Author: Momo Chan

When we were resetting the smart lock on my condo back to its factory settings, the building manager hesitated, looking up at me. “Ms. Foster, are you sure you want to wipe everything? This user, Isla, has administrator privileges. You’re actually registered here as a temporary guest.” I gave a small, tired smile. “Wipe it. Don’t leave a single name.” The night before, my stomach had flared up so badly I was doubled over by the elevator, my hand shaking so violently I couldn’t punch in the passcode. The lock kept flashing: Access Denied. When I called Larry, he kept his voice to a tight whisper on the other end: “Stop messing with the keypad, Natalie. Isla just fell asleep. Her nerves are shot, and the alarm is going to wake her up.” Sweat was beaded on my forehead from the pain. “This is my apartment, Larry.” He paused for two seconds, his tone shifting into familiar reproof. “She’s only staying here for a few days. Besides, don’t you have the code? Don’t make things difficult for her over something this small.” Only later did I discover what “temporary” actually meant. It meant her fingerprint was registered as the primary profile. And me—the person whose name was actually on the deed—was locked out in the hallway, unable to even reach my medication. I looked at the history log on the smart lock app. [11:48 PM: Larry Evans deleted Natalie Foster’s emergency access authorization.] I didn’t call him again. Instead, I prepaid the rest of the renovation loan and contacted my agent to put the condo back on the market. This place, which I had paid for, was no longer mine. And him? I didn’t want him either. 1 The night my gastritis flared up, I had to commute back from the clinic alone. The rain was coming down in sheets, pooling deep at the entrance of our building. By the time I stepped out of the storm, my socks were completely soaked through. When the elevator let me out on the twenty-first floor, I had one hand pressed against my ribs and the other reaching for the keypad. The interface lit up. Access Denied. Thinking I had just miskeyed, I tried again. Slow, deliberate presses. Access Denied. On the third try, the security system triggered, sending a shrill, piercing alarm echoing through the empty hallway. The pain in my stomach was so sharp I had to lean against the wall, my vision blurring. Inside, I heard muffled footsteps. It wasn’t Larry. “Who is it?” Isla’s voice came through the thick door, soft and tentative, sounding startled. I gritted my teeth. “It’s me, Natalie.” The hallway went quiet. She didn’t open the door. A moment later, my phone vibrated. It was Larry. His first words weren’t to ask how I was doing. “Natalie, stop pressing the buttons,” he said, his voice hushed. “Isla just got to sleep. You terrified her.” I leaned against the wall, the cramps twisting so hard I couldn’t stand up straight. “I can’t get inside. The lock says my access is denied.” There was a brief silence on the line. “It’s probably just a system glitch,” he said. “Go sit down at the convenience store on the corner for a bit. Don’t make a scene at the door. Isla’s emotional state is really fragile right now.” I let out a quiet laugh, though my lips felt completely numb. “Larry, my stomach is turning inside out. My prescription is in the kitchen.” His tone softened slightly, but it was still heavy with a simmering impatience. “They have over-the-counter stuff at the store. Just buy a pack to hold you over. I’ve got some things to handle here. I’ll be back late.” I stared at the brass handle. This was my apartment. I had put down seventy percent of the down payment. The mortgage auto-drafted from my account every month. The renovation loan was entirely in my name. Yet another woman was sleeping inside, and I was locked out. He was telling me to buy OTC meds at a convenience store. Through the door, I heard Isla’s hushed murmur. “Larry, should I let Natalie in? She sounds really angry.” Larry’s voice was low but clear through the receiver. “Don’t worry about it. Her stomach gets bad and she loses her temper. I don’t want her scaring you.” I listened to those words, and my fingers slowly slipped off the door handle. So, me crouching in pain in the hallway was just me “losing my temper.” I didn’t knock again. I walked over to the stairwell, sat down on the cold concrete step, and pulled up the smart lock app on my phone. The log took forever to load. When the user list finally appeared, I stared at it. User 1: Isla. Access Level: Administrator. Note: [Isla – Emergency Access] User 2: Larry Evans. Access Level: Administrator. User 3: Natalie Foster. Access Level: Temporary Guest. I stared at the words Temporary Guest for a long, quiet minute. I hadn’t put in the wrong code. I had been demoted in my own home. At 1:00 AM, Larry finally returned. He was carrying a white pharmacy bag, and the faint, sweet scent of the orange-blossom diffuser Isla favored clung to his jacket. Seeing me sitting on the stairs, he frowned. “Why didn’t you go get some medicine?” I looked up at him. “Who changed the passcode?” Larry blinked, caught off guard. “Isla’s ex-husband has been stalking her. She was terrified he’d find her, so I updated the security profile. I forgot to tell you.” Forgot. Such a simple, weightless word. He forgot to tell the owner of the house, but he remembered to register Isla’s fingerprint and assign her administrator rights. He reached down to help me up. “Let’s go inside first.” I pulled away from his hand and stood up on my own. Isla peeked out from behind the door, her eyes rimmed with red. “Natalie, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to take up your space. Larry told me not to open the door for anyone at night, and I… I didn’t know what to do.” Larry instinctively stepped in front of her, shielding her from me. “She’s had a rough couple of weeks. Don’t start on her.” Watching his protective stance, the urge to ask any more questions simply evaporated. Inside, I opened the shoe cabinet. My house slippers were gone. The pair on Isla’s feet was the brand-new set I had just bought for myself. She followed my gaze, looked down, and panicked, trying to kick them off. Larry caught her shoulder. “Don’t worry about it. The floor is freezing.” Then he turned to me. “It’s just a pair of slippers, Natalie. Is it really worth making a fuss over?” Just a pair of slippers. Just a security setting. Eventually, I would become a “just,” too. I took the medicine he bought but didn’t open it. In the master bedroom, our framed engagement photo had been moved from the nightstand. In its place stood an aromatherapy diffuser and Isla’s lavender sleep mist. Larry had told me she was only staying for three days. But in the closet, her shoes were already lined up, sorted by season. I opened my phone and pulled up my realtor’s contact. [I want to list the condo. As soon as possible.] She replied almost instantly. [Are you sure, Ms. Foster? I thought this was going to be your home after the wedding.] From the living room, I could hear Larry’s low, gentle voice soothing Isla. [I’m sure.] This place was no longer my home. The next morning, the sound of quiet chatter in the kitchen woke me. Larry was making breakfast. Pumpkin oatmeal. Sweet, warm, slow-simmered. I had suffered from chronic gastritis for years, yet he had never managed to remember that pumpkin always triggered my acid reflux. When he walked out carrying the bowl, he handed it straight to Isla. “You didn’t sleep well. Eat some of this first.” Isla was draped in my cashmere shawl, sitting at the dining table. “Thank you both,” she whispered. “I feel like such a burden.” I stood in the doorway of the bedroom. Larry finally noticed me. “Oh, Natalie. There’s more on the stove. Help yourself.” I walked into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. My unsweetened Greek yogurt was gone. The shelves were neatly stocked with oat milk and gluten-free bread. I remembered my endoscopy last month. The night before the procedure, Larry couldn’t even remember what time my fasting window started, but he had called to ask if I could grab him a cold brew on my way home. He wasn’t naturally careless. He just didn’t waste his care on me. I pulled open the first-aid cabinet. My stomach medication had expired six months ago. But Isla’s melatonin, anti-anxiety prescriptions, heating patches, and daily vitamins were organized in neat, labeled bins. Larry walked in behind me. Seeing me sorting through the cabinet, he offered a casual explanation. “Isla’s been struggling, and she can’t skip her meds. I wanted to make sure we had everything she might need.” “My prescription expired,” I said quietly. “Did you know?” He hesitated, looking slightly uncomfortable. “Well… you’re always so tough. You usually just push through it.” The words felt like a tiny needle—not a deep wound, but a sharp, localized sting. I clicked the cabinet shut. “Right. I push through it.” Which meant I was always the one who could wait. During breakfast, Isla looked up timidly. “Natalie, do you mind if I use the vanity in the master bedroom for a bit? I have a lot of skincare products.” Before I could speak, Larry answered for me. “Go ahead. Natalie hasn’t been wearing much makeup lately anyway.” I looked Larry dead in the eye. “That vanity is mine.” Larry’s brow furrowed. “I know it’s yours. She’s just borrowing it for a few days. Why are you being so sensitive?” Isla’s eyes welled with tears instantly. “Forget it, I don’t need it. Please, don’t fight because of me.” Larry set his spoon down with a sharp clink. “Natalie, she’s already walking on eggshells here. Can you stop making her feel like a nuisance?” I wanted to laugh. I was the one paying the mortgage. I had picked out the table we were sitting at, the plates we were eating off of. Even the chairs they were sitting on had been paid for with three months of my overtime bonuses. And yet, I was the one making her feel like a nuisance. That afternoon, after Larry left for the office and Isla went to nap, I went into the study to gather my documents. On the shelf next to the desk, there were several new pink storage bins. The labels were printed in neat, clear script. [Natalie’s Spares] I stared at the word Spares. In my own home, my things had been relegated to spare inventory. My phone buzzed with an Instagram notification. Isla had posted a photo. It was a shot of the corner of the master bedroom—the linen curtains, the reading lamp, the ceramic diffuser, all of which I had spent weekends sourcing. Her caption read: [Finally, a little sanctuary where I can sleep in peace.] Larry had liked it. And he had commented: [Rest easy.] I stared at those words for a long time, then took a screenshot and saved it. I opened my laptop and started a spreadsheet. Down payment, monthly payments, renovation loans, furniture, appliances, HOA fees, utilities. I pulled every bank statement from the last three years and itemized Larry’s contributions to the cent. I used to think keeping score was petty. I thought when you were planning a marriage, who spent what didn’t matter. But now I understood: the person who doesn’t keep score is the one who ends up with nowhere to stand. My realtor called to ask if the photographer could come by that afternoon. “Yes,” I said. “That works.” “Does your fiancé know about this, Ms. Foster?” I looked at the final numbers on my screen. “He’s not on the deed.” There was a brief pause on the line. “Understood. We’ll proceed.”

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The state’s largest unlicensed “troubled youth” ranch had finally been raided and shut down by the FBI. Sitting in the cold interrogation room, the director, Gary, smirked as he went down the list of kids who had passed through his gates, describing each of them with casual cruelty. But when he reached one particular name, his smile twisted into something dark and mocking. “This one was the most pathetic,” he sneered. “Twenty-one years old, sent to us just for dating some deadbeat. Her own mother personally requested the ‘maximum correction package’ for her. Said she needed to be broken.” The forensic artist’s pencil hitched. The room fell into a suffocating, dead silence. Gary bared his yellowed teeth, letting out a dry chuckle. “She was a clever little bitch, though. She actually managed to splice a live wire into the generator room’s terminal, rigging up a dial-tone just to make a call. Scared the living hell out of my staff.” “But you want to know the best part? Her mother called us right back. Told us exactly where she was hiding, clear as day.” “We dragged her out and beat her within an inch of her life. And that very night, she hung herself. Survived three years of our program, only to end it all over a failed phone call.” He leaned forward, his eyes locking onto the man holding the sketchpad. “Hey, Joseph. Don’t you think that girl sounds a little familiar?” My father, Joseph—the legendary forensic artist who could reconstruct a human face in six strokes—didn’t look up. He quietly shaded the final line on his paper. “Are you finished?” his voice was flat, hollow. “My youngest daughter is getting married tomorrow. If you’re going to lie to save your own skin, at least make it believable.” Gary laughed until tears rolled down his dirty cheeks. “Oh, I remember her clearly. Even when they cut her down, she was still clutching one of your sketch pens.” …… 1 My father let out a cold, dismissive breath and checked his phone. “Anyone who bothers to look at the records knows I gave my eldest daughter a custom fountain pen on her eighteenth birthday. But she cut ties with this family years ago.” He stood up, brushing the charcoal dust off his sketchpad. “My youngest is walking down the aisle today. I don’t have time to listen to a monster’s fairy tales.” Gary’s eyes filled with pure contempt. “You really are a piece of work, Joseph. So cold-blooded. You let your eldest rot in a hole, just so you could play the doting father to your darling youngest.” My father frowned, looking down at him as if he were a piece of garbage stuck to his shoe. “I have always loved both of my daughters. Neither of them would ever belong in a hellhole like yours.” He flipped his sketchpad around, revealing the face he had just drawn. “Gary Junior. Familiar?” The arrogant smirk on the director’s face vanished instantly. “Joseph! Leave him out of this! My son had nothing to do with the ranch! If you want blood, come after me!” My father snapped his folder shut. “Whether your son is clean is for the DA to decide. I suggest you start talking instead of playing games with me.” I stood beside my father, watching him with quiet admiration. He had always been larger than life to me. He didn’t just draw suspects from a victim’s memory; he had this incredible, almost magical gift of reconstructing a child’s face just by looking at their parents. Gary thrashed against his cuffs, begging, but the detectives in the room ignored him. My father turned to leave, his patience entirely depleted. Suddenly, Gary’s eyes turned bloodshot. He screamed at my father’s retreating back: “Your wife told you she was at Veritas Prep on a study-abroad program, didn’t she? You stupid, blind bastard! Why don’t you go look at what Veritas really is! You destroyed my family, Joseph—don’t think you’re getting a happy ending!” At the mention of those words, I instinctively shrank back, covering my head in terror. But the expected blow never came. I forgot. I’m already dead. Behind the double-sided glass, the lead detectives sprang into action. This ranch was just a branch of a much larger, darker syndicate. Every lead was vital, and the department had brought my father in specifically to crack Gary’s defenses. My father let out a long sigh, stepping into the hallway. His phone buzzed in his pocket. It was my mother, Meredith. “Honey, where are you? Maisie’s ceremony is about to start. You’re the father of the bride—you cannot be late for this.” “I’m on my way,” my father replied, his voice softening. But as his foot cleared the threshold, a desperate, raw shriek echoed from the interrogation room behind him: “That girl had an iris tattooed on her left forearm!” My father froze. His entire body went rigid. An iris. It means hope and protection. He had inked that tattoo on me himself. I remembered the exact weight of his hand, the gentle hum of the needle. He had looked at me and said, “An iris is a shield, Summer. Daddy put it on you, so I’ll be protecting you forever.” Then, his phone screen lit up with a photo Meredith had just sent. He stared at it, and a faint, relieved smile touched his lips. In the photo, a handsome young man was holding up a glass, flanked by my beaming mother and sister. The groom. My sister’s new husband. And the boy I had loved with every fiber of my being. The wedding venue was breathtaking, packed to the brim with high-society guests. Meredith looked at my father with a playful, scolding pout. “You always let your work get in the way of this family, Joseph.” “If you hadn’t been so soft on Summer back then, she wouldn’t have gone down such a rebellious path.” “It’s a good thing we sent her to Oakhaven to get her sorted out. Otherwise, I’d still be blaming you for being an irresponsible father.” I stood in the center of the floral-draped aisle, staring at my mother in absolute shock, my spectral hands clenching into tight fists. Rebellious path? To my mother, my “rebellious path” was refusing to break up with Wayne—who was poor but loved me—to marry the wealthy heir she had handpicked for me when I was twenty-one. I remembered that night vividly. I had wept at her feet, begging her to understand. “Mom, please! That man is cruel, he doesn’t care about me! And I love Wayne!” But Meredith couldn’t tolerate defiance. Her eyes had burned with a manic, red-hot fury as she struck me across the face, her fists raining down on my back. “Everything I do is for you!” she had shrieked. “You ungrateful little bitch! You think you’re grown now? You think you can disobey me? You will break up with him. Tonight.” When I remained silent, she grabbed a paring knife from the counter and pressed it against her own throat, drawing a thin line of real, crimson blood. “I’ll do it!” I had screamed, my heart fracturing into a thousand pieces. “I’ll break up with him!” But the moment the breakup text was sent, Wayne had lost his mind. He sped through the rain to find me and wrapped his car around a concrete pillar. The moment I heard he was in the ICU, I fought to run out the door, but my mother locked me in my room, screaming about parental authority and social standing. In a desperate, reckless bid to see him one last time, I crawled out of my second-story window and jumped. Before Wayne even woke from his coma, Meredith had dragged me back. My escape was the ultimate betrayal in her eyes. Her control was absolute, and my defiance was unforgivable. So, she arranged to have me sent to Oakhaven Academy. When my father returned home from an out-of-town case, all he saw was the dried blood on Meredith’s neck. Blaming me for nearly driving my mother to suicide, he personally drove me to the gates of that hellhole. Neither of them knew that Oakhaven wasn’t a school. It was a slaughterhouse. My spirit trembled violently, nearly swallowed by the darkness of those memories, until my father’s bitter voice pulled me back to the present. “Don’t bring up Summer,” he muttered to my mother. “She clearly wants nothing to do with us anyway.” Meredith’s face hardened. “All because we saved her from ruining her life? We spent a fortune on that academy. How dare she cut us off the moment she turned eighteen? Her program ends tomorrow. You’re going to pick her up, and she’s going to apologize.” I let out a hollow, silent laugh, looking at my sister, Maisie, standing just behind her. Maisie’s face was bloodless, her knuckles white. My mother had no idea. I was never coming home. It was Maisie who had shown my private texts with Wayne to Meredith in the first place. She knew exactly how to trigger our mother’s obsessive control, deliberately painting Wayne as a dangerous predator to turn Meredith against him. And Oakhaven? That was Maisie’s recommendation, too. Beside her, Wayne noticed her pale face and asked if she was alright. Maisie forced a brittle smile, whispering that she was just nervous, and pulled him toward the dressing room. Meredith beamed, waving them off. “Go on, you two. No time for flirting now. Get changed.” The moment the heavy dressing room door clicked shut, Maisie grabbed Wayne’s sleeve, her voice trembling. “Wayne… do you still love my sister?” The air in the room instantly turned to ice. I stood right beside them, staring at Wayne, my heart aching with a familiar, ghostly longing. We had loved each other since high school. Six years of shared dreams, secret notes, and promises of a future. But Wayne didn’t answer. He just let out a dry, humorless chuckle. “Why are you asking me that today, Maisie? It’s our wedding. Let’s not ruin it with dead weight.” But his hands were shaking, and on his wrist, he still wore the cheap leather watch I had bought him for his eighteenth birthday. “I need to know, Wayne!” Maisie demanded, her grip tightening on his jacket. Cornered, the frustration in Wayne’s chest finally boiled over into bitter resentment. “No! I don’t love her!” he spat. “After everything I gave her, how could she just discard me like trash? Six years, Maisie! And she walked away without a single word. She didn’t even show up when I was dying in that hospital bed. She just sent a text calling me a pathetic loser and vanished. Why would I still love someone like that?” A look of smug triumph flashed across Maisie’s face, and she threw her arms around his neck, holding him tight.

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Half an hour ago, an anonymous photo popped up on my phone. My bedroom. My bed. A man and a woman. The moment I pushed the door open, I felt nothing but a strange, terrifying calm. I pulled out my phone and dialed 9-1-1. “Yes, hello. I need an officer at my address. I think my wife is being assaulted.” My wife froze. The guy in my bed went dead pale. 1 It was 3:30 PM, and I was killing time at the office. My monitors were split into three windows: an endless string of backend code, a dense technical document I was pretending to read, and a Reddit thread about mechanical keyboards I had hidden in the corner. My phone buzzed. I glanced down. An anonymous text. No words. Just an image. It was grainy, like it had been taken through the crack of a curtain from a weird angle. But I recognized that bed instantly. The IKEA Malm frame, king-size. The charcoal-gray fitted sheet. The faint grease stain on the top right corner where I’d dropped a piece of pepperoni while eating late-night pizza last month. There were two people on the mattress. A man and a woman. The woman’s back was to the camera, but I knew that sapphire-blue silk nightgown. I bought it for her last Valentine’s Day. It was a hundred and twenty bucks. I remember the price vividly because I had originally picked out an eighty-dollar one, but she said the fabric felt cheap. The man’s face was turned away, his features blurred in the shadows. I stared at the photo for exactly ten seconds. Then I locked my screen, turned back to my monitor, and kept writing my code. Josh, the frontend developer in the next cubicle, leaned over. “Hey man, why do you look so blank?” “I always look blank.” “No, I mean the face you just made looking at your phone. It’s the exact same face you make when the client changes the project requirements at the last minute.” I thought about it. “Yeah. Pretty much.” I stood up, grabbed my jacket off the back of my chair, and walked over to my team lead. I told him I felt sick and was using half a sick day. He took one look at me. “You do look awful. Go home. Get some rest.” I nodded. I took the elevator down, got in my car, and put my home address into the GPS. An eighteen-minute drive. I didn’t turn on the radio. I didn’t have any profound, life-altering revelations. I just drove in total silence, methodically reconstructing the timeline in my head. Three months ago, Claire started working late. Two months ago, she changed the passcode on her phone and enabled Face ID. One month ago, she mentioned a series of weekend “team-building retreats” with her marketing agency. Last week, she was looking down at her screen and smiled. It was a soft, glowing kind of smile. The kind of smile I hadn’t seen directed at me in years. It wasn’t that I hadn’t suspected anything. But I’m a software architect. It’s an occupational hazard—before you declare a bug, you need the system logs to prove it. So, I bought a camera. Nothing high-tech. A twenty-dollar Amazon Prime knockoff disguised as a USB wall charger. I plugged it in facing the living room. Week one: nothing. Week two: nothing. Week three. Wednesday at 2:17 PM, a man walked through my front door. He was about six feet tall, wearing a navy polo shirt, carrying two Starbucks cups in a cardboard carrier. Claire came out of the bedroom to greet him. She was wearing the sapphire-blue silk nightgown. The two coffees were set down on the glass coffee table. Neither of them took a sip. They went straight into the bedroom. The door clicked shut. I was sitting at my desk in the office, watching the playback on my phone, and my expression was exactly what Josh had described—the client just changed the requirements again. Over the next three weeks, the exact same routine played out five times. Always on a Wednesday afternoon. Always the same guy. Always two Starbucks cups. They never drank the coffee. It felt incredibly wasteful. I quietly created an Excel spreadsheet. Date. Time of entry. Duration. Notes. Under the Notes column, I just typed: Didn’t drink the coffee again. Today was Wednesday. But I didn’t get a motion-detection alert at 2:00 PM. Instead, someone else had sent me a notification—the anonymous photo. That surprised me. Not the fact that Claire was cheating, but the fact that someone out there was actively trying to help me. Or, more likely, just wanted to watch the world burn. It didn’t matter. I parked my car in the underground garage of The Waverly. I didn’t take the elevator. I took the fire stairs. Twenty-three floors. It took me ten minutes. By the time I reached my front door, I wasn’t even breathing heavily. I pulled out my keys. I didn’t use the electronic keypad because it beeps when you type the code. I slid the physical key into the deadbolt, turned it silently, and pushed. The door swung open. In the living room, two Starbucks cups sat sweating on the glass table. Untouched. Still a waste. The bedroom door was slightly ajar. I stood in the hallway and took a deep breath. Not because I was nervous. Just because climbing twenty-three flights of stairs actually takes it out of you. Then, I pushed the door wide open. The live feed matched the camera footage perfectly. Claire was propped up against the headboard, her hair a messy halo around her shoulders. The man was lying on his side, his back to the door. The moment the hinges creaked, both of their heads snapped toward me. Four eyes locked on mine. Claire’s face cycled through a masterclass of human panic—confusion, shock, terror, and finally, an ashen, bloodless dread. She completed the entire emotional spectrum in roughly half a second. The man was a beat slower. He froze, his pupils dilating, his mouth falling slightly open. I had seen his face on my screen plenty of times. Square jaw, thick eyebrows, a faint mole near his chin. What the cheap camera couldn’t pick up, I could see clearly now—he took good care of himself. Expensive haircut, no crow’s feet. Probably mid-thirties. “N-Noah…” Claire’s voice broke the silence. She was trembling so hard the mattress shook. “What are you… aren’t you supposed to be at work?” I didn’t answer. I didn’t lunge at the bed. I didn’t rip the sheets off. I didn’t flip the nightstand or throw a punch. I simply took one step backward, out of the bedroom and into the living room. I pulled out my phone. Face ID unlocked. Keypad. Three digits. 9-1-1. Ring. Ring. “911, what is your emergency?” “Yes, hello.” My voice was as flat and steady as if I were reading lines of code. “My name is Noah Evans. I live at The Waverly, building B, apartment 2305. I just came home from work and found a strange man in my bedroom, in bed with my wife. My wife looks absolutely terrified, and I believe she is being sexually assaulted.” The dispatcher paused for three seconds. “Sir, can you repeat that? Are you saying there is an active assault?” “I came home, the bedroom door was open, and a man I do not know is in my bed. My wife’s expression is pure panic. Based on her reaction to my arrival, I have reason to believe she was coerced or forced.” “Okay, sir. We are dispatching officers to your location immediately. Please, do not engage with the intruder. Do not start a physical altercation.” “Don’t worry,” I said softly. “I won’t.” I hung up. I turned back to look at the bedroom. Claire had already scrambled out of bed, clutching the duvet tightly around her chest. Her face was the color of chalk, her lips quivering uncontrollably. “Noah! What the hell did you just do?!” I looked at her. My expression must have been terrifyingly blank, because seeing it only made her panic harder. “You’re crazy! Noah, listen to me, I can explain!” “No need.” I walked over to the living room couch and sat down, finding the most comfortable groove in the cushions. “The police are on their way. You can explain it to them. After all, you’re the victim here.” A frantic shuffling noise erupted from the bedroom. The man was trying to put his pants on. His hands were shaking so violently that he missed getting his foot through the leg hole twice. On the third try, he got them up, but the zipper was still down. He stumbled out of the bedroom, saw me sitting casually on the sofa, and stopped dead in his tracks. “Bro, man, listen to me—” “Zip your pants up first,” I said. He looked down. All the color drained from his face, leaving behind a sickly, grayish green. 2 His name was Trent. I would later see his full name on the police report, but right now, he was just “the guy with his fly down.” After Trent finally managed to yank his zipper up, he stood in the middle of my living room looking like a QA engineer who had just caused a massive server crash—he knew he was at fault, but he wasn’t entirely sure how much it was going to cost him. “Listen, man… there’s a huge misunderstanding here.” As he spoke, his eyes darted nervously between me and the front door, running the calculations. I knew exactly what he was doing. He was weighing his flight risk. Twenty-three floors down. Waiting for the elevator would take at least forty seconds. Taking the stairs would blow out his knees and still take three minutes. And if the cops pulled up while he was running— “Stop looking at the door,” I said, my tone mild. “The precinct is a six-minute drive from here. It’s been four minutes since I hung up the phone.” Trent’s face turned another shade paler. Claire was huddled in the far corner of the sofa, wrapped in the white duvet. Her hair was a mess, and her eyes were already red-rimmed. “Noah, what are you trying to do?” “Nothing. I’m just a concerned husband who came home, thought his wife was in danger, and called the authorities.” “Bullshit!” She leaped to her feet, almost dropping the blanket before snatching it back up. “You—you know damn well that’s not what this is!” “Oh?” I tilted my head slightly. “Then what is it?” Claire choked on her words. This was the first dead-end loop I had designed for her. She only had two options. Option A: Admit it was consensual. That meant confessing to adultery in front of the police, essentially handing me a flawless victory in a divorce settlement. Option B: Play along with my narrative. Which meant Trent was going straight to jail for a very serious felony. Both paths led to a fatal crash. And she had about sixty seconds to pick one. I leaned back into the sofa, reached over to the glass table, and picked up one of the Starbucks cups. I gave it a little shake. Still warm. I popped the plastic lid off and took a sip. Flat White. Not bad. Trent’s eye twitched as he watched me drink the coffee he had paid for. Claire stared at me like she was looking at a ghost. She was shaking from head to toe. “You’re out of your mind,” she whispered. “I’m perfectly rational.” I took another sip. “Do either of you want the other one? It’s a shame to waste it.” Nobody spoke. The living room fell into a suffocating silence for about fifteen seconds. Trent was the first to crack. He took a step forward, lowering his voice, slipping into corporate-negotiation mode. “Look, man, how about this—I cut you a check right now, and we make this whole thing go away. Private settlement.” “How much?” He thought I was taking the bait. A spark of hope lit up his eyes. “Fifty grand. No, a hundred. A hundred thousand dollars.” “Is a hundred grand enough to buy your way out of handcuffs?” The spark died instantly. “What I mean is, if you make a run for it right now, and the cops tackle you in the lobby, you’re going to end up in cuffs. I don’t think a hundred grand covers the legal fees for a sexual assault charge.” The doorbell rang. Trent flinched so hard it looked like he’d been tased. Claire let out a sharp gasp, burying her face in the duvet. I set the coffee down, stood up, and straightened the collar of my dress shirt. I took a deep, steadying breath. And then— I rubbed the heels of my palms into my eyes until they stung and turned red. I pinched the bridge of my nose hard enough to make it flush. I adjusted my facial muscles: pulling the corners of my mouth down, furrowing my brow, shifting my gaze from icy detachment to barely contained devastation. A one-second compile time. I opened the door. Two officers stood in the hallway. One was in his late forties, heavily built, with the tired eyes of a veteran detective. The other was maybe twenty-two, fresh out of the academy, his hand resting near his body cam. “Noah Evans?” the older cop asked. “That’s me.” My voice trembled perfectly, carrying just the right amount of repressed trauma. “Thank God you guys got here so fast… I—I didn’t know what else to do.” The older cop put a heavy, reassuring hand on my shoulder. “Take it easy, son. Where are they?” I stepped aside, opening up the view to the living room. The visual narrative was compelling. In the center of the room stood a disheveled man with a panicked expression, his shirt buttoned up wrong. On the couch, a woman was huddled in a blanket, weeping softly, her eyes red. On the table, two coffees. From a purely optical standpoint, the scene pointed directly toward one conclusion. The rookie cop looked at Trent, then at Claire, and his jaw tightened. The older cop’s face remained neutral, but his eyes hardened. “And who is this?” he asked, looking at Trent. Trent opened his mouth, but nothing came out. “That’s the man I told the dispatcher about,” I interjected, keeping my voice low and unsteady. “I came home early… opened the bedroom door… and found them in my bed. My wife looked absolutely terrified. I—I wasn’t sure if he had a weapon or if she was…” I let my voice crack and trail off. The universal sound of a man who couldn’t bear to finish the sentence. The rookie cop’s hand drifted toward his utility belt. The older cop’s expression turned to stone. He took a step toward Trent. “Let me see some ID. Now.” Trent stood frozen. “I…” “ID. Right now.” Trent’s hands shook violently as he dug into his pockets. He pulled out a leather wallet and fumbled with his driver’s license, nearly dropping it on the hardwood floor. The older cop took it, glanced at it, and pulled out a notepad. “Trenton Hayes. Thirty-six. Okay, Mr. Hayes. You’re going to come with us.” “Wait! Hold on!” Trent’s voice spiked an octave. “Officer, it’s not what it looks like! We—it was consensual!” He whipped his head around to look at Claire. “Claire! Tell them! Tell them it was consensual!” Every eye in the room zeroed in on my wife. Including mine. Claire’s lips were trembling. She looked at Trent. Then she looked at me. Then at the two police officers standing by the door. She was locked in the loop. She opened her mouth twice. No sound. The third time. “I…” I watched her, my face completely neutral. But in my head, I was counting down. Three. Two. One. “I don’t know him.” Claire’s voice was barely a whisper, but in the dead silence of the apartment, it rang like a gunshot. Watching Trent’s face was like watching a man get hit by a slow-motion train. First, shock. Then, disbelief. And finally, utter, suffocating terror. “Claire… what are you saying?” Claire buried her face back in the blanket, her shoulders heaving. “I don’t know him,” she repeated, her voice muffled. The rookie cop’s face went rigid. The older cop reached to the back of his belt and unclipped his handcuffs. “Alright, Mr. Hayes. Turn around and put your hands behind your back.” “No! You have to listen to me! She’s lying! We know each other! We’ve been sleeping together for three months!” Trent was hyperventilating now. He took a clumsy step backward, his leg clipping the edge of the glass table. The remaining Starbucks cup tipped over. Hot coffee spilled across the glass and dripped onto the expensive rug. I stood by the wall, watching Trent flail and panic as the cuffs clicked around his wrists. I only had one thought. That’s a shame about the Flat White. 3 We took separate cars to the station. Claire rode with the older detective. Trent was placed in the back of the rookie’s cruiser. I drove myself, following closely behind them. Halfway there, my phone buzzed on the dash mount. A text from Josh. Hey man, why’d you bounce so early? Boss said you were sick? I kept one hand on the wheel and used the other to type. Family emergency. What happened? I think my wife got assaulted. Six seconds later, my phone started ringing. “Holy shit!!! Noah! Where are you?! Do you need me to come over?!” Josh was yelling into the mic. “No. I called the cops. We’re heading to the precinct right now.” “Jesus Christ… dude, are you okay?” “I’m fine.” “Don’t do anything crazy, man!” “I’m driving. I’ll call you later.” I hung up. My grip on the steering wheel was perfectly relaxed. The Bluetooth audio automatically resumed the podcast I had been listening to on my commute that morning—an in-depth tutorial on advanced Excel macros. I didn’t turn it off. The precinct was more orderly than I expected. They separated us immediately. Trent was dragged into an interrogation room. Claire was ushered into a small office down the hall. I sat in a hard plastic chair in the corridor, sipping a lukewarm cup of water a uniform had handed me, and waited. Detective Ramirez—the older cop from the apartment—eventually came out and sat next to me with a clipboard. “Mr. Evans. Can you walk me through exactly what happened when you got home?” “Of course.” I organized my syntax. Clear, concise, chronological. “I left the office early today, around 3:40 PM, because I wasn’t feeling well. I arrived at my apartment at approximately 4:05 PM. When I walked in, I noticed two takeout coffees on the table and the bedroom door slightly open. I pushed it open and saw a man and a woman in my bed. The woman was my wife, Claire. The man was a stranger. When my wife saw me, she looked absolutely terrified, and the man panicked. Assessing her reaction, I backed out of the room and immediately dialed 911.” Ramirez scribbled in his notebook. He paused and looked up at me. “You didn’t engage in any physical altercation with the suspect?” “No.” “Why not?” “Because I’m a software engineer.” Ramirez blinked. “I mean, I process things logically. Fighting him wouldn’t have secured the scene.” “Right.” Ramirez nodded slowly, his pen moving again. “Has your wife ever mentioned this man before?” “Never.” “How are things between you and your wife generally?” “I thought they were good.” I injected just a fraction of an ounce of bitterness into my voice. Ramirez stopped writing. He looked at me. It was that specific, piercing gaze that veteran cops develop over decades—the kind that tries to see the code behind the user interface. He stared at my face for exactly three seconds. Then he looked back down at his notes. I don’t know what he saw. But he didn’t press the issue. I finished my statement, signed the paperwork, and went back to my plastic chair in the hallway. My phone buzzed again. Josh: Dude, what the hell is going on? Should I take PTO and come down there? No need. Did she really get…? They’re investigating. Did they catch the bastard? He’s in an interrogation room right now. Fuck that guy. Listen, Noah, if you need anything, the whole dev team has your back. Just say the word. Thanks. Can you order me some Pad Kee Mao? Not too spicy. … I missed lunch. Fifteen minutes later, the door to the interrogation room opened. Trent was escorted out. His face wasn’t just pale anymore; it was the color of wet concrete. He looked like a surgeon who had just lost a patient after a thirty-hour shift. He saw me sitting in the hallway. The look he gave me was so complex it could have been a novel. Fear, rage, indignation, and absolute despair, all swirling together. I gave him a brief, polite nod. His lips parted, but no sound came out. Ten minutes after that, Ramirez called me into his office. “Mr. Evans. The situation has gotten a bit complicated.” “How so?” “The suspect, Mr. Hayes… he is vehemently insisting that the sexual encounter was consensual. He claims they’ve been seeing each other for three months.” “Is that right?” My face arranged itself into a mask of polite skepticism.

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I have always been a deeply cautious, risk-averse person. My mother could watch hundreds of millions of dollars vanish from her stock portfolio in a single afternoon without so much as blinking. My father bought commercial real estate the way normal people bought groceries at a corner store. And my little sister started investing her own trust fund at the age of three, earning herself a reputation as a ruthless shark in the venture capital world. And then there was me. I was the kind of guy who agonized over whether to spend an extra fifty cents for an extra egg on my street-cart breakfast burrito. I lived this life of luxury in a state of perpetual anxiety, constantly waiting for the universe to demand its interest on my unearned good fortune. Until the night of my eighteenth birthday gala, when the “real” son showed up with a DNA test in hand. I let out a massive, quiet sigh of relief. I knew it. How could a cautious, ordinary guy like me actually belong to a multi-generational billionaire dynasty? 1 On the night of the gala, I stood on the elevated stage wearing a custom-tailored tuxedo worth more than a decent suburban home. I felt entirely out of place. “Dad, this fabric is driving me crazy. It’s so itchy. Can I please change into something else?” My father cast a stern, silent look in my direction and gestured for the stylist to touch up my makeup. “Toby,” he said, his voice low and steady. “Just remember, your most important job tonight is to keep your mouth shut.” I pouted, metaphorically zipping my lips, and stared blankly at the sea of high-society guests mingling below. It was a suffocating kind of misery. “Charles, sometimes I seriously wonder if this boy is actually ours,” my mother sighed, swirling her champagne. But before she could finish her thought, the grand double doors of the ballroom were flung open. A young man wearing a faded, twice-washed T-shirt strode into the room. He held a sheaf of papers high in the air, his voice cutting through the classical music. “This is a DNA test! I am the biological son of the Harrington family! You’ve all been lied to by Toby!” The room fell into a dead, stunned silence. Then, a wave of frenzied whispering erupted. “Swapped at birth? I knew coming tonight would be worth it!” “Honestly, I always thought Charles’s boy was a bit odd. Absolutely zero ambition. Last month, my kid asked him to invest in a tech startup, and the boy literally pulled a ten-dollar bill out of his pocket! What is anyone supposed to do with ten dollars?” Hearing their hushed gossip, I swallowed hard. Honestly, it felt amazing. I knew it. There was no way a guy like me—someone who needed a full mental preparation session just to order extra bacon—could be the heir to a historic empire. Looking at the boy standing by the entrance, I felt a sudden urge to run down, shake his hand, and thank him. Before I could say a word, he pointed a trembling finger at me and shouted, “Toby! You never expected me to find this place, did you? You’ve known all along that I was the real Harrington. Why did you hide it?” I blinked, completely baffled. What kind of script was he reading from? I had never seen this guy before in my life. I opened my mouth to speak, instinctively reaching for the tiny notebook in my pocket where I kept track of my daily expenses. My fingers met empty air; tonight’s tuxedo didn’t have room for it, so I had left it upstairs. My lack of response only seemed to embolden him. “My name is Damian. Though, of course, it will soon be Damian Harrington. A person of my rightful standing belongs in this family!” He puffed out his chest, marching proudly up to the stage, and grabbed my wrist with a tight, aggressive grip. “It wasn’t enough for an impostor like you to steal my identity. You even stole the heirloom our father left for me!” He glared at the silver bracelet on my wrist, then looked at my father. This felt entirely wrong. I had worn this simple silver band for over a decade. It wasn’t gold. It wasn’t platinum. How much could it possibly be worth? “This piece is worth a fortune, Toby! You could work a lifetime and never pay it off! If you behave like a good little dog from now on, I might consider letting you off easy.” Damian’s eyes welled with tears, looking as though he were the one who had been deeply wronged. “Are you saying the bracelet on his wrist is stolen from you? And that it’s worth a million dollars?” My father set his glass down. His voice was soft, but it instantly silenced the entire ballroom. “Yes!” Damian stood tall, squaring his shoulders. “Dad, the evidence is right here. Kick him out of the house!” Every eye in the room landed on me. I clenched my fists, wanting to defend myself, but the words caught in my throat. After what felt like an eternity, my father spoke. “Impossible.” He paused, looking at Damian. “I’d believe he had the guts to rob a bank before I believed he had the guts to steal from you.” 2 Damian’s expression crumbled. “Dad, are you seriously protecting an impostor?” He dropped to his knees, tears streaming down his face. “I was taken to some backwater town when I was a child. I had to fight tooth and nail just to get an education and make it to the city. Only when I arrived did I realize someone else had stolen my life. It was you, Toby! You’ve been living in luxury every single day while I suffered. Don’t you feel any guilt at all?” My expression remained neutral, but internally, I was nodding along. To be fair, I had suspected for years that I wasn’t a Harrington. The Harringtons were giants. My mother, Diana, was a Wall Street legend who could lose millions in a bad trade, shrug, and say, “Money comes and goes, but the thrill remains.” My father, Charles, checked his iPad every morning to see if there were any skyscrapers downtown he felt like buying. And Maeve, my sister, was a prodigy who took her pocket money, threw it into clean energy, and tripled her returns in six months. I was the glitch in their perfect system. When I was six, my father gave me a black card. I used it to scrape dirt off my shoes with the neighborhood kids. When I finally realized it held an unfathomable amount of wealth, I immediately returned it to him, untouched. When I was eight, I found a fifty-cent coin on the school playground. I stood in the scorching sun for hours waiting for the owner. When no one showed up, I marched to the local police precinct to hand it in, meticulously detailing the time, the location, and the specific path of the ants crawling nearby. I knew I didn’t fit in. Even among the other wealthy heirs in our circle, I was a running joke. “Toby? The guy doesn’t even know the difference between a Rolex and a Timex.” “I saw him at a charity gala once. He was literally counting the zeros on the auction catalog with his mouth wide open. It was hilarious.” I knew what they whispered. And I agreed with them. I mean, look at me. How could someone like me be a billionaire’s son? My father took a slow sip of his drink and smiled. “Toby literally signs an IOU every time he asks me for ten dollars. If you truly believe he stole from you, you are welcome to call the police. But let me remind you, filing a false police report is a crime.” Damian’s sobbing came to an abrupt halt. He wiped his eyes quickly and handed the DNA report to my father. “Maybe… maybe I misremembered the bracelet. But this paper doesn’t lie.” My mother skimmed through the documents, pinching the bridge of her nose. With a quiet nod to the estate manager, the entire ballroom was cleared of guests within ten minutes. “Charles,” she said quietly. “Explain this. Where did this boy come from?” My father looked genuinely bewildered. To prove his innocence, he insisted on taking the entire family to the hospital that very night for an official, expedited DNA test. Until the results came back, Damian was allowed to stay at the estate. The next morning, we gathered at the long dining table. I was meticulously organizing my plate, placing the salad, the eggs, and the toast in a precise, logical sequence. Experience had taught me that eating in this exact order prevented indigestion and kept me full longer, which meant I wouldn’t get sick and cause unnecessary trouble for the family. Just as I raised my fork, Damian decided to make his move. 3 He picked up his glass of orange juice, tossing it back as if it were a shot of expensive whiskey, and stood up. “Everyone, since I am sitting at this table, it means you recognize me as a Harrington. Therefore, I cannot keep this secret any longer.” Damian took a deep, dramatic breath. He pointed at Benson, our butler, who was in the middle of serving breakfast, and then turned a triumphant glare toward me. “Benson, I heard you with my own ears this morning. You said Toby stole two hundred thousand dollars in cash from the family safe! Toby, what do you have to say for yourself now?” Benson nearly dropped the platter in his hands, waving his arms in a panic. “I never said such a thing! Master Damian, where on earth did you hear that?” Damian slammed his hand on the table. “I am the rightful heir of this family! You should be addressing me with respect! Don’t worry, Benson. If you tell the truth, I personally guarantee you won’t lose your job.” Benson looked on the verge of tears. “Ma’am, Sir… I was simply murmuring to myself. Master Toby’s allowance this month was twenty dollars more than last month, and I was merely wondering if he had enough for his needs. It was twenty dollars, sir! Not twenty thousand!” I looked up from my plate, staring at Benson in sheer horror. How did he know about the extra twenty dollars? I had planned to use that money to splurge on a massive, fully loaded breakfast burrito from the food truck down the street before I got kicked out—one with extra bacon, avocado, and hot sauce. Now my secret indulgence was completely ruined. Damian completely misread my expression. He assumed my silence was a confession of guilt. “Look at him! If he didn’t steal the money, why is he looking so utterly ashamed?” My sister, Maeve, let out a sharp, mocking laugh. “Damian, you haven’t even been officially recognized, and you’re already trying to run the household? Also, don’t project your own petty, small-minded thoughts onto my brother.” I nodded in agreement. She was right. I might not be the real heir, but I knew what belonged to me and what didn’t. “You… Maeve! I know you haven’t accepted me yet,” Damian stammered, his voice trembling as he wrapped his arms around himself. “Growing up is a lonely road, but I am willing to bear this pain for the family.” I stared at him, bewildered. He was incredibly theatrical. Frankly, he didn’t behave like a Harrington at all. “Enough,” my father said, wiping his mouth with a napkin. His tone was cold and absolute. “Benson, go upstairs and flip Toby’s mattress.” Benson looked immensely relieved and hurried up the stairs. A few minutes later, he returned, holding a small stack of crumpled bills. “Ma’am, Master Toby had exactly three hundred and five dollars taped under his bedframe. Nothing else.” No one in the family looked surprised. I, however, let out a small gasp. “Wait. How did you guys find my stash?” I asked, my face burning. I thought I had hidden it so well. “You tape money under your bedframe? What are you, a squirrel, Toby?” Damian shrieked, unable to accept that my grand fortune amounted to barely three hundred dollars. “It’s for emergencies!” I defended myself, my cheeks flushing red. “What if the family suddenly goes bankrupt?” “Bankrupt?” My mother nearly choked on her water. “Toby, we are literally on the Forbes list.” My father tossed his napkin onto the table, eyeing Damian coldly. “Do you see? His risk awareness is the highest in this entire family. And you think he stole two hundred thousand dollars?” He offered a chillingly calm smile. “Damian, until the DNA results are officially delivered, you are a guest. Accuse Toby again, and see what happens.” Damian swallowed his words, quickly shutting his mouth. Just as the tension began to ease, my father’s phone rang. “Mr. Harrington, the expedited DNA results are ready.” 4 As expected, my DNA test confirmed I had no biological relation to the Harringtons. Damian strutted back into the living room like a victorious rooster, pointing a finger directly at my face. “You. Get out of our house.” He turned to the housekeeper. “And burn everything in his bedroom. I don’t want any of his cheap, common things touching my space. Mom, I need thirty million dollars. I found an investment project with a guaranteed thirty percent return.” He threw himself onto the Italian leather sofa, crossing his legs arrogantly. “Toby, you’ve spent eighteen years living my life. It’s time to pay it back.” I nodded, quietly pulling my worn little notebook from my pocket. I had been preparing for this day since I first learned to read and write. “I’ve kept track of everything,” I said, showing him the first page. “Over the years, my basic living expenses and education have cost the Harrington family exactly $13,140. I will find a job and pay every cent back to you.” I bowed politely and turned to grab my suitcase. “Wait!” Damian jumped up, grabbing the handle of my bag. “Thirteen thousand? Are you kidding me? This family is worth billions! You must be hiding the rest!” “I—” “Toby, what are you doing?” my mother interrupted, her voice gentle but firm. “This house has dozens of rooms. There is no reason for you to leave.” “Mom…” “Your mother is right,” my father added. “Even if your risk aversion is a bit extreme, it balances the rest of us out perfectly.” “Dad…” My eyes welled with tears as I looked at them. “I’ll do my best to keep up with everyone. I’ll start by ordering that extra egg tomorrow morning.” And so, Damian officially moved into the estate, legally changing his name to Damian Harrington. At his welcome-home party, he paraded around in a bespoke suit, raising his glass to every high-profile guest in the room. “Hello, I’m Damian Harrington. If the family business needs anything in the future, you can come directly to me.” The guests smiled politely, and one young heir joked, “Well, Damian, I actually have a tech venture on the table. It only requires a modest eight-figure buy-in. Interested?” Damian’s eyes lit up. “Oh? That cheap? Bring me the contract, and I’ll sign it tonight.” I reached out, gently tugging at Damian’s sleeve, silently pleading with him to stop talking. An eight-figure sum wasn’t pocket change—it was tens of millions of dollars. An investment of that scale required rigorous due diligence, not a casual agreement over cocktails. “Get off me!” Damian shoved me aside, sending me stumbling. “Toby, you just don’t want me making connections with your old friends, do you? Why else would you ruin my conversation?” My elbow hit the sharp edge of a marble pillar, a dull ache blooming through my arm. Before I could speak, Damian’s eyes widened as if a sudden realization had hit him. “Oh, I get it. Are you afraid I’ll tell Dad that you’ve been quietly selling off our family heirlooms?” I pinched the bridge of my nose, letting out a tired sigh. Damian was at it again. He just couldn’t resist trying to frame me. Why didn’t he ever learn? 5 As expected, Damian’s words acted like a sudden frost, chilling the entire room into absolute silence. “You don’t believe me?” Damian looked around, pulling a sleek smartphone from his pocket. “This time, I have proof.” He tapped the screen and held up a video for the guests to see. The footage showed a grainy figure in pajamas slipping into the study in the dead of night, pocketing something small, and slipping away. While the resolution was low, the silhouette did look remarkably like me. “See? This is the ‘honest boy’ you all adore!” Damian proclaimed, standing tall. “The emerald suite in the safe is a family heirloom worth eight million dollars. I saw him take it with my own eyes!” He pointed directly at me. “And the money he got from selling it is hidden right under his bed.” The room erupted into a flurry of whispers. My father’s hand froze mid-air with his drink. My mother’s brow furrowed as she looked at me. “If you don’t believe me, send someone to check his room right now! Or better yet, let’s all go and see!” Damian challenged. “Benson, go check Toby’s room,” my father said, his face unreadable. Benson nodded reluctantly and walked upstairs. A few minutes later, he returned, holding a neat stack of crisp hundred-dollar bills. It was at least two hundred thousand dollars. Silence descended on the room once more. “See! Caught red-handed!” After three attempts, Damian had finally succeeded in framing me. His voice cracked with manic excitement. “This is the money from the heirloom! The video is here, the cash is here. You have to believe me now!” I parted my lips, but the words felt heavy. “I didn’t do this—” “Save your breath!” Damian stepped forward, raising his hand to strike me in front of everyone. “An impostor like you belongs in the gutter! Why are you still clinging to this family?” But before his hand could make contact, the heavy doors of the ballroom were pushed open. A middle-aged woman in a tailored business suit rushed in, breathing heavily, carrying an exquisite mahogany box. She sprinted directly toward my father, bowing deeply. “Mr. Harrington, I am so incredibly sorry. One of my junior appraisers made an error and accepted an item of yours.”

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On New Year’s Eve, I spent hours in the kitchen preparing a table full of her favorite dishes, waiting for Lauren to come home. She didn’t even glance at the spread. She just walked past it, heading straight to the bedroom to pack her suitcase. Her voice was cold, almost detached. “I can’t spend New Year’s with you this year.” I didn’t say a word. I just sat down alone and started eating. Right at the stroke of midnight, her first love posted on Instagram. In the photo, Lauren was leaning intimately against his shoulder, the city skyline behind them exploding with brilliant, cascading fireworks. The caption read: “She said as long as I need her, she’ll leave everything behind to be by my side.” I didn’t call her screaming this time. I didn’t demand answers. I just quietly tapped the heart icon to leave a like. A second later, my phone rang. Lauren’s voice was breathless, panicked. “Jesse, please don’t be mad. I promise I’ll make it up to you next year…” I let out a soft, self-mocking laugh. “Too bad we don’t have a next year.” 1 By the time Lauren finally came back, the holidays were long over. In the past, I would have waited for her down in the lobby, eager to help with her bags. This time, I stayed upstairs. Her text popped up: “Where are you?” I took a slow bite of my lunch and typed back: “Come up. I’m eating.” A few minutes later, while I was rinsing my plate at the sink, the front door clicked open. Lauren rolled her suitcase into the kitchen, looking exhausted and out of breath. She leaned against the counter, watching my back. “I haven’t eaten all day. Can you make me some pasta?” Normally, I would have dropped everything to cook for her. But today, I didn’t even turn around. “I don’t have time. Grab something downstairs.” Lauren’s eyes flared with irritation, but she forced herself to keep her voice level. “I know you’re still throwing a fit about New Year’s, Jesse, but can we please not do this right now? I’m genuinely starving.” I dried my hands on a dish towel. “I’m not throwing a fit. And I’m not mad.” She rolled her eyes, clearly not believing me. “Chase was entirely alone in this city during the holidays. Regardless of what we used to be, I couldn’t just leave him like that. It was the decent thing to do.” My voice remained flat. “Right. I get it.” She stared at me, trying to read my face, searching for some crack in my armor. Finally, she let out a weary sigh. “You make this so exhausting. Can you please stop acting like a child?” I looked back at her. “I’m not. You don’t have to explain anything to me.” She stared at me in silence for a long moment before unzipping her suitcase. She pulled out a model airplane and handed it to me. “New Year’s gift,” she said, her tone carrying a familiar trace of condescension. The model had no wrapping paper. The cardboard box itself was dented and creased at the corners—a stark contrast to the beautifully wrapped packages Chase had flaunted on his feed. I didn’t feel a spark of joy, but I kept my voice polite. “Thanks.” And then I went back to cleaning the kitchen. A flash of annoyance crossed Lauren’s face. “That’s it?” she asked, her voice rising. “That’s it,” I replied quietly. Her face tightened into a hard, rigid line. She held her hand out in front of me. “Where’s mine?” The realization hit me, and I felt a brief pang of sheepishness. “Oh. Sorry. I forgot. Tell you what—I’ll Venmo you, and you can buy whatever you like.” I pulled out my phone and sent her the transfer. Lauren’s eyes widened, genuinely stunned that I had forgotten. Exchanging gifts on New Year’s had been our sacred tradition for years. I had never missed it, always spending weeks finding the perfect, thoughtful present for her, even in the years she completely forgot about me. The silence in the kitchen became suffocating. I grabbed my jacket off the sofa and headed for the door. Lauren called after me, her voice sharp with sudden panic. “Where are you going?” “Out for drinks with friends,” I said. I closed the door behind me, shutting out the sound of her calling my name. Ever since I started dating Lauren, I had completely given up drinking because she once mentioned she hated the smell of alcohol. My friends eventually stopped inviting me, labeling me as the guy who was whipped, the one whose girlfriend kept him on a tight leash. But tonight, I just wanted to feel something else. I wanted to drink until I couldn’t think anymore. 2 Three drinks in, my friends were already slapping my shoulder and complaining. “Man, we thought you completely forgot about the guys once you got a girl. You can’t keep disappearing on us like this.” I raised my glass, offering a genuine smile. “I won’t. From now on, whenever you guys plan something, just tell me. I’ll be there.” Looking back, it was embarrassing how much of my life I had sacrificed. I had made Lauren the absolute center of my universe, revolving my career, my schedule, and my identity around her, while letting my own friendships fade to nothing. It was a pathetic, foolish way to live. I glanced down at my phone. A notification showed that Lauren had declined the Venmo transfer. By the time I stumbled back home, it was past one in the morning. I flipped on the living room light, only to find Lauren sitting upright on the sofa. For a second, I thought the alcohol was making me hallucinate. She didn’t stand up to help me balance. Instead, she stared at me with a look of deep, curdled disappointment. “Jesse, can you have some self-respect?” she said, her voice dripping with disgust. “If you’re jealous, just say it. Drinking yourself into a stupor like this only makes me lose what little respect I have left for you.” My head was spinning. I reached out, steadying myself against the back of a dining chair, and slowly sat down. Lauren caught the scent of alcohol and pinched the bridge of her nose. “Didn’t I tell you I hate when you drink?” She took a deep breath, trying to control her temper. “Chase and I aren’t what you think we are. Right now, we are just friends. There is absolutely no reason for you to do this to yourself over him.” I rested my heavy chin in my hand, my vision blurring. “You’re… overthinking it. I didn’t drink because of him. I drank because… I was happy.” Lauren’s voice turned sharp, cutting through the quiet apartment. “Enough! I’ve given you an out, Jesse. What more do you want from me? Don’t push my buttons. I have limits, too. I’m not some saint who can spend forever catering to your insecurities.” My head throbbed, her voice ringing like a siren in my ears. I rubbed my temples, barely able to keep my eyes open. “Don’t get worked up. I’m going to bed.” She let out a long, heavy sigh. Her posture softened slightly, and she reached out to steady me as I stood up. But with the last shred of my sobriety, I stepped back, avoiding her touch. I wobbled down the hallway into the guest bedroom, shut the door, and turned the lock. I ignored the sound of her hand knocking against the wood, closed my eyes, and fell into a deep, uninterrupted sleep. It was the most peaceful night I’d had in years. When I woke up the next morning, Lauren was sitting on the couch, staring blankly at the TV. Her expression was icy, the silence in the room heavy with her anger. I knew she was waiting for an apology. But I didn’t give her one. I simply washed up, grabbed my keys, and walked out the door. 3 I drove straight to my office and handed in my resignation. The only reason I had taken this job in the first place was because the office was just a ten-minute walk from Lauren’s building. Now, that proximity felt meaningless. My manager tried repeatedly to convince me to stay, offering a raise, but I remained firm. Just a few days ago, I had received an email response to an international application I’d submitted on a whim. I was hired. The position was with a firm that had been my absolute dream since college. Back then, I had turned down their initial offer because Lauren didn’t want to relocate. It felt poetic that the dream was still waiting for me, proving it wasn’t too late to start over. After finalizing my resignation, I spent the afternoon transitioning my projects and called a close friend to share the news. He was thrilled for me, though a quiet beat stretched over the line before he asked, “What about Lauren? Is she moving with you?” I let out a dry, humorless chuckle. “No. Just me. We’re pretty much done.” Once my paperwork at the office was finished, I spent the rest of the day gathering the documents I would need for my visa. Both of my parents had passed away years ago; the only things anchoring me to this city were a handful of friends and Lauren. I used to believe that home was wherever she was. But now, I had no home. I was just driftwood, ready to float wherever the current took me. When I finally returned to the apartment, Lauren was getting ready to head out. Her makeup was immaculate, her legs looking impossibly long in a pair of fitted denim shorts. She was carrying a beautifully packaged birthday cake from an upscale bakery. Of course. It was Chase’s birthday. She was on the phone, her voice light and bubbly. “Stop guessing! If I tell you what the surprise is, it ruins the fun. Just make sure you’re ready when I get there.” Someone on the other end said something that made her let out a bright, genuine laugh, showing her dimples. It was a beautiful smile, the kind of easy warmth she almost never shared with me. She was always ready to give him whatever he wanted, yet she begrudged me even a passing smile. The moment her eyes met mine, her expression instantly went cold. She didn’t say a word, looking away with a flicker of annoyance as she slipped into her heels. The heavy thud of the front door closing echoed through the quiet apartment. I knew what this meant: the silent treatment had officially begun. We had played this game countless times before, and it was always sparked by Chase. In the past, I would have panicked, spending the next few days desperately trying to win back her favor, sending text after text even if she ignored them all. Instead, I sat down at the kitchen island, opened my laptop, and started looking up local recipes from the country I was moving to. I figured I should start practicing now. I needed to get used to the taste of my new life. 4 Later that night, as I lay in bed, I scrolled past a post from Chase on social media: “So grateful that through all the twists and turns of life, you’re still the one by my side.” In the comments, Lauren’s best friend, Chelsea, had written: “This makes me want to cry. I’m just so happy to see Lauren happy.” All of Lauren’s friends had liked the post. They had never hidden their disdain for me; in their eyes, I was merely the inconvenient obstacle standing between Chase and Lauren. They believed she would be infinitely happier if I just vanished from the picture. Then I saw Lauren’s own comment on the post: “Everything is exactly as it’s meant to be.” I stared at their public display of affection, feeling absolutely nothing. Beneath Lauren’s comment, another one of her friends had replied: “Shh, don’t post too much. We don’t want Jesse seeing this. You know how he is—he’ll throw a massive fit.” In the past, whenever I had gently asked Lauren to keep some boundaries with Chase out of respect for our relationship, her friends would label me as petty, controlling, and insecure, accusing me of stripping away her basic right to have friends. Lauren had always stayed silent during those attacks, implicitly agreeing with them, before turning around to tell me I needed to grow up and be more secure. I didn’t give them the satisfaction of a reaction. I quietly closed the app, tossed my phone onto the nightstand, and fell asleep. Hours later, the bedroom door slammed open. Lauren stood in the doorway, her face flushed with anger as she shook me awake. “Jesse, your girlfriend is out in the middle of the night and you don’t even care?” she demanded, her voice shrill. “My friends’ boyfriends have been calling them non-stop to make sure they’re safe. And you? Not a single text, not a single call. What is wrong with you?” 5 I stared up at her, utterly bewildered by her sudden outburst. When I used to call her during her nights out, she would snap at me: “I’m not a child, and I’m not a tool to satisfy your control issues. Give me some space, Jesse, I’m suffocating.” Now, when I finally gave her the freedom she had begged for, she accused me of neglect. I truly had no idea what she wanted from me anymore. But I didn’t want to waste my energy dragging up old arguments. I just pulled the blanket up and said quietly, “You were out celebrating with your friends. I didn’t want to ruin the mood by calling constantly. Besides, you were with Chase. Why wouldn’t I trust you?” Stunned silence hung in the room. She looked at me, her eyes wide, clearly shocked to hear me mention Chase’s name with such casual indifference. She quickly recovered, her expression softening into something defensive. “That post… it was just a trip down memory lane. It didn’t mean anything. Don’t read into it.” I shook my head, about to tell her it was fine, but she cut me off, her defensive walls rising. “What? Are you saying I shouldn’t have gone to his birthday? Jesse, we’ve known each other for ten years. Yes, we dated briefly a lifetime ago, but now we are just good friends. It’s his birthday. It would have been incredibly rude of me not to show up.” I nodded, my voice completely devoid of sarcasm. “I understand. Truly. It’s late, Lauren. You should go get some rest.” Lauren froze. She stared down at me, her eyes searching my face, desperately trying to find a trace of hidden anger or resentment. When she found nothing but empty calm, she slowly reached down, attempting to wrap her arms around my waist. I quietly rolled over, pulling myself out of her reach. Without looking back, I asked, “Are you sleeping in here, or should I take the guest room?” 6 A flicker of hurt and disbelief crossed her features. She wasn’t used to me rejecting her affection; for years, I had been the one begging for even a fraction of her attention. With a sharp, angry huff, she grabbed her pillow, stomped out of the room, and slammed the guest room door behind her. Once she was gone, I drifted off to sleep almost instantly. It was amazing how easy it was to sleep when your mind was finally quiet. The next morning, I received a phone call from my old college mentor, Professor Ward. Somehow, he had caught wind of my plans to move abroad. He insisted on hosting a farewell dinner for me, and though I tried to politely decline, he wouldn’t take no for an answer, proposing a small reunion with a few classmates instead. With the invitation extended so warmly, I couldn’t find a graceful way to refuse. But I never expected Lauren to be there. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised; she had been one of Professor Ward’s favorite students, too. What did surprise me was Chase, who was sitting right next to her. It seemed there was no event too personal or exclusive for her to drag him along. When Lauren saw me walk into the restaurant, she immediately caught my eye and gestured toward the empty seat next to her. I pretended not to see, taking a seat at the opposite end of the table instead. They looked perfectly matched, sitting side-by-side. I had no desire to interrupt. Chase met my gaze, giving me a small, smug smile before quickly masking it with a look of polite concern. “Hey, Jesse,” he said, loud enough for the table to hear. “Sorry for crashing your class reunion. I was just feeling so bored at home, and Lauren was sweet enough to insist I come along.” 7 Lauren opened her mouth to speak, looking nervously at me, but the words seemed to catch in her throat. I raised my glass to Chase, offering a polite, easy smile. “If the Professor doesn’t mind, why would I?” I took a sip of my wine and set the glass down. Throughout the dinner, my phone kept buzzing in my pocket. I finally pulled it out to check. They were texts from Lauren: “I only brought him because he was lonely. Please don’t be mad.” “If it really bothers you, I won’t bring him next time.” The final message read: “Let’s drive home together after this, okay?” I cleared my throat, typed a quick response, and hit send: “No need. Go ahead and take Chase home. I drove myself.” I put my phone face down on the table and focused on my dinner, ignoring the subsequent vibrations in my pocket. The rest of the evening passed in a blur of warm nostalgia. Everyone was laughing, sharing stories of our university days. Professor Ward, his cheeks flushed from the wine, stood up and raised his glass directly to me. “Jesse,” he said, his voice thick with emotion. “Back in college, you were the brightest student in my department. Your dream was always to go abroad, to build a career on the global stage. I was heartbroken when you suddenly decided to stay in the country after graduation.” He paused, smiling warmly at me. “But thank goodness, life has a way of sorting itself out. You’re finally going! You’re finally chasing the dream you always deserved. I couldn’t be prouder of you. Let’s raise a glass to Jesse—wishing you a safe journey, a brilliant career, and a future as bright as you are!” I smiled, deeply moved, and stood up to clink my glass against his, draining it in one go. Across the table, Lauren sat frozen, the color completely draining from her face, as if she had just heard something utterly impossible.

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “516775”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

Theo Prescott drew the Dare: Hand over your phone. The question was simple, cruel, and designed for a crowd: Who in your contacts has received the most ‘I love you’ texts from you? The queen bee of our senior class: 3 times. Me: 972 times. The raucous cheering in the VIP room died instantly. A suffocating vacuum of silence took its place. Kennedy Nathan’s eyes welled with tears. Theo didn’t even blink. He pulled up my contact right there in front of everyone, hit Delete, and then leaned in, a soft, indulgent smile playing on his lips as he coaxed Kennedy. “Is that really worth crying over?” he murmured. “You already knew. I only played house with her for three months. None of those words meant a damn thing.” Those nine hundred and seventy-two I love yous had been sent on a night Theo was blackout drunk. He had crouched on the curb outside a diner, refusing to let his friends pull him up. He just kept his head down, his thumbs flying across the screen, firing those three words to me over and over again. “If I send 999 of them,” he had typed. “The bet is off. We do this for real. Please.” 01 When Theo deleted my number, he didn’t look in my direction. Not even once. The atmosphere in the private karaoke room was eerily quiet. People exchanged complicated glances, their eyes darting toward me with a mixture of pity and morbid curiosity. Kennedy’s soft sobs began to quiet down. “Did you… did you really not like her at all?” Theo reached out, his thumb gently catching a tear on her cheek. He let out a low, breathy laugh. “What are you talking about? I told you, it was just a game.” “Then why did you send her all those messages… You guys were only together for three months.” A microscopic shift occurred in Theo’s expression. His tone cooled, flattening out. “I was wasted. I don’t even remember doing it.” That was all it took. Kennedy was thoroughly appeased. Tonight was the Class President’s birthday bash. After that display, the energy in the room was irrevocably dead. We all forced our way through the cake cutting, and the second it was done, everyone scrambled for excuses to leave, bolting like they’d been pardoned from death row. 02 The venue wasn’t far from my house. I decided to walk, the cool night air biting at my cheeks. As my sneakers hit the pavement, my mind drifted to those 972 texts. Two of them were sent right after we started dating. The other 970 were all sent on the exact same day. The day Theo got drunk. Back then, I didn’t know that my entire relationship was born from a dare. A bet between him and Kennedy. They were childhood friends, running in the same wealthy, country-club circles. He had always loved her, had confessed to her more times than anyone could count. But Kennedy liked keeping him on a leash. She thought a face like Theo’s was too dangerous, too much of a flight risk. She told him he couldn’t give her security. So, six months ago, when he confessed his love yet again, she casually pointed across the classroom to me—the quietest, most invisible girl in our AP Calculus class. “If you really want me,” she had said, “prove it. Date someone random for exactly three months. Don’t catch feelings. The second the clock runs out, you dump her. You pull that off, and I’m yours.” The night Theo got drunk, we had been together for a little over two months. We were at a diner with his friends. One of his buddies was scrolling through TikTok, scoffing at his screen. “Can you believe people actually fall for this manifestation crap? Look at this—it says if you send the person you like 999 ‘I love you’ texts in under fifteen minutes, the universe locks you together forever.” Under the table, Theo squeezed my hand. He took another shot, his face completely unbothered. But the moment we stepped out of the diner, he dropped to a crouch by the curb. His fingers flew across his screen. None of his friends could drag him to his feet. I stood there, looking down at my phone as the screen lit up with notification after notification. I love you. I love you. I love you. I sighed, feeling a helpless sort of fondness. I squatted down beside him, keeping my voice gentle. “Let’s go home, okay? The temperature is dropping. If you stay out in this wind, you’re going to catch a cold.” “Why are you buying into something so childish anyway?” I whispered. “We’re already together.” The harsh, artificial glow of the phone screen illuminated his face. His expression was intensely focused, his thumbs never stopping. “Josie, if I finish all 999 in fifteen minutes,” he typed. “The bet is off. We do this for real. Please.” I was just about to ask him—what bet?—when a voice cut through the night air. “What are you guys doing out here?” For ten minutes, nobody had been able to make Theo stop. But the second that feminine voice rang out, the typing ceased. The last message hovered in his text box, unsent. Kennedy strolled over, her gaze drifting leisurely between Theo and me. “Man, Theo’s being a crazy drunk tonight,” one of his friends groaned. “Nobody can talk sense into him. Good thing you showed up. You’ve known him forever—you give it a shot.” Theo stared at his screen for a second longer. Then, he deleted the unsent text. He locked the phone. The light reflecting in his eyes extinguished instantly. He stood up, his eyelashes lowering, casting long shadows over his cheekbones. “I’m sober,” he muttered. When I instinctively reached out to take his arm, he smoothly, imperceptibly stepped away, dodging my touch. “Let’s go,” he muttered to me. “I’ll take you home.” After that night, he never mentioned those 970 texts again. It was as if the moment had been erased from time. Two weeks later, on my birthday, Theo dumped me. He confessed the whole truth about the bet. I slapped him across the face. He didn’t even flinch. He just stood there, wearing that devastating, bastardly face, and said in a deadpan voice, “Hit me until you feel better. Then we’re even.” 03 The memory severed itself the moment I reached my apartment building. Theo was standing a few yards away. His eyes, dark and bottomless beneath the messy fringe of his hair, were fixed quietly on me. We held each other’s gaze for two agonizing seconds before he looked away. “Oh,” he said, his voice flat. “Took a wrong turn.” I didn’t say a word. I just sidestepped him and kept walking. “Josie.” The faint, unmistakable scent of mint and stale nicotine drifted from his black hoodie. He called out again, stopping me in my tracks. “A month ago… the last time you called me. What did you want to say?” I didn’t answer his question. I only looked at him and said, “We were even the day you let me hit you. From now on, unless it’s strictly about school, it’s best if we pretend the other doesn’t exist.” Theo let out a hollow, self-deprecating laugh. “Right. We’re just classmates who don’t even have each other’s phone numbers anymore. Sorry to bother you, Miss Evans.” His footsteps grew fainter. The streetlight stretched his tall silhouette into a long, distorted shadow against the pavement until, bit by bit, it melted entirely into the dusk. When the cliff-drop breakup happened, I spent days wandering around like a ghost. I spent most of my classes staring blankly out the window. To make matters worse, my period had come early that month. The cramps were blinding, radiating a heavy, dragging pain through my abdomen, triggering a brutal migraine. I had stayed after school for cleanup duty, and by the time I finished, the entire wing was completely deserted. I collapsed onto a desk, paralyzed by the pain. In a state of pure, thoughtless desperation, I dialed Theo’s number. “Hello?” It was Theo’s voice—clear, familiar, sending a pathetic jolt of relief through me. But then, immediately after: “Theo, let me answer it for you, okay?” A second later, the girl’s voice filled the speaker. “Josie, right? Did you need something from Theo? He’s right here beside me. You can just say it, he’s listening.” It was Kennedy. The fog in my brain vanished, replaced by a bucket of ice water. I hung up the phone without a word. I lay my head on the cold desk, riding out the wave of pain until I could finally force myself to stand up and walk out. The campus security guard looked at me in shock as I limped toward the gates. “Still kids here at this hour?” I tried to force a polite smile. I couldn’t make my mouth work. 04 The Class President’s party had been on a Friday night. I genuinely thought the sting of being publicly deleted from his phone would haunt me for weeks. In reality, I woke up Saturday morning and barely thought about it. Monday rolled around. Before first period, I stopped at my usual neighborhood coffee cart near the school for a bagel and a latte. The owner, a sweet older man, peered over my shoulder and teased, “Morning, kiddo! Brought the boyfriend around for coffee again, I see.” I froze. “What?” I followed his line of sight. I ended up staring dead into Theo’s eyes. Kennedy popped her head out from behind his shoulder, beaming. “You guessed wrong, sir! He’s my boyfriend.” The owner looked at me, then at Theo, clearly mortified. Kennedy, sensing the awkwardness and thriving in it, offered a sickly-sweet explanation. “You definitely misunderstood before. That little thing they had going on? It was just a game of Truth or Dare. Totally fake. I’m his one and only.” “Oh, you kids!” The owner laughed nervously, desperate to change the subject. “Well, last time Theo brought me a coffee from your competitor down the street, and honestly? Mine’s better.” Kennedy immediately charmed him. “Of course yours is! I told my dad to order a hundred of your pastries for his corporate office just to let them taste real quality.” The owner waved his hands, entirely won over. “You’re too kind, sweetheart.” That was Kennedy’s superpower. She wasn’t just stunningly beautiful. Despite being born into massive wealth, she played the approachable, down-to-earth girl perfectly. She was bubbly, understanding, and completely magnetic. Half the boys in our senior class were in love with her, and the girls fought viciously for a spot in her inner circle. I grabbed my latte, tapped my phone to pay, and turned to leave. Suddenly, a hand clamped down on my wrist, yanking me backward. Right in front of me was the espresso machine’s steaming wand. A violent hiss of boiling water shot out, hitting the exact empty space where my arm had been a split second before. Theo’s grip on my wrist tightened. His eyes were dark, almost stormy. “Still haven’t fixed that habit of walking without looking?” Kennedy’s smile turned brittle. I snatched my arm back. “Thanks.” Then I walked away, leaving them both behind. 05 The only thing worse than not being able to avoid Theo in the hallways was being forced to sit next to him in AP Bio. I had barely settled into my seat when Theo and his crew walked into the classroom. Catching him in my periphery, I kept my head down, pushed my chair in, and made myself as small as possible so he could slide past me. He slipped into the seat beside mine. For the entire duration, we didn’t exchange a single glance. Kennedy strolled over, leaning heavily against the edge of our lab table. “Theo, the seating chart changes next week. Let’s grab that table by the window in the third row, yeah?” Theo was rhythmically tapping his pen against the black countertop. He didn’t stop. “Sure,” he muttered, sounding completely indifferent. Kennedy turned to me, offering a painfully dramatic sigh as she patted my shoulder. “Oh, Josie. I have the worst news. I just found out everyone else in the class has already paired up. And since we have an odd number of students… it looks like you’re going to be sitting all by yourself for the next two months.” The tapping of Theo’s pen came to an abrupt halt. I didn’t look up. I just kept erasing a mistake on my worksheet and said softly, “That’s fine.” A few minutes after Kennedy flounced back to her seat, Theo suddenly reached over and violently shoved the window next to us wide open. The guy sitting behind us, our varsity track captain, let out a yelp. “Bro! What the hell? You just blew my notes everywhere!” Theo let his heavy eyelids drop, his expression bored. “It’s too suffocating in here.” 06 I was counting the seconds until the seating chart changed. When Friday finally arrived, I let out a massive breath of relief. During the passing period, the entire school was buzzing with a single topic: the new transfer student. “Who transfers in the middle of senior year?” “I don’t know, but I overheard them talking in the main office. It’s a guy, and I saw a glimpse of his file. Holy shit, he is gorgeous.” “Gorgeous how? Better-looking than Theo?” “Honestly? It’s a tight race.” “Wait, if we have a new guy, that makes the class numbers even. Nobody has to sit alone.” I tuned it out. As long as I was far away from Theo, I didn’t care if I was seated next to a serial killer. By the time the final bell rang, the oppressive grey sky had finally broken, unleashing a torrential downpour. It was my turn for homeroom cleanup duty, so I left the building nearly an hour after everyone else. When I reached the main double doors, the rain was coming down in sheets. I didn’t have an umbrella, so I stood in the vestibule, waiting for a break in the storm. Theo and Kennedy jogged into my line of sight. They were sprinting back from the parking lot. Theo had his varsity jacket draped over Kennedy’s head to shield her from the rain. She pulled a few tissues from her bag and stood on her tiptoes, carefully dabbing at his soaked hair. “I am so, so sorry. This is all my fault. I just had to go feed that stray cat near the bleachers, and now you’re freezing.” Theo tilted his head slightly away from her touch. “It’s fine. I got it.” The rain was only getting heavier. The security guard came jangling a massive ring of keys, shooing us out. “Shift’s over, kids. Building’s getting locked. Time to head home.” The bus stop was a solid ten-minute walk from the campus gates. Making a run for it meant getting drenched to the bone. My eyes landed on the small security booth by the front gates. The roof had a slight overhang—just enough space to huddle under and stay dry. I hugged my backpack tight against my chest and bolted into the rain. “Josie.” 07 I thought I heard Theo call my name. But the roar of the rain swallowed it up instantly. I figured I must have imagined it. It was rush hour. The absolute worst time to try and get an Uber. The app told me I was 57th in the queue. I let out a miserable sigh, praying the wind wouldn’t pick up. If the rain started coming in sideways, this little overhang wasn’t going to save me. A moment later, Kennedy and Theo walked over. Theo had apparently dug a spare rain poncho out of his locker. As if on cue, the wind began to howl. Icy, needle-like rain slanted viciously under the awning, hitting my legs and arms. Even with my back pressed flat against the brick wall of the security booth, my clothes were quickly soaking through. Theo looked up, his eyes landing on me. Without a word, he started to shrug off the poncho. He took two steps in my direction. Then, behind him, came the sharp, unmistakable sound of plastic tearing. Kennedy blinked, looking the picture of innocence. “Oh no! I accidentally ripped my umbrella on the gate. Theo, let me wear the poncho, please? I’m so cold.” Theo’s back went rigid. He stood frozen for a few agonizing seconds, his knuckles white as he gripped the plastic. Then, he handed it to Kennedy. “You’re the absolute best boyfriend!” she cooed. “I’ll just wrap the broken umbrella around my shoes so they don’t get ruined. Puddle water is so gross, I can’t bear to let it touch me.” She bundled herself up tightly, fully protected from the elements. Then she turned to me with a brilliant, sympathetic smile. “Do I look like a giant marshmallow?” she giggled. “Josie, you should really press yourself further back against the wall. That way you won’t get too wet.” 08 The sky looked like it was trying to drown the city. My phone screen was slick with rain. My fingers were blue and stiff with cold as I wiped the glass against my damp shirt and unlocked it. Seven people left ahead of me in the queue. I couldn’t stop shivering. I finally just dropped into a crouch, hugging my knees to conserve whatever body heat I had left. Kennedy wrapped her arms around Theo from behind. “If I stand like this, I can block the wind for you. Then you won’t get as wet.” Theo peeled her arms off him. “I’m fine. Just stand on your own so you stay dry.” He stood perfectly still, his eyes locked onto the misty, unrelenting downpour. The rain battered his shoulders, the water sliding down his pale skin and dripping rhythmically from his fingertips. A few minutes later, a sleek black SUV pulled up to the curb. It wasn’t my Uber. It was the Prescott family’s private driver. Theo turned to look at me. “Get in. We’ll drop you off.” Kennedy let out a soft, dramatic sound of disappointment. “It’s already so late. And Josie lives so far out of the way. I really just want a hot shower.” Theo’s eyes snapped to her. “Kennedy. She’s been in our class for three years.” Stung by the sharpness in his gaze, Kennedy forced a tight laugh. “I didn’t say we couldn’t take her! I just never knew my boyfriend was such a bleeding heart for his classmates.” Headlights pierced the rain in the distance. I squinted at the license plate as it approached. It was my ride. I stood up, my joints popping in the cold. “No thanks. My car is here.” Without looking back, I ran for the silver sedan and pulled the door shut behind me. As the car pulled away, Kennedy’s airy voice drifted through the rain. “Well, looks like she doesn’t care much for your charity.” By the time I got home and took a scalding shower, I had two missed calls from an unknown local number. A second later, the same number called again. I answered. Theo’s voice came through the receiver. “I’m downstairs.” I marched over to my bedroom window and looked down at the street. “Why are you here?” “I brought you cold medicine.” “I don’t need it. I can buy my own. Go home. I’m hanging up.” Theo’s tone didn’t shift. “Or, I can just come up to your door.” It was late, and my parents were in the living room watching TV. Panic flared in my chest. I threw on a hoodie and practically sprinted down the stairs. I pushed open the lobby doors. Theo tossed a pharmacy bag at my chest. I caught it by reflex. “Josie,” he said, the corner of his mouth lifting in a faint, bitter smirk. “Didn’t you say you just wanted to be ordinary classmates?” He stepped closer. “Do you run away from all your classmates like they’re a plague?” Before I could even process the audacity of the question, he turned and walked away. I stood under the flickering awning light, staring at his retreating back, utterly baffled as to why he was the one acting angry. 09 Monday morning. I walked into homeroom and dropped the unopened bag of cold medicine squarely onto Theo’s desk. Our homeroom teacher had already taped the new seating chart to the whiteboard. Following the diagram, I packed up my things and began migrating my books across the room before the bell rang. Everyone was settled into their new spots by the time the morning announcements crackled over the PA. Our teacher stepped up to the podium, clapping her hands. “Alright, listen up. We have a new student joining us today. Come on in, Kieran.” A guy walked through the door. A collective, suppressed gasp rippled through the room. “Holy shit…” someone whispered behind me. “He’s even better looking than the picture I saw on the counselor’s desk.” The teacher scanned the room and pointed to the empty desk right beside me. “Kieran, you can take that seat. If you have any questions about the syllabus, just ask your partner.” He dropped his bag and slid into the chair. I stared at the side of his face for two full seconds. He looked… intensely familiar. 10 Kieran and I didn’t exchange a single word all morning. He exuded an aura of chilled exhaustion, practically radiating a “Do Not Disturb” sign. The last period before lunch was P.E. Kieran was immediately recruited by the varsity guys to play a pickup game of basketball. I sat on the bleachers a little ways off, my eyes involuntarily tracking him across the court. The longer I looked, the more the pieces clicked together. I didn’t even notice how seamlessly he was passing the ball to Theo. Then, like a lightning strike, it hit me. The day I had my excruciating period cramps. The day I called Theo, only to hear Kennedy’s voice. After leaving the school that day, I was completely drained. I managed to drag myself onto a crowded city bus. The driver slammed on the brakes, and my knees nearly gave out. I would have hit the floor if a hand hadn’t shot out and grabbed my arm. A guy stood up from his seat. “Here. Sit down.” “Thank you,” I had mumbled. My vision was swimming, and I hadn’t even looked at his face. A few stops later, a middle-aged man boarded. He stood directly in front of me, his stomach bulging so far out it threatened to pop the buttons off his shirt. I had to press my spine flat against the window just to avoid touching him. Seeing this, the guy who gave up his seat smoothly maneuvered himself right into the gap between me and the older man. The suffocating smell of stale cigarettes and alcohol was instantly replaced by the clean, sharp scent of pine and fresh laundry. I had gently tugged at his sleeve. He tilted his head down to look at me. I offered him a sincere, exhausted “Thank you” again. He just gave a low “Mm,” turned back around, and kept scrolling on his phone. Now, watching him shoot a three-pointer on the court, I realized that guy was Kieran. Later on that bus ride, the crowd had gotten denser. My eyelids felt like lead, and I ended up dozing against the glass. When the bus stopped a while later, Kieran had straightened up. I assumed he was getting off. I forced myself awake. “Are you tired? You can take your seat back. Thanks for letting me rest.” I had tried to stand, but Kieran just pressed a hand to my shoulder, gently forcing me back down. “Don’t worry about it. Go back to sleep.” I did. I slept through most of the route, waking up groggily a few times, always seeing him standing there, standing guard. By the time we reached the end of the line, the bus had emptied out, and he was gone. 11 I decided I needed to buy Kieran lunch to properly thank him. The lunch bell rang, and I practically jogged over to the gym doors to catch him. He was surrounded by a crowd. Theo tossed a bottle of water to him. “Man, it’s been way too long. Dinner tonight? On me.” Kennedy leaned in, handing Kieran a fresh towel. “Dinner is on us, actually.” She heavily emphasized the us. Kieran caught the towel, wiping the sweat from his neck. “Oh, you two finally made it official? Couldn’t really tell.” I froze in my tracks. It felt like someone had shoved a fistful of wet cotton down my throat. For a second, I literally couldn’t breathe. Kennedy spotted me hovering near the doors. She tilted her head, feigning innocence. “Josie? Are you looking for someone?” Every eye in the group snapped to me. I opened my mouth, struggling to find my voice. “No. Nobody.” I turned on my heel and walked away as fast as dignity allowed. Seeing Kennedy and Kieran chatting so comfortably, with such easy familiarity… it triggered something awful in me. Like emotional PTSD. My hands started shaking. I thought back to the bus ride. The coincidence of it all. My mind went to the darkest possible place. Was it planned? Was he like Theo? Did he like Kennedy too? Was this just another game, another dare orchestrated by her to make a fool out of me? I would never, ever forget the day Theo broke up with me. The utter devastation of him sitting there, telling me it was a prank. I had begged him, reached for his hand, told him not to joke like that. He had yanked his hand away. He said I was delusional. He told me he was doing a chore. “Dating you was literally a homework assignment for me,” he had said. “The three months are up. Assignment submitted. Now let’s be adults about this—how much do you want? What kind of compensation is going to make you go away?” The memory violently pulled me back to the present. I looked down and realized my fists were clenched so tight that my fingernails had drawn half-moon crescents in my palms. Once the panic subsided, only one clear thought remained in my head: Stay the hell away from Kieran Maxwell.

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Since I was a kid, I’ve been able to share my best friend’s vision. To see exactly what he saw, through his eyes. I’d always thought it was a useless superpower. A party trick without a party. Until the night of his wedding, when he vanished. Every shred of evidence pointed to a classic runaway groom—that he’d packed up and fled with a mistress. His fiancée, Patricia, cried like her entire world had crumbled into ash. Even his own parents cursed him, calling him selfish and ungrateful. Our friends tried to console her, murmuring the usual hollow platitudes: “You deserve better. He wasn’t worth it. There are other fish in the sea.” I didn’t say a word. Instead, I closed my eyes and connected to his sight one more time. And what I saw was… The dark, putrid depths of a riverbed. 1 It started when I was about seven or eight. I discovered that if I covered my eyes and conjured his face in my mind, the world would shift. When I opened my eyes, I’d be looking at a reality that wasn’t mine. The first time it happened, I saw a messy, illegible handwriting on a lined notebook. I blinked, pulled my hands away, and looked to my right. There was Wyatt, my childhood best friend, sitting at the kitchen table, struggling with his spelling homework in that exact same messy scrawl. It was thrilling. We spent years treating it like our own secret playground. Whenever the teacher called me to the blackboard to solve an equation I didn’t know, Wyatt would quietly open his textbook to the correct page under his desk, guiding my hand through his eyes. During neighborhood games of hide-and-seek, I always knew exactly which oak tree or dusty basement corner he was hiding behind. During midterms, I’d peek at his answers—though honestly, it didn’t do us much good. We were both mediocre students at best. Two failing grades don’t make an A. I used to tease him, wishing he’d been born a genius so I could at least pass calculus. But we never figured out why I could only connect to Wyatt. Nobody else. Just him. After years of trying to make sense of it, we finally chalked it up to something simpler, maybe even a little sentimental: we were just soulmates of a different kind, bound by a frequency only we could hear. Then we grew up. And Wyatt got his first real girlfriend. I remember him texting me at one in the morning: “Hey, Jesse. Guess what I’m looking at right now?” I closed my eyes. “A cheap motel room,” I muttered into the phone. “And?” “A bathroom mirror. Steam.” “Get specific.” “…Definitely not PG-13.” I snapped my eyes open, my heart hammering against my ribs, and literally fell off my bed with a loud thud. On the other end of the line, Wyatt laughed so hard he sounded like he was choking. I cursed him out, calling him a maniac. But he just chuckled, his voice warm through the receiver. “Hey, you’ve been piggybacking on my eyes for tag and pop quizzes since we were kids. Fair is fair. You still got the guts to spy on me?” From that night on, Wyatt set a hard boundary. Unless he explicitly asked me to, I was banned from logging into his sight. I understood. Love requires privacy. But if I’m being entirely honest, I never liked Patricia. It wasn’t because she was mean. It was because she was too good to him. Devoted to a fault, perfect to the point of clinical. She was the textbook definition of the selfless, long-suffering partner. But to me, a woman who loves without boundaries, who accommodates every flaw without a single flicker of human irritation… it felt unnatural. It defied human nature. I kept my skepticism to myself. Whenever I dropped a hint, Wyatt would just laugh and tease me about being perpetually single. “You’ve never been in love, Jesse. When you find it, you’ll get it. Patricia is the best thing that ever happened to me.” Because he was happy, I swallowed my doubts. Right up until their wedding day. The ceremony Patricia planned was lavish, flawless in its execution. She handled every vendor, every minor crisis, shielding Wyatt from the stress. All Wyatt had to do was show up in his tuxedo and look handsome. Despite my reservations, seeing him smile at the altar made me genuinely happy. I wanted him to have the life he envisioned. That night, after a grueling day of playing best man, I should have collapsed into sleep the second my head hit the pillow. Instead, I tossed and turned, a strange, restless energy humming under my skin. I wanted to see how he was doing. Just a quick peek into his wedded bliss. So, I let myself slip into his eyes. But the perspective was wrong. It was jarring, violent, tilting wildly in the dark. A cold shiver raced down my spine. What is he doing? A second later, Patricia’s face filled his field of vision. It was too close, her features distorted by the proximity. “Wyatt,” she whispered, her voice dripping with something heavy. “I am going to love you forever.” I sat frozen in the dark, my breath caught in my throat, trying to rationalize it. Just some weird, intense wedding-night intimacy, I told myself, my cheeks burning. I quickly severed the connection, feeling like an intruder. But there was a detail I failed to process in my embarrassment. Throughout the entire exchange, Wyatt hadn’t spoken a single word. He hadn’t even breathed. It wasn’t until the next afternoon, when the police knocked on my door to report Wyatt Cooper missing, that the icy reality finally settled into my bones. It wasn’t a romantic wedding night. I had just witnessed his murder in real-time. Wyatt. My brother in everything but blood. I had been right there. I had the keys to his eyes. I could have saved him if I hadn’t been so blind, so stupidly polite. Instead, I watched him die and felt embarrassed. That realization became a physical ache, a self-loathing so sharp it made me sick. 2 Everyone was drowning Patricia in sympathy. The local media painted her as the tragic heroine, the devoted first love abandoned at the finish line. The Nation’s Most Heartbroken Bride, one headline read. Wyatt’s father bowed his head in shame, his voice cracking as he spoke to Patricia. “My son is a coward. I am so sorry for what he did to you.” His mother, consumed by rage and humiliation, disowned him on the spot. “He is selfish. Ignorant. I don’t have a son anymore.” Patricia merely offered a sad, martyr-like smile, shaking her head. “Mrs. Cooper, please don’t say that,” she murmured, her voice soft and trembling. “Wyatt didn’t do anything wrong. He just didn’t love me enough. If running away makes him happy, that’s all that matters to me. You will always be my mother.” Wyatt’s mother clutched her hands, weeping. “You sweet girl. He didn’t deserve you.” Standing in the corner of their living room, my stomach churned. He didn’t deserve her? How could she stand there and put on this grotesque performance? Without a word, I turned on my heel and walked straight to the precinct. Detective Briggs was heading the missing persons case. “Patricia killed him,” I told him, my hands gripping the edge of his desk. “On their wedding night. He didn’t run away. He’s dead.” Briggs stared at me for a long beat, his expression a mix of pity and exhaustion. “Do you have evidence?” The word died in my throat. How could I tell him I saw it through a psychic link? He’d have me committed before I could finish the sentence. “Just trust me,” I pleaded. “She killed him. I know it.” Because a report had been filed, Patricia was called in for questioning. When she saw me sitting in the waiting area, her eyes widened in soft surprise. “Jesse?” “She did it!” I yelled, stepping toward her, my voice cracking. “She’s the one!” Detective Briggs sighed, stepping between us. Patricia looked at the detective with an apologetic wince. “I’m sorry, Detective. I didn’t mean for him to cause a scene.” She reached out to touch my arm, but I violently yanked it back. “Don’t touch me! Get away from me!” She didn’t get angry. Her eyes remained swimming with gentle, maternal tolerance. “Jesse, I know you’re worried about Wyatt. I wanted nothing more than to marry him, to build a life together. But we can’t force him to stay. If he wanted to leave, we have to let him go.” I stared deep into her eyes. “I know what you did.” She froze for a fraction of a second. Around us, the whispers started. “Isn’t that the groom’s best friend? Why is he acting like a lunatic?” “Must be in denial. His buddy ditched his bride, and now he’s trying to blame her.” “Some friend.” Wyatt’s mother suddenly pushed through the crowd, her face twisted in fury. She shoved me back, stepping protectively in front of Patricia. “Is this your doing?!” she shrieked at me. “You’re the one who convinced my son to run, aren’t you?!” “I know you’ve always hated Patricia! You’ve been trying to poison his mind against her for years! Did you help him pack? Did you drive him to the airport?!” The crowd’s stares turned venomous. “Unbelievable. He’s trying to frame the poor girl to cover his own tracks.” “With friends like that, who needs enemies?” My body went rigid. “No, Mrs. Cooper, that’s not true—” She poked her finger hard into my chest. “My boy was gentle. He would never have had the guts to pull a stunt like this on his own! You whispered in his ear! You destroyed his life! Give me back my son!” Wyatt’s father stood behind her, his gaze cold with disgust. “Unprincipled,” he spat. Patricia sighed, her eyes welling with fresh tears. “Mr. and Mrs. Cooper, please. Don’t blame Jesse. He was Wyatt’s best friend. He’s just fiercely loyal to him. I understand.” On the surface, it was an act of grace. But in reality, she had just cemented my role as Wyatt’s accomplice. She had painted a narrative where I helped him flee and was now desperate to deflect blame onto her. A bystander scoffed. “Some people have no shame.” Patricia lowered her head, looking utterly defeated. “I don’t hold a grudge, Jesse. But please, stop wasting the detective’s time.” My fists clenched so hard my knuckles turned white. “You’re a phenomenal actress. But I will find the proof.” She had fooled everyone. Everyone except me. Wyatt’s mother grabbed my collar, her face inches from mine, trembling with rage. “Have you no shame? When will you stop torturing this girl?” “You ruined his wedding, you helped him abandon his life, and now you want to drag her name through the mud?” She broke down, sobbing hysterically. “If it wasn’t for you, my son would be happy right now! You ruined everything! What did we ever do to you?!!” I looked at her, the words of explanation dissolving on my tongue. Wyatt’s father pulled his wife back, his eyes dead as he looked at me. “We took you in like a second son, Jesse. We were wrong about you. Don’t ever speak to us again.” The words felt like a physical blow. The Coopers had practically raised me. Every birthday, every holiday, I had a place at their table. Now, that door was slammed shut forever. Detective Briggs placed a heavy, sympathetic hand on my shoulder. “That’s enough, kid. Go home.” The security footage from the gated community showed Wyatt leaving on foot in the middle of the night. He was wearing a hood, carrying a duffel bag, and getting into an unmarked cab. His passport, his credit cards, his watch, the family gold—all gone. He had even left a typed note of apology. It was a textbook runaway-groom scenario, perfectly packaged and ready for a file cabinet. Briggs sighed. “I know you’re hurting. But theories aren’t evidence.” Fine. If theories weren’t evidence, I would have to go out and dig up the truth myself. 3 Back home, I locked myself in my room and closed my eyes. I replayed the memory of that night. Once, twice, forty-eight times. On the forty-ninth time, a tiny detail clicked. The timestamp in my head was roughly 11:10 PM. But in Patricia’s official statement to the police, she claimed she was in the main ballroom of the hotel, making rounds and drinking champagne with her extended family. Yet, I had seen her face through Wyatt’s eyes. I sat up straight, my heart racing. Her alibi was a lie. But how had she pulled it off? The ballroom was packed. How did she slip away unnoticed, and how could she have been in two places at once? I paced the hardwood floor of my apartment, my thoughts spinning. The first step was finding Wyatt. Or rather, his body. Without a body, Patricia was untouchable. Suddenly, my phone buzzed. A barrage of notifications flooded my screen. Someone had filmed the confrontation at the police station and posted it online. The comments were brutal: “Look at this guy, blindly defending a cheating coward.” “Birds of a feather. He’s probably just as toxic.” “Enabling his friend’s affair and then gaslighting the heartbroken fiancée? Disgusting.” “This is why men’s friends are the worst. They hate seeing their buddies settle down with a good woman. He was probably jealous of how perfect Patricia was.” I swiped the screen black, ignoring the noise. I closed my eyes and focused, conjuring Wyatt’s face in the dark. The vision returned. The murky, foul-smelling water. This was where she had put him. The water was thick with silt and algae, tiny fish darting through the gloom. It was impossible to see anything clearly. Where was he? I pulled up a map of the county, drawing a ten-mile circle around the wedding venue. For her to slip out of the reception, kill him, dispose of him, and get back without raising suspicion, the location couldn’t be far. The storm drains? Too easily searched. The popular hiking trail along Whispering Pines? Too much foot traffic. My pen hovered over the final option. The Stillwater River, running behind the ridge. Secluded. Unmonitored. Empty at night. My throat tightened. I grabbed my keys and went back to the precinct. “I need to file a report.” 4 Detective Briggs rubbed his temples, looking thoroughly annoyed as he pulled out his notepad. “What is it this time, Jesse?” I kept my voice steady. “I know where she put the body.” Briggs’s pen paused. He gave me a sharp, warned look. “Making false reports is a felony.” “I know. But I’m telling the truth.” His jaw tightened. “Alright. Where?” I took a deep breath and laid out my deductions, pointing to the specific, secluded bends of the Stillwater River. A junior officer nearby let out a sharp chuckle. “Nice story. Very cinematic.” A young clerk rolled her eyes. “He thinks he’s Sherlock Holmes. Probably wants to take the police report to get clout on social media. I’ve seen this a hundred times.” I ignored them. I grabbed Briggs’s hand, my fingers digging into his sleeve. “Just check. Please. Just one look.” “It’s right down the road. If I’m wrong, what do you lose? A couple of hours?” “Instead of assuming I’m crazy, go look! That is a human being we are talking about! Why won’t you just look?!” The clerk started to snap at me, but Briggs raised a hand, silencing her. He stared at me, a mixture of pity and resignation in his eyes. “One last time, Jesse. That’s it.” 5 By the riverbank. A dozen officers and search-and-rescue K9 units combed the muddy banks of the Stillwater. Minutes stretched into hours. My anxiety flared. Why hadn’t they found him? I closed my eyes. The vision was still the same—dark, murky water. He was definitely in the water. Suddenly, headlights cut through the dark. Car doors slammed, and Patricia and Wyatt’s mother came rushing down the bank. Before I could even speak, a sharp, stinging blow landed on my cheek. My face burned, my vision blurring for a second. Wyatt’s mother was shaking with rage. “Are you happy now?!” “Are you going to stop when you’ve gotten Patricia fired from her job? When you’ve completely ruined her life?!” “If you have any respect left for this family, you will tell the detective to drop this ridiculous search right now! And you will get on your knees and apologize to her!” Patricia’s eyes flickered, a dark, calculating glint passing through them. “Mrs. Cooper, please. It’s okay. Jesse is just confused by grief.” I spat a copper taste of blood onto the grass, locking my eyes onto Patricia. “You know he’s down there,” I whispered. “That’s why you brought her here. To make a scene and stop them from digging. Am I right?” At the word water, a micro-expression of panic flashed across Patricia’s face. It was incredibly brief, but I caught it. She’s terrified. Just then, Detective Briggs walked back up from the riverbank, the search dogs trailing behind him. I looked at him with desperate hope. Patricia, too, turned to watch him. But Briggs’s face was grim, his eyes carrying a cold, dismissive pity. My stomach dropped. “Nothing,” Briggs said, his voice flat. “We dragged the riverbed. There’s nothing down there.” I saw Patricia’s shoulders visibly drop, a subtle sigh escaping her lips. “That’s impossible!” I screamed, my voice cracking. “Did you actually search? You couldn’t have!” The junior officer scoffed, stepping forward. “How many times do we have to humiliate ourselves for you, kid?” “If you’re so sure, why don’t you dive in yourself? We shouldn’t have wasted our time on a lunatic.” Briggs’s expression hardened. “Mr. Jesse, we searched the entire stretch. There isn’t a body. There isn’t even a stray tire. There’s nothing.” “We’re packing up.” As the officers walked past me, one of them intentionally clipped my shoulder. “Nice try, kid.” My mind scrambled. I couldn’t understand it. The murky water. The weeds. The silt. I had seen it. I know it was water. How could he not be there? Where did I go wrong? I sank to my knees, clawing at my hair in frustration. Think, damn it, think! “He’s completely lost his mind,” someone muttered in the distance. At those words, I froze. A sudden, violent realization hit me like a physical blow. The fog in my mind vanished, leaving a terrifying clarity. Of course. Why the river was empty. Why Wyatt had vanished. How Patricia had bypassed the cameras. I let out a harsh, breathless laugh. “Stop!” I yelled, standing up. “Stop acting! I know where he is!” “He’s been right in front of us the entire time!”

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I spent five years with Isaac. He was one of the top astrophotographers in the world. But I never once asked him to take me with him on a shoot. I stayed behind because of the rule he constantly hammered into me: “The absolute law of astrophotography is zero light pollution. A single flash of a phone screen can ruin an entire night’s long exposure.” So for five years, I never dared to send him even the simplest text. Not even a “Did you make it?” I was terrified that the screen’s brief glow would destroy his masterpiece. I just waited at home. Every time he set off for some frozen mountain or barren desert, I folded a paper star. Inside each strip of paper, I scribbled the quiet, anxious thoughts I was too afraid to send him. “Bundle up, it’s windy.” “Come home safe.” Five years. One thousand and ninety-six stars, filling three glass jars. He never opened a single one. Last week, his name was announced as a finalist for the International Astrophotography Awards. I was so happy for him. I went to the official website to look at his entry. The photograph was titled “Light”. Right in the center of the frame stood his assistant, Daphne. She was wearing a bright red parka, holding a sparkler, her laugh loud and uninhibited. The judge’s commentary read: “The photographer knowingly abandoned a once-in-a-lifetime comet to dedicate the entire exposure to the subject in the frame.” It turned out his world wasn’t hostile to light. It just didn’t have room for mine. That night, I poured all one thousand and ninety-six stars out of their jars. I unfolded them, one by one, and read every single word out loud. I read them to myself. And then, I burned them. When dawn broke, I washed those three glass jars until they were spotless and lined them up neatly on top of his hard-shell lens cases. The universe was meant to hold ten thousand tons of starlight. I shouldn’t have spent my life waiting on the periphery of someone else’s lens, hoping for a stray beam. …… The next day, Isaac’s interview was scheduled for three in the afternoon. That morning, he set up his backdrop fabric and meticulously arranged his high-end lenses on the wall by focal length. “National Geographic is coming to do the profile,” he said, not looking up. “Clear the clutter out of the living room.” The clutter was my books. And those three empty glass jars. I carried my books to the bedroom. When I walked back out, he had already shoved the three jars into a dusty corner, his face tight with irritation. “Why are we keeping these cheap jars anyway? They look awful. I don’t want them in the frame.” “Just leave them for now,” I said softly. He didn’t ask again. The journalist arrived at exactly three. Isaac had changed into the black button-down I’d ironed for him last week and sat down at his workstation. I sat at the kitchen island, wrapping my hands around a mug of tea that had already gone cold. “Isaac, “Light” has stunned everyone. Can you tell us about the night you captured it?” the reporter asked. Isaac leaned back, his posture relaxing as his voice took on a slow, practiced cadence. “The ideal viewing window that night was supposed to be for a comet that only passes Earth once every seventy years. But it was freezing on the summit—well below zero.” “My assistant, Daphne, was shivering so hard she could barely stand. She lit a sparkler just to feel some warmth. And the moment that spark flared, I suddenly realized… those dead rocks in the sky, tens of thousands of light-years away, couldn’t compare to the warmth of the living light right in front of me.” The reporter let out a soft gasp. “But everyone in the industry knows you have a golden rule. Absolute zero light pollution.” Isaac smiled, his eyes softening with a tenderness I had never seen directed at me. “Rules are just concepts. When that light illuminated her face, I was more than willing to break every single one of them.” Five years. I had kept watch through over a thousand pitch-black nights. Yet, because someone else was cold, he had willingly ignited the brightest, most piercing spark. The reporter flipped through her notes, her eyes drifting over to me. “And what does your partner think of your career, Isaac? I imagine it takes an incredible amount of understanding to support this kind of lifestyle.” Isaac followed her gaze, his expression instantly flattening back into indifference. “She doesn’t really understand photography, or how demanding this life can be. But she’s quiet. She knows how to stay out of the way.” Beneath the kitchen island, my right hand curled into a tight, trembling fist. Five years ago, my own portfolio of deep-space photography had won a national gold medal. I, too, had once hauled heavy telephoto lenses through blizzards, keeping watch until dawn. But then he told me that a home didn’t need two photographers. He said he needed a solid anchor. To preserve his “pure, uncompromised art,” I locked my camera in a cabinet. I shrank myself, fading into the background to become the live-in housekeeper he now dismissed as “clueless.” He had truly forgotten. After showing the reporter out, Isaac paused at the door of his study. “Upload the photos from the external hard drive to the cloud tonight. Daphne needs them for the upcoming gallery book.” He shut the door before I could answer. I opened my laptop and plugged in the drive. My phone buzzed. An email from the “Icelandic Observatory Journal”. “Dear Iris, we recently revisited your early portfolio. Your intuitive eye for the cosmos is exactly the creative soul we have been searching for. The position of Chief Astrophotographer remains yours if you want it. Have you given it any more thought?” I stared at the screen, my fingertips turning cold. Someone half a world away still recognized my light, while the man who slept beside me saw me as nothing more than a convenient maid. I bypassed the cloud drive link and clicked reply. “Thank you for keeping the offer open. Please give me three days, and I will have my decision.” The next morning, Isaac tossed a Manila envelope onto the dining table. “The publisher needs twenty select photos for a special feature. Pull them from the drive for me.” “You want me to choose?” “You took those photography classes back in the day, didn’t you? You know the basics of composition and lighting. I have to coordinate with the award committee, I don’t have time.” I opened the drive. The candidate folder contained over three hundred photos. Every single one of them was of Daphne. No star trackers, no celestial charts. Just Daphne wrapped in a sleeping bag watching the sunrise. Daphne kneeling by a stream to wash her hands, her profile bathed in golden hour light. Each shot was meticulously color-graded. I knew photography. I knew exactly what went into these. These three hundred images had been captured with profound, aching devotion. In our five years together, Isaac had never taken a single photo of me. He always said his lens was not meant for portraits—only the cosmos. I spent two hours selecting the twenty most technically perfect shots. Isaac came out of his study and flipped through my selection. “Good. These are exactly the angles I would have picked.” He grabbed the drive and headed for the front door, stopping at the threshold. “Oh, by the way, each photo needs a brief caption for the book. Draft them up for me, will you? Daphne isn’t great with words.” He wanted me to write the love letters to another woman’s portraits. “Sure,” I heard myself say, my voice entirely flat. He closed the door behind him. I opened the first file. It was a high-altitude plateau, deep winter, below zero. Daphne stood in the snow. Isaac had slipped his own heated gloves onto her hands. She was laughing, her face bright and untroubled. I stared at those gloved hands, then slowly looked down at my own right hand. The knuckles of my index and middle fingers were swollen, slightly deformed, marked by two dark purple patches of frostbite scar tissue that would never fade. Four years ago. Denali, Alaska. A blizzard screaming at thirty below. To make sure he didn’t miss a rare meteor shower, I had clawed through knee-deep snow with my bare hands to dig out his buried spare batteries. The wind was so fierce I slipped and fell, my hand instinctively pressing my phone screen. It flared for a fraction of a second. Isaac had rushed over from yards away, screaming into my face. “Do you have any concept of light pollution? I waited four hours for this shot, and you just ruined it!” I had sat there in the freezing snow, my hands entirely numb, suffering the permanent nerve damage that still haunted me. I placed my scarred fingers back on the keyboard. Staring at Daphne’s beaming face, I typed the first caption: “In the silent expanse of the frozen wild, she is the only color more precious than the stars.” There was no bitterness as I typed those words. Only a profound, heavy sense of absurdity. The great master who built his entire career on the sacred purity of the dark night was now eager to broadcast his surrender to a cheap flare of light. I would give him exactly what he wanted. I wanted these hypocritical captions permanently printed in his monograph. It was my parting gift—a quiet footnote to his ridiculous, compromised faith, written by someone who actually understood the art. Late that night, I sent the twenty captions to Isaac. He replied with a single word: “Fine.” I smiled, closed the document, and opened my email inbox. “I accept your invitation,” I wrote to the journal. “I will arrive in Reykjavik on the 15th to begin my duties.” Seven days until the 15th. Three days until the awards gala. The next afternoon, the doorbell rang. It was an express international package. The envelope was unsealed, and the gilded certificate slid out easily. “International Star Registry.” Right under the precise coordinates—RA 18h 36m 56s, Dec +38° 47′ 01″, Lyra—was a line of elegant calligraphy: “Daphne Wells”. The date of the registration matched the exact night he had abandoned the comet to capture “Light”. Tucked at the bottom of the frame was a handwritten note from Isaac: “Stars burn for billions of years. This one is your permanent exposure.” I stared at the elegant script. He had paid thousands of dollars to buy a named star in the constellation of Lyra, near Vega, just for her. I had folded one thousand and ninety-six paper stars, and he hadn’t even erred on the side of opening one. Clearly, folded paper didn’t carry the same weight as a star in the heavens. I placed the frame back in its box, sealing it perfectly, and left it dead center on his desk. When Isaac returned that evening, his eyes snagged on the package. His face tightened for a fraction of a second before he quickly threw a heavy art book over it. “The committee wants a five-minute acceptance speech,” he said, his voice forced. “Since you have some free time, write it for me.” “What do you want to say?” “Write about the photographer’s commitment to absolute darkness. Talk about what it takes to banish light pollution, about the sheer discipline of the craft.” I picked up a pen and let the words flow. It was easy. For five years, I had been the one shivering beside him in that absolute darkness, the one whose light he had systematically banished. The next morning, Isaac taped a printed itinerary to the whiteboard in the hallway. “I’m flying to Iceland right after the ceremony.” My hands paused over the sweaters I was folding into my suitcase. “Iceland?” “The final window of the aurora season. Daphne and I have been planning this for three months. There’s a perfect remote observation site there—zero light pollution.” It was exactly where I was headed. “How long?” “Ten days.” My eyes drifted to the red text scrawled on the final day of the schedule: “Aurora portrait session with Daphne—continuation of the Light series.” “Isaac,” I said, keeping my back turned to him. “You promised we would go to Iceland to see the northern lights together.” He stopped packing his gear, his brow furrowing into a deep, irritated line. “Iris, why are you bringing up ancient history? It’s twenty below zero over there. Your hands flare up the second they get cold. Going there would just be torture for you.” “Isn’t Daphne going to get cold?” “She’s a professional assistant. It’s different. Please, don’t start drama right now.” “I understand,” I said, turning away so he couldn’t see my face. I pulled my carry-on bag out from under the bed. I slipped in my passport, my visa, and a few heavy wool sweaters. The apartment was spacious, but everything I owned barely filled half of a single suitcase. The night of the awards gala. Instead of sitting in the VIP section, I used a staff pass to slip into the shadows at the very back of the auditorium. The spotlight focused on the center stage. On the massive screen overhead, “Light” was projected in high definition, Daphne’s face glowing in the sparkler’s fire. Isaac, sharp and handsome in a tailored suit, stepped up to the microphone with his trophy. He pulled my drafted speech from his pocket and read the opening line. “Astrophotography is a pilgrimage through the dark. We spend our entire lives chasing absolute zero light pollution…” He paused. A heavy silence stretched over the crowd of thousands. Then, slowly, Isaac folded the paper in half and slid it back into his breast pocket. “Actually, this speech feels a bit too formal. Tonight, I want to speak from the heart.” He looked up, his gaze locking directly onto Daphne, who sat in the second row. “Those who know me know that my absolute, non-negotiable rule is zero light pollution. For the sake of my exposures, I used to demand that anyone near me barely even breathe.” Standing in the back row, I listened to him describe the very collar he had kept fastened around my neck for five years. “Today, many people asked me why I chose to walk away from a comet we only see once every seventy years.” He paused, his gaze drifting over the crowd back to that cream-colored dress in the front rows. “Because comets always return. Even if it takes seventy years, they eventually cross our sky again.” “But some people aren’t comets. They are shooting stars. You don’t know when they will ignite, and you don’t know if they’ll ever shine again.” “So the moment she appeared, I shut off my trackers, threw out my plans, and pointed my camera, my night, and the entire sky directly at her.” His voice softened, carrying a rare vulnerability. “In that moment, I understood. The stars in the sky are dead. They travel millions of years just to reach us, completely cold. True light is the warmth you feel when you turn your head in the middle of a frozen wilderness and see someone standing right beside you.” He looked down at Daphne, whose face was already wet with tears. “So, I broke my golden rule. Because light pollution only exists when the light is in the wrong place. Daphne, thank you for lighting up my universe.” A wave of thunderous applause swept through the hall. Daphne covered her mouth, rising under the gaze of thousands to run toward the stage. He had used my five years of absolute devotion in the dark to build his reputation. Then, with a single sparkler, he used Daphne to prove his love. I didn’t stay to watch them embrace. As the applause peaked, I turned and walked out of the auditorium. I caught a cab back to the apartment we had shared. I rolled my small suitcase to the door. Then, walking over to the shelving unit, I took down the three spotless, dust-free glass jars. I arranged them side by side on top of his $20,000 camera rig. No notes. No lingering regrets. One thousand and ninety-six silent nights, completely emptied out. I grabbed my suitcase, opened the front door, and let it click shut behind me. My phone buzzed in my coat pocket. A text from Isaac: “Daphne had a bit too much to drink at the afterparty, so I’ll be back late. Go to sleep, don’t wait up.” I stared at the screen, pulled the SIM card I’d used for five years out of the tray, snapped it in half, and dropped it into a trash can on the street. The taxi sped down the highway. The city’s neon lights blurred past, a brilliant, chaotic wash of light pollution. He always complained that you couldn’t see the stars in this city, that he had to go to the ends of the earth to find them. But he never realized that the photographer who had once dimmed her own light to let him shine had vanished into the night. Isaac, your world doesn’t need to be dark anymore. And as for me, I am going to find my own universe.

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When I caught my husband—a rising Major General—in bed with the underprivileged student I had personally sponsored, I didn’t scream. I didn’t cry. Instead, I quietly packed a single suitcase and caught the first flight to Geneva to complete my medical residency. I changed my number, cut ties, and severed every connection to the Capital Command. After graduating, my dedication and surgical precision propelled me to the top of my field. My career skyrocketed. By thirty, I was a chief trauma surgeon at the military’s premier regional hospital. I thought Ryan Henderson was a closed chapter in my life, a ghost from a past I had outgrown. But on my very first day back, my first scheduled emergency case was a thoracotomy on his son. Ryan stared at the name tag pinned to my white coat, completely frozen. I opened the medical chart, my voice flat and professional as I ran through the surgical risks. After he signed the consent form, he lingered, gripping the pen with white knuckles. His eyes were a storm of conflicting emotions, his voice gravelly when he spoke. “I remember when you couldn’t stand the sight of blood.” I snapped the folder shut, keeping my tone perfectly polite, perfectly detached. “You get used to it when you see enough of it.” … 1 “Juliette, please! I’m begging you, save my son!” Chelsea somehow broke free from the two military guards. She threw herself onto her knees in front of me, her joints hitting the linoleum with a sickening thud. Ryan’s brow furrowed slightly as he bent down to pull her up by the arm. “Chelsea, get up. Dr. Ross is reviewing the chart.” His voice was gentle, soothing—the picture-perfect portrait of a responsible, emotionally stable, protective husband. Chelsea grabbed the hem of Ryan’s crisp dress uniform, her face contorted with tears. “Ryan, please, beg her! She was so good to me back then. She’ll save Toby, won’t she?” I ignored her, flicking through the chest CT scans on my tablet. My eyes paused on the patient’s age: four and a half. Four and a half years old. Ryan and I had been divorced for exactly five years and two months. The math was brutally simple. Even the universe, it seemed, was keeping score of their betrayal. “The patient has an acute tension pneumothorax. The right lung is ninety percent collapsed. We need to perform an exploratory thoracotomy immediately.” I slotted the film into the lightbox, my voice entirely level. “General Henderson has already signed the consent form. Now, go settle the intake paperwork and prepare the pre-op blood match.” Chelsea snapped her head up. Beneath the terror in her tear-streaked eyes, I saw a flicker of disbelief. She had likely expected me to use this moment to humiliate her, or to find some bureaucratic excuse to refuse the surgery. Ryan was taken aback too. Letting go of Chelsea, he stepped closer to me. “Juliette, thank you.” He looked at me, his eyes filled with a self-righteous tenderness that made my skin crawl. “I know you’re angry with me. But the boy is innocent. Name your price. Anything you want, it’s yours, as long as you perform the surgery.” I looked up at him. He stood tall in his tailored dress uniform, a luxury tactical watch gleaming on his wrist. That wrist—the same one he had once sliced open in a bloody, dramatic spectacle to force my hand—was now seamlessly concealed beneath the expensive leather strap and pressed cuffs. “General Henderson,” I said, my pen flying across the chart as I scribbled the pre-op orders. “I am the chief trauma surgeon at this hospital. I am on shift tonight. You brought in a patient, and I am doing my job. There are no ‘conditions,’ and there is no personal history here. It’s just medicine.” I slid the order sheet toward him. “Go pay the fee. We’re on a clock.” Ryan didn’t take the paper. Instead, he pulled a stainless steel thermos from his bag, unscrewed the lid, and pushed it gently toward me. “You’ve been pulling back-to-back shifts. Your stomach must be acting up again. I ran down to the cafe across the street and had them make you hot water with honey and lemon. You always lived on it when you stayed up late.” I looked at the steaming liquid, two thinly sliced lemons floating on the surface. A dull ache throbbed in my midsection, but it wasn’t from an ulcer. I didn’t have stomach ulcers. Chelsea did. Years ago, when Chelsea lived under our roof as our scholarship recipient, she would stay up late watching dramas and complain of stomach pain. Ryan would crawl out of bed in the middle of the night to brew her hot honey lemon water. He had done it so often that it had become muscle memory. He had done it so often that, in his revisionist memory, he had projected her favorite things onto me. “I don’t drink citrus,” I said, sliding the thermos back. The metal base scraped against the laminate desk with a harsh, screeching sound. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, General, I need to scrub in.” Ryan’s hand froze in midair. Suddenly, Chelsea shrieked. “Juliette! Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing! You’re going to use this to get back at me, aren’t you? I swear to God, if anything happens to my son on that table, I’ll destroy you!” Heads turned in the crowded triage corridor. Nurses and military families stared. I stood up calmly, smoothing down my white coat. “Mrs. Henderson, if you continue to make a scene, I will have military police escort you from the building. Furthermore, your son’s oxygen saturation is dropping. Every minute you spend screaming is a minute he loses.” Chelsea’s face drained of color, her lips trembling. Ryan grabbed her arm, his voice dropping to a harsh whisper. “That’s enough, Chelsea. Stop it.” He turned back to me, his eyes carrying a familiar, subtle sting of blame. “Juliette, she’s just terrified for our son. She’s not thinking straight. You’re a chief surgeon now. Can’t you show some grace instead of holding a grudge?” He delivered the most deeply biased words in the gentlest tone imaginable, successfully painting me as the cold-hearted aggressor while they played the tragic, helpless victims. I didn’t bother looking at him. I walked past them toward the scrub sink. “The intake forms are on the desk. See you in the OR in ten minutes.” Cold water rushed over my hands. I looked up, meeting my own gaze in the mirror, and let out a soft, humorless laugh. Droplets of water dripped from my chin into the stainless-steel sink, clean and sharp. 2 The surgery lasted four hours. The pediatric patient’s right lung had sustained severe lacerations, with over three hundred milliliters of blood pooling in the thoracic cavity. Under the glare of the shadowless surgical lamps, my movements were purely mechanical—clamp, ligate, suture. The monitor beeped rhythmically. The scrub nurse seamlessly handed me the forceps. No thoughts of Ryan or Chelsea entered my mind. On the operating table, I see only organs and anatomy, never the people they belong to. At three in the morning, the surgery concluded successfully. I stripped off my blood-spattered scrubs, threw on my white coat, and stepped out. Ryan was sitting alone on the corridor bench. Chelsea was nowhere to be seen—likely sent away to rest. Hearing my footsteps, he looked up, his eyes bloodshot. “The surgery was a success. His vitals are stable, and he’s been moved to the ICU for observation,” I delivered the update in my standard clinical tone, preparing to head back to the on-call room. “Juliette.” Ryan stood up, blocking my path. The empty hallway hummed under the dim fluorescent lights. He reached into his breast pocket and produced a sleek black debit card, holding it out to me. “There’s fifty thousand dollars on this,” he said, his voice quiet, carrying that familiar air of condescending charity. “The PIN is your birthday.” I looked down at the black plastic. “What is this?” “You left so quickly back then. You didn’t take a dime.” Ryan sighed, a look of unearned pity washing over his face. “I know these past five years haven’t been easy for you. A woman, fighting her way from a lowly resident to a chief surgeon… you must have suffered. Take the money. Buy yourself a decent car. Stop driving that beat-up sedan with the old military plates.” He paused, adding, “Consider it a peace offering from Chelsea. She was young and foolish back then.” Young and foolish. Three small words to erase how she bit the hand that fed her, how she crawled into her benefactor’s husband’s bed. Three words to wash away his own infidelity, and the night he sliced his own wrist to blackmail me into signing the divorce papers without a single asset. I looked at his handsome, composed face, and a sudden urge to laugh washed over me. He was so utterly convinced that I had been miserable. He was convinced I was still scraping by, harboring bitter resentment over the past. He wanted to use this fifty thousand dollars to buy his way out of his own guilt. “General Henderson,” I said, making no move to take the card. My eyes met his, cold and clear. “Five years ago, I gave Chelsea a ten-thousand-dollar scholarship to finish her degree. Even with the highest interest rate, the principal and interest today would barely reach fifteen thousand. Is the remaining thirty-five thousand hush money for your cheating?” Ryan’s expression tightened. He clearly hadn’t expected me to lay it bare so ruthlessly. “Juliette, is it really necessary to be this bitter?” He frowned, a flash of annoyance crossing his features. “I’m trying to look out for you. You never used to be so clinical about money.” Clinical. When I turned down a prestigious fellowship at the Walter Reed headquarters to follow him to a dusty, wind-swept border post for two years, he didn’t think I was “clinical.” Now that he had climbed the ranks and wanted to throw money at his problems, suddenly my pragmatism was a character flaw. I reached out, pinched the black card between two fingers, and slipped it from his grasp. “Is that so? Well, if General Henderson wants to buy his peace of mind, far be it from me to stop him.” A faint smile played on my lips. “After all, I earned this.” What I had earned wasn’t the fifty thousand dollars. It was the hard-won realization that I should have started putting myself first a long time ago. Years ago, I wore faded, thrifted clothes and ate the cheapest meals in the hospital cafeteria just to save every extra dollar to help fund his networking dinners and pave his way to promotion. He praised me for being “sensible,” “supportive,” and “not like other materialistic women.” I had felt proud back then, foolishly believing I was his unique soulmate. Now I understood: that wasn’t being noble. That was just being cheap. He had used a few worthless compliments to systematically exploit my youth and my future. Seeing me take the card, Ryan’s shoulders relaxed. A wave of relief washed over him, accompanied by a faint, almost imperceptible smirk of triumph. He had successfully reduced his betrayal into a transaction he could settle and forget. “I’m glad you’re seeing reason,” he said, adjusting the cuffs of his uniform as he regained his polished, respectable composure. “Chelsea has a temper. Now that we’re at the same base, try to be patient with her. I owe you one.” I slipped the card into my pocket and turned back toward the on-call room. “Rest easy, General. My job is to treat patients, not to raise your wife.” The window at the end of the hall was cracked open. The night breeze filtered in, carrying the sharp, cold scent of antiseptic—piercing and entirely sobering. 3 During ward rounds the next morning, a crowd had gathered outside the ICU. Chelsea was sitting on the floor, her hair disheveled, screaming at a young nurse. “Is this how you run a hospital? My son just had major chest surgery yesterday, and now he has a fever! Did you give him the wrong medication?” The young nurse’s eyes were rimmed with red as she stammered, “Mrs. Henderson, a post-operative absorption fever is perfectly normal. We’ve already started non-pharmacological cooling protocols…” “Don’t try to hide behind your medical jargon!” Chelsea lunged to her feet, shoving the nurse back. “Get the chief of surgery! Get Juliette out here! She’s still bitter about what happened five years ago. She did something to my boy on purpose!” I walked through the crowd, clipboard in hand. “Mrs. Henderson, this is the Intensive Care Unit. Keep your voice down.” The moment Chelsea saw me, her eyes flared. She charged at me. “Juliette! You finally showed your face! What did you do to my son?” She raised her hand to slap me, but the military guards intercepted her just in time. Ryan came rushing down the corridor. He pulled Chelsea into his arms, shielding her behind him. “What’s going on here?” He looked between Chelsea and me, his forehead creasing. The trembling nurse quickly explained the situation. After listening, Ryan turned his gaze to me. “Juliette, Chelsea is just frantic about the baby. Couldn’t you have just explained it to her calmly? Did you have to let it escalate like this?” There it was again—his trademark neutrality. Always playing the mediator, always shielding his precious Chelsea under the guise of reason. “General Henderson,” I said, shutting the chart. “During our pre-op consultation, I explicitly informed you of the risks of post-operative fever and infection. Your signature is on that consent form. If your wife has doubts about our treatment, she is welcome to file for a formal medical review. But if she continues to disrupt this ward and disturb other recovering patients, I will have security remove her.” Chelsea glared at me from behind Ryan’s shoulder, her teeth gritted. “Go ahead, call them! You think I’m scared of you? I saw my husband hand you that fifty-thousand-dollar card last night! Stop acting so righteous, Juliette. You blackmailed my husband using our son’s life!” The corridor fell dead silent. Every eye in the hallway locked onto me. The young nurse gasped, her mouth hanging open. Ryan’s face went completely pale. He whipped around, glaring at Chelsea. “What the hell are you talking about? Shut up!” But Chelsea thought she had won. Her expression turned smug. “Me, lying? Juliette is a shameless thief! She used her position as chief surgeon to solicit a massive bribe from a patient’s family! I’m going to report you to the board! I will ruin your career!” Ryan grabbed Chelsea’s arm with a bruising grip, trying to drag her away. He looked back at me, his eyes pleading, filled with silent desperation. “Juliette, go back to your office. I’ll handle this.” He expected me to panic, to scramble to defend myself. But I just stood there, quietly watching their little domestic drama. “Sure,” I said. I pulled out my phone and dialed the hospital’s internal ethics committee line. “Director Collins, please come up to the ICU. I have a family member here making a formal accusation of bribery against me.” The sharp dial tone echoed loudly down the silent hallway. 4 Inside the ethics committee office, the tension was suffocating. Director Collins sat behind his desk, his brow furrowed in a deep, troubled line. Ryan sat on the leather sofa, hands clasped, his expression grim and heavy. Chelsea sat beside him, wearing a triumphant, vindictive smirk. I stood by the window, watching the neat rows of military vehicles parked in the courtyard below. “Dr. Ross, Mrs. Henderson has filed a complaint stating that you accepted a debit card containing fifty thousand dollars from General Henderson last night,” Director Collins said, tapping his fingers on the desk. “Do you have an explanation for this?” I turned around, but before I could speak, Ryan cut in. “Director Collins, this is all a misunderstanding.” He stood up and stepped closer to my side, his voice dripping with earnest sincerity. “The fifty thousand was something I offered to Dr. Ross voluntarily. We have… history. I knew she might be facing some financial difficulties lately, and I simply wanted to help an old friend. She did not solicit a bribe.” I stared at Ryan’s hypocritical face, completely unmoved. On the surface, he was trying to shield me. In reality, every single word he spoke was designed to cement the narrative that I had taken his money. If I fell in line with his story and admitted I was struggling financially, I would be admitting to the transaction. I would become the desperate, mercenary woman Chelsea accused me of being, forever forced to look down in shame before them. “Ryan,” I said softly, calling him by his first name. “Are you absolutely sure you gave me that money of your own free will?” Ryan looked at me, a flash of warning in his eyes. He leaned in, lowering his voice so only I could hear. “Juliette, don’t be stubborn. Just apologize to Chelsea, say the money was a personal loan, and I’ll clear things up with Collins. You worked too hard to get to where you are. Don’t ruin your career over pride.” He was so sure I would break. Just like five years ago, when he was convinced that the sight of his bleeding wrist would make me sign the divorce papers without a fight. He had always believed he held the remote control to my life. I looked at him, a faint, mocking smile touching my lips. “General Henderson, do you honestly believe I’m still the same naive girl you manipulated so easily?” Ryan’s brow furrowed deeper. “I’m trying to help you.” At that moment, the office door was pushed open. The Chief of Medicine walked in, flanked by several high-ranking officers in military dress uniforms.

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At the end-of-quarter team dinner, my girlfriend went twenty minutes out of her way to pick up two bubble teas. She handed one to Drew, who sat across from us, and slid the other toward me. Drew smiled, his eyes crinkling. “You’re a lifesaver, Natalie. You always remember I can’t handle ice when my stomach is acting up.” I looked down at the mango-coconut slush sitting in front of me, its bright yellow color mocking me. I pushed it away with the tip of my finger. “What’s wrong?” Natalie asked, not even looking up from her phone. “I’m severely allergic to mango, Natalie. Did you forget? Again?” She paused for a fraction of a second, then let out a soft, dismissive laugh. “It’s just a little bit of mango jelly on top. Can’t you just pick it out?” But she remembered everything about Drew. She knew he hated cilantro, despised raw onions, and took his tea half-sweet with zero ice. Yet, my throat closing up from a single bite of mango was just “something I could pick out.” I realized then how deeply favoritism runs. When someone stops caring about you, even your survival becomes a minor inconvenience. On the drive home, I sat in the backseat. Looking at the two of them in the front, their silhouettes framed perfectly by the dashboard light, a sudden, unexpected wave of relief washed over me. I was done. I didn’t want a relationship where even my life-threatening allergies were treated as an afterthought. … When the car pulled up to our building, the two of them were still deep in a debate about a movie that had come out last weekend. The same movie Natalie had promised to see with me, only to bail at the last minute claiming she had to work late. They jumped from discussing the chemistry between the leads to analyzing the cinematography, their voices bouncing off the windshield. I couldn’t remember how many times I’d been left out of their conversations like this. Even now, I sat in the back like an unwanted hitchhiker. Eventually, the laughter faded. Natalie glanced at the rearview mirror, her eyebrows knitting together in mild surprise. “Why are you still in the car?” I looked up, my voice flat. “You didn’t unlock the doors.” Natalie went silent. Drew immediately stepped in to smooth things over. “Oh, man, that’s on me! I got so carried away talking.” He leaned over the center console and expertly pressed the unlock button on the driver’s side door. This car was bought with the first major bonus Natalie earned. Back then, she had held my hand, laughing, and promised me I’d never have to squeeze onto the crowded subway again. Then Drew moved to Chicago to “find himself.” Our two-person commute became a party of three. Because Drew claimed he got motion sickness easily, I was relegated to the backseat. Three years in the back had made me forget how the dashboard controls even worked. Drew, however, navigated them with the familiarity of a spouse. “Don’t be mad at her, Jesse,” Drew said, turning around with a sympathetic grin. “I’ll give Natalie a good scolding on the drive to my place.” Natalie let out a soft, amused chuckle, offering no denial. Having loved her for so long, I could easily recognize the warmth and indulgence in her tone. It was a tone she never used with me anymore. When I had once mentioned that I didn’t like the smell of cigarette smoke on her clothes, she had turned cold, calling me controlling and accusing me of suffocating her. Yet now, she let Drew criticize her driving, her music choices, and her habits without a single complaint. Outside, the rain began to leak through the slightly cracked passenger window, sending a damp chill straight to my chest. I pushed the door open and practically fled from the car. The downpour intensified the second I stepped out. I ran to the awning of our building, soaked and shivering. Through the rain-slicked glass of the windshield, I saw Natalie reach over and gently wipe a stray raindrop from Drew’s cheek. I wiped the water from my own face, but no matter how hard I rubbed, my skin still felt damp and cold. Back in the apartment, I took a long, hot shower. When I walked out, my phone was ringing. It was Diane, my department manager. “Jesse, are you absolutely sure about this resignation?” she asked, her voice tinged with regret. “You just landed that major account. I was actually planning to pitch a promotion and a raise to Natalie tomorrow.” In my six years at the company, I had applied for a promotion twelve times. Without fail, Natalie had blocked every single one. When my colleagues praised my campaign strategies, she dismissed them as “just meeting basic expectations.” When the regional head recommended me for an executive training program, she claimed my leadership skills were lacking. Even when the entire department signed a petition to promote me, she vetoed it. I had felt the sting of it, but I had never openly complained. Meanwhile, Drew—whom I had personally referred to the company—had received three promotions in three years. His salary had tripled. When I finally asked Natalie why, she had looked at me with cold, professional eyes. “We need to avoid any appearance of nepotism, Jesse. Be mature. Drew doesn’t have a safety net in this city; he needs the leverage to establish himself.” But I was done being mature. I was done stepping aside. I took a deep breath. “There’s no need to pitch anything to her, Diane. I’ve made up my mind. I’m leaving.” Diane sighed on the other end. “Alright, Jesse. I won’t push. Take care of yourself.” The sound of keys jangling at the lock cut through the quiet apartment. Natalie walked in, carrying a small FedEx box. She caught the tail end of my sentence. “What did you make up your mind about?” “Nothing,” I said. Natalie didn’t press. She walked over to the sofa, unboxing the package. Inside was a red carnelian Van Cleef Alhambra bracelet, the gold chains gleaming under the living room lights. She looked up at me. “Do you like it?” I stared at it. I had kept that exact bracelet in my online shopping cart for over a year. Every time I had shown it to her, she had rolled her eyes, calling luxury goods a tax on the insecure. She told me I didn’t have the wrist for something so flashy. For a split second, a foolish spark of hope flared in my chest. I thought she had remembered. Then she spoke again, extinguishing the spark completely. “Drew’s a guy, but he’s got pretty slim wrists. Do you think he’d like this color?” I went numb. I forced a nod. “He’ll love it.” Perhaps sensing my sudden withdrawal, Natalie offered a rare explanation. “Tomorrow is his three-year work anniversary. I wanted to get him something special. He moved across the country to work with us; I don’t want him to feel unappreciated.” She paused, her eyes lingering on my bare wrist. “If you really like it, I’ll get you one for your next birthday.” I was her boyfriend of seven years, yet I was expected to wait in line for the scraps of her affection, promised on some distant, hypothetical birthday. The Natalie from years ago never made empty promises. She showed her love in real-time. If I sent her a link to a new restaurant, she’d take me there the same weekend. If I mentioned a craving for those expensive lobster rolls from the harbor, they would be waiting in the fridge the next day. When I turned down a six-figure offer in Boston to move to Chicago so we could finally end our long-distance relationship, she didn’t say much. She just worked eighty-hour weeks, secured a massive partnership, and placed a deed to our condo in my hands. “We have a home now, Jesse,” she had whispered. I pulled myself out of the memory. “No need. I don’t really care for red.” Natalie’s brows drew together. “Suit yourself.” She loosened her blazer and walked toward the bathroom. “I’m going to shower. Don’t mention the bracelet to Drew tonight. I want it to be a surprise.” The sound of running water filled the apartment, masking the quiet hum of the refrigerator. Natalie’s phone, left on the coffee table, vibrated. I looked down. A message popped up on the lock screen. Home safe? The sender was saved simply as a blue whale emoji. It was Drew. Last year, Natalie and I had a screaming match over her phone contacts. I had discovered that while Drew was saved with a cute emoji, my contact name had been changed from “My Love” to a cold, clinical “7.14 Jesse Ward.” I had packed my bags, crying, and moved into a motel. Natalie had panicked. She begged me to stay, promising she would quit smoking, change the contact name back, and keep her distance from Drew. For a few months, it felt like we were back in college. She bought breakfast, waited for me after work, and held my hand in public. But there was a hairline fracture in our foundation, and we both knew it. Then, three months ago, Drew got alcohol poisoning at a client dinner after stepping in to drink on my behalf. He ended up in the ER, and just like that, he was back in our lives, woven tightly into the fabric of our daily routine. I had been waiting for them to cross a line, to give me a definitive reason to walk away. But they never did anything explicitly physical. They just developed a language of their own—an endless stream of inside jokes and shared memories that left me standing on the outside looking in. Like today, after the team dinner. I had bent down to tie my shoe. It took ten seconds. They didn’t even notice I had stopped. By the time I stood up, they were already around the corner, disappearing into the crowd together. The next morning, I went straight to the office and left my signed resignation letter on the HR director’s desk. When I walked back to my cubicle, Drew caught up to me, throwing an arm around my shoulder. “Can you believe Natalie forgot you were allergic to mangoes? I gave her a piece of my mind on the drive home last night.” He playfully punched the air. But she remembered you can’t drink cold drinks, I thought. I wanted to say it out loud, but it felt too pathetic, too desperate. Instead, I gently shrugged his arm off. “It’s fine. We didn’t fight. I’m just tired.” Drew didn’t seem to notice my coldness. “Well, make sure you get some rest. Let me treat you to a nice dinner tonight to make up for it!” Looking at his bright, innocent smile, I felt a sudden pang of resentment. I used to think of Drew as a younger brother who had no one else in this city. I tolerated his intrusion because I wanted him to feel welcome. But when I first moved to Chicago, I didn’t know anyone either. I only had Natalie. At least when Drew arrived, he had me to guide him. And eventually, he had Natalie to pamper him. “No, thanks,” I said quietly. “I have plans tonight.” I turned my back on him and sat down at my computer. Within minutes, a notification popped up in the company Slack. It was from Natalie. Congratulations to Drew on his three-year work anniversary! Afternoon tea is on me. Attached was a screenshot of an order from a high-end French patisserie downtown—the one with a two-week waiting list. I had bought a box of their pastries last weekend. Natalie had watched me open them, asking, “Is this place really worth the hype?” I had excitedly explained the flavor profiles, thinking she was taking an interest in my tastes. Now I realized she was just doing research for Drew’s celebration. In the breakroom, Drew was surrounded by coworkers, his face flushed with happiness. Natalie stood just outside the circle, watching him with a soft, affectionate smile. They looked like a picture-perfect couple. I was just a ghost haunting their peripheral vision. Drew walked over to me, holding a small plate with a gold-leaf chocolate tart. He winked. “Saved the most expensive one for you.” An expensive pastry couldn’t mask the fact that Natalie had just spent a fortune to treat fifty people in his honor. But I didn’t want to make a scene. “Thanks,” I said. Drew clasped his hands together, putting on a pleading face. “Jesse, I have this campaign brief due by Friday, and the client is riding my back. You’re the best at these. Can you take a look? Please?” He dropped a thick folder onto my desk before I could answer, entirely confident that I would do what I had always done—quietly take his work, finish it perfectly, and let him put his name on the cover. The red carnelian Van Cleef bracelet on his wrist caught the fluorescent light, burning my eyes. I pushed the folder back. “I’m busy, Drew. I can’t help you.” His smile faltered, his eyes immediately welling up with tears. “Jesse… are you mad at me? You’ve never said no before.” Natalie appeared out of nowhere, stepping between us and shielding Drew. “Jesse, what the hell is your problem?” I kept my voice calm as I explained the situation, half-hoping Natalie would reprimand him. She despised people who shirked responsibility at work; she had faced so much exploitation early in her career. But she only looked at me with cold disgust. “Drew is your superior. When he delegates a task to you, you don’t get to say no. You’ve been with this company for six years, Jesse. Have you ever wondered why you’re still sitting in a cubicle? It’s because you’re small-minded. You throw a tantrum the moment you’re asked to do a little extra work.” I wanted to laugh. People who started after me, people who had half my metrics, had been promoted to team leads. I was the only one stuck in place. Did she think the rest of the office didn’t notice? Did she really think I was the problem? Drew pulled gently on Natalie’s sleeve. “Nat, don’t worry about it. If Jesse won’t help, I’ll just stay late and do it myself.” Natalie’s glare remained fixed on me. “Jesse, if this is going to be your attitude moving forward, I’ll have to speak to HR about your termination—” “Let’s break up,” I interrupted. The open-plan office fell dead silent. Natalie’s eyes widened, her chest freezing mid-breath. “What did you just say?” I looked her dead in the eye. “I said, we’re breaking up.” Drew let out a sharp gasp. “Jesse! Why are you doing this? Natalie has been so good to you…” I ignored him, stood up, and grabbed my coat. Natalie grabbed my wrist, her grip so tight it felt like she wanted to crush the bone. “Jesse Ward, do you really have to resort to these pathetic stunts?” “What do you mean?” I asked, looking down at her hand. She sneered, her voice dropping to a harsh whisper. “You’re doing this to force my hand. You want to make our relationship public in front of the whole office. I told you, keeping our personal lives separate is for the best. Why can’t you just be professional?” I looked at my reddening wrist, a profound exhaustion settling deep into my bones. It was always like this. If I expressed hurt, I was throwing a tantrum. If I drew a boundary, I was being manipulative. But if Drew so much as frowned, she would tear down the world to fix it. I pulled my hand back with all the force I could muster, taking a step away from her. “Now that we’re broken up, you don’t have to worry about anyone accusing you of playing favorites.” I left the office immediately, went straight to our apartment, and started packing. I had lived in this condo for five years. The couch was a mid-century piece I had spent weeks hunting down in thrift stores when we were still living in a cramped studio. I couldn’t bear to leave it behind when we moved here; it was a testament to how far we had come. The linen curtains were ones I had researched for hours to find the best deal. On the wall hung a framed Polaroid of us from the day we moved in. Natalie was holding a paint roller, I had a broom, both of us covered in white smudges, laughing like idiots. We had a home. We were finally secure in a city that had felt so cold and foreign. I took the photo out of the frame, tore it into tiny pieces, and dropped them into the trash can. Since my resignation required a one-week notice period for handovers, I booked a room at a hotel near the office. By the next morning, the office rumors had taken on a life of their own. My colleagues looked at me with thinly veiled hostility. They assumed I was a toxic ex trying to ruin Natalie’s career. They began icing me out, dumping menial tasks like scanning and coffee runs onto my desk. Diane, who knew the truth about my departure, tried to intervene once or twice, but the whispers only grew louder. Soon, the rumor was that I had been fired because I tried to sleep with Diane—even though Diane was happily married with two kids. The exclusion turned into active hostility. Natalie did nothing to stop it. She either didn’t notice, or she thought I deserved it. Three days later, Natalie marched over to my desk and slammed a thick binder in front of me, her face pale with fury. “Jesse, what the hell is this? The strategic brief you submitted for the client is a total disaster!” I opened the binder, confused. On the cover page, my name was printed in bold letters. But I hadn’t touched a new project since submitting my resignation. Before I could speak, Drew rushed over, grabbing Natalie’s arm. His eyes were red, his voice trembling. “Nat, don’t yell at Jesse. It’s my fault. I must have mixed up the files.” Natalie’s expression didn’t soften. She kept her eyes locked on me. “Don’t let Drew cover for your incompetence, Jesse. The client is threatening to pull their account. I’m docking three months of your bonuses.” I had never seen this document in my life. Yet here she was, eager to paint me as the scapegoat. Around us, my coworkers whispered, some watching with smug satisfaction. I sat up straight. “I didn’t write this brief, Natalie.” Natalie leaned in, lowering her voice so only I could hear. “You’re leaving the company anyway, Jesse. A bad review won’t affect your future. But Drew is up for the Director position. If corporate finds out he botched this, he’ll lose the promotion. Just help him this once. Help me this once.” Looking into her eyes, seeing the desperation she felt for Drew’s future, the very last thread of my love for her snapped. Drew looked at me, a silent plea in his eyes, but he didn’t say a word to clear my name. I smiled. It was a cold, empty feeling. “Okay.” Consider it my final repayment for the drink he took for me three months ago. Because of the “gross negligence” on my record, HR fast-tracked my exit. That afternoon, Diane called me into her office. “Jesse, you don’t deserve this,” she said softly. She had quietly coded my departure as a layoff with severance instead of a termination for cause, ensuring I would receive a payout. I signed the paperwork and thanked her sincerely. I was the last one to leave the office that night. I took everything from my desk and threw it into the trash can by the elevators. As soon as I reached my hotel room, my phone buzzed. Both Natalie and Drew had sent messages at almost the exact same time. They wanted to take me out to dinner to “make things right.” They sent a pin to a trendy, reservations-only restaurant downtown—a place known for its intimate couple’s seating. I knew they had been there together dozens of times. Every time they went, they told me they only got the couple’s tasting menu because it was the most cost-effective option. But Natalie had never taken me there. I had only ever seen it in Drew’s Instagram stories. I didn’t reply. I booked a flight and called an Uber to O’Hare. At the boarding gate, my phone buzzed again with reminders about the dinner, promising a “big surprise” was waiting for me. I set my phone to Do Not Disturb, blocked both of their numbers, and boarded the plane. Six years ago, I had packed my life into two suitcases and followed Natalie to Chicago, eager to build a life together. Now, Drew was by her side, and there was no room left for me. It was time to go home.

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