Author: Momo Chan

1 I met Adrian Beaumont when I was thirteen. I confessed my love to him when I was twenty-one. But he only sighed, his hands firm yet gentle as he pushed me away. “Sienna, I’m eight years older than you,” he had whispered. “I can’t do that to you.” But later, through the heavy oak of a bedroom door, I heard him. I heard him pressed against my stepsister, their breaths tangled, the sound of a desperate, trembling kiss. Skylar’s voice was thick with a sweet, shy triumph. “What kind of ‘big brother’ kisses his sister like that on her eighteenth birthday?” It wasn’t that I was too young. It wasn’t that the eight-year gap was a bridge he couldn’t cross. It was simply that he didn’t love me. And when there is no love, there is only an excuse. The first time I saw Adrian, I was barely a teenager. My mother had passed away when I was five, leaving my father to raise me alone. Or so I thought. By the time I was thirteen, the narrative changed. A woman named Evelyn Reed entered the picture, bringing along her daughter, Skylar. Our house in the suburbs was small, and suddenly, there were too many people. “Sienna, you’re a big girl now. You need to help out the family,” Evelyn said, smiling as she straightened my collar. Her tone was honey-thick, but her eyes were cold. Behind her stood my father. He looked apologetic, yet utterly powerless, clutching my suitcase—a small, battered thing that held the entirety of my first thirteen years. The Beaumonts were a family of old money and immense prestige. Two decades prior, my father had pulled the only son of the Beaumont estate, Adrian, from a wreckage after a horrific car accident. For that, the Beaumonts gave him a blank check of a promise: ask for anything, anytime. Twenty years later, my father cashed it in. His request? For the Beaumonts to take me in, to raise me in the city, and to put me through the best schools. The Beaumonts spent millions on charities every year; what was one more girl? They were “gracious” enough to agree. They even sent a black Town Car to pick me up. As I left, my father shoved two hundred dollars into my hand, glancing nervously toward the house. “Don’t let Evelyn see this,” he sniffed, his nose turning a bright, pathetic red. “Take care of yourself, Sienna.” But Dad, why can’t you take care of me? I wanted to scream. Mom left plenty of money for me. Why are you throwing me away? I didn’t say a word. I took my suitcase and got into the car. As we pulled away, I watched them in the rearview mirror. They were laughing. Evelyn had her arm linked through my father’s, and my father was holding Skylar’s hand. A perfect, happy family of three. I had been the surplus. The early days at the Beaumont estate were suffocating. I was a ghost in a museum of modern art and velvet. The senior Beaumonts lived abroad most of the year, leaving me alone in the massive house with the staff. I moved through my days in silence—school, homework, dinner—trying to be as invisible as the air. Then, I found him: a scruffy, golden-furred stray puppy near the school gates. He was a mutt, but he had a peculiar, adorable tuft of white fur right on top of his head, like a poorly dyed mohawk. I didn’t dare bring him back to the estate, so I used my allowance to board him at a local vet clinic. Every day after school, I’d spend thirty minutes with him. He was my only friend, my only family. “Hey, little guy,” I whispered one afternoon, stroking his ears as he whimpered into my palm. “I’m going to call you Sunny. Because you have to be happy every single day, okay?” I squeezed my eyes shut. “You have to be happier than me.” “Ugh, what a tragic name for a tragic-looking dog.” A mocking voice cut through the air. I looked up to see Roman Knight, the boy from the neighboring estate. He was a year older than me and had made it his personal mission to make my life miserable since the day I arrived. I ignored him, handed Sunny back to the vet tech, and slung my backpack over my shoulder. “Hey, Mouse! I’m talking to you!” Roman blocked my path, his chest puffed out with adolescent arrogance. I wanted to scream at him. I wanted to tell him to go to hell. But I was a guest in this neighborhood—a charity case. If I caused trouble, it would get back to the Beaumonts, and then to my father. So, I kept my head down and tried to push past him. “So rude,” he sneered, grabbing the strap of my backpack. I stumbled, the momentum throwing me off balance. I closed my eyes, bracing for the hard sting of the pavement, but instead, I hit something warm and solid. A pair of steady hands caught my shoulders. “Roman, is this how we treat guests?” A voice, smooth as aged bourbon and twice as intoxicating, vibrated above me. I looked up. It was Adrian. That was the first time I truly saw him, and the first time he saved me. 2 I learned later that Adrian had been away on business for months. At twenty-one, he was already the “Golden Boy” of the corporate world, managing his family’s private equity firm with a ruthlessness that belied his gentle smile. When he returned and found out his parents had essentially “adopted” a teenager and left her to rot in a silent mansion, he was furious. He had driven over immediately to check on me, arriving just in time to see Roman’s bullying. “Next time that happens,” Adrian said as he drove me back to the estate, his hands relaxed on the steering wheel, “don’t hesitate. Hit back.” I opened my mouth to explain why I couldn’t, but the words died in my throat. I just looked down at my lap. Suddenly, I felt a warmth on my head. Adrian was ruffling my hair, his touch light and comforting. “Don’t be afraid, Sienna,” he said softly. “Whatever happens, I’m behind you. I’ve got your back.” Those words hit me like a physical force. They lodged themselves deep in my chest, right next to my heart. I looked up and saw him smiling—not the polite, cold smile he gave the press, but something genuine. Something that made me feel safe for the first time since my mother died. “Okay,” I whispered. From that day on, Adrian became my guardian in every sense of the word. He showed up for my parent-teacher conferences. He hired tutors when I struggled with Calculus. He took me shopping for winter coats and made sure the house was stocked with the things I liked. When I got my first period and was too terrified to tell the housekeeper, it was Adrian who walked into my room with a box of supplies and a heating pad, his face slightly flushed but his voice steady as he explained what to do. He was there for every milestone. He was the sun my world orbited around. So, falling in love with him wasn’t a choice; it was an inevitability. The summer after my junior year of college, I turned twenty-one. The party was held at the estate, a lavish affair Adrian had spent weeks planning. The night was humid and sweet, the moon a perfect ivory sliver reflecting in the turquoise water of the pool. Confetti and discarded champagne flutes littered the deck after the guests had drifted away. I was buzzing with a mix of adrenaline and expensive gin. I looked at Adrian, who was leaning against the pool railing, looking effortlessly handsome in a loosened silk tie. “Adrian,” I whispered, stepping into his space. He looked at me, his eyes dark and unreadable. I reached up, my heart hammering against my ribs, and kissed his cheek. He stiffened, his eyes flying open in shock. “Adrian… I love you. I’ve loved you for so long.” My confession was clumsy, a mess of girlish hope and terrifying vulnerability. But Adrian didn’t pull me closer. He reached up and slowly, firmly, unhooked my hands from his neck. “Sienna,” he sighed, and the sound felt like a death knell. “I’m eight years older than you. You’re just starting your life. I can’t do that to you. I shouldn’t.” My heart shattered into a thousand jagged pieces. I tried to swallow the sob rising in my throat, tried to keep some shred of dignity, but the tears came anyway. “Do you… do you even like me? At all?” Adrian turned his face away, unable to meet my gaze. His voice was strained, hollow. “Sienna, I’ve always seen you as family. As a sister. I care about you, but not like that.” The message was loud and clear. The next morning, I packed my bags and moved into a cramped dorm on campus. “I’m grateful for everything the Beaumonts have done for me,” I told him, standing by the front door with my suitcase. I didn’t look at his face. “When I graduate, I’ll find a way to pay it back.” I walked out without waiting for a reply. I cried the entire way to campus. But as I was hauling my boxes into my room, my phone rang. It was Adrian. His voice was broken. He was crying. “Sienna, I’m sorry. Please… don’t leave me. I love you too. I’m a coward, but I love you. Let’s try. Let’s just try.” In that moment, the sun broke through the clouds of my miserable little world. I thought I had won. 3 Our relationship was a secret. He was the heir to the Beaumont empire, still under his father’s thumb, and I was just the girl they’d taken in out of pity. A public scandal would have been disastrous for the firm’s upcoming merger. But I didn’t care. Being with him, even in the shadows, was enough. I stayed late at his penthouse while he worked, brought him soup when he was stressed, and loved him in the quiet spaces between his board meetings. We never talked about marriage or the future. I told myself we were just waiting—waiting for him to take full control, waiting for the right moment to tell the world. I didn’t expect the first person to find out would be Skylar. I hadn’t seen my father in nine years. When I walked into the Beaumont living room during a weekend visit, I barely recognized the man on the sofa. His hair was gray, his face lined with the stress of a life spent treading water. “Dad?” He stood up, his eyes welling with tears. “Sienna. Look at you. You’re a beautiful woman.” Then, he pulled a girl forward. She was tall, radiant, and possessed the kind of effortless beauty that only comes from being deeply loved. “This is your sister, Skylar,” he said, beaming. “She’s going to be living here for a while. You’ll look after her, won’t you?” “Hi, Sienna,” Skylar said, her smile bright and perfectly friendly. I stood there, paralyzed. My father, who hadn’t called me in years, was suddenly here to drop off his other daughter? “What’s going on?” I asked, my voice cold. My father rubbed his neck. “Well, Skylar’s a senior now. The schools back home… they aren’t like the ones here in the city. We wanted her to have the best shot at a top-tier college. Since you’ve been here so long, we thought… well, we asked the Beaumonts if she could stay for her final year.” I looked at him, feeling a familiar, icy numbness. “And the Beaumonts just said yes?” Skylar was the one who answered. “Adrian said yes. He was so sweet about it. He said the house was too big for just two people anyway.” My father patted her shoulder. “Everyone loves Skylar. She’s special.” And so, Skylar moved in. She took a room on the first floor, while Adrian and I were on the second. She was a whirlwind of energy—studying late, asking for help with her essays, always hovering around Adrian. I was busy with my final year of Veterinary Medicine, spending most of my time at the university clinic. When I finally came home for winter break, the atmosphere had shifted. The air in the house felt different—charged with something I didn’t want to name. 4 “If you don’t understand this theorem by now, Skylar, I’m worried about your SAT scores,” Adrian said, though his voice was thick with amusement. He was leaning over Skylar’s shoulder in the study, looking at her workbook. “Not everyone is a Stanford boy-wonder, Adrian,” Skylar teased, her voice dropping into a playful, melodic lilt. “You’re just too smart for us mere mortals.” Adrian laughed—a real, belly-deep laugh I hadn’t heard in weeks. He reached out and playfully nudged her shoulder. They were sitting so close their shadows merged into one on the mahogany desk. I knocked on the open door. “The fruit plate is on the table, Maria,” Skylar said without turning around, assuming I was the housekeeper. “It’s me,” I said. Adrian stiffened. It took him a full two seconds to turn around and face me. “Sienna. You’re back from the dorms.” Skylar turned, her smile as dazzling as ever. “Sienna! Long time no see.” I looked at Adrian. His expression was a mess of guilt and something else—irritation? “I texted you that I was coming home today,” I said. “You didn’t reply.” He checked his phone, looking chagrined. “Sorry. It’s been a crazy week at the firm. I must have missed it.” “Don’t be mad at him, Sienna,” Skylar chirped. “He’s just getting old. His memory is the first thing to go.” “I’m twenty-eight, Skylar. I’m hardly geriatric,” Adrian countered, and they both fell into a fit of giggles. “Whatever you say, Grandpa. Tell her about the time you went to my school and the principal thought you were my dad!” Adrian swatted at her head, and she ducked, laughing. He had gone to her school. He had been a presence in her life while I was tucked away in a lab. The insecurity I had been suppressing roared to life. I wanted to scream that he was mine. I wanted to mark my territory. Later that night, I begged him to go public. “Adrian, please. I don’t want to hide anymore. Let’s just tell people.” He sighed, rubbing his temples. “Sienna, not now. Give me a few more years to solidify my position at the firm. Then, no one can tell us what to do.” “Is anyone actually telling us what to do now?” I asked. The staff knew. His parents probably suspected. But he just shook his head. “You’re being sensitive. Skylar is just a guest. She’s like a sister to me.” Just like I was, I thought. The words tasted like ash.

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It was the seventh day of my hospital stay for a leg fracture. I was in the middle of a heated hand of Gin Rummy with a few other patients when my phone buzzed. It was Arthur. “Where are you?” he asked, his voice clipped and efficient. “On a business trip. I told you three times already,” I said, my eyes fixed on my cards, heart barely fluttering at the sound of his voice for the first time in years. There was a beat of silence. Then, “Hazel. Look up.” I froze. I slowly raised my gaze toward the door of the ward. Arthur Rhodes stood there, his face like a thundercloud, dressed in his charcoal-gray surgical scrubs. He walked toward my bed, his presence instantly draining the air from the room. Arthur was the city’s top orthopedic surgeon—brilliant, precise, and emotionally as cold as a scalpel. “A fracture,” he said, his voice dropping into that low, dangerous register he used when a resident messed up a procedure. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you come to my hospital? And why the hell did you lie about a business trip?” I looked at him, the man I had loved for two years, and felt a weary smile tug at the corner of my mouth. “Dr. Rhodes is a busy man,” I said lightly. After all, he had reminded me of that fact constantly. Don’t call me for every little thing, Hazel. I’m busy. Don’t be so clingy. “I figured I could handle a minor thing like this myself,” I added. “I didn’t want to be a nuisance.” 1 The other patients sensed the tension and scrambled away. A stray card fluttered to the linoleum floor. Arthur picked it up, his face an unreadable mask of clinical detachment, and placed it on my bedside table. “Hazel, you’re still sulking,” he said, the familiar edge of impatience creeping into his brow. “I didn’t miss our anniversary on purpose. How long are you going to keep punishing me for one night?” Seven days ago. Our second anniversary. I had booked the table at Alinea weeks in advance. We had just sat down; the menus hadn’t even been opened. Then his phone rang. He was up and gone before the water was poured. “Patient emergency,” was all he said. I had sat there under the pitying gaze of the sommelier for twenty minutes before leaving. I told them to keep the deposit. An hour later, I was scrolling through Instagram when I saw a post from a gala downtown. Phoebe was in the shot, looking radiant. In the corner of the frame was a man’s arm in a tailored suit sleeve, the cuff linked with the very watch I had bought Arthur that morning. I was staring at that photo, my eyes blurred with tears, when I missed a step on the pedestrian bridge. I went down hard. The ambulance, the surgery, the admission—it was all done by 11:00 PM. That’s when he finally called. “I’m home. Where are you?” I was staring at a chipped piece of black paint on the hospital bed rail, my leg elevated and throbbing. “Were you with Phoebe today?” He hesitated. “Phoebe tweaked her back at the event. An old injury flared up. I had to go, Hazel. I’m her doctor.” It was always Phoebe. Last month, she saw a spider and “twisted her hip” out of fear; he left mid-surgery recovery to check on her. Two months ago, the movie had just started when she texted saying her back ached from standing too long at a photoshoot. “I’ll make it up to you,” he’d say. It was always an “emergency.” It was always “necessary.” I closed my eyes and took a jagged breath. When I didn’t speak, he sighed—a sound of profound exhaustion. “Fine. Stop the drama. I’ll take some time off and stay with you later this week, okay? Now, where are you? I’ll come get you.” I could see him in my mind: pinching the bridge of his nose, eyes narrowed in irritation. I laughed, a dry, hollow sound. “I begged you for two weeks to take one night off for our anniversary. How long would I have to beg for the ‘later this week’?” “Hazel…” His voice turned cold. “Something came up. I’m out of town on business,” I lied, my voice steady. “I don’t need you to take time off. Goodbye, Arthur.” For the first time in our relationship, I hung up on him. 2 Back in the present, Arthur stared at me in the hospital bed. “If a former med school classmate hadn’t spotted your name on the surgery schedule, were you ever going to tell me?” he demanded. “Hazel, grow up. Stop making things so difficult for me.” I went rigid. Difficult. That was his favorite word for me. When I had night terrors and asked him to stay up with me, I was difficult. When I wanted him to bake a cake with me for my birthday, I was being unreasonable and difficult. When I had a fever and wanted him home, he told me he was an orthopedic surgeon, not an internist, and that his presence wouldn’t clinically change my temperature—so why was I being so difficult? I had learned to take melatonin for the nightmares. I ordered my own birthday cakes. I drove myself to the clinic. And now, I had even managed my own surgery and hospitalization without a word to him. And yet, I was still “making things difficult.” Three months ago, Phoebe called him at midnight claiming her stomach ached. He didn’t even hesitate. He was dressed and at the door in three minutes. I had blocked his way. “You’re a bone surgeon, Arthur. What are you going to do for her stomach ache that a Tylenol and a heating pad can’t?” He had looked at me with genuine confusion. “She’s not like you, Hazel. She’s fragile. She can’t handle things on her own. I have to take her to the ER.” “Why is it that when I need you, it’s a ‘nuisance,’ but when she calls, it’s a ‘responsibility’?” Arthur’s expression had shifted to something bordering on contempt. “Phoebe was an only child, born late to her parents. She was sheltered. She doesn’t have your… resilience. Do we really have to debate this now?” I was stunned into silence. Then his phone rang again. Phoebe’s voice, honey-thick and trembling, came through the speaker: “Arthur, where are you? It hurts so much.” “Almost there,” he said, and he pushed past me without another look. I had stumbled against the shoe rack, the sharp corner digging into my ankle. The pain was so sharp I doubled over, but he was already gone. Remembering that, I let out a long, slow breath. I looked up at him. “You’re in luck, Dr. Rhodes. I’m being discharged today. I don’t suppose borrowing your car for the ride home would be too much of a ‘difficulty’?” His jaw tightened. He wanted to snap back, but he swallowed his words. In the passenger seat of his Tesla, I felt something hard beneath my hip. I reached down and pulled out a tube of high-end lip gloss. Arthur glanced at it and immediately said, “I gave Phoebe a lift to an interview the other day…” “Give it back to her next time you see her,” I interrupted, tossing it onto the console. He went quiet, glancing at me for two long seconds. I stared out the window at the Chicago skyline, refusing to give him a single word more. When we got into the apartment, he finally spoke. “Come to my clinic in two days for the follow-up. I want to check the hardware they put in your leg myself.” I hopped toward the bedroom on my crutches. “No thanks. The team at the other hospital was great.” He grabbed my arm, his brow furrowed. After a moment, he said, “I’ll take the day off. We’ll spend it together. Happy?” I looked at him, genuinely puzzled. “Why?” He looked frustrated now, a simmering, impatient heat. “Isn’t this what you wanted? You’ve been silent the whole ride home, waiting for me to apologize, waiting for me to ‘make it up’ to you. Fine. I’m taking the day off. I’m compensating you. Is that enough?” The suffocating weight in my chest suddenly doubled. I wrenched my arm out of his grip. “Arthur, maybe we should just—” Break up. The words were on the tip of my tongue when his phone shrieked. He checked it and turned back to me. “Emergency consult. A multi-car pileup. We’ll talk when I get back.” 3 To my surprise, Arthur actually followed through. The next morning, he was in the kitchen making breakfast. The morning light caught the back of his neck as he carefully plated an omelet. For a fleeting second, my heart ached with the ghost of the love I once felt. Then the doorbell rang. Arthur dropped the spatula and went to the door. Phoebe walked in, sliding into the spare pair of guest slippers as if she lived there. “I heard Hazel got hurt,” she said, her voice airy. “I came to check on her.” Before I could say a word, she sniffed the air. “Oh, Arthur, that smells amazing. I haven’t had your cooking in forever. Is there enough for me?” Arthur didn’t even look at me. He just grabbed a third plate. “Have a seat,” he told her. I hobbled to the table on my crutches. I looked down at my plate and saw a thick garnish of cilantro mixed into the eggs. I felt a wave of nausea. Arthur knew I hated cilantro—it tasted like soap to me. He had known that for two years. Phoebe beamed. “Arthur, you remembered! I love extra cilantro.” I stopped pulling out my chair. I looked at the green flecks on the eggs and felt like I was looking at the epitaph of our relationship. “I’m not hungry,” I said, turning back toward the hallway. “You two enjoy.” Arthur looked up briefly, said nothing, and handed Phoebe the hot sauce. I shut the bathroom door behind me, my eyes stinging. As I turned, my crutch caught on the edge of the shelving unit. The whole thing tipped, and I went down in a clatter of glass jars and plastic bottles. Arthur burst in. He lifted me up, his eyes landing on my scraped, reddened knee. He went strangely still. “Hazel,” he said, his voice low and dangerous. “If you didn’t want Phoebe to stay for breakfast, you could have just said so. You don’t have to hurt yourself for attention.” I stared at him, my breath hitching. I remembered a rainy night months ago. My stomach had been cramping so badly I went to his hospital to find him. I had just sat down in his office when Phoebe’s assistant burst in. “Dr. Rhodes, Phoebe’s back is spasming. She needs you now.” Arthur had stood up immediately. I grabbed his hand. “Arthur, did you hear me? My stomach is killing me.” He had looked at me for a long time, then whispered, “Are you faking it?” “What?” “Are you actually in pain, or do you just want to stop me from seeing her? Even if you hate her, she’s still my patient. Don’t be petty, Hazel.” The door had clicked shut behind him. I had sat there, clutching my abdomen, unable to breathe. Later that night, I drove myself to a different ER. It was acute appendicitis. Lying on that cold operating table, I felt a bone-deep exhaustion—the kind that makes you want to let go of everything. That feeling was back now. “Arthur,” I whispered. “I think we’re don—” Another knock at the front door interrupted me. It was Jules, a friend I’d made in the hospital. She held up a Steam Deck and a bag of takeout. “We had a date, remember? Gaming and actual food.” I took a breath, letting my shoulders drop. I smiled at her. “Yeah. Let’s go to my room.” 4 The next afternoon, Arthur insisted on taking me for my follow-up. I just nodded, too tired to fight. The tension in the car was thick, a low-pressure system of unspoken resentment. When he pulled into the parking lot of his hospital, I frowned. “You’re at the wrong place.” “No, I’m not.” He got out, grabbed my crutches, and helped me out of the car. “I want a new set of X-rays. I need to see it myself.” I followed him through the sterile halls—the paperwork, the imaging, the radiation room. When I came out, Arthur was nowhere to be found. The nurse looked sympathetic. “Dr. Rhodes got a call and had to run. He said he’d be back to pick you up in a bit.” The sky outside turned a bruised purple, and within minutes, a torrential downpour began. I waited for twenty minutes, then texted him: It’s pouring. Don’t worry about coming back. I’ll just call an Uber. He didn’t reply. I took a cab back to the apartment. I let myself in, my clothes damp from the dash to the door. The lock clicked. I stopped dead. Phoebe was standing in the living room wearing one of Arthur’s white button-down shirts. A towel was draped over her head, her cheeks flushed pink from a hot shower. Arthur was handing her a hair dryer. They both turned to look at me. I gripped my crutches until my knuckles turned white. My mind went blank, a white noise of shock. Arthur’s face paled. He took a step toward me, panic flickering in his eyes. I instinctively stumbled back, nearly losing my balance. He froze. “Hazel, wait. Phoebe was being followed by some stalker… her place was surrounded. She had nowhere else to go. She got soaked in the rain… nothing happened. I swear.” Phoebe stepped out from behind the sofa, her long legs bare beneath the hem of his shirt. “Arthur was just worried about me, Hazel. Please, don’t make a scene.” I could feel myself shaking. Not with anger, but with a cold, absolute clarity. I turned to leave. Arthur ran out and caught my arm. “Hazel! We really—” “Arthur! Enough!” I shouted, my voice trembling. “It’s over.”

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1 My brain was a scorched wasteland. After three consecutive sixteen-hour shifts at the Chronicle, my IQ had plummeted into the negatives. I was a ghost in a trench coat, haunted by deadlines and caffeine jitters. When I reached my floor, I didn’t even look at the door number. I just punched the code into the keypad—my own birthday, a habit I’d never changed. The lock clicked. The door swung open. But as I stepped inside, the air felt wrong. My apartment usually smelled like overpriced lavender candles and neglected laundry; this place smelled of cedarwood, expensive scotch, and the sterile hum of high-end electronics. I reached for the light switch, but my hand hit nothing but smooth, cold wallpaper. A jolt of adrenaline finally pierced my exhaustion. I froze, my heart hammering against my ribs. I backed away, intending to bolt, but I slammed right into a solid, warm chest. “Is the upgrade finished so soon?” A voice vibrated against my back—low, resonant, and achingly familiar. Silas Blackwood. My neighbor. The man I’d been hopelessly, pathetically in love with for a year. Before I could process his words, his hand settled on my waist. Even through my thin silk blouse, the heat of his palm felt like a brand. My mind went blank. I caught a glimpse of a glossy booklet on the coffee table: The Synthetics User Guide: Model V Companion. Synthetic? As in… an android? Before I could gasp, Silas swept me off my feet. He carried me into the bedroom with an effortless, predatory grace. The room was bathed in the pale, blue glow of the city skyline. He didn’t turn on the lights. He didn’t say another word. He just kissed me. It wasn’t the polite, distant greeting of a neighbor. It was a shattering, soul-deep claim. His fingers tangled in my hair, tilting my head back as he tasted me with a hunger that made my knees weak. My brain, already fragile, completely short-circuited. I didn’t pull away. I didn’t tell him I was human. I just gripped his collar and let myself drown in the scent of him. “The haptic response is incredible,” he murmured against my lips, his breath hitching. “More realistic than the last version.” He thought I was a machine. The realization should have stung, but in the heat of his embrace, it felt like a shield. During the day, when we shared an elevator, Silas was the ice king of the tech world—a man who gave me nothing but a stiff nod and a “Mind the gap, Ms. Reed” even when I purposefully brushed against him. Who would have thought that the stoic, repressed Silas Blackwood spent his nights pouring his soul—and his body—into a robot that looked exactly like me? “Is the voice module still calibrating?” he whispered, his thumb tracing my lower lip. He looked troubled, his brow furrowing in the dark. I panicked. I forced my voice into a flat, rhythmic monotone. “Voice… pack… installing…” Silas let out a soft, breathy laugh that made my skin tingle. He pulled a set of silk pajamas from the nightstand. Then, with agonizing slowness and a gaze that felt like a physical touch, he began to undress me. 2 Aside from the kisses and the quiet, intimate ritual of changing my clothes, Silas didn’t cross the final line. He just held me. When the first grey light of dawn filtered through the blinds, I waited for him to leave for his workout before I scrambled out of his bed and fled to my own apartment. I collapsed against my front door, my heart still racing. Did he really have a synthetic that looked exactly like me? The thought was terrifying. And yet, I couldn’t stop thinking about the way he looked at me when he thought I couldn’t feel it. I forced myself through a cold shower and headed to the office, arriving late and looking like I’d been dragged through a hedge. I expected a lecture from my editor, Sarah, but instead, she pulled me into her glass-walled office with a manic grin. “Maren, the universe has smiled upon you,” she said, sliding a folder across the desk. “The Blackwood interview is finally a go. Two hours tomorrow, two hours the day after. Exclusive.” I nearly dropped the file. I had been chasing this profile for six months as a cover for my obsession, but now? Now it felt like a death sentence. I spent the day in a fever dream, drafting questions while my mind looped back to the cedarwood scent of his skin. Should I stop? Should I stay away from his apartment? But I was addicted. I was a journalist; I was supposed to seek the truth, but I found myself craving the lie. That night, I walked back into his apartment. I knew the code was my birthday. I knew where the pajamas were kept. I sat on his sofa and waited. When Silas arrived, he looked different. There was a faint, fresh scratch along his jawline. “Come here,” he said softly, heading into the bedroom. I followed him, my heart in my throat. He had already changed into his robe. He gestured to the bed, his expression unreadable. “Get in. It’s been a long day, and I have lab trials tomorrow. We’re just sleeping.” The disappointment was a sharp, physical pang in my chest. I climbed under the duvet, and he pulled me against him. He kissed my forehead—a gesture so tender it made my eyes sting—and fell asleep almost instantly. 3 The next morning, I stood outside the Blackwood Industries conference room, taking deep, shaky breaths. I was Maren Reed, professional journalist. I was not a synthetic. I was not a secret. “We can begin now,” a cold, clipped voice said from behind me. I turned and froze. Silas stood there in a charcoal suit, his eyes like flint. He looked nothing like the man who had held me hours ago. And more importantly—the scratch on his jaw was gone. “Of course,” I stammered, stepping back so quickly I nearly tripped over my own feet. My hands shook as I reached for my recorder. Silas adjusted his glasses, his gaze lingering on my trembling fingers. “Are you unwell, Ms. Reed? You look… pale.” “I’m fine,” I lied, staring at the floor. The memories of the night were screaming in my head, clashing violently with the sterile reality of the man in front of me. The interview was a nightmare of efficiency. He answered every technical question with surgical precision. But when I reached the final question—one I hadn’t cleared with Sarah—the air in the room curdled. “Mr. Blackwood, rumors suggest your firm is working on high-fidelity social synthetics. Why would a creator choose to model a prototype after someone in their personal life?” Silas went rigid. He stood up, smoothing his tie with a slow, deliberate motion. “That question was not on the approved list, Ms. Reed. This interview is over.” I couldn’t take it. The coldness, the hot-and-cold whiplash—it was breaking me. I watched him walk toward the elevator and I snapped. I chased after him, sliding into the car just as the doors began to close. “Silas, stop it!” I yelled. “What the hell is this? I’ve spent a year trying to get close to you, and you treat me like a stranger. But then I see what’s in your apartment. You have a machine that looks like me. You hold it. You kiss it. Is this just some sick research project? Am I just a blueprint to you?” Silas looked at me, his expression flat, his eyes devoid of the warmth I’d felt in the dark. “Ms. Reed,” he said, his voice like a gavel. “You are overstepping. Whatever you think you saw in my home is none of your concern.” The elevator doors opened. He walked away without looking back. I collapsed against the mirrored wall of the elevator, feeling smaller than I ever had in my life. I had bared my soul, and he hadn’t even blinked. The doors opened again on the lobby level. A woman was waiting there—tall, blonde, and wearing a coat that cost more than my car. 4 She stepped into the elevator and looked me up and down with a pitying smile. She toyed with a sapphire pendant at her throat—a perfect match for the cufflinks Silas had been wearing. “Honey, you need to learn your place,” she said, her voice like honeyed poison. “Silas and I might not be a ‘love match,’ as the tabloids put it, but we are an alliance. Our wedding is in three months. I don’t mind a little distraction, but I won’t tolerate a nuisance.” The doors opened. I walked out into a sudden New York downpour. I stood on the sidewalk, letting the rain soak through my clothes, feeling like a discarded toy. The last forty-eight hours had been a fever dream born of my own desperation. I huddled under a bus stop awning, my makeup running, my clothes clinging to my skin. I felt pathetic. Then, a sleek black sedan pulled up to the curb. The window rolled down. It was Silas. But there, on his jaw, was the scratch. “Maren,” he said, his voice urgent. “Get in.” I didn’t move. I stared at the scratch. Then I stared at him. “You knew,” I whispered. “You knew I wasn’t the machine from the beginning.” He didn’t answer. He got out of the car, shielding me with a large umbrella, his eyes searching mine. “Synthetics shouldn’t be out in the rain,” he said softly. “They’ll short-circuit.” Something inside me snapped. I shoved the umbrella away, stepping back into the deluge. “Stop it! Stop the games! You’re Silas, but you’re not… him. The Silas in that office doesn’t have a scratch on his face. He doesn’t have a soul. And he has a fiancée.” The man in front of me flinched. The umbrella tilted, forgotten. The rain washed over the scratch on his jaw, making it stand out vividly. “Who are you?” I screamed over the thunder. “Why are you doing this to me?” He swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “I’m Silas. The only Silas that matters to you.” “Liar,” I breathed. I could feel the truth now. It wasn’t just the scratch. It was the way he looked at me—with a desperate, terrifying vulnerability that the man in the office was incapable of. “I’m done. I don’t care who you are or what kind of twisted twin-swap you’re running. I’m out. Don’t come near me again.” I turned and ran into the rain. He didn’t follow. 5 The fever hit me like a freight train that night. I spent the next day drifting in and out of consciousness, my body shivering despite the piles of blankets. My phone buzzed incessantly—Sarah, demanding to know why I wasn’t at the second half of the Blackwood interview. With a Herculean effort, I dragged myself out of bed, threw on a dress, and called an Uber. I couldn’t lose my job over a broken heart. When I arrived at the Blackwood building, my vision was swimming. My colleague, a junior photographer, met me in the lobby. “Maren, you look like death,” he whispered. “I’m fine,” I said, though the floor felt like it was tilting. Suddenly, a hand gripped my wrist. It was cool against my burning skin. I leaned toward the sensation, my eyes fluttering shut. I looked up and saw Silas. “Maren, you’re burning up.” “Let go of me, Mr. Blackwood,” I hissed, my voice cracking. I tried to pull away, but I stumbled. He caught me, his arms locking around me like iron. He turned to my colleague and the gathered staff. “I have an emergency. The interview is canceled. Reschedule for next week.” “You can’t do that!” I protested, but he ignored me. He picked me up—that same effortless, bridal carry—and marched me toward the private garage. He tucked me into the passenger seat of his car, cranking the heat. I looked at his face in the light of the dashboard. The scratch was there. It was him. The ‘Night Silas.’ “Tell me,” I whispered. “Who are you?” He gripped the steering wheel, his knuckles white. After a long, heavy silence, he spoke. “Sawyer,” he said. “I’m Sawyer Blackwood. Silas’s twin brother. The one they keep in the basement because I’m not ‘corporate’ enough.”

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1 It took a failed suicide attempt and a bottle of Xanax for me to realize I was nothing more than a supporting character in a romance novel. The man I’d just tried to die for was my husband, Grant Weston. He was my first love, my high school crush, the boy I had defied my wealthy parents to marry back when he was just a brilliant, penniless coder with a dream. Now, he was the golden boy of the tech world, a billionaire mogul who had once promised me a display of fireworks for my birthday that would light up the entire New York skyline. I waited for those fireworks. I waited until the sparklers went out and the champagne turned flat. But the sky stayed dark. The only thing that arrived that night wasn’t a celebration—it was the news that his “one who got away” had finally come home. “Do you really think a few pills are going to stop this divorce?” Grant stood at the foot of my hospital bed, his silhouette sharp and cold against the sterile white walls. His voice held no pity, only a weary, jagged edge of resentment. “Grant? What are you talking about?” My head felt like it had been stuffed with wet wool. I tried to reach up to rub my temples, but the tug of an IV line in my wrist jerked me back to reality. Two hours ago, he had walked into our penthouse and told me he wanted out. I had spiraled, lost in a blur of grief, and emptied a prescription bottle before the world went black. I reached out, my fingers trembling as I caught the sleeve of his designer suit. It was an instinctual, pathetic plea. “Please, don’t joke like that. The fireworks… you said we were going to watch the fireworks tonight.” His eyes flickered—a brief, microscopic shadow of something like guilt—but it vanished as quickly as it appeared, replaced by a wall of ice. “Don’t you get it, Audrey? Seraphina is back. She’s always been the only one. It was always her.” My heart did a sickening drop. My pulse thudded in my ears, a frantic, rhythmic panic. “Seraphina? She’s been in London for years. Why now? Why does it matter?” Grant looked at me, his expression flat. “She didn’t leave because she didn’t love me. She left because my mother paid her off—a hundred thousand dollars to cover her family’s medical debts. It was a misunderstanding, Audrey. A cruel, decades-long mistake.” The room seemed to tilt. “And what about us? Why did you propose to me? Why did you spend three years building a life with me if—” “I was young. I was confused,” he said, his voice dropping to a low, steady drone. “I thought marriage was a partnership, a sensible arrangement. But Seraphina… she’s the soul. Thank you for helping me realize that I can’t settle for anything less than her.” It felt like a physical blow to the chest. As I lay there, fragments of a strange, haunting memory began to stitch themselves together in my mind—not memories of my life, but plot points. I saw the narrative arc laid out like a blueprint. Grant Weston, the misunderstood hero. Seraphina Rossi, the tragic, beautiful first love. And me? I was Audrey Hale, the “placeholder wife.” The woman the readers were supposed to dislike for standing in the way of true love. The “filler” character used to build the hero’s wealth before he discarded her. Every word Grant had just spoken was a line from a script I hadn’t known I was following. In the “book,” I was supposed to scream. I was supposed to call our parents, throw a tantrum, and refuse to sign the papers. I was supposed to spend the next three years clinging to the wreckage of our marriage until Grant eventually dismantled my father’s company, stripped me of my dignity, and threw me out into the street as a laughingstock of the Upper East Side. Am I really just a footnote in her story? “Just tell me,” Grant said, stepping closer, leaning over the bed until his shadow eclipsed me. “What is it going to take for you to sign? Money? Property? Just name the price so we can end this.” I shrank back, my voice a thin, shaky thread. “And if… if I say no?” He frowned, his jaw tightening, but before he could answer, his phone chimed. He checked the screen, and his entire demeanor shifted. The ice melted instantly into a terrifyingly soft warmth. “Seraphina? What’s wrong?” I could hear her voice through the receiver—a soft, melodic trill, laced with practiced vulnerability. “Grant? The gallery opening is starting soon. I’m getting nervous. Where are you?” “I’m on my way,” he said, his eyes darting to me with a flash of impatience. “There was a minor complication. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.” He hung up and looked at me one last time, his voice stripped of all emotion. “You have three days, Audrey. Give me an answer that doesn’t waste any more of my time.” He turned and walked out without looking back. I stared at the empty doorway, a cold, hollow ache spreading through my ribs. Only a month ago, we were celebrating his company’s IPO. He had held my hand, looked me in the eye, and told me he’d never seen anything as beautiful as me. He’d seemed so sincere. How does a man go from that to looking at you like you’re a stain on his carpet? It wasn’t possible. He loved me. He had to. This had to be some terrible, temporary fever dream. With trembling hands, I ripped the IV from my arm. I ignored the sting of blood and the dizziness in my head. I had to see them. I had to know if the “script” was real. 2 The art gallery was a hive of New York’s elite, smelling of expensive perfume and pretension. I found them in a quiet corner, tucked away behind a large abstract canvas. Grant’s arm was draped protectively around a woman whose frame was so delicate she looked as if she might shatter under a heavy gaze. Seraphina Rossi. Ten years ago, I was the naive girl who believed love was something you could earn through sheer endurance. When Grant mentioned he admired women with an “artistic soul,” I dropped my business major and enrolled in Fine Arts. I spent years perfecting a version of myself that I thought he wanted. I remembered the first time he asked for my help back in college for a charity gala. I had stayed up all night organizing it, bringing along my younger classmates to staff the event. That was the night he met Seraphina. I thought their breakup years ago was the end. I didn’t realize she was a ghost that had been haunting my hallways for three years. Grant noticed me first. His face darkened. He shifted, subtly shielding Seraphina with his body. “What the hell are you doing here, Audrey?” I fought back the hot prickle of tears, forcing my chin up. “My husband is here. Why wouldn’t I be?” Seraphina blinked, her wide, doe-like eyes darting between us. “Grant? You… you said the divorce was settled. You told me the papers were signed.” She lowered her head, the picture of a wounded angel. “It’s being handled,” Grant murmured, squeezing her shoulder. He turned back to me, his voice a low hiss. “Audrey, stop this. You’re making a scene. You’re embarrassing yourself.” Seraphina stepped forward, her voice a soft, sugary whisper. “Audrey, I’m so sorry. Truly. But you can’t force a heart to stay where it doesn’t belong. Please… for everyone’s sake, just let him go.” Let him go? In the original plot, this was where I was supposed to break. This was where I would spend three years begging for scraps of his affection, only to end up on my knees on a snowy Christmas Eve, pleading with him not to bankrupt my family’s firm while he stayed inside a warm penthouse with her. The memory of that unwritten future sent a shiver of pure, cold terror through my spine. Maybe it was time to stop fighting the inevitable. “Fine. If that’s what you want… then let’s divorce.” The words were right there, on the tip of my tongue. But as I opened my mouth, my throat seized. It felt like an invisible hand was squeezing my windpipe. “Grant…” I heard my own voice, but it wasn’t saying what I wanted. It was high, desperate, and clingy. “Grant, please. Are we really just… over? Can’t we go back to how it was?” I froze. My own mind was screaming No! Stop! but my body was reciting the script. I was a puppet, and the strings were being pulled by a narrative I couldn’t control. Grant rolled his eyes, the last of his patience snapping. “Is this a joke to you? You won’t sign the papers, you show up here to harass us—do you have any dignity left at all?” His voice carried. People were starting to turn, their whispers cutting through the air like glass. “No, that’s not it—” I shook my head, trying to fight the invisible force in my throat. “I’m not trying to cause a scene, I just—” “You just can’t let go,” he interrupted, his lip curling in a sneer of pure disgust. “Grant, wait!” I reached out, grabbing his forearm, my mind screaming for me to tell him that we were in a story, that none of this was right. He didn’t wait. He snarled and wrenched his arm away with such force that I lost my balance. I stumbled back, my heels skidding on the polished floor. My shoulder slammed into a display wall, and I collapsed onto the ground in a heap of silk and shame. The gallery went silent for a heartbeat. Then, the murmurs began. “Is that the wife? How pathetic.” “She looks like a mess. No wonder he’s leaving her.” “Some women just don’t know when they’ve been replaced.” Seraphina tugged at Grant’s sleeve, her voice trembling. “Grant, let’s just go. Please. I can’t be here for this.” Grant gave me one final, loathing look. “Don’t follow us, Audrey. I’m done being patient.” I sat on the floor, watching the man I had loved for a decade walk away with another woman. I wanted to cry, but the tears wouldn’t come. There was only a vast, echoing numbness. Pain, when it goes deep enough, eventually turns into a kind of hollow silence. 3 I don’t remember leaving the gallery. For the next three days, I tried to fight the script. I went to my mother, intending to tell her I was leaving Grant, but when I opened my mouth, the words came out as: “Mom, I can’t lose him. You have to help me keep him…” I called my best friend, Gia, wanting to tell her I was done, but instead, I sobbed into the phone: “I still love him. I can’t let her win.” I was a prisoner in my own skin, watching myself play the part of the hysterical, jilted wife. I was terrified. Was I doomed to follow this path until I hit rock bottom? On the third day, I drove to Grant’s office at Weston Tech. My chest felt like it was being squeezed by a vice. I had to end this. I had to find a way to say the words. As I approached his private suite, I heard a sound that made my blood run cold. It was a low, muffled moan—a sound of stifled, breathless passion. I froze at the door. Every instinct told me to turn around, but the script pushed me forward. My hand reached out. My thumb pressed against the biometric scanner. The door hissed open. The sight inside shattered whatever was left of my heart. Grant was in his executive chair, and Seraphina was draped across his lap, her silk dress pushed up high. His hands were buried in her hair, his mouth pressed feverishly against the hollow of her throat. In three years of marriage, I had never seen him lose control like this. With me, he was always composed, always “sensible.” With her, he was a man possessed. This wasn’t in the book. The book said they were “soulmates,” but it never described this blatant, daylight infidelity in the middle of a corporate office. Seraphina saw me first. She let out a small, performative gasp and buried her face in Grant’s chest, pulling her bodice up as if she were a startled rabbit. Grant looked up. When he saw me, his expression shifted from shock to a blinding, incandescent rage. “Have you lost your mind?” He stood up, shielding Seraphina behind him. “This is a place of business! Bursting in here like a lunatic—who do you think you are?” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “Who do I think I am? I’m your wife! You’re having sex with her in your office, and I’m the lunatic?” Seraphina touched his arm, her voice a fragile whisper. “Grant, don’t be angry with her. She’s just… she’s hurting. I should go.” She adjusted her clothes, making sure I saw the fresh, dark bruises of his affection on her skin. Something inside me snapped. It wasn’t the script. It wasn’t the “supporting character.” It was me. The real Audrey Hale. I didn’t think. I lunged forward and swung my hand with every ounce of strength I had left. The sound echoed like a gunshot. The air in the room turned to lead. The next second, Grant’s face twisted into something demonic. In a blur of motion, he grabbed a heavy glass carafe from his desk and hurled it at me. The glass exploded against my forehead. The force sent me reeling backward until I hit the floor. A hot, thick liquid began to crawl down my face. I reached up, my fingers coming away drenched in crimson. My head throbbed with a rhythmic, sickening heat. He had actually hit me. Grant didn’t even look at the wound. He was already leaning down, cradling Seraphina. “Are you okay? Did she hurt you?” His voice was cooing, desperate, as if she were the one bleeding on the carpet. She sobbed into his chest, shaking her head. “Audrey Hale!” Grant barked, turning his head to glare at me, his eyes bloodshot. “I told you I wanted a divorce! You’re the one clinging like a parasite, and now you’re getting violent? You are unstable!” I stared at him, my vision blurring. Unstable? Parasite? Was that what ten years of devotion got me? I looked at him—really looked at him—and the pedestal I had built for him for a decade finally crumbled into dust. The humiliation and the physical pain merged into a singular, sharp point of clarity. The “script” in my head shivered. The gears of fate groaned and shifted. I gritted my teeth, the taste of copper filling my mouth. I pushed myself up from the floor, bone by painful bone, until I was standing. I looked him dead in the eye, and for the first time in three days, my voice belonged entirely to me. “Grant Weston,” I said, my voice as cold as a grave. “Let’s divorce. Now.” His entire body went rigid. His expression went blank, the rage replaced by a sudden, jarring silence.

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1 The salt air on the yacht was thick with the scent of expensive gin and the lingering heat of a summer night in the Hamptons. We were playing a high-stakes version of Liar’s Dice. In this circle, if your bluff was called and you were caught, the penalty was a shot of something bottom-shelf and a humiliating truth. When it was my turn, I looked at Grant Miller—the man I’d shared my life, my bed, and my secrets with for the last eight years. I smiled, feeling a rare flutter of hope. “I’m getting married this year,” I said. The table went silent. Before Grant could even react, my “best friend,” Sienna Hayes, raised her hand, her eyes sparkling with a cruel sort of playfulness. “I call bullshit,” she chirped. “There is no way you’re getting married this year, Elena.” The eyes of our entire social circle shifted to Grant. He didn’t look at me. Instead, he reached for a glass of cheap whiskey, his movements casual, and pushed it across the polished teak table toward me. “You lost,” he said, his voice flat. “Drink up.” I didn’t hesitate. I downed the liquid in one go. It burned my throat, but the fire in my chest—the sudden, sharp realization of betrayal—hurt infinitely more. Then it was Sienna’s turn. She leaned back, a Cheshire cat grin on her face. “I’m getting married this year, too.” I slammed my glass down. “Bullshit.” “She pulled out a crisp sheet of paper from her Dior clutch. It wasn’t a joke or a prop. It was the official Clark County filing, signed, dated, and embossed with the golden seal of a legal union. The bride: Sienna Hayes. The groom: Grant Miller.” The table erupted in muffled giggles and whispers. “Poor Elena,” someone joked. “You lost again. That’s a double shot for you.” Grant let out a weary, performative sigh. “It was a total fluke. We lost a bet during that wild weekend in Vegas last month. The group dared us to actually go through with the paperwork. It’s just a formality, Elena. Don’t be dramatic.” The blood in my veins turned to ice. It wasn’t just that they had played the game; it was that they had played me. But they forgot one thing about me: I am a woman of my word. I will be getting married this year. It just won’t be to him. … Grant pushed a second glass toward me. “Come on, stop sulking. I told you, it was a dare. It’s a one-year deal. Once the year is up, we’ll get a quiet annulment. It doesn’t change anything between us.” He said it so easily, with the terrifying confidence of a man who assumed I’d wait forever. Sienna’s eyes welled with performative tears. “Everyone was cheering, Elena. I didn’t think it would blow up like this. Please don’t be mad. We’ve been friends for too long to let a stupid prank come between us.” Others chimed in, their voices a chorus of gaslighting. “It was just a joke, Elena. That’s why we didn’t tell you. We knew you’d take it too seriously.” I listened to them, and my heart didn’t just break—it hardened. They all knew. They all laughed behind my back while I was planning a future with a man who was already legally bound to my best friend. I stood up. Grant’s brow furrowed. “Where are you going?” “I need air.” He lowered his voice, his tone sharp with impatience. “That’s enough. Don’t make a scene. Just sit down and finish the game.” I looked at him and felt a sudden, hysterical urge to laugh. I was already a ghost in this circle. I walked out to the edge of the deck, where the wind was whipping off the Atlantic. The sea was a void, black and bottomless. I pulled out my phone and dialed a number I hadn’t called in months. My mother picked up on the second ring, her voice laced with surprise. “Elena? It’s late. Is everything okay?” I gripped the railing, my knuckles white. “That merger… the one you and Dad talked about. The alliance with the Caldwell family. I’ll do it. I’m ready.” The line went quiet for a beat. Then, my father’s voice took over. “Are you serious, Elena?” “Yes.” “Have you thought this through?” “I have.” I watched the distant, flickering lights of the shoreline. My voice was calmer than I expected. “I’m done waiting for Grant. I’m done being the girl who waits.” My mother’s voice softened, frantic. “Did he do something? Where are you? We’ll send a car.” “No,” I said. “I’ll come to you. I just need to get off this boat.” I grew up as an outsider. I was a late addition to the Brooks family—adopted back into my biological family’s life in my teens after a childhood of being raised by the wrong people. I had always felt like I didn’t quite belong, like I had to prove my worth. I thought Grant was my home. I thought as long as I had him, the Brooks’ legacy didn’t matter. I had valued myself too little. And I had valued him far too much. “Do you want to meet him first?” my mother asked gently. “Sebastian Caldwell is… he’s a lot, Elena.” “No,” I said. “Just set it up. I don’t care about the details.” I hung up and stood there for a long time. Behind me, the music was still thumping. The laughter hadn’t stopped. My humiliation was just the evening’s entertainment for them. A text buzzed from Grant: [Stop being a brat. Get back in here.] I looked at the screen and remembered a winter years ago. His first startup had failed. He was broke, shivering on a curb, sobbing. I had held him and told him, It’s okay. I’ve got you. I’ll be your safety net. It turns out I hadn’t been a safety net. I’d been a floor he walked on. I deleted the message and powered off the phone. That was the night I decided to leave him behind. The next morning, the sun was blinding. I hadn’t slept a wink. The deck was already buzzing with the “morning-after” energy—mimosas and forced cheer. Grant walked over with a plate of breakfast, placing it beside me with a patronizing smile. “Eat something.” I didn’t touch it. His face darkened. “Still throwing a tantrum?” I looked up at him. “Is that what you call this? A tantrum?” “I explained it last night,” he snapped. “The license was a fluke. A legal glitch. Why are you being so literal?” I let out a cold laugh and pushed the plate back toward him. “Grant, I’m just realizing for the first time exactly who you are.” His expression shifted into something ugly. “Elena Brooks.” “Don’t use my full name like you’re my father. You were pretty clear-headed when you were handing me those shots last night. You seemed to enjoy the ‘joke’ then.” The crowd around us went quiet. People were starting to stare. Grant grabbed my arm, his voice a low hiss. “Are you really going to lose your mind in front of everyone?” I shoved him off. “Am I the one who lost my mind? Or was it the man who married someone else on a dare?” Sienna drifted over then, stepping into his orbit like she belonged there. She looked at me with faux-pity. “Elena, everyone is watching. Think about Grant’s reputation. Don’t make this ugly.” “My reputation?” I scoffed. “Where was your concern for my reputation when you pulled that license out of your bag?” Her face went pale, her eyes instantly brimming with tears. “I’m sorry… I just wanted to win the game.” I felt a chill of pure clarity. Our friendship had been a lie—a long-term project of hers to ensure she was always the one on top. “Don’t bother explaining, Sienna.” Grant, embarrassed and furious, grabbed Sienna’s hand. “Fine. If she wants to be ungrateful, let her. Let’s go fishing. She can stay here and rot.” They iced me out for the rest of the morning. They held a fishing competition on the aft deck, laughing and taking photos. Eventually, Sienna lost a round. The penalty was to jump into the ocean. She stood at the railing, looking performatively frail. The group cheered for her to jump. But Grant stepped in. “She’s on her period,” he announced. “She can’t go in.” A dull thud echoed in my chest. He knew her cycle. He knew her better than a ‘prank’ would suggest. But then he turned to me, his eyes cold. “Elena, you do it. Do it as an apology to Sienna for being such a bitch this morning.” I stared at him, unable to breathe. “You want me to jump for her?” “Grant, you know I’m terrified of deep water.” He hesitated for a fraction of a second, then shrugged. “There are life preservers. It’s fine.” I turned to walk away, but Sienna caught my arm. “Elena, please. I’m really not feeling well. Just do this one thing for me.” I wrenched my arm away. “It’s your penalty. Jump yourself.” The crowd started to groan. “God, Elena, it’s just water. Don’t be a buzzkill.” I was cornered. I looked at Grant, desperate for him to be the man I thought he was. But he walked over and roughly shoved a life ring over my head. I struggled against him. “Let go of me! Grant, stop!” His hands paused. For a second, I saw a flash of the old Grant. Then it vanished. “It’ll be fine,” he whispered. And then, he pushed me. The world tilted. I hit the water, and the cold was a physical blow. I went under, my lungs screaming, my limbs flailing in a blind, primal panic. When I was a child, I had nearly drowned in a riptide; the ocean wasn’t a playground to me. It was a grave. I surfaced, gasping and coughing up salt water. The yacht didn’t stop. It kept moving, the wake churning around me. I clung to the life ring, waiting for the engines to cut, for the laughter to stop and the rescue to begin. But the boat grew smaller. The sun began to dip toward the horizon. They really had forgotten me. Or worse, they didn’t care. As the sky turned a bruised purple, I felt my body start to shut down. My fingers were numb. I thought about Grant telling me he’d be rich one day so he could take care of me. I thought about Sienna promising to be my maid of honor. I thought about every time I had shrunk myself so they could feel big. By the time the darkness swallowed the sea, I didn’t even have the energy to hate them anymore. I was just… done. When the rescue boat finally found me, I was drifting on the edge of consciousness. A man knelt over me, his voice steady and commanding. He checked my pulse, his hand warm against my freezing skin. “Can you hear me?” I opened my eyes and saw a man in a dark dress shirt, his sleeves rolled up. He looked like power personified. He saved me. I managed to whisper my parents’ address. When we reached the docks, my parents were already there. My mother let out a strangled cry and threw her coat around me, her hands shaking. “Elena! What happened? Who did this to you?” My throat was too raw to speak. My father looked at my rescuer, his expression shifting to one of profound respect. He stepped forward. “Mr. Caldwell. Thank you for bringing her back.” I looked up. This was him. Sebastian Caldwell. My “strategic alliance.” Back at the Brooks estate, the world felt surreal. A doctor cleared me; my mother dried my hair, whispering that I was safe now. For the first time since I was a teenager, I felt like I truly belonged in this house. I finally accepted them, because they were the only ones who showed up when I was sinking. Once the house settled, Sebastian sat in our living room. He had been waiting. “I assume you were here to discuss the merger, Sebastian,” my father said. Sebastian nodded. “I was. But I’d like to prioritize something else first.” He looked at me. His gaze wasn’t “shy”—it was observant, intense. “I’ve seen enough of Elena tonight to know she’s a woman of incredible resilience. I’d like to move forward with the marriage. Immediately. If she’ll have me.” The room went still. My parents looked at me, waiting. I looked at Sebastian. I didn’t know if he loved me—we were strangers—but he had pulled me out of the Atlantic while my “lover” had pushed me in. I looked at the steaming cup of tea in my hands. “Fine,” I said. “Let’s do it tomorrow.” Sebastian’s eyebrows shot up, a small, genuine smile playing on his lips. The next day, we stood in the courthouse. When the clerk handed me the marriage certificate, I felt a strange, hollow peace. It was a contract, yes. But it was a contract with a man who saw me. Outside, Sebastian took a call. Business, clearly. When he hung up, he turned to me. “I have to be in London for a few days. When I get back, we’ll plan a wedding that this city will never forget. Wait for me, Elena.” He kissed my forehead—a soft, respectful gesture—and left. I went straight to my old office to resign. I didn’t want anything left of my old life. But as I approached the conference room, I saw Grant and Sienna sitting inside. They were there for a pitch meeting. Grant froze when he saw me. He stood up abruptly. “Where the hell were you last night? Why didn’t you answer your phone?” I looked at him and felt nothing but a sharp, acidic disdain. “You’re asking me where I was? You should be asking how I managed to survive the night in the middle of the ocean.” His face went ashen. “I… I didn’t mean for the boat to go that far. We got distracted. We came back for you, but we couldn’t find you.” Sienna leaned back in her chair, sipping her latte. “I knew you’d be fine, Elena. You always were a strong swimmer. Stop being so dramatic.” Any lingering doubt I had vanished. I walked to the table, took off my ID badge, and dropped it in front of them. “I quit,” I said. Grant stood up, his face reddening. “Wait, we have a deal to discuss. Don’t let your ‘personal feelings’ ruin this contract.” “What contract, Grant? I don’t work for you, and I certainly don’t owe you anything.” I turned to leave, but that night, the real nightmare started. Private photos of me—intimate photos I had only ever sent to Grant—were leaked online. My world shattered. Those photos were meant for his eyes only. The only person who could have leaked them was him. By the next morning, the police were at my door. Someone had made an anonymous tip, accusing me of using those photos for “escort services” and “extortion.” It was a calculated, brutal character assassination. I sat in the back of the police car, my mind a static hum of shock. Because the photos were real, I was detained pending a bail hearing. The humiliation was total. Every officer, every clerk, looked at me like I was something found in the gutter. I had one phone call. I didn’t call my parents. I called Sebastian. “I’m at the precinct,” I whispered, my voice breaking. There was a second of silence. “Stay put,” he said. “I’m coming.” While I waited, I saw the social media fallout. My old college groups, the yacht crew—they were all tearing me apart. They called me a homewrecker, a gold-digger. Then I saw a post from Sienna: [This has all gone too far. When Elena gets out, we all need to show her grace and apologize!] Grace. Apologize. As if she wasn’t the one holding the matches while my life burned. When the visitation hour arrived, I expected my parents or Sebastian. Instead, Grant and Sienna walked in, followed by a few of “our” friends. They sat behind the glass, looking at me with a mix of pity and triumph. Grant leaned into the microphone. “Elena. This is a mess. But I can make it go away.” I stared at him, speechless. “If you agree to drop the ‘dispute’ over the marriage and stop harassing Sienna, I’ll post your bail. I’ll even put out a statement saying the photos were hacked from my phone. We can go back to how things were.” He was holding my freedom hostage for my silence. Sienna put a hand on her stomach, her voice a soft coo. “Elena, nobody wanted this. We were all just drinking too much. Let’s just be friends again.” The others nodded. “Come on, Elena. Don’t be stubborn. Just take the deal.” I looked at them—these people I had called family—and I finally understood. They didn’t want me to be okay. They wanted me to be small. “You leaked the photos,” I said, my voice echoing in the small room. “You called the police. And you think I’m going to thank you for it?” Grant’s face hardened. “Don’t be ungrateful. I’m the only one who can save you.” I smiled. It was the scariest smile I’d ever felt. “Save yourself, Grant.” I looked past him. Sebastian was walking down the hallway. He wasn’t alone. He had a team of lawyers and a stern-faced assistant carrying a mountain of folders. Sebastian didn’t even look at Grant. He spoke to the captain, his voice carrying the weight of a man who owned the city. My lawyers laid out the evidence: the IP addresses where the photos were uploaded, the group chat logs I had forwarded to Sebastian earlier, and the proof of Grant’s company accounts paying off the “anonymous” leaker. Grant’s face turned a sickly shade of grey. He hadn’t expected a man like Sebastian Caldwell to be standing in my corner. Once the paperwork was signed, I walked out of that cell. My legs were shaking, but Sebastian caught me. He held me steady, his hand firm on my waist. “Can you walk?” “Yes.” He led me toward the exit. He never looked back at Grant. He didn’t need to. As we reached the car, I took out my phone. I posted one thing to every social media platform I had. It was a photo of my hand and Sebastian’s, our wedding bands catching the light. The caption was four words: [Married. Do not disturb.] Behind us, I heard Grant shout my name. I didn’t turn around. I didn’t even flinch. I just got in the car and let Sebastian take me home.

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My roommate convinced me to hit the latest “extreme” haunted house that had gone viral on Reddit. It was October 30th—Devil’s Night. He’d dropped a staggering amount of money to rent the entire place out for a private, overnight “immersion experience.” We were supposed to be there until dawn. We hadn’t been on the service stairs for more than twenty minutes when the guide suddenly stopped. He wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead, his flashlight beam trembling against the gray concrete. “We’ve been going down for dozens of flights now,” he muttered, his voice sounding thin in the narrow stairwell. “Why haven’t we hit the basement yet?” Tyler, my roommate, let out a dismissive snort. He was leaning against the handrail, looking bored. “It’s a marketing gimmick, man. They probably just looped the stairs to mess with our heads. It’s part of the ‘immersion,’ right?” I looked over the railing, staring into the rectangular void of the stairwell. The darkness below was absolute, a throat that seemed to swallow the light from our phones. My stomach did a slow, nauseating flip. “Tyler,” I said, my voice tight. “We’ve been walking down for almost two hours.” 1 I turned to the guide, my pulse thrumming in my fingertips. “I… I just remembered I have a project due. Something came up. Can you just take us out through the emergency exit? The normal way?” Under the harsh, pallid glow of his industrial flashlight, the guide’s face looked skeletal. He wasn’t smiling. “This is the only way. I don’t get it. I’ve run this route a hundred times. I don’t remember it being this many floors.” I felt a chill settle into my bones, a physical stiffness spreading through my limbs. Tyler rolled his eyes, a smirk playing on his lips. “Oh, come on, Jason. Are you serious? You’re letting the ‘actor’ get to you? He’s clearly just building the atmosphere. Give the guy an Oscar and let’s keep moving.” The guide didn’t look like he was acting. His eyes were wide, fixed on the darkness below. “I’m not building atmosphere,” he whispered. “I’ve never seen this before. Is it possible we… we crossed into…?” He didn’t finish the sentence. 2 The moment the words left his mouth, a ripple of unease went through the group. We were mostly freshmen, kids who had barely spent a semester away from home. We didn’t know each other well; there was no shared history to ground us, no collective courage to draw from. Tyler had organized this whole thing because he’d read somewhere that fear releases a flood of oxytocin—that terror is the ultimate aphrodisiac. He wanted to get close to Sienna, the girl from our Psych 101 class who everyone was obsessed with. But now, even Tyler’s cockiness was starting to fray at the edges. Sienna shivered, pulling her North Face jacket tighter around her. “I’m tired. I want to go back to the dorms. Let’s just leave.” The guide’s jaw tightened. “I told you, this is the only path. You’re college students—learn to listen. There are no other doors.” Tyler’s face darkened. “Watch your tone. I paid a premium for this. If you’re lost, that’s on you. Call the manager. Tell them to come get us.” The guide seemed relieved at the suggestion. He fumbled with his phone, his fingers shaking as he pulled it from his pocket. He hit a contact and put it on speaker so we could all hear. We held our breath. There was a long, agonizing stretch of static—a dry, rasping hiss. Then, the call connected. A collective sigh of relief escaped us. But it lasted less than a second. From the tiny speaker came a sound that didn’t belong to the world of the living. It was a cacophony of jagged screams, wet, guttural sobbing, and a high-pitched, manic laughter that sounded like metal scraping against bone. It was a roar of agony that felt distinctly inhuman. We all recoiled, covering our ears. Tyler, his face turning a sickly shade of white, lunged forward and snatched the phone, slamming the end-call button. “Nice. Real high-tech sound effects. Give it to me, I’ll call the main office myself.” He dialed. He put it on speaker. At first, there was only the hum of the dial tone. Then, the screaming exploded again—louder this time, more distorted, as if the things on the other end were pressing their mouths directly against the receiver. Tyler dropped the phone. It clattered against the concrete, the screen cracking, but the screaming continued until the device finally flickered and died. Panic hit us like a physical wave. A girl in the back began to sob. Kevin, a guy in thick glasses from the floor above ours, sank to the floor, his knees giving out. “I told you we shouldn’t have come,” he whimpered. “Something is wrong with this building.” The fear was infectious, spreading through the narrow, windowless space. The flashlight beams caught our faces, making us all look like ghosts—pale, hollow-eyed, and already dead. The guide wiped cold sweat from his neck. “Shut up! Both of you! Crying isn’t going to get us out.” Tyler stood there for a long moment, staring at the dead phone. He wiped his palms on his jeans and looked down into the infinite black. “He’s right,” Tyler said, his voice forced and brittle. “Sitting here is suicide. We keep moving. I want to see what’s at the bottom of these goddamn stairs.” The guide took a deep breath, adjusted his grip on his light, and took the first step down. 3 We descended. The light only reached a few steps ahead before the dark swallowed it whole. The sound of our footsteps echoed upward, bouncing off the concrete walls, mingling with the soft, rhythmic weeping of the girls. The hair on my arms stood up. My legs were beginning to burn—a dull, throbbing ache in my calves and a grinding sensation in my knees. It felt like my blood was turning to lead. Finally, someone broke. It was Lily. She was a petite girl from the Linguistics department, someone I remembered seeing at the gym, always looking exhausted after just five minutes on the treadmill. She didn’t have the stamina for this—physically or mentally. She collapsed against the wall, burying her face in her hands. “I’m not moving. I can’t. We’re never getting out. We’re going to die in here.” Her voice spiraled up the stairwell, a jagged, broken sound that threatened to snap what little remained of our composure. We stopped. No one spoke. The only sounds were the heavy, labored breathing of exhausted bodies and the oppressive silence of the building. The guide turned around, his expression grim. “Shut it!” “What good is crying?” he snapped. “You think your tears are going to shorten the stairs? You think an exit is going to manifest because you’re sad?” He looked at us, his eyes dark and unsettlingly intense. “You college kids… you have all the ego and none of the grit. You didn’t even check the history of this place before you signed the waiver, did you?” He gritted his teeth, leaning in. “Do any of you know the story behind this tenement?” 4 “What… what story?” Tyler asked, swallowing hard. The guide lowered his flashlight, letting the beam hit the floor so that his face was cast in terrifying upward shadows. “Twenty-five years ago, this wasn’t a ‘haunted attraction.’ It was a low-income housing project. A hundred families packed in like sardines. Then, a new family moved in. A man, his wife, a teenage daughter, and a five-year-old son. Just a normal family.” “On moving day, one of their crates fell off the truck. It hit the sidewalk and the lock snapped. You know what spilled out?” Silence. The air felt heavy, like it was filled with invisible dust. “Gold,” the guide whispered. “Jewelry. Rolexes. Family heirlooms. A literal fortune in a wooden box. Every person in this building was watching from their windows.” “That same night, the family was gone. Someone—or several someones—broke in with machetes. The parents were slaughtered in the foyer; their blood was thick enough to seep under the front door. But the fifteen-year-old girl and her little brother… they made a run for it.” He tilted his flashlight up, illuminating the spiraling stairs above us. “They were barefoot. They ran down these very stairs, screaming for help. Their voices were raw, screaming for someone, anyone, to open their door and let them in. Do you think a single person opened their door?” Lily was trembling so hard her teeth were chattering. “N-no?” “Oh, they opened them,” the guide said, a sick, twisted smile touching his lips. “They opened the doors and stepped out into the hall with knives and pipes. Every single tenant in this building was in on it. The siblings ran flight after flight, floor after floor, until they couldn’t run anymore. The girl tucked her little brother under her body, trying to shield him. They hacked them both to pieces right on the landing.” A collective gasp shuddered through the group. “And then?” someone whispered. “And then the building went sour. You’d hear kids crying in the middle of the night. People started falling. They’d be walking down the stairs, and suddenly they’d just… tumble. Snap their necks. Others would be fine, then they’d suddenly stop, turn around, and run to the roof just to throw themselves off. Dozens died on these stairs. The police couldn’t find anything—no footprints, no prints, no intruders. The security footage just showed people losing their minds.” “Eventually, everyone fled. The place sat abandoned for decades.” He looked at us, his eyes lingering on each of our faces. “Until a developer bought it a few years ago and turned it into this.” The silence that followed was absolute. 5 “You’re saying… we’re caught in that?” “We didn’t do anything! We weren’t even born then! It has nothing to do with us!” “I want to go home. Please, I just want my mom.” Tyler turned on the guide, his voice trembling with rage. “You knew this place was cursed? You brought us here on Devil’s Night knowing this? What the hell is wrong with you?” The guide snapped back, his face inches from Tyler’s. “Are you kidding me? You picked this place. You insisted on the private overnight ‘extreme’ package on the most superstitious night of the year. Don’t you dare pin this on me.” Tyler flinched, his bravado finally crumbling, but he tried to maintain his stance. “We’re just kids. You’re the professional. You should have warned us.” “It’s an urban legend!” the guide yelled. “I’ve been leading tours here for two years and nothing ever happened! How was I supposed to know tonight would be different?” “I don’t care. I paid you. Get us out. I didn’t even want this specific building, you’re the one who pushed the ‘Tenement of Terror’ package!” “Because you were being a cheap-ass!” the guide roared. “You wanted the lowest price-point for a private booking, and this was it! I’d rather be at home with a beer and a movie than stuck here with a bunch of entitled brats!” As they began to lung at each other, I stepped between them, putting my hands on their chests. “Stop it! Both of you!” I yelled. My own voice sounded foreign to me. “Fighting isn’t going to fix the space-time continuum. We need a plan.” They both glared at me, panting. “What plan, Jason?” Tyler spat. I chewed my lip, looking up. “We go up.” 6 The guide blinked. Then, a spark of hope returned to his eyes. “That makes sense. We came in from the top. If we find the entry point, we can leave.” The setup for this place was weird. They’d picked us up in a shuttle, blindfolded us, and led us into a windowless “elevator” that supposedly “randomized” our starting point in the building. It was a gimmick to keep people from knowing the layout. I’d thought it was cool at the time. Now, I wanted to find the person who designed it and throttle them. If we could find the entry room, maybe we could trigger an emergency alarm. Lily looked up, her eyes red and puffy. “Go up? Are you insane? I just told you I can’t move! My legs, my knees—I’m done. I’ll die if I have to climb a hundred flights.” She backed away, pressing her spine against the cold concrete. “You guys go. Go find help. I’ll stay here. Just come back for me.” The group wavered. Kevin, the guy with the glasses, nodded slowly. “She’s got a point. If we all go, and we all get exhausted halfway up, we’re stranded. Maybe some of us should stay and conserve energy while the strongest go for help?” “Yeah,” another girl chimed in. “I’m shaking, Tyler. I can’t do this. This is your fault, you should be the one to go.” Tyler’s face went through a kaleidoscope of emotions—fear, guilt, and then a defensive anger. “My fault? I didn’t force you to sign the waiver!” “You’re the organizer!” Kevin shouted, the stress finally breaking his voice. “You dragged us here! You take the lead!” “Fine!” I barked, cutting through the bickering. “I’ll go.” I took a deep breath, looking at Tyler. “Tyler, you’re coming with me. Everyone else, stay here. If we find the door, we’ll bring the staff back. If we find a phone that works, we’ll call 911.” Tyler didn’t argue. He looked relieved to have a task. Lily slumped back down, looking defeated but grateful. The guide nodded. “I’ll stay with them. I’ll keep everyone together.” I turned and began the climb. Up. Always up. “How many floors?” Tyler wheezed after a while. “Thirty-six… or thirty-seven…” My throat felt like it was lined with sandpaper. Every step was a battle against gravity. Sweat stung my eyes. We stopped to catch our breath. Tyler slid down the wall, hugging his knees. “God… I’m so sorry, Jason. I’m such a moron.” I didn’t have the energy to forgive him. My ears were ringing, a high-pitched drone that wouldn’t stop. We kept going. The stairs were endless, an infinite loop of gray cement and rusted railings. Just as my mind was starting to turn into a hazy fog of exhaustion, I heard something. Voices. Muffled, familiar voices coming from above. Tyler and I froze. We looked at each other, eyes wide. “People!” Tyler scrambled up, energized by a sudden jolt of adrenaline. “Hey! We’re down here! Help!” He sprinted up the last few steps, and I followed, my heart hammering against my ribs. We rounded the corner to the next landing—and I nearly crashed into him as he stopped dead. Lily was huddled in the corner. Kevin was leaning against the opposite wall. The guide was standing in the middle of the floor, staring at his dead phone. They all looked up at us, their faces masked in pure, unadulterated horror. “You…” Lily whispered. “How did you get back here?” Tyler’s face went ashen. “We… we were climbing. We were going up. How the hell are we back where we started?” No one had an answer. We were caught in a loop that defied physics, a vertical cage with no beginning and no end. Lily started to scream.

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1 To Brooks Harrison, I was a temporary fixture. A guest who was never meant to stay. Every time I visited his penthouse, I was required to live a “disposable” life. I wore paper-thin hotel slippers; I ate with plastic cutlery; even when I stayed the night, he would produce a set of sealed, single-use travel sheets and spread them over the bed with clinical precision. “It’s just to be safe, Sera,” he’d whisper, his voice a smooth, practiced caress. “If someone—a neighbor, a maid, my mother—sees your things here, I won’t be able to explain it. Not yet.” For three years, I lived on the promise of “the next time.” The next time we’re public, I’ll buy you a real silk robe. Next time, we’ll put your name on the lease. I waited through a thousand “next times,” always walking into his home like a stranger trespassing on expensive hardwood. The illusion shattered on the night he threw a birthday party for his “star assistant,” Skylar Reed. When the door opened, I saw Skylar already inside. She was leaning against the marble counter, comfortably wearing a pair of limited-edition designer house slides—the ones Brooks had told me were “too personal” for a guest to use. As the rest of Brooks’s inner circle followed me in, they reached into the coat closet and took every remaining pair of disposable slippers. I was left standing at the threshold, my boots in my hand, staring at the empty floor. “Just walk in barefoot, Sera,” Brooks said, not even looking up from the drink he was mixing. “It’s summer. The floor isn’t cold.” He called to me as if he were addressing a courier, not the woman who had shared his bed for thirty-six months. From the doorway, I looked toward the dining table. It was set with a gorgeous, permanent set of stoneware featuring the minimalist botanical prints Skylar obsessed over. And there, tucked in the far corner like an afterthought, sat a single set of cheap, white paper plates and plastic forks. My “reserved” seat. A cold clarity washed over me. If everything in this house—and this relationship—was disposable, then I had played my part. I had been used once. Now, it was time to be thrown away. I didn’t step onto his floor. I turned around and walked out. It took twenty minutes for Brooks to realize I was gone. My phone vibrated in my pocket as I reached the street. “Where are you? Everyone’s sitting down,” his text read, followed immediately by another: “Did you seriously leave without saying a word? Is this about the slippers? Don’t be dramatic.” I didn’t reply. I was sitting in a 24-hour urgent care clinic, looking down at my feet. Blood had soaked through the makeshift bandage on my heel, a throbbing, white-hot pain. Three days ago, while Brooks and I were doing a site inspection for his new development project, I had tripped over a pile of construction debris and sliced my foot on a shard of glass. Brooks had been standing right there. He was the closest person to me. But he didn’t reach out. He didn’t even flinch. He just looked at his watch and muttered, “If you need to leave early, make sure you log it through HR. We have to keep appearances consistent.” For three years, he had maintained that “professional distance” with a fervor that bordered on cruelty. Yet, earlier that evening at the party, when Skylar had pricked her finger on a tiny splinter from a gift box, I watched him stop everything. He spent ten minutes meticulously cleaning the “wound” and wrapping it in a Band-Aid, his face etched with a tenderness I hadn’t seen in years. “Sweetie, why are you crying?” the nurse asked as she cleaned my heel. She glanced at my buzzing phone. “Bad breakup?” I wiped my face and looked at her. “Something like that.” She finished the dressing and tossed the bloody, single-use cotton swab into the biohazard bin. It landed with a soft thud. “Don’t worry,” she smiled. “The next one will be better. Some things just aren’t meant to be kept.” I took a deep breath, the trembling in my hands finally subsiding. “You’re right,” I said, a strange sense of peace settling over me. “It’s time to throw it all out.” I turned off my phone. When I finally powered it back on at home, the floodgates opened. First, fifteen missed calls from Brooks. Second, an Instagram notification. Skylar had posted a photo dump. The caption: “A little too much tequila, oops! Thanks to the best boss in the world for taking care of me ~” The photos featured the party, the expensive stoneware, and a final slide: two matching electric toothbrushes sitting in a marble holder in Brooks’s master bathroom. The comments were already a shark tank of office gossip. “Wait, who’s the boss’s secret sweetheart? Everything is color-coordinated!” “Matching toothbrushes? That’s not a ‘boss,’ that’s a husband-in-waiting!” Skylar had replied with a coy, “Don’t be crazy, guys! He has a ‘girlfriend’ somewhere, remember?” Someone immediately shot back: “What girlfriend? I’ve worked at Harrison & Associates for four years and never seen a soul. Brooks is the most eligible bachelor in the city. Go get him, Sky!” Brooks had spent three years crafting the image of a perfectly unattached, high-powered executive. I was the ghost in his machine, and I was tired of being invisible. I tapped the “heart” icon on Skylar’s post. A minute later, Brooks called. I picked up. “Skylar didn’t mean anything by that post,” he snapped, skip-jumping the greetings. “She’s young, she’s impulsive. Don’t take it to heart. I just bought those things to make her feel welcome because she’s been stressed.” Because she liked them. He allowed her to leave her mark on his sanctuary, while I was forced to use paper plates. “Tonight was a big networking opportunity, Sera,” he continued, his tone shifting to that patronizing, “reasonable” frequency. “I had to maintain the boundary—” “Which is why I left,” I interrupted, my voice flat. “My absence is the ultimate boundary, isn’t it? No one can suspect a woman who isn’t there.” There was a pause. “Sera, don’t be passive-aggressive. I’ve told you a thousand times, this is for us. Our careers—” “Brooks, is the plush towel in the left cabinet or the right one?” Skylar’s voice, honey-sweet and loud, drifted through the receiver. Brooks hung up instantly. I stared at the blank screen, remembering the one time I had stayed over and he had run to the CVS downstairs to buy me a “disposable travel towel.” It was so scratchy it left a red rash across my neck for a week. I didn’t hesitate. I dialed a number I had saved months ago. “Mr. Montgomery? It’s Sera Parker. I’ve reconsidered your offer at the London office. If the position is still open, I can start next week.” The next morning, I walked into Harrison & Associates with my resignation letter. The office was buzzing. “Did you hear? Skylar’s being fast-tracked to Junior Partner. Brooks signed off on it this morning!” “An assistant jumping straight to the business side? We all know why,” a coworker whispered as I passed. “I saw her drinking out of his personalized mug yesterday. He has a total germaphobia thing, but he didn’t even blink.” I swallowed the bitter taste in my throat. Once, I had accidentally sipped from his glass, and he had looked at me like I’d committed a felony. The next day, a box of a hundred disposable paper cups appeared on his desk, “for communal use.” “Sera? You’re resigning?” The HR director looked at me with genuine regret. “There’s a senior promotion cycle coming up at the end of the quarter. Brooks mentioned you were a top candidate… eventually.” “I’ve been here four years,” I said gently. “I’m done waiting for ‘eventually’.” She sighed. “I get it. You’ve put in more work than anyone, but for some reason, the ceiling over your head just won’t break.” I knew why. Brooks told me that if he promoted me, people would whisper about favoritism. To “protect” my reputation, he kept me stagnant. He wasn’t protecting me; he was hobbling me. Ten minutes later, I was summoned to his office. He didn’t even ask me to sit. “What is this?” He tossed the letter onto the mahogany desk. “Because Skylar got the promotion? Sera, this kind of jealousy makes you look small. It makes my job harder—” “That’s why I’m leaving,” I said. “Just like last night. If I disappear, you don’t have to worry about how things ‘look’ anymore.” He flinched, his eyes darting away. “You’re still hung up on the party. Is this a stunt? Are you trying to blackmail me into going public?” The sheer exhaustion of loving him finally hit me. I opened my mouth to speak, but the door swung open without a knock. “Brooks, it’s pouring outside and I didn’t bring an umbrella…” Skylar stood there, pouting. “I’ll drive you,” Brooks said, standing up immediately. No hesitation. He grabbed his keys. In the hallway, I heard the bullpen erupt in laughter. “Told you! He’d never let her walk in the rain. Pay up on the coffee bet!” I remembered a storm last autumn. I had a fever and no car. Brooks wouldn’t even let me borrow his umbrella because “carrying a man’s umbrella would look suspicious” if someone saw me leaving the building. Instead, he handed me a plastic emergency poncho—the kind they sell at stadiums for two dollars. I had walked to the subway in the freezing rain, shivering and humiliated. “Sera, you want a lift?” Skylar asked, leaning her head into the office. “I felt bad you missed my birthday. Let me buy you lunch to make up for it.” The office went quiet, waiting for my reaction. I looked at Brooks. He looked like he wanted to be anywhere else, but he didn’t defend me. He didn’t say, ‘Don’t talk to her like that.’ “No thanks,” I smiled. “I have a much better offer.” Over the next three hours, Brooks sent a string of texts. Who are you meeting? Don’t be stupid, Sera. No one else is going to give you the opportunities I have. Stop targeting Skylar. I’ll give you a lead on the next project if you stay. I didn’t read them. I was having dinner with Arthur Montgomery, the CEO of our primary global competitor. By the time dessert arrived, my flight to London was booked. That night, the company Slack channel was a shrine to Brooks and Skylar. They were at a “work dinner” that looked suspiciously like a date in a dimly lit booth at The Ivy. “She’s a bit fragile, she needs a mentor,” Brooks messaged me privately, probably seeing the same photos I was. I didn’t reply. The next morning, I went to his penthouse one last time. I had a key he didn’t know I still had. The door opened to a scene of domestic bliss. Skylar’s high heels were tossed carelessly in the foyer. “Brooks, this lipstick shade you picked is perfect!” Skylar’s voice sang out from the bedroom. On the table were two matching ceramic mugs, steam rising from fresh coffee. The disposable tissues were gone, replaced by plush guest towels in the shape of flowers. The air smelled of a custom perfume he’d clearly commissioned for her. He had built a home for her in a week. I had been a “guest” for three years. “Sera? What are you doing here?” Brooks emerged from the hallway, his face turning ghostly white. I walked past him and picked up a large FedEx box sitting by the door. It was a vintage watch I’d ordered months ago for his upcoming birthday. “We’re done, Brooks,” I said. “I’m just taking back the things that aren’t disposable.” “What are you talking about?” “Sera?” Skylar appeared behind him, clutching a mug. Her eyes went wide, then instantly filled with crocodile tears. “Oh my god, I didn’t know you two were… like that. Is that why you didn’t come to my party? Do you hate me?” She stepped toward me. “I only think of him as a brother, I swear. Let me explain—” As she reached out, her hand “slipped.” The scalding coffee splashed directly onto my silk blouse. “Skylar!” Brooks yelled. He didn’t check on me. He grabbed Skylar’s hand. “Are you okay? Did it splash on you? Stay there, I’ll get the burn cream!” I stood there, the hot liquid soaking into my skin. I didn’t know he even had burn cream. When I’d burned my hand on his kettle a year ago, he’d handed me a pair of thin plastic food-prep gloves and told me to run it under cold water. “A guy like me doesn’t keep a first aid kit, Sera. It’s too domestic.” I looked at the stain on my chest and laughed. It was the most honest thing that had happened in that apartment in years. I turned for the door. “Sera, wait!” Brooks chased me into the hall. “Don’t throw a tantrum over an accident! I told you, Skylar is like a sister. You’re my girlfriend, which is why I have to be more careful with you—” The elevator doors slid shut. I didn’t look back.

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1 The day my boyfriend almost died, I found his final wishes. Two hundred and fourteen letters, to be exact. The dates spanned six years, but the beneficiary remained hauntingly consistent. They weren’t for me. They were for his first love. I stood in that sterile hospital corridor, my blood turning to ice. I couldn’t even scream at him; he was lying in the ICU, a mess of tubes and wires, still lost in a coma. “Mr. Whitaker has a thing for extreme sports—the more dangerous, the better,” his assistant, Ben, explained softly, his eyes refusing to meet mine. “He made it a habit to write a ‘just in case’ letter before every trip. It was his ritual.” I stared at the stack of envelopes in my trembling hands. “But only the last one went through a lawyer, right?” Ben didn’t need to answer. I already knew the truth. “Still nothing for me, I assume?” The room fell silent, save for the rhythmic, agonizing beep-beep-beep of the heart monitor. We had been together for six years. Every time Harrison Whitaker vanished for a month to scale a mountain or dive into an abyss, I spent my nights paralyzed by the fear of losing him. And all that time, while I was praying for his safety, he was meticulously building a safety net for another woman. If that was the case, why was I still wasting my tears on him? … Harrison lay there, his face as pale as the sheets. I had discovered his betrayal, yet I couldn’t get a single word of explanation from him. My chest felt like it was being crushed by a lead weight. The door swung open, and Harrison’s mother, Eleanor, rushed in, her designer heels clicking sharply against the linoleum. Her eyes reddened the moment she saw him. “Mrs. Whitaker…” I started. Crack. The slap was so sudden and so hard it sent my head snapping to the side. A sharp, stinging heat bloomed across my cheek. “You gave me your word,” Eleanor hissed, her voice trembling with rage. “You promised you’d look after him! How could you let him do something so reckless?” I kept my face turned away, the faint metallic taste of blood rising in my mouth. “Harrison is a grown man, Eleanor. He makes his own choices. I never had a say in his life.” “Don’t you dare give me those excuses!” She stepped closer, her finger jabbing painfully into my sternum. “When Harrison was with her, he never felt the need to go looking for death. You’re a curse on him. You’re nothing but bad luck.” I swallowed the blood and forced a jagged, hollow laugh. “Fine. If I’m the problem, I’ll leave. We’re over. Does that satisfy you?” “Are you threatening me with a breakup now?” she shrieked. “Mom…” A weak, raspy voice broke through the tension. Harrison’s eyes were barely open, just a sliver of blue showing through the haze of medication. “Don’t… don’t blame Audrey. It’s not her fault.” He wheezed, trying to shift his weight. Ben rushed forward to adjust his pillows. “Don’t be hard on her.” “Oh, she’s certainly clever, isn’t she?” Eleanor scoffed, grabbing her Chanel bag. “If you actually marry this girl, I suppose I’ll lose my son entirely.” She slammed the door on her way out. A tear finally escaped and hit the floor with a soft thud. Harrison reached out a trembling hand, his fingers clumsily brushing the moisture from my cheek. “I’m sorry. It’s my fault.” His voice was as gentle as it had been on the day we met. “I let her treat you like that. It won’t happen again, okay?” “The letters, Harrison,” I whispered, my voice cracking. “What were they about?” He glanced at Ben, his expression flickering with a brief moment of calculation before he turned back to me with a tired smile. “I’m alive, Audrey. The letters don’t matter now. You should be happy they weren’t needed.” “Stop moving the goalposts. I don’t care about your money. I don’t want a dime of your estate. But you owe me the truth. Why is there a third person in our relationship? Why has there always been a third person?” The monitor continued its steady, indifferent ticking. A nurse pushed the door open, pressing a finger to her lips. “Please, keep it down. We have other patients recovering.” Harrison remained perfectly calm. I was the one who looked like a madwoman. “If we’re being honest, Audrey,” he said, his breath fogging the oxygen mask, “you’re the outsider here.” He smiled. It was a thin, ghostly thing. It struck me then that I had never really known the man lying in that bed. “Why do you care about the past? In the end, you’re the one I’m marrying.” My brain felt like it was short-circuiting. “I’m the outsider? Me?” I pushed my hair back, revealing the faint, jagged scar near my hairline. “When I heard you’d crashed, I fell down the stairs in my rush to get to the hospital. I didn’t even stop to get stitches. All I could think about was seeing you one last time.” A flash of genuine pain crossed Harrison’s eyes. He tried to speak, but a violent coughing fit seized him, and a spray of blood flecked the inside of his mask. “Sir!” Ben cried out, but Harrison caught his wrist. “I’m fine,” Harrison gasped. “Ben, take Audrey to get her head looked at.” He turned back to me, his grip on my hand weak but desperate. “Forget about the letters. Bella… she’s alone in the world. She has no one. She saved my life once during a climb. I just wanted to make sure she was taken care of. It was a debt of honor, nothing more.” “Was it just a debt?” He nodded, the movement so slight it was almost imperceptible. “Liar,” I whispered. I picked up one of the letters from the bedside table. “You asked to be buried next to her. Is that just ‘helping’ her, too?” “Audrey—” “What am I to you, Harrison? A placeholder? A trophy? I’m done. I’m not standing in the way of your grand, tragic romance anymore. We’re finished.” “Audrey Montgomery!” He used every ounce of his remaining strength to shout my name. I didn’t look back. I grabbed the door handle and stepped out. The moment the door clicked shut, the adrenaline evaporated. My legs gave out, and I slid down the hallway wall, my hands shaking uncontrollably. I tried to unlock my phone. My fingers fumbled over the passcode I knew by heart. Finally, the screen flickered to life. Dear Ms. Montgomery, please confirm your itinerary. Your flight is scheduled to depart tomorrow at midnight. “Miss Montgomery, the floor is cold.” Ben was standing over me, his hand extended. I took it, my movements mechanical. “Isabella—Bella—is a special case,” Ben said as he helped me up. “She saved his life during a mountain biking accident years ago. That’s how they met. But she’s terminal. She’s dying, Audrey. Harrison made a pact with her—to see the world for her, since she can’t.” I leaned against the cold tile wall, feeling a chill that no sweater could touch. “Right. That’s what you all say. And I’m just the petty girlfriend who doesn’t understand ‘honor’.” I pulled my hand away and began to shuffle down the hall. Harrison’s heart was like these walls—impenetrable and cold. I couldn’t warm it, no matter how hard I tried. I don’t remember the drive home. I spent hours staring at the ceiling of our penthouse, numb. Then, my phone buzzed. Are you home? Are you still angry? I could picture him sending that—composed, emotionless, perfectly reasonable. No, I replied. I ordered some flowers. They should be at the door. Make sure you take them in. Why the flowers, Harrison? Because you like them. The doorbell rang at that exact moment. A massive bouquet of ninety-nine roses sat on the mat. I didn’t touch them. Another text rolled in. Did you get them? I closed the door. Of all the flowers in the world, I hated these specific roses the most. They reminded me of my stepmother. On the day of my mother’s funeral, she had filled our house with them, a silent, fragrant declaration of her victory. Put them in a vase and send me a photo. A wide shot of the room. Do it now. I felt a surge of annoyance, but I complied. I snapped a quick photo of the corner of the living room and sent it. The chat went silent. It didn’t feel like he was comforting me; it felt like he was checking a box. I never spent much time on social media, but for some reason, I felt a pull toward Instagram. I saw a red notification dot. I clicked. The top post was a photo of my own living room. Actually, it was the exact photo I had just sent Harrison. But it wasn’t posted by Harrison. It was posted by the girl I had been anonymously sponsoring for six years—a girl who had developed a congenital heart condition after a severe fever. I had funded her treatments, her housing, her life. I had been her secret benefactor for over half a decade. And I had just realized I was sponsoring my boyfriend’s the one who got away. The caption was simple: I finally have a home. There was a second photo in the post—an architectural blueprint. It was a hand-drawn design of my house. My sanctuary. I felt a wave of nausea so strong I had to run to the bathroom. I leaned over the sink, dry-heaving, but my thumb kept scrolling of its own accord. I finally understood their “pact.” Bella’s birthday was February 14th. That was why there were 214 letters. That was why Harrison went on 214 trips “to see the world” for her. To make her feel like she was there, he had her name tattooed over his heart. In every photo from his travels, he was holding a picture of her. I had never seen a single one of those travel photos, yet they were all over her private feed. They had loved each other with a burning, desperate intensity. Even their separation was a performance of tragic devotion. During all those weeks when Harrison was “off the grid” and unreachable to me, he was checking in with her every single day. My brain went white. I had one singular, driving impulse. I had to see Isabella. But when I arrived at the high-end hospice care facility in the Hudson Valley, the first thing I saw was Harrison’s car. He had just woken up from a coma, and he had literally crawled out of his hospital bed to see her. Under the shade of an old oak tree, Harrison sat in a wheelchair. Bella was perched on the grass, her head resting on his knees, her shoulders shaking with heartbreaking sobs. I stood in the distance, watching. I really was the outsider. Harrison was looking at her with a tenderness I had never once received in six years. “Shh, don’t cry. I’m okay, see? I promised I’d come back, and I did.” I pulled out my phone and dialed his number. I saw him hesitate. He signaled for Bella to be quiet before he answered. “What is it, Audrey?” “Do you remember promising me that when you got back, we’d go look at wedding venues?” I asked, my voice steady despite the fact that I was watching him lie to me in real-time. “I’m in the hospital on an IV drip, Audrey. How am I supposed to go venue hunting?” “Right. Of course.” “Look, as soon as I’m discharged, we’ll go. I’ll make it up to you, okay?” “Don’t bother.” He stiffened. “What do you mean, don’t bother?” “It’s not necessary anymore,” I said. My hand was shaking so hard the phone nearly slipped. “I’m not marrying you, Harrison.” I hung up. Harrison’s head snapped around, and his eyes locked onto me. His face went from calm to panicked in a heartbeat. “Audrey! What are you doing here?” He frantically began to turn his wheelchair toward me. Bella looked up, startled. When she saw me, a bright, innocent smile lit up her face. “Audrey! You’re here!” She looked so fragile, so lovely. She made me feel like the villain in my own life. “Do you two know each other?” Harrison asked, looking between us, his voice trembling. “We’re friends,” I said coldly. “Is that all we are? Just friends?” Harrison hissed at me, pulling out his phone to type a quick message: [She can’t handle stress. She thinks you’re just my assistant. Why are you being like this?] I smiled at him. It wasn’t a nice smile. “Aren’t you going to introduce us properly, Harrison?” “Harrison,” Bella said, sounding confused. “I should introduce you. This is the woman who has been sponsoring my care for six years. My angel.” Harrison’s face went paper-white. He reached out, grabbing my sleeve. [Please, don’t tell her about us. Not yet.] “Of course,” I said aloud. Harrison exhaled, a look of profound relief washing over him. “After all,” I continued, “we’ve broken up. We’re practically strangers now.” “Audrey, stop talking nonsense!” Harrison snapped, abandoning the text messages. He was angry now, his pride wounded. He pushed his wheelchair away, turning his back on me. “Audrey,” Bella whispered, her eyes fixed on Harrison’s retreating form. “I never told you… he was my first love. My only love.” “I know.” “When I got sick, I ended it. I didn’t want to be a burden. But sometimes I wish… I wish I was the one standing next to him. Why did it have to be me? Why couldn’t it have been his current girlfriend who got sick? Why am I the one dying?” I looked at her, a swirl of complex emotions churning in my gut. “And what if I am his ‘current girlfriend’?” Bella’s body went rigid. She turned to look at me. One second. Two. The realization hit her like a physical blow. She covered her mouth with her hand and fled toward the building, stumbling in her haste to get away from me. I stood there alone until the facility director walked up to me. “Ms. Montgomery, good to see you. How much should we bill to your card for Bella’s next quarter?” I stared at the wheelchair tracks in the grass. I took a deep breath. “I won’t be sponsoring her anymore.” The director blinked. “I’m sorry?” “I’m moving abroad. My expenses are increasing, and I can no longer carry the cost of a private patient.” The director nodded understandingly. She walked me to my car. “Well, I wish you the best of luck. We heard you were getting married—we were actually planning to send a gift. You’ve been so generous over the years.” “The wedding is canceled.” Saying it out loud didn’t hurt anymore. It felt like stating a weather report. The director paused, looking at me with genuine kindness. “Then I wish you a life where you find someone who loves you as much as you’ve given to others.” “Thank you.” I opened my car door. “Bella ran off toward the east wing. You might want to send someone to find her. She’s upset.” I had driven a few miles when a familiar car swerved in front of me, forcing me to the shoulder. Harrison climbed out of the passenger side, leaning heavily on his crutches. “What did you say to her?” he roared. “What could I possibly say that would be worse than the truth?” He swung his hand. The slap was clumsy, fueled by desperation rather than strength, but it still burned. “She was so upset she walked right into a service cart! She’s bruised and hysterical!” “And you’re hitting me? Again?” I pointed at my own face. “We were together for six years, Harrison. How could you ever think this was okay?” Harrison’s hand began to shake. He seemed to snap out of it, reaching out to pull me into a hug. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Audrey. I’m just… I’m losing it. Please, don’t hate me. I didn’t mean it.” I looked at his surgical bandages and dug my nails into them. He winced, his face contorting in pain, but he didn’t push me away. “Just let it out,” he whispered, stroking the back of my neck. “I have to go check on her, but once she’s stable, I’m done. I won’t see her again, I promise.” “Can’t you just stay? For once, can’t I be the priority? I don’t even know who you love anymore.” He let go of my arms. “It’s different, Audrey. Don’t be difficult. You’re the one I’m going to marry. You’re my wife.” “And if she hadn’t broken up with you all those years ago? Would I even exist to you?” Harrison didn’t answer. He got back into his car and drove away, leaving nothing but a cloud of exhaust. I instinctively reached for my neck, but it was empty. The gold locket—the one Harrison had commissioned for me when I was sick with pneumonia years ago—was gone. He had stayed by my side for weeks then, moving his entire office into my bedroom. It’s just a cold, Harrison, I had joked. I just want you safe, he had replied, holding me tight. Seeing you hurt is worse than death. When I finally made it back to the hospital to look for him, I found him in Bella’s room. He was carefully placing a necklace around her neck. My necklace. “We can’t do this,” Bella was sobbing. “Audrey is my benefactor. I can’t break her heart.” Harrison pulled her into his chest. “You’re too good for this world, Bella. You need to think about yourself for once.” Bella didn’t answer. Harrison stroked her hair. “I’ve transferred the deed of the penthouse to your name. I’ve already had the interior redone exactly the way you like it. I’ll take Audrey and move away. You’ll never have to see us again.” They clung to each other in the dim light of the hospital room. I was the interloper. Harrison claimed to love me, yet he was giving away our home without even telling me. “Since this is the last time we’ll be together like this,” Bella whispered, “can we take a photo? A formal one, with a red backdrop? I want to pretend, just for a second, that I was the one who got to marry you.” “Do you want to wear a wedding dress?” Harrison’s voice was full of longing. “Could I? But… it’s so late. The shops are closed.” “Audrey already brought her dress home,” Harrison said. “If you don’t mind, you can wear hers. As long as she never finds out, it doesn’t matter.” He stood up and grabbed his keys. I ducked into an alcove, watching him walk toward the exit. I turned and walked in the opposite direction. On my way to the airport, I called my housekeeper. “Maria, I need you to pack up my wedding dress. Put it in its box and leave a note on top of it. I’ve already wired your severance pay. You don’t need to come in tomorrow.” Maria knew everything. She didn’t ask questions. Ten minutes later, she sent me a photo of the box sitting on the entryway table. When Harrison got home, the dress was waiting for him. The note was resting on the lid. The penthouse was silent and empty. His heart hammered against his ribs. He walked forward, and as he read the words I had left behind, his world finally began to crumble.

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1 The day I caught Nathan Miller in bed with another woman, she didn’t scream or try to hide. Instead, she took a jagged shard from a broken bedside lamp and sliced it deep across her own cheek. Nathan didn’t even look at me. He just lunged for her, pinning her hands down, shielding her mangled face with his own body as if she were a precious, wounded animal. “Nathan, let me see her!” I screamed, my voice a raw, hysterical mess. “Let me see who she is!” He turned his head just enough for me to see his eyes. They were bloodshot, rimmed with a desperate, suffocating guilt. “It’s my fault,” he choked out. “Everything is my fault. I’ll spend the rest of my life making it up to you. Please, Ginger… just don’t look. Don’t force her into this.” After that night, Nathan became a ghost, haunting the edges of our life with a terrifying, subservient devotion. He surrendered his phone every night. He installed cameras in his own car. Even when a female patient sent him a professional text, he’d bring it to me, begging for a cross-examination. He did everything I asked—and everything I didn’t—just to be allowed back into my grace. I thought I was finally healing. Until three days before our wedding. I went to the bridal boutique to pick up my dress. The clerk looked at me, her expression a mask of confusion. “Ms. Hall? You already picked up your gown this morning. I actually just saw the video of your ceremony on Instagram.” She tapped her phone and turned the screen toward me. In the video, Derek and the rest of Nathan’s inner circle—men who had spent the last year calling me “big sister”—were laughing as they handed over the rings. Our mutual friends were all there, cheering. Nathan stood at the altar, his face glowing with a tenderness I hadn’t seen in years. He leaned down, whispering to the bride, his voice a honeyed caress. “Cassidy,” he murmured. The name hit me like a physical blow. But it was the bride’s face—a face identical to my own—that turned my blood to ice. My ears began to ring with a deafening, high-pitched whine. My vision blurred as I stared at the bride’s shoulder. There, peeking out from the lace of the dress I was supposed to be wearing, was a tattoo of a wild hibiscus. I knew that tattoo. My best friend, Cassidy Beckett, had gotten it years ago after a devastating breakup. I had begged her not to do it, but she had been inconsolable. She never told me who the man was—the one who made her feel so small. “I just need to hold onto something,” she had sobbed back then. “Ginger, you have everything. You don’t know what it’s like to love someone you can never have.” Now, I knew. The man she couldn’t have was my fiancé. My knees gave out, and I hit the floor of the boutique. For the last three years, whenever I had a mental breakdown, Cassidy had been there via text, replying within seconds. But she never saw me in person. She always claimed her job kept her traveling, kept her too busy to visit. I never imagined she was the woman from three years ago. The woman who would rather mutilate her own face than let me see who she was. Ignoring the worried calls of the shop girls, I scrambled out of the store and drove like a madwoman to the venue. When I arrived, the reception was in full swing at a secluded estate. I stepped out of the car and immediately heard Derek’s voice coming from a side terrace. “Are you really not worried about Ginger finding out?” There was a long silence. Then, Nathan’s voice, low and heavy. “Ginger took everything from Cassidy. Her face was ruined because of Ginger’s reaction that night. This wedding… it’s the only way I can pay her back. It’s what she deserves.” “Just keep her in the dark a little longer,” Nathan added. Derek patted his shoulder. “Of course, man. I mean, if Ginger hadn’t been so hysterical back then, Cassidy wouldn’t have felt pushed to do that to herself. Ginger really went over the edge.” Riley, a med student I had personally mentored and sponsored, chimed in without a hint of hesitation. “Don’t worry, Dr. Miller. We’ve got your back. You just enjoy the honeymoon with the real Mrs. Miller. I’ll handle Ginger.” As she spoke, my phone vibrated. A text from Riley: [Hey Ginger! Dr. Miller is going to be stuck at the hospital for clinical training for the next few days. I’ll keep an eye on him for you!] Tears splashed onto the screen. I scrolled up. Five hundred messages. Five hundred reports on Nathan’s movements over the years. Every single one was a lie. They had spent three years treating me like a fool to be managed. On the terrace, Derek suddenly tensed. “Wait, what if Ginger sees a video on social media? I should go deal with that.” He started to get up, but Cassidy—wearing my face and my dress—stopped him. “Don’t worry,” she said softly. “Ginger has seen ‘glimpses’ of us before. But every time she checked the security footage, she only saw this face. She looks in the mirror and sees me. After a while, she started to think she was just losing her mind.” The world tilted. I remembered the nights I spent questioning my own sanity. Nathan would just look at me with those tired, patient eyes. He would let me strip him down to check for marks. He would swear he was alone, that I was just imagining things. He made me believe I was sick. He used my own face as a shield for his mistress. A wave of nausea hit me so hard I doubled over, vomiting into the grass. Riley’s voice drifted over again. She was hugging Cassidy. “You’ve sacrificed so much for him. Why can’t he just tell Ginger the truth and leave her?” Nathan sighed. I could almost picture the pained, noble look on his face. “Ginger… she saved my life once. Taking care of her is my responsibility for the rest of my life.” Responsibility. I thought back to the boy I had found years ago. Nathan had been a stray. His parents had remarried and abandoned him; he was just a teenager shivering under my porch during a brutal winter. I brought him a bowl of soup, and he asked me what I wanted in return. I didn’t want a debt. I wanted a friend. From age eight to eighteen, he was my shadow. But Cassidy used to pretend to hate him. She said he wasn’t good enough for me. They fought constantly. I tried to mediate, thinking they both just loved me too much to share me. Then came the night Cassidy got cornered by a group of thugs in an alley. Nathan, usually so calm, had bolted out the door the second he heard. By the time I caught up, he was fighting like a demon, blood on his face, eyes wild with a protective rage I’d never seen. I had rushed in to pull him away. In the chaos, I was pushed into the street. A car hit me. I spent months in a wheelchair; I nearly lost my legs. Nathan had knelt before my parents, swearing that if he ever betrayed me, God could strike him dead. Cassidy had cried until her eyes were swollen shut, promising she’d stay by my side until I could walk again. When I finally put on my prosthetics, they both wept. I thought they were crying for my pain. Now I realized they were crying for their love—the love that had to be buried in the dark because of me. Cassidy’s voice pulled me back. “Nathan, do you think we’re being too cruel to Ginger?” The group surrounded her, offering comfort. “It’s not your fault. Ginger is the one dragging you both down. If she wasn’t so fragile, we wouldn’t have to hide like this.” Nathan didn’t answer. He just pulled her into his arms. My heart felt like it was being crushed. My breath came in ragged gasps. With trembling hands, I pulled out my phone and sent a message to a number I hadn’t touched in years. [You once said that if the future version of you ever betrayed me, you’d give me a final gift. Does that still stand?] The reply came instantly. [Yes.] I wiped my eyes, stood up, and walked out into the reception. “Then tell me,” I said, my voice a hollow rasp. “Whose fault is it, exactly?” Nathan froze. His face went ghostly pale. He took a reflexive step toward me, his lips moving, but no sound came out. I turned my gaze to Cassidy. “Or maybe you think it’s my fault?” Cassidy’s hand flew to the skirt of the wedding dress—my dress. She looked like she wanted to disappear. “Ginger, I’m so sorry, I just…” “You just what?” I snapped. “You just couldn’t help being a pathetic backstabber? You just had to have my life?” The bitterness boiled over. Before I knew it, my hand connected with her face. The slap echoed across the terrace. Nathan lunged forward, putting himself between us. “Ginger! Stop it! You don’t know what you’re saying!” Cassidy pushed him back, her voice trembling. “Don’t be mean to her! Ginger, it’s my fault. Hit me again if it makes you feel better.” When her fingers brushed my arm, the revulsion was electric. I swung again, harder this time. “Don’t you touch me!” The force of the movement sent Cassidy stumbling back. She tripped on the hem of the dress and fell hard onto the stone floor. She clutched her stomach, a look of genuine agony crossing her face. Before I could react, Nathan shoved me aside with a violence that sent me sprawling. “Ginger, are you insane?! Just because you can’t have a child doesn’t mean you can kill hers! She ruined her face to protect your feelings, and you still treat her like trash?” He didn’t look at me with guilt anymore. It was pure, unadulterated loathing. He scooped Cassidy up and walked away without looking back. Derek glared at me. “Do you have any idea? Cassidy is pregnant. If anything happens to that baby, Nathan will never forgive you.” Riley looked at me with deep disappointment. “You went too far, Ginger.” I sat on the cold stone, watching them chase after him. I felt hollow. They seemed to have forgotten. Five years ago, Nathan and I had a child. To help Cassidy’s firm get off the ground, I had worked myself to the bone, drinking cold gin at every business dinner to close deals for her. I lost the baby before I even knew I was pregnant. Nathan had been hysterical with grief back then. He had pinned Cassidy against a wall, screaming at her. I was the one who pulled him off. I was the one who begged him not to blame her. Now, as I watched his retreating back, I felt a chill that settled into my very marrow. I collapsed, the world going black. I woke up in a hospital bed. Nathan was sitting there. When he saw my eyes open, he hesitated. “The doctor says you need rest.” He handed me a cup of water and some pills. I stared at him, then flicked my wrist. The scalding water splashed over his hand. He winced but didn’t move. He only grabbed my wrist when I tried to get out of bed. “Ginger, you can scream at me later. But right now, you aren’t leaving.” His grip was frantic, as if he were terrified I’d find something out. Suddenly, a loud crash echoed from the hallway downstairs, followed by a familiar, angry roar. My heart plummeted. I broke free and ran to the stairs. The scene in the living room made my blood run cold. Cassidy was there, wearing a silk robe, standing amidst shattered porcelain. And standing across from her were my parents. Nathan rushed past me, grabbing Cassidy. “Are you okay? Did they hurt you?” My parents stared at them, their faces contorted. They hadn’t even had time to process why this woman looked like me before they saw Nathan’s hands all over her. “Nathan,” my father said, his voice shaking. “What is the meaning of this?” Nathan tightened his grip on Cassidy’s hand. “It’s exactly what it looks like.” My father’s chest heaved. “You’re insane. After everything Ginger did for you? After everything we did for you?” My mother held onto him, her eyes burning with rage. Cassidy suddenly dropped to her knees. “Mr. and Mrs. Hall, it’s my fault… I’m so sorry. But please, let us be together.” Nathan pulled her up, his voice cold. “I know I owe Ginger. I’ll come to your house and apologize properly another day. But Cassidy is in her first trimester and needs peace. Please. Leave my house.” He had knelt before these people once. He had promised to cherish me. My father has a weak heart; I had never told him about Nathan’s past infidelities because I was afraid the shock would kill him. Now, he was finding out that the boy he raised like a son was sleeping with a woman who had surgically altered herself to look like his daughter. “How… how could you do this to her?” my father gasped. His eyes rolled back, and he hit the floor with a sickening thud. “Dad!” I screamed, pushing past Cassidy. “Get away from him!” Nathan’s face was like stone. He shielded Cassidy. “Ginger! Stop being so bitter!” I didn’t care what he said. I got my father to the hospital, but the ER was slammed. I remembered that as a doctor’s spouse, I could request the use of a reserved surgical suite. I ran to the nurse’s station. The nurse looked at me with pure disdain. “Dr. Miller’s wife is in the VIP wing right now with a pregnancy complication. Who are you? If you want a room, wait in line like everyone else.” I froze. My father’s breathing was getting shallower. My mother was a wreck, sobbing. I sprinted to the VIP wing and burst into the room where Nathan was sitting. Before I could even speak, Cassidy started crying. “Ginger, I know you hate me, but my baby is in danger. Isn’t that enough of a punishment?” Nathan’s hesitation vanished. He gripped her hand. “Go back to the ER, Ginger. When Cassidy is stable, I’ll go check on your dad.” I looked at him as if he were a stranger. He flinched under my gaze. “Don’t look at me like that,” he snapped. “If you hadn’t provoked her at the house, she wouldn’t be in this position.” The world went quiet. I dropped to my knees. My forehead hit the linoleum floor. “Is this enough?” I whispered. “Is this enough for you to go save him?” I slammed my head against the floor again. And again. I felt the warm blood start to trickle down my face, stinging my eyes. My phone buzzed. A text from the nurse downstairs: [Your father didn’t make it. Your mother… she couldn’t take it. She jumped from the waiting room window. I’m so sorry.] The string in my brain snapped. I didn’t feel the blood on my face. I ran downstairs, stumbling, until I saw her. My mother’s body. Broken. “Mom… wake up,” I whispered, shaking her cold hand. I stood up, my soul torn into jagged pieces. I started walking, swaying like a drunkard. “Dad, Mom… let’s go home.” When Nathan finally got the news and rushed out of the hospital, he saw me walking straight into the path of a speeding truck. “GINGER!” he screamed.

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1 My brother’s memory shattered in the twisted metal of a car wreck three years ago. At least, that’s what I believed. When he woke up, he didn’t recognize me. Instead, he reached out for Jodie Hart—the scholarship student our family had been sponsoring—and called her his little sister. He showered her with the protective, obsessive love that used to be mine. And me? He treated me like a ghost, a parasite, an enemy to be broken. Every time the torment became unbearable, every time I was on the verge of screaming the truth into his face, I choked it back. I didn’t want to trigger another neurological relapse. I chose his health over my life. Until today. Xander had forced me to hike up the mountain trail in the blistering, triple-digit heat of a Georgia summer. My task was to deliver emergency oxygen tanks to the luxury villa at the summit, where Jodie was supposedly having a “breathing spell” during their vacation. I reached the heavy oak doors of the villa, my lungs screaming, my vision swimming in the heat. But as I reached for the handle, I heard laughter from the patio. They were playing a game. “I’m telling you, the amnesia was a masterpiece,” Xander’s voice rang out, clear and chillingly sober. “The memory loss was a front. Mistaking Jodie for my sister? A calculated move. But the way I cherish Jodie? That’s the only part that’s real.” A chorus of gasps and drunken chuckles followed from his inner circle of friends. “Damn, Xander,” one of them laughed. “So treating Sloane like a dog, torturing her for three years—that was all intentional? You’ve got a cold heart, man.” Xander’s voice was devoid of remorse. “It was the only way to break her. Sloane was a spoiled, entitled brat. She needed to be rebuilt from the ground up. This ‘ordeal’ was her refinement process. Besides, I’m planning to ‘recover’ my memory tomorrow. By dinner time, she’ll be my beloved sister again, and she’ll be a hell of a lot more obedient for it.” The hiking pole in my hand shook so violently it rattled against the stone. A wave of nauseating absurdity crashed into my chest, so heavy I thought it would snap my ribs. I started to laugh, a dry, bitter sound that died in my parched throat. What Xander didn’t know was that the System—the inexplicable consciousness that had governed my life since I turned twenty—was finally pulling me out of this world. I wouldn’t be around to be his “beloved sister” tomorrow. A sharp, digital ping echoed in my skull. [Warning! Host has three hours remaining until world-exit. Please prepare for departure.] Usually, I’d be crying, begging the System for more time, desperate to see my brother smile at me just once more. This time, I simply whispered, “Copy that.” Inside the villa, the discussion surged again. “You’re right though,” another friend chimed in. “Sloane needed to be put in her place. Remember how many times she made Jodie cry back in the day? Seeing her stripped of her status… honestly, Xander, some of those moves were brilliant. She’s definitely not arrogant anymore.” “And today’s stunt?” someone else asked. “The news said it’s a record-breaking 105 degrees. You made her hike three thousand feet with heavy tanks? She’s lucky if she makes it up here with half her soul intact.” I pushed the door open. The silence that followed was deafening. The air-conditioned chill hit my sweat-soaked skin like a slap. Everyone stared. Xander’s face flickered with a momentary spasm of panic before he smoothed it into a mask of cold indifference. I dragged my trembling legs across the polished marble, my head bowed, and set the oxygen tanks on the mahogany table. As I tried to straighten my back, my strength vanished. I collapsed onto the floor, my knees hitting the wood with a dull thud. One of Xander’s friends looked between us, his expression shifting to one of sheer awkwardness. He stepped forward to help me, muttering, “Sloane, hey, be careful—” “Sloane Miller!” Xander’s voice thundered, stopping the man in his tracks. “Now that you’ve heard the truth, you think you can just play the victim? You’re falling on the floor to guilt-trip me?” He walked toward me, his shadow looming large. “I see three years of discipline haven’t cured your theatrics. You’re still as manipulative as ever.” My heart gave a dull, painful flutter. My throat was too scorched to form words. Too light? He thought the discipline was too light? He had unleashed the full force of his cruelty on me. A ‘staged’ car accident that left my bones shattered, landing me in the ICU for three months. Multiple ‘accidental’ falls into the river that left me with chronic respiratory issues. He had turned me into Jodie’s personal maid, stripping me of my dignity until I was lower than a stray in the eyes of our social circle. I had endured it all because I thought I was saving him. Because I thought his ‘recovery’ was the light at the end of the tunnel. But he had been the one holding the match the whole time. The injustice boiled up, hot and stinging. I forced my head up, my eyes bloodshot, and stared directly into his. Xander flinched, a small cough escaping him as if he were about to soften his tone. Then, Jodie screamed. “Oh my god! There’s a razor blade taped to the oxygen tank! It cut me! It hurts so much!” She gripped her hand, sobbing hysterically. “Sloane, if you’re mad at Xander, take it out on him. Please don’t hurt me anymore. He only did this because he loves you!” In a heartbeat, the flicker of guilt in Xander’s eyes died. It was replaced by a familiar, searing disappointment. “You never change, Sloane. And here I was, actually feeling sorry for you. I was going to ‘remember’ who you were tomorrow.” He leaned down, his voice a low hiss. “Tonight is your final lesson. If you can’t fix your soul by morning, don’t blame me for being truly heartless.” He turned his back on me, scooping Jodie into his arms to tend to her ‘wound.’ He barked an order to the security guards. “Take her outside. Let her stay in the sun until she learns the meaning of accountability.” I was dragged out and dumped on the burning patio. Through the floor-to-ceiling glass, I watched Xander tenderly hovering over Jodie, feeding her water like she was made of glass. My heart felt like it was turning to ash. Did he even know why he did this? Was it really to “refine” me, or was the amnesia just a convenient excuse to love Jodie openly? I don’t think even he knew anymore. The world began to go quiet. Only the mechanical voice in my head remained. [Thirty minutes until world-exit.] The sun was a physical weight. Dehydration was setting in, my skin turning a terrifying shade of mottled red. Every muscle in my body spasmed. A few yards away, there was a garden hose. I began to crawl, an instinctive, pathetic movement toward survival. I reached it. My fingers brushed the plastic. But before I could turn the nozzle, a designer shoe stepped firmly on the hose. Xander. “Jodie is inside crying, and here you are, still playing your little games,” he snapped. “How can I ever trust you with the family name again?” My lips were cracked and bleeding. I could only wheeze out one word. “Water… please…” Xander frowned, unable or unwilling to hear me. One of his friends stood by the glass door, looking uneasy. “Xander, man, look at her. It’s lethal out there. Just let her have a drink.” Xander didn’t blink. “Absolutely not. Discipline requires hardship. She’s built like an ox—I’ve made sure of that over the last three years. She’s faking the extremity to get my attention.” The friend opened his mouth to argue, but Xander’s expression shifted. He threw out a subtle threat about a pending business merger, and the friend went silent, retreating inside. Xander turned to the gardener who was working nearby. “Make sure the jasmine garden is watered every hour. Jodie worked hard on those flowers. Don’t let them wither in this heat.” The words felt like a scalpel to the heart. My life was worth less than Jodie’s flowers. Xander started to walk away, then paused. He didn’t look back, but his voice held a strange mix of frustration and buried hope. “Stay out here until tomorrow. If you don’t cause any more trouble, I’ll announce my recovery in the morning. You’ll be my sister again. The girl I used to spoil.” I shook my head, a ghostly, tragic smile on my face. He used to love me more than his own life. He used to say he’d bring me the stars if I asked. Somewhere along the line, after Jodie arrived, that love had curdled into something unrecognizable. And besides, I wouldn’t make it to tomorrow. The dehydration was absolute. My vision was tunneling into darkness. [System Alert: Final countdown. Ten… nine…] The ticking was a hammer against my skull. With my last ounce of strength, I looked toward the villa. “Goodbye, Xander.” He froze at the door, his hand on the handle. He let out a sharp, angry laugh. “Sloane, I told you—it’s tomorrow or never. Your threats don’t work on me anymore.” He slammed the door. As the sound echoed, the final second ticked away. A violent, yet strangely gentle force yanked me upward. I was floating, looking down at the mangled, pathetic heap of my own body. My legs were covered in raw scrapes from the hike. My clothes were stiff with salt and sweat. I looked like a discarded rag. I drifted through the glass into the villa. Even without a body, the sudden drop in temperature felt like a shock. Xander had spent a fortune to have industrial-grade AC installed up here, just so Jodie wouldn’t be uncomfortable in the summer. Jodie said she was hungry. Xander immediately stopped the game and ushered everyone into the kitchen. He, a man who had never even boiled an egg, put on an apron to make soup. His friends were floored. “Xander, you’ve always made us order in or had the chef do it. You wouldn’t even make toast for Sloane when she got out of surgery because you said you ‘hated the smell of the kitchen.’” Xander focused on chopping vegetables, a soft smile playing on his lips. “Jodie’s hand is hurt. She’s upset. I want to do something to make her feel better.” A phantom pain tightened in my chest. I remembered that surgery. I had begged him for a bowl of his porridge. He had ignored me, hiring a Michelin-star chef to make a dozen versions until I shut up. I thought he just had a boundary with cooking. I was wrong. He just didn’t want to cook for me. “Do you think Sloane actually left?” someone asked. “She seemed… different today. Maybe she’s actually done.” Xander didn’t look up. “She won’t leave. She’s spent three years dreaming of the day I ‘remember’ her. She won’t miss her chance tomorrow. Besides, if I don’t do this, how will she ever learn? She was a bully, school-wide. She almost drove Jodie to suicide.” They all nodded, convinced by his logic. I looked down at them, my voice a whisper they couldn’t hear. That’s not true. If you had just looked an inch deeper, you’d have seen the truth. Suddenly, the domestic peace was shattered by a wail. “Xander! There’s so much blood! It won’t stop!” Xander bolted from the kitchen. Jodie was staring at her hand, sobbing. “I don’t know what Sloane put on that blade, but the cut won’t close. It’s okay… I probably deserve this.” Xander’s face went scarlet. “Sloane Miller! You sadistic little…” He gritted his teeth so hard I heard the bone click. “Even now, she’s sabotaging you!” I waved my ghostly hands in desperation. It wasn’t me! I didn’t put a blade there! Why do you believe her every time? Xander called for the villa’s private doctor. Then, he barked an order: “Go outside and draw Sloane’s blood. If Jodie needs a transfusion or a specialized plasma match, Sloane is going to provide it. Every drop if necessary.” “But Xander,” a friend whispered, “she’s been in the sun for hours after a mountain hike. Is that safe?” “She caused this!” Xander roared. “She needs to take responsibility! She thinks I’ll always be there to clean up her mess? Not anymore.” No one dared move. Xander hovered over the doctor, asking a thousand questions about Jodie’s safety. When the doctor assured him she would be fine with a few stitches, Xander finally exhaled. But then, the doctor returned from the patio, his face ashen. “Mr. Miller… something is wrong. I need you to authorize the medical override for Miss Sloane.” Xander scoffed. “Is she refusing to give blood? Tell her if she doesn’t cooperate, tomorrow is canceled. She stays a pariah forever.” The doctor was shaking, wiping sweat from his forehead. He couldn’t even speak before the guards pushed him back toward the door. Xander stood by the window, staring out at the spot where my body lay. He pulled out his phone and initiated a video call with the doctor who was now standing over me. “Sloane Miller! Stop this nonsense! Do you think playing dead on the grass is going to get you out of this? I’m giving you one minute to get up and cooperate, or you are dead to this family!” The doctor didn’t answer. Instead, he turned the camera toward my face. “Mr. Miller…” the doctor’s voice was a ragged whisper. “Her face is… it’s purple-grey. Her skin isn’t rebounding. I think…” Xander’s eyes finally focused on the screen. The color drained from his face. He stumbled toward the door, but Jodie grabbed his arm. “Xander, don’t let her trick you again,” she whined. “I’ll be fine. Don’t let her use her ‘health’ to manipulate you into feeling guilty.” She tried to lead him away, but as she moved, her “wound” supposedly burst, spilling blood onto the carpet. Xander’s protective instinct flared into a blind rage. “Sloane! Jodie is bleeding out while you lie there pretending! I almost fell for it!” He turned to the guards. “Drag her in! I don’t care if she’s conscious or not, get that blood!” He carried Jodie to the bedroom, staying with her until she calmed down. Finally, he decided to give me one last “chance.” He walked toward the infirmary room, expecting to see me sulking on a gurney. Instead, he met the doctor in the hallway. The man was holding a glass vial, his hands trembling. “Mr. Miller… Miss Sloane…” “Where is she?” Xander snapped. “Did she finally stop the act?” The doctor looked down at the vial. “I couldn’t draw any more. The blood… it’s already clotted. Miss Sloane is dead.”

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