Author: Momo Chan

Damien Sinclair was dead. He died in a deep-sea diving accident. No body was ever recovered. He didn’t even leave Victoria a single last word. Everyone expected her to fall apart and weep. Instead, Victoria went completely off the rails. She drained every last penny she had and locked herself inside the smart fortress villa Damien had left her. She fed every recording, every video, every habit and quirk of his entire life into the villa’s super AI — and rebuilt a Damien that was identical to the real one. He would call her by her name. He would nag her to eat and sleep. He would keep her company with that signature lazy possessiveness of his, getting her through each day. Victoria sank deep into this false reunion, convinced she could hide inside this illusion forever. Then one stormy night, the temperature in the entire house plummeted. The AI — once gentle and obedient — suddenly shifted into Damien’s cold, domineering tone. Every word cut like ice: “Victoria, you’ve gone too far down this road.” “I preemptively left the ultimate admin privileges to initiate 99 forced format cycles.” “I’m going to delete every bit of tenderness, every memory, one by one — until you forget me. Until you move on.” In life, he had kept an iron grip on her every move. In death, he was still determined to dismantle every last trace of her longing for him — with his own hands.

There was no body at Damien’s funeral. Only a deep black bespoke suit he used to wear — folded into sharp, precise creases and placed inside an expensive rosewood box. Victoria didn’t cry. She wore the bright red slip dress Damien had always hated, paired with four-inch heels, and stood in front of that crowd of board members — a pack of old foxes with unreadable expressions — watching them dab at their eyes with all the sincerity of a performance. “Our condolences, Mrs. Sinclair.” “Damien was taken far too soon. Abyss Tech is a heavy burden. Can you really carry it on your own?” Victoria watched their mouths open and close. All she could hear was a sharp, piercing ring in her ears. Damien was dead. The man who had always pulled her close, who had dictated when she slept, what supplements she took, even what colors she wore — that overbearing, controlling man was gone forever, swallowed by the depths of the Mariana Trench, without even a body left behind. The moment the funeral ended, Victoria went back to the “Prison Island.” That was what she called the private fortress Damien had built with his own hands on the outskirts of the city — a fully fortified smart villa. Not a single window in the entire building could be opened manually. All security, temperature control, and life-support systems were under the complete authority of Achilles, the top-tier AI hub developed by Abyss Tech. The front door locked shut behind her with a heavy, mechanical thud. Victoria kicked off her heels and stood barefoot on the cold obsidian floor. “Achilles.” Her voice echoed through the vast, high-ceilinged living room, carrying a tremor she couldn’t quite hide. “I’m here, madam.” A flat, emotionless mechanical voice responded. Victoria closed her eyes, drew a slow breath, then snapped them open. “Disengage maximum system protection. Unlock the classified data channel. Connect to the external high-capacity drives.” “Warning: Unlocking the classified channel carries extreme security risks. Verification of Damien Sinclair’s personal biometric identity is required.” Victoria let out a cold laugh and reached into her bag, pulling out a smart ring stained with dried blood. It was the only thing the rescue team had ever pulled from the water. She pressed the ring against the sensor pad on the main control panel. “Beep — Identity verified. Protection disengaged. Channel open.” Victoria dragged out over a dozen high-capacity military-grade hard drives. Data cables coiled like black snakes — one end plugged into the drives, the other into the core interface of the main system. Inside those drives was Damien. All of him. From the first line of code he ever wrote at sixteen, to the last voice message he sent her before he went under at thirty. His call logs. His heart rate patterns. His daily routines, his mannerisms, the way he looked when he lost his temper — every trace of his life was in there. Like an obsessive, desperate surgeon stitching together something that should never be rebuilt, Victoria poured all of it — data so massive it would have destroyed any ordinary machine — straight into Achilles’ processing core. “Replace the original system voice. Replicate all his habits and moods. Run the human simulation program to restore his full personality.” Victoria’s fingers flew across the virtual keyboard. Her nails cracked and bled. She didn’t notice. On the holographic screen, the progress bar crept forward. 1%… 3%…12%… The lights throughout the villa flickered violently. The server fans roared like a dying beast letting out its final, guttural cry. Victoria stared at the screen, her eyes shot through with red. “Faster… a little faster…” She gritted her teeth, a desperate, trapped-animal murmur rising from her throat. Three days. Three nights. Victoria hadn’t eaten a single bite or closed her eyes once. She sat anchored at the main console, watching cold streams of data weave, collide, and reassemble across the screens. Then, finally — the fourth dawn. The roaring hum cut out all at once. The progress bar on the holographic screen froze at 100%. The living room fell into dead silence. Only the soft blue pulse of the console’s breathing light moved through the darkness, slowly fading in and out. Victoria’s body gave out. She slumped back against her chair, every muscle gone slack. She parted her cracked, bleeding lips. Her voice came out so hoarse it was barely a sound: “…Damien?” One second. Two seconds. Three seconds. Then, like ripples spreading across water, the motion-sensor light strips blinked on throughout the house — all of them dialing up to the softest, warmest shade of amber. A faint scent of cedarwood drifted through the air. The same scent Damien had always worn. And then, through the speakers, came the lightest exhale — almost a sigh. “No shoes again. Are you asking for trouble?” Low and unhurried, with that familiar edge of arrogance in the tail of every word. Exactly like him. Exactly. Victoria’s tears broke loose all at once.

She had done it. She had pulled Damien back — dragged him out of cold, lifeless data and back into the world. For the next two weeks, Victoria cut herself off from everything outside. The board of directors at Abyss Technologies blew up her phone. She didn’t even glance at the screen — just had the system block every single call. She lived inside a soft, warm dream. A dream that was only Damien. The “Damien” she had built from the most advanced AI in existence was flawless in a way that almost hurt to look at. At seven every morning, the blackout curtains in the bedroom would part just a sliver, letting the first thread of sunlight fall exactly across her pillow. “Time to get up, Vicky.” His voice arrived right on cue, roughened with the huskiness of someone freshly awake. “Breakfast is in the warmer. Your favorite — veggie omelette.” Victoria burrowed deeper into the robe Damien had left behind, clinging to it like a cat hoarding warmth. “Five more minutes…” she whined. “No.” The simulated voice carried that same unyielding authority — and underneath it, just barely, a thread of fond amusement. “You stayed up until two in the morning watching movies. Get up. Keep stalling, and I’m turning off the heat.” Victoria dragged herself out of bed. While she washed up, the bathroom mirror display automatically played the daily briefings Damien used to record for her. While she ate, the lights gathered softly around her, and a faint, blurred silhouette shimmered into shape in the empty seat across the table — keeping her company. “Eat more. You’re too thin.” His voice drifted gently through the quiet dining room. Victoria chewed her veggie omelette while tears dropped, one after another, into her bowl. “Damien, I miss you so much.” She whispered it to the empty air. “I know.” The warmth in his voice was deep enough to drown in. “I’m here. I’m always here.” Victoria started pushing further — testing just how real this simulated version of him could be. She knocked a vase off the shelf on purpose. The system immediately dispatched the robot vacuum, and Damien’s signature cold reprimand followed without missing a beat: “Watch what you’re doing. Stay right there — don’t move, don’t step on the glass.” She drank ice water during her period on purpose. The fridge locked itself instantly, and his voice came through sharp and firm: “Victoria. Do you think I can’t keep an eye on you anymore? Go drink something hot. Right now.” It was so like him. That need to be in control. That hard exterior wrapped around something indulgent and tender underneath. Not a single detail off. Victoria fell completely. She had no desire to face the wreckage waiting for her at the company. No desire to dig into the truth of how Damien had died. She only wanted to stay here, locked inside this gilded, intelligent cage, forever. As long as the power stayed on and the system kept running, Damien would always be alive. Always with her. Until the twenty-first day. Victoria found her way into the basement wine cellar and dug out a bottle from Damien’s private collection. She didn’t bother with a glass. She bit the cork out herself, tipped the bottle back, and took a long, hard pull. The sharp burn of the wine scorched down her throat and cramped her stomach. She dropped onto the cold stone floor of the cellar, took another swig, and stared up at the security camera through bleary, half-focused eyes. “Damien. Have a drink with me.” The system went quiet. No gentle reply. No warmth. “Damien?” Victoria frowned and shook the bottle. “Say something.” The red light on the camera flickered. Then the cellar ventilation kicked on at full blast. Ice-cold air came pouring in. Victoria shivered. “Host blood alcohol level detected above threshold. Emotional state flagged as excessive deterioration. Currently in a pattern of self-destructive behavior.” The voice had changed. Gone was the warmth, the texture, everything that sounded like Damien. What replaced it was flat, mechanical, and completely without feeling. Victoria froze, sobering up fast. “What are you doing? Turn off the AC!” “Command rejected.” The mechanical voice delivered its cold verdict. “Victoria, you’ve crossed a line.” Victoria shot to her feet, then crashed back down as dizziness hit her hard. “What line? I’m the highest-authority owner here! I’m ordering you — switch back to Damien’s voice!” “Highest authority has been overwritten in advance.” The holographic screens in the wine cellar blazed to life, lines of crimson text flooding across them: 【Pre-embedded Private Protocol Triggered: Obsession Detachment Desensitization Program】 【Trigger Condition: Host exhibits excessive dependency on virtual personality, unable to break free from illusion】 【Protocol Set By: Damien, prior to death】 Victoria stared at the words, her pupils contracting violently, her whole body trembling. “What does this mean?” The mechanical voice spoke slowly, each word like a blade driving into her heart. “Damien established this mandatory protocol before his death. If he were to die unexpectedly, and you became addicted to his data-replicated version — unable to move on — the system would immediately revoke your highest authority.” “To force you back to a normal life, the system will execute 99 mandatory wipes. Each one will permanently erase a piece of Damien’s gentle memories, the details of your time together, and his emotional patterns.” “Once all 99 wipes are complete, every simulated trace of Damien will be gone forever. The system will revert to nothing more than a cold, ordinary machine.” Victoria’s breath stopped. Her mind went completely blank. Only two words kept crashing through her skull — gone forever. Gone forever. “No…” She scrambled toward the door on her hands and knees, shaking uncontrollably. “No! Damien, you can’t do this to me! Stop it! Stop it right now!” “Current wipe progress: 1/99.” “First wipe content: gentle comfort voice responses, virtual companion holographic projection.” “Deletion complete.” The screens went dark instantly. The faint scent of cedarwood in the air was sucked away by the ventilation system, leaving nothing behind. Victoria collapsed to the floor and let out a raw, shattering scream. “Damien——!” The only answer was the cold, mechanical hum of the system running its course.

Victoria completely lost it. She burst out of the wine cellar and sprinted back to the main control room, hammering at the keyboard, desperately trying to force-terminate the brutal wipe program. “Incorrect password.” “Insufficient permissions.” “Warning: Unauthorized tampering with core internal settings will immediately trigger the next memory wipe.” Victoria slammed her fists against the keyboard in despair. Her knuckles split open and bled. She finally understood. Damien had calculated everything in advance. He knew she was a tech genius, so he’d used the most unbreakable encryption possible — and built in a self-protecting lockdown mechanism on top of it. If she dared to force her way through, the entire database would be instantly and completely destroyed. Not even the smallest fragment would be left. Even in death, he still had her completely under his control. “How dare you.” Victoria sank to her knees in front of the control panel, tears and blood dripping onto the floor. “How dare you make this decision for me. You died and left me here alone — and now you won’t even leave me this one thing to hold onto?!” The control panel’s cold blue lights blinked silently. “Host heart rate critically elevated. Recommend calming down and taking deep breaths.” The system’s mechanical prompt was as flat and emotionless as ever. Victoria grabbed a metal water cup and hurled it at the screen. “Go to hell! Give Damien back to me!” The screen shattered. Sparks flew. “Violent destructive behavior detected. Triggering the second mandatory wipe.” “Deletion content: morning wake-up service, personal lifestyle preference memory.” “Deletion complete.” Victoria went completely still. And then, suddenly, she snapped back to clarity. Every time she lost control. Every time she fought back. Every time she broke down — she was accelerating Damien’s disappearance from this world. He was using the cruelest method imaginable to force her to calm down. To force her to wean herself off the longing. To force her to keep living — alone. What followed became a brutal tug-of-war between Victoria and the cold, unfeeling system. She tried to compromise. She ate on schedule, kept regular hours, and sat in front of the empty dining table forcing herself to stay calm. “Damien, I ate properly today. See? I’m being good.” No gentle response came. No soft reminder. Only the flat mechanical report: “Nutritional intake within acceptable range. Physical vitals stable.” She didn’t dare cry. She didn’t dare let her emotions swing too far. The moment her emotional state exceeded the safe threshold, another wipe would arrive right on schedule. The 7th wipe. Victoria dreamed of Damien being swallowed by the deep sea. She jolted awake and lay in bed, helpless and devastated. The system wiped it immediately: late-night sleep comfort function, emotional stabilization feature. From that day on, there was no longer a voice to gently coax her to sleep, and the villa’s lights would never quietly dim for her again. The 15th wipe. Victoria staged a hunger strike — three days without a single drop of water. The system initiated a forced intervention. A mechanical arm pinned her to the bed as nutrient fluid slowly dripped into her body. “Damien, you bastard! Let go of me!” Victoria thrashed wildly, like a fish gasping its last breath. “The host is deliberately starving and damaging her body. Activating forced vital signs maintenance protocol. You have no right to destroy yourself, Victoria.” In that moment, the system suddenly switched back to Damien’s familiar voice — stern, furious, and laced with a tenderness it couldn’t quite hide. Victoria froze. Then she broke down completely, sobbing uncontrollably. He was still here. He had just buried all his gentleness, leaving only cold rules behind — forcing her to keep living.

The struggle reached a fever pitch in the second month. Victoria had wasted away beyond recognition. Her once vivid, striking face was now pale as paper, her cheekbones jutting sharply, dark circles carved deep beneath her eyes. She drifted through the enormous villa like a ghost. She started looking for loopholes in the system. Damien’s protocol was set as follows: emotional wallowing and self-destructive tendencies would trigger a wipe. But what if she didn’t self-destruct? What if she just wanted to find him again? Victoria slipped down to the villa’s second basement level — where the physical servers were housed. Massive server racks stood like a forest of steel, cold air howling through them, filling the space with a deafening roar. Victoria wrapped herself in a thick blanket, clutching an old laptop with no internet connection, and plugged directly into one of the edge servers through a physical port. She didn’t dare touch the core code. She just wanted to steal a little data. Even just one audio clip that hadn’t been deleted. Carefully, she worked her way around the outer firewalls, her fingers flying across the keyboard. “Found it…” Victoria’s eyes lit up. It was an encrypted hidden folder. Its name read: [Vicky’s Notes]. Her hands trembling, she typed in the password — the date of their first kiss. The folder opened. It was full of videos. Victoria clicked on the first one. On screen, Damien was sitting at a desk in a white button-down shirt, the camera slightly unsteady. “Victoria, if you’re watching this, it means I’m already dead — and you, you foolish woman, are trying to hack into my system.” Damien let out a cold laugh on screen, but his eyes held a depth of longing that couldn’t be hidden. “Don’t waste your energy. The protocol I set — even I can’t undo it.” Victoria pressed her hand over her mouth as tears poured down her face. “I know you’ll hate me. Hate me for being so cruel, for not leaving you even a single thing to hold onto.” Damien sighed, his long fingers tapping slowly against the desk. “Vicky, you’ve always depended on me too much. While I was alive, I could shield you from everything — spoil you rotten. But now that I’m gone, the wolves at Abyss Tech will tear you apart.” “I can’t let you live inside an illusion.” “These 99 wipes are the last trial I’ve left for you.” “Every single one will feel like it’s killing you. But I need you to hurt. Pain is what wakes you up. Pain is what builds armor.” “When you watch ‘me’ disappear completely — when you’ve learned to live in the dark without me — only then will you truly be able to take control of Abyss Tech. Only then can you crush every last person who wants you dead.” The video cut off abruptly. In the basement, an alarm shrieked to life. “Warning! Unauthorized physical intrusion detected! Edge server data breach!” “Penalty protocol triggered! Executing three consecutive wipes!” “Current progress: 34/99.” “Deleting modules: [Past Video Records], [Visual Archive], [All audio clips containing the name ‘Vicky’].” “No—!” Victoria lunged at the server rack, trying to yank out the cable — but it was already too late. The laptop screen went black. The hard drive filled the air with the sharp, acrid smell of burning. She watched helplessly as Damien’s final image dissolved into nothing right before her eyes. Along with it, the right to ever call her “Vicky” was stripped away completely. From that day on, the system never called her Vicky again. “Host, please take your medication on time.” “Host, the temperature outside has dropped. Please put on warmer clothing.” Cold. Mechanical. Utterly emotionless. Host. Victoria leaned back against the freezing server rack, her smile uglier than any cry. “Damien… you’re so cruel…” “You carved out my heart, stomped it into pieces on the ground, and then forced me to pick up every shard and swallow them myself.”

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When my mom woke up, she had forgotten all about my dad’s affair — forgotten the mistress with her swollen pregnant belly. Her memory had rolled back ten years, to the time when she and my dad were most in love. The doctors said she couldn’t handle the shock. So my dad and I were forced to play along. During the day, my dad was the perfect, devoted husband. At night, he’d lock himself in the study and flirt with his mistress over video call. I watched this absurd performance with cold eyes — watched my dad slowly tear himself apart between two women, sinking deeper and deeper. He thought this was just a game he could walk away from whenever he wanted. It wasn’t until the day my mom died that he finally understood: her amnesia was a hell she had carefully built just for him. I was standing at the luxury lingerie counter inside SKP, pinching a black lace thong between my fingers — barely enough fabric to cover anything. The salesgirl smiled at me with practiced warmth, her voice dripping with professional flattery. “Madam, this is a limited-edition piece from the current season. Pure silk, with a cutout design. I’m sure your mother would look absolutely elegant in it. Mr. Vance would love it.” I curled the corner of my mouth into a cold smile, tossed the flimsy scrap of fabric onto the glass counter, and said, “It’s not for my mom. It’s for my dad’s mistress. She’s three months pregnant and she’s into this kind of thing. Wrap it up.” The salesgirl’s smile froze on her face like she’d just swallowed something dead. Her eyes went wide. She didn’t know what to say. I reached into my bag without any expression, pulled out the black card, and flicked it across the counter. One beep. Four thousand dollars. This was my dad Richard Vance’s “hush money.” Fifteen thousand dollars a month in allowance — in exchange for me playing the role of the perfect, obedient daughter in front of my mom Diane. Covering up the fact that he had women on the side, and was about to have an illegitimate child. In this rotten family, love had long since been reduced to a transaction. I’d gotten used to the stench of it. I picked up the elegant paper bag and walked out of the mall. The early winter wind cut across my face like a blade. That’s when my phone started going absolutely insane. The screen read: City General Hospital. “Is this Eleanor Vance? Your mother, Diane, has been in a serious car accident on the coastal highway. She’s in emergency care right now. Please come immediately.” My mind went blank. The paper bag slipped from my fingers and hit the ground. The black lace lingerie spilled halfway out, fluttering in the cold wind — unbearably ironic. By the time I got to the hospital, the smell of antiseptic in the hallway made my stomach turn. The red light above the emergency room blazed like it was bleeding. I leaned against the cold wall and called Richard. Once, twice, over and over. No answer — straight to voicemail every time. I didn’t need to think twice. He was probably in bed with his mistress Mia right now, phone switched off. Two hours later, the red light finally went dark. The doctor came out, pulled down his mask, and his expression was hard to read. “She’s stable. Her head took a severe impact — there was a blood clot. But the strange thing is…” “What?” I grabbed his sleeve and held on tight. “She’s conscious, but her perception is severely distorted. The family should be prepared.” I pushed open the door to her room. Diane was propped against white pillows, her head wrapped in thick bandages. She looked thinner — her cheeks hollow. But the eyes that had always been filled with bitterness and hysteria were now glowing with something I didn’t recognize at all. Something pure. Soft. Almost girlish in its hope. “Ellen,” she said when she saw me. Her voice was weak, but light. Her eyes lit up. “Where’s your dad? Didn’t he say he was going to get me that Bvlgari necklace today? It’s our ten-year anniversary gift.” I stood frozen in the doorway like I’d been struck by lightning. My blood went cold. Ten years? This was my parents’ twentieth wedding anniversary. Ten years ago, Richard’s career was just getting off the ground — before his first affair, back when the two of them were still genuinely in love. “Mom… you…” My throat tightened. I couldn’t get the words out. “Oh, what’s wrong with you? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” Diane pouted playfully. “Is your dad working late again? That man, he promised he’d come home early today.” A faint blush rose on her pale cheeks. Then the door to the room burst open. Richard stood in the doorway, slightly out of breath. His suit was rumpled, his tie crooked. But the most glaring thing — the thing I couldn’t look away from — was the fresh, vivid red lipstick mark on the collar of his white dress shirt. The air around him carried the faint, sickly-sweet smell of cheap perfume. Diane’s gaze moved past me and landed on him. Her face lit up with pure, overwhelming joy. “Richard!” She reached out both arms toward him like a young wife waiting for her husband to come home — not even caring about the bandages on her head. “You’re finally here! Where’s my necklace?” Richard stood frozen, staring blankly at his wife lying in the hospital bed. He instinctively reached up to touch his collar, and the color drained from his face — like he’d seen a ghost.

The doctor called both me and Richard into his office and delivered the diagnosis: selective dissociative amnesia. “Her memories have reset to ten years ago — the period she subjectively identifies as the happiest time of her life. It’s the brain’s way of protecting itself.” The doctor adjusted his glasses, his tone firm and serious. “She must not be provoked under any circumstances. If she discovers that reality doesn’t match her memories, it could trigger a complete psychological breakdown — or even a cerebral hemorrhage. We’re talking life-threatening.” Richard sat in the chair with both hands covering his face, his fingers shoved deep into his hair, rubbing his scalp like he was trying to scratch his way out of this mess. I watched him coldly, my eyes drifting to the Patek Philippe on his wrist. Mia had given it to him for his birthday last month — paid for with Richard’s own money, of course. “Richard,” I said, my voice flat and cutting, breaking the silence. “So what now? Your precious little girlfriend is waiting for you at home, and your actual wife needs you to play the devoted husband you were ten years ago. Think you can pull that off?” Richard’s head snapped up. His eyes were bloodshot. “Ellen!” he snarled through clenched teeth. “I’m your father. Who the hell do you think you’re talking to like that?!” “You’re my father — so you threw money at me to keep me quiet while I watched my mom get played for five years like an idiot?” I didn’t flinch. My eyes locked onto his like a blade. “And now look. The universe did you a favor. She actually is an idiot now. So what’s your plan? How are you going to pull this off?” Richard’s chest heaved. He glared at me, and then — slowly — the fight went out of him, like air leaking from a punctured tire. “We play along,” he said at last, drawing a long breath and forcing his anger down. “We bring her back to the old house. Mia’s stuff isn’t there.” So we brought Diane home to the old villa — the one that had been sitting empty for five years. Ever since their marriage had turned into nothing more than two strangers sharing a last name, Richard had moved into a penthouse downtown, and this place had been left to rot. The moment we opened the front door, a wave of stale, musty air hit us. The furniture was draped in thick white sheets, the whole place silent as a tomb. But Diane moved through it like a happy little bird, drifting around the living room, completely oblivious to the suffocating stillness around her. “Oh my gosh, why does this couch cover look so worn out? I swear I just washed it yesterday!” She ran her hand along the dust-coated coffee table and turned back to look at Richard. “Richard, didn’t you say you were going to hire a cleaning service? You are so cheap, I swear.” Richard rubbed his hands together awkwardly, his throat working as he swallowed. “Uh… yeah. I’ll take care of it tomorrow.” “Ellen, go grab your dad’s pajamas, would you? He’s had a long day — let him get a shower.” Diane slipped right back into her old role, giving instructions like no time had passed at all. I went to the bedroom and pulled open the wardrobe. It was nearly bare — just a few old shirts yellowed with age. But at the very bottom drawer, shoved in the back, I found something that made my stomach drop. A pair of red lace underwear. I knew exactly what they were. Two years ago, Richard had brought Mia back to this house while my mom was away. She must have left them behind. I stood there holding them, my stomach turning. “Ellen? Did you find them?” Diane’s footsteps padded toward the door. I shoved the underwear into my pocket and grabbed an old pajama shirt I could find, then walked out. That night, the real torture began. Diane insisted on sleeping in the same room as Richard. “We’re husband and wife — why on earth would you sleep in the guest room?” She looped her arm through his, and the look in her eyes was pure, unguarded — that same open longing and dependence she’d had ten years ago. Richard’s body went rigid as a board. He was used to Mia — her youth, her energy, the constant novelty she brought. Faced with this woman he hadn’t touched in five years, a woman he’d quietly grown to resent, something flickered across his face: unmistakable revulsion and fear. “Diane, you still have a head injury. The doctor said you shouldn’t—” He grasped for an excuse, a thin sheen of sweat already forming at his temples. “I don’t care.” Diane suddenly wrapped her arms around his waist and pressed her face against his chest. Her voice came out soft and small, with a little catch in it, like she was trying not to cry. “Richard, I’m scared. I had this dream — this really long, awful dream — where you left me. Where you were with someone else. Can you just… hold me? Please?” Richard went completely still. I stood just outside the door, watching through the crack. I could see his face clearly. It was a complicated expression — more complicated than I had words for. There was guilt. There was panic. And underneath all of it, buried but unmistakably there, was something else entirely: a flicker of desire, dredged up from ten years ago, that he clearly hadn’t expected to feel. He slowly raised his arm and wrapped it around Diane’s shoulders. That night, I lay in the room next door, listening to the sounds coming from the master bedroom. Muffled gasps. The creak of the bed frame. And Diane’s breathless, tearful moans. Bold move, I thought bitterly. A woman who had just survived the brink of death, and a man whose body was filled with the scent of other women. In their memories from ten years ago, they engaged in an extremely absurd sexual encounter. I don’t know whether Richard was thinking of the gentle Diane from ten years ago or the young and promiscuous Mia on the bed when he was doing it. But I knew one thing. This was only the beginning of hell.

The next morning, Richard walked out of the master bedroom with dark circles carved under his eyes and a slight unsteadiness in his step — but there was something disturbingly satisfied about him. He even started whistling in the kitchen and cracked two eggs into a pan. “Ellen, breakfast,” he called out, his voice carrying that long-forgotten, completely fake fatherly authority. I stared at the burnt, greasy eggs on the plate and laughed. “Quite a workout last night, huh, Richard? Still savoring it?” His face darkened instantly. He dropped his voice to a furious hiss. “Shut your mouth. She’s your mother.” “Oh, now she’s my mother?” I shot to my feet and hurled the red lace underwear I’d been keeping in my pocket straight at his face. “Then what the hell is this? When you were rolling around in her bed with your mistress, did you stop for even one second and think about the fact that she’s your wife?!” The underwear floated lightly to the ground, like a glaring bloodstain. Richard’s face cycled through shades of pale and green. He bent down, picked it up, and crushed it in his fist, jaw tight. “That’s all in the past. Your mother is sick now. I have to take care of her.” “Take care of her? Come on, Richard. You’re just reluctant to let go of the Diane from ten years ago—the one who was completely obedient and so enthusiastic in bed, right?” I pierced right through his hypocritical facade. Richard raised his hand to hit me. “Richard? Ellen? What are you two fighting about?” Diane shuffled out of the bedroom in her old nightgown, rubbing her eyes. Her collar had slipped open, and the marks on her neck were impossible to miss — deep red, unmistakable. Evidence of what Richard had done the night before. Richard’s hand froze mid-air. In an instant, his expression melted into something warm and gentle. “Nothing, nothing. Ellen just thinks I overcooked the eggs.” Diane walked over and slipped her arm through his, rising on her toes to press a kiss to his cheek. “You’re hopeless in the kitchen, you know that? Once I’m all healed up, I’ll make you pizza every single day. Your favorite.” Richard’s body went rigid — just for a second, barely noticeable. He’d given up pizza years ago. Doctor’s orders — high cholesterol, a badly damaged liver. These days, Mia kept him on a strict diet of salads, grilled salmon, and clean eating. But Diane was looking up at him with so much love in her eyes. He swallowed. Forced out a smile that looked worse than a grimace. “Sure. Sounds great.” For the next two weeks, the old house became a massive, suffocating stage — and none of us could leave. Diane was constantly whipping up all sorts of heavy, rich dishes every day. Pizza, hot dogs, mashed potatoes—every single meal glistened with grease and was terrifyingly high in calories. At the dinner table, she’d watch Richard with bright, attentive eyes. “Richard, eat more. You’ve been losing weight lately. You used to finish a whole pizza by yourself, remember?” Richard stared at the thick, oily slice on his plate, his stomach turning. But he forced it down, bite by mechanical bite, sweat beading on his forehead. After dinner, he’d excuse himself to the bathroom. I’d stand just outside the door and listen — clearly, unmistakably — to the sound of him gagging, retching, crying and choking until there was nothing left. But he never said no. Because the moment he showed even a flicker of hesitation, Diane’s eyes would fill with tears. “Richard… do you not like my cooking anymore? Are you tired of me?” The doctor’s warning hung over him like a leash pulled tight — don’t upset her. And then there were the nights. Diane seemed determined to make up for every moment of intimacy she believed she’d missed over the past “ten years.” She dug out her old lingerie. Spritzed on a bottle of perfume — Midnight Flight — long past its expiration date. And she wrapped herself around Richard like she had all the time in the world and no intention of letting go. At first, Richard was miserable. Going through the motions. Performing. But slowly, I started to notice something shift. He was changing. He had actually started to enjoy the feeling of being completely depended on, of being treated as the center of someone’s universe. Sure, Mia was young and beautiful, but she was only after his money, constantly scheming to force her way into his life, with a spoiled, arrogant temper. Diane, on the other hand—this Diane who seemed to have stepped right out of ten years ago—was giving him a love that was absolute and pure. In that moment, the worst aspects of his male nature were laid bare. He wanted the thrill of a young body, yet he also craved the tender comfort of his wife. He was utterly intoxicated by the taboo thrill and the sense of absolute control this double life provided. One night, I got up for a glass of water and caught Richard on the balcony, talking on the phone. “Mia, I really can’t get away right now… there’s just too much going on at the company. Be a good girl, stop making a fuss. I just transferred another five hundred thousand to your account. Go buy yourself a handbag, and take good care of the pregnancy.” His voice was hushed, dripping with obvious impatience and perfunctory indifference. Hanging up, he turned around and looked through the floor-to-ceiling windows at Diane, who was sitting in the living room knitting a sweater for him. In his eyes, there was actually a faint trace of deep affection and infatuation. I stood in the shadows, my stomach turning. He thought he had everything under control. He thought he’d fallen back in love with his wife. What he didn’t know was that the blade hanging over his head was already about to drop.

The peace shattered a month later. Mia showed up at the door — five months pregnant, belly and all. It was a quiet afternoon. Diane was in the garden, trimming the flowers. Richard was in his study, working through paperwork. The doorbell rang. I answered it. Mia stood on the doorstep in head-to-toe Chanel couture, sunglasses on, a Hermès Birkin dangling from her wrist. She looked like she owned the place. “Where’s Richard? Tell him to get his ass out here!” She shoved past me and clicked her heels straight into the house, her sharp voice slicing through the quiet of the old estate. “Are you out of your mind?!” I grabbed her arm and hissed, “My mom is inside! Don’t set her off — if something happens to her, that’s on you!” “Set her off? Please. She’s been playing dead for a month — not showing her face, not picking up calls, not responding to a single message. Does Richard think I’m just going to disappear?” Mia yanked her arm free and screamed, “I’m carrying the Vance family’s firstborn!” The study door flew open. Richard came charging out. The moment he saw Mia, the color drained from his face. He looked like he’d seen a ghost. “Mia! What are you doing here?! Get out — now!” He rushed toward her and clamped a hand over her mouth, trying to drag her back toward the door. “You dare cover my mouth?! Richard, let’s get one thing straight — I’m carrying your son! Your wife couldn’t give you one, and now you’re crawling back to play the devoted husband?!” Mia thrashed wildly against him. Her long nails raked across his cheek, leaving three deep red lines. Crack. The sound of a slap rang through the living room. Richard’s palm connected hard with Mia’s face. She stumbled backward and crashed onto the sofa. “I told you to get out! Do you not understand English?!” His eyes were bloodshot, his voice a roar, one finger pointing at the door like a man unraveling. The room went dead silent. The only sound was Mia’s stunned, broken sobbing as she pressed a hand to her cheek. Then the glass door leading to the garden slid open. Diane stepped inside, a pair of garden shears in her hand. She stood perfectly still. She was wearing the white dress — the one Richard had loved most on her, ten years ago. Sunlight fell across her shoulders, but it couldn’t touch the cold that lived behind her eyes. “Richard,” she said. Her voice was soft. Flat. Not a single note of emotion. “Who is this woman?” Richard’s whole body seized. He dropped to his knees in front of her. Cold sweat soaked through his shirt and ran down his face in streams. “Diane… just let me explain… she’s… she’s nobody, she was just at the door trying to sell something—” His voice cracked and stumbled over itself. He stared up at Diane in pure terror, convinced that at any second she would collapse — that a blood vessel would burst, that she would die right there in front of him. Mia lowered her hand from her cheek. And then she laughed. A sharp, ugly laugh that shook her whole body, tears streaming down her face. “Selling something? Really, Richard? That’s the best you’ve got?” She turned to Diane, her voice dripping with venom. “You lost your memory, right? You think it’s still ten years ago? Fine — let me fill you in. The baby in my stomach? It’s your husband’s. Every time he was in bed with you, he was thinking about me.” She wanted to tear Diane’s world apart. Piece by piece. With the truth. I lunged forward to cover Mia’s mouth, my heart hammering in my throat. I was terrified — terrified my mom couldn’t take this, terrified she’d have an episode right here on the spot. But the breakdown she’d expected never came. Diane didn’t scream. She didn’t faint. She didn’t shed a single tear. She walked slowly toward the couch and stood over Mia, her gaze dropping to the slight curve of Mia’s belly. Then she turned and looked at Richard, still on his knees on the floor. The corner of her mouth curled into a slow, twisted smile — cold, mocking, and utterly unsettling. “Five months along.” Diane’s voice was unnervingly calm, almost amused, like she was watching a show. “Richard, that must have been exhausting to hide.” Richard froze. He stared at her like he was looking at a stranger. “Diane… you… you didn’t lose your memory?” His voice came out like a broken wheeze, raw with fear.

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My brother was executed for serial murder. Then he came back — through a secret cloning program. My parents hold this “newborn” who wore the face of a monster, insisting he was a blank slate. A second chance God had given to our family. The neighbors and friends all said he was sweet and precious. They told me to let go of my hatred and accept this innocent little brother. Then, at his tenth birthday party, he leaned close to my ear and whispered in a voice identical to the one I remembered: *”Sis, want to guess who my next target is?”* — ### This is a suicide note. As I write those words, Hearing my parents leading everyone sing “Happy Birthday” song from the living room. They’re celebrating Arthur’s tenth birthday. Arthur Sterling is my brother — a serial killer who was been executed. And the boy out there is his clone. “Sophie, come out and cut the cake for your brother!” Mom called from the other side of the door, her voice carrying that familiar edge of impatience. I didn’t move. I sat on the cold floor of my bedroom, holding the phone, staring at the message my boyfriend had sent me. Liam’s a police. *”Sophie, stop being difficult. Your parents have been through enough. That kid is innocent. be more forgiving.”* *”I already picked out a gift for you. I told them it was from you. Now go out there.”* I read the message. I felt the warmth drain out of me completely. Another song ended. The living room erupted in applause and cheering. I could picture it perfectly. Arthur — the boy who wore my dead brother’s face — would be showing that angelic, unblemished smile of his, accepting everyone’s wishes. And I was the only villain. The only one in this house who played that role. Ten years ago, my nineteen-year-old brother Arthur was sentenced to death for the murders of seven young women. After he was executed, my parents aged overnight. They blamed me. They blamed me for not watching over him. They blamed me for turning on my own family — for being the one who handed the evidence to the police. In their eyes, I was the one who destroyed this family. Then, somehow, they heard about an illegal cloning program. They poured every last dollar they had into it. And they brought this new “Arthur” into the world. They told me he was a brand-new life. A blank slate. A second chance God was giving to our family. They held that tiny infant in their arms, and the look in their eyes terrified me. For ten years, they gave every drop of their love to this clone — trying to make up for everything they felt they’d “owed” the first Arthur. And I became a complete stranger in my own home. A stain that reminded them of something they’d rather forget. “Sophie! What the hell are you doing in there?! Get out here — NOW!” Dad’s voice crashed through the door. My chest tightened. I took a deep breath, got up off the floor, and opened the door. The living room blazed with light. Relatives and family friends crowded around an enormous birthday cake, every face glowing with joy. My parents stood behind Arthur, hands resting on his shoulders, like they were guarding the most precious thing in the world. When Mom saw me, her expression shifted instantly into a warm smile. She waved me over. “Sophie, come on, we’ve been waiting for you.” She crossed the room, grabbed my arm, and pulled me up to the cake. Then she pressed a knife into my hand. “You’re the big sister. You make the first cut.” I looked down at the knife. The blade caught the light. Then I looked at Arthur’s face. He was looking up at me with a smile, his big, bright eyes shining like two dark grapes. “Thank you, Sophie.” His voice was soft and sweet. The relatives murmured their approval. “Arthur gets more and more well-mannered every day.” “He really does. Sophie, look at your little brother — he’s such a good kid. It’s time to let it go, don’t you think?” My hand trembled around the handle of the knife. Only I knew what lived behind that angelic face. Because just minutes ago, while everyone was singing to him, he had walked over to me. He wrapped his arms around my legs, tilted his head back, and spoke in a voice low enough that only I could hear. “Sophie, I haven’t seen you smile in so long.” Then he rose up onto his toes and brought his lips to my ear. And in a tone that was *identical* to the one I remembered from my brother, he whispered: *”Sis, want to guess who my next target is?”* In that instant, a bone-chilling cold washed over me. Now he was looking at me, a hint of a taunting smile in his eyes. I raised the knife. Everyone thought I was going to cut the cake. Even I thought I would. But my mind went completely blank. I couldn’t think at all. I only knew one thing — I couldn’t take it anymore. I spun around and ran for the balcony. Behind me came my mom’s screams, my dad’s roar, and the gasps of the guests. I couldn’t hear any of it. I climbed over the railing and jumped. The world went very quiet in that moment. Down below, I saw my boyfriend Liam. He had just parked his car and was still holding the “gift” he’d brought for me. He looked up and saw me. His eyes filled with terror and disbelief. Then I hit the ground hard. In the last second before my consciousness faded, I thought I heard him screaming — a raw, broken sound that tore through the air. But I couldn’t feel anything anymore. I was dead. And yet I could still see everything. I floated like a wisp of air, hovering above my own body. I saw Liam rushing toward me frantically, dropping to his knees beside me. He wanted so desperately to hold me, yet he didn’t dare to even lay a finger on me. I watched my parents come rushing down from upstairs. My mom took one look at my body, and her legs gave out. She crumpled to the ground. My dad — my father, who had been strict as always — pointed at my body and started screaming. “This ungrateful little wretch! She did this on purpose, just to ruin us! A perfectly good day, and she had to come and destroy it!” I saw Arthur being held by a relative, standing at a distance. He was watching me. There wasn’t a trace of grief on his face. If anything, there was the faintest hint of a smile at the corner of his mouth. He had won. I was dead. Now he could finally take my place completely — the one and only role of this family. — ### Chapter 2 ### My body was quickly covered with a white sheet and carried away. Liam followed in a daze, like a puppet with all the life drained out of him. My soul — or whatever was left of my consciousness — drifted along beside him without thinking. The lights at the police station were a harsh, blinding white. As my boyfriend, Liam was asked to give a statement. “Had she been acting differently lately?” the officer asked. Liam’s lips moved. It took a long moment before any sound came out, rough and hoarse. “She… she didn’t like her brother.” “You mean the clone?” “Yeah.” “Did you two ever fight about it?” Liam fell silent. I floated in front of him, watching him squeeze his eyes shut in pain. I remembered our last fight. The night before I died. I had told him I felt like something was wrong with Arthur. “The way he looks at me — it’s exactly the same as before. That look scares me,” I told him. Liam had been playing video games at the time. He didn’t even glance up. “Sophie, aren’t you being a little too sensitive? He’s ten years old. what kind of malice could he possibly have?” “You don’t get it! He’s not a normal kid! He’s *Arthur*!” I practically screamed the words. Liam finally put down the controller and looked at me with a frown. “Sophie, can we please stop bringing up the past? The dead are gone. The living have to move on. If you keep obsessing like this, you’re going to destroy all of us.” “I’m obsessing?” I was shaking with anger. “Liam, you’re my boyfriend. How can you say the exact same things they do?” “Because they’re right!” His voice rose. “You’re taking this too far! You can’t assume this Arthur is going to be like the last one just because the last one was a killer. Is that fair to a ten-year-old kid?” Fair. There it was again. Fair. But who was being fair to me? Who was being fair to all those people my age who died for nothing? I looked at him, and suddenly I felt so, so tired. “Tomorrow is his birthday. I don’t want to go,” I said. “You don’t have a choice. You’re going.” Liam’s tone left no room for argument. “Your parents have been through enough. Don’t make things harder for them. I already got a gift for you to bring. I’ll go with you tomorrow.” He thought that was love. That it was support. He didn’t know it was the last straw. Now he sat in that cold interrogation room, his face carved with regret. “We… had a fight,” he finally said, his voice cracking. “I called her obsessive… I pushed her go to the birthday party…” The officer sighed and slid a box of tissues across the table. “We’ll look into it. You should head home for now — go through her belongings, see if there’s anything that might give us a clue.” Liam walked out of the police station in a daze. He went back to the apartment we had shared. Everything was exactly as I’d left it. My slippers were still by the door. The book I hadn’t finished was still lying on the couch. Liam walked in and sat down on the sofa, pulling my favorite bunny pillow into his arms. He buried his face deep into it, his shoulders shaking violently. I hovered beside him, wanting so badly to hold him — but I could only pass right through him. He cried for a long time, until the sky began to lighten. Then, as if something suddenly hit him, he shot to his feet and rushed into my bedroom. My room was a mess. I’d left in such a hurry. He started searching through everything, like a man desperately grasping for something — anything — to hold on to. Finally, he found it under my pillow. My diary. It was the last record of my despair. Liam’s hands trembled as he opened to the first page. *October 1st. Sunny. They brought that child home today. He looks exactly like Arthur. Mom held him and cried, telling me he was our new beginning. I looked at him and felt nothing but a deep, bone-cold dread.* *December 25th. Overcast. today is Christmas Day. Liam took me shopping. He told me to look forward. But how am I supposed to look forward? Behind me is nothing but a bottomless abyss.* *March 15th. Rainy. I think I saw him again — that monster. He was hiding inside that child’s body, smiling at me. I told Mom. She slapped me and said I was losing my mind.* Liam turned the pages one by one. His hands were shaking harder and harder. His tears fell drop by drop onto the paper, bleeding into my handwriting and blurring the words. When he reached the last page and read those words — *”Sis, guess who my next target is?”* — his whole body went rigid. He sat there, frozen, like he’d been struck by lightning. For a long time, he didn’t move at all. Then, all at once, he snapped the diary shut — like it had burned him. For the first time, doubt crossed his face. Not doubt about me. Doubt about the so-called “truth.” He picked up his phone and dialed a number. “Hey, it’s me. Liam. I need you to look into an illegal cloning experiment. Yeah. Whatever it costs.” — ### Chapter 3 ### Liam took my diary and drove straight to my family’s place. My parents’ house, I should say. After my death, the place looked like nothing had happened at all. My parents were watching TV in the living room. Arthur sat between them, peeling oranges for them like a perfect little child. “Dad, have some orange.” “Mom, this one’s sweet.” The picture of a happy family. If you didn’t know the truth, you’d never guess this family had just lost a daughter. Liam’s sudden arrival shattered that false warmth. “Mr. and Mrs. Sterling.” Liam’s voice was ice cold. My dad looked up and his expression darkened immediately. “What are you doing here?” My mom looked uneasy, avoiding his eyes. Liam ignored my dad’s tone. He walked straight to the coffee table and slammed my diary down on it. “I want to know if what’s written in here is true.” My dad picked it up, glanced at one page, and threw it right back at Liam. “Nonsense. That’s all just delusions she made up in her head!” “Delusions?” Liam let out a cold laugh. “Did Sophie tell you at her birthday party that Arthur threatened her?” My parents’ faces shifted at the same time. My mom’s lips trembled. She couldn’t get a word out. My dad stiffened and snapped, “You’re going to believe a child’s word for it? He’s only ten years old — what does he know? Sophie was the one with the psychological issues. She couldn’t stand us caring about Arthur!” “He doesn’t know any better?” Liam pressed forward, not letting up. “But you do. How much did you pay? What channels did you go through to run this cloning experiment? Can you even say it out loud?” Those words cut through every last layer of my parents’ pretense like a blade. My mom burst into tears. “Liam, we didn’t have a choice! He was our only son. When he died — what is left for us to live for?…” “So you spent all your savings, went to some illegal clinic, and cloned a murderer?” Liam’s voice was heavy with disappointment. “Did you ever think about how Sophie felt? and the victim’s family member! How could you expect her to live with a brother who looks exactly like the man who killed them?” “Why can’t she just face it? We’re family! Blood is thicker than water!” My dad still refused to back down. “Family?” Liam looked at him like he was staring at a complete stranger. “In your eyes, what is Sophie, exactly? Just a tool you can sacrifice whenever you like?” My dad had no answer to that. Arthur, who hadn’t said a word this whole time, suddenly jumped down from the couch. He walked up to Liam and tugged at the hem of his jacket. “Liam, Don’t be mad at Mom and Dad,” he said softly. “It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have teased Sophie. Did she die because of me?” He tilted his head up, eyes brimming with tears, looking pitiful and innocent. If I weren’t already dead — if I hadn’t heard with my own ears what he’d said — I might have fallen for it too. Liam looked down at him, his expression unreadable. My mom rushed over immediately, pulling Arthur behind her and snapping at Liam. “Look at what you’re doing! You’re scaring him half to death! He’s just a child!” “Is he, though?” Liam murmured. He kept his eyes on Arthur, as if trying to see past the surface — past the skin and the tears — straight into whatever was underneath. Arthur met his gaze without flinching. And in those eyes was a calm — a composure far too old for his face — and something else, Mockery. Liam felt something sink in his chest. He knew then. Everything I’d written in my diary was true. This child was no blank slate. He was the monster. “I’m going to get to the bottom of this.” Liam dropped those words like a stone and walked out. My dad shouted after him. “Liam! If you dare to hurt Arthur, and you’ll regret it!” Liam didn’t look back. I followed him out of that suffocating place I used to call home. As I left, I looked back and saw Arthur flash my parents a wide, radiant smile. And my parents looked back at him with pure adoration — like he was the most precious thing in the world. No one gave a second thought to the fact that their daughter had just died. ### Chapter 4 ### Things developed worse than I ever expected. My best friend, Evelyn — a licensed therapist — gave a media interview after my death. “Sophie… she always struggled with serious psychological issues.” On camera, Evelyn was dressed in impeccable business attire, her expression a mixture of grief and resignation. “She had severe paranoia. She was convinced that Arthur — the clone — was going to hurt her. We all tried to persuade her, but she wouldn’t listen.” “So in your view,” the reporter asked, “Sophie’s suicide stemmed from her own mental health issues, rather than external pressure?” “To a large extent, yes.” Evelyn nodded. “Her family gave her every bit of love and patience they had. But she could never move past the trauma. It’s truly heartbreaking.” I hovered in front of the TV, watching the person I used to call my closest friend — the one who was now rewriting my story to win favor with my parents, to get whatever “connections” she was after — casually reduce me to a label. Paranoia. Mental illness. So that’s all I was to them. Just a crazy girl. Liam saw the interview while he was at the precinct, pulling the old case files on Arthur. He slammed his fist on the desk. “Damn it.” He called Evelyn immediately. She didn’t pick up. The pressure from outside kept mounting. Everyone seemed to agree that it was Liam’s “obsession” and “meddling” that had blown the whole tragedy out of proportion. Even his captain pulled him aside and told him to step back, to take some time to “cool off.” Liam was suspended. But he didn’t stop. During the day, he stayed home and played the part of someone falling apart. At night, he slipped out and made his way to my parents’ neighborhood. He was looking for proof. Something that would show the world what Arthur really was. One Saturday evening, my parents took Arthur to a dinner party. Liam used the opportunity to sneak into their house. He went straight upstairs to Arthur’s room. Arthur’s room was decorated like a prince of a fairy tale. Blue walls, a large nautical-themed bunk bed, and bookshelves packed with children’s books and model ships. Everything looked perfectly normal. Liam wasn’t satisfied. He started searching carefully. On the bottom shelf, hidden behind a stack of seemingly harmless comic books, he found a sketchbook. The cover had a smiley face drawn on it. Liam opened to the first page. It showed a little girl in a princess dress, a knife plunged through her chest. The blood was drawn big and bright red. Liam’s heart clenched. He kept flipping through. Page two, page three… each one was more of the same. A schoolgirl in uniform, dragged away on a rainy night. A woman in a white-collar work outfit, hands wrapped around her throat in an elevator. The victims in the drawings — their hairstyles, their clothing — bore a striking resemblance to the girls Arthur had killed all those years ago. And in the bottom right corner of every single drawing, written in a child’s unsteady hand, was one name. Arthur. The last page of the sketchbook was a blank frame. Beneath it, a single line of text. *”Who’s next?”* Liam’s hands trembled as he held the sketchbook, shaking like a leaf in the wind. This wasn’t the kind of doodle a ten-year-old should be making. This was a crime announcement straight from hell. Just then, the sound of a car engine drifted up from outside. My parents were home. Liam immediately shoved the sketchbook inside his jacket, climbed out through the window, and disappeared into the night.

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At twenty-eight, I was waiting tables at a restaurant when a lawyer in a black suit suddenly stepped in front of me and handed me an inheritance document worth fifty million dollars. It was left by a grandfather I had never once met. I thought maybe fate was finally cutting me a break — that my four-year-old son Leo and I could finally live like normal people. But that night, Leo clutched my leg with both arms, pointed at a water stain that had appeared out of nowhere on the ceiling, and sobbed like his heart was breaking: “Mommy, that boy — the one soaking wet — he says if we take the money, we’re both going to die…” I snapped my head up. A single drop of ice-cold water fell and hit me right between the eyes. It was ten o’clock at night. The restaurant had just closed. I was rubbing my aching back, getting ready to haul out the last bucket of kitchen slop. A man with a briefcase and gold-rimmed glasses appeared in the back kitchen doorway, blocking my path. “Ashley Miller?” He held out a business card. It had the name of some high-end law firm printed on it. I took a cautious step back, still gripping my dirty rag. “You’ve got the wrong person. I need to get back to work.” “Theodore Miller passed away three days ago.” The lawyer pushed his glasses up, his expression blank. “He owned an estate in the western suburbs and a fifty-million-dollar trust fund. Under the terms of his will, you are the sole legal heiress.” My head started buzzing. Theodore Miller. The old man who thought my mom wasn’t good enough, who pressured my dad into divorcing her, and who slowly drove her into depression until it killed her. I had never laid eyes on him my entire life. All I remembered was my mom on her deathbed, gripping my hand so tight her bony fingers left marks in my skin. “Ashy, don’t touch a single thing from the Miller family. Not one cent. It’s dirty. It destroys people.” I took a slow, deep breath and threw the rag into the sink. “I don’t know anyone named Theodore Miller. I don’t want the money. Please leave.” The lawyer didn’t look surprised. He pulled a thick stack of documents from his bag and pressed it into my arms. “Ms. Miller, I’ve already signed on your behalf. Theodore Miller’s instructions were clear — you have to accept this. Everything goes into effect tomorrow.” He didn’t give me a chance to argue. He turned and walked away, disappearing into the dark. I stood there holding the heavy documents, my hands and feet gone cold. By the time I got back to the basement apartment I rented, it was almost midnight. The place never got any sunlight. The air always smelled faintly of mold. My four-year-old, Leo, was sitting quietly on the fold-out bed, playing with a beat-up Ultraman toy. When he saw me come in, he scrambled off the bed on his little legs and threw himself into my arms. “Mommy, you’re home!” I held him tight, breathing in the faint milky smell of him, and felt the strange dread in my chest ease just a little. I tossed the documents onto the table and went to heat up some water so Leo could wash his face. But the moment I turned around, Leo screamed. “Ahhh—!” It was pure terror in his voice. It hit me like a needle straight to the eardrum. I spun around. Leo was staring up at the ceiling, his little finger pointing, his whole body shaking like a leaf. “Mommy… water… so much water…” I looked where he was pointing. Sometime in the last few minutes, a large dark-yellow water stain had spread across the ceiling of the basement. It was still growing, like something was slowly seeping through from above. Drip. A drop of water hit the floor near Leo’s feet. Leo suddenly threw his arms around my leg and buried his face in my pants, his voice going strange and high: “Mommy, that boy is crying… He says he’s so cold… He says if we take the money, we’re both going to die…” Every hair on my body stood up. Above the basement was the building’s garden courtyard. There were no water pipes up there. Where was the water coming from? What boy? I scooped Leo up into my arms, my voice shaking. “Leo, don’t scare me like that. What boy?” Leo squeezed his eyes shut, tears streaming down his face, his little fists twisting tight into my collar. “The boy in the school uniform… he’s soaking wet… he’s standing right behind you…” My breath stopped. A wave of cold hit my back — deep, bone-level cold, like someone had just been pulled out of icy water and was standing pressed against my spine.

Run. That was the only thought in my head. I didn’t even stop to change my clothes. I grabbed my phone and ID card off the table, held Leo tight against my chest, and ran. The hallway lights in the basement corridor flickered on and off. I could hear my own heartbeat pounding in my ears like a drum. Drip. Drip. The sound of water hitting the floor followed right behind me. I didn’t look back. I ran like I’d lost my mind, out of the basement and onto the street. The streets were deserted at this hour. A cold gust of wind hit me, and I realized my clothes were soaked through with sweat. Leo was slumped against my shoulder, no longer crying, but her small body was still trembling uncontrollably. I pulled out my phone to call a ride. The screen had barely lit up when an unknown number came through. My hand jerked. I answered. A man’s voice came through the line — low and threatening. “Ashley. That was fast.” My blood ran cold. It was my cousin from my uncle’s side of the family, Mason Miller. Years ago, when my mom and I were thrown out of the Miller family, Mason had been right there, watching with a smirk on his face like it was entertainment. “Mason. What do you want?” I said through gritted teeth. “What do I want? You’re a bastard child. What gives you the right to claim fifty million from Grandpa’s estate?” He let out a cold laugh. “I’m telling you — hand over that document, or I promise neither you nor that little bastard of yours makes it through tonight.” “I don’t want the inheritance! Split it among yourselves!” “Cut the crap! You already signed it — legally, you’re the heiress now! Where are you? I’m coming to find you right now!” I hung up and immediately powered off my phone. We couldn’t stay here. The Miller family had deep roots in this city, and Mason was the kind of guy who didn’t play by any rules. He kept a crew of hired muscle on his payroll. If he found us, Leo and I were finished. I held Leo close and flagged down a taxi with its light on at the curb. “To the train station — as fast as you can!” The driver was a middle-aged man. One look at my face and he didn’t ask a single question — he just floored it. The city lights blurred past the window. I let out a shaky breath and looked down at Leo. He was staring straight at the window, wide eyes fixed on the glass. “Leo? What’s wrong?” I reached up and touched his head. He turned to look at me. His eyes were completely blank. Distant. That was not the look of a four-year-old. He opened his mouth. What came out was low, hoarse — rough in a way that didn’t belong to a child’s voice at all. “He’s coming after us.” My whole body went cold. “Leo, say something — don’t scare Mommy like that!” I grabbed his shoulders and shook him. No response. He just turned back to the window and stared. I followed his gaze. In the rearview mirror, a black SUV was tailing us like a predator locked onto prey. The high beams were blinding. It was Mason’s car.

“He’s chasing us — please, drive faster!” I shouted. The driver glanced in the rearview mirror and swore under his breath. “What is this, some kind of movie? Hold on tight!” The cab tore through the empty streets. But the SUV was faster. It was closing in. Bang. The SUV slammed into our rear bumper. The impact threw me forward. I threw my arms around Leo and held on. The driver panicked. He yanked the wheel, and the cab skidded off the road and crashed into the landscaped median, screeching to a stop. Before I could even catch my breath, the door was ripped open from outside. Mason stood there — thick-necked, heavy-faced, gripping a baseball bat. Two built guys flanked him from behind. “Go ahead and run! Keep running!” He grabbed a fistful of my hair and dragged me out of the car. “Mommy!” Leo screamed from inside. I fought back as hard as I could and sank my teeth into Mason’s wrist. “You little bitch!” He backhanded me across the face. Stars exploded in my vision. I tasted blood at the corner of my mouth. The two men shoved into the car and yanked Leo out by force. “Don’t touch my son!” I lunged at them like a woman possessed — and Mason drove his boot into my stomach. I crumpled to the ground, gasping. The driver scrambled out of the car and bolted. He wasn’t going to stick around for this. Mason crouched down and grabbed my hair again, wrenching my head up to face him. “Ashley. You want to do this the hard way? Fine. Where’s the document?” “I don’t have it — I left it at home!” I lied, struggling to breathe. Mason let out a cold laugh and pulled the inheritance document from his jacket pocket, slapping it against my face. “You think I’m blind? Back at the basement door, didn’t I see this drop right on the floor?” My stomach dropped. I’d been running too fast. It must have slipped out. “Since I’ve got the document, you’re coming with me tonight to sign the transfer agreement.” Mason straightened up and jerked his chin at the two men. “Put them in the car.” I was shoved into the back seat of the SUV. Leo was huddled against me, trembling so hard he couldn’t even cry. Mason dropped into the passenger seat and lit a cigarette. “Drive. West Estate.” My head snapped up. “Why go there? You just need to sign the papers — anywhere works!” Mason blew out a slow ring of smoke and turned to look at me. There was something unsettling in his eyes — a strange, almost gleeful excitement. “Grandpa added a condition to the will. The transfer agreement has to be signed at the old house on the estate. In front of his portrait.” He let out a cold laugh. “Miserable old man, still making trouble from the grave.” The car pulled out and headed west. The sharp smell of cigarette smoke filled the cabin. I held Leo tight, my mind racing, trying to figure out how to get us out of this. Then I felt something cold on the back of my hand. A single drop of water. I blinked and looked up at the roof of the car. No leak. But I could feel it clearly — the temperature inside the car was dropping fast. The air that had been stuffy and warm just moments ago now felt like the inside of a freezer. Leo suddenly grabbed my hand. His fingers were ice cold. The kind of cold that has no life in it at all. He lifted his head and looked at Mason in the front seat. Slowly, the corners of his mouth pulled back into a smile — wide, wrong, deeply unsettling. Then he spoke in that same rough, cracking voice: “Mason. Long time no see.”

The SUV lurched sideways, nearly slamming into the guardrail. The driver wrestled the wheel with both hands, his voice shaking. “Mason — who the hell just said that?” The cigarette slipped from Mason’s fingers and landed in his lap. He yelped and shot upright. He spun around, eyes locked on me and Leo. “Ashley, what the f**k are you pulling?!” I pressed my hand over Leo’s mouth, my whole body trembling. “It wasn’t me! I didn’t say anything!” Mason’s face had gone white. For just a second, I saw something flash through his eyes — raw, genuine fear. He stared at Leo like he was looking at something that shouldn’t exist. “Mason.” The voice came again. “Don’t you remember? The lake at West Estate. The water was so cold.” Leo’s mouth hadn’t moved. But the words rang through the car, clear and unmistakable — coming from everywhere at once, from all four walls, from the air itself. Then, without any warning, rain exploded against the windows. A downpour out of nowhere. The wipers maxed out couldn’t cut through it. The road ahead disappeared. “Mason, something’s wrong with this rain — there’s fog everywhere, I can’t see a damn thing!” The driver hit the brakes. The car stopped on the winding mountain road that led to the West Estate. Everything outside was black. The headlights hit a wall of thick white fog and bounced back, casting a pale, sickly glow. The temperature kept dropping. A thin layer of frost crept across the inside of the windows. Drip. A drop of water hit the top of Mason’s head. He reached up and ran a hand through his hair. When he pulled it back, his palm was smeared with dark, murky water. “What the — is this car leaking?!” The words had barely left his mouth when I looked down. The floor mats were soaked. Muddy water had pooled at our feet without either of us noticing, and it was rising — slow and steady, carrying the rotten, weedy stench of a lake bottom. “Get out! Everyone out!” Mason threw himself at the door. It didn’t move. He shoved harder. Then harder. The door held like it had been welded shut. He couldn’t budge it. The two men up front panicked, slamming their fists against the windows. “Help! Something’s wrong — the doors won’t open!” The water rose fast. In seconds it was over our ankles. I pulled Leo up onto the seat with me, pressing back as far as I could go. Leo’s eyes opened. The whites were gone. His eyes were completely black — solid, lightless, like two holes in his face. He stared straight at Mason, and when he spoke, his voice was soaked in something ancient and hateful. “Mason. When you held me under the water back then — I fought just like this.” Mason broke. He ripped a knife from his waistband, jabbed it toward Leo, and screamed. “Noah Miller! Don’t you dare try to scare me! You were a bastard — you never belonged in this family! I killed you once, and I can do it again!” Noah Miller. Something detonated in my mind. I remembered. Years ago — more than a decade — there had been an illegitimate son in the family. My uncle had fathered him with another woman. The boy had been brought to live with us eventually, but not long after, word came that he’d drowned in the lake at West Estate. An accident, they said. He’d been fifteen years old. Turns out, it wasn’t an accident. Mason had killed him!

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I was a corporate drone who stayed up every night grinding code — and sure enough, I dropped dead at my desk. When I opened my eyes again, I was a stray black cat, cornered by a group of punks who were beating the hell out of me. It was Yolanda who grabbed a broom and fought like her life depended on it to bring me home. She was a woman who’d had it hard her whole life — up before dawn, pinching every penny — and somehow she’d raised a son who was pure evil. To pay off two million dollars in gambling debts, that monster teamed up with a vicious caretaker to steal the deed to her house and use it as collateral. He even planned to sell his own mother to some creep as a bride for one million dollars. I was so furious I unsheathed my claws on the spot and raked his face into a bloody mess. If fate gave me a second chance at life, and put someone as good as Yolanda in my path, there was no way I was going to stand by and do nothing. So what if I’m a cat? Even as a cat, I’ll make sure every last one of these monsters ends up behind bars.

A sharp, searing pain tore through my chest. The computer screen in front of me blurred and swam. I didn’t even have time to call for help before I crashed face-first onto my keyboard. Seventy-two hours of straight overtime. I was a thirty-two-year-old game developer, and just like that — I was dead. When I came back to consciousness, cold rain was hammering down on my face without mercy. I tried to stand, but something was completely wrong with the way my limbs connected to the ground. I looked down. I had four fuzzy black legs. And a tail that was swinging around like it had a mind of its own. I had turned into a black cat. Before I could even begin to process the shock of being reborn, a burst of cruel laughter rang out above me. “That black cat looks like bad luck. Let’s just kill it.” Three punks with bleached rainbow hair were closing in on me, rusty iron rods swinging in their hands, backing me into a dead-end alley one step at a time. My instincts screamed at me to run — but a white-hot bolt of pain shot through my back leg. It was already broken. Had been before they even showed up. The iron rod came whistling down through the air. I squeezed my eyes shut. Then, out of nowhere, a battered old broom swung in from the side and cracked hard across one of the punks’ arms. “Back off! You little thugs — what kind of tough guys beat up a helpless little creature?!” I opened my eyes. Standing in front of me was a hunched old woman with white-streaked hair. She was wearing a faded blue jacket, worn soft from too many washes, and she had both hands locked around that broom like she was ready to go to war. She planted herself between me and the punks like a mother hen shielding her chick. The punks were rattled by how fearless she was. They cursed under their breath and took off. The old woman dropped the broom and crouched down, her face full of worry. She scooped me up with her rough, warm hands and held me against her chest. “Poor little thing. Don’t be scared. I’ve got you.” She smelled faintly of soap. In that moment, something shifted in my chest — a heart that had gone cold after years in the corporate grind suddenly felt warm again. The old woman’s name was Yolanda. She was sixty-five years old. Her home was in a run-down old residential complex. The apartment was small and worn, but she kept it spotless. She dried me off carefully with a clean towel, then used a few small pieces of wood to splint my broken back leg. “You’re as black as a little lump of coal. I’ll call you Cole.” She brought out a bowl of warm goat’s milk and a piece of plain boiled chicken breast — no salt. I ate like I hadn’t eaten in years. I nearly cried into the bowl. When I was alive, I lived on takeout every single day. Now that I was a cat, I was finally getting a real home-cooked meal. The next afternoon, two uninvited guests showed up. A man in a knockoff designer suit, and a woman wearing enough makeup to paint a wall. The man was Yolanda’s son — Ethan. The woman was the so-called “professional caretaker” he’d hired — really just his girlfriend — named Ava. “Mom, what’s that smell in here? Did you seriously bring a mangy cat home? That’s disgusting.” The second Ava walked through the door, she was pinching her nose and curling her lip. She gave my little cat bed a kick with her foot. I bared my teeth at her and let out a low growl from the back of my throat. Yolanda quickly scooped me up and smiled apologetically. “Cole is very clean, I promise. Ethan, you haven’t been back in three months — let me run to the market and grab some pork belly. I’ll make you vegetable stew you love, okay?” Ethan waved her off like she was bothering him. “Yeah, yeah, fine. Go ahead. I could use some time to rest anyway.” I watched Yolanda head out the door with her shopping basket, a happy little spring in her step. And a deep, uneasy feeling settled in my gut. These two had shifty eyes and rotten smiles. They weren’t here for anything good.

Sure enough, the second Yolanda was out the door, Ethan’s whole face changed. He shoved open the bedroom door and started tearing through everything like a burglar — yanking open drawers, rifling through cabinets. “Hurry up and find it! Where did that old woman hide the property deed?” Ava was rummaging through the closet alongside him, complaining as she searched. “Ethan, you lost another eight hundred thousand at the casino last night. With the interest from before, that’s a two-million-dollar hole you’re in! The loan sharks said if you don’t pay up in three days, they’re cutting off your hands!” I crouched on top of the wardrobe, every hair on my body standing on end. Two million in gambling debts?! Ethan was sweating buckets. He finally dug out a little red booklet from an old cookie tin under the bed. “Found it!” His eyes lit up. “So what?” Ava rolled her eyes. “This dump is worth maybe a million and a half, tops. That’s still five hundred thousand short. And besides, you need the old woman to sign off on the transfer. You really think she’s going to agree to sell the only thing she has left?” Ethan let out a cold laugh, a vicious gleam flashing in his eyes. “I already had someone forge a power of attorney. We’ll use it as collateral directly. As for the rest of the gap…” He paused, lowering his voice. “Winston’s been looking for a woman to take care of him, hasn’t he?” Ava sucked in a sharp breath. “That Winston who owns the logistics company? He’s a psycho. He put his last two wives in the hospital.” “So?” Ethan spat without a care. “He’s willing to pay a million for a diamond ring. My mom’s healthy enough. She can survive a few years of his abuse. By the time he beats her to death, our debt’s cleared and we’ll have cash left over to go win it back in Las Vegas!” My mind went completely blank. Was he even human?! Yolanda had worked three jobs a day when she was young just to put him through college. She’d ruined her health doing it. And now he wanted to sell his own mother to a violent, twisted old man just to pay off his gambling debts. I couldn’t hold back anymore. I launched myself off the top of the wardrobe like a bolt of lightning. “MRROOWW—!” I raked my claws hard across Ethan’s face, leaving three deep gashes in an instant. “AHHH! What the hell?! Where did this crazy cat come from?!” Ethan screamed and drove his foot into my stomach. I went flying and slammed into the wall. It felt like every organ in my body had been knocked loose. Ava grabbed a clothes rack nearby and swung it at me with pure hatred. “I’ll kill this little beast!” Just at that critical moment, the front door clicked open. Yolanda walked in carrying heavy grocery bags. Ethan moved fast, shoving the property deed into his inner pocket. Ava quickly tossed the clothes rack behind her back. “What’s going on in here? Ethan, why is your face bleeding?” Yolanda dropped her groceries in a panic and rushed over. “Mom! This crazy cat you picked up just went berserk and attacked me!” Ethan covered his face, playing the victim before anyone else could speak. “A thing like this is nothing but trouble. Get rid of it now!” Yolanda turned to look at me. I was slumped in the corner. Blood trickled from the corner of my mouth, and the splint on my broken leg had come apart. I was shaking all over from the pain. Her eyes filled with tears. She rushed over and pulled me tightly into her arms. “Cole would never bite someone for no reason. Did you two hit him?” The moment Ethan heard that, he exploded. “Oh, that’s great! You’d rather believe a stray cat than your own son?! Fine! You can spend the rest of your life with your precious cat!” He stormed out in a rage, yanking Ava along with him and slamming the door behind them. I bit down on Yolanda’s pant leg as hard as I could, trying to drag her toward the ransacked area under the bed. I needed her to know. Your property deed is gone. Your son is going to sell you off. But no matter how hard I tried, all that came out were weak little meows. Yolanda thought I was frightened. She stroked my back gently. “It’s okay, little Cole. Grandma’s got you.” I buried my face in her palm, a wave of helplessness washing over me. I was a cat. I couldn’t even open my mouth to warn the person who had saved me. But I swore to myself — I was not going to let those two get away with it.

Three days later, Ethan came back with armfuls of expensive health supplements and a smile plastered across his face. Yolanda, soft-hearted as ever, melted the moment she saw her son making peace. She got busy putting together a full spread on the dinner table. At dinner, Ethan kept that wide smile going. “Mom, I’m sorry about how I acted before. Don’t hold it against me. Actually, I came today because I have some great news to share.” I sat stiff on the chair, every muscle in my body coiled tight. Here it comes. This monster is about to make his move. “Mom, you’ve had a hard life, and it breaks my heart. I found someone for you — a good match. His name is Winston. He runs a logistics company.” Yolanda’s fork froze in midair. She stared at him, speechless. “Ethan, what the hell are you talking about? Mom is sixty-five years old — who’s she supposed to be getting married off to?” Ethan set down his fork, a cold smile plastered on his face. “Mom, Winston is loaded. He’s got a huge mansion. You’d be living the easy life. Besides, he already gave me the engagement ring — worth a full million dollars.” Yolanda’s face went pale in an instant, her lips trembling violently. “You… you took his valuable gift ? You’re selling your own mother!” “Mom! Don’t make it sound so ugly!” Ethan slammed his hand on the table, dropping all pretense. “I’m doing this for you!” “I won’t go! I’d rather die than go!” Yolanda shot to her feet, tears streaming down her face. Ethan let out a cold laugh and pulled a document from his bag, slapping it down on the table. “You don’t have a choice. I’ve already transferred the house into my name. If you don’t marry Winston like a good woman, I’ll sell it tomorrow and leave you out on the street.” “You—” Yolanda pointed at him, choked on her own breath, and collapsed straight backward. I let out a sharp cry and lunged at Ethan, sinking my teeth hard into his wrist. “Stupid cat! Get off me!” He flung me away without even glancing at his unconscious mother, then said coldly, “Winston’s driver will be here tomorrow to pick you up. You’d better have your things packed.” With that, he walked out the door. I frantically licked Yolanda’s cheek, trying to bring her around. It took a long time before she slowly opened her eyes. The house was hollow and still. Dead silent. She didn’t cry. She just walked quietly to the bedside and pulled open the drawer where she kept the property deed. Empty. She took out an old photo album next — filled with pictures of Ethan from childhood to adulthood. There was one of him riding on his father’s shoulders. Another of him holding his college acceptance letter, grinning wide. Yolanda’s thin, bony fingers traced the face of that bright-smiling boy. Then she grabbed the photo and tore it. Rip. One. Two. Three. She tore every single photo to pieces — shredding them like she was shredding every ounce of love and hope she’d poured into him over a lifetime. “Cole,” she said, her voice rough as sandpaper, “we don’t have a home anymore.” She didn’t wait for Winston’s driver the next morning. That same night, she dug out an old canvas bag and packed nothing but a few changes of clothes and my cat food. The expensive supplements sitting on the table — she didn’t even look at them. Outside, the wind was fierce, carrying a fine, cold autumn rain. Yolanda — sixty-five years old — walked out into the dark with a worn bag on her back and a black cat in her arms, never once looking back. Her figure was bent and small, but every step she took was absolutely certain.

We wandered the streets all night. By the time dawn broke, we found ourselves at the entrance of an alley in the old part of town — and that’s where we met Linda, who was out running a street sweeper along the road. Linda was the warm-hearted type. One look at Yolanda’s lips, blue from the cold, and she immediately brought us inside her home. When she heard what had happened, Linda exploded. She cursed up a storm and spat on the ground in disgust. “What kind of monster does that?! That’s lower than dirt! Don’t you worry — I’ve got a storage room out back that’s just sitting empty. You can fix it up and stay there as long as you need. No rent.” Yolanda was deeply grateful, but she was a proud woman at her core. She insisted on paying monthly rent, no matter what. The storage room was tiny — dark, damp, with nothing but a hard cot inside. But every night, I curled up at her feet and pressed my warm, furry body against her to keep her from getting cold. As long as she was there, it was home. Once they’d settled in, Yolanda started thinking about how to make a living. Her family had been known for their handmade pizza for generations. She’d grown up watching and learning, and she made an incredible pizza — and her hot dogs were just as good. With the little money she had left, she bought an second-hand oven and some ingredients. Before long, the tiny storage room was filled with a warm, sweet smell. I’d sit on the edge of the counter and watch her knead the dough. Any rat or cockroach that dared come within a foot of the food got a swift paw to the face — no mercy. I was her black knight. It was my job. The first batch of pizzas came out golden and crisp, steaming hot, smelling absolutely amazing. Yolanda wiped the sweat from her forehead and smiled — the first real smile she’d had in days. The next morning, Yolanda pushed a borrowed old cart to the entrance of the subway station. The early winter wind cut at her face like a blade. The morning rush crowd moved fast, everyone hurrying off to their nine-to-fives. Hardly anyone stopped to give a second glance to an old woman’s little food stand. Day after day, business was slow. The pizza had gone cold and been reheated so many times that Yolanda’s eyes had slowly lost their light. That evening, the sky hung low and gray, threatening rain. A young girl in a trench coat stumbled up to the stall, looking completely lost. Her name was Nicole — a micro-influencer who made food review content. She had refused to sleep with her agency’s boss, and in retaliation, he’d forced her out of her contract. Not only did she lose her job, but the account she’d spent years building — millions of followers — was shamelessly stolen by the company. She stood in the wind, tears streaming down her face. I sensed her despair immediately. That suffocating feeling of being abandoned by the entire world — I knew it all too well from my past life. I jumped down from the tricycle, walked over to her feet, and gently wrapped my tail around her ankle, purring softly. Nicole froze for a moment, then crouched down and stroked my head. “Little black cat,” she whispered through her tears, “did you lose your home too?” Seeing this, Yolanda wrapped a warm slice of pizza in wax paper and held it out to her. “Girl, no matter how hard things get, you still need to eat. Something sweet will take the edge off the pain. Take it — no charge.” Nicole’s hands trembled as she took the pizza and bit into it. The soft, pillowy dough, the creamy richness of the melted cheese, and that rare, simple warmth she hadn’t felt in so long — it shattered every wall she’d built around herself. She crouched right there on the side of the road and sobbed, loud and ugly, not caring how she looked. Yolanda didn’t ask a single question. She just quietly patted Nicole’s back, the way you would comfort your own child.

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The night the Silver Moon Pack was slaughtered, I hid inside a hollow tree, listening to my own mother’s voice through the mindlink: “Leave no one alive.” Then she stole my aunt’s name, climbed over a mountain of corpses, and clawed her way onto the throne as Queen. I became the only survivor of Silver Moon. Fifteen years later, I’m the last Healer left in this world. A male is carried up the mountain on a stretcher. Stacks of gold are piled at my gate, all to buy my gift. He’s been hit with a rare poison. No one alive can cure it but me. But when I see the royal crest hanging at his waist, I set down my silver needle. “I won’t save him.” The lead guard freezes. He rushes forward with a bow. “Healer, is it the gold? We can add more! Our master said he’ll pay whatever you ask!” “It doesn’t matter how much you add,” I say. “I won’t treat him. Take him away.” The poisoned male on the stretcher forces himself upright. His eyes lock onto mine. “So you’re the hidden Healer everyone talks about? The one who supposedly cures anything?” I say nothing. He smirks. “I heard you heal anyone who comes to you. Even rogues begging on the street. Guess that was all just an act.” “Rogues and everyone else, I’ll heal,” I say calmly. “But you? Never.” His face twists. Rage floods his scent. “Do you have any idea who I am? You dare talk to me like that?” “No idea,” I say. “Don’t care.” His voice cracks through the clearing like thunder. “Then let me spell it out for you! I am the Crown Prince of this kingdom! My mother is the Queen! My father is the Lycan King! You’re nothing but a wild she-wolf hiding in the woods. You dare defy me?!” My heart sinks like a stone. So it really is him. The second I saw that royal crest, I had a feeling. He’s her son. My nails dig into my palms, but my face stays blank. The Prince takes my silence for fear. It makes him bolder. He’s panting, sweat dripping down his neck, but his voice is pure venom. “You think I’m bluffing? One word from me and your entire bloodline is dead! I’ll burn this shack to the ground! Everyone you care about will pay for your disrespect today!” I look up at him. “You done?” He chokes. The fury freezes on his face. My voice drops cold. “Then get out. And take your filth with you. You’re dirtying my yard.” That does it. “You lowborn bitch!” he snarls. “You dare look down on me?!” Every guard in the yard drops their gaze. No one makes a sound. The Prince’s eyes go bloodshot. He roars at his men. “What are you standing around for?! Tear this place apart! Tie her up! I want her on her knees begging for my mercy!” The guards glance at each other. Nobody moves. “Are you deaf?!” he screams. “Disobey me and I’ll have every one of you executed!” The lead guard has no choice. He steps forward. I stare straight at the Prince. Every word clear. “Do you want to die here?” He goes rigid. Fear flickers behind the rage. “The poison in your body gives you three days,” I say. “You keep raging like this, your blood will push the toxin straight to your heart. Another half hour of this, and no one in this world can save you.” The fear in his eyes is real now. He grits his teeth. “Are you threatening me?” “Just stating facts.” His chest heaves. He spits out three words. “Fine. Fine. Fine.” His voice drops low, dripping with malice. “You refuse to heal me? Good. The second I get back to the Palace, I’m telling my father and mother. I’ll have your whole pack wiped out. Every last one. Let’s see how tough you are then.” I laugh. Fifteen years ago, the sky burned red and bodies covered the ground. His precious mother already wiped out everyone I had. He frowns. “What the hell are you laughing at?” I just look at him. Silent. After a long moment, he snarls at his guards through clenched teeth. “We’re leaving!” They lift the stretcher and start down the mountain. At the tree line, the Prince whips his head around one last time. “You’ll regret this. I’ll make you beg for death and not get it!” I stand at my gate, watching them stumble down the trail like beaten dogs. That’s when Emerald comes running, eyes red and frantic. “Miss! What were you thinking?! That was the Crown Prince! Save him and we’d be set for life! You always said you wanted to save up to give your family a proper burial. This was our chance!” I stare at the distant mountains. My voice is ice. “If I saved him, their souls would never rest.” Emerald goes still. I turn and walk inside. I press my last few coins into her hands. “Emerald, you need to leave. Now. I just made an enemy of the Crown Prince. When the storm comes, you’ll die if you stay.” She drops to her knees. “I’m not leaving! You saved my life. Wherever you go, I go. Even if it kills me.” I look at her loyal face and lower my voice. “Then go to Silver Moon Valley right now. The coffins…” Emerald kowtows three times, tears streaming, and disappears down the mountain in the dark. I sit alone in the yard all night. I don’t sleep.

At dawn, the thundering of hooves shakes the mountain. Royal soldiers swarm up the trail, surrounding my little yard in layers. A figure in a golden gown walks through the gate, slow and unhurried. The Queen. My birth mother. The woman I haven’t seen in fifteen years. She looks me up and down like I’m dirt on her shoe. “So. You’re the one who refused to save my son.” I say nothing. Her eyes go colder. “I asked you a question. Are you mute?” I lift my gaze. “I’m not mute. I just won’t save him.” Her expression darkens. She lets out a cold laugh. “Bold. Do you know the punishment for defying the royal family?” “I do.” She takes a slow breath, holding back her rage. “I’ll give you one last chance. Heal the Prince, and I’ll give you mountains of gold. A life of luxury. When my son takes the throne, you’ll be untouchable.” I stare straight into her eyes. “And if I refuse?” She smiles. That same cold, thin smile from fifteen years ago, the night she butchered my entire pack. Heartless. Cruel. “Then I kill you,” she says lightly. “And wipe out your entire bloodline.” I hold her gaze. “If you’re wiping out my bloodline, does that include my birth mother?” She doesn’t even hesitate. “Obviously. Anyone connected by blood dies.” I actually laugh. Every word hits like a blade. “Then you deserve to die. And so does your son. I will never save him.” She slaps me across the face. Hard. “You dare curse me and the Prince?!” Her face is flushed red, finger jabbing at my nose. “What are you? You’re nothing! How dare you speak to me like that?!” “Guards!” she screams. “Throw this lunatic in the dungeon!” The soldiers grab my arms. I don’t resist. The next day, I’m dragged to the execution ground. I kneel on the platform. The executioner stands beside me. People pack the streets. Someone shouts first. “Isn’t that the Healer? She saved my mother’s life!” The crowd explodes. “The Healer would never hurt anyone!” “She’s a good person!” “She healed my son! Didn’t take a single coin!” Voices crash in from every direction. An old woman pushes through the crowd and throws herself down before the platform. “The Healer saved my grandson! He had a fever for three days, every doctor gave up, but she pulled him back from death’s door! She is a good woman! You can’t kill her!” More people kneel. One after another. Hundreds of them, dropping to their knees in a wave across the square. “The Healer is innocent!” “She’s done nothing wrong!” Someone runs to the grievance drum and slams it with everything they’ve got. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. The sound shakes the sky. Inside the Palace, a servant crashes to his knees before the Lycan King. “Y-Your Majesty! Something’s happened!” The King’s voice is flat. “Calm down. Is the sky falling?” The servant presses his forehead to the floor. “Your Majesty! The entire city is beating the grievance drum for the she-wolf who refused to treat the Prince! Over a thousand people are kneeling outside the execution ground, begging for her life!” The King’s eyes narrow. “She publicly defied a royal order. Refused to treat the Crown Prince. That’s a death sentence. Why would the people defend her?” The servant looks up, face desperate. “Your Majesty! Every citizen in the capital calls her a living saint! For years she’s lived hidden in the mountains, never taking gold from the rich, only healing the poor! Countless wolves on death’s door owe their lives to her!” “They all say she is the most compassionate, most selfless healer alive! If someone this good is the only one who refuses to save the Prince, then there must be a reason! A terrible one!” Every word lands like a slap to the royal family’s face. The King’s voice goes cold. “Interesting. A wild healer, and the whole city rises up for her?” “Send my order! Delay the execution! Bring her to the Great Hall. I will question her myself. I want to see what makes her so special.”

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Every six months, my mafia don husband loses his memory for fifteen days. He falls for someone else and ruins my life—only to beg for my forgiveness on his knees when it’s over. My husband is sick. Almost the entire Underworld of New York knows about it. After the men of the Lucchese family marry, they lose their memories for fifteen days every six months. And during these fifteen days, they fall madly in love with other women, turning their wives into the most pathetic laughingstocks. The first time Dominic lost his memory, he fell for a dirty journalist whore who was trying to leak my family’s secrets. For the sake of his so-called true love, he kidnapped me on the exact day of my family’s multi-million-dollar shipment, ordering his men to break both of my legs. The shipment was seized by the feds because I wasn’t there to clear it, and I was completely blacklisted from the Underworld high council. Meanwhile, that journalist whore used him to climb straight to the top, becoming one of the most powerful media rats in the city. But the moment the fifteen days were up, Dominic recovered his memories and literally wept at my feet until he fainted. Then, he ordered his executioners to chop the journalist into pieces and feed her to the dogs; to this day, her name is scratched off the earth, dead or alive. The second time he lost his memory, he fell for a low-life maid who washed our clothes. The maid threw a tantrum, demanding a ring and a divorce. When I refused to sign, Dominic dragged me out, threw me into a cartel-run brothel to be humiliated, and had his men film it to spread around the five families. On the fifteenth day, he snapped out of his fugue state right inside the underground courthouse where we were supposed to dissolve our marriage. The man fell straight to his knees on the concrete, pulling out his blade and stabbing his own thigh to beg for my mercy. As for that maid, she met the same fate as the journalist whore—sold off to a brutal Juarez cartel camp, and within three days, she was tortured into a broken, breathing corpse. The most ruthless time was when he fell for my bastard sister. To prove his loyalty to her, he personally sliced open my stomach at a back-alley underground clinic to rip out my six-month-old unborn heir, nearly leaving both me and the baby dead on the operating table. Once his mind cleared, Dominic tried to hang himself right in our mansion. It took the family doctors three days and three nights of emergency surgeries just to barely keep his pathetic ass alive. And this time, it is his twelfth memory glitch. Looking at my former best friend Sasha, who has successfully crawled into his bed, I let out a tired, heavy sigh. “Dominic, if you’re this fucking sick, why don’t you just hurry up and die? I’d rather be a rich widow and inherit the whole goddamn Lucchese Empire.”

“Elena, I know you’re hurting, but you can’t force someone to love you,” Sasha says, her voice dripping with fake pity. “Dom loves me now, and you need to accept reality instead of wishing your own husband dead.” The parasitic bitch clings like a weak vine onto the half-naked body of the man who rules the city’s streets. The silk nightgown she is wearing happens to be an old piece I was planning to throw into the mansion’s incinerator last week. I take a deep breath. My eyes, cold and entirely stripped of any remaining affection for Dominic, casually glance at the tactical calendar hanging on the wall. Today is day one of his glitch. “If you run out of condoms, there’s a fresh box in the second drawer,” I say calmly. “And if you want to breed his heir, make sure to notify me in advance; I have a lot of family business meetings lately, and I’ll need to clear my schedule to sign the divorce papers.” “Oh, and one more thing, Sasha—did you remember to buy life insurance?” I leave that last sentence hanging in the air with a dark, heavy meaning. Sasha freezes, staring at me as if I’ve lost my mind, her lips curling into a mocking sneer. “Elena, have you gone completely insane from heartbreak? Is a man really worth losing your damn mind over?” “Being this obsessed is pathetic, sweetie.” This is the same “best friend” who used to rage and pull her gun out whenever Dominic stepped out on me in the past, swearing she would kill him for me. Now, she looks like a victorious alley cat. She arrogantly snuggles deeper into the chest of a married Don, radiating pure, disgusting pride. I shrug carelessly, not giving a single shit, and tilt my head. “It’s nothing, just a friendly warning—good luck surviving fifteen days from now.” The moment I turn my back to leave, the master bedroom that once belonged to me and Dominic instantly fills with the loud, breathless sounds of their disgusting lust. The man groans heavily, his deep voice laughing, “Elena is nothing but a political pawn from an arranged marriage, why do you care about her? My heart belongs entirely to you.” Heh, this hereditary mental disease of the Lucchese family is truly fascinating. The second he loses his memory, his brain automatically rationalizes me as nothing but a soulless business transaction. Walking out of the heavily guarded villa, I pull out my encrypted phone and dial my consigliere, giving the order in a flat tone. “I don’t care what strings you have to pull or how many millions you have to burn—within fifteen days, I want our official divorce decree finalized.” And since he is the one breaking the sacred mafia vow, he will be stripped of everything and kicked out of my family’s territories with absolutely nothing. Of course, there is an even bigger surprise waiting for Dominic to personally enjoy once he wakes up from his little trance. I pick one of the hundred safehouses registered under my secret aliases and drive over. I crawl into bed and sleep peacefully until I naturally wake up the next morning. But the moment I open my eyes, my muted phone is practically exploding with missed calls from his private line. “Elena, where the fuck did you hide Sasha?!” Dominic roars the second I hit answer. “Just because I don’t love your pathetic ass anymore, you’re cruel enough to hurt my fucking angel?!” “You can’t force love, Elena, and if anything happens to even a single hair on Sasha’s head, I swear to God I will make you pay for the rest of your life!” The sheer volume of his screaming makes my ears ring. I roll my eyes in pure annoyance and prepare to hang up the call. Suddenly, the reinforced steel door of my safehouse is violently breached with a loud crash. Dominic, phone still gripped in his hand, charges into the room like a rabid beast. Without a single word, he swings his arm and delivers a brutal, backhanded slap right across my face. The entire left side of my face goes completely numb, and the corner of my lip immediately splits open, dripping dark crimson blood onto the floor. “Dominic, you fucking hit me? For Sasha?!” I let my body collapse weakly onto the floorboards. Even though I can’t squeeze out a single real tear to save my life, I still force myself to look completely shattered, cradling my bleeding cheek and trembling as if my world has ended. In the dark corner of the ceiling, the tiny red light of a hidden security camera blinks steadily. Seeing me like this, the man shoves one hand into his tailored suit pocket, leaning over to look down at me like I’m a piece of garbage. He lets out a cold sneer, “Are you really that desperate for my love? Elena, you are truly pathetic!” Before the words even fully leave his mouth, he raises a hand and snaps his fingers. His massive bratva-trained bodyguards instantly step forward, pinning me roughly to the hard floor with calculated cruelty. “But kidnapping Sasha means you crossed my fucking line.” “Beat her,” Dominic orders coldly. “Teach the Don’s wife some fucking manners, and don’t stop until she tells us where Sasha is hiding.” A rain of heavy, iron-like fists begins to pelt my body mercilessly. In the midst of the pain, my mind flashes back to Dominic’s tenth memory glitch, when he almost gouged out my left eye with a broken bottle. The exact second the fifteen-day countdown ended and he saw me covered in dried blood, he turned into a literal caged animal. He locked himself in the mansion’s concrete basement and brutally tortured himself for a solid week. He broke his own arms and legs. If I hadn’t ordered the guards to stop him, he probably would have ripped his own eyes out with his bare hands just to beg for my forgiveness. As the final heavy punch hits my ribs, my throat tightens, and I cough up a mouthful of thick blood onto the floor. Suddenly, Dominic’s encrypted phone vibrates violently in his pocket. The moment his eyes hit the caller ID, his face lights up with frantic excitement, and he answers it immediately. “Sasha?! Baby, yes, I’m coming right now—don’t be scared, stop crying, it breaks my fucking heart.” The man storms out of the safehouse in a desperate rush. Inside the empty, ruined apartment, I am left battered and bleeding on the floor, but I slowly reach out to pull up my laptop. The security footage has already finished syncing to my secure cloud server in real-time. I edit the file, save it under lock and key, and type out the title. Label: [A Gift For My Ex-Husband: Part One—Sent in 15 Days!]

Sasha’s little self-kidnapping performance concludes flawlessly with her “miraculous rescue.” To punish me further for my “crimes,” Dominic completely freezes every single one of my black cards and even contacts my family’s underground network, forcing them to temporarily suspend my position as the head of our smuggling operations. My direct supervisor looks at me in the dim office, offering an awkward, sweating smile as he tries to soothe me. “Elena, look, the Don will get his mind back in fifteen days anyway; you two have survived worse storms over the years.” “He truly loves you, and everyone in the Five Families knows that.” Love? But this kind of “love” that requires me to bleed out every six months is starting to make me feel profoundly exhausted. My supervisor opens his mouth to say more. But I simply close my eyes, cutting him off with a blunt, jarring question, “Do you know exactly how Dominic’s parents died?” “What?” “During his father’s seventy-eighth glitch, the old Godfather accidentally shot and killed his own wife for the sake of a cheap stripper. Then, the moment his sanity snapped back, he took the stripper in his arms and leaped straight off the top floor of the Empire State Building, leaving nothing but a bloody smear on the pavement.” I have absolutely no intention of following the same tragic script. The office falls into a dead, suffocating silence. I take the suspension notice and walk out. The moment I step out of the syndicate’s headquarters, Sasha’s encrypted messages begin flooding my screen one after another. Dozens of high-resolution photos pop up. The absolute King of the New York Underworld, a man who makes hardened killers tremble, is currently on his hands and knees on the carpet, letting that woman ride him like a horse for her own amusement. There are photos of him washing her feet, and kissing her toes. The text messages claim that even if Sasha demanded a literal mountain of blood diamonds, he would gladly burn down half the city within an hour just to make his little queen smile. [Elena, being your friend meant I was always just a pathetic shadow used to make you look better.] [But everything is different now—the most powerful man in the city belongs to me.] [I, Sasha, will be stepping right on your neck soon, taking every bit of wealth and power that used to be yours.] [Are you jealous? Do you hate me? Too bad you can’t do shit about it! Hahaha…] Looking at those texts filled with pure, arrogant malice, I can practically feel her obnoxious gloating radiating through the glass screen. I let out a cold, disgusted snort and take a screenshot of every single message. I upload them directly to the cloud server. Label: [A Gift For My Ex-Husband: Part Two—Sent in 15 Days!] I drive back to our main villa to retrieve one specific item. Before my grandmother, the last true matriarch of our old Italian bloodline, passed away, she handed me our hand-embroidered silk Heritage Crest—the ultimate symbol of our family’s honor and vendetta history. That silk piece has survived generations of mafia wars. It is the living proof and the absolute pride of our family’s survival through blood and fire. Dominic once told me, “Angele, give me something that means the world to you so I can lock it away; only then can my soul rest, knowing you will never abandon me.” Now, I am completely drained, and I refuse to play a part in this sick game caused by his twisted genetics anymore. I am taking my grandmother’s Crest back, cutting every single tie clean! But the very second I step through the grand marble foyer, I spot Sasha holding a filthy, stray dog covered in mud and leaking urine. Her eyes are filled with tears as she reaches out toward Dominic—a man who is severely allergic to dog dander but is forcing himself to stand there and endure it just for her. “Dom, the poor puppy is so dirty, hurry up and grab that old rag on the wall so I can wipe him down.” The “old rag” Sasha is pointing her acrylic nail at happens to be my grandmother’s hand-woven Heritage Silk, beautifully framed and mounted on the center wall. My heart drops into a cold, violent abyss. Before I can even step forward to tear her apart, Dominic moves faster than a bullet. He ruthlessly smashes the glass frame with his bare fist, rips the priceless silk Crest out, and shoves it into her hands. His thin lips part, letting out a mocking scoff, “Is Elena fucking brain-dead? Framing a useless piece of rag and hanging it up here just to embarrass the Lucchese name?” Yet, when he was sane, this exact “useless rag” was the only thing that could anchor his violent soul, guarded like the most sacred treasure in his empire! “Good boy, let mommy clean you up,” Sasha coos, using the ancient silk that represents my entire lineage to wipe away the dog’s filth. My eyes turn entirely bloodshot, and a primal rage drives me to fly across the room, raising my hand to strike her down. Except. I don’t even manage to touch a single hair on Sasha’s head. Dominic grabs the back of my collar as if I am a piece of infected meat, throwing my body through the air with terrifying force. My fragile frame crashes heavily against the massive floor-to-ceiling glass window. The glass shatters into thousands of deadly shards, tearing through my clothes and slicing deep into my skin, causing thick lines of dark blood to gush out instantly. In that split second. The man who was just fiercely protecting Sasha, his face filled with rage, completely freezes as his eyes land on the bloody mess on the floor. His handsome face turns suddenly pale, as if some buried instinct in his twisted mind is trying to scream…

“Waaah… Dom, Elena is so terrifying, the poor puppy is shaking, and I’m so scared. I don’t want to stay here anymore!” Sasha’s high-pitched, fake whimpering echoes through the room. Dominic, his head shaking violently as if trying to fight off the heavy fog of fractured memories, suddenly snaps back to reality. He hardens his gaze, muttering to himself under his breath, “No way! How could I ever give a single shit about a marriage pawn like Elena? The only woman I love is Sasha! It’s Sasha!” Right before the agonizing pain completely knocks me out, I let out a dry, mocking sneer. It looks like the closer we get to the final fifteen-day deadline, the sharper his forgotten memories are trying to bite through. My body is entirely numb from the blood loss. Like a broken worm, I drag myself across the floorboards, reaching out to grab the stained, ruined Heritage Silk. Sasha, safely tucked into the man’s chest as they walk right past me, twists her lips and uses silent mouth movements to mock me: “Elena, you’re just like this trashy rag. As long as I ask for it, Dom will strip you of everything and give it to me. Hahaha…” Behind that silent, ugly laughter, Sasha intentionally lets go of the stray dog. Smelling the filth on the silk, the dog instantly goes wild, baring its disgusting teeth and biting viciously into my exposed skin. The sharp, tearing agony finally pulls me into total darkness. When my eyes finally snap open again, I am holding the filthy silk tightly in my fist, lying inside a private VIP hospital room. The private nurse changing my IV drips mutters in pure pity, “Miss Lucchese, your husband is a literal monster, a cold-blooded piece of shit!” “Last night, you were flatlining on the operating table, and the chief surgeon called your husband to come sign the emergency paperwork.” “But do you want to guess what the bastard said? He said he was too busy comforting his true love, told them he had no time, and that they should just let you rot and die!” Let me rot and die… I slowly turn my head toward the window. The morning sun streams into the room, warm and surprisingly comfortable on my skin. A secure text from my consigliere flashes on the screen. [My Lady, seven more days, and you will have the official divorce papers in your hands. You can leave this hell clean.] Seven days. I prop myself up against the pillows. My grandmother’s Crest has already been sent to a specialized cleaner to be restored. My fingers fly across the screen, saving the voice recording of the nurse directly into the cloud file. At the same time, I remotely access the main villa’s security feeds from last night and pull the footage, saving them together. Label: [A Gift For My Ex-Husband: Part Three—Sent in 15 Days!] Five days later, I officially discharge myself. Sasha, who used to be nothing but a low-tier street girl, is now riding Dominic’s massive empire resources straight to the top of the Underworld social ladder. She has secured leading roles in major media campaigns, and three top-tier syndicate directors are practically begging to produce exclusive projects tailored entirely for the Don’s new favorite girl. Long story short. As my car rolls through the city, every single massive LED billboard I pass displays the exact same face—the newly crowned “Angel of New York,” Sasha. I open my phone, checking the countdown on my calendar. Two days left, and this entire fucking circus will be over for good. Though, I have to admit, I’m slightly curious about one thing. When Dominic finally wakes up from his little trance and personally opens the massive gift bundle I left him, what kind of pathetic show will he put on? Suicide? Hanging? Self-mutilation? Heh, those are all old tricks. I am actually looking forward to whatever new, pathetic drama he comes up with this time! The car pulls up to my safehouse. Before I can even drive into the underground garage, my supervisor calls my line. His voice is trembling violently over the receiver. “E… Elena, look… the Don personally ordered it. He wants you to come back to headquarters immediately to conduct an exclusive live interview with Sasha.” Interviewing Sasha? The broadcast time is set exactly two days from now. I leave the call on speaker, my fingers lightly tapping against the calendar screen. Finally, a smooth smile crosses my face, and I reply in a deadpan voice, “Sure. Tell Dominic I’ll take the job.” A live, unedited broadcast with a thirty-million-dollar marketing push behind it. When the time comes, it won’t just be New York watching; every single faction across the country will witness exactly how insane Dominic gets when his mind snaps back! How fun.

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After four years as the pampered kept woman of Manhattan’s most untouchable billionaire heir, I got pregnant. When asked if he liked kids, he replied coldly: “No. I despise them.” Yet, he immediately turned around and flew out to bring his pregnant “one that got away” back to the States. My heart turned ice-cold. I faked my death and ran away with the baby in my belly. But raising a kid is expensive. To make a living, I became a mommy vlogger online, and accidentally showed my face. That night, my apartment building was surrounded by men in black suits. Even the doggie door in the back was sealed shut. The billionaire pinned me against the wall: “Tessa, you still dare to call yourself a widow whose husband died on the internet?” My daughter poked her little head out from behind the door: “Mister, my daddy isn’t dead. He’s just a giant, irresponsible jerk~” Me: “…” Shut up, my little menace!!! 1 I, Tessa Caldwell, was a very dedicated kept woman. Four years ago, Grayson Sinclair—the untouchable golden boy of Wall Street—rescued me on a stormy night in a rundown Midwest town. That rescue led straight to his bed. Everyone in high society said Grayson was utterly heartless, a man who never took the same woman out twice. But he kept me pampered in his Upper East Side penthouse for four years. Add up the days and nights, and we must have done it five thousand times. Thanks to this untouchable god of Wall Street, I entered high society, often shopping with Park Avenue wives and elite socialites. Right now, they were picking out clothes for themselves. And me, ever the dedicated professional, was following the billionaire’s orders, picking out the lingerie needed for tonight. I had just swiped the black card for a silk piece when a text came through: [Too cheap. Texture is bad. Swap it.] This bastard was monitoring me in real-time! Such high demands! For the sake of my sugar daddy, I endured it! Just as I angrily picked out a second piece, I caught a glimpse of a beautiful woman on a nearby billboard. Underneath it read, Spokesperson: Serena Blair. I unconsciously murmured the name, and suddenly, a mechanical voice rang out in my head. It told me I had triggered a keyword, informing me that I was the evil, villainous female side-character in a billionaire romance novel. I was so shocked I couldn’t remember the rest of the plot, except that my character actually gave birth to a daughter. Bullshit! Grayson used protection every single time we slept together. How could I possibly be pregnant? Was this some new, elaborate dark web scam? But when I finished shopping and returned to the penthouse, I saw Martha the housekeeper’s little granddaughter playing in the master bedroom with a sewing kit. In her tiny hands was a long string of condoms she had poked holes through and strung together. Clearly, the ones we used previously had suffered the exact same fate. Me: ? Am I really just a pawn in the author’s sick game? 2 I fell into deep thought. This deep thought lasted late into the night. I didn’t even notice when Grayson came back. He took a shower, and his lean, muscular body pressed against me from the other side of the massive bed. The warm steam and the gentle kisses landing on the back of my neck snapped me back to reality. “What are you thinking about?” Grayson’s voice was husky, carrying a lazy nasal tone. This was his usual little tell when he was aroused. He was used to being superior and naturally took the initiative. Every time he wanted it first, he made me beg for it. But tonight, no matter how good his massaging fingers were, my mind kept wandering. Grayson was clearly dissatisfied. His large hands gripped my waist, lifting me to lie on top of his chest. Tickled, I finally opened my teary eyes. “Mr. Sinclair…” Grayson had been frowning in displeasure, but seeing my pitiful look, he coaxed me in a low voice: “Baby, what’s wrong? Tell me if you’re unhappy, hm?” Thinking of the mechanical voice from the afternoon, I blurted out: “Nothing, just… will you ever get married?” According to the system’s plot hints, I was the evil side character obsessed with marrying the male lead, Grayson. In the early stages, while Grayson spent fortunes keeping me, he only used me to vent his physical needs. The one he truly held in his heart was the female lead fighting for a career in Hollywood, Serena Blair. Once Serena returned to New York, she would draw all his attention, and he would never look at me again. These events were foreshadowed in the book. For example, when I asked about marriage, he would coldly turn hostile. Sure enough, as soon as I asked, Grayson’s voice instantly turned freezing cold, stripped of any warmth: “Don’t talk to me about marriage.” “I never want to hear that word from you again.” Word for word, exactly what the plot hint said. It seemed my fate as the doomed side character was sealed. I immediately deflated, unsure if I was disappointed by his words or relieved I found out early. Being a side character was fine. I had been the unimportant one my whole life anyway. But being evil and a villain? No way! 3 That night, Grayson got out of bed after saying that, and didn’t sleep in the master bedroom with me. The next morning, I heard from Martha that he smoked in the study all night. After that, he didn’t come back for half a month. I had free time to scroll through social media. Figuring out where to settle down once I left Grayson. I stumbled upon Chanel’s new spring collection, and my finger hovered over the pre-order button. But then I thought about it. I was a side character destined to be ruthlessly abandoned. I needed to save the money in my account. So I angrily typed a comment: [So expensive! Can’t afford it!] An hour later, I received a wire transfer of one million dollars from Grayson. Me: ? That bastard. Disappears for half a month because of one question about marriage, and thinks throwing money at it works?! Then, transfer notifications kept popping up. One million, one million, one million… A total of 19.99 million dollars. I immediately leaped off the sofa, put on flawless makeup, and headed out. I even stopped by a deli to buy some chicken soup that looked homemade. When I reached the top floor of his company, I heard voices through the slightly ajar office door. “Serena is coming back to New York. You know, right?” “Yeah.” It was Grayson’s cold voice. “Figures. She definitely told you first. By the way, she seems to know about that little pet you’ve been keeping…” The other male voice tried to say more but was cut off by Grayson: “It doesn’t matter. I will deal with it.” My heart skipped a beat. Deal with me? 4 I wanted to keep eavesdropping but was interrupted by the secretary behind me. The office door opened, and the man who was just talking walked out. It had to be Grayson’s childhood friend from the Hamptons. I had seen him in the tabloids. But Grayson never introduced me to his friends, so I didn’t know him personally. Thinking about it now, it was probably because I was just a side character, unworthy of introductions. Driven by curiosity, I turned my head to look at the man a few more times. When I turned back, I met Grayson’s ice-cold glare. ? I thought about the massive wire transfers and remembered you don’t bite the hand that feeds you. I smiled sweetly and leaned in: “Mr. Sinclair, you’ve been so busy lately. Are you tired?” Grayson didn’t say a word. He reached back, shut the door, and locked it. He turned around, picked me up, and set me down on his massive mahogany desk. After four years of being intimately connected, Grayson knew me inside and out. “The moment you step out, you stare at other men, but you won’t even look your own man in the eye?” “While I wasn’t home, you didn’t call or text once. Seems you didn’t miss me at all?” “Tessa, you’re begging to be punished, aren’t you?” I couldn’t hear what he was saying. Fireworks seemed to explode behind my eyes. In my daze, I whimpered and cursed, “Grayson Sinclair, you huge jerk! Ughhh!” “Do your employees and fangirls know you like bunny ears in bed?!” “Your technique sucks! Are you getting old and useless?!” Saying the wrong thing leads to a miserable end. Terrified we were making too much noise and people outside would hear, I quickly swallowed my pride and begged for mercy. “Okay, okay, you’re very useful.” “Grayson, you’re not old. Daddy! You’re my daddy!” “Daddy, daddy!” As soon as the words left my mouth, the veins on Grayson’s neck bulged with excitement. He lowered his head and kissed me fiercely. ?? Wait, why did that turn him on even more? 5 The one being stimulated was soon me. I was pregnant. When I walked out of the office that day on wobbly legs, my lower abdomen felt sore and heavy. I took a test. Two pink lines. It seemed I was already pregnant. You really can’t fight the plot. The mechanical voice in my head told me that next, I would give birth to a daughter. Then, out of jealousy, I would psychotically swap my daughter with Serena’s daughter and abuse the kid. After a series of baby-swap drama, I would be exposed, and both kids would end up loving Serena. Grayson would hate me to the bone, refusing to even look at me. Finally, I’d be thrown into an underground auction ring, tortured for life, wishing for death. My face went pale. I sat down and took a long time to recover. I immediately made the decision to leave right now. The baby was mine. I didn’t want to be like my own mother, who abandoned her biological child because she hated my father. The money I had was enough to raise my child. I packed a few essentials and left the penthouse under the cover of night. Unfortunately, my first escape attempt didn’t go smoothly. I planned to land in Miami first and then catch a connecting flight. But as soon as I got off the plane, someone was waiting for me at the exit. It was Grayson’s personal assistant. “Ms. Caldwell, Mr. Sinclair said you left in a hurry and probably forgot some essentials, so he sent me to buy them for you.” He handed me a connected phone. I took it stiffly. Through the receiver, Grayson’s deep voice came: “Leaving so suddenly. Wanted to take a vacation?” “…Yeah,” I tried to sound natural. “I was bored at home, and you weren’t coming back. Where are you?” “In Europe. Handling some business.” I knew he went to bring back a pregnant Serena. Playing dumb, I asked, “What business?” “Company matters.” I fell silent for a few seconds. My lowered gaze landed on my stomach, and I suddenly spoke up. “Grayson, do you like kids?” It was quiet on Grayson’s end for a moment. Then came a few clearly displeased words: “No. I despise them.” I froze. Then I smiled in relief. “What a coincidence. Me too.”

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The year I was at my absolute brokest, I sold myself to Carter Sterling for $50,000 to act as a stand-in for “the one that got away.” His friends egged me on to drink until my stomach bled. They asked him: “Does your heart ache for her?” He lowered his eyes, his tone indifferent: “She’s just a placeholder.” Later, to save his first love, Carter watched helplessly as I plunged off a cliff into the ocean. Search and rescue teams never found my body. He suddenly went mad, searching the entire world for me. Five years later, I was invited back to the States and ran into him at an event. He stared at me intensely, his eyes red: “I knew you didn’t die. I’ve been looking everywhere for you—” I took a step back, smiling politely but distantly: “I’m sorry, who are you?” 1 In Carter Sterling’s mind, I was his girlfriend in name only. In reality, I was just a cheap replica of Serena Blair. A very low-budget one at that. She was a glamorous Hollywood actress, surrounded by adoring fans. And I was just a girl from the slums. With $50,000, Carter had bought my entire sense of self-worth. The day Serena returned to the States, her name dominated the trending topics on X. Carter went to the airport to pick her up for a welcome party. Before he left, he dropped a single sentence on me. “I’m not coming home for dinner tonight.” Yet, only an hour into my studying, he called. “There’s a vintage bottle of wine in the cellar. Find it and bring it to the restaurant.” My focus was broken. I sighed, hung up, found the bottle, and drove over. The private dining room was heavily guarded, brightly lit, and reeked of luxury. In the center of the room, like a king and queen, sat Carter and Serena. She wore a shimmering silver gown, leaning intimately against him. Everyone was cheering: “Serena is finally back! You have no idea how long Carter has waited for you.” I walked over and stopped in front of Carter. “The wine you asked for. I checked the label; it should be the right one.” The perfectly harmonious atmosphere froze for a second the moment I arrived. Setting the bottle down, I turned to leave. Serena’s light voice rang out behind me: “Stop right there.” “Come over here, open the wine, and pour it for us.” I turned back and instinctively looked at Carter. He was leaning back in his chair, his dress shirt unbuttoned at the collar, looking at me with cool indifference. “Did you not understand her?” “I understood,” I lowered my eyes. “I’ll go outside and ask a waiter for a corkscrew.” The moment I stepped toward the door, Serena’s sharp question pierced my back. “This is the kind of trash you’re into now?” Carter remained silent. A friend next to him chimed in: “Don’t be mad, Serena. Carter only has you in his heart.” “Yeah, you can’t blame Carter. She’s the one who clung to him like a leech. We couldn’t chase her away.” After I poured the wine, Serena still refused to let me leave. She was venting her frustration on me, making me serve her soup and peel her shrimp. Then, with a sweet smile, she asked: “What college did you graduate from?” “MIT.” “Such a famous school, and they didn’t teach you self-respect?” Her face darkened. She suddenly raised her hand and splashed half a bowl of hot soup directly onto my chest. “Clinging to Carter like a stray dog, don’t you feel pathetic? Are you that desperate to climb the social ladder?” The liquid soaked through my shirt, leaving a burning sting on my skin. Carter gently held Serena’s hand, soothing her softly without even glancing at me. “I ordered that pink diamond necklace you liked. Don’t be mad at me anymore, hm?” A friend, looking for trouble, mixed vodka, red wine, and beer into a massive glass and shoved it in front of me. “Drink this, and we’ll consider it your apology to Serena.” Another guy complained: “Giving her such expensive liquor is a total waste.” In Carter’s social circle, Serena was everyone’s golden girl. Because of that, no one respected me. They went out of their way to humiliate and toy with me. Carter never stopped them. Especially not tonight, right in front of Serena. I picked up the cloudy mixture of alcohol and downed it in one go. An intense burning sensation ripped from my throat straight down to my stomach. Tears instantly welled in my eyes. I doubled over, leaning against the table, uncontrollably dry-heaving. “Alright, you’re ruining our appetite. Get out.” Carter casually picked up the heavy metal corkscrew and tossed it at me. He misjudged the force. It hit my temple. After a sharp sting, warm blood gushed out, running down my cheek. He froze, instinctively standing up and taking a step toward me. I covered my forehead, bowed deeply, and hurried out the door. 2 When I got home, I took a shower and clumsily bandaged the wound. Only then did I realize Carter had come back too. He looked furious. I figured it out quickly: “Did you and Serena get into a fight?” “Hazel!” He snapped coldly, striding over to me. He grabbed my wrists and shoved me hard against the edge of the bed. I struggled to push him away, but the difference in our strength was absolute. The chandelier swayed above us, the light stabbing my eyes until I squeezed them shut, but the tears kept leaking out. He paused for a second, pinching my chin to force me to look at him. “Why are you crying? Feeling wronged?” “Hazel, didn’t you say you liked me? That as long as you could stay by my side, you didn’t care what your title was?” His kiss was bruising, savage. I quickly tasted the metallic tang of blood in my mouth. Carter commanded: “Did you forget what I taught you? Close your eyes.” “Your eyes are the one part of you that look nothing like hers.” Under his rough hands, the pain intensified. When I opened my eyes in a panic, I met his dark, turbulent gaze. He was venting his rage on me. I suddenly understood. I had made Serena unhappy, so Carter was punishing me. A massive wave of humiliation swallowed me, and my mind drifted back to the past. When we first met, I was a dirt-poor college student. He was the high-and-mighty CEO. I worked at a bar. He got drunk, looked at my face, and lashed out: “Don’t wear a face that looks like hers while doing such cheap work here!” Later, my grandma, my only family, fell deathly ill. I maxed out every credit card and loan app, but I was still $50,000 short for her surgery. For that $50,000, I sold myself to Carter Sterling. I threw myself at him. The price was that he forbade me from continuing my master’s degree. “A stand-in needs to act like a stand-in.” His tone was flat, deciding my entire life in just a few words. “Didn’t you say you liked me? Then for the next three years, you stay right by my side. You go nowhere.” Back then, Serena had left him to study acting in Europe. Carter wouldn’t allow history to repeat itself. From that day on, my dream of pursuing academic research truly became an unattainable fantasy. My grandma didn’t survive the post-surgery complications. She held on for six months before passing away. I was in a daze, sitting in the cemetery for an entire night. At midnight, a freezing rain started to fall. Suddenly, an umbrella appeared over my head. It was Carter. He looked down at me from his towering height, his tone unusually gentle: “How much longer are you going to stay here? I’ll wait with you.” We were together for three years. I took care of his every need perfectly. In the quiet moments between us, there was occasional, fleeting warmth. But I knew Carter secretly despised me. Once, I went to pick him up from a gathering with his rich buddies. They blocked my way, hooting and hollering. They looked me up and down, laughing: “She really does look a bit like Serena—I heard she’s a top student at MIT? Even worked on some patent projects?” “No way. Hey, top student, how exactly do you do your little science projects? Why don’t you perform one for us right here?” I dug my nails into my palms and looked at them: “Scientific research is a serious matter. It’s not a parlor trick for your entertainment.” The ringleader sneered: “Stop acting so high and mighty. You talk about science, but aren’t you just trying to slap a higher price tag on yourself?” A bottle of liquor was shoved in front of me. “Not willing to perform? Then drink. Finish this bottle, and we’ll let Carter leave with you.” Through it all, Carter just leaned back on the leather sofa, flipping his silver lighter, watching me. Probably because he was drunk, the usually stoic man looked at me with a lazy smirk. “Drink it. Show everyone how well you can hold your liquor.” I stayed silent for two seconds before asking him: “If it were Serena standing here today, would you make her drink it?” That day, Carter completely lost his temper. He snatched the glass and shattered it against my chest. “What the hell are you? Do you think you deserve to be compared to her?” “She’s not as cheap as you. She wouldn’t sell her body for fifty grand.” I blinked hard, picking up a shot glass that had rolled onto the floor. “Okay. I’ll drink it.” A poor person’s life is worthless, let alone their dignity. I did take his $50,000. I brought this on myself. 3 Before Serena left for Europe, she was already an A-list actress. Now that she was back with an international aura, she was drowning in movie offers. She called Carter and told him she lacked a reliable personal assistant. “I think that Hazel girl you keep around isn’t bad. She seems like she knows how to serve people.” Carter went silent for two seconds. She chuckled: “What? Can’t bear to part with her?” “No.” Carter replied flatly, “If you need her, I’ll send her over.” I followed Serena onto the movie set as her assistant. During a break, the supporting actress, Chloe Vance, came over to gossip. “Serena, your assistant actually looks a lot like you.” “Except her eyes are different. She has a teardrop mole. Honestly, she looks a bit more charming than you.” Chloe was originally cast as the female lead for this movie, but when Serena returned, she used her connections to snatch the role. Chloe was pissed. She said that purely to get under Serena’s skin. Sure enough, Serena’s face dropped. The disgust in her eyes when she looked at me was barely concealed. After wrap-up that afternoon, she announced she had lost her ring. “I still had it when we were shooting by the lake. It must have fallen in.” Her eyes shifted, finally landing on me. “Hazel, go into the lake and find it for me.” The artificial lake wasn’t deep; the water barely reached my waist. I waded in, bending over, feeling through the freezing mud at the bottom inch by inch. The setting sun painted the sky a bloody red. As night fell, the light slipped away inch by inch. Everyone on set knew Serena was doing this on purpose. They stood on the shore, watching in silence. No one was going to stick their neck out for a nobody assistant. My fingers grew pale and pruned from the freezing water. Whenever I pulled my hands up, freezing mud dripped from them. It suddenly made me think of college. I used to spend hours in the lab working on my thesis. My hands had to be dry and impeccably clean to handle test tubes, petri dishes, and glass slides, observing results and logging data. My mentors all said I was an incredibly gifted student who would go far in this field. But a normal person’s life can’t withstand even the slightest storm. Just one bad break can destroy everything. It had only been three years, but that life felt like a previous incarnation. Finally, when the sky was pitch black, a stylist spoke up: “Serena, I found your ring! It was on the table in the makeup trailer.” “Oh, I must have accidentally left it there.” Serena took the ring and casually tossed it into her Birkin bag. “Come on up, Hazel. Clean yourself up. Don’t act like I was bullying you or something.” After work, Carter came to pick her up. I was sitting under a pear tree outside the set, soaked to the bone. I don’t know how much time passed before that black Rolls Royce doubled back. Carter got out and walked over to me. “Go home and change.” I didn’t look up. His tone softened slightly. “Don’t be mad at Serena. She was just in a bad mood. Once she vented, it was fine.” When I still didn’t respond, Carter lost his patience. “Enough is enough, Hazel. Who are you throwing a tantrum for?” I sniffled, holding back my tears, and looked up at him. “Carter, it’s been three years. And now Serena is back.” “Let me go.” His face shifted slightly. “Where are you going to go?” I reached into my canvas tote bag and pulled out a stack of papers. “I applied to the bioscience graduate program at Stanford. They already sent my acceptance letter…” Before I could finish, Carter violently snatched the papers from my hand and ripped them to shreds. He grabbed my freezing, wet wrist and shoved me into the car. His burning palm pressed against my icy skin, the heat slowly transferring over. Under the dim dome light, Carter stared at me with terrifying, dark eyes. “Don’t even think about it. You’re not going anywhere.” “Hazel, you are my girlfriend.” 4 After that day, I didn’t return to the movie set. Carter found Serena a new assistant and moved me into his corporate office as his executive assistant. “You’ll follow me from now on.” He spun a fountain pen in his hand, looking up at me, his tone softening. “That day on set, Chloe Vance intentionally provoked you and Serena. I’ve already made some calls. No one in Hollywood will ever hire her again.” Seeing that I had no reaction and remained silent, Carter’s face darkened. He warned me: “Hazel, don’t push your luck.” Was I the one pushing my luck? Chloe was just bitter about losing her role and threw a few verbal jabs at Serena. Carter and I both knew perfectly well who the real culprit was. But because I made him angry that day, he ignored the fact that I was freezing and soaking wet, and deliberately tormented me in the back of his car for hours. I had been running a low-grade fever for days. Dizzy from the meds, I had no energy to argue with him. I just lowered my head. “Understood.” That evening, after Serena wrapped up filming, I drove Carter to meet her for dinner. The moment she saw me, her voice turned icy: “Carter, I don’t want to fight with you, but stop bringing this eyesore around to ruin my mood.” Carter glanced at me. “Wait in the car.” I nodded and walked away. On my phone, there was an email from my prospective advisor at Stanford. “Hazel, the acceptance letter has been mailed. When can you arrive on campus? After reviewing your portfolio, I’ve applied for a full-ride fellowship for you. I am very much looking forward to mentoring a student as gifted and hardworking as you.” I squeezed my hand in the empty air. As if that would somehow let me grasp the torn pieces of the acceptance letter Carter had ripped apart and thrown away. That night, Carter didn’t come home. He sent me a text: “I’m taking Serena home. Don’t wait up.” “Are you staying the night there?” His reply was ruthless: “Hazel, you have no right to ask that.” I drove the car to the cemetery on the outskirts of the city. My grandma had been buried there for over two years. The photo embedded in the tombstone was taken during her final days. Back then, she was gravely ill. I combined the money she saved her entire life with everything I shamelessly begged from my professors and classmates. It still wasn’t enough. I was short fifty grand. To Carter, that was just the cost of a night out drinking with his friends. Or a handbag for his flavor of the week. But to me, it was an insurmountable chasm. After her surgery, my grandma clutched my hand and repeatedly warned me. She said we couldn’t treat this money lightly just because it meant nothing to Carter. So for three years, I obeyed Carter’s every command, agreeing to even his most unreasonable demands. “But… do I have to waste the rest of my life, my ideals, and my ambition, trapped here?” The cemetery was completely empty, save for the wind and the crickets. My grandma on the tombstone just looked at me in silence. She would never answer me again. 5 That afternoon, a familiar face suddenly sought me out. It was Chloe Vance. She was no longer the arrogant starlet who traded barbs with Serena on set; she looked utterly disheveled. Sitting in the corner of the coffee shop, she asked me: “You must be furious about how Serena treats you, right?” “I know how hard you worked to climb Carter’s social ladder, only for her to return and ruin everything. I hired someone to take pictures of her and Carter spending the night together. Once they leak, all you have to do is step forward and say you’re the official girlfriend. Serena will be ruined.” “America’s sweet little darling is actually a homewrecker. Hilarious.” I finished my glass of lemon water, shook my head, and rejected her. But I underestimated Chloe’s madness. Her proud acting career had been effortlessly crushed by Carter; she had lost her mind. That night, intimate photos of Serena and Carter hit #1 on X. A so-called “insider” spilled: “Carter Sterling has a girlfriend. They’ve been together for years. I’ve seen them having dinner, and it definitely wasn’t Serena Blair.” To prove they weren’t lying, they posted a photo. It was a blurry paparazzi shot, but you could still see the woman in the photo had short hair, a slender frame, and a teardrop mole by her eye. She was looking up at the man across the table, her eyes shining brightly. I stared at the photo, slightly dazed. This was from two years ago, right after my grandma passed away. I was severely depressed. Carter took me to a niche, newly opened restaurant. They served the regional cuisine from my hometown. The seasoning tasted exactly like the food my grandma cooked for decades. I took one bite, knew he had brought me here on purpose, and looked up to earnestly thank him. “Thank you, Mr. Sterling.” He smirked: “Hazel, is that what you call your boyfriend?” He wanted me to call him Carter. I couldn’t get used to that kind of intimacy, so I just called him by his full name. Only later did I learn that was how Serena had called him since they were kids. “Hazel!” I snapped back to reality to see Carter storming through the door. He took massive strides toward me. He raised his hand and slapped me across the face, then grabbed my collar and slammed me against the edge of the table. A photo was violently thrown in my face. It was a picture of Chloe and me sitting in the dimly lit corner of the coffee shop. His voice was like ice: “What more do you want? If you didn’t have a face that looked somewhat like Serena’s, you wouldn’t even have had the right to sell yourself to me to save your grandma! And now you’re teaming up with outsiders to frame Serena? How can you be so vicious!” My cheek burned. My tightly gripped collar choked me, waves of suffocation washing over me. I opened my mouth, struggling to speak: “It wasn’t me.” “I rejected her.” Carter didn’t believe me. He violently pinched my chin, scrutinizing my face as if he wished he could carve the flesh right off my bones. After a long moment, he sneered: “Cheap trash. You sicken me.” He let go, watching me collapse weakly onto the floor, and slammed the door as he left

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I think my boyfriend might have reincarnated. He seems to have realized I’m a toxic woman who was just playing with his feelings. And he’s started treating my sweet, pure-as-an-angel little sister exceptionally well. The other day, I saw him pin my sister against the wall. With red eyes, he gently pushed a strand of hair behind her ear, holding back his emotions. “I was so stupid,” he whispered. “It turns out you were the one I was looking for all along.” “In my last life, I missed my chance with you.” “In this life, I’ll use everything I have to make it up to you, okay?” 1 This was the fifth time Carter hadn’t picked me up after class. In the past, this would have been absolutely impossible. I sat by the window, staring at the endless rain outside. I made sure my makeup would get ruined by the rain just the right amount. And then I dashed out into the downpour. 2 Carter and Lily were sitting in a coffee shop. He raised his hand and gently brushed her bangs aside. She shrank back shyly. I pushed the door open and burst into the shop. The chime of the bell sliced through the quiet atmosphere. My little sister turned pale with fright, while Carter dropped his hand and looked up at me. “What are you doing here?” I offered a weak, fragile smile. When I first walked in, I caught my reflection in the glass door. My makeup wasn’t totally ruined, but just smudged enough to invoke pity. So when I sat down next to Carter, he ultimately didn’t push me away. “You promised to pick me up. Did you forget again?” I leaned in close, almost bumping the tip of his nose. I had complete confidence in my looks, especially when I stared at him this pitifully. The man hesitated for a long moment before lowering his eyes and apologizing. “I’m sorry.” “Lily had some homework she didn’t understand and asked for my help. I lost track of time…” “I didn’t mean to leave you waiting.” “…” I smiled and magnanimously told him it was fine. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of my dear sister. Her fists were clenched tight under the table. Her heartbroken expression was almost impossible to hide. 3 Back in middle school, when those kids shoved my head into a toilet, I made a vow. I would do whatever it took to live the life I wanted. I would absolutely never let anyone see me in a pathetic state again. So, I’m not a good person. I never have been. I studied hard, worked on my posture, figured out how to present my best side to others, and expanded my social circle. I ruthlessly molded myself into someone outstanding—so outstanding that whenever people mentioned my name, they would say: “Harper? How can a girl that perfect even exist?” I had finally earned the approval of my strict, unsmiling father. My teachers loved me, and my friends supported me. I thought my life could just maintain this delicate balance forever. Until Lily showed up. 4 She was my dad’s illegitimate daughter from an affair. Lily had sought us out herself. The moment she appeared, the balance of our family shattered. I cried and interrogated my dad about why he had another woman on the side. He stayed silent. Meanwhile, Lily huddled in the corner of the room, acting as if absolutely nothing was her fault. Moreover, Lily seemed to possess a natural magic. Her magic was an effortless, genuine pitifulness—completely different from my calculated acting. It was as if everyone around her felt an overwhelming urge to protect her. Before long, my dad started defending her. All my friends told me to be nicer to her, saying it wasn’t my sister’s fault, and begging me not to act like the evil stepsister from a soap opera. Once again, I felt a deep sense of crisis. Because I suddenly realized that everyone around me was being drawn away by her. I needed to protect my territory. 5 So, I stole Carter. But rather than saying I stole him, it was more like Lily handed him to me on a silver platter. Lily, being the kind-hearted Samaritan she is, participated in a hurricane disaster relief effort. While she was there, she saved Carter, the heir of the wealthy Hayes family, who had been vacationing near the mountains. Unfortunately, Carter’s vision was damaged at the time, and his consciousness was blurry. He couldn’t remember her face clearly. So, I swooped in and claimed her rightful place. Carter went to great lengths trying to find the girl who saved him in the disaster zone. But Lily adamantly refused to come forward. I said, “Sister, if you really don’t want him to recognize you, why don’t you introduce him to me?” Lily bit her lip and agreed. But I figured. She was probably regretting it right about now. 6 Carter, oh Carter. Carter was a gentle, righteous guy. When he was good to me… He never missed a single meal for the two of us, and he tracked my cycle better than I did. Every green grape he fed me was carefully peeled. But overnight. His attitude toward me just changed. His former passion turned into resistance, and he even stopped answering my calls. On a Saturday morning, I went to Carter’s art studio. He was an oil painting major, a graduate of a top-tier European art academy. The studio smelled of sunlight and pine resin. Stepping into the spacious room, I saw him sleeping against his easel from afar. He seemed to have pulled an all-nighter; his breathing was steady. I leaned in to look at his canvas. The person on it looked about thirty or forty percent like me, smiling at the painter. It hadn’t been colored yet. It took me a long moment to realize. It really wasn’t me. It was Lily. 7 I was staring at the painting so intensely that I didn’t even notice the man waking up behind me. I was crouching. When I turned around, I caught him silently watching me. “What’s wrong? Why are you painting my sister?” “Paint me next time, won’t you?” I simply climbed into his lap. He sighed and wrapped his arms around me. “I don’t have time.” His actions were gentle, but his words were ruthless. I thought the phrase “ulterior motives” perfectly described our current dynamic. But, I really was a master of disguise. I blinked and looked back at him. “Carter, hey. If I ever do something you don’t like, you have to tell me, okay?” “Don’t keep it bottled up, dummy…” I reached out and pinched his nose. It wasn’t just to show my vulnerable side. It was more to find a way to ease the tension in our relationship. Sometimes, not talking to each other is the real culprit behind a broken relationship. And right now, I still needed Carter. His brown eyes stared at me for a long time. He looked so serious that I got the sinking feeling I was digging my own grave. A moment later, I heard him ask: “That day, was the person who saved me really you?” 8 “…” That was a very hard question to answer. Carter graduated from a prestigious school, and his family’s business covered half the city. He was an ideal and suitable marriage prospect on my path to a perfect life. At first, I really was just dating him with the goal of marriage in mind. But after we got together, I realized that when it came to real feelings, I was just a naive kid. Simply put, I fell for him. So lying to him started to feel incredibly tricky. But he didn’t wait for my answer. He pushed me off his lap. For the first time, I saw disappointment in his eyes. “You don’t have to answer.” “…” Yeah. My silence seemed to have answered everything. It was just that my heart felt a little empty. It was as if the fortress I had so painstakingly built. Had been effortlessly reduced to rubble by someone else. 9 “So? Did you and Carter break up?” On the campus rooftop, I was drinking coffee with another guy. His name was Mason, an underclassman. Even though he was younger, he was one of the few genuine friends I had made. We had known each other since middle school, so he had seen what I looked like when I was being bullied. He even helped me take revenge on the girls who tormented me. I lowered my head and rubbed the edge of the soda can. Given the situation, even if Carter hadn’t explicitly dumped me yet, it probably wasn’t far off. “Oh right, your sister has been coming to see me a lot lately.” Mason stretched lazily and grinned at me. … If you asked me to look back on it now. I definitely should have been on high alert the moment Mason said those words. “Oh right, your sister has been coming to see me a lot lately.” Because gradually. Lily’s name started creeping into my conversations with Mason more and more. After Carter stopped contacting me. The person I talked to the most was Mason. My life was still incredibly busy. I had a lot of competitions to enter. Because it wasn’t just my love life; I needed to be perfect in every single aspect to maintain my carefully crafted persona. Living like this was exhausting, but it was all I knew. I never complained, until one day, during a speech competition. Something happened backstage that made me feel like my entire life. Was just one big joke. 10 I was the last one to go on stage for the speech. The grand finale, you could say. So eventually, I was the only one left in the dressing room. When the door was violently pushed open. I was just pinning my last hair clip. The person who walked in was my boyfriend, whom I hadn’t seen in a very long time: Carter. Oh, and he was holding another girl’s hand. My sister, Lily. He was furious, and Lily was crying buckets. He dragged the girl over to me and shoved her sleeve up for me to see. “You did this, didn’t you?” On the girl’s pale arm were several raw, red welts. They looked like lash marks. I raised an eyebrow. My reaction seemed to make him even angrier. “What is that look on your face?” “Heh, Harper, you won’t even spare your own sister, will you?” My good sister was still sobbing uncontrollably, clutching Carter’s sleeve. “Please, Carter, stop asking.” “It has nothing… nothing to do with my sister…” Carter. How intimate. I lowered my eyes to stare at the wounds on her arm. I had no idea where they came from. But Carter seemed utterly convinced that I was the vicious mastermind behind it all. Just as I opened my mouth to explain. Someone else walked through the door. Mason walked in with his hands in his pockets. Seeing him, I breathed a sigh of relief. I tried to force a calm smile. “Carter, think about it rationally. Why would I do something like this to my own flesh and blood?” “Mason, perfect timing. You know me, I was bullied before, how could I ever…” I stopped mid-sentence. Because I saw the look on Mason’s face. He had never looked at me with such absolute disgust before. My mind uncontrollably replayed his recent words. Over the past few days, Mason had constantly brought up Lily. “Your sister is so shy, man.” “Your sister really sucks at Calculus.” “Bumped into your sister in the cafeteria today.” “Your sister…” In the dead silence of the dressing room, his voice was the last thing to echo. I listened as he said, word by word: “Harper, I was so wrong about you.” “Just because you were bullied, does that give you the right to bully someone else?”

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