swarmed around Jonah, comforting him. I rolled my eyes toward him. Every bone in my body ached. Jonah leaned in close, whispering so only I could hear. “Gavin, you’re like a cockroach. You just won’t die.” Looking at his smug face, I summoned the last of my strength and slapped him. It was weak, but it connected. Jonah clutched his face. “If hitting me makes you feel better, Gavin… go ahead.” He leaned his face forward. The next second, my father rushed forward and yanked me off the bed. My healing skin tore open. “You have the energy to hit people? You’re definitely faking it.” I didn’t fight. He dragged me across the floor, leaving a streak of blood. He dragged me to the janitor’s sink in the hallway. He turned on the faucet, grabbed the hose, and aimed it at my face. Ice-cold water blasted into my nose and mouth. I gagged, choking as water filled my lungs. “Still acting? Still framing Jonah?” “I raised a monster!” I coughed, unable to speak. Elena stood there, watching. A flicker of hesitation crossed her face, but she didn’t move. Finally, he pulled me out of the sink. “Did you learn your lesson?” I looked at him. And I smiled. Bloody water dripped from the corners of my mouth. His eyes went cold. “Unrepentant.” He shoved my head back into the bloody water. I didn’t struggle. The cold liquid filled me. My body temperature plummeted. This vessel was done. Ding— [Misery Index: 100/100] [Host is cleared for extraction. Initiating Protocol: Hundredfold Reflection.]

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My boyfriend always had this habit of whispering sweet nothings into my ear after he thought I’d fallen asleep. Little things. Baby. Wifey. I love you so much. I had caught him doing it a few times before, but I was always too exhausted to keep my eyes open, letting the exhaustion pull me under. Tonight, though, I wanted to tease him. I kept my breathing even, feigning sleep. Right on cue, his voice dropped into that low, soulful register. “Sweetheart. I love you the most…” My heart melted into a puddle. I cracked my eyes open, throwing my arms wide to pull him into a massive, suffocating hug. Only to find him staring at the glowing screen of his phone, his thumb holding down the voice memo button on iMessage. 01 My arms hung suspended in the dark. To hug, or not to hug. Time seemed to freeze in our dimly lit bedroom. It would have stayed frozen, too, if Tyler hadn’t suddenly looked up, his eyes going wide with sheer panic. He shoved the phone behind his back so fast I heard his elbow crack against the headboard. His mouth opened and closed, but no actual words came out. Slowly, I retracted my awkward, hovering arms. I shoved down the sudden, violent spike of adrenaline in my chest and forced a painfully calm smile. “Who are you sending voice notes to?” Tyler scooted backward, pressing himself against the wall. “Harper… it’s not what you think…” “Give me the phone.” He let out a hollow, synthetic laugh. “Haha, come on, I was just messing around with the boys!” “I said, give me the phone.” What happened next genuinely blew my mind. In the span of three seconds, Tyler’s expression underwent a masterclass in manipulation. When he looked back up at me, his face was a perfectly calibrated mix of thirty percent innocent, forty percent pathetic, and thirty percent deeply offended. His voice actually trembled when he spoke. “Harper! It’s for my work! Is this really the kind of person you think I am?” I didn’t quite understand the sheer audacity of it, but I was spectacularly awestruck. “Tyler, let’s get one thing straight. You’re the one sexting someone else in our bed. Who exactly gave you the audacity to point the finger at me?” I was so furiously angry that a laugh tore out of my throat. I actually started clapping, offering a slow ovation for his performance. I had to admit, the way the corners of his eyes flushed pink, the way his unshed tears caught the bedside light—he looked beautiful. If he didn’t, I never would have given him the time of day to begin with. He was a D-list TikTok thirst-trap, a guy who built an audience by flexing his abs and looking pretty for the camera. He had slid into my DMs claiming he was “obsessed” with the menswear I designed, asking to borrow a few pieces for a shoot. He borrowed the clothes, and eventually, he borrowed his way into my apartment. I was not a woman who believed in love. But Tyler… Tyler was relentless. He was the Good morning, the Did you eat?, the Goodnight texts. He was the one who always had to send the last message. He remembered Valentine’s Day, our anniversaries, the little mundane milestones, slowly, painstakingly building a glittering illusion of romance around me. And now, with his own hands, he had shattered it. My chest felt like it had been carved out with a rusted spoon, but I have always been fiercely proud. I never believed in it anyway, I told myself. Tyler just slipped up and let the mask drop. He was nothing but a harsh lesson, a cosmic reminder that I was right to never expect anything from love. He was an empty, vacuous thing wrapped in attractive packaging. He was a songbird I kept in a gilded cage, and if the bird couldn’t stay loyal, I simply wouldn’t keep him. I am the one throwing him away. I repeated the mantra in my head, desperately trying to convince myself, but the tears blurred my vision anyway, hot and entirely out of my control. “Harper, please…” Tyler leaned in, trying to use his usual boyish charm to coax me down. Except this time, I took a step back. I dodged him. “I messed up. I swear on my life I’ll never do it again, okay?” I crossed my arms defensively over my chest, staring at him. I let the silence stretch out, heavy and suffocating. Tyler abruptly grabbed the water glass from the nightstand and hurled it onto the hardwood floor. It shattered into a hundred pieces. “Fine! Then let’s break up!” “Done.” My immediate, icy response must have stung his fragile ego. He looked stunned, and then, like a petulant toddler throwing a tantrum, he screamed, “Get the hell out! I never want to see you again!” I rolled my eyes, turned on my heel, and marched out to the living room to pack my bags. As a freelance fashion designer hustling from the ground up, I was constantly flying between coasts, living out of suitcases. I barely spent any time at home. If the post-pandemic industry slowdown hadn’t forced me to take a breather, I never would have been home long enough to discover my boyfriend’s little secret. I didn’t have much unpacked anyway. It took me exactly ten minutes to zip up my duffel bag. But right as my hand hit the front doorknob, I froze. Wait a damn minute. I pay the rent on this apartment! The realization hit me like a freight train, followed instantly by a wave of pure rage. I dropped my bag with a heavy thud and marched right back into the bedroom. When Tyler saw me walk back in, the corner of his mouth twitched upward into a smug little smirk. He fully believed I’d changed my mind, that I couldn’t bear to leave him. Once upon a time, I thought his boyish arrogance was somewhat endearing. Now, I just wondered how someone so young could be so utterly repulsive. I mirrored his smile, drew in a deep breath from my diaphragm, and said, “Get the hell out.” 02 The more I compromised, the more I felt like a fool. Standing in the center of my apartment, everywhere I looked, I saw traces of Tyler. Worse, the intrusive thoughts began to spiral: What if, while I was traveling for work, he brought other women back here? Into this bed? I physically recoiled from the mattress. The hair on the back of my neck stood up. Ugh! I was so angry. I shouldn’t have just kicked him out; I should have cursed him to hell and back and slapped that smug look off his face! And so, at two in the morning, I found myself rage-cleaning. I was crying, violently scrubbing the counters, and tossing all my bedsheets into the washing machine on the hottest cycle. Work had been practically stagnant lately. Life was already hard enough. Why the hell was I volunteering to suffer over love? “Smart women don’t catch feelings, they catch flights. Single, thriving, and building an empire!” Chanting this newly adopted life motto, I threw a couple of clean sweatshirts over my bare mattress and finally cried myself to sleep. The next morning, I was violently jolted awake by a FaceTime call from my best friend. I had texted her in the middle of the night to tell her I got cheated on. The second she woke up at ten a.m. and saw the message, she called. That’s the thing about true best friends; they show up when your world falls apart. “Hey,” I croaked, my eyes swollen to the size of golf balls. Even through the blur, I could see Blair looking at her screen like she’d just seen a ghost. “Holy shit! Harper, did you get jumped?” “Shut up. I’m mourning the death of my love life, do you mind?” She scoffed. “No, you’re looking at this all wrong. Ending a toxic relationship is a cause for celebration! I told you from day one that Tyler was a walking red flag…” She caught the bleak look on my face and quickly pivoted. “Okay, fine, fine, we can mourn. But I’m taking you to a much better place to do it!” An hour later, standing on the edge of a literal cliff with the wind violently whipping my hair across my face, I realized I didn’t know my best friend at all. When she said she was taking me out for a “plunge,” I assumed she meant that new subterranean speakeasy downtown. Bars. Cocktails. Dim lighting. Because of this assumption, I had spent an hour doing a full beat of makeup and poured myself into a custom-designed, emerald-green silk playsuit. It hugged every curve, the deep v-neck toeing the line between elegant and dangerous. Instead, Blair drove us two hours upstate to a gorge. To go bungee jumping. Cocktails and cliffs. Vastly different dress codes. Blair spent a solid minute looking me up and down. “Well. Thank God you wore shorts.” I knew what she meant—you can’t exactly strap into a harness in a miniskirt—but a few guys in the line next to us still let out low, sleazy chuckles. Instinctively, I whipped my head around to glare at whichever creep was laughing, but my eyes instantly locked onto someone else. He was taller than the rest of the guys in line. The kind of tall that commands a room without trying. He was wearing casual clothes, but as a designer, I understood the architecture of fabric; from the way his shirt draped across his shoulders and chest, I could tell he was built like a god. He had the natural, effortless proportions of a runway model, possessing more raw magnetism than any professional I’d ever dressed. It’s an occupational hazard. When I see a perfect canvas, I stare. Sensing my eyes on him, he looked right back at me. Suddenly, the tips of his ears twitched—the smallest, most imperceptible movement, like a golden retriever spotting its owner. The tiny detail delighted me. The corner of my mouth hooked up into a brazen smirk. He immediately brought a large, long-fingered hand up to cover his right ear, ducking his head slightly as a dark, dusty pink began to spread across his cheekbones. Blair aggressively elbowed my ribs, grinning like a menace. “Oh, he’s a ten. Let me wingman this for you.” Her eyes were practically stripping the poor guy naked. I quickly grabbed her arm and dragged her forward before she could embarrass me further. Unfortunately, the universe has a sick sense of humor. We had paid for a tandem jump because Blair claimed she was too scared to go alone. But the second we stepped onto the metal grating of the platform and she looked down into the gaping chasm below, she dug her heels in. She refused to jump. Almost everyone else was paired up. If I didn’t find a partner, I’d have to take off the harness and do the walk of shame back to the car. The instructor asked the crowd three times if anyone wanted to tandem jump with me. I saw a few of the sleazy guys eyeing me, thankfully held back by their glaring girlfriends. Just as I accepted that I had driven two hours upstate for nothing, the gorgeous guy stepped out of the crowd. “I’ll jump with her.” His voice was a deep, gravelly timbre that went straight to my knees. “Step closer to him!” the instructor barked. “Hold on tight!” 03 The instructor kept yelling at us, but we were standing so rigidly apart you could have driven a Honda Civic between us. Suddenly, Blair planted her hands on my lower back and shoved me forward. I collided hard against his chest. Maybe it was his solid muscle, or maybe it was my own momentum, but we actually bounced off each other for a second before his arms came up. It was a strange, electric sensation. My cheeks felt like they were on fire. Despite being with Tyler for a long time, our physical intimacy had been incredibly sparse. It stemmed from trauma. My mother had gotten pregnant with me out of wedlock before marrying my father, and she spent my entire childhood enduring the subtle, biting contempt of his family. Because of that environment, I grew up with a deep-seated, psychological aversion to letting men touch me. Tyler had tried, of course. He would put on the tacky lingerie sets he modeled online and parade around the bedroom. But all I could ever think about was how the stitching was uneven, how the structural integrity of the garment failed to support the torso, and how the fabric choice was cheap. I had worried about frustrating him. I had even quietly resolved to finally sleep with him next month for his birthday, and then… Thinking about it now, a bitter laugh bubbled up in my throat. Tyler wasn’t exactly suffering in my absence. He clearly had plenty of other girls keeping his bed warm. Suddenly, two massive hands gripped my waist. He pulled me flush against his body. He’s so hot. Literally. He felt like a furnace. Before I could process it, gravity vanished. We plummeted. I always thought I wasn’t afraid of dying. I thought I was cynical enough to accept the end. But as the wind ripped the air from my lungs, every biological instinct screamed, Survive! Fueled by sheer terror, I locked my arms around his neck, burying my face in his chest, clinging to him like if I pressed hard enough, I could fuse my skeleton with his and somehow be safer. A bungee jump only lasts a few seconds, but when you’re in freefall, time dilates into a terrifying eternity. Every time the cord snapped taut and we rebounded, I felt the heavy thud of his chest and heard a low, muffled groan rumble in his throat. I was mortified, but I was way too terrified to let go. Realizing he was making noise, he bit down hard on his lower lip to stifle it. Seeing his lips bruised to a dark, flush red made my face burn even hotter. When we were finally hauled back up, I had to sit on a nearby bench for ten minutes just to stop my legs from shaking. My jumping partner had vanished the second our boots touched solid ground. Damn. I should have asked for his Instagram, I thought, a wave of disappointment washing over me. I slapped both hands against my cheeks. Pull it together, Harper. What the hell is wrong with you today? A cold bottle of water suddenly appeared in my line of sight. I traced the arm holding it all the way up to his perfectly sculpted face. “Thank you,” I said softly. I took the water, noticing the cap had already been cracked open for me. I took a small sip, then pressed the condensation-covered plastic against my burning cheek. It was too hot out here. “Let me get your Venmo. I’ll pay you back for this,” I said, mustering my courage. “Everything at these tourist traps is a rip-off.” He froze, looking at me like a deer in headlights, before frantically waving his hands. “No, no, it’s not expensive! I can afford it.” His panicked desperation to assure me he wasn’t broke was equally endearing and frustrating. I blinked, then let out a soft laugh. Sometimes, men used awkwardness as a shield. He clearly knew I was trying to get his contact info and was politely shutting me down. He probably had a girlfriend and didn’t want the drama. Thinking about that, my crush on him deepened a little, even as my heart sank. There were genuinely good men in the world; my mother and I just had the rotten luck of never running into them. Blair finally came bounding over, looking entirely too pleased with herself as she unzipped her massive backpack. It was packed with craft beers and heavy snacks. No wonder she had complained about it weighing a ton when I offered to carry it earlier. “Are we having a picnic, Blair? Seriously?” I asked through gritted teeth. She ignored my murderous glare and immediately turned her aggressive friendliness onto the guy. “It’s way too heavy to hike back down with! Harper, you know how kind I am, I’m just forcing us to drink it to save your back. Come on, handsome, sit with us!” I fully expected him to make an excuse and leave. Instead, he stood there, genuinely contemplating it, before nodding seriously. “It is too heavy to carry back.” I’m usually a happy drunk. The only problem is that alcohol destroys my verbal filter. Three beers in, I completely forgot there was a stranger sitting with us. The fresh memory of Tyler’s betrayal came crashing down, and the floodgates opened. I ended up burying my face in Blair’s shoulder, sobbing uncontrollably. “Blair, is this karma? Did I reject too many guys in college? Was I too mean? Is that why the universe cursed me with a walking red flag the second I graduated?” Blair patted my back, looking at me with a mix of pity and exasperation. “I told you to be nicer. You could have just strung a few along for the ego boost, like everyone else does! College is supposed to be fun, but you chose to be a nun. Who are you blaming now?” “Wait. You didn’t have a boyfriend in college?” A deep, quiet voice cut through my tears. I sniffled, pulling back to look at his face. Through my blurry, tear-filled vision, I gave him a deeply serious answer. “No!” 04 A sudden, striking light flared in his eyes. “You didn’t?” he murmured to himself. “Wait a minute,” Blair interjected, zeroing in on him. “Why would you assume she had a boyfriend in college?” He stared at me for a long time. His eyes were dark, unreadable, and intensely focused. I tilted my head, waiting for his answer. Finally, a slow, devastating smile broke across his face. “Just a guess.” Oh, God. My heart skipped a violent beat. It was a genuine, unguarded smile. It transformed his already perfect face, making the sharp angles softer. The slight curve of his eyes made him look boyish and incredibly warm. It felt like the sun coming out from behind a cloud. Staring at beautiful men was clearly good for the soul. I felt spiritually cleansed. Halfway through the afternoon, Blair wandered off to find a bathroom. When ten minutes passed and she hadn’t returned, I got anxious and decided to go look for her. My face was still warm from the alcohol, but I wasn’t drunk anymore. I was lingering in that pleasant, hazy space between tipsy and entirely lucid. “Do you want me to come with you?” He started to stand up, concern etching his brow. I was fast. Before he could fully rise, I planted a hand firmly on his shoulder, pressing him back onto the picnic blanket. I told him to stay and guard the bags. It was weird. This was the first time we’d ever met, but there was an inexplicable familiarity to him. I didn’t even know his name yet, but my intuition screamed that he was the safest person on this mountain. I shook my head, marveling at how strange human connection was. You can see someone every day for years and feel miles apart, or you can meet a stranger and feel like you’ve known them for a lifetime. It was a shame I hadn’t met him sooner. The dirt trails leading into the woods were uneven and rocky. I slipped my expensive heels off, carrying them by the straps, and walked barefoot against the cool earth. I swayed slightly, taking deep breaths of the pine-scented air. With every exhale, it felt like the heavy knot of grief in my chest was loosening. Cell service in the mountains was practically nonexistent. I walked for ten minutes and couldn’t find the bathrooms. When I realized the path was getting narrower and the crowds had completely disappeared, a spike of anxiety hit me. I had wandered off the main trail. I spun around to head back. But as I rounded a bend, three men stepped out from the trees, blocking my path. The leader had bleached blonde hair and a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. He looked me up and down, his eyes lingering on the deep cut of my silk playsuit. “You lost, sweetheart? Want us to escort you back?” He reached a hand out toward my arm. I took a sharp step back, forcing my voice to stay level. “No. Thank you.” I kept my eyes pinned to the dirt, trying to sidestep them, but they shifted, forming a wall. “Hahaha! Did you hear that, boys? She’s got manners!” “Since you already thanked us, it’d be rude not to show you a good time, right?” The greasy, predatory grins on their faces made my stomach violently turn. Bile rose in my throat. Stay calm. Stay calm. Without breaking eye contact, I slid my hand behind my back and rapidly pressed the emergency SOS button on my iPhone. Then, I held out my phone and the gold watch on my wrist. I prayed this was just a mugging. I forced a tight, placating smile. “Take this. Consider it a gift. I won’t go to the cops, just let me walk past. Please.” The two guys in the back looked at the watch, hesitating, but the blonde leader’s eyes never left my chest. He spat his cigarette onto the dirt. “I have never seen a girl built like this in my life. I wouldn’t care if I died tomorrow, I’m taking this today.” The pure malice in his voice stripped away any illusion of safety. The hesitation in the other men vanished, replaced by the same sick, hungry look in their leader’s eyes. The situation was critical. I instantly changed tactics. I dropped my hands, adopting a shy, submissive posture, and softly suggested that just the blonde guy take me into the denser trees. His ego was massive. He genuinely believed his raw magnetism had won me over. He grinned ear to ear, waving off the grumbles of his friends. I picked him for two reasons: he was the most distracted by his own lust, and he was the skinniest and shortest of the three. Against him, I actually had a fighting chance. We walked deeper into the woods. At first, he was patient. But soon, his hands started reaching for me. I pushed his chest back. “I have HIV!” I blurted out, praying it would kill the mood. Instead, the adrenaline seemed to make him crazier. He laughed, a high, unhinged sound. “HIV? Let me give you an exam, then!” He lunged forward to rip my playsuit. In a split second, I swung the heel of my shoe with everything I had, smashing it squarely into the bridge of his nose, and bolted. “Fuck! You dead bitch! I’m going to kill you!” The sound of his screaming alerted the other two. Heavy footsteps crashed through the brush behind me. I ran like I had never run in my life. Sharp rocks and dead branches slashed at my bare feet, but I didn’t feel it. My brain shut down every system except one: Run! The wind roared in my ears, but the heavy thud of their boots was gaining on me. Suddenly, through the trees, I heard voices! The main trail was right above the embankment! Just make it up the hill. Just make it up the hill and you’re safe! My hand reached out for the dirt ledge— And a heavy hand locked around my ankle. “Help—!”

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The company was selling for two million dollars, and I was the absolute last person to find out. That morning, I went to work just like any other day. But when I pushed open the glass door to the conference room, it was packed. Carter Prescott sat at the head of the long mahogany table, flanked by three strangers in impeccably tailored suits. When he saw me, a micro-expression flickered across his eyes. A sudden, nervous shifting of the tectonic plates beneath his polished exterior. “Tessa, could you hold off on whatever you’re doing? We won’t be needing you in here.” I froze in the doorway. Splayed open on the center of the table was a thick legal document. I was only close enough to make out the bolded header at the top of the page. Letter of Intent for Equity Acquisition. 1. My name is Tessa Gallagher, and I am twenty-nine years old. Three years ago, I was a junior accountant at a no-name firm, pulling in maybe four thousand dollars a month. I rented a cramped, drafty apartment and spent two hours every day staring at the bleak tunnel walls of the L train commute. Carter Prescott was an older guy from my college. He had graduated four years ahead of me—a former frat president, the charismatic golden boy everyone assumed was destined to conquer the corporate world. We weren’t close. After graduation, we occasionally exchanged pleasantries in the alumni Facebook group. Nothing more. Until one night, three years ago, when he asked me out to dinner out of the blue. “Tessa, I’m launching a startup. Direct-to-consumer e-commerce,” he said, casually swirling his bourbon. The ice clinked against the glass, a sharp, confident sound. “You’re a numbers girl. You want in?” I blinked, taken aback. “Carter, I… I don’t know the first thing about e-commerce.” “You don’t need to.” He offered a brilliant, disarming smile. “You manage the money, I manage the business. We go fifty-fifty.” Fifty-fifty. Those two words dropped like heavy stones into the stagnant pond of my life. I was in a dark place back then. I had just gone through a brutal breakup, my job was a dead-end spreadsheet nightmare, and I was walking through my days in a gray, numbing fog, wondering if this was all life had to offer. Carter’s words felt like a lifeline. A blinding beam of light. “I don’t have much capital, Carter,” I admitted, my voice small. “How much do you have?” “In savings? Maybe… fifteen grand.” He nodded slowly. “Not enough. Seed capital needs to be at least two hundred thousand.” My heart plummeted into my stomach. “But—” He leaned across the table, his eyes locked on mine. “I’ll put up a hundred, and you put up a hundred. Whatever you’re short, maybe you can borrow from your folks.” Borrow from my folks. My parents were blue-collar workers. They had spent their entire lives scraping by, clipping coupons, putting away whatever meager dollars they could. And yet, my heart was racing. Fifty-fifty. My own boss. A chance to completely rewrite the trajectory of my life. Those phrases echoed in my skull all night, keeping me wide awake. The next morning, I called my mother. “Mom, I want to start a business.” The line was quiet for a long, agonizing stretch. “How much do you need?” “…A hundred thousand.” She didn’t yell. She didn’t interrogate me. A week later, the funds cleared into my checking account. Only much later did I learn the anatomy of that money. It was their entire retirement fund. It was loans begged from skeptical aunts and uncles. It was a second mortgage taken out on the small, vinyl-sided house I grew up in. A hundred thousand dollars. My parents had never seen that much money in their entire lives. They placed it in my hands. And I placed it in Carter’s. The day we signed the paperwork, Carter took me to an upscale steakhouse to celebrate. “Come on, Tessa. Drink up! To our partnership!” I was a lightweight, but I was riding such a high that night. Every time he raised his glass to me, I drank. One glass. Two. Three. The rest of the evening blurred at the edges, smudged like wet ink. I only remember him sliding a stack of stapled papers across the white tablecloth. “Just sign here. It’s just a formality.” I squinted at the pages. The dense, microscopic legalese swam before my eyes under the dim, moody restaurant lighting. “What is this exactly…?” “The equity agreement.” He practically placed the heavy, gold-trimmed pen into my fingers. “See right there? Your hundred grand buys fifty percent. It’s all spelled out in black and white.” I took the pen. I signed my name. He smiled, a wide, triumphant thing, slipping the papers back into his leather briefcase before clapping a warm hand on my shoulder. “From today on, Tessa, we’re partners.” Partners. I believed that word with my whole soul for three years. Getting the company off the ground was a nightmare. We leased a tiny, windowless six-hundred-square-foot office that baked in the July heat and felt like a meat locker in January. Carter handled the sourcing and client relations; I ran the finances, the payroll, the inventory logs. Along with two part-time customer service reps, we were the entire operation. I arrived at eight in the morning and rarely saw the outside of the building before midnight. My salary? Zero. Carter had told me, “We’re in the trenches right now. We shouldn’t pull salaries until we’re safely in the black.” It made sense to me. It was my company, too. The exhaustion would pay off. The blood and sweat were investments. In our first year, we bled thirty thousand dollars. Carter was a wreck, pacing the floor, pulling his hair out, fueled by black coffee and sheer panic. “Tessa, how much runway do we have left?” “Less than forty grand in the operating account.” He lit a cigarette right there in the office, staring at me through the blue smoke. “Do you have any personal cash left?” I hesitated. “I… I have a little.” It was a downpayment I had been secretly saving for a modest condo. Thirty thousand dollars. “Could you float it to the company?” He stubbed the cigarette out violently. “Just as a bridge loan. Once we bounce back, I’ll pay you back double.” I didn’t answer right away. “Tessa, I know I have no right to ask this.” He sighed, running a hand over his face, looking older, broken. “But we are partners. If this ship sinks, we both drown.” Partners. There was that word again. The next morning, I wired thirty thousand dollars into the corporate account. Carter texted me: “Thank you. I owe you. I won’t forget this.” I won’t forget this. I believed him. In year two, we finally hit profitability. In year three, our revenue tripled. At the beginning of this year, Carter pulled me aside and mentioned, offhand, that a larger conglomerate was sniffing around, looking to acquire us. “How much are they offering?” I asked, my pulse quickening. “Still hashing out the details.” He gave me a sly, conspiratorial grin. “But it won’t be a small number, I promise you that.” I thought the golden days had finally arrived. I thought three years of relentless, grinding sacrifice were about to bear fruit. I thought— Until today. Standing in the doorway of the conference room, staring at the letter of intent. Two million dollars. The company was worth two million. I put in a hundred thousand for fifty percent. My cut should be one million dollars. Plus the thirty thousand bridge loan. One million, thirty thousand dollars. I could finally pay my parents back. I could clear their mortgage. I could buy that condo. I could breathe. But the way Carter was looking at me—his eyes cold, flat, devoid of the warmth he usually weaponized—made the hairs on my arms stand up. “Tessa, wait outside,” he said. His voice wasn’t loud, but it had the sharp, unforgiving edge of a guillotine. I stood rooted to the carpet. I didn’t move. “Outside.” I looked at him. I looked at the three men in suits. I looked at the papers on the table. “Carter, I’m a shareholder. Why am I being excluded from this meeting?” The room went dead silent for one agonizing second. Carter laughed. It was a strange, hollow sound. The kind of laugh you’d give a toddler who just said something absurdly naive. “A shareholder?” He pushed his chair back and stood up, walking slowly toward me. “Tessa, since when were you a shareholder?” 2. The words didn’t compute. My brain refused to process the syllables. “Carter, what did you just say?” He sighed, a heavy, performative exhalation of patience, like he was dealing with a difficult child. “The boardroom isn’t the place for this. My office. Now.” He turned, offered a slick apology to the suits, and practically herded me down the hallway. My mind was a violent storm of static. Since when were you a shareholder? Three years ago, he said it to my face. Fifty-fifty. I put up the cash. I signed the contract. I— “Sit.” Carter’s corner office was ten times the size of our original freezing room. Genuine leather sofas. A massive oak desk. Floor-to-ceiling windows framing the jagged, beautiful Chicago skyline. Half of this belonged to me. Didn’t it? I sat down, my knees shaking slightly, and looked up at him. “Carter, the company is being acquired. Why was I kept in the dark?” “It’s strictly confidential business information.” “I am an equity partner.” Carter opened a sleek mahogany drawer and pulled out a manila folder, dropping it onto the desk in front of me. “Read it yourself.” My fingers trembled as I flipped the cover open. Inside was a contract. My name. My signature. But the title at the top of the page— “A Promissory Note?” My voice cracked, fragile and thin in the vast, quiet room. The black ink was damning. It clearly stated: Tessa Gallagher loans Carter Prescott the sum of $100,000, at an annual interest rate of 6%, for a term of three years. What loan? I signed an equity agreement! “Carter, this is wrong. I signed an operating agreement. One hundred thousand for fifty percent equity—” “Read it again. Carefully,” he said, his tone utterly devoid of emotion. I stared at the paper, reading word by agonizing word. Borrower: Carter Prescott. Lender: Tessa Gallagher. Principal Amount: $100,000. Term: 36 Months. Interest: 6% APR. Repayment: Lump sum of principal and accrued interest at maturity. At the very bottom, my signature. It was my handwriting. Unmistakable. But I remembered… The memory crashed into me like a physical blow. The steakhouse. The clinking glasses. The toasts. The alcohol softening the edges of the room. He had pushed the papers toward me. Just sign here. It’s just a formality. I had squinted at the dense text, the letters swaying under the dim lights… “Coming back to you?” Carter’s voice pulled me out of the flashback. I looked up at him, my vision blurring with hot, furious tears. “You set me up.” “What do you mean, set you up?” He leaned back in his plush executive chair, crossing his legs casually. “It’s right there in black and white. You signed it yourself. How is that a setup?” “You got me drunk—” “I bought you dinner. You drank of your own free will. Is that my fault?” “You told me it was an equity agreement—” “It doesn’t matter what I said, Tessa. It matters what’s in the contract.” He smiled, a tight, patronizing smirk, like a professor lecturing a freshman who had failed an open-book exam. “You’re an accountant, Tessa. You work in finance. You of all people should know to read a contract before you put your name on it. That’s just basic common sense, isn’t it?” Ice flooded my veins. Three years. Three entire years of my youth. I thought I was an owner. I was just a creditor. I thought we were partners. I was just unpaid labor. I thought… “You—” I opened my mouth, but the words withered in my throat. A massive, suffocating lump formed, choking off my air. Carter picked up a silver pen from his desk and twirled it between his fingers. “Alright, glad we cleared that up. A hundred grand principal, plus three years of six percent interest. That comes out to $118,000. I’ll cut you a check for every last cent.” A hundred and eighteen thousand dollars. I gave him a hundred grand, poured three years of my blood and sanity into this place, and I was walking away with eighteen thousand dollars in “profit.” While he was pocketing two million dollars. And keeping all of it. “What about the thirty thousand?” My voice sounded like dry leaves scraping across concrete. “What thirty thousand?” “Our first year. We almost went under. I gave the company thirty thousand dollars.” “Ah, right. That thirty grand.” He nodded slowly. “I remember. I drafted a note for that one, too.” He opened another drawer and pulled out a second sheet of paper. Borrower: The Company. Lender: Tessa Gallagher. Principal: $30,000. Term: 12 Months. Interest: 5%. Twelve months? That had expired two years ago. “The company already paid that back.” “What? No, I never received—” “It was wired to your personal account. Check your bank app.” With trembling, clumsy fingers, I pulled out my phone. I opened my banking app, scrolling furiously back through the digital archives to two years ago. There it was. Incoming Transfer: $31,500. Memo: Loan Repayment. I had absolutely no memory of seeing it. Back then, I was managing hundreds of incoming and outgoing transactions a day for the business. I was so exhausted I was practically sleepwalking. I never even checked my personal balances… “See?” Carter stood up, walking over to the floor-to-ceiling windows, turning his back to me. “Tessa, because we go way back, because we’re alumni, I calculated the interest perfectly. Down to the penny. If you were anyone else, I would have found a way to bleed you dry.” He turned back to face me, his silhouette framed by the blinding city sky. “What more do you want?” I sat there, my entire body vibrating. It wasn’t the cold. It was pure, unadulterated rage. Three years. I hadn’t taken a single vacation day. I hadn’t received a single paycheck. I had bet my parents’ retirement, the kindness of my relatives, and my childhood home on this company. And him? He was walking away with two million dollars, without tossing me a single crumb. He called me a creditor. He said black and white. He said— “Carter.” My voice dropped to a terrifying whisper. “Where is my salary for the last three years?” “What salary?” “I worked here for three years. Full-time. I never took a dime.” “You agreed to that. You said we shouldn’t pull salaries until we were established.” “Did you pull a salary?” Carter flinched. Just barely. “I’m the CEO—” “How much did you pay yourself?” “That’s confidential corporate—” “I did the books, Carter. You cut yourself five thousand dollars a month.” I stood up, locking eyes with him. “Three years. A hundred and eighty thousand dollars. And that’s not counting your ‘business expenses,’ the luxury dinners, the consulting fees, the mileage.” “You—” “If I wasn’t an owner, if I wasn’t a partner, why the hell did you get a salary and I didn’t?” Carter’s face hardened, the charming mask finally slipping to reveal the ugliness underneath. “Don’t push your luck, Tessa.” “I’m pushing my luck?” I took a step toward him. “You trick me into signing a loan, you steal my equity, you work me like a dog for free for three years, and I’m pushing my luck?” “Trick you? Where’s your proof?” He closed the distance between us, towering over me, looking down his nose. “Let me teach you a lesson about the real world, Tessa. Without proof, it never happened.” “You said fifty-fifty—” “Hearsay.” “You said we were partners—” “Not on the paper.” “You handed it to me and called it an equity agreement—” “You didn’t read it. Whose fault is that?” With every word, an icy anchor dragged my heart deeper into the abyss. He was right. I had no proof. I didn’t record him. I had no text messages confirming the split. I had no witnesses. All I had was a legally binding promissory note with my signature on it. And a shattered, foolish heart. “Get out.” Carter walked over and pulled the heavy oak door open. “I’ll wire the $118,000 next week. Take the money, and don’t ever come back here.” I stood frozen in the center of the room. “Unless—” He let out a dark, mocking chuckle. “You want to sue me?” Sue him. Could I win? He had the contracts. He had the bank statements. He had the “black and white.” What did I have? “Tessa, because you did me a solid in the early days, I’ll give you one last piece of advice.” He leaned in close, his voice dropping to a harsh, condescending whisper. “You were a community college transfer. If I hadn’t dragged you up with me, do you really think you’d be sitting in a high-rise right now? Know your place. Take the cash and walk away. It’s better for everyone.” Community college transfer. Dragged you up. Know your place. The words slid into my ribs like a switchblade. I turned on my heel and walked out of his office. I didn’t look back. I didn’t know what I was going to do next. But I knew one thing with absolute, terrifying clarity. This wasn’t over. 3. It was nine o’clock at night by the time I unlocked the door to my apartment. I didn’t turn on the lights. I just collapsed onto the sofa, staring blankly up at the popcorn ceiling, letting the silence press against my eardrums. One image kept playing in my head on a torturous loop. Carter pushing that contract across the white tablecloth, his pearly smile glinting. “Black and white.” I squeezed my eyes shut, forcing myself to mentally rewind to that night three years ago. The restaurant. The private booth. The low, amber lighting. He kept pouring the wine. “Come on, Tessa, to our partnership. Drink up.” “Carter, I really shouldn’t have more…” “Nonsense, we’re celebrating! Just a sip.” One glass. Two glasses. Three. My memory was hazy, fractured. He slid the papers across the table. “Just sign here. It’s just a formality.” “What is this…?” “The equity agreement. Look, a hundred grand gets you fifty percent.” I had taken the pen. But had I actually read it? The letters had been a blurry swarm of black ants. All I registered were the numbers “$100,000” and “50%”… My eyes snapped open in the dark. Wait. He had said the words “equity agreement.” He had said “50%.” But what was actually printed on that specific piece of paper I signed? I scrambled off the couch, tearing into my bedroom closet, pulling out the fireproof lockbox where I kept my copies of the paperwork. I found the file. Promissory Note. Black and white. But if the paper in my hand was a promissory note, what happened to the “equity agreement” he kept talking about? Staring at the crisp legal document, a sickening realization washed over me. What if there never was an equity agreement? What if he had planned to defraud me from the very first dinner? My phone buzzed on the nightstand, jarring me. Mom. I stared at the glowing screen, my throat constricting. I didn’t know how to speak to her. “Hey, Mom,” I managed to croak. “Did you eat?” “How are things at the office?” she chirped, completely bypassing the small talk. “Carter told me the company is getting acquired! Does that mean you get a big payout?” The blood drained from my face. “Mom… how do you know about the acquisition?” “Carter told me! He called me a couple of days ago to thank me again for supporting your startup.” Carter called my mother? “What… what exactly did he say?” “He said the business is doing incredible, and it’s all thanks to your hard work. He told me not to worry about a thing. He said once the sale goes through, you’re going to get a massive payday, and we can finally pay off the mortgage on the house.” My hand gripped the phone so hard my knuckles turned white. He called my mother to tell her I was getting a payout. While planning to look me dead in the eye and tell me I was nothing but a creditor. What the hell was he playing at? “Tessa? Honey, are you there?” “I’m here… Mom, I have to go. Something came up at work.” I hung up the phone and sank to the floor, my back against the bedframe. Why would he call my mother?

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When the adopted golden boy discovered I was the actual biological heir, he left a cynical little memoir titled The Stand-In’s Guide to High Society on my bed and caught the next flight to Europe. He claimed he needed to “find the meaning of life.” What he really meant was that he was leaving me to fulfill his contractual obligation—marrying into the Sinclair dynasty. My biological parents, too terrified to discipline the boy they’d raised as their own, simply yanked me out of the working-class diner I’d grown up in. They spent an exorbitant amount of money on etiquette coaches to scrub the blue-collar off me in a month, just in time to hand me over as the sacrificial lamb for the Sinclair corporate merger. Ten years later, having bled the world dry of its thrills, the golden boy returned. He was just as reckless and radiant as he was a decade ago. He walked right up to thirty-two-year-old Valerie Sinclair and handed her a glass jar filled with sand. “Every grain in here is a moment I spent missing you,” he whispered. I watched Valerie’s spine turn to steel, her entire body rigid. Then, Tristan turned his blinding, confident smile toward me. “I’m back. You can clock out now, understudy.” When Tristan left ten years ago, twenty-two-year-old Valerie Sinclair had lost half her soul. I couldn’t help but wonder. How would the cold, ruthless, notoriously bloodthirsty CEO of Sinclair Enterprises react to him now? 1 Valerie tossed the jar of sand onto the passenger seat without a second glance. Taking the cue, I opened the rear door and slid into the back. Valerie froze, her hand hovering over the door handle. “What are you doing?” I knew exactly what she was asking. It was a silent language we had forged over ten years of surviving the trenches together. “We had an agreement when we got married,” I said evenly, looking out the tinted window. “I told you I would never delude myself into thinking I could take Tristan’s place.” A decade ago, Tristan vanished on the eve of the engagement. Panicked, my biological parents dragged me out of obscurity, hastily introduced me to society, and shoved me down the aisle to save the merger. On our wedding night, Valerie drank herself into oblivion. She spent the entire night curled on the bathroom floor, sobbing Tristan’s name into the tiles. Over the next ten years, while Tristan was dancing at luaus in Hawaii, I was swallowing my pride, playing the submissive husband to appease her wicked stepmother. While Tristan was taking selfies with penguins in Antarctica, I was drinking myself into a bleeding ulcer at corporate dinners to secure the first major contract for her new subsidiary. He chased the Northern Lights. He watched sunsets over the Serengeti. I, meanwhile, navigated the lethal crossfire of the Sinclair family succession wars. In the process, I lost our first unborn child. Then our second. I even had a kidnapper’s blade pressed so hard against my throat it left a silver scar. Tristan got ten years of unbridled freedom, and now he had the audacity to waltz back in and tell me to pack my bags. He always wanted the fruit without planting the tree. What gave him the right? Valerie’s lips parted at my words. “Cole, actually, we…” Before she could finish the sentence, her phone rang. Tristan’s name lit up the dashboard console. The Bluetooth was connected. Valerie tapped the screen to answer. “Val,” Tristan’s voice filled the quiet of the luxury sedan, breathless and practically vibrating with shy excitement. “Mom and Dad said you guys still don’t have kids.” A pause. “Is it… is it because you were waiting for me?” “Tristan, what on earth are you talking about!” My mother’s voice panicked in the background, trying to snatch the phone. The topic of children was a graveyard in my mind. A permanent, suffocating taboo. When Valerie was twenty-five, she got pregnant for the first time. Her stepmother had her prenatal vitamins swapped with abortifacients. At twenty-eight, she got pregnant again. I was paranoid. I guarded her like a hawk, keeping her isolated and safe until the six-month mark. But somehow, a slow-acting toxin made its way into her system. The baby’s heart simply stopped beating. The day they induced labor to deliver our stillborn, I collapsed in the sterile hospital room, screaming until my vocal cords tore. Valerie had held me on that linoleum floor, her tears soaking my hospital gown, swearing on her life that she would never let anyone hurt us again. And she kept her word. In three years, she orchestrated a corporate massacre, exiling her stepmother and half-sister, seizing total control of the Sinclair empire. This year, at thirty-two, she was named the country’s top CEO. In her first major broadcast interview, she looked right into the camera and offered a polite, sanitized expression of gratitude for my “unwavering support.” A week after that interview aired, Tristan came home. In the rearview mirror, Valerie saw the color drain from my face. She jammed her finger against the screen, killing the call. “Cole,” she started, her voice tight. “Tristan doesn’t know what happened during those ten years. Don’t take it to heart.” “He’s always been sheltered,” she continued, her knuckles white on the steering wheel. “He speaks without thinking. He’s just impulsive…” “Enough,” I snapped, the exhaustion settling deep into my bones. “Since when does the ruthless Valerie Sinclair stumble over her words?” I let out a dry, hollow laugh. “Look at you… bending over backward to make excuses for a grown man.” Valerie’s jaw clenched. She swerved the car violently, throwing it into park on the shoulder of the road. “Cole. Are you still punishing me for what happened back then?” 2 During our first year of marriage, Valerie’s half-sister suddenly broke out in severe hives. Diane, Valerie’s stepmother, immediately pointed the finger at me, claiming I had snuck peanut oil into the kitchen’s baking supplies. Diane’s private security detail dragged me into the foyer. They forced me to my knees on the cold marble floor. I looked up at Valerie. I pleaded with my eyes. She had been with me the entire afternoon; she knew with absolute certainty that I was innocent. But Valerie just stood there, staring at the floor, absolutely silent. That day, two overgrown thugs slapped me across the face twenty times. By the time they were done, my mouth was pooling with blood, my vision swimming, my cheeks swollen and bruised purple. When we finally returned to our bedroom, Valerie handed me two ice packs, her eyes brimming with guilt. “The timing isn’t right yet to strike back. I hope you can understand.” Understand. That single word forced me to swallow a mouthful of blood and humiliation. Later that night, the throbbing pain woke me. I padded downstairs to the kitchen for more ice. That’s when I heard Valerie on the phone in the study. “Thank God it wasn’t Tristan… he wouldn’t have been able to handle it.” I froze in the dark hallway. The idea that love could be cultivated, that shared trauma forged an unbreakable bond—what a pathetic, laughable delusion. To this day, Valerie had no idea I heard her say that. Now, stinging from my sarcasm in the car, she stepped out onto the asphalt, running a frustrated hand through her hair. Right on cue, Tristan called again. She answered, but in her flustered state, she forgot to switch off the Bluetooth. Trapped in the backseat, I was forced to listen to Tristan’s sickeningly sweet voice in surround sound. “Val… can you come over and keep me company tonight?” She scrambled to kill the audio. Through the tinted glass, I watched Valerie pacing on the shoulder of the road, phone pressed to her ear, kicking at loose gravel. That nervous, frantic energy—she looked exactly like the lovesick twenty-two-year-old girl I met a decade ago. So this was the power of the ghost of her first love. It reduced a titan of industry to a blushing teenager. Ten minutes later, she climbed back into the driver’s seat, looking drained. “Cole, I’m going to drop you off at the house first.” “Tonight, I might need to…” “Save it,” I cut her off, my voice like ice. I really didn’t want to hear whatever garbage excuse she was about to invent to go see him. Realizing my tone was slipping, I took a breath and forced a mask of indifference. “You’re the CEO, Valerie. You don’t have to report to your subordinates.” The cold, corporate distance in my voice wasn’t lost on her. She slammed the palm of her hand against the steering wheel. “Cole, you have spent ten years building walls against me. Are you really that desperate to draw a line in the sand the second things get complicated?” It was comical, really. She was the one dancing on the borders of our marriage, yet she was casting me as the villain. I turned my head toward the window, fiercely swallowing the lump of emotion rising in my throat. If there was one thing ten years in this viper’s nest had taught me, it was that you can lose the battle, but you never lose your dignity. While the silence in the car thickened, my mother called. “Cole, sweetheart,” Helen’s voice was cloying. “Your father and I aren’t very good with words, so we had to ask Valerie to come over and help talk Tristan off the ledge.” “Can you just give your brother a little grace? He’s still young. He’ll understand eventually.” I scoffed. It was genuinely absurd. Thirty years old, and he’s still a child? Then why, ten years ago, when they were shoving me into this arranged marriage, did they tell me: “You’re a grown man now, Cole. It’s time you learned to shoulder the family’s burdens.” When I spoke, my voice was dead. “Mom. It’s comforting to know that you and Dad haven’t changed a bit. Still bending over backward to wipe Tristan’s messes.” “Though, I have to admit, your tone is a lot gentler than it used to be.” I was eighteen when they tracked me down and brought me back to the Prescott estate. But Tristan couldn’t tolerate my existence. He framed me, repeatedly. His tactics were sloppy, almost childish, but my biological parents chose to believe him every single time. The final straw was when he threw himself down a flight of stairs and claimed I pushed him. My father didn’t ask a single question before he backhanded me across the face. My mother wept, calling me vicious, screaming that they never should have brought the trash out of the gutters. Without asking what I wanted, they packed my bags and exiled me back to my adoptive mother’s diner. It wasn’t until their precious Tristan ran away from his wedding that they remembered their real son was available for emergency use. Looking back, my actual time living as a member of their family amounted to little more than a year. “Cole, do you really hate us that much?” my mother asked, sounding genuinely shocked. Her question stunned me. I thought my utter apathy toward them was glaringly obvious. Had a decade of peace without Tristan really caused them to forget who did what to whom? 3 Valerie didn’t come home that night. I wasn’t surprised. My head throbbed relentlessly until dawn as I sat in the dark, drafting a divorce agreement that finally felt fair. Switched at birth, dragged into high society, discarded like trash, then blackmailed into marriage… I never had a choice in my own life. At the very least, checking out of this marriage could be my decision. At 9:00 AM, Valerie called. “About last night…” “Val, come eat! I made your eggs exactly how you like them.” Tristan’s voice drifted through the receiver, close enough to make my stomach turn. “I’m not interested,” I interrupted, my tone flat. I had imagined a hundred different scenarios of what their “last night” entailed, and I didn’t want to hear a single one confirmed. “Cole, do you have to be this cold?” I stayed silent, letting the dead air hang. Through the line, I heard Tristan step closer to the phone. “Val, don’t fight with him.” “If my brother really can’t stand the sight of me, I can just leave for another ten years.” “Don’t be ridiculous,” Valerie said softly, her voice laced with comfort. Then, directing her words back to the phone: “There’s a Prescott family dinner in a few hours. I want you there.” “You have to come, Cole!” Tristan shouted in the background, his voice practically singing with triumph. I hung up. My grip on the phone was tight enough to crack the screen. Go? Of course I’m going. They were my parents, my wife. What the hell did I have to be afraid of? Two hours later, draped in bespoke Tom Ford, I walked into the Prescott family estate like I owned it. I found Tristan sitting cross-legged on the plush sofa, barefoot, wearing silk pajamas with his hair perfectly tousled. He was holding a stack of glossy photographs, animatedly describing his worldly adventures to the three people hanging onto his every word. When Tristan saw me, he paused. Then, he covered his mouth and let out a bright, mocking laugh. “Cole, it’s just a family lunch. Why are you dressed in full battle armor?” “Don’t tell me you’re so insecure you feel the need to compete with me over Sunday brunch?” I stopped in my tracks. My fingers twitched, curling into fists at my sides. But I forced the corners of my mouth up into a condescending smirk. “Well, seeing as you spent at least forty minutes blending your tinted moisturizer this morning, someone is clearly competing.” “I’m not like you, Tristan. If a paparazzo snaps a photo of me looking like I just rolled out of a frat house, Sinclair Enterprises’ stock takes a hit.” “You—!” Tristan shot up from the sofa. His eyes instantly went red, tears welling up with practiced precision. “You’re nothing but a thief who stole my life while I was gone! How dare you stand there and flaunt it?” Hearing the word thief fall from the lips of the fake son was the height of black comedy. I glanced at my biological parents, who looked utterly paralyzed, and let out a genuine, booming laugh. “A thief? Let’s get the record straight on who stole what.” “When it suited you, you paraded around as the Prescott heir, claiming the trust fund and the legacy belonged to you.” “But when things got tough, suddenly you were ‘just Tristan,’ a free spirit who needed to find his own path.” “You bolted, leaving me to clean up your mess and marry into a goddamn warzone! You think I wanted any of this?” “Cole!” Valerie’s voice cut through the room like a whip. She had been silent until now. “Do you have to be so vicious about your regrets?” Her eyes were bloodshot. She stormed across the rug, closing the distance between us, and raised her right hand high in the air. I tilted my chin up, locking eyes with her, refusing to back down an inch. Do it, I thought. One slap to wake me up from a ten-year nightmare. “Val, don’t!” Tristan threw himself at Valerie from behind, wrapping his arms around her waist, his voice choking with sobs. “We cleared the air about our feelings last night. That’s enough for me.” “If you fight with my brother because of me, I’ll never forgive myself.” Our feelings? My brain short-circuited. Why didn’t she step away from his touch? The words bypassed my brain and tore out of my throat. “You’re real tough when it comes to me, Val.” “But the second Tristan whimpers, you roll over like a well-trained dog!” SMACK. The sound echoed through the high ceilings of the living room. The sting blossomed hot and sharp across my cheek. From behind Valerie’s shoulder, Tristan peeked out. The corner of his mouth twitched into a victorious smirk. “Cole,” my mother gasped, rushing forward, her trembling hands reaching for my bruised face. “Don’t touch me!” I roared, stepping back so violently I nearly tipped over. I put ten feet of distance between me and the rest of them. I locked eyes with Valerie, articulating every word with venomous clarity. “I want a divorce, Valerie. Ten years of my life. Two hundred million dollars. I think that’s a bargain.” Valerie’s pupils blew wide. She froze in place, staring at me as if the ground had just opened up and swallowed her. 4 “Two hundred million! Are you out of your mind?!” Tristan was the first to recover. “Valerie made that money. With Dad’s help. What did you ever do?” “You got to play billionaire playboy for a decade. You’ve taken enough. You have no right to ask for a dime!” I didn’t even acknowledge Tristan’s existence. My eyes were fixed on Valerie. “Two hundred million, Val. It buys you a clean slate, total control of your empire, and the freedom to marry the love of your life. It’s the perfect ending. You’re getting a steal.” “Cole…” Valerie took a step toward me, her movements frantic but hesitant, like she was approaching a wild animal. I steadied my breathing and held up a hand, stopping her in her tracks. “Let’s just rip the band-aid off.” “This was a transaction from day one. Now, the contract is up. We go our separate ways.” Before I turned toward the grand mahogany doors, I looked at the four of them one last time. “The greatest tragedy of my life wasn’t growing up poor. It was being found by the Prescotts.” If I had never been given this cursed last name, I would have stayed in that small town. I would have helped my adoptive mother run her diner. Maybe she wouldn’t have been working the late shift alone. Maybe the carbon monoxide leak wouldn’t have taken her. If I hadn’t been dragged into this gilded cage, the one person in the world who actually loved me would still be alive. When I woke up in my hotel room the next morning, my phone was bricked with notifications. 99+ missed calls. 99+ texts. “Cole, honey, I know you were just speaking out of anger.” — Helen. “Cole. I am not agreeing to a divorce. This is not a unilateral decision.” — Valerie. “Son, about the past… your mother and I are deeply sorry.” — Arthur. I scoffed at the ceiling. A slap rings loud enough to shatter glass, but they think a text message can sweep up the shards. I kept scrolling until I hit a message from Tristan. “You think walking away makes you the bigger person? Playing the tragic victim just to get her attention? Pathetic.” “If you actually think ten years of a fake marriage means you own her heart, you’re delusional.” “She told me everything last night. She only married you to use you as a human shield until it was safe for me to come back.” “You were never going to win, Cole.” I stopped breathing. She said that? Tristan’s text was a serrated blade, cutting away the last scraps of my dignity. To soothe her fragile first love, she had completely obliterated me. Everything I did yesterday, my desperate attempt to leave with my head held high—in Tristan’s eyes, I was just a dancing clown in a circus he owned. I forced my hands to stop shaking. I opened my email and forwarded the finalized divorce agreement and power of attorney to my legal team. Then, I booked the first international flight out of JFK. When I was done, I took a screenshot of Tristan’s text and sent it to Valerie. “Your taste in men is slipping, Val. And so is your subtlety.” Block. Power off. I was in the back of a black car heading to the airport when my oldest friend called me on a burner line. “Cole. Look at Twitter. Right now.” 5 I clicked the link. A high-res photo of Tristan wrapping his arms around Valerie from behind was plastered across the front page of every gossip site. #TrueLoveReturns: Heir Cole Prescott Replaced? was trending at number one. The comments were a bloodbath. “I mean, what powerful woman wouldn’t want to go back to her high school sweetheart?” “Rumor has it she slapped Cole right in front of Tristan yesterday. Tell me who the real alpha is.” “Tristan was her first love. I bet Cole orchestrated some dark twisted shit to run him out of town ten years ago.” The photo was too crisp, the angle too perfect to be a paparazzo hiding in the bushes. Someone inside that house had leaked it. I switched over to a local news livestream. A swarm of reporters had barricaded the gates of the Prescott estate. “Tristan! Why did you leave ten years ago?” “Are you back to reclaim Valerie Sinclair?” On screen, Valerie emerged from the gates. One hand firmly shielded Tristan’s face, while the other physically pushed a microphone away. She personally escorted him into the back of her Maybach, guarding him like he was made of spun glass, terrified the world might crack him. I locked my phone and threw it onto the leather seat. Breathe in. Breathe out. Do not cry. Crying just gives the vultures better lighting. The second I stepped out at the departures curb, I made a beeline for the VIP security checkpoint. But a voice pierced the chaos. “There he is! That’s Cole Prescott!” It was an ambush. A tidal wave of bodies, cameras, and microphones crashed over me. “Mr. Prescott! How does it feel to be publicly discarded?” “Is it true Tristan is the real heir and you’re the fraud?” “Are you running away because you’re scared of a fight?” Without Valerie’s private security to shield me, the press turned feral. “Back off!” I yelled, pushing my suitcase forward like a battering ram. They didn’t budge. “Mr. Prescott, sources say you used blackmail to force Tristan out ten years ago so you could marry into the Sinclair fortune. Care to comment?” My eyes went wild. I glared at the reporter holding a mic to my chin. “That is defamatory garbage, and I will sue you for everything you own!” “Touched a nerve, Mr. Prescott? Is the guilt getting to you?” another shouted, fanning the flames. “What’s your strategy now that the real golden boy is back?” A hundred mouths. A hundred knives plunging straight into my chest. The flashes strobed, blinding me, waiting for me to crack, waiting for the money shot. I didn’t know how to fight this. The family that was supposed to protect me was currently playing bodyguard for the man who ruined my life. I gritted my teeth, shoving blindly toward the sliding glass doors, shouting for airport security. Travelers stopped, pulling out their phones, pointing and whispering. “Is that the guy whose billionaire wife is cheating on him with his brother?” “Look at him run. You marry for money, you get thrown out with the trash. What did he expect?” Suddenly, someone in the crush shoved me hard from behind. My ankle gave out. I lost my center of gravity and went down hard. My palms hit the concrete, ripping the skin, and I landed squarely on my knees in front of thirty rolling cameras. In that split second, a decade of degradation, grief, and unadulterated rage clawed up my throat. I knew exactly what the headlines would say in an hour. Trophy Husband Begs on His Knees. A single, heavy tear broke free, splashing onto the gray pavement. I swiped it away instantly. I pushed myself up, brushing off my suit with agonizing slowness, acting as if I had just tripped over my own shoelaces. They had their photo. The mob backed off slightly. My ankle screamed with every step, but I lifted my chin, squared my shoulders, and walked through the terminal doors like absolute royalty. “May we never cross paths again, Valerie Sinclair.”

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While ordering late-night snacks for my boyfriend, I followed a popular internet joke and messaged the delivery driver to check up on him. He quickly sent a photo: “Your boyfriend seems to be cheating; a woman opened the door.” I was furious and immediately took a taxi to catch him in the act. But on the way, I encountered a thug, was dragged into an alley, and brutally raped to death. My boyfriend was devastated and arranged my funeral. He never married and showed no signs of cheating. When I opened my eyes again, I was back to the night I ordered takeout for my boyfriend. I immediately blocked that delivery driver and had a new one deliver the food. But I still received a call: “Miss, your boyfriend seems to be living with another woman…” … Hearing the delivery driver’s voice through the receiver, a violent shudder ripped through my body. In my past life, it was this exact phone call that sent me spiraling. I had hailed a cab in the dead of night, desperately rushing across state lines to the city where my boyfriend, Miles, was stationed for a work project. But I never made it to his apartment. Just steps away from his building, I was dragged into a blind alley by a group of men. I was brutalized. I was murdered. The killers left almost no evidence behind, and the case quickly grew cold. It was Miles who refused to let it go. He hired the country’s most elite private investigators, liquidating every asset he had to fund a relentless manhunt. “Claire, if I hadn’t taken that out-of-town project, you wouldn’t have missed me. You wouldn’t have come looking for me,”he had wept at my funeral, his voice shattered. “It’s my fault. I killed you.” “Even if I have to sell my house, even if I have to sell my own kidney, I will find the bastards who did this to you.” He was entirely consumed. By the time he was barely thirty, his hair had turned entirely white from the agonizing, sleepless years on the road. When the perpetrators were finally caught, Miles buried me in his family’s private estate, claiming me as his wife in death. He lived the rest of his days utterly alone, guarding my memory. There was never another woman. Never a whisper of infidelity. Remembering all of this, a heavy, suffocating ache bloomed in my chest. Miles had loved me with a devotion that transcended death, and yet, here I was, having dared to doubt him. I abruptly hung up the phone. I didn’t know why this new delivery driver—a completely different person from my past life, since I had purposely requested a change on the app—was still trying to smear Miles’s name. But in this life, I didn’t care what anyone said. I would never doubt him again. After washing my face, I curled up on the living room sofa, letting the quiet dark of the apartment wash over me as I sifted through the fragmented memories of my past life. Suddenly, the front door clicked open. My best friend, Blair, stepped inside, shaking out her umbrella. She froze when she saw me in the dim light, her eyes widening. “Claire? Why are you still just lying around?” “Should I be doing something else?” Meeting my confused gaze, Blair bit off the rest of her sentence. Her eyes darted to the side—a fleeting, almost imperceptible shift. Then, she forced a bright smile. “I just meant, with the thunderstorm outside… you know how terrified you are of lightning. I figured you’d be pacing a hole in the floor, not lounging like a cat.” Her tone was warm, dripping with that familiar, protective sincerity. But my heart turned to lead. She was lying. Blair, Miles, and I had been inseparable since our freshman year of college. We were the quintessential trio, bound by promises of lifelong loyalty. I knew Blair just as intimately as I knew Miles. That split-second eye dart? That was her tell. I opened my mouth to press her, but a piercing ring shattered the silence. My phone. It was the delivery driver again. I moved to decline it, but Blair was faster. She snatched the phone from the coffee table, swiped accept, and instantly hit the speaker button. A gruff, gravelly voice echoed through the room. “Look, lady, I’m only speaking up because I saw the ‘Happy Birthday, Hubby’ note on the cake box. The guy who took this order? He had his arms wrapped around some other girl. It wasn’t exactly friendly. Don’t let some trash guy play you for a fool.” Before I could process the words, a notification chimed. A video file from the driver in my app messages. The footage was shaky, shot from the hallway. A door opened just a crack. A man reached out to grab the takeout bags, and a woman was clinging to his bicep, pressing herself against him in a cloying, intimate way. When the man lifted his chin to thank the driver, the hallway light caught his face perfectly. It was Miles. My brow furrowed. The air in the room felt suddenly very thin. What the hell was going on? The delivery app assigned drivers at random. There was no conceivable way this stranger was in on a prank. Was Miles actually cheating on me? While my mind spun, Blair slammed her palm onto the glass coffee table, her face twisting in fury. “That son of a bitch! How dare he do this to you!” She grabbed my wrist, pulling me up. “Come on, Claire. We are driving over there right now. We are going to catch that cheating bastard and his little tramp dead to rights in that bed. He is going to look you in the eye and give you an explanation!” She was practically dragging me toward the door. I was still numb, stumbling in her wake, when Blair suddenly doubled over with a sharp gasp. “Oh my god, it hurts!” she cried out, dropping to her knees, her face draining of color. A chilling wave of déjà vu washed over me. This was exactly how it happened in my past life. Blair had been absolutely enraged by the infidelity, insisting I go confront him, promising to drive me herself. But right as we reached the front door, she was struck by a sudden, agonizing bout of stomach cramps. She couldn’t stop throwing up. So, I went alone. And I died screaming on the asphalt outside Miles’s apartment complex. A terrifying, pitch-black theory began to take root in my mind. In my previous life, the detectives eventually concluded that my murder wasn’t a random mugging gone wrong. It was a premeditated hit. I had been lured to that specific location. But the most maddening part was that the police never caught the mastermind. The thugs they arrested had taken a vow of silence to protect whoever hired them. “We did it on our own! It has nothing to do with anyone else!” they had spit at the judge. “Give us the chair, we don’t care!” So, who was the puppet master? I squeezed my eyes shut, fighting the nausea rising in my throat. I didn’t want to follow this thought to its logical, devastating conclusion. Blair was still groaning on the floor, clutching her stomach, but between her winces, she was looking up at me. Urging me. Pushing me out the door. Beneath the feigned pain, her eyes glittered with a dark, impatient anticipation. Every word of outrage she had spoken on my behalf suddenly echoed in my ears not as support, but as a death warrant. I slowly looked down at her. I forced my breathing to slow, keeping my voice utterly level. “Blair, why are you so desperate for me to leave the apartment tonight?” I watched her face carefully. “Why are you so absolutely certain there’s no misunderstanding? Why jump straight to the conclusion that Miles has betrayed me?” The color vanished from Blair’s lips. She stared at me, her mouth slightly open, entirely speechless. My heart dropped another agonizing inch. A heavy, suffocating silence filled the room. Ring! My phone lit up again. A FaceTime call. From Miles. I answered. His face filled the screen, handsome and glowing with that soft, familiar affection. He offered me a gentle, teasing smile. “Hey, babe. Did you order me midnight snacks? Miss me that much?” He leaned closer to the camera. “I saw the weather app. It’s pouring back home, isn’t it? You hate the thunder, so I figured I’d stay on video with you. Keep you company.” Looking at his tender expression, hearing the soothing cadence of his voice… it had only been a few minutes since I woke up in this timeline, but it felt like an eternity had passed. Tears prickled the corners of my eyes. I wanted to spill everything to him. But before I could even form a syllable, a woman’s breathy, teasing giggle drifted from the background of his end. “Babe, let’s do Iceland next month, okay?” I stared at the screen, every muscle in my body locking up. In the corner of the frame, just for a fraction of a second, I saw a cascade of long, golden-blonde hair. The next second, Miles’s eyes widened in sheer panic. The camera jerked wildly as he practically sprinted out of the room, slamming a door behind him. Bang! It felt like a bomb had detonated inside my skull. The ambient noise of the apartment faded into a high-pitched ringing. Through the phone, Miles’s voice dripped with manufactured concern. “Claire? Honey, your face just went completely pale. Are you okay?” Blair had crawled up beside me. She saw the whole thing. Her face flushed crimson with rage. Without asking, she snatched the phone from my hand, hung up on Miles, and began pacing the room, hurling every curse word in the English language at him. When she finally ran out of breath, she looked at me with hesitant, pitying eyes. She pulled out her own phone and let out a long, heavy sigh. “Claire… do you understand now why I wanted you to catch him with your own eyes? I… I wasn’t going to tell you this.” She unlocked her phone and pulled up her private message thread with Miles. She held the screen out to me. My eyes widened in absolute horror. The screen was filled with paragraphs of sickeningly sweet, obsessive texts. All from Miles. To Blair. [Blair, that night at the freshman mixer? You were the one I wanted to ask out. But you started talking to that guy from the football team, so I settled for Claire instead.] [I haven’t felt anything for her in years. Honestly, touching her makes my skin crawl. If it weren’t for the fact that you pulled away, and the only way I could see you was by staying close to her, I would have dumped that frumpy bore ages ago.] The timestamps were damning. Even just moments ago, while he was supposedly comforting me about the thunderstorm, he was texting his devotion to my best friend. [Blair, I’m just playing a part with her. You’re the only one I love. When I get back from this trip, I’m ending things with Claire. I’m coming for you.] My hands shook uncontrollably as I tapped on Miles’s profile picture in her phone. I checked his number, his handle, his linked social accounts. It was him. No fake accounts. No hacks. The man who shared my bed, the man who claimed to love me, had been telling my best friend I disgusted him. Thick, hot tears spilled over my eyelashes and splashed onto the screen. We had been together for almost a decade. How had I been so completely, utterly blind to the monster hiding behind his smile? But the math still didn’t make sense. If he despised me, why did he sacrifice his youth, his sanity, and his wealth to avenge my murder in the past life? Was it the butterfly effect? Did my decision to stay home tonight change his feelings? Or was he always cheating, and the tragic, devoted widower routine was nothing but an elaborate, calculated cover-up? Blair sighed, wrapping her arms around me in a tight, suffocating hug. “Claire, I didn’t know how to tell you. Stuff like this… it destroys friendships. Once the truth is out, things are never the same.” “That’s why I wanted you to see it for yourself. But if you don’t want to go confront him now… we don’t have to. Just know that whatever you decide, I am here. I will always support you.” I offered a hollow nod, murmuring something noncommittal. I pulled away from her, walked into my bedroom, and collapsed onto the mattress. I felt like every drop of blood had been drained from my veins. Too many puzzle pieces were scattered in my mind, and none of them fit. Was Miles cheating? Why did Blair lie about expecting me to be awake? Who was I supposed to trust? And the most terrifying question of all: Who was the mastermind who paid to have me butchered in the dark? Suddenly, a loud, urgent knocking echoed from the front door. Helen, Miles’s mother, bustled into the apartment, her face glowing with breathless excitement. She hoisted a massive, velvet-wrapped jewelry box in the air. “Claire, sweetheart! Look what just arrived. The custom bridal suite is finally ready. Come see!” She set it on the table, practically vibrating with pride. “Miles said the engagement ring he gave you last year wasn’t enough. He knows you grew up in the foster system, that you never had a real family to spoil you. So, he wanted to make sure you felt like a queen.” “He picked every stone himself. It’s top-tier platinum and flawless diamonds. He liquidated his entire stock portfolio to pay for this.” The box popped open. A blinding array of diamonds caught the light—a breathtaking necklace, cascading earrings, a tennis bracelet, and a massive, custom-cut ring. The craftsmanship was so exquisite it felt unreal. Miles and I had been together for eight years. He had proposed three times. But because I grew up moving between group homes, lacking any blueprint for a healthy marriage, I had always been terrified of taking the final step. I kept stalling. Before he left for this trip, he had held me tight and laughed gently. “Take all the time you need, Claire. I’m not going anywhere. But I’m buying the wedding jewelry now, and I’m getting you the best in the world. You deserve it.” In my past life, even though I died before we could say our vows, he had placed this exact, impossibly expensive jewelry suite inside my casket. Later, to fund the private investigators tracking my killers, he had sold his own home. That unwavering financial sacrifice was the anchor of my trust in him. If a man was truly betraying you, why would he willingly bankrupt himself for your memory? Seeing my resolve waver, Blair frantically grabbed my arm. “Claire, wake up! You cannot marry this man! Did you already forget what he was doing behind your back ten minutes ago?” Helen’s face drained of its joy. Insulted and determined to prove Blair wrong, she whipped out her phone and dialed Miles on FaceTime. When the video connected, the background noise was chaotic—loud music, clinking glasses. Helen’s voice turned icy. “Miles, what exactly are you doing right now?” Miles’s exhausted but cheerful face appeared. “Mom! Hey. The project wrapped up early, so we’re celebrating. I threw a little party for the team at the rental.” He panned the camera around the room. There were about seven or eight people in business casual attire holding drinks. In the corner, the blonde woman from the earlier video was draped over another male coworker, posing for a selfie. Miles rolled his eyes at the camera and lowered his voice. “She’s the new intern. Terrible at her job, completely lacks boundaries with the guys. Mom, please don’t tell Claire she’s here. You know how Claire hates girls who act like that. I don’t want her getting upset over nothing.” Hearing the explanation, Helen let out a massive sigh of relief. She hung up the phone and studied my face carefully, choosing her words. “Claire… has there been some sort of misunderstanding between you two lately?” “My son treats you like you hang the moon. He would never do anything to hurt you.” Then, her gaze snapped to Blair, hardening into a glare. “Unlike some people, who threw themselves at my son in college, got rejected, and never quite got over it. People who use the title of ‘best friend’ just to try and poison my daughter-in-law’s marriage!” I followed Helen’s piercing glare. I saw Blair’s face turn completely white. I saw the flash of raw, naked panic in her eyes. In that fleeting second, the fragments of my past life and the bizarre events of tonight slammed together in my mind. A bolt of lightning illuminated the dark. I finally understood. I knew exactly what was happening. And I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, who had ordered my murder. It was the one person I had never, ever suspected.

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Everyone in Miami knows that Roman’s wife is terrified of the dark, sickened by the sight of blood, and wouldn’t survive three days without him. Even Roman himself believed it. After we got married, he stepped out on me dozens of times, never once worried that I might actually leave. Just like right now. I had just found a pair of bloody lace panties tucked into the passenger side of his Mercedes. Roman barely glanced at them. He gave a careless, easy laugh. “The new girl at the club just lost her cherry. We played a little rough. Don’t sweat it.” This time, I didn’t scream. I didn’t throw a hysterical fit like I used to. Instead, I simply nodded, my face a mask of calm. “Understood.” His hand suddenly shot out, his fingers locking around my wrist like a vice. His voice dropped, thick with suppressed tension. “Something’s wrong with you, Diana. Why aren’t you mad?” I looked at him and smiled. We had been married for three years. He had no idea that I had already taken a lover of my own—a wild, obedient boy who actually listened to me. He just didn’t know it yet. … Don’t come over tonight. Roman’s back. A second later, the screen lit up with a GIF of a cartoon dog crying its eyes out. I couldn’t help the small smile that tugged at the corner of my mouth. But when I looked up, I collided straight into Roman’s dark, brooding stare. Only then did I realize how suffocatingly quiet the car had become. I locked my phone and slipped it away, my tone entirely indifferent. “Did you need something?” “You’ve been… off lately,” he said, his eyes drilling into me. I paused. This wasn’t the first time one of his girls had left a calling card. The last one had stuffed a pair of shredded stockings into the breast pocket of Roman’s bespoke suit. Back then, I had lost my mind. I tore through the house, shattering every piece of glass and porcelain I could get my hands on, sobbing and screaming at him until my throat bled. All it earned me was a cold, disdainful look. Have some goddamn dignity, Diana, he had sneered. You’re the First Lady of this syndicate. Stop acting like a rabid dog. Now, I could finally do exactly what he asked. I could sit here, perfectly serene, in the face of his endless rotation of women. I offered him a thin smile. “Isn’t this what you wanted?” Roman’s face hardened, a sudden chill rolling off him. His words came out sharp and barbed. “Lexi is uninhibited. She’s wild, and she gets creative in bed. It’s fun.” He raised an eyebrow, looking down at me with a patronizing smirk. “You could learn a thing or two from her, babe. Stop being so damn rigid all the time. Who knows? If you loosen up, maybe I’ll feel like spending a few more nights at home.” “Don’t do me any favors,” I said, leaning my head against the cool glass of the window and closing my eyes. Roman hadn’t stepped foot in our Coral Gables mansion in a month. He had taken Lexi to the Swiss Alps, calling it a much-needed “mental health break.” They had been excruciatingly loud about it. His lieutenants had practically tripped over themselves to circulate photos of the happy couple on yachts and ski lifts, making sure the images made their rounds through our social circles. I had become the brightest, most pathetic punchline in Miami. Now, he stood in the doorway of our master bedroom, his brow furrowed as he took in the completely overhauled space. The heavy, dark silk sheets he loved were gone. The custom gold-plated Colt he kept on the nightstand to mark his territory was missing. There wasn’t a single trace of his existence left in the room. “Where is my stuff?” “Cleared out.” Roman whipped his head around. “What did you say?” He stared at me, then suddenly let out a soft chuckle, his tone dropping into something coaxing and sweet. “Diana, look, I know I crossed a line this time. You’re pissed, right?” “Come on, I’m home now, aren’t I? I came back to keep you company.” “I even brought you a gift.” He tossed a velvet box onto the glass coffee table and turned to head into the master bath. When he walked back out, roughly towel-drying his hair, he paused. “That cologne I always use… when did you change it?” I blinked, taking a moment to remember. Nico had changed it. The little wolf hated the heavy, suffocating stench of gunpowder and stale cigars that always lingered in the bathroom. He had taken it upon himself to swap it out for something crisp, sharp, and smelling of winter cedar. The scent of that cedar washed over me as Roman stepped up from behind, wrapping his arms around my waist and intentionally burying his face in the crook of my neck. “God, I missed you, babe…” My heart slammed against my ribs. The bruises Nico had left on my collarbone last night hadn’t faded yet. If Roman’s lips trailed down just an inch, he would see them. I twisted hard, shoving him away. “I’m not Lexi. If you need to get your rocks off, go back to the club and find her.” Roman stumbled back a step. When he caught his balance, his face was absolutely livid. His voice hissed through his teeth. “You’re never going to let this go, are you?” “So I took her on a trip for a few days. Have I never taken you anywhere? Is this really necessary?” I looked him dead in the eyes, my voice flat and dead. “It is, Roman. Because I think you’re filthy.” The veins in his neck popped. His hands clenched into white-knuckled fists at his sides. He snatched his suit jacket off the armchair. “I try to give you an inch, and you throw it in my face! Don’t you dare come begging me to come back!” The front door slammed with enough force to shake the walls. I walked over to the coffee table and picked up the velvet box. Only then did it register—today was our three-year anniversary. Inside was a miniature, diamond-studded derringer. The grip was engraved with a unique serial number. One of only five in the world. My lips curled into a bitter line. How thoughtful of him. Taking his mistress on a luxury vacation, but still remembering to toss a shiny toy my way to keep my mouth shut. My phone lit up. A picture from Lexi. She was leaning heavily against a slot machine in a neon-drenched casino in Nassau, her dress slipping off her shoulder. Roman’s hand was firmly planted on her waist. You just don’t know how to keep your man, do you, Mrs. Reyes? she wrote. I practically had to beg the Boss to go home and check on you. Late that night, the shrill ring of my phone sliced through the dark. I answered, greeted by Roman’s heavily slurred voice. “Babe… babe… come get me…” I was about to hang up when a stranger’s voice cut in. “Mrs. Reyes? The Boss got way too hammered at our place, and we’re closing up. Could you…” I rattled off a phone number from memory. “Call Lexi. I’m busy.” This wasn’t the first time this had happened. There was a night years ago when I was burning up with a 102-degree fever. I had driven myself across the city to drag him out of a club he was running. But when I got there, he had shoved me away. Blind drunk, he had demanded Lexi. I don’t want you, he had slurred. I want Lexi. He had told me to stop getting in his way. I had stumbled backward, my hand catching the sharp edge of the car door. The blood had welled up instantly, dripping onto the asphalt. But the sting on my hand was nothing compared to the sensation of my chest being hollowed out with a blunt knife. Pulling myself back to the present, I glanced down at the faint, silver scar on the back of my hand. Flesh heals. And eventually, so does the heart. It just stops hurting altogether. I must have drifted off, because I was jolted awake again by the phone. This time, it was a woman. She sounded frantic. “Are you the wife of this drunk lunatic? Your husband has been pounding on my front door for twenty minutes! Come get him right now, or I’m calling the cops!” “What?” She gave me an address, and I sat in bed, frozen for a long moment. Roman, blackout drunk, had somehow stumbled his way back to the rotting apartment complex in Overtown. It was the hellhole we used to live in back when we had absolutely nothing. I had to apologize profusely to the terrified woman before I could finally haul Roman’s dead weight out of the peeling hallway. He reeked of cheap whiskey and sweat, completely delirious. “Diana…” he mumbled into my shoulder. “Did the boys give you a hard time collecting the books today…? You must be so tired…” It had been years since I heard him speak to me like that. With a jarring ache, I realized he was so drunk he thought we were still kids, just starting out in the syndicate. Back then, we were desperately poor. We squeezed into a sweltering, roach-infested room, counting every single penny. I would sit up late at the back of the underground casinos, cooking the books until my eyes blurred. And no matter how late it was, even if he had just finished breaking someone’s legs and was covered in blood, he would always walk the long way around the block just to walk me home. He used to hold me, his eyes red and exhausted, pressing his forehead to mine. He swore up and down that one day, he’d put me in a mansion on the water. That he would make me the most respected woman in the city. A sudden, sharp sting hit the back of my nose. I ducked my head, quickly trying to wipe my eyes, but a hand reached up before I could. Roman lifted his hand and clumsily brushed his thumb beneath my eye. His voice cracked, sounding like a wounded little boy. “Babe, why aren’t you mad at me anymore…? Why did you wash my scent away…?” “Why don’t you fight with Lexi…?” “You’ve changed…” I looked down at the man who was completely out of his mind, and for the first time in a long time, I felt a strange, detached peace. “Because I’m tired, Roman.” He didn’t seem to hear me. He suddenly pushed out of my grip and fumbled in his coat pocket, pulling something out and guarding it against his chest like a treasure. Under the sickly yellow glow of the streetlamp, I saw what it was. A crushed, battered cardboard pastry box. Inside was a slice of devil’s food cake. It was from the crumbling old bakery on the corner. My favorite. I thought he had forgotten. Truth be told, the very first time I realized something was wrong with our marriage, it was over a pastry, too. Lexi wasn’t his first. The first time I discovered he was cheating was on the anniversary of my father’s death. In our world, the Coalition strictly observes these days of respect. As the Boss and his wife, we were supposed to light the incense and honor the altar together. I had set up the memorial room, dressing in a solemn black dress, and waited for him to come home. I waited from the afternoon until the dead of night. When he finally walked through the door and saw the candles burning, he froze. He had completely forgotten what day it was. A flash of guilt crossed his face. Desperate to cover it up, he shoved a bakery box into my hands—a peace offering he had just picked up from whichever woman’s bed he had crawled out of. He didn’t even read the label on the box. It was a strawberry tart. I am deathly allergic to strawberries. One bite could send me into anaphylactic shock. In that moment, a woman’s intuition is sharper than any blade. I stood up slowly and reached out, hooking my finger around the top buttons of his dress shirt and ripping them open. Right below his collarbone, glaring up at me in the dim light, was a fresh, deep purple bruise. It had teeth marks. It felt like a bomb went off in my skull. The entire world just gave way beneath my feet. I destroyed the altar. I smashed the porcelain plates, the glasses, everything I could lift. I screamed at him, tears blinding me. I asked him how he could face my dead father. How he could face the years I spent cooking his ledgers, the bullets I took meant for him. I slapped him. Again and again, until my palms were bruised. And what did Roman do? He dropped to his knees in front of my father’s portrait and begged me to forgive him. After that, I became a paranoid wreck. I checked every phone call. I smelled the collar of every jacket he owned. He grew increasingly annoyed, increasingly suffocated, until he just stopped coming home altogether. Then came Lexi. It was the same cycle. The screaming, the crying, the shattered glass. But the difference was, this time, Roman didn’t drop to his knees. He stood there, slowly crushing his cigar into the crystal ashtray, his eyes devoid of any warmth. “Let me make this perfectly clear, Diana. I’m not cutting Lexi off. I like her. She knows her place.” “You sit here and play the good First Lady. You get the status, you get the bank accounts, you get everything you’re entitled to. Nothing changes.” My chest felt like it was being ripped open with a crowbar. I couldn’t breathe. Through a broken, gravelly voice, I whispered, “Roman… let’s just get a divorce.” His head snapped up, his eyes suddenly burning with a toxic, violent light. “Divorce? You’re out of your goddamn mind.” “You married into this life. You swore the oath in blood. The only way you leave this family is in a body bag. There’s no walking away. Don’t even entertain the thought.” “Your little brother is still running product for me down at the docks, isn’t he? Unless you want him feeding the fishes in the bay, you will shut your mouth and endure it.” My little brother had just started working for him. His life was entirely in Roman’s hands. All the contacts and leverage my father had left me had been systematically swallowed up by Roman’s empire years ago. I had built the cage he was using to lock me in. Every day after that was pure purgatory. I watched him parade Lexi around the VIP rooms and the underground casinos, letting his enforcers call her “Mrs. Reyes.” I watched them walk in and out of rooms like husband and wife, while I was relegated to the shadows, a dirty secret in my own home. I started swallowing handfuls of sleeping pills just to get a few hours of dead air, only to spend the rest of the night staring at the ceiling until the sun came up. Until one afternoon, during a bloody dispute at the shipyards, I purposefully let my focus slip. A rival swung a blade, tearing a deep, jagged gash down my forearm. When Roman found out, he didn’t pull me into his arms. He didn’t ask if I was okay. He backhanded me across the face and screamed at me for being careless and trying to get myself killed. That slap finally woke me up. I thought, Why? He was the one who broke us. Why was I paying for it with my blood? If Roman wouldn’t give me a clean exit, I would carve one out myself. It was right around that time that I used a ghost channel in our weapons supply line and made contact with Nico. The kid was smarter than Roman. Sweeter. And most importantly, whatever I said, he did. Now, Roman and I were truly equals. We both had our little playthings on the side. I left Roman to sleep on the freezing concrete floor of that rotting apartment in Overtown. The next morning, he cornered me in the narrow stairwell, his face thunderous. “Why didn’t you pick me up last night? Why did you make Lexi do it?” “Why not?” I said, deadpan. “You love her, don’t you?” The words struck a match to a powder keg. He lunged, grabbing my jaw and kissing me—hard, bruising, desperate. He tasted like stale liquor and violent rage. “This isn’t how it’s supposed to be, Diana,” he growled against my mouth, his teeth grazing my lip. “You’re not supposed to look at me like I’m dead!” “Why aren’t you fighting me anymore?!” I bit down, hard. The sharp, metallic tang of blood flooded my mouth. “Roman,” I laughed, breathless and mocking. “You are so pathetic.” He stared at me, a dark, murderous shadow crossing his face. Before he turned to leave, he threw a warning over his shoulder: “You’re going to regret this, Diana.” The look in his eye made my stomach drop. But I never could have predicted how fast his retaliation would come. Two days later, my phone buzzed. A text from Lexi. Attached was a photo. It was taken inside my father’s memorial room. Roman said it’s especially thrilling to do it in here, the text read. A high-pitched ringing pierced my ears. The world tilted on its axis, black spots dancing in my vision. My knees nearly buckled. Pure, unadulterated fury obliterated whatever was left of my sanity. That was my father’s sanctuary! How could he! How dare he bring that trash into that room, and do that… I drove back to the Coral Gables estate like a madwoman, my tires screeching as I tore up the driveway. I sprinted through the halls and shoved open the heavy oak doors of the memorial room. The scene in front of me turned my blood to ice. I bit down on my lip so hard I tasted copper. The gold silk cloth on the altar had been dragged down. Lexi was practically naked, draped across the mahogany table, and Roman was right behind her. The brass incense burner had been knocked to the floor, white ash scattered over the Persian rug. Seeing me standing in the doorway, Roman casually pushed Lexi away and pulled his clothes straight. A cruel, mocking smirk twisted his lips. “What’s the matter? Is this too much for you?” My nails dug so hard into my palms that the pain was the only thing keeping me upright. My voice was a ragged whisper, dragged over broken glass. “Get. Out.” Lexi slid off the altar, taking her sweet time. As she moved, her fingers purposefully trailed over my father’s urn. Suddenly, she snatched up the antique gold pocket watch resting beside it—the only piece of my father I had left—and hurled it onto the marble floor! The glass shattered, the metal casing crunching violently. “Oops,” she giggled, looking up at me with a sickeningly sweet smile. “Butterfingers. Looks like it’s broken.” “You dead bitch!” Every thread of my restraint snapped. I vaulted forward, burying my hands into her bleached blonde hair. She shrieked, but I didn’t stop. I swung, slapping her across the face with every ounce of strength I had in my body. “Are you insane, Diana?!” A blinding pain exploded in my ribs. Roman had kicked me. The force sent me flying backward, my spine colliding sickeningly with the sharp edge of a heavy rosewood chair. I crumpled to the floor, gasping for air, unable to push myself up. Roman didn’t even look at me. He rushed to Lexi, wrapping his arms around her, his face a portrait of tender concern. Then he turned his head and glared at me, his eyes blazing with fury. “You are out of your goddamn mind! It’s just a cheap piece of metal! Are you kidding me?” “I’ve let you get away with too much lately!” My eyes burned with unshed tears, but I clamped my jaw shut, refusing to let them fall, even as my entire body shook uncontrollably. Roman marched over, grabbed me by the collar, and began dragging me toward the back of the basement—toward the steel, windowless vault they used to break rats and traitors. “What are you doing! Let me go!” A primal terror clawed at my throat. I thrashed wildly. When he threw me inside and the heavy steel door slammed shut with a definitive clang, cutting off the last sliver of light, absolute, paralyzing panic seized my chest. I am terrified of the dark. Years ago, a rival cartel had kidnapped me. They locked me in a shipping container at the bottom of the docks for three days and three nights. It left me permanently scarred. When Roman finally found me back then, he held my violently shaking body and swore to God that he would never, ever let me be alone in the dark again. Now, he was using it to break me. “Take some time in there and think about what you did,” his muffled, icy voice bled through the steel door. “When you’re ready to apologize, I’ll let you out.” My screams and my fists pounding against the metal were entirely swallowed by the suffocating black void. I pressed my back against the freezing steel and slowly slid to the floor, my body seizing with violent tremors. Fat tears hit the dusty floor. I slammed my fists against the door, my voice shattering into pathetic, ragged gasps. “Roman… please… open the door…” “Let me out…” “I’m sorry…” I weakly banged my head against the metal. The skin on my forehead split, and warm blood trickled down my temple, sticky and sickening. From the other side of the door, I could hear Lexi’s simpering voice, and Roman’s low, amused chuckle. “Boss, you aren’t going to go soft on her, are you?” Roman’s tone was ice-cold. “No. I’ve spoiled her too much lately.” “It’s about time she learned her place.” I dug my fingertips into the microscopic gap at the bottom of the door, tearing my nails until they splintered and bled. With violently trembling hands, I reached into the lining of my skirt and pulled out the micro-transmitter I kept sewn in. I pressed the single emergency button. Nico. Save me. I don’t know how much time passed. Maybe minutes. Maybe lifetimes. The heavy steel door was suddenly violently ripped open from the outside. A blinding flashlight beam cut through the black. I threw my bloody hands up to shield my eyes. Roman stood in the doorway, back-lit, staring down at me like a god examining a crushed insect. “Diana. Do you know what you did wrong now?” The harsh light forced involuntary tears down my cheeks. I slowly lowered my hands. I looked up at him, my voice so hoarse and broken it didn’t even sound like me. “Roman. I want a divorce.” Roman’s brow furrowed in irritation. “I told you, that’s not…” “I’m sleeping with someone else,” I cut him off. The words died in Roman’s throat. His Adam’s apple bobbed violently. The veins at his temples began to pulse. It was the look he got right before he murdered someone. “Say that to me again,” he whispered. The quietness of his voice was terrifying.

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Five years. That’s how long I’ve been pining for my icy, untouchable adoptive brother. Five years of starving for a man who looked at me like I was a budget report he couldn’t quite balance. Finally, I snapped. I didn’t just snap; I went nuclear. I slipped a heavy sedative into his drink, waited for him to go down, and then—feeling dangerously bold—I climbed on top of him, straddling his waist. Just as I was about to savor my victory, a flurry of translucent text started scrolling across my vision, like a frantic livestream chat: [Girlie, you are literally signing your own death warrant. You think he’s some celibate saint? This man is a high-functioning sociopath with severe touch-starvation and a literal addiction to the bedroom. Run!] [I’m telling you, stop acting. You look like a strawberry cupcake—sweet, soft, and totally out of your league. The real monster is lying right under you, just biding his time.] [It’s over. I can’t even imagine what he’s going to do to her once the meds wear off. RIP to her spine.] I froze, my heart hammering against my ribs. Before I could process the “glitch” in my reality, the man beneath me stirred. His long lashes fluttered, and his eyes snapped open. 1 Bennett’s eyes—dark, bottomless, and terrifyingly sharp—locked onto mine. I’d already stripped him to the waist. He was lying there in nothing but a pair of charcoal-grey lounge pants. I had to give it to him: his physique was top-tier. Broad shoulders, lean muscle that looked like it had been carved from marble, and a core so defined it felt like iron under my thighs. His brow was furrowed, a storm brewing in his expression. Even with his wrists handcuffed to the headboard, he radiated the kind of suffocating authority that usually made me want to hide in the basement. His voice was a lethal frost. “Sadie. What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Old habits die hard. Having been under his thumb for a decade, I instinctively flinched. But then I remembered the “spoiler” from those strange floating words. I forced myself to smirk, leaning in close. “Can’t you tell? I’m finally taking what I want. I’m sleeping with you.” The catalyst for my madness had happened a few days ago. He’d been trending for twenty-four hours with that A-list starlet, Mia Rossi. Papparazzi had caught her entering the Foster Group headquarters multiple times. There were even rumors that Bennett had dropped nine figures on a rare pink diamond just to make her smile. That same night, Mia had tweeted: My favorite color? Pink, obviously. I had stared at that tweet until my vision blurred, then smashed my phone against the wall. I went straight to the liquor cabinet, picked the strongest bottle, and spiked it with enough sedative to put down a grizzly bear. Then I’d dragged him to bed, stripped him, and locked him down. One smooth motion. I was going to wait for him to wake up and give him an ultimatum: Marry me, or I make sure there’s no turning back from tonight. But I never expected to find out—via some cosmic hallucination—that Bennett might actually want me back. A massive surge of adrenaline, bright as a firework, exploded in my chest. I shifted, grinding slightly against his hips, and leaned down to nip at his prominent Adam’s apple. I felt a surge of intoxicating power. “Come on, Ben. You’ve been wanting this for a long time too, haven’t you?” As I leaned over him, the hem of my wine-red lace nightgown rode up, exposing my thighs. If the “feed” was right, my brother was a man with a very specific, very repressed hunger. And here I was, offering myself up on a silver platter. I swallowed hard, my cheeks burning, and whispered in his ear, “Maybe I should give you an heir, Ben. Think about it. Would the kid call you ‘Daddy’ or ‘Uncle’?” 2 Bennett’s face went from icy to thunderous in a heartbeat. He looked at me with the same sharp, disciplinary gaze he used when I was ten and failed my math tests. “Sadie! What kind of garbage is filling that head of yours?” he barked. “Say one more word like that and I swear I’ll break your legs.” He yanked at the handcuffs, the metal clinking violently against the frame. “Get off me. Now.” The shout made me jump. My instinct was to obey, to scramble off the bed and apologize. I started to slide down, pouting. “Fine, fine. So grumpy. Let’s see how much you’re yelling when that ‘hunger’ hits you.” My eyes drifted down, following the lines of his chest, past the eight-pack, and further down… I squinted, waiting for the inevitable sign of his “addiction.” Nothing. The grey lounge pants remained frustratingly flat. No “salute,” no reaction. I rubbed my eyes, baffled. “This isn’t scientifically possible!” Bennett let out a cold, mocking laugh. “You’re my sister, Sadie. What kind of reaction did you expect? Unlock these cuffs. Don’t make me ask a third time.” He sounded so much like the stern guardian who had raised me that my confidence began to crumble. Was the “feed” lying to me? Just then, the text flickered back into existence: [Girlie, don’t believe him! The old fox took a heavy-duty suppressant this morning. He’s literally forcing himself to be ‘out of order’ right now!] [Exactly. Think about it—living under the same roof as a girl who looks like a literal angel, smelling her vanilla perfume every day… with his ‘condition,’ he’d have devoured her years ago if he didn’t have a moral compass made of titanium.] [He’s the ultimate ‘tragic villain’ trope. He’d rather make himself ‘incapable’ than touch his sister. It’s honestly kind of hot.] [+1. This slow burn is killing me. Don’t worry, Sadie—that suppressant only lasts seventy-two hours. Once it wears off, he’s going to be a weapon of mass destruction.] I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding. I looked back at my brother, my smirk returning, wider than ever. “Oh, Ben. You’re the one in the cage, not me. Stop trying to play the big, bad CEO.” “Sit tight and be a good little captive. If you keep me happy, maybe I’ll let you go by the weekend.” 3 Day two of Bennett’s “captivity.” As the head of Foster Group, he couldn’t just vanish without the world ending. I played the part of the dutiful captor—I dressed him in a crisp white shirt, tied his silk tie, and even set up his laptop for a high-level board meeting via Zoom. Of course, he was still in his lounge pants below the camera’s view, and his wrists were still tethered to the bedpost. I leaned in, just out of the camera’s range, and whispered a warning: “Don’t you dare mention being kidnapped, Ben. You wouldn’t want the whole world to know that the formidable Mr. Foster is his sister’s little pet, would you?” Bennett’s expression was so dark it could have curdled milk. But, as I expected, he was a professional. He sat through the entire hour-long meeting with a stone-cold face, never breathing a word about his predicament. Day three. I stripped the elite suit off him again, leaving him bare-chested. I even looped a decorative body chain over his shoulders—it looked devastatingly erotic on his tan skin. I set up my easel and gave him a foxy little grin. “My oil painting class needs a model, Ben. And honestly, your physique puts those professional models to shame. Just consider this your contribution to the arts.” Bennett turned his head away, jaw clenched, refusing to utter a single word. By day four, my resolve was starting to waver. I whispered to the “voices” in my head: You guys said he likes me! It’s been four days and he still looks like he wants to file a restraining order! The response was instant: [That’s because his self-control is legendary! If you hadn’t moved first, he would have locked YOU up in about six months. The guy is obsessed.] [In the original story, he has a safe in his study filled with ‘toys’ and ‘special equipment’ all labeled with your name. He’s a total deviant under that suit.] My eyes widened. I bolted for the study and cracked the safe—I’d known the combination for years (it was my birthday). The door swung open. There were no toys. No deviant equipment. Instead, there was a will and a series of trust fund documents. The papers stated in black and white: Upon Sadie Foster’s 21st birthday, 5% of Foster Group shares will be transferred to her annually. In the event of Bennett Foster’s death or incapacitation, Sadie Foster is to inherit the entirety of the estate and controlling interest of the company. I stood there, the papers trembling in my hand, feeling like I’d been hit by a freight train. A wave of crushing guilt washed over me. Bennett wasn’t my biological brother, but he had given me everything. He was the one who had pulled me out of that terrifying foster-care situation when I was seven. I had clung to him then, begging my parents to keep him. When our parents died in that tragic accident two years later, leaving us with nothing but debt, fifteen-year-old Bennett had grabbed my hand at the funeral. “Don’t be scared, Sadie,” he’d said, his voice cracking but firm. “I’ve got you. I’ll always take care of you.” And he had. He was a man of his word. He’d worked three jobs while getting his PhD, built a tech empire from the ground up by twenty-five, and protected me from every predatory relative who tried to cash in on us. He’d even come home with bruises once because he’d taken a job at an underground gym just to buy me the designer dress I wanted for prom. And how did I repay him? By drugging him and humiliating him for my own selfish crush. My throat tightened. I ran back to the bedroom, tears blurring my vision. “Ben… Ben, I’m so sorry. Please don’t hate me.” Bennett looked up, his eyes weary. “What’s the new game, Sadie?” He looked thinner. He hadn’t eaten much in three days. Seeing him like this broke something inside me. I wiped my face, pulled the key from my pocket, and sobbed, “I’m sorry. I’m letting you go. Right now.” Suddenly, the “feed” went absolutely ballistic: [OH MY GOD! STOP! I just remembered—the suppressant only lasts 72 hours!] [TODAY IS DAY FOUR! IT’S OVER! THE DRUG IS OUT OF HIS SYSTEM!] [SADIE, DON’T DO IT! DO NOT UNLOCK THOSE CUFFS! He’s been repressing a decade of lust and three days of pure rage—he’s a powder keg!] [He is going to ruin you! You won’t be able to walk for a week! ABORT MISSION!] At the same time, Bennett’s calm demeanor vanished. His face flushed, and his voice dropped to a low, dangerous register. “Sadie… wait. Don’t touch that lock yet.” But I was too fast. I’d already slid the key in. Click. The cuffs fell away.

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When the tenth attempt failed—when the System chimed in my head, coldly declaring that I had “not only failed to redeem the heroine but had driven her to absolute loathing”—something inside me finally snapped. I didn’t just break; I went full-blown manic. We were at the engagement gala, a high-society merger between two dynasties. Noah, Margot’s foster brother—the boy she protected with a ferocity that bordered on the divine—had just pulled his latest stunt. He claimed I’d taken the sentimental heirloom he’d bought for his “future brother-in-law” and tossed it into the deep end of the estate’s decorative koi pond. Standing there, flanked by my parents’ disappointed glares and Margot’s murderous, icy stare, I suddenly realized how exhausted I was. Living felt like a chore I no longer wanted to perform. So, without a word, I turned and threw myself into the dark, frigid water of the pond. Splash. I let the weight of my tuxedo pull me straight to the bottom. My parents went into a frantic tailspin. They had the security detail haul me out, my father’s face ashen, my mother looking like she was seconds away from a heart attack. I stood there, dripping, shivering, as Noah huddled against Margot’s side, playing the wounded bird. Margot didn’t even look at me with concern. She just rubbed Noah’s back, her eyes boring into mine like twin daggers. “Bennett, I’m warning you,” she hissed. “If you ever try a pathetic stunt like this to scare Noah again, the engagement is off. You’ll never set foot in the Sinclair estate again.” I wiped the pond water from my eyes and started walking—not toward the house, but toward the heavy traffic of the main road outside the gates. “Message received, Margot,” I called back over my shoulder. “Why go through the hassle of a breakup when a funeral is so much cleaner? I’m going to go find a semi-truck to play chicken with.” Margot’s composure shattered. She looked at me like I was a lunatic before sprinting after me, grabbing my arm just as I reached the curb of the bustling highway. A freight truck roared past, the wind nearly knocking us over. That night, in the hospital, Noah was at it again. He was standing on the edge of the second-floor terrace, sobbing for the benefit of the nurses. “It’s all my fault. I shouldn’t be here. I’m just the foster brother. I’ll leave Margot to Bennett… I’ll just end it now!” I watched him. He wasn’t even close to the edge; his toes were firmly planted on the concrete. I sighed, walked up behind him, and shoved him aside. “You’re taking too long,” I muttered. “Watch a pro do it.” Before anyone could scream, I vaulted over the railing and plummeted toward the pavement. 1 The whistling of the wind was the last thing I heard before the lights went out. When I drifted back into consciousness, the first thing I heard was Noah’s whimpering, high-pitched voice. “Margot, I swear, I didn’t say anything. Bennett just… he just jumped. I don’t know what happened to him…” I opened my eyes to see Margot standing over my bed, shielding Noah like a mother hen. My parents had arrived, looking haggard. “Arthur, Diane,” Margot said, her voice hard as flint, “this is clearly another one of Bennett’s performances. He’s obsessed with the idea that I care more about Noah than him. He’s trying to frame a traumatized boy just to force me to send Noah away.” She turned her gaze toward me, her eyes flashing with a cruel kind of brilliance. “If he actually wanted to die, why jump from the second floor? He knew there was a terrace below. He calculated the fall so he’d survive. He’s manipulative, and he’s dangerous.” She saw the flicker of doubt in my parents’ eyes. Then, she noticed I was awake. She didn’t offer a hand or a kind word. Instead, she grabbed my arm and dragged me off the bed toward the large hospital window. “Look, Bennett,” she snarled, pressing my face toward the glass. “We’re on the thirtieth floor now. No terraces. Just a straight drop to the concrete. If you’re so determined to end it, why aren’t you jumping now?” I was still groggy, every bone in my body feeling like it had been through a meat grinder. I was genuinely disappointed I was still breathing. But when I looked down at that dizzying, lethal height, a genuine smile spread across my face. “You’re right,” I whispered. While Margot was mid-sentence, lecturing my parents on my “wicked intentions,” I didn’t hesitate. I unlatched the window and started climbing out. The room went silent for exactly one second. Then, chaos exploded. Screams, chairs flipping, hands grabbing at my waist. I fought them. I thrashed like a wild animal, desperate to hit the air. It took four of them to pin me back onto the bed and lock the window. Margot stood there, chest heaving, trying to find her voice to scold me again. But before she could speak, my father’s hand cracked across her face. Snap. “Enough! Margot, shut your damn mouth!” My father locked the window and pointed a trembling finger at her. “Have you ever seen an ‘actor’ gamble with his life like that? This is your fiancé! Look at what you’ve turned him into!” My parents turned to me, their eyes red-rimmed. “Bennett…” Before they could speak, Noah let out a choked sob, clutching his chest. “It’s my fault. Bennett is like this because of me. Margot, maybe I should just move out. I shouldn’t be between you two…” The room shifted instantly. My parents’ expressions turned awkward and complicated. Margot stepped in front of Noah, her protective instincts flaring like a raw nerve. “Noah, stop it,” she said, her voice a vow. “We might not share blood, but you are my brother. As long as I’m alive, no one kicks you out.” If this were the first time I’d heard that speech, my heart would have been in tatters. But I had lived this exact moment ten times before. I knew the script by heart. It didn’t hurt anymore; it just made me want to vomit. A wave of nausea hit me. I closed my eyes, memories of the “Before” flooding back. I was a loser in my past life. I’d lost my job and been diagnosed with a terminal illness in the same week. So, when the “System” told me I could have a billion dollars and a healthy body if I could just win over this cold-hearted heiress, I didn’t think twice. But the System was a glitchy piece of shit. It kept dropping me into “Hard Mode” scripts where I was the punching bag for her foster brother. I had developed literal PTSD from being a “Tragic Fiancé.” I had been ready to take my “consolation prize” from ten failed lives and just retire into oblivion, but then the eleventh reboot started. “Host, are you really giving up?” the System’s voice echoed in my mind. “I swear, her emotional metrics are shifting this time…” “If you want out,” it continued, “the rules haven’t changed. You just have to die permanently in this world.” I was busy haggling with the voice in my head when Margot’s sharp tone snapped me back to reality. “Bennett! Look at what you’ve done!” I looked up. Her face was a mask of fury. 2 She pointed at Noah, who was slumped against the wall, looking pale. “Because of your little stunt, Noah’s heart condition flared up. The doctor says he needs an emergency transfusion.” I leaned back against the pillows. “If he’s sick, treat him. If he’s dying, let him. Why are you bothering me?” “If he doesn’t know how to die properly,” I added, “I can give him some pointers.” Margot’s face went white. My parents had stepped out to find a specialist, and the moment they were gone, she slapped me. Hard. “You caused this! He’s a universal donor, but his specific subtype is rare—and you’re the only match in the building! You’re giving him the blood, Bennett. You don’t get a choice.” Noah began to weep. “Forget it, Margot. Bennett hates me. He won’t save me. Just let me fade away. I’m just an orphan anyway…” Margot’s rage boiled over. She grabbed me by the collar, shaking me. “Bennett, if you want any hope of this marriage happening, you will give him that blood!” My vision swam. She slammed me back onto the mattress. “Don’t make me use force. Sign the consent form and—” Before she could finish, I snatched the pen and scribbled my name. I tossed the pen aside without looking up. “Take it.” Margot blinked. “What?” “I said, take the blood. Take it all. Drain me dry for all I care. I’m done with this anyway.” Noah shot a quick glance at Margot. Her expression darkened. “Bennett, quit the dramatics. It’s just a pint of blood. Do you have to act like a martyr just to make us feel guilty?” “Fine,” she sighed, her tone shifting to that bizarrely clinical, “negotiator” voice she used. “What do you want? Name your price for the blood. Money? A new car? Just tell me what it takes for you to do this willingly.” My head throbbed. This woman was a sociopath. Nothing was ever enough. I couldn’t stand the sound of her voice for one more second. I bolted upright and screamed at her, “I said I’ll give it to him! I’ll give him my blood, my heart, my damn soul if it’ll make you shut up!” Before she could react, I grabbed a paring knife from the fruit basket on the bedside table and drove it toward my wrist. The pain didn’t come. Margot’s reflexes were terrifying; she caught the blade with her bare hand. Blood seeped through her fingers. Noah screamed and ran out to call a nurse. Margot pinned my arms down, her face livid, her voice trembling with something that almost sounded like fear. “Bennett! Are you insane?! Is this the only trick you have left? To hurt yourself for attention?” “You used to just be jealous,” she spat, “but this? This is pathetic.” I thrashed under her grip. “Let go! What I do with my life is none of your business!” “I’m your fiancée!” I kicked, I bit her hand, I fought like a feral cat. My mouth tasted like iron from her blood. Finally, I went limp. I looked at her and gave her a soft, terrifyingly sweet smile. “Fine, Margot. You win. I was just acting. I just wanted to be the center of the universe. I wanted to steal you away from Noah.” “You’re so smart,” I whispered. “You saw right through me. The play is over. I’m not going to die today. Can you let go now?” She searched my eyes. I made sure they looked as sincere as a saint’s. Eventually, she exhaled, releasing her grip. “Bennett, I don’t like forcing people. But Noah is my brother. Saving him is the right thing to do. You were being a child.” “I promise,” she added, “if you give the blood, the Sinclair family will still honor the engagement…” Before the sentence left her lips, I grabbed the knife and drove it into my throat. The world went silent. My parents walked in with a bag of takeout—warm porridge for their recovering son. My blood sprayed across their faces before they could even say hello. The bag hit the floor. A scream ripped through the room: “Doctor! Get a doctor!” 3 I had a long, vivid dream. In the dream, I was still that wide-eyed idiot who first bonded with the System. I believed that if I were just kind enough, or patient enough, I could earn Margot’s love. Every time Noah framed me, I would scramble to explain, sweating and stuttering, dragging my dignity through the mud just for a chance at being believed. I tried everything: hunger strikes, ten-page letters of apology, standing in the rain outside her office. I was the textbook definition of a “simp.” By the ninth failed attempt, Margot had thrown the annulment papers at my face. She told me I was “too dark and twisted to be loved” and told me to vanish. So I did. I walked into traffic and was crushed into nothingness. My last memory was the sound of my own bones snapping and the screams of onlookers. Then I woke up for round ten, my brain already fractured from the trauma. I tried to endure it, but when Margot stood me up at our engagement party to take Noah to the movies, I finally understood. To hell with love. To hell with the mission. I had more affection for a plate of cold lasagna than I did for Margot Sinclair. I was woken up by her voice. It was coming from outside the hospital door, thick with that nauseating self-righteousness. “Arthur, Diane, I know it looks bad. But Noah’s heart attack was triggered by the shock Bennett gave him!” “Think about how Bennett has treated him in the past!” Her voice dropped an octave, sounding conspiratorial. “Weren’t you the ones who let me hire those nine girls to ‘seduce’ him? You wanted to see if his ambition was too high, to break his spirit so he’d be a submissive husband for the Sinclair family.” “You really think a suicide attempt means he’s changed? I don’t buy it. He’s been spending too much time on the streets. He’s learned how to act. This is Oscar-level stuff…” “Enough!” my father barked, though I could hear the guilt beneath his anger. Silence followed. A dead, heavy silence. I sat up in bed, picking at the stitches on my neck. My ears were ringing. They hired nine girls to ruin me. The System erupted in my head like a boiling kettle. “Holy shit! I knew something was wrong! No wonder every ‘love interest’ I gave you turned out to be a gold-digging snake! It wasn’t a bug in the code—it was these people! They were trying to gaslight you into a puppet!” “Host, how can you stand this? Good thing you’ve got that billion-dollar exit fund ready in another world. We can leave this trash heap whenever you want.” I didn’t wait for it to finish. I ripped the IV out of my arm and swung my legs over the bed. “Wait, Host, why do you look like a vengeful spirit? What are you looking for?” My voice was a raspy ghost of itself. “A knife.” 4 I didn’t find a knife. My parents and Margot caught me and dragged me back to my family’s estate like a prisoner under guard. The moment I got home, I tore the house apart. But they had been thorough. Not a single sharp edge remained—not even a nail clipper. I tried the windows, but they had installed security bars that would have made a prison warden jealous. The stairs were covered in triple-thick carpeting. The table corners were padded. Even the chopsticks were rounded plastic. A parade of psychiatrists shuffled through my room, looking at me like I was a broken engine. They prescribed enough sedatives to kill a horse. My mother spent every day crying into a bowl of soup, trying to force-feed me while telling me it was “for my own good.” My father, in a desperate attempt to cheer me up, hung photos of Margot and me from our childhood all over the living room. “Pathetic,” Margot sneered one afternoon as she walked past the gallery of photos. “Is this the new plan? Looking like a ghost to guilt my parents into sending Noah away?” She leaned in, her voice cold. “I told you, Bennett. As long as I’m breathing, you won’t touch a hair on his head.” She turned and swept out of the room. I looked at the photo of ten-year-old me—a boy who looked like a happy idiot—and felt nothing. Days passed. I was trapped. But the tiny sliver of familial love I had left had been incinerated the moment I learned my parents had helped destroy my life nine times over. I didn’t just want to die anymore. I wanted to take the whole world down with me. The opportunity came at Noah’s birthday party, hosted at our estate to “show a united front.” The moment I appeared, Noah grabbed my arm. “Bennett, I’m so glad you came. I know you’re mad, but I really want to be friends.” I let him lead me away from the crowd like a hollow shell. When we reached the deep end of the swimming pool in the back garden, his smile vanished. He leaned into my ear, his voice a venomous hiss. “Don’t think playing the victim will win her back. You want to die so bad, right?” “I had the cameras turned off yesterday,” he whispered, a cruel smirk playing on his lips. “When they find you at the bottom, they’ll just say you finally succeeded in your little madness. Do us all a favor.” He shoved me. Hard. Splash. The icy water swallowed me whole. This time, I didn’t fight. I didn’t even hold my breath. I let the water pour into my lungs like liquid concrete. The suffocating pressure was almost blissful. The System’s countdown started in my head—a heavenly sound. “Five… four… three…” Just as the darkness was closing in, a hand grabbed my hair and yanked me violently back to the surface. Margot’s voice exploded in my ear, hysterical with rage. “Noah says you stole his engagement ring! You tried to humiliate him in front of everyone!” She threw me onto the tiles. I lay there, shivering, my lungs burning, unable to even cough. She let go for a second, startled by how weak I looked, but then she remembered Noah’s face. “Bennett! Give it back! Stop pretending to be dead!” “You really threw yourself in the pool over a ring? How childish can you get?” I didn’t move. My heart was a faint, stuttering rhythm. “Are you addicted to this drama?!” she screamed, grabbing my limp, cold wrist to drag me upright. She froze. Her face went as white as a sheet. At that exact moment, my parents and a group of guests burst into the garden. They were staring at their phones—specifically, at the live feed from the micro-camera hidden in my lapel pin. Margot looked back at the crowd, then down at me—a broken, blue-lipped doll. She stumbled back, her knees giving out, and collapsed onto the wet concrete.

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I was at my high school reunion when I saw the post. I’d spent the last hour nursing a drink I didn’t want, scrolling through social media to avoid eye contact, when Jackson’s latest update popped up on my feed. [Ran into the guy I hated most in high school at the reunion tonight. Seeing how pathetic his life turned out? Absolute peak satisfaction. Karma is a beautiful thing.] The comment section was already a sea of “likes” and “congrats” from people I used to share a homeroom with. I sat there, my thumb hovering over the screen, before I slowly typed out a single line: “By ‘hated,’ do you mean the way you led the entire grade to ostracize him? Or the part where you knew he and his childhood sweetheart were in love, yet you inserted yourself into their lives under the guise of being a ‘bro’ just to sabotage them, eventually bullying him into moving across the ocean?” The second I hit send, the comment vanished. Deleted. I looked up. Jackson was standing three feet away, a smug, punchable grin plastered across his face. “Miles, man, why are you dressed so… casual?” he asked, his voice carrying just loud enough for the nearby tables to go quiet. “Is life in London not treating you well? Or did you just give up?” He leaned in, the scent of expensive bourbon and cheap malice radiating off him. “Are you married? Got a girlfriend? Or are you still just drifting? Don’t tell me you’re still living paycheck to paycheck, waiting in line for a government handout.” He chuckled, glancing at the crowd for approval. “If you’re struggling, just come back home. We won’t laugh at you. Or is the reason you stayed away for ten years because you’re still holding a grudge against me?” The room went dead silent. Every head turned. I could feel those eyes—sharp, judgmental, and heavy with the same casual cruelty they’d wielded a decade ago. But I wasn’t that seventeen-year-old boy anymore. I didn’t shrink. I didn’t look at the floor. I didn’t bother telling them that I owned more than just a house and a car. I didn’t mention that I held a significant stake in the very hotel group hosting this pathetic gathering. Instead, I looked Jackson dead in the eye and asked one question: “What about you, Jackson? It’s been ten years. Are you and Tina finally together?” 1 The words hit the room like a sudden drop in temperature. Tina, who had been standing a few feet away, finally broke her ten-year silence. She looked exactly the same, yet entirely different—the girl I once thought I’d spend my life with was now just a stranger in a cocktail dress. “Miles, stop it,” she said, her voice trembling slightly. “Don’t be like that. Jackson and I… we’re just friends. We’ve always just been friends.” She stepped closer, trying to reclaim some ghost of the intimacy we once had. “I know you’re still bitter about the past, but it’s been so long. I’ve wanted to get everyone together for years just so we could finally talk, clear the air, and start over. Can’t we just move past it?” Jackson, sensing an opening, raised his glass. He tried to throw an arm around my shoulder, the way he used to do when he was mocking me. “Exactly! We’re all adults here, Miles. If I did anything to offend you back in the day, don’t take it to heart. You know me—I’ve always been a straight shooter. I never understood all that sensitive, brooding stuff you had going on.” The crowd followed his lead like clockwork, standing up with their glasses raised. “Yeah, don’t be a buzzkill, Miles. Jackson’s just a high-energy guy.” “It’s all in the past. Who keeps a grudge for ten years? That’s just petty.” “Be the bigger person. Jackson was the one who went out of his way to make sure you were invited tonight.” They framed his forced invitation as an act of charity, a seat at the table I should be grateful for. They wanted the satisfaction of my forgiveness so they could stop feeling like the villains of my story. But I’ve never been good at following a script I didn’t write. I didn’t touch my glass. “I can’t drink,” I said quietly. “My wife is pregnant. I have to go pick her up in a bit.” The sound of shattering glass sliced through the room. Tina’s drink had slipped from her hand, splashing red wine across the hem of her dress. Everyone stared, but Jackson was the only one whose eyes betrayed a flicker of genuine relief. Tina forced a jagged, painful smile. “You’re… you’re joking. You don’t have to lie just because you don’t want to drink with us.” “I’m not joking,” I replied calmly. “I’m married. My wife is expecting. I’m only back in the States to handle some family business acquisitions.” Jackson couldn’t hide his excitement. It was the most honest he’d been all night; with me married, he finally didn’t have to pretend to be Tina’s “just a friend” anymore. “When did this happen?” he asked, his voice booming. “Why wasn’t there an announcement? Congratulations, man!” Tina’s voice was brittle, like dry leaves. “But… you always said… Miles, you’re lying to me, aren’t you?” One of Jackson’s flunkies stepped forward, his face reddening with secondhand indignation. “Miles, seriously? You’re going to pull this? Do you have any idea how long Tina has been waiting for you to come back?” He gestured wildly. “Look at her. You didn’t come to this reunion to move on; you came to get back with her. Be a man. Don’t be so dramatic. Don’t miss out on a woman like her—you’ll never find another one.” I’d forgotten how much I hated the sound of their voices. I gave them a thin, effortless smile. “I really am married. As for the things I said back then? They were just the foolish promises of a kid who didn’t know any better.” I looked directly at Tina, taking the very words she’d used to destroy me ten years ago and handing them back to her. “Surely you can take a joke, right?” 2 Tina and I were “the” couple. We grew up in houses that shared a fence, went to the same schools, and shared every secret from kindergarten through sophomore year. Then came Jackson. He moved to our town junior year and blew through our lives like a hurricane. He was loud, athletic, and had that “golden boy” charisma that made every guy want to be his brother and every girl want his attention. That included Tina. Suddenly, they were always together. They sat together in the back of the class, whispering about things I wasn’t part of. They gamed together until 2 AM. Our walk home from school, which had been a private ritual for a decade, slowly became a trio. At first, I told myself I was being paranoid. He was just a new friend. Until the day Jackson, while “play-fighting” with Tina, knocked my glass water bottle off my desk. It shattered into a thousand jagged pieces. It was a custom-etched bottle Tina had given me for my birthday. Part of a set. “Whoops!” Jackson said, his voice loud and performative. He patted my shoulder with a heavy hand. “My bad, bro. I’ll buy you a new one. Don’t get all worked up about it.” I shook my head, trying to keep my voice steady. “It’s fine. It was an accident. Don’t worry about it.” Jackson leaned down, but his voice stayed loud enough for the whole room to hear. “No, really, let me replace it. I know how you sensitive types are. You say you’re not mad to our faces, then you go home and stew about it for a week.” The air left my lungs. He was framing me as the “delicate” one, the guy who was secretly petty. The guys around us started snickering. “I said it’s fine,” I muttered, my face heating up. Jackson pointed at me, laughing for the crowd. “See? Look at that face! He’s already sulking. It’s just a bottle, man. Just tell me to buy you a new one instead of being so passive-aggressive. I hate it when people can’t just be real.” He nudged Tina. “Tess, talk to your boy. Tell him to cheer up before he ruins the vibe for everyone.” Tina looked at the glass on the floor, then at me. “Miles, honestly, stop being so sensitive. I’ll just buy you another one. It wasn’t even that expensive.” “You think I’m being sensitive?” I asked, a lump forming in my throat. “I’ll buy it myself. Forget it.” Tina looked like she wanted to apologize, but Jackson threw an arm around her neck, pulling her away. “Man, what did you say to him? You broke the Prince’s heart!” he joked. “Let’s go, let’s go. We’ll come back when His Royal Highness has cheered up.” And just like that, I had a nickname: The Little Prince. Every time I handed out papers for a teacher: “Careful, don’t want our delicate Little Prince getting a paper cut.” Every time I sat quietly to read: “Look at that royal posture. So much more refined than us peasants, right?” The laughter followed me through the hallways like a physical weight. The smirks, the side-eyes, the whispered jokes—they were everywhere. And Tina? She did nothing. Eventually, even she started using the narrative. When she was annoyed with me, she’d sigh and say: “God, Miles, stop acting so entitled. You don’t actually live in a castle. Drop the ‘Little Prince’ attitude.” 3 The cold war between Tina and me set in, and Jackson used the silence to sharpen his knives. He started targeting every little thing. If I had a simple keychain on my bag, he’d gasp: “Whoa! Look at the accessory on Miles’s bag! So chic. You really put a lot of thought into being ‘aesthetic,’ don’t you?” He’d mimic me, primping his collar with exaggerated, feminine movements while the other guys howled. If I wiped down my desk after lunch, he’d sneer: “So refined, Miles. You think the rest of us are pigs? If we’re too gross for you, why don’t you just get a private tutor at home? Why bother slumming it with us?” I could feel the resentment from the other kids growing. He was making my basic habits look like an insult to them. During the weekly seat rotation, I was moving a heavy box of books. I couldn’t carry it all in one trip. Jackson walked over and put his foot right on top of the remaining box. “Man, I’m exhausted,” he shouted to the room. “Is there a brave soul willing to help our Little Prince? He’s got such frail, dainty arms, I’m worried he might snap.” The classroom erupted. People were literally doubling over, some even mocking the way I walked. Tina didn’t look back. She just muttered, “That’s enough, Jackson.” Jackson gave a loud, mocking Tsk. “Oh, looks like someone’s still protective of her childhood crush.” Tina flared up, her face turning red. “I’m not protective! I’m not ‘hearting’ anyone, especially not a crybaby!” Jackson grinned, satisfied. “Exactly. We’re just trying to toughen him up, right? He’s too soft. He’ll never survive in the real world if he’s this in his head all the time.” Tina looked at him, her expression softening into something familiar and warm. “Yeah… I guess guys should be a bit more… rugged.” Jackson playfully punched her shoulder. “Now you’re talking! Men should act like men!” My heart didn’t just break; it felt like it had been shredded. I thought if I just ignored them, Jackson would get bored. But after a month of silence, it was Tina who broke first. She caught me by the lockers. “Miles, please stop being mad. Don’t ignore me.” She looked at me with those big, tearful eyes she’d used since we were six. And like an idiot, I softened. I couldn’t imagine a life without her. We were supposed to go to the same college, move to the same city. I couldn’t leave her behind. So, we made up. Or at least, we pretended to. I still waited for her after her extracurriculars. We still walked home together, the streetlights casting our long shadows on the pavement. But I could feel Jackson watching us from a distance, whispering to his friends and laughing. That laughter made my skin crawl. It made me feel like I was the punchline to a joke I hadn’t heard yet. I tried to tell Tina how I felt. She groaned. “You’re overthinking again. They’re just kidding around. That’s just how guys are with each other.” When she saw my face fall, she softened her voice. “Okay, fine. I’ll talk to them. I’ll tell them to back off the jokes.” She walked over to Jackson across the quad. I watched as Jackson threw his head back and yelled, “Oh, we can’t even joke now? Does he think he’s a god? Does everyone have to bow down to him?” “Jackson!” Tina snapped, but it sounded performative. Jackson shrugged and shot me a look of pure, unadulterated malice. During those months, Jackson’s voice and his subtle cruelties were like invisible fists. The whispering in the back of the room felt like insects crawling over my skin. But I was weak. I told myself it was only two more years. Just two more years and I’d be free. I could endure it. And then, out of nowhere, Tina confessed she loved me. 4 She asked me to meet her at the football bleachers after practice. We’d spent our whole lives hanging out at the fields, so I didn’t suspect a thing. Until a few guys from class started acting weird. They kept asking me what my “big plans” were for the weekend and what I was going to wear. “Just a workout set,” I told them. “We’re hitting the gym, then the library. Just a normal Saturday.” They looked disappointed. “You’re going on a date with the prettiest girl in school and that’s the best you can do? So boring.” Boring. The word stung. Was that why Tina was spending so much time with Jackson? Because I was boring? The next day, following the “advice” of those guys, I bought a new athletic set. They told me it was “high-fashion” and “fitted” to show off my build. I wasn’t the biggest guy, but I was lean and toned from years of swimming. When I met Tina, her eyes lit up. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, looking almost shy. I felt a surge of hope. Maybe this was it. Maybe we were finally going back to how things used to be. We sat down in the shade of the bleachers, and she started acting fidgety. “Miles,” she said, her voice small. “I’ve been holding something in for a long time. I need to tell you.” My heart started thumping so hard I could hear it in my ears. “Will you be my boyfriend?” Blood rushed to my face. I felt dizzy with relief. After a moment, I whispered, “If it’s you, Tina… then yes.” I remembered when we were seven, and she’d held my hand and told me I was the best boy in the world and she was going to marry me one day. I remembered her standing up to middle-school bullies for me like a mother hen. Miles is mine, she’d said. If you mess with him, you mess with me. Ten years of history. How could a guy like Jackson ever stand a chance against that? Tina leaned in, asking me to repeat myself. I took a deep breath and said it louder. “Yes! I love you too, Tina!” “HAHAHAHAHA!” A roar of laughter erupted from behind the bleachers. A dozen kids from our class spilled out, phones in hand, recording everything. Their faces were twisted with mockery. Jackson was at the front. “God, Tina, you really are the best. I can’t believe you actually got him to say it.” I looked at Tina. She turned her head away, refusing to meet my eyes. Jackson walked up to me, his face a mask of fake pity. “Oh man, Miles. Are you serious? You wore that outfit to a fake confession? What are you trying to prove? That you’ve actually been to a gym once?” The guys who had “recommended” the outfit were in the back, smirking and looking away. Jackson reached out and yanked the collar of my shirt, pulling it so hard the fabric strained. I stumbled back. “I was wondering why you looked so ‘buff’ today,” Jackson laughed. “It’s because the shirt is two sizes too small! He’s literally squeezing himself into a kid’s size to look tough!” “I’m not!” I shouted, my voice cracking. The crowd went wild. “Is it true, Jackson?” someone yelled. “I felt the fabric myself!” Jackson yelled back. “It’s stretched to the breaking point! Talk about overcompensating!” A few guys started whistling, their eyes scanning me like I was a freak in a circus. I looked at Tina, my face pale, my voice trembling. “What is this? What did they mean?” 5 Tina finally looked at me, but her eyes were cold. “Miles, you’re just so… uncool. You never fit in with anyone. Jackson thought this would be a good way to get you to loosen up. To stop acting like you’re better than everyone.” The betrayal felt like a physical blow to the chest. My eyes burned. “You think humiliating me like this is ‘helping’ me?” Before she could answer, Jackson stepped in. “Don’t you dare talk to her like that. You’re always playing the victim, banking on the fact that she feels sorry for you.” He leaned in, his voice dropping to a whisper meant only for me. “She didn’t even want to talk to you anymore. It took me five minutes to convince her this would be funny. She even bet me that the second she showed you a little affection, you’d come crawling like a pathetic puppy. And look at you. She was right.” The world tilted. The air felt like lead. Without thinking, I lunged forward and shoved Jackson as hard as I could. “MILES!” A sharp shout came from the edge of the field. Before I could move, a massive force slammed into me. I was hoisted up by my collar and slammed against the equipment shed. Pain flared in my back. Panic and rage flooded my system.

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“Isolated and bullied by the entire office just because I refused the eighty-hour work week?” I’m the new Audit Lead. I’ve been here three months, and in that time, no one has spoken a word to me. My reports are hijacked, and “accidental” coffee spills are a weekly occurrence. At the annual gala, Linda—the woman who’s spent the last quarter stealing my credit—stands on stage as ‘Employee of the Year.’ She smirks into the microphone, throwing shade for the whole company to hear: “Some people are just dead weight. They don’t understand what it means to truly sacrifice for the team.” I just smile. I walk up to the stage and take the mic. With one sentence, the room turns to ice. And Linda? Her face doesn’t just drop—it shatters. 1 My name is Andrea Lawson. I’m twenty-five, and I didn’t exactly take the traditional route into my family’s empire. My father’s mandate was clear: start at the bottom, keep your head down, and find the rot. He sent me to one of our most troubled subsidiaries in Charlotte to serve as the Audit Lead. My mission wasn’t to manage; it was to excise the cancer of internal corruption. I accepted without hesitation. From day one, the atmosphere was glacial. My desk was tucked into a dim corner, buried under mountains of legacy files no one bothered to explain. Every “good morning” I offered was met with a dismissive nod or a cold, calculated stare. Then there was Linda Vickers. She was in her late thirties with a gaze that screamed corporate shark. She was the first to test my limits. I’d barely finished my first comprehensive audit when she intercepted the file before I could present it to the Director. By the afternoon meeting, her name was on the cover. The Director showered her with praise while Linda beamed, soaking in the stolen glory. I sat there, a ghost in the room. Afterward, I caught her by the breakroom. “Linda, about that report—” She didn’t even look up from her phone. She just curled her lip in a way that felt like a slap. “Listen, honey, you’re young. You need to learn how things work around here. Don’t be so eager to take credit. I did you a favor by polishing that mess of yours.” I didn’t argue. I just walked away, knowing I had the original digital timestamps saved on an encrypted drive. This was only the beginning. Lunch was a solitary affair. It was a choreographed dance; the moment I stood up, the rest of the office would leave in clusters. One afternoon, as I was pouring a fresh cup of coffee, Linda “happened” to brush past me. Her elbow caught my arm, and the scalding liquid surged over the brim, soaking my laptop keyboard. The screen flickered once and went black. Linda gasped—a sound so hollow it made my skin crawl. “Oh, Andrea! You really need to watch where you’re going. You’re so clumsy.” The Director, Howard Bennett, came over to see what the commotion was. He didn’t ask if I was okay; he just told me to go fetch a replacement from IT. I didn’t lose my temper. I wiped the coffee from my desk in silence, already weaving a net they couldn’t see. 2 My life as the “Invisible Woman” continued. I was the girl who clocked in at nine and left at five. In a culture that worshipped “hustle” and “toxic productivity,” I was a heretic. Howard was a master of the corporate gaslight. He’d hold these mandatory meetings, preaching that the company was a “family” and that “sacrifice” was our highest calling. He rebranded the grueling overtime as “passion” and “personal growth.” I refused to play. My investigation required a sharp mind and hours of quiet, uninterrupted work—not performative exhaustion. My refusal to stay until 10:00 PM became their favorite weapon to use against me. “Andrea, we’re a team here,” Howard said during a staff meeting, his voice dripping with forced concern. “When everyone else is grinding and you’re out the door at five, it really hurts morale.” Linda chimed in from the side, her eyes full of scorn. “It’s hard to trust someone who isn’t ‘all in,’ isn’t it?” I looked Howard straight in the eye. “My productivity isn’t measured by how many hours I sit in this chair. The data in my reports speaks for itself.” The room went silent. Howard’s face flushed a deep, angry red. He cleared his throat and ended the meeting abruptly. I didn’t care about the icy glares following me out. The more they hated my calm, the more mistakes they’d make. A week later, I submitted a proposal for optimizing our procurement process. I’d spent weeks agonizing over it, identifying loopholes that were costing us millions. Howard barely glanced at it before tossing it onto a pile of junk mail. Three days later, it appeared on the company intranet—word for word—with Linda Vickers listed as the sole author. Howard hailed it as a “revolutionary breakthrough.” I didn’t confront them. I just saved the version history, the metadata, and the submission logs. My patience was fraying, but the trap was almost set. Then came the “technical issues.” My thumb drive vanished from my desk; files were remotely deleted from my shared folder. I didn’t make a scene. I simply used recovery software to pull them back and started backing everything up to a private cloud server. I even installed a tiny, discreet camera at my workstation. I wasn’t just taking the hits anymore; I was collecting receipts. 3 I became a ghost in the machine. Every suggestion I made was vetoed. Every insight was ignored. Under Linda’s “leadership,” the rest of the audit team treated me like a leper. They’d stop talking the moment I entered the room, exchanging knowing, cruel smirks. I leaned into the silence. I started staying late—not for their “hustle,” but for my hunt. In the quiet of the empty office, I tore through the layered financial statements they thought were hidden. I found the threads. A web of vendors all tied back to shell companies owned by Linda and Howard’s relatives. The “clean” procurement contracts were actually bloated with kickbacks. It was a sophisticated laundering scheme, funneling millions into offshore accounts. I compiled it all. Every transaction, every shell company, every forged signature. I mapped the rot with surgical precision. They mistook my quietness for weakness. Linda got bolder. She’d stand near my desk and whisper to Howard about “top-secret projects,” throwing me looks of mocking pity. One afternoon, she handed a quarterly report that was legally my responsibility to a brand-new intern. “Watch and learn from a pro, kid,” she told him, loud enough for the whole floor to hear. The intern looked at me, embarrassed. “It’s fine,” I told him with a small, tight smile. “Do your best.” I walked away without a word. Every insult they threw was just another nail in their professional coffins. I even started “failing” on purpose. I’d leave minor, obvious errors in unimportant files just to watch them pounce on me during meetings. They’d tear me apart, feeling superior, feeling invincible. They thought I was a sacrificial lamb. They had no idea I was the butcher. 4 The three-month mark arrived, and with it, the annual company gala. The office was buzzing with a fake, frantic energy. Everyone was obsessed with the year-end bonuses and the “Employee of the Year” award. Linda was the shoo-in. Howard was already bragging about his upcoming promotion to the regional office. They thought they were untouchable. I knew it was just the eye of the storm. I moved all my evidence—the recordings, the bank statements, the video footage—onto a single, encrypted external drive. I kept it on my person at all times. I’d already made a quiet call to the Chief Legal Officer at the corporate headquarters. I didn’t give details; I just told them to be ready. The night before the gala, Howard called me into his office. He sat behind his mahogany desk, looking like a man who had already won. “Andrea, look. You’re a bright girl, but you’re just not a ‘culture fit,’” he said, using that classic corporate euphemism for ‘we hate you.’ “You’re an outsider. You don’t blend. I’m going to give you a graceful way out. Sign this resignation, and I’ll give you a glowing recommendation.” He pushed a paper toward me. I didn’t even pick it up. “Howard,” I said, my voice steady and cold. “I didn’t come here to blend in. I came to fix what’s broken. And my employment isn’t your decision to make.” His face turned a sickly shade of purple. He waved me out of the office, his hand shaking with rage. We were past the point of no return. 5 The gala was held in a gilded ballroom at the Ritz-Carlton. Crystal chandeliers, open bars, and a sea of people in expensive suits pretending to like each other. I wore a simple, charcoal-grey suit and sat at the furthest table in the back. I was an island in a sea of forced laughter. I watched them. I watched the people who had mocked me and stolen from me as they hovered around Howard and Linda like moths to a flame. The awards ceremony began. Howard took the stage, glowing with self-importance. He gave a nauseating speech about “vision” and “loyalty” before announcing the Employee of the Year. “This person represents the very heart of this branch,” Howard boomed. “A leader who gives everything to the team. Please join me in congratulating Linda Vickers!” The room erupted. Linda floated to the stage, her face a mask of practiced humility. She took the trophy, her eyes gleaming. Howard added that she was a “model for the entire organization.” Linda stepped to the mic. She thanked Howard, thanked the “family,” and then her gaze found me in the back of the room. A cruel, triumphant light sparked in her eyes. “But we all know,” she said, her voice amplified and sharp, “that a team is only as strong as its weakest link. There are some people who are just dead weight—people who refuse to sacrifice, who think they’re above the grind. Those people don’t belong here.” The room chuckled. Heads turned. A hundred pairs of eyes landed on me, filled with pity, mockery, and cold indifference. I didn’t look down. I didn’t flush. I stood up, smoothed my jacket, and started walking toward the stage. My footsteps were the only sound in the suddenly quiet room. Linda’s smirk faltered for a second as I approached, but she held her ground, thinking I was coming up to beg for a second chance. I didn’t look at her. I walked straight to the center of the stage.

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