Author: Momo Chan

I transmigrated into a cannon-fodder extra, and the System immediately slapped me with a mission: seduce and win over the second male lead—the resident peacock of the school. The problem? I’d been emotionally tone-deaf since childhood. All I could do was stand there, blink dumbly, and watch him try to toy with me the way he toyed with all his other prey. “Guess where the rose is?” He held a red rose behind his back, looking down at me with an effortless, honeyed smirk. Host, in a moment like this, all you have to do is act shy! Look down and blush! Right. Shy. Got it. I offered a timid little smile, raised my hand, and let my fingers graze the shell of his ear before drawing back. “I guess…” A split second later, a gorgeous, fresh red rose materialized out of thin air between my fingertips. “It’s right here.” The air went dead silent for two full seconds. The rich boy’s face flushed a violent, incandescent red. 01 The System buzzed in my ear with a violent screech of static, sounding as though its motherboard had just fried on the spot. I held the rose out toward Parker Hayes. “For you.” Parker stood there, completely forgetting to hide the blossom he was holding behind his back. He’d probably flirted with half the girls at Westfield High, but this was undoubtedly the first time anyone had ever turned the tables and flirted back with pure sleight of hand. After a few excruciating seconds, he ran a hand through his wavy brown hair, desperate to reclaim his swagger. “Thanks,” he murmured, his voice slightly raspy. He pulled the rose out from behind his back and offered it to me, those bedroom hazel eyes flickering with a dangerous, practiced charm. “An even trade.” I shook my head, took his rose, tapped the two stems together, and with a swift flick of my fingers, bound them into a single, seamless stem. I deposited both blossoms right back into his palm. “You can have both.” Evidently not expecting a phase two to the trick, Parker froze, entirely disarmed. “Why?” The fried System finally rebooted in my head, screeching in panic: Host! You have to be coy! Play hard to get! That’s the only way to hook a guy like Parker! Coy? Understood. The System was telling me not to be clingy, and definitely not to force him into liking me. So I took a respectful step back, looked him dead in the eye, and said, “Because I like you.” The System: ??? Then, to substantiate my premise with absolute logical rigor, I added placidly, “So all the pretty roses belong to you.” If human mortification could take physical form, steam would have been whistling out of Parker’s ears right about then. He gripped the stems so hard his knuckles turned white. Without a single word, he spun on his heel and bolted. Watching the furious crimson tinting the tips of his ears, I asked internally, “System, did I handle that correctly?” The System paused for a very long time before muttering: …That was an absolute god-tier play. I have no notes. 02 In my previous life, I was a professional escape artist. I died inside a padlocked water tank under blinding stage lights because of a mechanical failure and a crew member’s split-second blunder. When I opened my eyes again, I was in this world. Even though I’d been saddled with a mission to pursue the second male lead and secure a happily-ever-after, getting a second shot at life—and getting to perform magic again—was more than enough for me. The next few days of pursuing Parker were actually quite fun. The System’s playbook was simple: bring him breakfast every day and shower him with constant, attentive care. I followed the instructions to the letter. “Parker, I brought you breakfast.” I sat in the desk right in front of him and placed a single, perfectly smooth hard-boiled egg on his wooden desk. Parker stared down at the egg. Clearly, his bruised ego from the other day was still smarting. He let out a cold, defensive sneer: “You bring someone breakfast and it’s a plain, unpeeled egg? Who am I, a shelter case?” “What do you usually like to eat?” I asked plainly. Parker threw out the first absurd thing that came to mind: “A New York bagel. Toasted, extra scallion cream cheese.” I swept my right hand lightly over the egg. In a blink, a warm, fragrant sesame bagel materialized directly beside it. Parker’s eyes widened to the size of saucers. “I—I meant an iced latte!” he blurted out. Another pass of my palm. The bagel vanished, replaced instantly by a sweating plastic cup of iced latte with a straw. “Holy shit… I meant a warm blueberry muffin! Fresh from the bakery!” This time, I didn’t wave my hand. Seeing that I’d finally hit a wall, Parker leaned back in his chair with a smug, self-satisfied smirk. “What’s the matter? Can’t pull that off with your little street magic tricks?” I nodded honestly. “If you really want a warm muffin, Parker, I can run down to the bakery on the corner and buy one for you right now.” The smirk vanished from his face instantly. He sat up straight, his gaze darting away in flustered embarrassment. “Bring the bagel back.” With a flick of my wrist, the sesame bagel rested neatly on his desk once more. “This is plenty. Who told you to go running around buying stuff? You’re annoying.” I looked at the bright red creeping up his ears and smiled. Host, didn’t you actually have an emergency muffin in your backpack? I answered in my mind: The soul of magic is to deliver surprise and delight, not to humiliate someone in a battle of petty pride. 03 After tailing Parker for a few weeks, Westfield High held its first major standardized midterm examinations of the semester. When the monthly Honor Roll and GPA rankings were pinned to the main hallway bulletin board, Parker looked like a thundercloud ready to burst. He didn’t utter a word of complaint, but he coldly pushed away the breakfast sandwich I offered him. I looked up at the names at the very top of the bulletin board: Rank 1: Julian Cole. Rank 2: Parker Hayes. The male lead and second male lead have always been bitter rivals, the System chimed in. They fight for the top spot academically, and emotionally, Parker is the female lead’s childhood friend—yet he stands zero chance against the brooding, untouchable Julian. I nodded slowly. The System had already briefed me: Clara Brooks, the original female lead, would soon transfer here specifically to chase Julian. In the original plotline, Parker’s obsession with Clara derailed his academic focus completely. He never beat Julian again. After high school, Parker shipped off to Europe to remake himself into a cutthroat corporate titan, hoping to return and win Clara back. But by the time he returned, Clara and Julian had already tied the knot in a high-society wedding. He remained unmarried for the rest of his life, pulling dirty strings behind the scenes in desperate attempts to drive a wedge between them. He became the textbook definition of the bitter, toxic second lead who ruined himself for unrequited love. The main couple’s bond proved unbreakable. Clara eventually cut him off entirely, shattering what was left of his heart. Parker spiraled into chronic depression, and despite inheriting his family’s billion-dollar conglomerate, the relentless emotional torment wore him down into an early grave. I extracted two fundamental takeaways from this tragedy: One: Confidence is vital. I needed to rebuild Parker’s self-esteem. Two: Joy is paramount. I had to keep Parker happy. I found Parker ditching class, sprawled on a weathered bench beneath a massive oak tree behind the athletic fields. Hearing my footsteps, he squeezed his eyes shut and snapped, “I’m in a foul mood. Don’t bother me.” 04 Without saying a word, I sat down quietly on the opposite end of the wooden bench. Then, I slipped a small, clear glass bottle with a black screw cap out of my jacket pocket. “Parker, let me teach you a trick.” Parker opened his eyes, scowling, clearly about to tell me to get lost. Until he saw me give the little bottle a sharp flick of the wrist. The single die sitting inside exploded into a dozen miniature dice right before his eyes. His gaze was instantly hooked. “There’s a false chamber in the black cap,” I explained, unscrewing it. “The spare die sits here, and the miniature dice are nested inside the rim.” Parker caught on to the mechanism and gave a subtle, reluctant nod. I reset the gimmick, screwed the cap back on tight, and offered it to him. “Give it a try.” Parker took it hesitantly. “Just a shake?” “Just one.” Parker gripped the bottle and gave it a firm shake. Inside, the die hadn’t shattered into mini dice. Instead, it had transformed into a piece of gold-foil-wrapped toffee. Parker’s hand twitched violently. He avoided my gaze entirely, staring down at the bottle as he awkwardly picked at the candy wrapper, muttering under his breath: “What’s the point of messing around with these childish—” The moment the wrapper unfolded, his voice died in his throat. Tucked inside was a tiny strip of paper. On it was written in neat, steady handwriting: You will always be number one in my book. The trick was my design; the note was a joint effort between me and the System. Host, do you think he’s going to break down and sob from sheer gratitude? Before I could reply, the System began blubbering in my ear: Forget him, I’m the one crying! Wahhh, this is too soft! Ignoring the bizarre synthesized sobbing in my head, I calmly unwrapped the breakfast sandwich Parker had rejected earlier and took a bite. As it turned out, the peacock had weathered enough social storms to keep his composure. He dropped his head, clutching the paper slip and the candy into his palm so hard his knuckles trembled. Then he stood up, moving with the stiff, jerky mechanics of a rusted marionette, and strode toward the academic building. “Parker?” I jogged after him. “Where are you going?” “Do you ever stop nagging?!” His breathing was ragged, his eyes darting frantically in every direction except toward me. “Where do you think I’m going? Back to class to study, obviously!” With that, he took a giant sidestep to put three feet of space between us. “And stop trying to hit on me. I don’t date in high school. Period.” I paused, asking the System in my head, “Has Parker really never had a girlfriend?” Affirmative, Host. Parker strictly abides by the playboy code: all flirtation, zero commitment. “So he’s what people call a player?” Well, technically yes, but he’s never actually crossed any real lines. The most he’s ever done is a casual arm around someone’s waist at a party. The guy hasn’t even had his first kiss… Whatever, he’s still a menace. I nodded in agreement. When I first arrived in this world, Parker had only flirted with me out of sheer boredom. Yet lately… I studied the tall, retreating silhouette ahead of me. He hadn’t spoken to any of the cheerleaders or high-society girls in weeks. “Why the sudden change?” I asked the System. Probably because you kept uno-reversing his flirty games, the System reasoned. You gave his fragile playboy ego an existential crisis. I nodded solemnly once more. “My mistake.” 05 “Hi everyone, I’m Clara Brooks. I’m really excited to be here, and I hope we can all be great friends.” At the front of the classroom, the transferred female lead was delivering her self-introduction. I glanced beside me. Parker had stopped writing; his pen hovered motionless over his notebook as he stared intently at Clara on the podium. Meanwhile, Clara’s gaze bypassed the entire room, locking straight onto Julian Cole, who sat in the first row by the door. And Julian, sitting in the front row, suddenly lifted his head, looked across the entire classroom, and met my eyes. Me: ? Host! Break eye contact! Abort! Love triangle collision detected! Startled, I moved to look away. “Who are you staring at?” Parker’s voice drifted over, thick with a venomous, quiet edge. I turned back. He was twirling his pen, his hazel eyes narrowed into slits as they drilled into my face. Quick on my feet, I blurted out, “Checking if the hall monitor is doing rounds outside.” To sell the lie, I slid a deck of Bicycle cards from my desk and executed a seamless, one-handed cut. “Didn’t want to get caught playing with cards in class.” Parker’s attention was instantly derailed by the flashy dexterity of my fingers. His tone softened despite himself. “Teach me that cut after class.” I nodded. “Deal.” For some reason, during that split-second interaction with Julian, my heart had skipped an odd beat. Having grown accustomed to life-and-death stakes on stage, it had been a very long time since I felt that sort of electric tension. Once Clara settled in, Parker ended up bickering with her constantly. Because Clara’s desk was situated diagonally in front of him, their hushed banter was practically a soundtrack to our lectures. “Parker, help me out with the last calculus problem on the worksheet.” “Are you brain-dead? It’s a basic derivative. Take it away, don’t waste my study time.” I looked down at the AP English Literature practice test on my desk. Half of the essay prompts were blank; I hadn’t the faintest idea how to analyze the allegorical subtext of nineteenth-century poetry. Looks like the prince charming detests dumb girls, the System noted grimly. I agreed wholeheartedly and let out a quiet sigh. Naturally, the moment the bell rang, Parker reached over and snatched my test right off my desk. He stared down at the sea of white space, his brows knitting together. “Why is this blank?” “I don’t get it,” I confessed. “I don’t know the answers.” Just as I was debating whether an apology was in order, Parker dragged his chair over. “Which one don’t you get?” Wait, what? I pointed lamely at question number one on the multiple-choice section. Parker pulled his chair right up against mine, so close that the crisp scent of his cedarwood cologne wrapped around me. “Missing this one is completely understandable,” he began, his voice surprisingly patient. “The phrasing is unnecessarily obtuse. Look here, all you have to do is identify the underlying metaphor…” He launched into an earnest, thorough breakdown of a basic vocabulary question. Watching his profile lean in so close that his shoulder brushed mine, my palms grew embarrassingly clammy. Was it really “understandable”? It was literally a definition question. The System sighed in my head: I take back what I said about him hating dumb girls. 06 Childhood friends were childhood friends after all. Parker looked out for Clara in countless little ways, and occasionally, Clara brought him fancy bakery snacks. Whenever Clara brought him food, Parker refused the breakfast I handed him, muttering under his breath: “Keep it for yourself. You barely eat as it is. Look at you—a strong gust of wind could snap you in half.” What a waste, the System lamented. You stayed up half the night practicing that new coin transposition routine. I took a bite of my smoked ham sandwich and shook my head quietly. “It’s fine.” Courting someone was an incremental process; a professional illusionist possessed infinite patience. The sandwich tasted great, anyway. Still… Deep down in my chest, a faint, dull ache stirred. Just a tiny bit. “Hey, Chloe! Parker told me you’re an incredible magician!” During lunch, Clara turned around in her seat, resting her chin on her hands with an eager, sunny grin. I blinked, momentarily thrown, then nodded. “Could you show me a trick? Parker showed off a coin vanity vanish at a party last week and bragged that you taught it to him personally.” Before I could process her words, Parker reached over, snagged the hood of Clara’s sweater, and yanked her backward. “Why are you bothering her? Go back to your locker.” “Let go of me, Parker! I just wanted to see a trick, stop being such a jerk!” Parker scowled, his gaze instinctively flicking toward me. I offered a gentle smile. “It’s really no trouble.” I stood up and pulled a plain yellow rubber band from my blazer pocket. I asked Clara to hold out her index finger. I looped the band securely around her finger, then stretched it across and looped it around my own. Our fingertips touched lightly. With my free hand, I gave a sharp, theatrical tug— The rubber band seemed to melt straight through our flesh and bone, coming away completely intact in my hand. Clara gasped, her eyes wide with shock. But before she could speak, my hand fluttered like a butterfly’s wing. The rubber band dissolved into thin air. In its place rested a brightly wrapped gourmet lollipop. I offered the candy to her with a warm smile, meeting her eyes. Clara clapped both hands over her bright red cheeks, practically vibrating with excitement. “Oh my gosh… thank you! Chloe, you are the coolest person alive!” The warning bell rang, and an enchanted Clara was practically herded back to her seat by a stony-faced Parker. 07 When the final bell chimed, I was just zipping up my backpack when a large, elegant hand slammed down onto my desk. I looked up to find Parker glaring down at me, his voice low and laced with accusation: “Why did you go out of your way to do a trick for Clara?” He searched my face relentlessly, refusing to miss a single micro-expression. “Don’t you feel even a little bit jealous seeing me with her?” The System immediately began screaming tactical advice in my ear: Host! In a critical drama scenario like this, you must display the magnanimous, unbothered grace of a true queen! Got it. Crystal clear. I looked up into his eyes and said with absolute sincerity, “You like her. If making her happy brings you joy, then I’m happy to do it.” Parker looked as if he’d been struck by lightning. He froze, utterly paralyzed. He dropped his head into his hands with a groan, then looked back at me, his jaw clenched tight. “Chloe… are you genuinely brain-dead? Are you playing dumb, or are you actually this clueless?” Seeing the raw, overwhelmed emotion welling in his eyes, I congratulated myself on executing the System’s plan flawlessly. “I don’t have feelings for her!” Parker blurted out, desperate to clear the air. “Our families have been business associates since before we were born! Our parents practically ordered me to make sure she didn’t get lost on her first week here!” He cleared his throat, his gaze drifting away awkwardly. “…Is there anything you want from me? As payback?” I tilted my head. “Payback?” “A gift! A favor! Whatever!” Parker snapped, his ears turning red. “Parker Hayes doesn’t take charity, and I’m not going to let you sit there feeling like a martyr for free.” Truth be told, Parker had already gifted me an absurd amount of things. He frequently bought extra high-end stationery or limited-edition merch in the city, casually tossing them onto my desk with excuses like, “Bought an extra by mistake, it’s taking up too much room in my bag.” Once, he tossed me a custom, gold-gilded deck of commemorative playing cards. When I looked it up later, it was an auction piece valued at over two thousand dollars. The System was screaming at a fever pitch: Golden opportunity, Host! Escalate physical intimacy! Do not fumble this! I weighed the options carefully. Looking up into Parker’s eyes, I asked, “Can I ask for anything?” Parker shoved his hands into his pockets, trying to maintain an aloof posture. “Yeah. A Hayes keeps his word.” I spoke softly: “Can I hold your hand?” Parker went completely rigid. His Adam’s apple bobbed violently, and he jerked his head to the side, his entire face burning. Just when I assumed my bold request had been denied, a warm, long-fingered hand reached across the desk, trembling ever so slightly. My eyes curved into a genuine smile. “Thank you.” Then, with extreme restraint, I reached out and gently hooked my index finger around his. … After delivering that “gift,” Parker seemed to have suffered a mild stroke. He could barely string a sentence together without stammering. Even so, he stubbornly clung to his sacred “no dating in high school” rule like a monk clutching a vow of chastity. “D-Dating… don’t even think about it. I… I don’t do serious relationships before college.” He looked down at me, an undeniable flicker of desperate hope dancing in his hazel eyes. I understood. He was clearly looking for reassurance—he needed to know I wouldn’t pressure him. So I gave him a firm, solemn nod. “Okay. I promise I won’t try to make you date me.” Parker’s posture instantly deflated like a punctured tire. I asked the System what happened, and it threw up its virtual hands: Don’t look at me, human psychology is a mess. Maybe his blood sugar crashed. I nodded sympathetically. The light salad Clara had packed him really didn’t have enough calories for an active teenage boy. 08 For the class president’s birthday, a private karaoke lounge in the downtown district was booked for our social circle. The guest list naturally included me, Parker, Clara, and Julian. After the cake was cut, someone suggested a game of Truth or Dare. Parker scoffed, calling it childish, and retreated to a leather booth in the corner with a drink. Clara slipped away to the restroom. I agreed to play. To everyone’s absolute shock, the usually aloof Julian Cole pulled out a chair and joined the circle. Watching the reclusive, ice-cold valedictorian take part in an ordinary teenage drinking game sent an electric ripple through the room. What I didn’t expect was that on the very first round, I drew the answer card, and Julian held the question. In the dim shadows of the corner booth, Parker’s silhouette shifted forward. “Truth,” I stated simply. Julian’s long lashes lifted. His piercing, stormy-gray eyes locked onto mine, his voice smooth and measured: “Do you currently have someone you like?” The rowdy chatter in the lounge vanished instantly into dead silence. The suffocating quiet wasn’t just because of the intrusive question, but because the person asking it was the untouchable Julian Cole. In the dark corner, the ice in Parker’s glass rattled against the rim. I thought about it for a few seconds. If I answered “yes” in front of this crowd, the next immediate question would be “who?” That would put immense social pressure on Parker, a boy who had explicitly declared he would never date anyone in high school. So I looked Julian in the eye and said, “No.” Crash! In the corner, Parker stood up so violently his glass slammed against the wooden table. I turned in surprise just in time to see his jaw clenched tight, glaring at me with an expression of pure fury before he whipped around and slammed the lounge door behind him. Several classmates exchanged bewildered looks and ran out after him. I moved to stand up to follow— “Next round,” Julian’s cool, even voice cut through the air. His fingers shuffled the cards with fluid precision, dealing the next hand. The game continued under a cloud of stifling tension.

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Chapter 1 Four years into our long-distance relationship, I was on a video call with my girlfriend when her study partner, Chase, leaned into the camera frame. He pressed his lips together. “Hey, Tyler. Brooke hasn’t finished her practice set for today.” I froze for a second, the words Just give us ten minutes dying on my tongue. Before I could speak, he chimed in again. “Oh, by the way, those entertainment gossip links you sent earlier today—I went ahead and filtered them out for her. The second she looks at her phone, her focus completely shatters, and her study efficiency drops by half.” A faint smile touched his lips. “You don’t mind me stepping in, do you?” Brooke kept her head down, flipping through her prep book without a word of protest. A hollow ache settled in my chest. I thought back to the photos of sunsets, the hole-in-the-wall diners, the new console I’d bought—all the things I had shared with her that she never answered. They hadn’t been ignored. They had been cleaned out. A heavy tightness gripped my ribs, suffocating and dull. Brooke finally looked up at the screen. “Chase organizing my notifications is actually a good thing.” Chase leaned in closer to the webcam, his voice dropping low. “Word is you barely cracked an 1100 on your SATs back in high school, but Brooke scored in the 1500s…” He paused, as if deliberately searching for gentler words. “She always says she wants to end up in the same city as you for grad school. But your grades are so far behind hers—she’d literally have to settle and drag herself down just to meet you.” Having said his piece, he stepped back beside Brooke and gave her shoulder a gentle, reassuring squeeze. “Keep pushing. I’m right here with you.” Brooke nodded at him, her expression soft and completely natural—the casual ease of two people who had grown entirely accustomed to standing side by side. My throat tightened, as though a thin wire were slowly choking the air out of me. “Get some rest, then,” I managed to say, clinging to the last shred of my dignity before hanging up. My phone screen remained lit, showing the last text I had sent her: It’s raining today. Remember to grab a jacket. Beside it, no reply. Just like the past four years. She had never been absent from her own life. She had only been absent from mine. I closed FaceTime, my fingers trembling as I scrolled through our chat history. Line after line, it was an endless monologue. I sent her evening skies, the takeout I’d picked up, the stray ginger cat lounging on the sidewalk outside my dorm. Her replies were few and far between. A dry k after several hours. A lukewarm sounds good two days later. Most of the time, just a thumbs-up emoji. I closed the thread and pulled up her profile. Her cover photo had changed. It used to be a selfie of the two of us on New Year’s Eve. Now, it was a snapshot from an academic awards banquet. Chase stood right beside her, their shoulders tipped toward each other, looking like the picture-perfect power couple. A sudden sting burned behind my eyes. I blinked hard to force the tears back, but one slipped down my cheek anyway. Just as I went to lock my phone, a banner notification popped up from Chase. Tyler, man, I’ve been thinking about this for a while, and I think it’s time someone told you. If you really care about Brooke, stop spamming her with every little thought that crosses your mind. She studies past midnight every single day. Every time her phone buzzes, she can’t help checking it, and then it takes her ten minutes just to get back into the zone. Sending her pictures of stray cats and your dinner… it serves zero purpose. She doesn’t want to reply, but she feels guilty ignoring you, so she spends mental energy agonizing over it. Do you have any idea how draining that is for her? Her target grad program has an insanely high cutoff, and you’re so far behind. How many all-nighters does she have to pull to bridge that gap? You claim you’re doing this for her own good, but which part of what you do is actually helping her? I stared at the screen, every word lodging into my chest like a needle. I typed out a response, deleted it, and in the end only sent back one sentence: Does she… know you’re sending this to me? His reply came instantly. Of course she does. She told me you keep sending irrelevant nonsense, but she was too nice to say it to your face because she didn’t want to bruise your ego. She asked me to relay it. I stared at the words She asked me to relay it, my throat closing up completely. A second text followed immediately: Oh, and she told me to tell you—don’t call during study hours from now on. If it’s urgent, text. She’ll see it, but she won’t necessarily reply. Try to be understanding. Possessed by a reckless impulse, I clicked onto Chase’s public feed. His latest post was from yesterday: a photo inside a bustling hot pot restaurant. Brooke was sitting across from him, using her chopsticks to drop food into his bowl. The caption read: Weekend fuel with the top student. I scrolled down. Last week, it was a hiking trail, the two of them flashing peace signs at the summit. Further back, under blooming cherry blossoms, inside a late-night study lounge, at a newly opened arcade—she was in every single photo. The same Brooke who constantly told me, I don’t have time, and I’m swamped with studying. She didn’t lack time. She was simply giving it all to someone else. The reason I had called her tonight was to tell her that I’d been granted early admission to the graduate program in her city. I wouldn’t have to wait for her replies across a screen anymore. Now, those words remained lodged in my throat, aching like a blunt blade. I typed out three words and hit send. Let’s break up. Chapter 2 The next morning, I unlocked my phone. Inside my chat with Brooke, the words Let’s break up hung quietly at the bottom of the screen. No response. Just like every message I had sent over the past four years, it had vanished into an abyss. I stared at the screen and let out a dry, self-deprecating laugh. She couldn’t even be bothered to reply to a breakup. Just as I went to set the phone down, a notification pinged in our campus athletic group chat. It was the roster for the upcoming intercollegiate women’s basketball tournament, and my eyes immediately caught Brooke’s name on East State’s team. Chase was listed right beside her as part of their traveling staff. My roommate leaned over my shoulder, taking a look before whistling. “Those two are East State’s golden couple. Live in the library together. Even the professors say they’re made for each other.” He pulled up a screenshot of Chase’s post. “Look at that. One’s ranked first in the department, the other’s second. Double the honors.” I swallowed down the acidity rising in my throat and forced a nod. Beneath the desk, my fingernails dug deep into my palms. From that day on, I deliberately avoided the campus rec center, the courts, and every path where I might cross paths with the visiting teams. Yet right outside the academic advisor’s office, I walked straight into her. Brooke had gotten thinner, her expression calm and composed as she cradled a stack of paperwork. When she saw me, her steps faltered, followed by a slight smile. “Tyler? It’s been a while. Let’s grab dinner.” My first instinct was to decline. But a breakup of four years wasn’t something to brush under the rug; it deserved to be stated clearly to her face. So I nodded. The moment the gesture registered, Chase casually stepped up beside her, flashing me an easy smile. “Tyler’s here too? Perfect. Let’s all go together.” He tilted his head toward Brooke. “Picked a spot yet?” Brooke shook her head, and Chase immediately turned back to me. “Why don’t you pick, man? It’s not every day we all get together.” I tossed out the name of a spicy Szechuan place right outside the campus gate. Chase frowned. “Her stomach’s been acting up lately. The doctor told her strictly no spicy food. Don’t you know that?” I pressed my lips together and suggested a light dim sum teahouse instead. Chase shook his head again. “Too greasy. Last time she ate there, she had acid reflux half the night.” He paused, letting out a soft, exasperated chuckle. “Tyler, how do you not even know what she can and can’t eat?” I threw out four or five different places. For every single one, Chase found a reason to shoot it down on Brooke’s behalf. Too far. Too loud. Questionable hygiene. The wait would take forever. Finally, he gave a resigned sigh, as if making a gracious concession. “Forget it, I’ll pick. Neither of you can be trusted to handle this.” Brooke smiled softly, her voice warm. “Thanks, Chase.” Chase rolled his eyes at her, half-teasing. “I’m literally playing the middleman here. You owe me big time for this meal. Make sure you thank me properly later.” The two of them bantered back and forth. I stood on the sidewalk beside them, watching Brooke’s laughing profile as she looked at Chase. A fist seemed to squeeze around my heart, suffocating the air from my lungs. Four years of long distance. I had thought it was merely miles separating us. As it turned out, the distance was so vast that I had been completely phased out of her life. The words Let’s break up sat trapped in my throat, and suddenly, saying them aloud felt entirely redundant. When we sat down, Chase took the menu. He pointed to a scrambled egg dish with shrimp, noting that Brooke was watching her calories and needed it light on oil. He pointed to steamed greens, reminding the server she needed something gentle on her stomach. Then he ordered a slow-simmered soup, turning to smile at Brooke. “You said you loved this soup last time. I remembered.” Brooke nodded, chiming in naturally, “Do you want to add the salt-and-pepper ribs you like?” Back and forth they went. I sat across from them like a stranger sharing a communal table. Chase suddenly slid the menu across to me. “Tyler, order something you like.” Just as I parted my lips, Brooke spoke first. “He doesn’t eat spicy food. Get him…” She froze. Her finger hovered over the laminated page, her brows slightly furrowed. After an awkward beat, she pointed to two dishes, her voice vague. “Get him this, and this.” I looked down at the items she had selected. Sautéed celtuce. Cold-tossed wood ear mushrooms. A bitter sting rushed up my throat. Those were dishes I had never touched in my life. I was violently allergic to mushrooms, and celtuce caused hives to break out all over my skin. She had forgotten entirely. Chase reached over and gave the back of Brooke’s head a playful pat, laughing. “Did you study your brain into mush? Those are my favorites!” Brooke blinked, momentarily stunned. Then, avoiding my gaze, she nudged the menu an inch closer to my side. “Just order whatever you want.” I shook my head and pushed my chair back. “No need. I have somewhere to be tonight. I’ll get going.” Before turning to leave, I paused, looking down at her. “Check your messages when you get a chance.” She gave an indifferent hum. “Chase filters them for me. If it’s important, he’ll remind me to reply.” I let out a faint laugh, the corners of my mouth pulling tight until it hurt. It turned out I didn’t even meet the threshold of important. In that case, there was no point waiting for an answer. I turned around and pushed open the restaurant door. The evening wind rushed against my face, perfectly cold. Chapter 3 The following afternoon, my roommate dragged me out to the court to keep an eye on his younger sister, Sadie. She was a freshman playing in her first collegiate invitational, and her nerves were so bad her hands were shaking. I bought an assortment of water and sports drinks, acting as her sideline support. When the whistle blew, my gaze instinctively drifted up, catching Brooke as she executed a clean crossover past her defender. Chase stood just beyond the baseline, clutching a towel and a water bottle. Every time she scored, he clapped and shouted, “Nice shot!” Whenever she paused to catch her breath, he was right there offering water and patting her face with the towel, his movements entirely practiced. Nearby spectators were murmuring among themselves. “They look so good together.” “Brooke’s playing full court without breaking a sweat—Chase definitely deserves half the credit for that!” I pulled the corner of my mouth taut and forced my eyes back onto Sadie. When the third quarter ended, Brooke stepped off the court to grab a drink, and Chase draped the towel over the back of her neck with effortless familiarity. I kept my head down, twisting open a bottle cap, but out of the corner of my eye, I saw Brooke walking over. She glanced at the neatly arranged drinks by my feet, her brow furrowing. “Chase already got everything ready for me. You didn’t have to go through the trouble.” She paused, then added, “If you have free time, you’d be better off spending it on your books.” I gripped the bottle, saying nothing. She continued, “Look at Chase. Top of his class, winning academic competitions, managing his schedule down to the minute. You could really stand to learn from him.” A sudden wave of absurdity washed over me. For the first time, I looked directly into her eyes. “Whether I study or not, what does that have to do with you?” She was visibly taken aback, her brow knitting tight. “Tyler, what’s with the attitude? College really changed you—you’ve lost all your drive. If your mindset falls behind, how are we supposed to—” “How are we supposed to?” I cut her off, my eyes stinging. “There is no we anymore.” Her mouth opened, but no sound came out. She reached down to pick up one of the bottles near my sneakers. Before her fingers could graze the plastic, another hand snatched it away. Sadie twisted the cap off, took a long gulp, and flashed me a grin. “Ty, the water you buy always tastes better.” Then, shifting her stance, she stepped directly between Brooke and me. Brooke’s hand hovered in midair before she awkwardly pulled it back. She glared at me, and seeing that I kept my gaze averted, her expression hardened. Chase strolled over, his tone breezy. “Oh, Tyler, so you came specifically to cheer for freshman Sadie? No wonder you brought so many drinks.” He paused, his lips twitching into a slight smirk. “I was wondering earlier why you hadn’t looked Brooke’s way even once.” Before I could reply, Brooke’s face darkened completely. I lifted my chin. “You’re keeping such close tabs on me, Chase. Anyone watching might think you and Sadie were the ones dating.” “Tyler!” Brooke snapped, her voice lowered but burning with fury. “What kind of garbage are you spewing? Chase has spoken up for you so many times—have some shame. Can your mind not be so filthy?” Before I could fire back, her words tumbled out in an agitated rush. “Every time I run into trouble, every time I’m struggling with a problem, who’s the one standing beside me? It’s Chase! When I’m up studying till three in the morning and can barely keep my eyes open, who’s sitting right there with me? It’s Chase! When I had a fever and went to the clinic, who stayed by my side the entire night?” Her eyes rimmed with red, her voice trembling. “You ask why I don’t answer your texts? Think about it yourself—when I actually needed you, where the hell were you?” The sideline instantly fell silent. Several students nearby subtly cast their eyes in our direction. Chase kept his head lowered, tugging lightly at her sleeve, looking like he was trying to calm her down while subtly playing the victim. Inside my chest, the single thread that had stayed taut for four years snapped clean in two. Chapter 4 “Where was I?” My voice came out scratchy and dry. “Brooke, during finals week of our freshman year when you had a fever, I called you eleven times. You didn’t pick up once. The next day, you told me your phone was on silent, and I believed you.” “Sophomore year, when my part-time boss docked my pay, I sat on the curb in the freezing cold and sent you a voice message saying, I’m hurting so badly. You sent me a hugging emoji two days later.” “Last month on my birthday, I stayed up until two in the morning waiting. You didn’t even say happy birthday. The next day, you said you forgot, and told me to stop being so melodramatic.” I stared at her, the tears finally breaking past my eyelashes and tracking down my jaw. “I wasn’t there when you needed me? Did you ever give me the chance to be there? Every single time you needed someone, Chase was already standing right next to you. Where was I supposed to stand?” Brooke’s lips parted, trembling, but she couldn’t formulate a single word. Chase released her sleeve, his voice hushed. “Brooke, drop it… Tyler’s probably just in a bad mood.” I turned to walk away when a sudden shout shattered the air. “Watch out!” In my peripheral vision, a heavy black shape hurtled toward us. I tried to duck, but it was already too late. Thud. I stumbled backward, the impact rattling my skull. Through my blurred vision, I saw Brooke lunging sideways toward Chase, wrapping her arms securely around his shoulders, twisting her torso to shield him from the line of fire. Even though the errant ball had never been heading anywhere near him. As my knees gave out, the pain in my chest choked the air straight out of my lungs. Chase cried out in panic, “Brooke, the ball hit Tyler!” Only then did Brooke whip her head around, her face draining entirely blank. I closed my eyes as waves of throbbing ache pulsed through the back of my head. Yet strangely enough, the boulder that had pressed down on my heart for the last three years finally dropped away into nothingness. In the campus infirmary. Brooke let out an audible breath. “The doctor said it’s just a mild concussion. Nothing serious.” I didn’t answer. She pulled a chair closer and sat down. “The tournament just ended, and I have to catch the last bus back to my campus. Get some rest, okay? I’ll come see you next time.” She hesitated, softening her tone. “About what happened on the court today—don’t overthink it. It was just a reflex. You look thinner lately; make sure you eat properly. Text me if you need anything. I… I’ll check and reply.” In the past, those few placating sentences would have been enough to make me swallow every drop of bitterness and wait patiently for that elusive next time. Hearing them now, the words carried no weight whatsoever. They drifted like ash landing on water, not even causing a ripple. I gave a faint nod. “Okay.” She waited for a beat. Seeing that I had nothing more to say, her lips twitched, but she finally stood up and walked toward the exit. At the threshold, she turned back, a trace of hesitation in her eyes, as if expecting me to call her back. I spoke up. “Check the messages I sent you when you get back.” She paused, then nodded. “Okay.” The next day, my phone remained dead silent. She had promised to check, yet there was still no reply. I pressed down on her chat thread and tapped delete. I packed a duffel bag and bought a train ticket to the coast. Chapter 5 I rented a small cottage by the beach—white siding, blue-framed windows, and a back porch that stepped directly onto the sand. For the first three days, I did absolutely nothing except lie there listening to the waves, sleeping until I woke up on my own. When hunger hit, I walked down the lane to grab a bowl of seafood chowder. The warm sun soaked into the tops of my bare feet as I rested my phone on my stomach. The screen lit up with a text from Sadie: Are the waves rough today? Don’t go swimming out into the deep water. Before I could type back, another notification popped up: Never mind, you wouldn’t listen anyway. I checked the tide charts. Between 2:00 PM and 4:00 PM is safe. Only go in the water during that window. I blinked at the screen, tapping back: You actually checked the tide charts? Yeah. I don’t trust you out there alone. Outside, white foam rolled over the shore in steady, hypnotic rhythms. I stared at the line of text for a long time, my chest feeling as though it were being submerged in warm water. With Brooke, ten messages earned a single k. A photo earned a sounds good. A confession of heartbreak earned a generic emoji. I had spent years believing love was supposed to be like that—quiet, lukewarm, an endless exercise in waiting. I snapped a picture of the evening sunset and sent it to Sadie: Look at this. Sharing it with you. She replied instantly: Gorgeous. Tomorrow I’m coming to see it too. I wrapped myself in a blanket and sank into the porch chair, listening to the surf rise and fall. The tangled knot that had been twisted tight inside my chest for so long finally began to smooth out. … A month later. Inside the East State library, Chase kept his voice low as he leaned toward Brooke. “Your birthday is the day after tomorrow. Have you thought about how you want to celebrate? I booked a table at that Italian place, and I put together a group…” Brooke slipped off her headphones, cutting him short. “I’m planning to go see Tyler.” She paused. “Just me this time.” Chase’s fingers paused over his notebook. He lowered his gaze, his voice turning bitter. “Are you… trying to surprise him? Maybe let him know ahead of time, just in case he has other plans?” Brooke shook her head with absolute certainty. “He won’t. For four years, he took the train to visit me every single year. He ordered the cake, picked out the gifts, counted down the seconds to text me right at midnight.” The memory of how dim and lifeless his eyes had looked during our last video call flashed through her mind, and her brow furrowed. “This time, it’s my turn to go to him.” Chase swallowed the ache in his throat, forcing a smile onto his face. “All right. Let me come with you to pick out a gift, then. Your taste in guys’ stuff is terrible.” After class, the department store lights were blindingly bright. Chase slung an arm over Brooke’s shoulder, walking briskly through the aisles. “If we’re picking something for Tyler, we need to get him something solid.” He stopped at an electronics display, picking up a heavy matte-black gaming headset and weighing it in his hand. “This one. The noise cancellation is top-tier. He plays games late, so he definitely needs a good headset.” Brooke shook her head. “He hasn’t played much lately. He said it strains his eyes.” Chase let out a dismissive scoff, setting it back on the shelf. “That’s just because he didn’t have the right gear. Guys say they don’t play, but they always do.” He turned into the outdoor section, pulling a dark charcoal technical windbreaker off the rack. “This one. Stiff cut, waterproof. Great for when he rides his bike to work.” Brooke felt the fabric between her fingers. “The material is sturdy, but isn’t the color too gloomy?” “Dark colors hide dirt.” Chase patted the jacket with a smile, though his eyes remained cold. “A guy like him who stays quiet all the time would look ridiculous wearing bright colors.” He remembered Tyler’s flat, unreadable gaze, and an inexplicable resentment surged in his chest. With a personality like that, what right did he have to make Brooke travel all this way for him? Chase turned around and grabbed a heavy tactical flashlight, tossing it lightly between his hands. “Take this too. When he walks home late at night, having a bright beam will keep him safe.” Brooke hesitated for a moment, then nodded. Chase watched her take the items one by one, his fingernails biting into his palms. Every single thing he had selected was something Tyler would despise. Yet Brooke remained completely oblivious, even turning to smile at him. “You really understand this stuff.” Late that night back in her dorm, Brooke washed her face and pulled up her text thread with Tyler. Her fingers hovered over the screen before typing: I’m coming down to see you tomorrow. I’ll send you my train ticket info. She hit send. A red exclamation mark flashed on the screen. Message Not Delivered. She had been blocked.

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I could see the number of people each person had ever been intimate with. In college, a rich heir and the poor, breathtakingly handsome guy everyone admired confessed to me at the same time. The number above the heir’s head was 108. The number above Evan Hart’s was zero. So I took Evan’s flowers. After we got married, his number became one. For seven years after that, even after he became an Oscar-winning actor, it never rose. Then an exuberant newcomer joined his production. Evan and she clicked. They ran lines late into the night. He guided her through close-contact fight choreography, hand over hand. “Sophie has real instinct,” Evan explained. “I’m just excited to see talent.” The number above his head hadn’t changed, so I believed him. After the shoot wrapped, they seemed to lose touch. I thought nothing had changed. Then, on the most ordinary day imaginable, the number above Evan’s head changed from one to two. 01 I stared at the vivid red 2 above Evan’s head. Strangely, I didn’t think anything at all. It felt more like a stone that had been hanging over me for ages had finally crashed to the ground. Evan didn’t notice anything was wrong. He came home as usual, shrugged off his coat, and wrapped me in a hug, mumbling that work had worn him out. As if nothing had changed. Maybe success really did flatter a man. Years later, Evan wasn’t any less handsome; if anything, he was more so. His dark, laughing eyes and elegant features made his fans joke that every fictional rake finally had a face. Before today, no one would have guessed I was the only person Evan Hart had ever slept with. But now there was another. Once you know the answer, tracing the steps that led there is easy. After Evan fell asleep that night, I unlocked his phone. The passcode was still my birthday. I searched every social-media app. Everything looked normal. But the numbers never lied. The first person whose number had ever alarmed me was my father. To the world, he was a devoted husband and family man. In a single month, though, the number over his head rose again and again. I refused to believe it. I followed him in secret, and watched him walk out of an apartment building as that number ticked up by one. I had never doubted the numbers after that. Then, scrolling through Evan’s contacts, I found an unlisted number. One call had lasted an hour and forty-six minutes. My instincts told me it was the one. I tapped it. A soft ringtone sounded, and the call was answered almost immediately. A familiar, syrupy voice said, “Why are you calling now? Aren’t you worried your wife will find out?” Then she laughed. “Or did you get a taste of me and decide you can’t get enough?” I said nothing. I ended the call and erased it from the log. Holding the phone, I sat rigidly on the living-room couch. Only after a long while did the pain finally reach my heart. The last scraps of hope shattered with it. 02 After Evan won his Oscar, we had planned to go public. His team had begun laying the groundwork; we were only waiting for the right moment. Before that could happen, Evan agreed to a cameo in a fantasy drama to repay an old favor. He played a revered master there, and met Sophie Lane. On-screen, she played the young apprentice secretly in love with him. Off-screen, she said she had entered the business because she was his fan. They grew closer by the day. The set was not far away, and whenever I had time, I made lunch and sent it over with Evan’s assistant. He used to finish every bite. But one day, when I visited the set, I found the lunchbox I had packed with my own hands sitting in front of a stray dog. His assistant, Jason, jumped when he saw me. “L-Lydia, today Sophie bought lunch for the whole crew…” So that made it all right to feed my lunch to a dog? Before I could ask, Sophie stepped forward. Pointing at me with a small, accusing finger, she said righteously, “How can you bully him? I told Jason to do it!” I was angry that my effort had been trashed, and my face must have shown it. But I had hardly bullied anyone. I laughed in disbelief and turned to Evan, who had just arrived. “You agreed with this too? You thought it was fine to feed my homemade lunch to a dog?” Evan froze, then immediately said, “No. I didn’t.” Everyone looked at Sophie. Her eyes instantly reddened, yet she bit her lip and stubbornly refused to back down. “I didn’t do anything wrong. Wasting food is wrong, and bullying people is wrong too!” Seeing her on the verge of tears, Evan softened. “All right. It’s not a big deal. You meant well, Sophie. Don’t blame yourself.” Then he looked at me. “It’s only lunch, Lydia. Don’t make such a big thing out of it.” My heart sank. It wasn’t only lunch. It was my care, thrown on the ground and stomped on. Worse was Evan’s response. But the crew had to get back to work. Sophie pulled him away, saying, “A master can’t be late,” and I refused to make a scene by chasing after them. I left. A few days later, Evan called, sounding wounded. He asked why I had stopped sending food. “So it can feed dogs?” I asked. He paused, then turned it back on me. “Sophie’s young. She doesn’t understand social cues. As the senior person here, am I supposed to punish her over something that small?” “She didn’t mean it. Why are you picking a fight with a girl?” We ended badly. Evan eventually apologized first and promised it would not happen again. But the seed of doubt had been planted. The moment his number changed, it finally broke through the soil. 03 I slept badly and got up late the next morning. By the time I came out, Evan had made breakfast: beef noodle soup, my favorite. Wearing an apron and holding a spatula, he smiled at me. “Lydia, come see if I’ve gotten rusty.” Before Evan became famous, he often couldn’t get roles. I supported us then. In return, he took over the housework and learned to cook, clean, and do laundry. I used to tease him. “You could be a stay-at-home husband. I wouldn’t mind.” But he had shaken his head seriously. “Your family would never accept us if I did that. Lydia, I want to become someone worthy of you.” And he had done it, rising step by step from background parts to Best Actor. We could not announce our marriage because of his contracts, but everyone in the industry knew Evan Hart had a wife he adored. I believed his promise had been sincere then. His betrayal was real now too, and it cut just as deep. The word taste made my stomach turn. I put down my chopsticks. Evan noticed my expression and panicked. “What’s wrong, Lydia? Are you sick? I’ll take you to a doctor.” The concern in his eyes looked real. My resolve wavered, and I had barely opened my mouth when a soft ringtone sounded. The same one as last night. Without thinking, Evan turned aside to answer. Whatever Sophie said made him look torn. A few seconds later, he faced me, mouth tight with apology. “Lydia, I’m sorry. The studio just scheduled an appearance, and I…” “It’s fine,” I said with a thoughtful smile, cutting him off. “Go.” Don’t keep her waiting. My appointment with a divorce attorney was coming up too. 04 Evan looked back three times before he finally left. I got up, called a rideshare, and went to the law office. Hours later, I came out with a draft divorce agreement and ran into someone I had not seen in years. Miles Bennett looked from me to the papers in my hand. He tried to sound concerned, but his mouth kept pulling upward. “Lydia Moore. You’re getting divorced?” In college, Miles was the wealthy heir who had confessed to me alongside Evan. Everyone had assumed I would choose him. He had money and movie-star looks. Instead, I chose Evan, an orphan with nothing but a beautiful face. Because I could see their numbers. Miles’s had been in the hundreds. I had seen too many men drift through relationships, and all I wanted was someone unspoiled by that carelessness. Evan was the only handsome man I knew who had never treated intimacy casually. Miles did not know any of that. He had never accepted my choice. “I know I was a player,” he had once said. “But Lydia, how could you know Evan would never cheat?” “I can’t guarantee it,” I had answered. “But if he does, I’ll know.” I was a slow person, really. If a heart briefly wandered, I might never notice. But men, I had thought bitterly, so often let their bodies make the decision first. I had no reason to hide the truth from Miles. I was not the one who had done wrong. “Yes,” I said. “He cheated.” The curve of Miles’s mouth deepened. He coughed, trying to conceal it. “Oh. I’m sorry.” Then, as if the idea had just occurred to him, he said, “I’m headed your way. Let me drive you.” His office was downtown. My home was in the hills on the other side of Los Angeles. They were nowhere near each other. But I glanced at the number above his head. All these years later, it had not increased. “All right,” I said. He was the one who would be driving for hours, not me. 05 On the way, Miles asked, “You’re not going to sue him?” I hummed. My mother’s birthday was only days away. She had a heart condition and had never been strong. Giving birth to me after a difficult pregnancy had nearly killed her. When I was in middle school, hot-headed and reckless, I exposed my father’s affair. It nearly killed her again. After that, I stopped acting on emotion. Even after learning my husband had betrayed me the night before, I had smiled through my mother’s concerned questions when she called that morning. She had asked when Evan and I would have a child. For years, Evan’s career had been too demanding. Later, tests showed that chronic exhaustion and an inherited condition might make having children difficult for him. I touched my lower stomach without thinking. My period was late this month. I hoped it did not mean what I feared. Then a message from Evan appeared. [Lydia, I have to travel for a few days.] [When I get back, let’s go public.] I stared at it. Before I could reply, a tremendous force slammed us from behind. I pitched forward, stopped only by the seat belt digging into my chest. Miles swore. “We got rear-ended.” 06 My head spun from the impact. Before I could collect myself, I heard two familiar voices outside. Miles froze halfway out of the car. “Mr. Hart, what do we do?” Sophie’s voice trembled with tears. “I just wanted to take you for a drive now that I finally got my license. I didn’t mean to have an accident. I don’t want reporters dragging me online…” I heard Evan reassure her, then he walked over and stopped beside our window. He knocked twice. “No photos. No police. Forty thousand dollars, and we settle this privately.” Miles’s windows were darkly tinted. Evan could not see inside. He had no idea I was behind the glass, watching him. The man who had just texted me that he wanted to go public now spoke in a cold negotiating voice, only to protect Sophie’s reputation. All at once, I understood. His kindness toward me lately had only been guilt after his affair. Assuming the people inside were dissatisfied, Evan knocked again. His voice hardened. “Sixty thousand. That’s enough to buy a new car. Don’t get greedy.” I pressed the window control. As the glass lowered, the impatience drained from Evan’s face, little by little, until it went bloodless. “Evan,” I said softly, meeting his frantic eyes. “Let’s get divorced.” 07 “Lydia.” Panic covered Evan’s exquisitely handsome face. His words tumbled over one another. “I don’t want a divorce. Please, let me explain.” I stepped out and faced him. “All right.” “Explain why you said you were working when you were taking Sophie for a drive. And tell me who you were with yesterday, and what you did.” Under my gaze, as if I knew everything, Evan went white. His mouth opened, but no words came out. He reached for me and tried to pull me toward his car. “Lydia, can we talk at home?” It was a quiet road, but cars still passed now and then. Evan was afraid someone would take pictures. His grip clamped hard around my wrist. I could not shake him off. Just as he was about to drag me to the car, Miles stepped between us with a raised brow and a light smile. “Forcing someone isn’t a great look.” “Miles Bennett!” Evan’s expression changed the instant he recognized him. “Why were you in his car?” He remembered Miles used to want me. Sophie, who had been pretending to disappear into the background, suddenly spoke up. “Lydia, did you betray Mr. Hart first? Why else would you be alone in a car with another man in broad daylight?” Her back was straight, her voice trembling. She looked frightened of me and brave for speaking the truth. Sure enough, suspicion appeared in Evan’s eyes. Disgusted, I frowned. “Don’t assume everyone is as filthy as the two of you.” Miles added, “I happened to run into Lydia. I was giving her a ride.” 08 Sophie’s eyes filled with tears. Biting her lip, she said, “Lydia, can you just let me go?” “You have everything: a pursuer and someone as wonderful as Mr. Hart. I only have my career.” She looked lovely and defiant, and Evan’s face softened with pity. After a moment’s silence, he turned to me. “Lydia, don’t call the police. Making a big deal of it won’t help anyone.” “What if I do?” Irritation crossed his features. He raked a hand through his hair and sighed at me as though I were being unreasonable. “Lydia, you have to understand. No one can love only one person their whole life. The entertainment business is full of hookups. I’ve gone seven years without anyone else. Haven’t I treated you well enough?” Evan had played so many roles that I no longer knew whether the way he had loved me was a performance too. I had told him I was slow. But slow people can be the most stubborn. After my father cheated, I cut him out of my life. Even when my mother said one more relative meant one more person in your corner, I never called him Dad again. It was the same now. “You don’t have to call the police,” I said. “But I want a divorce.” I handed him the agreement I had already signed. Evan stared at me, his face dark. He seemed offended by my refusal to know my place. Sophie tugged his sleeve, eyes full of pleading. After a long time, he said, “Fine.” He took the pen and signed with quick, angry strokes, then gave a bitter laugh. “Let’s see how well you do alone. You’re a homemaker in your thirties with no job. Don’t come crying to me later.” He seemed to have forgotten that he was the one who had said his work kept him so busy that, if I worked too, we would barely see each other. He had offered to support me so I could simply be a happy wife with money to spend. Now it was the very thing he despised in me. I quietly put the papers away. I looked at the glaring 2 above Evan’s head, at Sophie’s barely hidden satisfaction, and laughed once. What was there to hold on to in a partner whose body and heart had both betrayed me?

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My brother found out I’d gotten my tongue pierced. He didn’t lose his temper. He simply caught my tongue between his fingers and refused to let me pull it back. “Ryan Bennett, do you really like pain that much?” I stared at him through watery eyes, a twisted sense of pleasure rising inside me. But what he said next turned my blood to ice. “If you like it so much,” he said, his eyes frighteningly dark, “how about being my best man when I get married?” Chapter 1 The tongue piercing was my little secret. The metal ball pressed against the roof of my mouth, constantly reminding me it was there. It made me feel alive. Especially whenever I looked at my older brother, Ethan Bennett. I just hadn’t expected him to find out so soon. We were having dinner at home when he handed me a glass of water. I reached for it, but he suddenly pulled it away. “What’s that shiny thing in your mouth?” My heart nearly stopped. “Nothing.” I tried to close my mouth, but it was too late. His expression didn’t change, but his eyes turned cold. “Come here.” As if under a spell, I obediently walked over. He reached out and gripped my chin. “Stick out your tongue.” My tongue obeyed before I could stop myself. The silver stud was right there for him to see. Then his fingers slipped into my mouth. Warm. Slightly calloused. He caught my tongue between them. His grip was firm enough that I couldn’t close my mouth. “When did you get this?” he asked quietly. I couldn’t answer. Saliva gathered uncontrollably in my mouth and trickled down the corner of my lips. He stared at me, his eyes dark and unreadable. “Ryan Bennett, do you really like pain that much?” Chapter 2 The tears were an involuntary reaction. I couldn’t control them. But the twisted pleasure rising inside me was real, too. Being treated this way by him gave me a sick sense of satisfaction. He suddenly let go. I stumbled backward, grabbing the table as I coughed. “Take it out.” He pulled a tissue from the box and wiped his fingers. His tone left no room for argument. “No.” I wiped the moisture from my chin. For the first time, I openly defied him. He turned to look at me as though he were seeing me for the first time. “Why?” “Because I like it.” I ran my tongue over the sore piercing. “It’s my body.” He laughed. It was a cold, humorless sound. “Your body?” He walked toward me, one deliberate step at a time. “When you were eighteen and running a fever, who carried you to the emergency room in the middle of the night?” “When you got into a fight at twenty, who came down to the police station to get you out?” “Tell me, Ryan. What exactly have you ever handled on your own?” Every word struck somewhere deep inside me. I had no answer. “Take it out,” he repeated before turning toward his office. “No!” I shouted after him, reckless enough now that I didn’t care what happened next. He stopped in the doorway. He didn’t turn around. Then he said something that froze me to the bone. “If you like it so much,” he said, glancing back at me, his profile hard and cold, “how about being my best man when I get married?” Chapter 3 Married? I stood there, stunned. Had I heard him correctly? Who was he marrying? He’d never mentioned anyone. “You’re… getting married?” My voice sounded so strained I barely recognized it. “Yeah.” His tone was casual. “Next month. Emily Carter.” Emily Carter. I knew who she was. She came from a wealthy family with connections to ours. Our father had introduced them. How long had they even known each other? “So,” he said, finally turning to face me, “get rid of all that junk you’ve been putting in your body. I don’t want you embarrassing us at the wedding.” Junk. That was what he thought of the things I used to cope. Of the feelings I couldn’t put into words. Of my desperate attachment to him. I watched him close the office door. All the strength seemed to drain out of me. The tongue stud rubbed against the tender wound, sending tiny jolts of pain through my mouth. But this time, there was no pleasure. Only pain. So this was how he chose to punish me. Not by gripping my tongue and forcing me to obey. But by casually telling me he was going to start a family with someone else. And what about me? His younger brother, the one who wasn’t even related to him by blood. The burden he’d taken in all those years ago. Where was I supposed to go? Chapter 4 I didn’t take out my tongue piercing. Instead, I got another one. A tiny silver dermal stud, just below my collarbone. My shirt covered it. No one could see it. The pain kept me grounded. It helped me remember the humiliation and jealousy I felt that day. Ethan became busy. There was a wedding to plan, families to meet, and a venue to book. He hardly ever came home for dinner anymore. Even when we happened to cross paths, he acted like I wasn’t there. He stopped asking where I’d been or whether I’d put another hole in my body. Until one week before the wedding. I was standing in the living room late that night, drinking water in my pajamas. My collar was a little loose. Ethan had just come home, smelling faintly of alcohol. His gaze swept over my collarbone. Then stopped. “What’s that?” His voice was low. I knew he’d seen it. And I was done hiding. “What does it look like? It’s new.” He strode toward me and yanked my collar aside. The silver stud caught the light. The skin around it was still a little red. “You really are…” He was so furious he actually laughed. “Unbelievable.” “I told you. It’s my body.” It was the same weak protest I’d made before. “Fine.” He nodded, his eyes sharp. “Your body.” He released me and took out his phone. “Emily? I’m sorry. We need to postpone the wedding.” I froze. What was he talking about? “Why?” I faintly heard her ask. Ethan looked straight at me. “My brother’s sick. Seriously sick. I need to take care of him.” He ended the call. The living room went deathly silent. “Happy now?” he asked. My mind went blank. This wasn’t what I’d wanted. Chapter 5 The wedding really was postponed. The atmosphere at home turned icy. Ethan never brought it up again, but he started spending more time in the house. If he was in the living room, I stayed in my bedroom. If he was in his office, I made sure not to disturb him. Then one day, I couldn’t find an art book I’d bought a while back. I thought I might have left it in his office. While he was out, I slipped inside to look for it. His desk was immaculate. I opened the bottom drawer and found a velvet box. Something compelled me to open it. There were no wedding rings inside. Instead, I found a collection of every piercing I’d ever taken out. Earrings. Lip rings. Belly-button jewelry. Even my very first tongue stud, the one I’d thought I’d lost years ago. Every piece had been cleaned and carefully arranged in its own little compartment. Each had a label with a date. Like some kind of sick collection. My hands trembled around the box. Why had he kept these? Wasn’t he the one who hated seeing me hurt myself? The door opened behind me. I whipped around. Ethan stood in the doorway, staring at the box in my hands. Something complicated flickered across his face. “Ethan…” My voice shook. “What is this?” He didn’t answer. He walked over, took the box from my hands, closed it, and returned it to the drawer. Then he seized my wrist. Hard. “Ryan.” He leaned so close that his breath brushed my ear. “You have no idea how much self-control it’s taken not to lock you away where no one else can touch you.” I looked up into his eyes. There was something in them I’d spent years searching for. Something I’d never dared believe was really there. “Then why did you…” Why were you getting married? Why did you keep all those piercings? Why had you let me get away with so much? He didn’t let me finish. His mouth came down on mine with a force that left no room for hesitation. My tongue stud struck his teeth, sending a sharp jolt of pain through me. And somehow, it felt like an offering we’d both waited far too long to make. Chapter 6 The kiss tasted of blood. My tongue piercing had cut his lip. He kissed me fiercely, almost brutally, as if he were punishing both of us. Then he suddenly shoved me away. “Get out.” He turned his back on me, his voice terribly hoarse. I touched my stinging lips and stared at him. “Ethan…” “I said get out!” I practically fled his office. With my back pressed against the cold door, my heart hammered so hard I thought it might burst. He kissed me. Ethan kissed me. The realization made my whole body shake. Not with disgust. With a wild, overwhelming joy. But a moment later, panic seized me. He regretted it. He’d told me to get out. I didn’t sleep that night. At three in the morning, I heard him drive away. The sound of his engine disappeared into the darkness. Chapter 7 He didn’t come home for the next several days. I texted him. No reply. I called. He didn’t answer. The piercing below my collarbone became inflamed. The skin was swollen, red, and painful. Part of me almost welcomed the discomfort. On the fifth day, he finally came back. He hadn’t shaved. Dark circles shadowed his eyes. He carried a bag from the pharmacy. He tossed it onto the couch. “Antibiotic ointment. Put it on.” I didn’t move. “Where have you been?” He ignored the question and went straight to the liquor cabinet. He poured himself a whiskey and swallowed half of it in one gulp. “The wedding…” My throat tightened. “Is it still postponed?” His fingers tightened around the glass. “No.” My heart sank. “Why?” “Because it isn’t.” He turned to face me, his eyes exhausted but sharp. “Ryan, what happened in my office was a mistake. Forget it.” A mistake. The moment I’d treasured more than anything was nothing but a mistake to him. Something he wanted to erase. “A mistake?” I heard myself laugh. “Was keeping all my old piercings a mistake, too? Was kissing me because you couldn’t help yourself another mistake?” His face darkened. “Shut up!” “Why should I?” I stepped closer and stared him down. “You did it. Why can’t you admit it?” “I said shut up!” His arm jerked upward. The whiskey glass smashed against the floor near my feet. Glass and liquor scattered everywhere. A shard sliced across my ankle. A sharp sting followed. We both froze. Ethan stared at the tiny beads of blood appearing on my skin. His expression changed. It was as though all the strength had suddenly left him. “Ryan…” His voice was so quiet, so fragile, that I barely recognized it. “Please don’t push me.” The pain in his eyes was real. So real that every accusation I’d been ready to throw at him lodged in my throat. He turned and stumbled upstairs. I’d never seen him look so defeated. Chapter 8 I picked up the broken glass. A sharp edge cut my fingertip. A bead of blood appeared, echoing the sting in my ankle. I secretly kept one of the shards. Like a shameful secret no one was supposed to discover. That night, I took it into the bathroom and locked the door. Hot water ran over my body. The piercing beneath my collarbone still ached. I pressed the glass against the skin beside the old wound. A small sting. Not enough. Not nearly enough. I needed something stronger. Something that could drown out the word he’d left behind. Mistake. As I dragged the glass across my skin, all I could see was the look in his eyes. So much pain. So much struggle. Did that mean he cared about me? Even a little? Blood mingled with the hot water and disappeared down the drain. Suddenly, someone knocked on the door. “Ryan Bennett.” Ethan’s voice came through, unusually tense. “Come out.” I quickly turned off the shower. “I’m taking a shower.” “I’m counting to three. If you don’t open this door, I’m kicking it down.” The command in his voice made my heart skip. “One.” “Two…” I hurriedly grabbed a bathrobe and wrapped it around myself. The moment I unlocked the door, he shoved it open. His eyes swept over my wet body before stopping on my bleeding arm. His expression turned icy. “What’s in your hand?” He stared at my clenched right fist. I tried to hide it. Too late. He seized my wrist with frightening force and pried my fingers open. The bloodstained piece of glass fell to the tile. It landed with a sharp little clink.

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1 The raid hit our wedding reception exactly as the diamond slipped onto my left ring finger. Screams tore through the ballroom. My fiancé, Preston Hayes, took a bullet straight to the forehead. He crumpled to the marble floor right in front of me, his blood pooling into the grout lines. Before my brain could even process the horror, a hand twisted into my scalp, yanking me backward. I was thrown hard against the ground. When I opened my eyes again, the men of the Hale family had already been dragged to the docks, supposedly tossed into the ocean to feed the sharks. The Hale women—myself included—were loaded onto a suffocating, rusted freighter bound for a dark-web cartel hub down in South America. The young ones would be sold for flesh. The older ones for parts. My grandmother, Eleanor Hale, sat in the gloom of the cargo hold. She remained completely silent for a long time before turning her sharp gaze to our pale, trembling faces. “The Hale women don’t wait for the slaughter,” she said, her voice like grinding stone. “We choose how we go out.” The muffled thwack of suppressed gunfire vibrated through the metal hull. That night, the saltwater off the Atlantic coast was dyed completely red. I was lying on the rusted floorboards, driving a hunting knife deep into my own artery, when I heard the faint clinking of beer bottles from the adjacent cabin. The walls were thin. “Sloane Hale is a piece of work,” a male voice laughed. “Threatening to slit her wrists just to get attention, making the Hale men fake their own deaths.” “Preston Hayes is too damn indulgent,” another chimed in. “Not only did he hire a fake hit squad, he actually let them knock a bunch of women out and load them onto this boat.” A third man chuckled. “He lost a bet to Harper. He had to play along with her little tantrum one last time.” “He said once tonight is over, the Hale family miraculously comes back to life, the wedding goes on, and the men will just have to figure out how to grovel to their wives!” My eyes slipped closed. A slow, agonizing smile stretched across my face. The hit squad was fake. The massacre was fake. But to appease Harper, the deaths of the Hale women would be very, very real. The wedding goes on? There was nothing left to go on. … The blood flowed like water, spreading across the steel floor. My vision was already blacking out. Through the haze, the laughter from the deck above drifted down with agonizing clarity. “If Sloane had never been found and brought back to the Hales ten years ago, Harper would be the one marrying Preston today. No wonder she’s so bitter.” “Harper might be the adopted daughter, but she was raised as a Hale for two decades. All she has to do is cry and throw a fit, and the Hale men fall right in line.” I lay immobilized in the dark. Blood clogged my nose and throat. I couldn’t make a sound. Someone peered down through the grated window of the door. “This Sloane chick is out of her mind. How is she just sleeping through this?” Another guard stepped closer, using the moonlight slicing through the grate. His voice suddenly tightened. “She slit her wrist. Call the boss!” But a hand shoved the phone back down. “Forget it. Harper Hale paid us very well. We’re on the clock for her now. Besides, a little cut on the wrist won’t kill anyone.” The man hesitated, then slipped his phone back into his pocket. “Fair enough. Preston Hayes is probably busy dealing with the fallout anyway. He wouldn’t pick up.” It turned out that the blade slicing through my flesh wasn’t the most painful part of tonight. The most painful part was hearing those words. Preston wasn’t dead. My father, Richard Hale, and my two older brothers were all alive. For a stupid bet. For a pathetic lie. They had handed us a death sentence. The moon hung high and indifferent. The footsteps faded into the sound of the crashing waves. The pristine custom Vera Wang gown Preston had flown in for me was soaked through. A heavy, sickening crimson. I felt a sudden lightness. Then, I was floating. Suspended in the air, I followed the trail of red. My grandmother lay slumped against a stack of wooden crates, a dark, perfect hole blown through her temple. My eldest sister-in-law, Audrey, had a steady hand. One shot, dead center between the eyes. She was gone before the blood even began to pool. My second sister-in-law, Gemma, had worse aim. Her hands had been shaking too violently to find her temple, so she pressed the muzzle directly to her heart. Two hollow bangs. The hardest was my older sister, Nora. Her daughter, little Lily, was only two. She had just learned to say my name. Nora had to use her own silk scarf to strangle the life out of her baby. As the child thrashed in her mother’s lap, suffocating, she didn’t cry out in pain. She only managed a tiny, gasping whisper: “Mommy… don’t cry.” And Nora didn’t cry. She only looked up at me, her voice entirely completely hollowed out. “When she gets down there… do you think she’ll forgive me?” Before I could answer, Nora shoved the barrel of the gun into her own mouth. Bang. The air itself seemed to turn to glue. There was no sound left in the world. Only the suffocating, metallic stench of copper. Nora collapsed, using her final ounce of strength to pull Lily’s still body tightly against her chest. When it was my mother’s turn, the gun was empty. Margaret Hale slowly reached into her coat and pulled out a switchblade. Her eyes were rimmed in red. “I’m so sorry, my sweet girl,” she whispered, looking at me. “I’m so sorry you have to be in pain.” “But a quick pain is better than a long one. Better to die clean than be dragged through hell by those animals.” I clung to her, shaking my head violently, finally sobbing aloud. “Mom…” Before my cry even faded, the sickening sound of steel puncturing flesh echoed in the cramped space. The blade sank deep into her chest. Warm, terrifyingly fast blood sprayed across my face. She tipped backward, falling directly into my arms. “Sloane… don’t be afraid.” “Wherever you go… Mom will be right there.” Her hands trembled as she reached up, trying to wipe the blood from my cheek. She tried twice. Halfway up, her hand dropped like a stone. These were the same hands that had pinned the corsage to my dress that morning. She had been so reluctant to let me go, but she had forced a teary smile. I’ve watched Preston grow up, she had said. If he ever dares to mistreat you, we’ll throw him right out! Her laughter was still echoing in my ears. But her body was already going stiff. I looked at them one last time, my family of women, before the ocean breeze caught me and carried my spirit back to the Hale estate. I heard Harper’s laughter before I saw her. She was sitting next to Preston in the grand parlor, wearing a stunning crimson Carolina Herrera dress—the one I had personally designed for my rehearsal dinner. Piled on the coffee table in front of her were stacks of property deeds, diamond necklaces, and bank cards. But the most blindingly painful object in the pile was the vintage silver Colt M1911. The gun Preston had given me. Shortly after I was finally found and brought back to the Hales, a rival family kidnapped me. It was Preston who went in alone, nearly dying to drag me out of that warehouse. His face had been covered in his own blood, but he had aggressively pressed that heavy Colt into my shaking palms. I promised I’d protect you when we were kids, he had said. That still counts. The words were still carved into my heart. But the gun was in Harper’s hand. Back then, my father used to spoil me too. His favorite phrase was My Sloane. No matter how busy my eldest brother, Connor, was, he would drive across the city just to bring me that truffle risotto from my favorite spot in Little Italy. Whenever my second brother, Declan, traveled for business, he bought half the continent for me. Even Grant, my brother-in-law, always bought an extra toy for me whenever he shopped for little Lily. But the better they treated me, the darker Harper’s moods became. I gave her my clothes, my favorite foods, even the trust funds they set up for me. I yielded everything. But it only fueled her escalating tantrums. She threatened suicide. She sobbed that she shouldn’t have stolen my place, that it was her fault I suffered for ten years. The more she self-destructed, the more the Hale men pitied her. To my face, she apologized. She played the fragile, cautious victim. But behind my back, she kept forcing Preston into sick little bets. The first time she won a bet, I was deliberately tripped at my welcome-home banquet, crashing into the champagne tower in front of the city’s elite. The second time, she claimed she was driving drunk and hit me with her car, fracturing my tibia. My father had merely sighed. “She doesn’t mean any harm, Sloane. She’s just in a dark place.” My brothers had urged me to let it go. “Preston is marrying you anyway. Don’t stoop to her level.” Preston himself had promised me: “Three strikes. That’s it.” Yet here we were. He had indulged her for the third time. “I did everything you asked,” Preston said now, his voice tight. “The public hit. Faking my death. Tricking them onto the boat. Once I sit here with you through the night, this bet is over.” Harper gripped the heavy Colt, her voice trembling. “What does that mean?” Preston looked down, his thumb brushing over his wedding band. “Because of this stupid game, I hurt Sloane. For the rest of my life, I’m going to make it up to her.” He looked up, his eyes cold. “Whether you make another bet, or threaten to slit your wrists again—I am done caring whether you live or die.” Harper went pale. “You really won’t care?” She looked past Preston to the other men in the room. My father rubbed his temples. “Harper, we really crossed a line this time.” Connor and Declan both looked away, a silent agreement. Harper let out a sharp laugh. Suddenly, she raised the gun and pressed the barrel to her forehead. “If you won’t care, then I’ll just die! It’s me or her! Choose!” My father shot up, his face ashen. “Harper, put it down! We want you here!” Connor threw his hands up. “Okay, okay! When we get Sloane back, we’ll send her abroad for a while!” Declan tried to placate her. “Sloane has always yielded to you anyway…” Harper didn’t reply. She just racked the slide. A bullet slipped into the chamber. Preston’s jaw clenched tight. He lunged forward to rip the gun from her grip. But as he did, he caught the tears brimming in her eyes. He froze. A long, suffocating silence stretched over the room. Finally, he reached up and wiped a tear from her cheek. “I choose you.” “Stop crying. It kills me to see you cry. Tomorrow… I’ll make things clear with Sloane.” Grant nodded from the sofa. “Tonight is supposed to be your night. Don’t ruin your makeup, you’ll look awful.” Harper sniffled, a fragile, triumphant smile finally breaking through. My father let out a heavy breath, asking quietly, “Is everything squared away on the boat?” Grant nodded. “The crew are all our guys.” Connor chimed in, “It’s a luxury private yacht. The suites are five-star, fully catered, AC, streaming services. They’re practically on vacation.” Declan added, “I stocked it with motion-sickness meds, a private doctor on standby, and plenty of french fries and lollipops so Lily won’t fuss.” Preston nodded, his expression softening. “We’ll head out first thing in the morning to pick them up. If we grovel enough, they shouldn’t hold onto their anger for too long.” The men sighed collectively, exchanging anxious but fond looks. Only Harper, sitting slightly in the shadows, let her lips curl into a slow, venomous smirk. That night, Preston swept Harper into his arms and carried her into our bridal suite. The diamond on his ring finger caught the hallway light, blinding and sharp. Through the heavy oak door, I could hear her laughter. The sound of a woman who had finally gotten everything she wanted. It was followed by the rhythmic creaking of our marital bed, every sound dropping like acid into my ears. Outside the door, I stood in the hallway as an invisible rain washed over me. The way Preston used to smile when he called my name. The gentleness in his hands when he bought me my first puppy. The absolute devotion in his eyes when he dropped to one knee and promised me a home. It all shattered like a baseball bat taken to a pane of glass. I closed my eyes, wiping away the ghost of tears. Every single man in this house was eagerly anticipating tomorrow. But the women lying in a pool of blood in the middle of the ocean didn’t have a tomorrow. Preston thought that after tonight, he would have a lifetime to explain himself, to apologize. He didn’t know that just hours ago, the “loyal crew” they had hired had gotten drunk and crept down into the cargo hold. Their pockets were lined with dirty money and cheap sedatives. Four men had lined up outside our metal door. They didn’t bother hiding their intentions. “We’re here to catch up with Preston Hayes’ new bride.” They were smiling. But the switchblades in their hands were brighter than the moon outside. The leader had looked me up and down, his eyes dark with predatory greed, stepping slowly toward me. My grandmother had grabbed a heavy metal pipe and swung it wildly at him. “You filthy animals! Don’t you dare touch her!” The man hissed in pain. When his hand came away bloody, his face twisted into something demonic. “You’re a bunch of whores being shipped to a cartel! You think you’re still human?” he spat. “We got specific orders to break the young one in. The rest of you back off!” He kicked out, his heavy boot catching Eleanor in the chest. She flew backward into the wooden pallets. My mother threw herself in front of me, a human shield. “Don’t touch her!” But she was no match for four grown men. They grabbed me by the hair, dragging me toward the doorway. A hand ripped at the bodice of my gown. The heavy silk tore with a sickening rip. The cold air hit my exposed skin. I twisted my head and sank my teeth into the man’s forearm, biting down until I tasted copper. He backhanded me across the face, twice. My head snapped back, blood bursting from my lip, and I crumpled to the floor. Audrey and Gemma grabbed whatever they could find—a broken chair leg, a wrench—and threw themselves at the men, swinging with feral desperation. My grandmother found a dropped knife and began stabbing wildly at their legs. My mother lost her mind. She tackled one of the men to the ground, sinking her teeth directly into his throat like a rabid dog. The sound of heavy fists hitting bone, the agonized screams, the wet tearing of flesh—it echoed endlessly inside the steel box. The door was sealed tight. From the deck above, we occasionally heard the other guards laughing. “Keep it down in there! Don’t rock the boat!” Nora tucked baby Lily securely into a corner crate. She stripped off her jacket to cover my exposed chest, then took off her stiletto heel. She gripped it like an ice pick, driving the sharp metal spike repeatedly into a man’s collarbone. Someone backhanded her brutally. She merely spat out a mouthful of blood and snarled. “You pieces of shit. Even looking at my sister is a desecration! If you want her, you’re going to have to kill every last one of us!” Gemma, who usually spoke in a soft, melodic whisper, wrapped a heavy leather belt around her fist and whipped the buckle across a man’s face. “The Hale men might be dead, but the women aren’t! You think you can break us? Go to hell!” The chaotic symphony of violence and curses was suddenly drowned out by four deafening bangs. Four bullets. Four men dropped dead to the floor. My mother stood in the shadows, her arms shaking violently as she held the silver Kimber. The leader of the guards lay on the ground, his chest heaving as his lungs filled with blood. He let out a wet, gurgling laugh. “Idiots,” he choked out. “You’re fighting to the death… for your purity? For the Hale men? When they were the ones… who put you on this boat… in the first place.” For a long time, the cargo hold was dead silent. The only sound was Audrey and Gemma collapsed on the floor, panting heavily. Nora sat in the corner, clutching Lily, staring into the dark. My mother wrapped her coat tightly around my shivering shoulders. Her lips moved, but no sound came out. Eleanor sat on the crates, her spine perfectly straight. She looked at me, then at little Lily, who was innocently wiping the blood off her mother’s cheek with her sleeve. Finally, my grandmother spoke. “You’ve all read the news about the trafficking rings down south. It’s a living hell.” “If we were on land, we could fight our way out. But out here, on the open ocean… there is no survival.” She paused, and a strange, serene smile touched her lips. “If we go together, it’s not so bad. Four generations of Hale women, walking the same road.” No one argued. Little Lily tugged on Nora’s sleeve, her voice soft and confused. “Mommy, what does it mean… walking the same road?” Nora didn’t answer. Her eyes just slowly filled with tears. She leaned down and kissed her daughter’s forehead. “Don’t be scared, baby. Wherever we go, Mommy is with you.” Audrey and Gemma exchanged a quiet, understanding look. They both smiled. My mother helped me sit up. She took out the custom Kimber again, her thumb stroking the engraving on the slide. It was a beautiful, compact gun with a suppressor. My father had given it to her as an anniversary gift years ago. The Hales had enemies; it was meant to keep her safe. She never imagined it would be the tool she used to send her family to the grave. Seeing the gun, Lily instinctively shrank back. She curled into Nora’s chest, her little body trembling, though she didn’t make a sound. Nora lifted a hand and gently patted her back. She began to hum. Hush, little baby, don’t say a word… The soft, haunting melody drifted through the stench of blood and seawater. Audrey and Gemma lowered their heads. My mother bit her lip so hard it bled, fighting to keep her composure. Eleanor took the gun from my mother’s hand. With her other hand, she gently wiped the grime from my face. When she pressed the muzzle to her own temple, she was still smiling. “This song put you to sleep when you were babies. Let it guide you to sleep now.” She looked right at me. “Don’t be afraid, Sloane. Grandma is going ahead to clear the way.” My mother bit back a sob, reaching over to cover my eyes with her warm hand. The heavy, suppressed gunshots felt like they were piercing directly into my own heart. Blood splattered against the walls. One by one, the shadows dropped. They died not knowing the truth. They died thinking their husbands had been murdered. They died for a sick, twisted joke meant to make Harper Hale feel special. At 4:00 AM, the bedroom door opened. Preston walked into my old room. He stood there, staring at the massive wedding portrait on the wall. He watched it until the dawn light crept through the window, painting my face in a warm, golden glow. He pulled out his phone. The lock screen was a candid photo of me. Whatever he was thinking, it made him reach up and rub the ring on his left hand. The inside of the band was engraved with two letters. [P & S] Preston and Sloane. A shadow of guilt flickered in his eyes. He looked down and began typing out text messages. [Order an exact replica of the Vera Wang gown and the Cartier set.] [Have someone pick up the truffle risotto from Valerio’s. Make sure it stays hot. Sloane’s stomach is sensitive.] [Tell the makeup team and the on-call doctor to be waiting at the estate.] The last message, he sent to me. I shouldn’t have made that bet with her. It was the last time, I swear. Your dad and I agreed—we’re bringing you home today, and we’re sending her away to Europe. He hit send, the tension finally leaving his shoulders. A knock sounded at the door. “Boss, the convoy is ready.” Preston grabbed his coat and opened the door. “Grab some chilled gel masks for the car. Sloane hates when her eyes get puffy from crying.” When he walked downstairs, the Hale men were already leaning out of their SUVs. “We’ve got the food, clothes, and blankets ready,” Connor called out. Fearing Eleanor’s wrath, my father had actually brought a wooden cane, ready to let her beat him half to death to vent her anger. Connor, ever the detail-oriented one, had brought Audrey’s favorite perfume and a fresh set of press-on nails. “You know how particular your sister-in-law is!” Declan held up a thermos of green juice, grinning. “Gemma’s on a health kick.” Grant didn’t say anything. He just stroked the box of a brand new Barbie doll in his lap, a soft smile on his face. Preston sat in the back of the stretched Lincoln, constantly refreshing his phone, waiting to see the Read receipt on my messages. But my phone had been tossed into the ocean before we even boarded. When no reply came, his brow furrowed. He stared at my face on his screen for a long time before snapping his gaze up. “Drive. Step on it.” The convoy roared toward the Port of Miami. But when they arrived at the private marina, the slip was empty. There was no luxury Royal Caribbean yacht. The harbor master rushed over the moment he saw Preston step out of the car, practically bowing. “Mr. Hayes…” Before Preston could even speak, my father pushed past him. “Where is the yacht? Where is my wife? Where are the Hale women?” The rapid-fire questions left the man stuttering. He wiped cold sweat from his forehead. “Mr. Hale… the last private yacht left two days ago. There hasn’t been another boat docked here.” “Impossible!” Connor’s face twisted in rage. He grabbed the man by the collar. “My sister, my wife, and the rest of the family are on that boat! What do you mean there’s no boat?!” The man trembled violently, looking pleadingly at Preston. “I wouldn’t dare lie to you, Mr. Hayes! There has been no ship here since yesterday!” His sheer terror proved he was telling the truth. Preston whipped his head around to look at the Hale men, all the color draining from his face. “Didn’t you say everything was set? Our own crew? A luxury yacht? Doctors?” My father’s face turned ash gray. He ripped a gun from his holster and shoved it against the harbor master’s forehead. “Don’t give me excuses! Pull the security footage. Now!” Hours later, racing on a high-speed interceptor, they caught up to a rusted freighter drifting in international waters. The moment they breached the deck, a line of armed thugs sneered at them. “Harper Hale!” one of them shouted over the wind. “The women down there are all dead. When are you wiring the second half of the payment?” Those words hit the men like a physical blow. Their faces went completely slack. Within seconds, Preston’s men had the thugs surrounded and disarmed. When Preston and my father finally wrenched open the heavy steel doors of the cargo hold, Preston’s knees buckled. The floor was a lake of congealed blood. A row of dead women lay shoulder to shoulder. I was at the very end. The bodice of my dress was torn violently open. By my hand lay the blood-soaked diamond ring. And above my head, scrawled in my own blood on the rusted wall, was a single sentence: In the next life, let me never be born a Hale, and never be bound to one.

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It had been over a year since my Alpha touched me. When I finally caught him with the human girl in the hollow beneath the limestone falls, I didn’t announce myself. I stood in the heavy mountain mist and listened to the low, breathless rumble of his voice. “Every time her blood runs hot,” Garrett was murmuring, his fingers tracing the soft curve of her human throat, “she shifts into that brute form. All that coarse, thick pelt—it turns my stomach. She isn’t clean and porcelain like you. Give me a son, Gwen. Give me a pup with your sweet blood, and I’ll crown you the highest mother this pack has ever known.” Behind me, swallowed by the pines, my entire council stood in silence. Garrett had sat on the bone throne for far too long. He had forgotten the ancient, unbroken law of our territory: our bloodlines do not bow to outsiders. And more than that, he had conveniently forgotten the truth known only to the two of us: between the Alpha and his Queen, the barren one was him. 1 From the afternoon Garrett brought Gwen back from the lowlands, his quiet fixation had settled over the camp like an incoming blizzard. He offered her our deepest, dryest limestone den—a cavern once reserved exclusively for our elders during hard winters. He barred our young hunters from the geothermal springs near the ridge simply so she could soak undisturbed in clear water. Wolves eat warm, raw marrow. We tear into the kill while the heart still twitches. But a human stomach was too delicate for our wild harvests. Garrett would carve away the most tender ribbons of flank, stooping over open charcoal fires to roast the meat until it was half-cooked, seasoning it with the sharp, pungent cumin he traded for in human trading posts. The scent clung to the night wind—acrid, foreign, and stinging our acute noses. Every time the warriors caught the smell, their jaws clenched in unease. Yet Garrett was our King. In the pack, an Alpha’s word is sovereign. No one challenged him openly. And as his Queen, I bore the weight of his dignity. When the hunting parties murmured, I silenced them. When the older females grumbled over lost hunting grounds, I smoothed the tension over. In the quiet of our sleeping den, I tried warning him. I told him softly that bending our ancestral ways for a fragile human stray was eroding his authority. Garrett only laughed it off, his eyes distant and dismissive. To prove his point, he took our elite vanguard across the frozen river into the feline territory, hunting down an elder spotted tiger and flaying its golden hide just to lay a soft winter quilt across Gwen’s cot. For the sake of that single vanity blanket, the peace we had maintained with the feline clans for nearly a decade fractured overnight. We were thrown into endless, exhausting vigilance. We patrolled the boundaries until our pads cracked from the ice, sleeping with our jaws inches from the earth, terrified of night ambushes. My wolves were simple, honorable creatures. It never crossed their minds that our mighty King would harbor a foul, cross-species desire for a human girl. After all, he had me. And among our kind, wolves mate for life. The bond is etched into the bone; it does not waver. I stood post at the perimeter night after night, bleeding in quiet scuffles, cementing his rule while guarding our den from the consequences of his arrogance. I was a fool. Wolves, it turned out, were no better than men. Their hearts could turn rotten just as easily. 2 The night the feline clan allied with the red foxes to storm our eastern ridge, chaos tore through the camp. My sentries were fighting a losing retreat until Garrett flanked the breach, his gray frame lunging into the fray, tearing through the felines and driving the foxes back toward the tree line. In the final push, while shielding a yearling pup, he caught an iron blade coated in black feline venom. The blood oozing from his flank was thick, tar-colored, and foul. Gwen came sprinting from the inner dens. She called herself a healer in the mortal villages. Without hesitation, she fell to her knees and pressed her soft lips to his open flesh, sucking out the black taint and spitting it onto the snow. But the venom was ancient; it had already seeped past the muscle and coiled around his inner organs. “We need the frost lotus from the high glacial peaks,” Gwen panted, her lips stained with his blood. “Nothing else will purge the cold poison before it reaches his heart.” She called him Garrett. Plainly. Without deference. Even as his Queen, duty demanded I address him by his royal rank before the pack. The clearing fell deathly silent. Every yellow eye swung toward me, waiting. The Alpha had collapsed; the Queen had to carry the sky. In the dirt, Garrett’s fevered fingers reached out, his claws digging painfully into the leather of my wrist. His voice was ragged, desperate. “Listen to Gwen, Maeve. She… she wouldn’t steer me wrong.” The sentence was heavy with unspoken intimacies, but with his pulse fluttering under my grip like a dying bird, there was no room for bitter pride. “Declan, Darren,” I barked, looking at the two fiercest brothers in my vanguard. “You ride the ridge with me to the peaks. The rest of you seal the borders. Not a single pup leaves the inner perimeter.” A low, resonant chorus of howls shook the frost from the pines. As we pulled on our winter leathers, Gwen dropped to her knees, bowing until her forehead nearly touched my snow-covered boots. “The poison will take his marrow in three days, my Queen. I beg of you… bring the lotus back before the third sundown.” I stared down at her dark hair, an acid burn spreading through my chest. Garrett was my husband. His life and mine were bound by sacred pack vows. Risking my neck to bring back medicine was my duty as his Queen—yet here she was, bowing as though she were entrusting her most sacred possession into my hands. By what right did she kneel to me as his caretaker? What was he to her? I turned my back without answering. When I return from the glaciers, I promised myself, this human will be driven beyond our riverbanks forever. The glacial climb was brutal. Declan and Darren ran our flanks, throwing their broad shoulders into the howling blizzard to shield me from the wind. We only rested when granite precipices forced us into narrow clefts, our breath ragged in the thinning air. “A stray fox blade couldn’t have nicked the Alpha like that,” Darren spat, chewing violently on a strip of dry birch bark, his golden eyes blazing with disgust. “You and I know how Garrett fights. He took that strike on purpose—making a spectacle of himself so that little doe would look at him like a savior.” “And who the hell does she think she is?” Darren continued, his claws digging into the stone. “Living in the elder den, hogging the hot springs. The Queen herself was never hand-fed roasted meat by Garrett! Maeve is the daughter of our late King. Without her bloodline, who among the elders would have knelt to Garrett? In strategy, in command, in raw battlefield instinct, he doesn’t hold a candle to my brother Declan!” “Shut your mouth, Darren,” Declan snapped, his voice rough and deep as grinding river stones. “Watch your tongue.” “I won’t shut up!” Darren snapped back. “I’m telling the truth. When the feline warriors dragged Maeve into the blood pits years ago, it was you who broke four ribs tearing her out of that den! Garrett only met you at the boundary line to carry her unconscious body home. She woke up thinking Garrett was the one who bled for her, and that pathetic misunderstanding handed him the crown!” Maeve. My real name. Before I took the crown, Declan, Darren, and I were wild runts who hunted the ravines together. But after my father passed and the crown settled onto Garrett’s brow, duty had stiffened my spine and widened the chasm between us. “Enough,” Declan ordered, his tone suddenly rigid. “The Queen is back.” Darren snapped his jaw shut. I walked into the cave shelter, tossing the field hare I had just killed onto the dirt between them. The wind shrieked through the rocks outside. After a long silence, I looked directly into Declan’s amber eyes. “On the morning of our mating ceremony, Garrett told me. He confessed that you were the one who pulled me from the pit. I’ve always known, Declan. I’ve always known you were my savior.” Declan’s entire frame went rigid. The sharp, predatory fire that usually lived in his eyes flickered, dimming into an unreadable, aching shadow. “I will repay that blood debt,” I said softly, holding his gaze. “To the end of my days. But it has nothing to do with who wears the crown.” Declan lowered his chin, pressing his fist against his broad chest in our sacred salute. “My life belongs to the Queen,” he whispered, his voice gravelly. “Until the last breath.” I frowned, the phrasing catching in my throat. He had pledged himself to the Queen, not the King. But the freezing squall was already picking up outside, leaving no room to dissect his words. Darren muttered under his breath, “Telling you on your wedding day… Garrett sure knew how to play his cards.” It took a day and a half to breach the razor-sharp crest of the glacier, and another half-day scouring the blue ice fissures before we found it: the frost lotus, its petals crystalline and translucent. I snapped the stem, nestled it into an ice box, wrapped it in buckskin, and lashed it tight across my chest. Racing down the mountain, my right boot came down hard on a rusted iron jaw concealed beneath the powder—a trap left by human poachers. The steel teeth crushed through leather and bit directly into bone. Red blood sprayed across the buckskin, staining the ice box. In a blind panic, I rubbed the frost clean, breathing again only when I saw the petals inside remained untainted. My right leg was shattered, dead weight beneath me. Without a word, Declan carved a sled out of a pine trunk with his bare claws. He and Darren harnessed themselves to it, hauling me through the drifts and sliding down sheer ice slopes. Before the third sunset dipped beneath the jagged peaks, we broke through the boundary line and carried the lotus into the council hall. I limped forward, supported by Declan, only to freeze mid-step. Garrett was not dying. He was sitting tall and immaculate upon the throne of stone and antlers, the gray flush gone from his cheeks, radiating vitality. And the sacred bloom—the flower I had traded my shattered bone to retrieve—was swept off the dais and handed casually into Gwen’s pale hands. “Gwen saved my life with her swift medicine,” Garrett announced to the gathered pack, his tone easy and dismissive. “This sacred flower is her reward.” A coldness settled over my ribs, sharper than any iron trap. While I choked back the nausea rising from the throbbing pain in my leg, Garrett added smoothly, “Gwen is mortal. She cannot linger indefinitely among our kind. In a few days, I will personally escort her back to her father’s village.” Sending her away was what I wanted. But for an Alpha to serve as a lone human girl’s escort? It was degrading. It made a mockery of his station. I stood there, bewildered, my mind spinning with questions I couldn’t voice. That night, Garrett gave me every answer I never wanted to hear. 3 Because of the crushed bone in my leg, I was stripped of patrol duty. For eighteen unbroken months, I had held the perimeter through sleet and ambushes; now, an injury had finally granted me permission to sleep in my own warm den. Garrett and I hadn’t shared a pelt in over a year. A foolish, lingering part of me hoped he would come. I pictured him licking the dried blood from my calf, running his rough paws through my tangled fur, pulling me against his broad chest until the suspicions that had plagued me for months melted away. I wanted to talk to him. I wanted to ask him to stay—to let a regular sentry escort the human away, to remain here with the pack, with me. Yet the grand cave was empty. The hearth was cold. I limped out into the main clearing and asked the vanguard sentries. They averted their eyes, muttering that the Alpha was walking the boundary lines. I waited until midnight. When the frost began to bite, a sickening dread pushed me to my feet. I dragged my ruined leg through the camp, searching the caves, the ridges, the springs. Finally, I followed the faint, sweet scent of human herbs to the mouth of the deepest cavern. Inside, the shadows flickered with amber firelight. Gwen’s pale, hairless body was pressed tight against Garrett’s dark, muscular chest. Their skin glistened with a fine sheen of sweat, their breathing shallow and uneven, the heavy air thick with the musk of recent passion. My breath locked in my throat. Every nerve in my spine pulled taut as wire. “I gave myself to you,” Gwen was pouting, her small hands resting on his collarbones, “but I told you, Garrett. I won’t be a hidden thing. I won’t live as a concubine.” Garrett stroked her soft, rounded shoulder with a tenderness he had never shown me. “You won’t,” he murmured, his voice thick. “I’ve told you a dozen times. You will be my equal wife. You will stand beside me with the same honors as the Queen. As soon as you carry my pup, you will be the most revered mother in this territory.” Gwen sighed softly, her fingers trailing down his chest. “And Maeve? Will your proud Queen stomach sharing you? She loves you so fiercely. She patrols the borders for you every night, carrying the pack on her shoulders. Will she really let me take half of what’s hers?” “She has no say in the matter,” Garrett sneered, leaning down to nuzzle her throat. “She’s barren. That failure lies squarely on her, not me. Ancestral law says a King takes one mate, yes, but a Queen who cannot birth an heir is no Queen at all. She has no right to question me bringing home a woman who can.” A winter chill spread through my veins, but their whispers didn’t stop. “I feigned that scratch from the fox warrior to force her to climb the glacier for that lotus,” Garrett chuckled softly. “It was hard on her, sure. When we hold our mating rites, you can show her some deference in public to keep the elders quiet. But in truth, every good thing I have will belong to you. That flower will cure your father’s lungs. Tomorrow, I ride with you to the human town, ten chests of pack gold in tow, to buy his blessing.” Gwen remained unsatisfied. “And once we’re wed? Whose bed will you sleep in? Hers or mine? I don’t care what you did before, but now that you’re mine, I can’t stomach the thought of you touching… that creature.” Garrett laughed, a dry, dismissive sound that tore straight through my ribs. “Every time her passion flares,” he whispered, “she shifts into that brute form. Looking at all that coarse, thick pelt—it turns my stomach. She isn’t clean and porcelain like you. Rest easy, my sweet. I will sleep in your bed every single night. Now come here. Give me another kiss.” The cavern amplified every whisper, carrying it out into the crisp night air. It reached my ears. And it reached the ears of the dozen wolves standing frozen behind me. My limping search through the camp hadn’t been quiet. The elders, the vanguard, Darren, and Declan had followed my trail, worried about my shattered leg. They had heard every single word. Darren let out a low, feral snarl, his fangs baring as he prepared to lunge through the cavern opening to tear the human to ribbons. Declan moved like lightning, clapping a massive hand over his brother’s muzzle and dragging him backward into the shadows. I stood there, rigid as stone, the cold finally reaching my core. Suddenly, the last eighteen months made sense. He found my fur repulsive. He looked at my natural form and felt disgust. Two council elders took my arms, pulling me gently away from the cave mouth. Once we were back near the center of the camp, they looked at my pale face and let out long, weary sighs. “Garrett has lost his mind,” one elder murmured, shaking his gray head. “This is a disgrace. But… the pack needs bloodline continuation, Maeve. If Garrett uses your barrenness to justify taking an outsider, our ancient laws don’t give the council much ground to forbid him.” The elders carried the weight of our survival. They had never openly reproached me for failing to produce a pup, but the silence had always hung between us like a drawn blade. Yet blood does not sprout from barren earth alone. Breeding takes two wolves. Why was my body the only one blamed? And more importantly: how dare he dream of diluting our sacred blood with an outsider? I lifted my chin, staring into the milky eyes of the elders. “If I carry a true-blooded pup… will the council stand with me?” The elders exchanged bewildered glances. “Garrett is bewitched by that mortal girl. Maeve, how could you possibly—” A slow, vicious smile touched the corners of my mouth. I had never felt colder, or more lucid. “Who said the pup would be Garrett’s?” The elders gasped. My gaze shifted over their shoulders, landing directly on Declan, who stood silently in the dark. Wolves mate for life, yes. But when a King turns traitor to his vows, he ceases to be a mate. He becomes vermin. Garrett had abandoned our laws first. As the Queen of this territory, what crime was there in crowning a new King? “Tell me, elders,” I murmured, my voice cutting through the pine needles. “Between a half-breed mongrel carrying fragile human blood, and a pure-blooded pup birthed from the royal lineage of my father… which one will this pack bow to?”

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1 I woke up inside a trashy, early-2000s alpha-billionaire melodrama. Worse, I was the villainous stand-in daughter. Unloved by my adoptive parents, despised by my adoptive brother, and deeply aware of my precarious shelf life, I had spent the last seventy-two hours playing the part of a serene, delicate little saint. “It belongs to Gwen anyway,” I said, my voice soft enough to pass for velvet as I offered a placid, beatific smile. “I wouldn’t dream of keeping what isn’t mine.” Across the polished marble coffee table, the Harrington family looked at me with varying degrees of strained paternal warmth. It was a suffocatingly performative portrait of domestic reconciliation, and in the quiet privacy of my own skull, I couldn’t help myself: Absolute morons. Every set of eyes in the room snapped to mine. I blinked, keeping my expression like still water, while my internal monologue rolled its eyes into the stratosphere: What are you staring at? Staring at me isn’t going to raise your collective IQ. Preston Harrington’s dark brows knit tightly together. His gaze lingered on my mouth, searching for movement that hadn’t occurred. “Did you… just say something?” he asked, his voice low and hesitant. Is he going deaf? Did my lips move, you magnificent idiot? Outwardly, my gentle smile didn’t waver. “No, Preston. You must be hearing things.” He let out a small, guarded breath. Then my internal voice fired off again: Not only is this family hopelessly biased, they’re experiencing group auditory hallucinations. Someone ought to book them a four-for-one consult with a neurologist. The room froze. The expressions on all four faces went rigid, turning an unnatural, sickly shade of grey. I didn’t care enough to investigate. My only goal was to survive this agonizing “welcome home to the real heiress” summit and get out with my skin intact. Three days ago, my soul had been unceremoniously shoved into the body of Paige Harrington, the designated antagonist of Cruel Surrender: The Tycoon’s Reluctant Captive. In the original text, Paige had occupied Gwen Harrington’s rightful place for twenty years. When the truth came out, instead of bowing out gracefully, Paige went full scorched-earth—terrorizing Gwen, clinging desperately to the Harrington fortune, and orchestrating petty, vindictive schemes. Her reward in the final chapters? She was booted onto the curb by the Harringtons, dragged back to her deadbeat biological parents, and sold off to a fifty-something loan shark to settle their gambling debts. She died fleeing from a motel window, hit by an oncoming semi-truck. Gwen, the saintly heroine, hadn’t fared much better. The Harringtons used her as financial leverage, packaging her into an arranged marriage with the story’s male lead, Damian Cross. What followed was eight hundred chapters of physical and emotional degradation—kidnappings, miscarriages, forced isolation, and cold-blooded gaslighting. In the epilogue, Damian whispered a single I love you, and Gwen wept, forgave him completely, and they rode off into a sunset made of trauma. As for the three Harrington family members sitting in front of me? Arthur Harrington went bankrupt and died in a federal penitentiary; his wife, Eleanor, suffered a catastrophic stroke; and Preston plunged his sports car off a cliff on Mulholland Drive. A picture-perfect family tragedy. Every single one of them had been ground into cheap kindling to feed the toxic bonfire of the main couple’s romance. When I read that book, I didn’t cry for the romance. I cried for the subscription money I was never getting back. A pack of utter lunatics, every last one of them. Eleanor cleared her throat, breaking the heavy silence. She looked at me with an apologetic, rehearsed gentleness. “Paige, sweetheart… this emerald bracelet was left by your grandmother for the Harrington daughter. Now that Gwen is home, you… you understand it should go to her, don’t you?” Without a second of hesitation, I extended my wrist. “Of course.” I pulled the jadeite clasp open with such frantic efficiency that you would have thought the piece was coated in arsenic. Take it. Take the damn thing. It’s only an eight-hundred-thousand-dollar heirloom. I don’t care. Truly. I’ll only wake up at three in the morning in some cheap studio apartment and slap myself across the face twice for giving it away. Eleanor’s hand stalled mid-reach. Her eyes grew wide, almost frightened. Before she could touch the gold clasp, Gwen crossed the rug, gently catching my hand. With careful, surprisingly steady fingers, she slipped the emerald back over my knuckles. Eleanor opened her mouth to object, murmuring that it belonged to her by right of blood, but Gwen cut her off quietly. “I never had the chance to meet Grandmother,” Gwen said, her voice clear and devoid of malice. “I can’t feel robbed of something I never knew.” I looked down at the cool green stones resting against my pulse, feeling an immediate, eight-hundred-thousand-dollar spike of affection for this girl. She’s actually an angel, I thought. No wonder she managed to endure eight hundred chapters of that walking federal indictment, Damian Cross. Across the table, Arthur’s tea cup clattered sharply against its saucer. The old man sat bolt upright, his face dark with sudden tension. “What did you just say about Damian Cross?” A spike of panic hit my chest. I kept my face smooth as glass, staring back at him blankly. Had I spoken out loud? Jesus. The old man has the ears of a hunting hound. Arthur’s face twitched violently, his complexion darkening from pale to stormy purple. 2 Dinner that evening was conducted in absolute, suffocating silence. Arthur tried to clear his throat and speak three separate times, only for Eleanor to kick his shin under the mahogany table with an audible thud. Preston, meanwhile, sat diagonally across from me, his silver eyes fixed on my face with an intensity so unblinking he managed to miss a piece of roasted asparagus entirely with his fork. I subtly nudged my dining chair two inches to the left. The way Preston is staring at me, you’d think I broke into his penthouse and stole his lucky boxer shorts. Snap. The silver fork in Preston’s fist bent slightly against the bone china. I shifted my chair another inch away. Clearly, the original Paige had torched whatever sibling affection existed years ago. The man couldn’t even stand watching me chew without entering a homicidal rage. Directly across from me, Gwen kept her head bowed over her plate. Her napkin was pressed to her mouth, her shoulders trembling with small, rhythmic spasms. She was probably overwhelmed, I reasoned. Adapting to old money after a lifetime of poverty was an emotional minefield. Midway through the roast chicken, Arthur’s executive assistant slipped into the dining room, placing a thick leather-bound folder beside the patriarch’s elbow. Arthur slid it across to Preston. “Review the Cross Industries joint venture. The signing ceremony is scheduled for ten tomorrow morning. Make sure the indemnification clauses hold.” Preston skimmed the first two pages, then, with an uncharacteristic hesitation, slid the contract across the linen toward me. “I don’t understand corporate restructuring,” I said quickly, pushing my hands into my lap. “You shouldn’t ask me.” My eyes, however, had already caught the header on page three, and a burst of genuine amusement bubbled up inside me. Here it comes. The thirty-million-dollar express train straight to bankruptcy court. On paper, it’s a joint development project for the South Harbor waterfront. In reality, the contracting entity is a shell LLC Damian Cross bought off the shelf last month in Delaware. The Harringtons put up the prime commercial acreage and forty million in liquid escrow; Cross contributes a handsome face and empty promises. In ninety days, the funds will be wired to a dummy account in the Caymans. Old Man Arthur will be hauled away in handcuffs for unlawful securities guarantees, spending his golden years sewing prison jumpsuits. If he’s lucky, he can stitch a matching set for the whole family. Arthur’s hand gripped the stem of his wine glass so hard the crystal groaned. Preston’s fingers slowed over the pages. He pulled out his phone, his thumbs blurring across the keyboard as he fired off three urgent messages under the table. Within minutes, the screen on his lap lit up with replies. Preston leaned over, showing the screen to his father. Arthur read the messages, and the color drained from his skin until he looked like chalk. “Cancel tomorrow’s signing,” Arthur said, his voice raw and gravelly. “Hire an independent forensic auditor. I want that holding company’s financial trail unraveled by sunrise.” I nearly choked on my jasmine rice. In the novel, the Harringtons had thrown an extravagant gala to celebrate inking the deal with Damian Cross, treating him like an economic savior. Why on earth were they backing out over a routine contract review? Before I could puzzle it out, Gwen’s elbow accidentally brushed against Preston’s key ring resting near the centerpiece. It was the fob to his black Porsche 911 GT3. I stared at the silver crest, and a chill went down my spine as a forgotten plot point flickered in my memory. Isn’t Preston driving that exact car up Mulholland Highway tonight for that midnight charity rally? Have fun, big brother. Your golden-boy assistant Paul already snipped the primary brake line in the garage this afternoon. Look on the bright side: once you cartwheel off the canyon wall, you’ll save a fortune on monthly parking fees. Preston’s hand stopped an inch above the keys. He didn’t pick them up. Instead, he turned his head slowly toward the butler standing by the sideboard. “Did Paul handle my car today?” The butler blinked, caught off guard. “Yes, Mr. Preston. Mr. Paul took the keys around two o’clock to take it for a detailing and routine inspection.” Preston stood up so fast his chair screeched against the hardwood. He signaled two private security guards from the foyer and walked straight toward the subterranean garage. Thirty minutes later, he returned with two uniformed LAPD officers. Behind them walked Paul, handcuffed, his face the color of damp parchment. The brake lines had indeed been severed with wire cutters, held together by a thin sleeve of heat-shrink plastic designed to fail under high pressure. They had also found a magnetic GPS tracker clamped to the rear subframe. Paul had maintained his innocence until the officers pulled up his offshore bank records, revealing a wire transfer that originated from a holding firm linked to Cross Industries. As the squad car’s red-and-blue lights painted the driveway, a strange, prickling sensation crawled up the back of my neck. The plot had derailed. Drastically. And the Harrington family’s reactions were bizarrely, impossibly sharp. Beside me, Gwen set a freshly peeled jumbo prawn onto my porcelain plate. I glanced at her, surprised, then popped the shrimp into my mouth. Gwen really is the best, I thought happily. The lone sane, non-moronic entity in the entire Harrington gene pool. Across the table, Arthur, Eleanor, and Preston stiffened simultaneously, their faces darkening in unison. Gwen pressed her napkin to her lips, unable to stop a tiny, delighted snort from escaping. 3 The following afternoon, Damian Cross arrived at the Harrington estate in person, flanked by two personal aides carrying embossed gift boxes. The original author had dedicated three full pages to describing the man’s jawline—an exhausting sequence of adjectives about aristocratic cheekbones and predatory obsidian eyes that had made me fall asleep so hard my phone hit me square on the bridge of my nose. Seeing him now, clad in a bespoke charcoal Tom Ford suit, I felt nothing but an overwhelming urge to check my pockets for stolen goods. Damian set a velvet case in front of Gwen, popping the brass latch to reveal a heavy Harry Winston diamond collar. “A modest welcoming gift, Gwen,” he murmured, his voice pitched to that low, bedroom frequency that romance heroines usually found intoxicating. Eleanor glanced at her daughter, an anxious, hopeful flicker in her eyes. According to the original script, today was the day the two families were supposed to formalize the betrothal. The Harringtons needed Cross’s capital to shore up their struggling commercial branch, while Damian needed the marriage to access the Harrington family’s proprietary battery patents. Everyone thought they were gaming the system. In reality, Gwen was the only casualty. Later in the novel, she had dropped to her knees, begging Damian to spare her ruined family, only for him to grip her chin and whisper: Beg for them one more time, and I’ll make sure your brother’s life support is switched off. Looking at Gwen’s cautious, still face, I couldn’t help a private sigh. Congratulations on the diamond choke-chain, sweetie. Fast-track to a three-year domestic imprisonment package, complete with a traumatic miscarriage and eight hundred rounds of public humiliation courtesy of his vindictive ex. Gwen’s hand, which had been reaching politely toward the velvet box, snapped back as if the velvet were on fire. Eleanor turned completely white. Damian frowned, noting the sudden chill. “Do you dislike the cut?” Gwen pushed the box back across the marble table. “It’s far too extravagant, Mr. Cross. I can’t accept this.” Damian didn’t press her, but his predatory gaze shifted slowly, landing on me. I offered him my best, pageant-trained smile. Good afternoon, walking felony. Please have a seat, walking felony. When is your federal indictment coming down, walking felony? Arthur erupted into a violent, hacking cough. Preston turned his head sharply toward the French doors, his broad shoulders shaking with silent, desperate tension. Unaware of the silent theater, Damian merely thought he was being subtly insulted by the family’s lack of deference. The charming edge of his smile cooled into something razor-thin. He pulled an addendum out of his leather portfolio. “Arthur, you abruptly canceled our signing this morning. I believe I’m owed an explanation.” Arthur didn’t offer the groveling excuses written in the original book. He took a slow sip of his black coffee, his expression carved from granite. “Our compliance team flagged irregularities in your funding entity’s capital flow. We’ll resume talks after our forensic audit concludes.” Damian leaned forward, dropping the polite veneer. “The Harrington Group’s liquid reserves are tight, Arthur. Playing hardball over routine holding structures might cost you your credit rating.” I internally scoffed. A felon through and through. The second things didn’t go his way, the mafia tactics came out. Stop blowing smoke, you fraud. The municipal zoning announcement for the East Port Bay district drops the day after tomorrow—South Harbor property values are going to quintuple overnight! Once that news breaks, investment banks will be queuing down the driveway to hand the Harringtons cash. If Old Man Arthur had sold three days earlier like the original idiot he was, he’d already be in prison trading cigarettes for cornbread. Arthur’s face morphed through three distinct shades of crimson, but he didn’t touch the addendum. Instead, he signaled the butler. “Show Mr. Cross to his car.” Damian stood up, his jaw clenched tight. As he buttoned his jacket, he stopped directly in front of my chair. “Do you have an issue with me, Paige?” “Not at all, Mr. Cross,” I replied, voice dripping with honeyed innocence. “We only just met.” Inwardly, I added: I treat all criminal suspects with equal democratic contempt. Gwen dropped her chin to her chest, her shoulders shaking so violently her chair vibrated. The moment Damian’s Maybach pulled out of the courtyard, Arthur barked an order to his chief of staff: “Verify the rumors regarding the East Port Bay municipal rezoning immediately! And pull every single parcel of our South Harbor land off the market. Not an inch gets sold.” I sat on the velvet sofa, watching the chaotic flurry of phone calls with narrowing eyes. A deeply unsettling theory began to take root in my mind. Wait a second… can they actually hear me? In a fraction of a second, Arthur, Eleanor, Preston, and Gwen all violently snapped their heads in opposite directions. It was executed with such terrifying, synchronized precision they could have headlined a Broadway dance revue. 4 Before I could set a trap to test my telepathy hypothesis, my biological parents showed up at the front gates. Frank Miller arrived wearing a faded, grease-stained windbreaker, his eyes artificially reddened with tears. Beside him, his wife, Martha, let out a piercing wail the moment the front doors opened, lunging across the foyer toward me with outstretched arms. I took half a step backward, smoothly evading her embrace. “Good afternoon, Mr. and Mrs. Miller.” Martha’s theatrical sobbing hitched for a fraction of a second before redoubling in volume. She clutched at her chest, crying out that I was ashamed of their working-class roots, weeping about how sacred blood was, and how a mother’s love couldn’t be bought with Harrington gold. Couldn’t be bought? I held back a dry laugh. You’ve spent the last three days calculating my exact trade-in value. Has Damian Cross’s five-hundred-thousand-dollar cash advance cleared your checking account yet? Frank was literally in an underground poker den in Koreatown last night dropping eighty grand, and now he’s an apostle of family values? If you need collateral for your debts so badly, why don’t you harvest your own kidneys? Arthur’s expression darkened into thunder. Frank, entirely deaf to my thoughts, flashed Arthur an oily, deferential grin. “Mr. Harrington, sir, now that your real girl is back where she belongs, it’s only right we take Paige home. We wouldn’t want the tabloids saying you’re hoarding someone else’s child.” Eleanor had been holding a cashier’s check in her purse, meant as an olive branch. Now, her fingers tightened around the leather strap, and she quietly slid the zipper shut. Beside me, Gwen had gone deathly pale. Her hands hung at her sides, curled into white-knuckled fists. Having lived with the Millers for twenty years, she knew the exact flavor of poison lurking behind their working-class facade. In the novel’s later arcs, it was revealed that our swap had never been an accidental hospital mix-up. Martha had worked as a per-diem sanitation aide in the maternity ward. When she learned the Harrington family had delivered a daughter on the same floor, she swapped the wristbands during a midnight shift change. She wanted her own flesh and blood to grow up wearing diamonds, but she lived in constant, paranoid terror of discovery. As a result, she took out her guilt and fear on Gwen—beating her, starving her, and forcing her to sleep on an old cot in the laundry room while Martha spent her modest wages buying designer knock-offs. Now, with the truth exposed, they had taken hush money from Damian Cross to drag me away, intending to use me as a hostage to extort the Harringtons whenever Cross needed leverage. Look at this child-trafficking monster putting on an audition for Mother of the Year, I thought coldly. The scald scar below Gwen’s collarbone came from the boiling water you threw when she was fourteen. You spent twenty years abusing her without batting an eye. Now you want to bring me home? What, did you run out of punching bags and think my skin looks thicker? Gwen’s head snapped up. Martha was still weeping into a handkerchief when Gwen lunged forward, her hand clamping down around the older woman’s wrist like a vise. “You told the authorities the hospital made an error twenty years ago,” Gwen said, her voice dropping to a dangerous, icy register. “Do you have proof?” Martha’s eyes darted nervously. “The hospital settled out of court, Gwen! You know that! It was a clerical tragedy—” “Last Thanksgiving, when you and Frank got drunk on cheap bourbon in the kitchen,” Gwen interrupted, her voice steady as a scalpel, “you bragged about how you swapped the bassinet tags. You laughed about it. And I recorded every single word on my phone.” Frank’s face turned the color of ash. He lunged across the rug to grab Gwen’s purse, but Preston stepped between them like a brick wall, catching Frank by the collar and throwing him back onto the sofa with enough force to rattle his teeth. Gwen pulled out a small digital recorder and pressed play. The scratchy audio filled the vaulted foyer. The Millers’ drunken voices bragged about stealing a Harrington life, sneered about how little money the family had offered so far, and plotted how they would use Paige to bleed the family dry for the next decade. The police arrived ten minutes later. As they were being led out in zip-ties, Frank and Martha screamed obscenities at Gwen, calling her an ungrateful wretch, before pivoting to scream at me, begging their “real daughter” to hire them a private attorney. I stood by the grand entrance, my hands clasped loosely in front of me, watching them go with absolute detachment. Gwen remained at my side until the sirens faded down the canyon road. Only then did the rigid tension leave her shoulders. I pulled a clean linen handkerchief from my pocket and pressed it into her trembling fingers. “You don’t owe them a single breath, Gwen.” Gwen looked down at the handkerchief, then up at the emerald bracelet still resting on my wrist. “The swap wasn’t your fault,” she said quietly, her eyes clear and dark. “You don’t owe me anything, either.” A strange, unfamiliar warmth tightened behind my nose. I cleared my throat, busying myself with smoothing the pleats of my skirt. Damn it. Why is the female lead so ridiculously lovable? If this keeps up, I’m just going to move out and marry her myself. A sudden flush of pink climbed straight up Gwen’s neck to the tips of her ears. Behind us, Preston choked violently on a mouthful of mineral water, spraying a fine mist across the mahogany hall table. 5 By eight o’clock the next morning, Eleanor appeared in my suite accompanied by the Harrington family’s senior estate attorney. Spread out across the glass desk were three items: the deed to a four-bedroom penthouse in downtown Century City, two black titanium debit cards, and an irrevocable transfer agreement for a five-percent equity stake in Harrington Enterprises. Eleanor smoothed the edge of the documents with cautious, almost timid fingers. “Paige… the family has failed you in ways we cannot undo. Your father and I drew this up as a formal separation settlement.” I cast an aloof, disinterested glance at the legal paperwork, maintaining my saintly, detached facade while offering a polite, melancholic sigh. “You really don’t have to do this, Eleanor—” Internally, I was screaming at the top of my lungs: SHOVE IT INTO MY HANDS! My vocal cords are running on auto-pilot, but my dominant hand is literally cramping from how ready it is to sign! Push the pen into my fingers, you cowards! Eleanor pressed her lips together to suppress a twitch, immediately grabbed the Montblanc rollerball, and shoved it firmly into my palm. I gave a heavy, tragic sigh of resignation and took a seat. Inside, fireworks were exploding: Sweet baby Jesus. My zen, unbothered routine finally bloomed into cold, hard cash. Terrified that Arthur might suffer from buyer’s remorse, I pulled the equity contract closer to my chest with subtle urgency. The attorney cleared his throat. “The penthouse has already cleared title. The two accounts hold a combined thirty million in liquid reserves, and the five percent non-voting equity carries quarterly dividend distributions.” Thirty million in cash. Prime real estate. Five percent of a multi-billion-dollar empire. This was enough for me to cut ties, retire to a coastal villa, and live in hedonistic luxury until I was ninety-nine years old. I signed every line with exquisite calligraphy, so elated I felt like executing a backflip off the balcony. Preston stepped into the room just as the ink dried, holding a set of car keys. “The custom Porsche you ordered arrived this morning. It’s parked downstairs.” I recognized the model immediately. It was the custom Carrera the original Paige had begged for on her eighteenth birthday. Preston had canceled the order back then, calling her spoiled and reckless, only to turn around and buy the exact same model for Gwen the day she arrived at the estate. The original Paige had thrown a legendary tantrum over it, which the author had used to prove her insatiable jealousy. Gwen, however, had refused to drive it, so now it was being recycled back to me. Oh, how deeply moving, I thought dryly. I only get the leftovers because Gwen turned it down. If you’d waited any longer to deliver it, Preston, you could have parked two of them in front of my mausoleum. Preston’s fingers tightened painfully around the key fob. He set it on the glass desk, his voice remarkably free of his usual condescension. “I was unfair to you back then. I’m sorry.” I didn’t answer. An apology could acknowledge a debt, but it couldn’t balance the ledger of two decades of emotional neglect. Preston stood there for a long moment, waiting for a response that never came, before turning on his heel and walking out. Eleanor lingered by the door with the attorney. “What would you like for lunch today, sweetheart?” “Grilled sea bass and the wild mushroom risotto, please,” I replied casually. The heavy oak door clicked shut. And then, like a lightning bolt through a clear sky, the reality of the morning hit me. Wait. I had never said shove it into my hands out loud. I hadn’t said a word about wanting the pen. Yet Eleanor had thrust it into my grip with frantic precision. My mind raced backward through the last forty-eight hours: Arthur canceling the Cross contract out of nowhere; Preston dismantling his car’s brakes; Gwen’s sudden, smothered laughter; the synchronized head-turns. A ridiculous, impossible hypothesis crystallized into cold fact. They can hear me. Every single word. A muffled thud echoed from the hallway outside. I ripped the heavy door open. Eleanor was bent over, hurriedly retrieving her dropped designer handbag from the carpet. A few yards away, Preston and the estate lawyer stood frozen near the elevator doors, their backs as stiff as marble statues. I narrowed my eyes at their retreating silhouettes. Fine. Play dumb. Just wait until I catch all four of you red-handed.

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I thought I was just online dating a guy who was way too deep into his own fantasy world. Some tech-bro LARPer with a massive god complex who insisted he was a sovereign king. He was incredibly committed to the bit. If I disagreed with him, he’d threaten to have me dragged into the courtyard and executed. Honestly, it cracked me up. I treated him like a high-maintenance Tamagotchi. Every morning, I’d check in on him just to keep my streak alive. “Your loyal subject grovels before the Crown. Slay, Your Majesty. Literally.” When he went on a sprawling rant about the coastal guilds hoarding all the salt and starving the peasantry, I humored him. I dropped a YouTube link for a DIY solar desalination rig. When he told me the Northern Raiders were breaching the borders with heavy artillery, I did a quick Google search and forwarded him the chemical ratios for black powder. Eventually, the novelty wore off. It started getting a little too weird, so I blocked him. I never expected that when I woke up the next morning, I wouldn’t be in my apartment. I opened my eyes and found myself staring at a damp, stone ceiling. I was in a literal dungeon. And the only thing on my person was my iPhone. Hands trembling, staring at a screen that miraculously still had a signal, I opened my blocked contacts list. The next morning, I was released from the cell. “The King is overjoyed!” the guards announced. “A general amnesty for the realm!” 1 I had somehow been transported to another dimension, armed with nothing but a smartphone. Because I was wearing my pajamas—what this world considered bizarre, scandalous rags—and had no identification papers, my starting point in this new reality was maximum security. I didn’t even waste my breath screaming about my innocence. Instead, I grabbed the woman shivering in the cell next to me. “Are you absolutely sure this is Valera? And the King’s name is Roman?” My cellmate gave me a long, hard look. Then she immediately flagged down a guard and snitched on me for speaking the Sovereign’s birth name. They tacked another three years onto my sentence. I slumped against the cold stone wall, pulled out my phone, and frantically scrolled to the very top of my chat history with the guy I thought was just a roleplayer. [I am Roman, Sovereign of Valera. You dare disrespect the Crown? I will have you dragged into the square and beheaded!] What did I even say to that back then? Oh, right. I had replied: [Lmao, my royal lungs are hurting from laughing so hard. Sure, and I’m the resurrected King Arthur. If you wire me fifty grand in Bitcoin, I’ll awaken the Knights of the Round Table and we’ll conquer the world. I’ll even make you my top general!] His response had been a masterclass in earnest gullibility. [Is this truly the Ancient King? How do I transfer this ‘Bitcoin’? Can I simply burn gold offerings at an altar for you?] It had been a long time since I’d encountered someone so purely, unironically dense. I didn’t even want to keep the scam going; there was zero satisfaction in outsmarting him. So, I had hit him with the truth. [I’m messing with you, Your Majesty. If you shake your head too fast, do your own ears slap you in the face?] He lost his mind. He bombarded me with furious texts. [You dare make a fool of the Crown?! I will eradicate your entire bloodline! You will be drawn and quartered!] I had been having the time of my life. [Ooh, am I getting the medieval torture package? Can we use a fleet of My Little Ponies to pull me apart?] Roman had gone silent for a few minutes. [Are you a demon? What manner of sadistic beast uses miniature painted horses for an execution?] At first, I really thought he was just a guy with a severe delusion. But as time went on, I realized his world-building was flawlessly consistent. He knew politics, strategy, and economics better than most professors. He was a literate delusional guy. So, he became my electronic pet. [Your loyal subject grovels before His Majesty. May your reign be as long as a CVS receipt!] At first, he tried to virtually execute my extended family every day. When he realized that did absolutely nothing to deter me, he just gave up and leaned into it. [You may rise, my Queen.] [Thank you, Your Majesty. May your bowel movements forever be smooth.] 2 Against all odds, we clicked. Two weirdos finding solace in the digital ether. I even started taking the roleplay seriously. When he complained that the corrupt southern lords had monopolized the salt mines, driving prices so high the commoners couldn’t afford to eat, I casually sent him a diagram of how to evaporate seawater in shallow clay pans. He didn’t text me back for three days. On the fourth day, he sent me a wall of exclamation points and declared he was going to officially crown me as his Queen. I had laughed and typed: [Pass! From what I can tell, your reign is a hot mess. You’re practically a figurehead. One wrong move and your head is on a spike. I’m not going down with that ship.] He got angry again, though this time he didn’t threaten my bloodline. He just said: [Watch me. I will slaughter every corrupt lord who dares step on my authority. I will never let you suffer the indignity of a weak husband.] Later, when the Northern Raiders invaded with superior numbers and heavy cavalry, he texted me in what felt like genuine despair. [My sweet, if I do not survive this, find a good man and marry him. I buried five hundred pounds of gold beneath the gargoyle fountain at the Royal Abbey. If you ever fall on hard times, dig it up.] He said it with such visceral sincerity, it actually gave me pause. I felt a pang of pity, so I dug up a historical recipe for black powder and hit send. [You’ve been upgraded. Go get ’em!] I didn’t hear from him for a month. When he finally returned, he was ecstatic, rambling about expanding the western borders and asking if I wanted any rare jewels from the conquered territories. That was the moment I snapped back to reality. I realized this parasocial relationship was getting deeply unhealthy. Afraid I was fueling a man’s actual descent into madness, I blocked him. I had no idea I was breaking up with a literal monarch. And I certainly had no idea that the moment I blocked him, the universe would violently rip me from my life and drop me into his. The regret I felt sitting in that cell was suffocating. If I had known I was going to get Isekai’d into his world, I would have kissed the ground he walked on! I would have been his biggest cheerleader, practically guaranteeing myself a cushy job as Co-Emperor on day one. Instead, I had relentlessly mocked him, trolled his decrees, and insulted his intelligence. My immediate priority was figuring out how to grow a hundred extra heads, because the one I had was definitely getting chopped off. For the sake of my own survival, he could never, ever find out that the girl from his magical chat window was currently breathing his air. But… I looked around my cage. A pile of rotting straw in the corner. Bare, weeping stone walls. A rat the size of a football casually strolling across my shoe. I immediately pulled out my phone and took Roman off the blocklist. 3 Sure enough, his was the only contact icon with a signal. The second I unblocked him, his messages flooded in like a dam breaking. [My sweet, you’re finally speaking to me! Do you know what these past few days have been like? I wept so hard I ruined my Egyptian cotton pillows!] [Never say the word ‘breakup’ to me again. I’m warning you, if you ever leave me, I will end my own life.] [Where have you been? Have you met another man? Speak to me! Are you trying to drive me to madness?!] This unhinged intensity was exactly why I had blocked him in the first place. Your Majesty, your toxic attachment style is showing. Before he could spiral any further, I cut him off. Me: [I’m back. Are you happy to see me?] Roman: [I am delirious with joy.] Me: [Prove it.] Roman: [I shall pardon the realm.] That was exactly what I needed to hear. I locked my phone, resolving to employ the golden rules of toxic survival: Do not initiate. Do not refuse. Do not take responsibility. The prison gruel was rancid. I took one tiny sip and nearly gagged. Knowing I was getting out tomorrow, I pushed the bowl away and pulled my knees to my chest, staring blankly at the iron bars. The cellmate who had snitched on me couldn’t understand it. “If you’re not going to eat that, can I have it?” I slid the sludge over to her. “What are you waiting for?” she asked between bites. “Aren’t you afraid of starving?” I shook my head, keeping my expression perfectly stoic. “I’m waiting to be released tomorrow.” She went dead silent for a few seconds before barking out a harsh laugh. “Are you delusional? Unless you’ve got serious connections in high places, nobody leaves this place early.” The King is literally throwing a nationwide pardon just to prove he loves me. What do you know about romance? I ignored her and went to sleep. The next morning, as pale light filtered through the high grates, a guard unlocked the heavy iron doors. “The King is overjoyed! General amnesty for the realm!” My cellmate and I were both dragged out into the blinding sunlight, free women. My one-day prison tour was officially over. I hadn’t even taken two steps before I felt a burning stare on my back. I turned to see my former cellmate looking at me like I was a deity. “Girl… your connections are insane,” she whispered. “Can you tell me? Who exactly is your sugar daddy?” Try the Sovereign of the entire continent, babe. I offered a mysterious smile. “Trust me, you’d die of shock if I told you.” I started mentally calculating how to find shelter. I had no identification, which meant I was essentially an undocumented ghost in this world. Seeing my lost expression, the woman hurried after me. “Look, I can see you don’t have anywhere to go. I live alone. I’ve got a little bakery. If you don’t mind the tight space, we could be roommates.” I looked at her—the second person I had met in this strange, terrifying world. We had shared a cell. There’s a certain bond in that. Plus, if things went south, at least I’d have a buddy when they threw me back in jail. “Okay,” I said. 4 Her name was Hannah Abbot. She came from a decent family and ran a rustic, generational bakery in the lower district. Late one night, over a cup of bitter tea, she told me about her younger sister, Haley. After their parents passed, the family fell on hard times, and Haley took a job as a servant in the Royal Palace. Thanks to the bakery, Hannah eventually saved up enough money to buy Haley out of her contract. Haley had even smuggled a letter out, saying she was desperate to come home. But when Hannah took the bribe money to the palace steward, he coldly informed her that Haley had died of a sudden fever three months prior. The math didn’t add up. Haley’s letter had been dated only a month ago. When Hannah started asking too many questions, she was suddenly framed for poisoning her own pastries and thrown into the dungeon. “So, what now?” I asked softly. “Are you going to keep looking into her death?” Hannah offered a broken, bitter smile. “I don’t dare. If I dig any deeper, I’ll be the next one in the ground.” Now, she just wanted to bake her bread and leave a single candle at her sister’s empty grave every year. “My name is Harper,” I told her, deciding to drop my guard. “I don’t have any family here. I just got lucky with the amnesty. I don’t actually have any connections.” Hannah nodded. “I figured. You don’t exactly carry yourself like high society.” She smiled. “But Harper… that sounds like a name from my mother’s village. From now on, just think of me as your older sister.” And just like that, I moved in. I woke up at dawn to help her knead dough, prep the ovens, and serve customers. It was a simple, exhausting life, but it kept me grounded. Still, the fear of being undocumented gnawed at me. Every knock at the door made my heart stop, terrified it was a city guard coming to check my papers and deport me back to a cell. I asked around the black market and found out that forging a legitimate citizen’s registry would cost about fifty gold marks. That was an astronomical sum. A working-class baker wouldn’t see that much gold in a lifetime. Before I could figure out a side hustle, Hannah got sick. When it rains, it pours. My new life was drowning. Unable to afford her medicine, I sat on my lumpy mattress and furiously texted Roman, cursing him out just to vent my frustration. It was only after my rant that a memory violently clicked into place. The gargoyle fountain. The Royal Abbey. Five hundred pounds of gold. The whole monastery would be asleep by now. I was going to get my money. I waited until midnight, dressed in dark clothes, and hopped the stone wall into the Abbey’s sprawling gardens. Why were there so many monks patrolling tonight? Their bald heads practically glowed in the moonlight, saving me the trouble of bringing a lantern. I finally located the specific gargoyle Roman had described. I spat on my palms, gripped the shovel I’d stolen from the bakery, and started digging. 5 Come to mama. Where is my gold? Roman had buried it absurdly deep. I couldn’t tell if he was trying to hide it from thieves or from me. I kept digging, sweat dripping down my face, pausing every few seconds to look over my shoulder. To make matters worse, Roman was blowing up my phone. The device buzzed furiously against my thigh. Eventually, I got too tired to keep swinging the shovel, so I pulled it out. [My sweet, what are you doing?] [Why are you ignoring me again? Did I do something wrong?] [Please don’t be angry. The moon is beautiful tonight. I lit a candle for you in the sanctuary, praying the gods might take pity and finally let us meet.] Cut the poetry and give me my money! I quickly typed back: [That gold you said you buried under the fountain at the Abbey… is it still there?] Roman: [Of course not. Once the Raiders retreated, I dug it back up. I couldn’t just leave a fortune in the dirt! I put it in a highly secure vault for you, along with some jewelry.] My vision actually went dark for a second. Roman, you are the Sovereign of a continent! You practically wipe your nose with silk! Why did you take my gold?! What was the point of all this digging? Was I just providing free landscaping for the church? The sheer exhaustion, the terror of this new world, the prison, Hannah’s illness, and now the loss of my guaranteed fortune… it all crashed down on me at once. That was my money! My gold! The tears erupted before I could stop them. Terrified of being caught, I clamped a hand over my mouth, sobbing pathetically as I used my feet to kick dirt back into the empty hole. I didn’t even notice Roman’s new messages. [Wait. I think I hear someone crying. Is there a ghost out here?] [But this is holy ground. There shouldn’t be ghosts.] [Hold on, my sweet. Let me go check.] I was mid-sob, still kicking dirt, when a cold, irritated voice drifted down from above me. “Are you a woman or a poltergeist?” I snapped my head up. Standing before me was a man in a dark, velvet tunic, a heavy gold signet ring catching the moonlight. He was young, viciously handsome, and his eyes were dark with annoyance. Roman glared down at me. “You dare interrupt my private time with my wife? What is your punishment?” 6 Oh my god, it’s over. I was hallucinating. My brain completely flatlined. My only coherent thought was: Wow, our first in-person date is going terribly. Then reality hit me like a freight train. No wonder the Abbey was swarming with guards tonight. The King was visiting. Fate, you absolute menace. Roman, you psycho. He wasn’t sleeping because he was out here romantically texting me, and now my life was going to end. I swallowed my pride and lowered my head. “Forgive me, Your Grace. I’ll leave immediately.” I made it two steps before his voice cracked like a whip. “Halt. Which sector of the palace do you serve? I’ve never seen you before.” His gaze dropped to the freshly mutilated earth at my feet. His eyes narrowed. “Furthermore… digging holes in the dead of night? What exactly are you looking for?” Think, Harper! Think! The more I panicked, the emptier my brain became. As my silence dragged on, the suspicion on Roman’s face began to shift. A terrifying, desperate glint of hope sparked in his eyes. “My sweet… is it you?” Half a second before he put the pieces together, sheer survival instinct took over. I dropped to my knees so hard they bruised. “Have mercy, Your Majesty! My name is Hannah Abbot! I came here tonight looking for a pendant buried by my late sister, Haley!” I am so sorry, Hannah! I promise I’ll find out who murdered your sister! The shift was instantaneous. I could physically feel Roman lose all interest in me. He let out a flat, disappointed, “Oh.” I forced myself to keep talking, weaving the lie. “My sister Haley served in the royal sector. I was told she died of a fever, but her body was never returned to us, nor was our family’s heirloom pendant. In her last letter, she said she buried something important in the Abbey gardens, so I came looking…” I dumped Hannah’s entire tragic backstory onto him, then looked up at him with the wide, honest eyes of a desperate peasant. Roman pondered this for a moment. “Haley… yes, the name is vaguely familiar. Fine. Your devotion to your kin is admirable. I will allow you to serve in my personal staff so you may uncover the truth behind her death.” Wait, what? No, no, no! You’re supposed to laugh a haughty, arrogant laugh, wave your hand, and order your Royal Guards to investigate it for me! Then, when the truth comes out, I thank you, and we never see each other again! Where did my script go wrong? How did I just get promoted to his inner circle?! God wasn’t ignoring me; He was actively picking the worst dialogue options in this RPG! Seeing me frozen in horror, Roman raised an eyebrow. “You aren’t pleased?” I clenched my jaw. “I am delirious with joy.” Satisfied, Roman reached into his tunic and pulled out a small, rectangular slab of polished obsidian that glowed faintly with magic. He tapped it twice. A second later, the phone in my pocket buzzed twice. My jaw practically hit the grass. Are you kidding me? That’s his phone?! Once he turned his back and walked away, I pulled out my screen. [My sweet, I bestowed mercy upon a pathetic peasant woman today. Am I not a benevolent King?] Benevolent my ass. I ignored his self-congratulatory paragraphs and fired back one message: [Thanks for walking into my life like a stray cat, but I’m a rat, and you’ve ruined everything! I will never forgive you!] Then I blocked him again. Ah. That felt good.

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1 When I saw the words Stage IV Gastric Cancer printed near the bottom of my pathology report, I curled into a plastic chair in the forgotten corner of the hospital corridor and pressed both hands over my mouth to keep from screaming. My husband, Thomas, had been dead for thirteen years. Since then, I had worked myself to the bone. Twelve-hour shifts on the factory floor, clipping coupons, wearing shoes until the soles wore thin—all of it so my daughter and I could finally have a decent life. We were just starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. How could it end like this? Lily had just started her senior year of high school. If I died now, what would happen to her? The thought of my daughter was a jolt to my heart. It sparked a sudden, fierce will to live. I wiped my face, forced my trembling legs to hold my weight, and stood up. I was going to fight this. I had savings. I would pay whatever I needed to pay to stay alive, at least to see her graduate. But when I opened my banking app in the hospital parking lot, the blood rushed out of my head. The world tilted on its axis. Available Balance: $0.00. Where was my money? The eighteen thousand dollars I had scraped together, dollar by dollar, over a decade—where was it? My hands shook so violently that it took me four tries to dial the bank’s customer service number. The phone slipped against my sweaty palm. After what felt like an eternity on hold, a crisp, professional voice came through the speaker. “Mrs. Hayes, after reviewing your account, I can confirm the funds were authorized and transferred out from your end.” “How is that possible?!” I practically shrieked, the panic tearing at my throat. “Do you have any idea how hard I worked for that money? That is my entire safety net!” It is my life-saving money, I thought, the cancer diagnosis suddenly feeling like a ticking bomb in my chest. “I’ve been hacked,” I stammered. “It has to be fraud.” But the representative’s next words sent a hard chill down my spine. “Ma’am, the transfer was initiated the evening before last, at six-thirty. It was authenticated using Face ID on your primary device. If you believe this is fraud, I strongly advise you to file a police report.” Six-thirty. A memory clicked into place, sharp and sickening. Two evenings ago, Lily had come into the kitchen while I was doing dishes. She’d held my phone up to my face. Mom, I need your Face ID to pay for my senior AP exam fees. It’s due tonight. Lily was a good kid. She had always been a good kid. I trusted her implicitly, so I had looked at the screen without a second thought. A heavy, dark premonition settled in my gut. Did my own daughter drain my life savings? I immediately tried to kill the thought. It was impossible. Lily was the girl who would do her homework alone at the kitchen table and have dinner warming on the stove when I worked overtime. She knew money was tight. She never begged for the trendy clothes or the latest iPhones like her classmates. She wore her faded sneakers without a single complaint. I remembered my birthday two years ago. She had skipped lunch for a month to buy me a wool scarf. She had wrapped it around my neck, her small hands holding mine. Mom, when I grow up and make real money, I’m going to spoil you every day. A child like that doesn’t steal eighteen thousand dollars. It had to be a mistake. I dialed her number. It rang out to voicemail. I tried again. And again. Five calls, all unanswered. The panic completely eclipsed my physical illness. I grabbed my purse and practically ran to my car. When I pushed open the front door, the house was dark. Lily wasn’t home. I rushed down the hall and opened the door to my bedroom. I froze. The closet doors were wide open. Drawers were yanked halfway out. The bedsheets were tossed aside. Someone had ransacked the room. My chest tightened painfully as I rushed to the nightstand and pulled open the top drawer. The silver locket was gone. It was the only thing my mother had left me. Before she died, she took it off her neck and fastened it around mine. Keep it, she had whispered. So you don’t forget me. Through all our hardest years, through the threats of eviction and the empty pantries, I had never once considered pawning it. I collapsed onto the edge of the mattress, the tears finally spilling over. The child I had poured my entire soul into raising had… At midnight, I was still sitting in the dark living room, staring at the wall. The front door clicked open. I looked up and saw my daughter walk in. Her hair, usually a simple dark brown, was streaked with neon pink. Her face was plastered in heavy, glittery makeup. She was waving a glowing concert wand in the air, her face flushed with pure ecstasy as she chattered away on her cell phone. “I can’t believe we actually secured the VIP All-Access passes!” she squealed into the phone. “I’m going to breathe the same air as Jaxon Wade. If I die tomorrow, my life is complete!” I stared at her, the blood in my veins turning to ice water. My daughter, who was supposed to be at the library studying for her SATs, was stumbling in at midnight, painted like a stranger, crying tears of joy over a pop star. Something inside me snapped. I stood up, my voice hoarse and ragged. “Lily Hayes! You stole every cent we had to go to a damn concert? Are you out of your mind?!” She paused, startled by my voice in the dark. But she didn’t look guilty. She casually ended her call, let out an annoyed sigh, and rolled her eyes. “I thought you were taking an overnight shift at the factory tonight.” I opened my mouth, but no sound came out. I had told her I was working an overnight shift. When I got the biopsy results earlier that week, my first instinct was to protect her. She was a senior; her college applications were looming. I didn’t want to derail her life with my tragedy. I had planned to quietly check myself into the hospital, figure out a treatment plan, and only tell her when she was safely done with her exams. But I couldn’t even afford to walk through the hospital doors now. My throat constricted. “Where is the eighteen thousand dollars, Lily?” She casually ran a hand through her neon hair, her tone maddeningly light. Completely unbothered. “I wired it for the Jaxon Wade meet-and-greet package.” The room spun. “Eighteen thousand dollars. Every single dime we had… for a backstage pass?” She scoffed, looking at me like I was an embarrassing relic. “God, Mom, you’re so out of touch. You wouldn’t get it even if I explained it.” She turned to walk toward her bedroom, dismissing me entirely. My daughter called a boy she had never met her idol, her reason for living. Meanwhile, her own mother was dying, and I had been too afraid to even burden her with the truth. A sob broke through my chest. “Do you have any idea that I was diagnosed with stomach cancer today? That money was to save my life!” Lily stopped dead in her tracks. Her shoulders stiffened. For a fraction of a second, the room was suffocatingly quiet. Then, she turned around and let out a sharp, mocking laugh. “Wow, Mom. The lengths you’ll go to just to make me feel guilty. You’re actually making up a terminal illness?” I stared at her. The girl I had raised for seventeen years felt like an alien wearing my daughter’s skin. She kept laughing, leaning against the wall. “This is Jaxon’s last VIP tour before he shoots a movie. I don’t care if it cost eighteen grand or twenty-eight grand. I was going. Stop trying to emotionally blackmail me with this fake cancer crap. It’s toxic.” When you dedicate your entire existence to keeping a child warm and fed, and she tells you your dying truth is emotional blackmail, something inside you breaks beyond repair. I didn’t say another word. I unzipped my purse, pulled out the pathology report, and slammed it onto the coffee table. “Read it.” The smug smile didn’t entirely leave Lily’s face as she sauntered over. But as her eyes scanned the medical jargon and landed on the bolded diagnosis at the bottom, the color drained from her cheeks. She stared at it for a long, agonizing minute. When she finally spoke, her voice trembled. “Mom… you actually have cancer?” A flicker of shock passed over her eyes. I waited for the dam to break. I waited for her to crumple, to apologize, to throw her arms around me and beg for forgiveness. Instead, she slowly looked up from the paper. Her expression hardened. “Well,” she said, her voice chillingly pragmatic. “Cancer is basically a death sentence anyway. At least the money didn’t go to waste. At least one of my dreams came true.” My entire body began to shake. I looked at this girl. This girl I had starved for, bled for, lived for. The dam inside me shattered, and the grief poured out as pure, unfiltered rage. “He’s a manufactured pop-star prick!” I screamed. “How could you? How can you look at yourself in the mirror? Are you not ashamed to face your father’s memory?!” Lily’s face went chalk-white. Then, her eyes narrowed into vicious slits. Her voice was a whip crack. “Don’t you dare bring Dad into this! If it weren’t for you, he wouldn’t even be dead!” The air was sucked out of my lungs. “What did you say?” Lily looked at me with a twisted sort of triumph, like she had been waiting years to fire this bullet. “Hit a nerve? Think I don’t know? Dad died because you two had a massive fight, and he stormed out into the rain in the middle of the night and got hit by that truck.” She took a step closer, her voice dripping with venom. “If Dad were still here, we wouldn’t be living in this dump. I wouldn’t have to scrounge for concert tickets. You ruined my life! You killed him!” My hand moved before my brain could process the command. I slapped her across the face. The sharp crack echoed in the silent house. Lily clutched her cheek, shooting me a look of pure, unadulterated hatred. She turned and ran out the front door, slamming it so hard the windows rattled. I slid down the wall, hitting the floor, completely hollowed out by a helplessness I had never known. My Thomas. My kind, gentle Thomas who worked so hard for us. If only that drunk driver hadn’t run the red light thirteen years ago, maybe we would have been happy. I sat on the living room floor until the sun came up. The next morning, the front door opened. Lily walked in carrying a takeout bag from a local deli. She set it on the kitchen table and looked at me with what appeared to be profound remorse. “Mom. I’m sorry. I was way out of line last night. I was just… I was shocked, and I lashed out. Please forgive me.” She pulled out a container of warm oatmeal. “You haven’t eaten anything since yesterday. Your stomach must be killing you. Please, just eat a little bit to coat your stomach.” Looking at her soft, apologetic eyes, a weak, desperate warmth bloomed in my chest. There she is, I thought. There’s my sweet girl. I swallowed the lump in my throat and accepted the spoon. “Okay… I’ll eat.” Lily watched me closely. Too closely. There was a weird, electric anticipation in her gaze. I took a large spoonful and swallowed. A second later, a fire unlike anything I had ever felt exploded in my esophagus. It was as if I had swallowed battery acid and ground glass. I violently gagged, vomiting the oatmeal directly into the sink, coughing so hard I thought my ribs would snap. Behind me, Lily burst into hysterical laughter. I turned, clutching my burning chest. She had her phone pointed right at my face, recording me. “Oh my god, you guys seeing this?” she laughed into the phone. “She looks so stupid! I’m crying, this is hilarious—” Tiny, distorted voices drifted from her phone speaker. She was on a FaceTime call with her friends. “Damn, Lily, you’re savage,” a teenage boy’s voice snickered. “Didn’t you say you put, like, half a bottle of Ghost Pepper extract in there?” “Wait, I thought she had stomach cancer?” a girl’s voice chimed in. “Isn’t that gonna, like, kill her?” Lily rolled her eyes at the screen, utterly unconcerned. “Whatever. She called Jaxon a prick. She deserved to learn a lesson.” I looked down at the sink. Amidst the oatmeal, there was a thick, unnatural pool of dark red sauce. Ghost pepper extract. For a healthy person, it would be agony. For someone with advanced gastric cancer, it was a physical torture that felt fatal. I gripped the counter, the agonizing pain radiating through my abdomen as I stared at her in horror. “What are you looking at?” Lily snapped, lowering her phone. “You brought this on yourself.” She flipped her hair over her shoulder and walked out of the kitchen, strutting like she had just won a prize. I slid to the linoleum floor amidst the mess. I pulled my knees to my chest, wrapped my arms around myself, and wept until there was nothing left inside me. Why? I asked the empty room. Why did my daughter turn into a monster? Ten minutes later, my phone buzzed. It was the high school guidance counselor. She informed me that Lily had skipped first period again, and brought up her plummeting grades over the last semester. “Mrs. Hayes, we need to schedule a sit-down,” the counselor said gently. “If she keeps skipping classes for these… fan events, she’s not going to get into a state college. She might not even graduate.” If I had received this call yesterday, I would have fought tooth and nail. I would have grounded her, hired a tutor, done whatever it took. But sitting on the kitchen floor, tasting bile and ghost pepper, my heart felt completely dead. “Don’t bother, Ms. Clark,” I rasped. “Let her go. She’s beyond saving.” I hung up. I must have passed out against the cabinets, because when I finally opened my eyes, the afternoon sun was slanting through the blinds. My phone was vibrating incessantly against my thigh. It was the local urgent care clinic. The discount place down the street where I had done my initial bloodwork and exams to save on my insurance copay. I answered it, my voice weak. “Hello?” “Mrs. Hayes? Evelyn Hayes?” The clinic administrator’s voice was breathless, panicked. “Ma’am, I am so incredibly sorry. There’s been a catastrophic clerical error. The pathology report you received… the cancer diagnosis. It isn’t yours.” My brain short-circuited. “What are you talking about?” “The lab swapped the barcodes on two biopsy samples taken that same morning. We just caught the discrepancy when reviewing the files. The Stage IV Gastric Cancer diagnosis… it belongs to your daughter, Lily.” The world stopped. “What?” I breathed. When the clinic had first flagged my routine bloodwork, I had been terrified. To save money, I had brought Lily with me so we could both get our physicals out of the way on the same day. It wasn’t me. To be absolutely certain, I had immediately booked an appointment at the comprehensive oncology center downtown for an endoscopy out-of-pocket. The results had just posted to my patient portal. I pulled them up with trembling fingers. Patient: Evelyn Hayes. Diagnosis: Mild gastritis. No malignancies detected. It was true. The cancer wasn’t mine. It was eating my daughter alive. A tsunami of conflicting emotions crashed over me. Betrayal, fury, relief, and a crushing, instinctual maternal terror. No matter what she had done to me, she was my flesh and blood. I couldn’t just sit by and let her die. I frantically dialed Lily’s number. After four rings, she answered, her tone dripping with irritation. “What now?” I took a deep, shuddering breath, trying to keep my voice steady. “Lily. You need to come home right now. I have to tell you something extremely important.” “Oh, save it,” she sneered, cutting me off. “Stop playing the victim. It’s disgusting. I already spent the eighteen grand, okay? Don’t even think about making me pay it back.” In the span of five seconds, the maternal terror evaporated, replaced by a cold, hard clarity. “Do you really want to know how your father died?” I asked quietly.

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I was dying. I was going to starve to death in the sweltering heat under a concrete interstate overpass, my phone battery clinging to its last breath, when I scrolled past a viral Reddit thread. What’s the most devastating scam you’ve ever pulled on someone who trusted you? The top comment made my blood run cold. My wealthy parents found their missing biological daughter last year, but they couldn’t bear to let me go—the daughter they’d raised for twenty years. So, they let me stay. When she first got here, she didn’t know how our world worked. I played the sweet sister and offered to manage her monthly allowance for her. My mom wired me $8,000 a month for her. I gave her $80. The rest, I spent on myself. In the replies, someone asked what happened to the real daughter. The original poster replied, completely devoid of remorse: My parents just assumed she was white trash who got a taste of money and blew it all. They thought she was inherently bad and couldn’t be fixed. So, one day, I just slipped one of my vintage brooches into her suitcase and accused her of stealing. She got kicked out of the house. Honestly, she’s probably dead in a ditch somewhere by now. Reading those words, the truth finally clicked into place. My parents hadn’t neglected me. They had been deliberately kept in the dark by the sister who was suffocating me. As the dark edges of starvation closed in on my vision, my mind raced. What if I had the chance to expose the truth? What would my life have been? When I opened my eyes again, I was sitting on a plush mattress. I had really gone back. Back to the exact day before she framed me. 1 Tomorrow night, the Harrison family would host a formal dinner party. Stella would cry, claiming her grandmother’s antique emerald brooch was missing. The housekeeper would find it zipped into the lining of my suitcase. My father, Arthur Harrison, would publicly scream that trash never changes its stripes, and he would throw me out of the house. My phone buzzed against my palm. A Zelle notification. From Stella Harrison. $80.00. Memo: Monthly allowance! I stared at the three words, a cold laugh catching in my throat. In my past life, I had to survive on this $80 a month. I had to deduct subway fares for my commute to campus, buy toothpaste and shampoo, and ration my tampons. The money left over was only enough for bruised fruit from the discount bins and stale bagels right before the bakeries closed. Eighty dollars. It sounds like something, but stretched over thirty days, it was less than three dollars a day. The Harrisons had also packed my schedule with etiquette coaches and finishing classes, insisting they needed to “polish me into a proper Harrison.” Those studios were miles away. I had to take a bus, transfer to a subway, and then catch another bus. I was often so hungry my vision would white out, yet I had to stand in front of floor-to-length mirrors and practice my smile. Because Stella had told me, “Don’t look so miserable, Nora. Mom and Dad will think you’re ungrateful.” A soft knock came at my bedroom door. “Nora? Are you awake?” She was here. I got off the bed and pulled the door open. Stella stood in the hallway, wearing a flawless silk slip dress, a brand-new Cartier Love bracelet gleaming on her wrist. I recognized that bracelet. I had seen it in her anonymous post right before I died. She had attached a photo to her comment: The jewelry I buy with the real heiress’s money is just so gorgeous. She held up her phone screen with a condescending little smile. “I just Zelle’d your allowance. Make sure you accept it.” I didn’t tap the screen. Instead, I asked, “Is the allowance Mom and Dad give me really just eighty dollars?” Stella’s smile faltered. It was a microscopic shift. Very light, very brief. But I caught it. She glanced down both ends of the hallway. Once she was sure the corridor was empty, she lowered her voice. “Nora, you just got back. I’m just worried you’ll blow through it all at once, so I’m holding the rest for you. For safekeeping.” I kept my voice just as quiet. “So how much do they actually give you for me?” “Why are you asking?” “I just want to know.” She stared at me for a few long seconds, and then she smiled. It wasn’t the sweet, perfect-daughter smile she reserved for our mother, Eleanor. It was laced with disgust and a heavy dose of aristocratic pity. “What are you going to do even if you knew? Let’s get one thing straight. Mom and Dad raised me for twenty years. Who do you think they’ll believe?” She took a step closer, her eyes turning glacial. “If you dare make a scene, they’ll just think you’re greedy. After all, it’s only natural that a girl dragged in from the streets would get a little dollar-struck when she finally sees real wealth, right?” Inside the pocket of my pajama pants, my thumb lightly pressed the button on my phone screen. The voice memo app was recording. I looked at her. “But eighty dollars isn’t enough for me to eat.” She actually laughed out loud. “Then eat less. Isn’t that how you survived before?” That single sentence violently yanked me back to that suffocatingly hot night under the concrete overpass. I was burning with a fever, my lips cracked and bleeding, unable to afford a single bottle of water. The neon lights of a 7-Eleven were shining just across the street, but I only had three quarters in my pocket. Looking at Stella’s face now, I felt a strange sense of dissonance. It was strange because she had never dropped the act for this long around me before. But it was intimately familiar because, from the very beginning, she never wanted me to live like a human being. I nodded slowly. “I understand.” Assuming I had backed down, Stella patted my shoulder, thoroughly satisfied. “We have the dinner party tomorrow. The extended family will be here. You’d better watch your mouth.” “Don’t embarrass Mom and Dad.” The moment the door clicked shut, I uploaded the audio file directly to my cloud drive. Then, I opened my laptop and drafted an email to Thomas Caldwell. Mr. Caldwell was the family’s wealth manager; he had handled the Harrisons’ accounts for over a decade. In my past life, he hadn’t stepped up to help me, but he wasn’t exactly in Stella’s pocket, either. I kept my tone perfectly polite and professional. Dear Mr. Caldwell, my university’s financial aid office is requesting proof of my living expenses and income sources. Could you kindly pull the disbursement records for my monthly allowance since I moved back home? Half an hour later, I had a reply. Attached were three months of authorization forms. Authorized by: Eleanor Harrison. Payee: Stella Harrison. Amount: $8,000.00. Memo: Nora’s monthly living expenses, to be managed and disbursed by Stella. I stared at the string of zeros for a very long time. It wasn’t that the Harrison family refused to give me money. It was that they had handed my literal survival over to the one person who was terrified of seeing me thrive. I didn’t storm downstairs to scream and demand answers. The Nora of the past loved to explain herself. Even as I was being dragged out the front doors, I was sobbing, begging, “I swear I didn’t steal it!” But in the Harrison house, the truth without evidence was worthless. I downloaded the PDFs, backed them up to my drive, and forwarded them to someone else. Sloane Mercer. Sloane was a 3L law student I had met at a campus legal aid clinic, already interning at a top-tier corporate firm downtown. In my past life, right after I was kicked out, she had texted me asking if I was in trouble. But by then, my phone was shut off for unpaid bills, the screen was shattered, and I was delirious with fever. I missed her lifeline. I wasn’t going to miss it this time. After I explained everything on the phone, the line went dead silent for a few seconds. Then Sloane asked, her voice razor-sharp, “Are you absolutely certain she’s going to plant the brooch tomorrow?” “I’m certain.” “Where is she going to hide it?” I glanced at the corner of my bedroom. “My suitcase.” Sloane’s tone was steady and entirely pragmatic. “Then you have two jobs tonight. Number one: do not touch a single piece of her jewelry. Number two: set up a camera in your bedroom. Frame it so it only captures the door, your suitcase, and the general walking area. Do not film the bathroom or where you change clothes. You are doing this to protect your personal property and safety. It’s entirely legal.” Listening to her crisp instructions, my racing heart finally settled back into my chest. “What if my parents still try to sweep it under the rug?” Sloane let out a dark little laugh. “Then we don’t just show it to your parents. Lies aren’t afraid of tears, Nora. They’re afraid of a closed-loop chain of evidence.” After hanging up, I slipped out to Best Buy and bought two discreet Wyze cameras. When I returned to the estate, my mother, Eleanor, was in the sunroom arranging white hydrangeas. Seeing the plastic bag in my hand, her brow furrowed. “Spending money on unnecessary things again?” I stopped in my tracks. “It was forty dollars.” She sighed, a sound heavy with aristocratic exhaustion. “Nora, it’s not that I mind giving you money. But you just got back. You have to learn how to manage yourself. Stella told me you’ve been complaining about being broke lately.” I looked at her. This was my biological mother. The day the DNA results came back, she had held me against her chest and wept, crying about how much I had suffered all these years. But shortly after, she handed my finances over to Stella, and along with it, the authority to dictate my narrative. I asked, “Mom, do you know how much I actually receive every month?” Eleanor blinked, taken aback. Then, a flash of annoyance crossed her features. “Didn’t Stella arrange your allowance? She understands the rules of this house better than you do.” “And if she hasn’t been giving it to me?” The gentle, maternal softness drained from Eleanor’s face. “How could you even say that? Why is your mind always so twisted? She is already feeling incredibly insecure because you’re back. Just because we let her stay doesn’t mean we don’t love you. You are sisters. You need to show some grace.” Sisters. What a sick joke. I lowered my eyes and gave a soft, noncommittal hum. Thinking she had gotten through to me, her tone softened again. “We have the dinner tomorrow. Dress appropriately. The Kensingtons will be there.” The Kensingtons. Hayes Kensington. Technically, he was the fiancé my grandfather had promised to the biological Harrison daughter years ago. But the day I was brought home, my father, Arthur, had simply waved a hand and said, “It’s a different era. We aren’t going to bind the children with archaic promises.” And so, Hayes continued to parade around town with Stella on his arm. Everyone in our social circle silently agreed that the engagement had never belonged to me. In my past life, they even got married. They used my grocery money to book the Plaza, shoot their engagement photos, and buy their Cartier bands. Looking back on it now, it was enough to make me sick. At ten o’clock that night, Stella pushed my door open. She was holding an iced matcha latte, playing the part of the doting sister. “Mom said you were asking about your allowance again?” I was kneeling on the rug, organizing my suitcase. The camera was tucked perfectly behind a stack of books on my shelf, its lens trained directly on the doorway and the luggage. I didn’t turn around. “Eighty dollars isn’t enough.” She set her glass down on my desk and walked up behind me. “Nora, you need to learn to be grateful.” “How much of it are you skimming?” I asked. The air went dead. She clearly hadn’t expected me to be so blunt. A few seconds later, she chuckled. “Skimming is an ugly word.” “The Harrisons raised me for twenty years, and you expect to just waltz in and take everything? What does it matter if I spend a little of it for you?” I turned around to face her. “Does that include spending it on Hayes?” Stella’s face twitched. But she quickly smoothed her features back into that sickeningly gentle mask. “Hayes loves me. An engagement is about feelings, not archaic contracts.” She leaned down, her lips brushing close to my ear. “Besides… after tomorrow, who knows if you’ll even be allowed to stay in this house.” I played dumb. “What does that mean?” She smiled. “Nothing. Get some sleep.” At 1:47 AM, a motion alert pinged on my phone. In the black-and-white night vision on my screen, Stella, wearing her silk nightgown, pushed my door open with practiced silence. I kept my eyes shut, my breathing slow and even. She glanced at my bed first. Then, she moved to the suitcase on the floor, unzipped the interior lining, and slipped an antique emerald brooch inside. The next evening, the Harrison family dinner was in full swing. The dining room was packed with extended relatives. Hayes Kensington was there, too. He sat next to Stella, leaning in close to peel the shell off a shrimp for her. One of my aunts laughed softly. “Hayes spoils our Stella just as much as ever.” Stella lowered her head, the picture of blushing modesty. Eleanor watched them with a look of profound, maternal contentment. I sat at the far end of the long mahogany table, looking like a last-minute addition to the guest list. In my past life, I was so paralyzed by the extravagance of this room that I used the wrong fork for my salad, earning a chorus of muffled giggles from my aunts. Tonight, I just quietly ate my food. Halfway through the main course, Stella suddenly touched her collarbone. All the color drained from her face. “Where’s my brooch?” Eleanor was on high alert instantly. “Which one, sweetheart?” “The emerald one Grandma gave me.” Stella’s voice began to tremble. “I know I put it on my vanity this afternoon.” A heavy silence fell over the table. Her eyes brimmed with tears, and yet, she didn’t look at anyone else. She looked straight at me. Hayes put down his silver cutlery. “Don’t panic. We’ll find it. Things don’t just vanish into thin air.” When he said it, his gaze also landed heavily on me. I looked up from my plate. “Why are you looking at me?” Hayes frowned. “I didn’t say it was you.” I let out a cold scoff. Arthur tapped the table sharply, his face stern. “Nora. Mind your manners.” Stella immediately grabbed Hayes’s sleeve. “It’s fine, let’s just drop it. Maybe I remembered wrong.” That only made Eleanor panic more. “Drop it? It’s a family heirloom. We absolutely cannot just drop it.” A tear finally slipped down Stella’s cheek. “Mom, I’m really not suspecting Nora. It’s just… yesterday she kept complaining that her allowance wasn’t enough, and I’m just terrified she might have had a moment of weakness…” She left the sentence hanging. She didn’t need to finish it. Everyone at the table understood exactly what she meant. The relatives’ expressions soured instantly. “Not enough allowance?” “Doesn’t she get eight thousand a month?” “Eight thousand isn’t enough? Good lord.” “Well, she grew up on the streets. You really have to teach her boundaries.” Eleanor looked humiliated. She turned to me, her voice trembling but sharp. “Nora, just bring it out right now. I won’t be angry with you, but we end this right here, right now.” I looked at her. “You’re already angry.” She froze. Arthur’s face turned thunderous. “Search the house.” The housekeeper was sent upstairs. Fifteen minutes later, she walked back into the dining room carrying my suitcase. She unzipped the inner lining, and there it was. Under the crystal chandelier, the emerald was blindingly green. Stella covered her mouth, a sob tearing from her throat. “Nora… how could you?” Hayes stood up abruptly, his chair scraping violently against the hardwood. “Nora, this is completely out of line.” Arthur slammed his fist on the table. “We brought you back into this family, not so you could steal from us like a common thief!” This was the exact moment from my past life. The moment I had cried and begged. The moment I said someone had been in my room. The moment I swore I didn’t even know what the brooch looked like. Nobody believed me. Because I had no proof, and Stella was crying. Because, deep down, they all already believed that a girl raised in the gutter would naturally have sticky fingers. This time, I didn’t shed a single tear. I wiped my mouth with my linen napkin and stood up. “Call the police.” The entire room went dead silent. Stella’s face twitched. I looked dead at Arthur. “Since you’re all so convinced I’m a thief, call the police. Let them dust for prints. Pull the security footage. Let them investigate exactly who touched my suitcase.” Arthur suppressed his rage, his voice a low hiss. “This is a family matter. Are you really going to drag the police into this?” I shot back, “Weren’t you just accusing me of grand larceny? A missing heirloom isn’t a small family matter, is it?” Stella frantically intervened. “Nora, I really don’t want to press charges! If you just admit you made a mistake, I can forgive you.” I stared her down. “Forgive me for what?” She cried harder, her shoulders shaking. “I know you’ve been under a lot of pressure lately. You blew through your eight thousand dollars, and when you asked me for more, I didn’t give it to you right away. But if you needed money, you could have just talked to me! Why did you have to take the brooch?” Perfect. She finally brought up the money. I pulled out my phone and connected it to the massive smart TV mounted in the adjoining living room.

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