Author: Momo Chan

The night I walked into our bedroom, my eyes swollen raw from crying at my grandmother’s funeral, I found my husband and my best friend tangled together on our bed. Their skin was slick and flushed, their breathing heavy and rushed in the dark room. The confrontation died in my throat before I could even draw breath. Instead, a surreal, glowing stream of text began to scroll directly across my field of vision, like a live-chat feed running over a broadcast of my own life: [Naomi really loves Davis. In her past life, she literally died for him. Thank God he got a second chance at life—it’s finally not just a one-sided crush!] [But Davis traded the lives of his wife’s unborn twins just to get this second chance. Isn’t that a little psycho? Ella just lost her babies, and now her grandma is dead. This is brutal.] [He did it to pay Naomi back! Besides, those weren’t even his babies. He never even touched his wife. He literally hired some random guy to get her pregnant so he wouldn’t have to deal with her. Honestly, genius.] My world fractured. The room spun, the air turning to ice in my lungs. Before I could process the horror of what I was reading, Davis pulled a sheet over them, shielding Naomi protectively in his arms. “It was me,” he said, his voice devoid of any guilt. “I’m the one who pushed for this. I didn’t want Naomi to have to hide in the shadows anymore, but she was the one who didn’t want to hurt you. If you don’t make a scene, you can keep the Fitch name. You’ll still be my wife.” As I stood there, the translucent text kept scrolling, detailing the wild, obsessive things he had done in this “reborn” life to repay Naomi. It was so absurdly cruel that it crossed the line into comedy. I wiped the hot tears from my face, a cold, mocking laugh bubbling up from my chest. “No, thank you,” I said, my voice steady despite the trembling in my knees. “Let’s get a divorce. I’m letting you both go.” 1 Davis paused, his hand freezing on the shirt he was pulling over his shoulders. “Are you sure about that?” Naomi immediately slipped out of bed, throwing on a silk robe. She dropped to her knees right in front of me, tears streaming down her face—the perfect picture of fragile, tragic innocence. “Ella, I’m so sorry. I lost my mind for a second. Please, just pretend this never happened. I’ll disappear, I swear. You love him so much… it shouldn’t end like this because of me.” My eyes burned as I stared down at her. Without a word, I raised my hand and slapped her hard across the face. “I loved him, yes,” I whispered, my voice cracking. “But I loved you too. And you still crossed the line and ruined everything.” For ten years, she had watched me pine after Davis. She was the one who bought me tissues, who yelled at the sky that Davis was blind for not seeing my worth. On my wedding day, she had grabbed his collar and threatened to ruin him if he ever broke my heart. I thought our friendship was a fortress. I thought we were a trio against the world. Now, the woman who had held my hand at the altar was the one in my bed. Davis’s face contorted with rage. He lunged forward, grabbing the heavy, glass-framed wedding portrait from the nightstand and throwing it directly at me. “Ella, how dare you touch her!” The heavy frame shattered against my forehead. A sharp, hot pain bloomed instantly, and a drop of blood, warm and thick, rolled down my face, splitting over the bridge of my nose like a red tear. Six months ago, he had knelt on a bed of rose petals, kissing my hand like I was his entire universe. “Ella, I love you,” he had shouted, loud enough for the photographers to laugh. “I will protect you forever.” Six months. That was all it took for “forever” to turn into shattered glass and blood in my eyes. Davis seemed briefly stunned seeing me bleed, but his face quickly hardened back into a cold, defensive sneer. “Think about it carefully. If you divorce me, you have nothing. The house, the car, the bank accounts—they’re all mine. You don’t even have a job. How are you going to survive?” He was right. For three years, I had shrunk myself to fit his life. He said he hated women who were always out in public, so I resigned from my firm. He said he hated strangers in his space, so I became his maid, his cook, his laundress. He said he despised needy women, so when my appendix nearly burst, I drove myself to the ER in the dead of night, biting my lip so I wouldn’t call him. I thought I was becoming the perfect wife. But the glowing text in front of my eyes kept updating, rewriting my reality with every second: [Davis knew Naomi wouldn’t just accept handouts, so he secretly pulled strings to get her a high-paying, low-stress job. She didn’t even have to interview; she was hired on the spot.] [Last time Naomi had a 102-degree fever, Davis canceled a major board meeting to stay by her side all night, wiping her sweat and feeding her water. He was more attentive than a private nurse.] [He literally traveled back in time to make things right with Naomi. She died for him in his past life; of course he’s going to give her every ounce of his tenderness now.] I laughed. I laughed until my stomach cramped, until my whole body shook. He wasn’t incapable of love, or tenderness, or care. He just didn’t have any of it for me. I met his cold gaze, my resolve hardening. “Don’t worry about how I’ll survive. I’m divorcing you, Davis. It’s over.” I pulled my suitcase from the closet and began packing my few belongings. Davis’s brow furrowed in irritation, while Naomi’s weeping grew louder. She clutched his arm, her voice trembling. “Davis, don’t agree to this. It’s my fault… Ella just lost her grandmother, she’s fragile right now. She’s just speaking out of anger…” At the mention of my grandmother, Davis’s eyes flickered toward my bleeding forehead and swollen eyes. For a fraction of a second, I thought I saw a shadow of guilt, but it was quickly swallowed by disgust. “What does her grandmother’s death have to do with you?” Davis said, gently wiping Naomi’s tears. “She’s only crying because of the inheritance. Her grandmother left the family cottage to someone else, not her. Do you really think she’s mourning?” I froze, a sweater slipping from my hands. My grandmother had loved me more than life itself. She had told me a thousand times that the old family cottage was my safety net. “No matter who you marry, Ella, you will always have a place that belongs to you. That is your retreat.” The scrolling text flared up again: [Just because Naomi mentioned she loved the cottage, Davis had his lawyer friend alter the grandmother’s will. Ella got absolutely nothing. Talk about devotion.] [That’s nothing. Naomi said funerals are depressing and bring bad luck, so Davis literally banned Ella from attending the wake. He even paid people to spread rumors that Ella was an ungrateful granddaughter who wouldn’t even stay by her grandmother’s side. Ella had to threaten suicide just to get to the funeral.] [To keep Naomi happy during the grandmother’s final days, Davis literally locked Ella inside the house so she couldn’t say goodbye, all while he was taking Naomi on a weekend getaway to cheer her up.] A loud roar filled my ears, and my mind went completely blank. The night my grandmother passed, I had been clawing at the front door, desperate to go to the hospital. But Davis had held me back, wrapping his arms around me, telling me the doctors said she was stable. He had told me to rest, promising he would stay by her bedside so I wouldn’t have to worry. I had slept that night feeling so incredibly grateful for his kindness. But he wasn’t at the hospital. He was with Naomi, creating beautiful memories, while my grandmother drew her last breath alone. “Davis Fitch! It was you, wasn’t it?” I screamed, the sound tearing from my throat. The blood from my forehead had reached my lips, hot and metallic. “You locked me in! You kept me from saying goodbye to my grandmother! Did you forget how good she was to you?” I wanted him to feel a shred of remorse. I wanted him to remember. “I didn’t forget,” Davis said, his voice dropping into a chilling, dismissive register. “When my first start-up failed and I was broke, she fed me. She gave me a warm place to stay and lent me her life savings to keep me afloat. But so what? Those cheap little favors were just her and your way of feeling important. I never asked for them.” The sheer, monstrous ingratitude broke something inside me. I lunged forward, swinging my hand toward his face. Davis didn’t even flinch. He stood there, his eyes filled with bored annoyance. But before my palm could connect, Naomi let out a piercing shriek and threw herself between us. My hand struck her cheek. She was fragile, and the force of the impact sent her stumbling backward. The back of her head cracked sharply against the edge of the wooden vanity. Naomi whimpered, her face turning pale as a thin line of blood began to seep through her hair. Davis completely lost his mind. He rushed to her, scooping her into his arms with a terror I had never seen in him. “Naomi! Naomi, look at me. I’m here. Where does it hurt? I’m taking you to the hospital right now.” His voice shook, his eyes rimmed with sudden, genuine tears. I stood frozen, watching his panic. A memory, cold and sharp, cut through my mind. A few weeks ago, when I was losing our twins, hemorrhaging on the cold operating table, the doctors had issued critical condition notices twice. I had been terrified, my hand gripping the nurse’s arm, begging to see my husband. But Davis had only stood outside the OR for two minutes. He had asked the doctor, “She’s not dead, right?” and when they said no, he hung up his phone and drove three hours through a storm to be with Naomi because she had a mild cold. At the time, I couldn’t understand how the man who used to put band-aids on my paper cuts had become so utterly indifferent to my life. Now, the truth was laid bare. He hadn’t changed. He just reserved all his warmth for someone else. Davis violently shoved me aside as he lifted Naomi. The sudden movement sent a sharp, agonizing pain blooming through my lower abdomen, and I stumbled, warm blood dripping onto the bedroom floor. Davis paused for a second, looking at the blood on the floor, but Naomi let out a soft groan, and he immediately turned and ran out the door, leaving me behind. I stared at the empty doorway and let out a quiet, hollow laugh. The last lingering shred of my love for him died in that silence. I packed my bag, placed the signed divorce papers on the kitchen counter, and walked out into the cold night. The next morning, I dragged my weak, aching body to my grandmother’s cottage. The lock had been changed. I didn’t care. I grabbed a brick from the garden and smashed the glass pane of the back door, reaching in to unlock it. But when I stepped inside, the breath left my lungs. The cottage was unrecognizable. My grandmother’s antique wooden furniture had been dragged into the yard and smashed into kindling. The framed photographs of us that used to line the hallway were torn to pieces, scattered across the floor and covered in muddy boot prints. Naomi’s modern, colorful luggage and clothes were piled high in the living room. And in the corner of the yard, lying in a pool of dried, blackened blood, was Rusty. Rusty, the golden retriever who had protected me for twelve years, who had slept at my grandmother’s feet, lay completely still. His throat had been brutally slit. My knees gave out, and I fell heavily onto the gravel, a bitter, metallic taste rising in my throat. My grandmother was gone. And now, the only creature left who welcomed me home was gone too. “You’re just in time.” Naomi walked out of the house. The fragile, weeping victim from last night was gone; her face was twisted into a cold, triumphant sneer. She walked slowly toward me, looking down at me as I huddled in the dirt. “Ella, are you still too stupid to get it? I’ve hated you from the very beginning. You had a grandmother who adored you, and a husband who worshipped you. And me? I had nothing. So I decided to take your man, destroy your babies, take your house, and crush everything you ever loved under my heel. I had Davis change the will. I had the dog killed. I told him to keep you from your grandmother.” I trembled violently, my eyes hot with blood and tears. “Grandmother was so good to you! How could you be this evil?” “Good to me?” Naomi spat, stepping forward and grabbing a handful of my hair, forcing my face up. “She was never my family! She only looked at you. Her ‘kindness’ was just charity, and it made me sick.” She suddenly let go of my hair and threw herself backward onto the gravel, scraping her palms and ripping her clothes. At that exact moment, the front gate clicked open, and Davis walked in. Naomi’s face transformed instantly. Tears welled in her eyes as she whimpered, crawling toward him. “Davis… Ella is just upset… if hitting me makes her feel better, let her…” Davis didn’t even look at me. He scooped her into his arms, his chest rising and falling with anger. He turned a freezing glare toward me. “Ella, haven’t you thrown enough tantrums?” “This is my grandmother’s house!” I screamed, pushing myself up from the dirt. “It belongs to me!” “Belongs to you?” Davis took a step forward, shielding Naomi. “The will is legally binding. The cottage belongs to Naomi. Your grandmother willingly named her as her beneficiary. You have no right to cause a scene here.” “Willingly?” My voice cracked, a hysterical laugh escaping my throat. “You know exactly what you did! You took everything from me for her! Do you even have a conscience?” My words only seemed to make him colder. Naomi whimpered against his chest. “Davis, as long as we’re together, I can bear anything. Let’s just give her the house. I don’t want you two fighting because of me.” Davis looked down at me, his eyes devoid of any humanity. He turned, walked into the house, and emerged a moment later carrying a small, ceramic urn. My grandmother’s ashes. He held it high, hovering it over the concrete steps. “The cottage stays with Naomi. But if you kneel down, beg Naomi for forgiveness, and admit you tried to illegally take this property, I’ll give you the ashes.” He paused, tilting the urn slightly. “Otherwise…” I froze, the air leaving my lungs. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. How could they do this to her? “Ella! What on earth are you doing?” I turned to see my Aunt Abigail rushing through the gate, having heard the commotion. But instead of helping me, she looked at my bleeding face with deep disappointment. “Ella, stop being so difficult! Your grandmother left the house to Naomi because Naomi was the one who actually stayed and took care of her. Just apologize and take your grandmother’s ashes. Stop causing a scene!” Naomi let out a soft sigh, patting Aunt Abigail’s hand. “Don’t blame her, Auntie. Ella was always so busy with her own life. I was happy to care for grandmother. I never expected her to leave me the house…” Davis gave me a chilling, expectant look. “I’m waiting, Ella.” I closed my eyes. The gravel bit into my knees, but I didn’t care. To let my grandmother rest in peace, I would surrender every last shred of my dignity. I bent my knees and sank to the ground. I leaned forward and pressed my forehead against the sharp stones. Once. Twice. Three times. The stones cut into my skin, and the pain in my abdomen flared so intensely that my vision went black at the edges. Above me, I heard the faint click of a camera. Naomi had pulled out her phone, recording my bloody, desperate humilation. Within minutes, she had uploaded the video online with a caption: Ungrateful granddaughter tries to steal family estate, attacks the rightful heir, and holds grandmother’s ashes hostage. The internet did the rest. Within twenty minutes, the video went viral. A crowd of neighbors and passersby, fueled by self-righteous fury, began gathering outside the gate. They pushed into the yard, shouting insults, throwing trash, and pulling at my clothes. “Heartless bitch!” someone yelled, throwing a plastic bottle that struck my shoulder. “You don’t deserve to live!” Through the chaos, I saw Davis standing on the porch, his arm wrapped tightly around Naomi, keeping her safe from the crowd. Naomi snuggled closer to him, a small, satisfied smirk playing on her lips before she looked up at him with faux concern. “Davis, do you think she’ll hate me?” Davis’s face remained impassive. “She’s too stubborn. If she doesn’t learn her lesson today, she’ll never learn to respect you.” I lay in the dirt, the pain in my abdomen screaming, my forehead bleeding, my body covered in bruises. The world was slipping away. I was suffocating under the weight of their cruelty. Just as my eyes began to close, a shadow fell over me. The crowd’s shouting suddenly died down, replaced by a tense, heavy silence. A pair of strong arms slipped under my knees and back, lifting me effortlessly from the cold ground. A deep, commanding voice cut through the silence, vibrating with a terrifying, quiet rage. “You want to die for touching what’s mine?”

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “455114”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

It took me three years of bleeding in front of a screen to take the company’s account from zero to ten million followers. My boss’s response was to look me in the eye and slash my revenue cut from ten percent to point-one percent. “We’re reallocating the funds to buy trending pushes for Kenzie,” he told me. “You’re the brains behind the scenes. You know how this industry works. It’s time to pass the torch.” Kenzie leaned against his shoulder, her lip gloss catching the light. “Don’t be mad, babe. Honestly, at your age, you’d be lucky to get a job bagging groceries.” Three months ago, she was the receptionist. I was the one who held her hand and taught her how to structure a hook, how to edit to the beat of trending audio, how to manipulate an audience’s emotions in sixty seconds. Now, she was wearing a designer dress I couldn’t afford, using the exact corporate buzzwords I taught her to laugh in my face. I didn’t say a word. I just turned around, walked back to my desk, and opened the creator dashboard. One thousand, two hundred videos. Select All. Delete. 1 “Talia, have a seat.” Derek slid a manila folder across the polished oak of his desk, tapping the cover with his index finger. “Take a look at the compensation adjustments for this quarter.” I flipped it open. Page one. My name. Revenue share: 10% → 0.1%. I stared at the ink for five dead, silent seconds. “Derek, is this a typo?” He leaned back in his leather executive chair, crossing his legs with the casual grace of a man who held all the cards. He gave a breezy little laugh. “No typo.” “The company is pivoting to push Kenzie as the main face. She’s young. The demographic responds to her aesthetic. Her metrics are spiking faster.” My fingers gripped the edge of the folder. The paper dug into my skin, my knuckles turning bone-white. “I built this account from a dead URL to ten million followers.” “Three years,” I said, my voice dangerously level. “Twelve hundred videos. Pitching, scripting, lighting, shooting, editing—every single frame was me.” Derek waved his hand, swatting away my labor like a gnat. “I’m not denying your contribution, Talia. But the market shifts. That deep-dive lifestyle content you do? Engagement dropped fifteen percent last month.” “Because you slashed my production budget to zero!” “Budget has to go where the ROI is.” The look in his eyes shifted then. He wasn’t looking at a founding partner. He was looking at a power tool that had worn out its motor. “Look, Talia, you’re thirty-two. You don’t have Kenzie’s camera presence. The comment sections are begging for her. This whole influencer game has a shelf life, and you know it better than anyone.” He picked up a gold-plated pen and circled the 0.1% at the bottom of the page. “The margins we save on you are going straight into Kenzie’s promotional pushes. You’re our behind-the-scenes hero. You need to know when to step aside for the greater good of the brand.” I didn’t speak. He took my silence for submission. “You’ve got a year left on your contract,” he continued, his tone softening into faux-paternalism. “Just ride it out comfortably. Put your head down, do the back-end work, and when the time comes, I’ll write you a glowing letter of rec—” The heavy glass door swung open. Kenzie strutted in, balancing on four-inch Louboutins, holding an iced Americano. “Your coffee, Derek~” She placed the cup perfectly by his right hand, her manicured fingertips grazing the back of his knuckles. It was a fraction of a second. But I saw it. She turned to look at me, her eyes curving into perfect, innocent crescents. “Oh, Talia, don’t look so down! Derek is really looking out for you. Being behind the camera is so much less pressure.” She shifted her weight, leaning just a fraction closer to Derek’s personal space. “Besides, let’s be real. At your age, it’s not like the job market is exactly begging for you, right? You’d probably end up bagging groceries or—” “Kenzie,” Derek murmured softly. But the corner of his mouth was twitching upward. He wasn’t stopping her. He was enjoying the show. Kenzie covered her mouth, stifling a giggle. “Oh my god, I’m totally kidding. Don’t take it to heart, babe.” I looked at her. Three months ago, on her first day, she didn’t even know how to import footage into Premiere Pro. I was the one who sat beside her, teaching her the hotkeys. I gave her my proprietary script templates. I showed her how to use the exact BPM of a track to trigger a dopamine hit in the viewer. Just last week, I’d checked the backend analytics. The “viral” pitch Kenzie had presented to Derek—The Solo Girl’s Sanctuary: 100 Habits—was line-for-line Idea #37 from the master content vault I had built three months prior. She used to stand behind my chair while I typed them out. I thought she was taking notes. She was just taking. She took it, pitched it to Derek, and he praised her for it. “This feels so fresh, Kenzie. Way better than the stale stuff Talia’s been pushing.” I hadn’t said anything then. Looking back, the rot had started long before today. “Hello? Earth to Talia?” Kenzie waved a hand in front of my face. “Zoning out much?” I pulled my gaze away from her and locked eyes with my boss. “Derek,” I said, my voice stripped of all emotion. “I will ask you one last time. Is this compensation structure final?” He took a slow sip of his Americano. “It is.” Kenzie chimed in, “You know what they say, babe. The smart ones know when to adapt.” “Okay.” I stood up. “Then let me show you what adapting looks like.” 2 I walked out of his office and back to my desk in the bullpen. The dozen or so people in the open-plan office were all aggressively staring at their monitors, pretending they hadn’t heard a thing. But the air was thick with their sideways glances. I sat down. I woke up my iMac. I typed in the master password for the creator dashboard. The main page of Curated Living loaded. Ten million followers. The profile picture? I took it. The bio? I wrote it. Below that, a grid of one thousand, two hundred video thumbnails stretched endlessly down the screen. I knew the anatomy of every single thumbnail. Video #1: Filmed in my cramped studio apartment with my iPhone. It was raining that afternoon, the natural light was garbage, and I used a $15 ring light from Amazon to illuminate my face. I recorded it seventeen times. It got three views. Video #100: Finished rendering at 4:00 AM. My hands were physically shaking when I hit ‘Publish’. That was the video that went viral. We gained half a million followers in forty-eight hours. Derek texted me: “Great work. Get us to five mil and we’ll talk equity.” We hit five million. The equity never materialized. Video #800: A summer outdoor shoot. It was a hundred and five degrees on the pavement. I was carrying the tripod, the Sony rig, and the mics by myself. I threw up twice from heat exhaustion, went home, and edited until 3:00 AM. By Video #1000, the account crossed eight million. Derek took the entire office out for an omakase dinner to celebrate. Everyone except me. “Talia’s deep in the edit,” he had told them. “Let’s not break her flow.” I ate a cup of instant ramen at this exact desk. Twelve hundred videos. Behind every single one was a graveyard of 3:00 AMs, cold sweats, fevers, and the solitary weight of hauling camera gear through hundreds of miles of city blocks. I moved the cursor to the ‘Creator Tools’ tab. Clicked. ‘Content Management.’ Select All. Twelve hundred checkboxes turned blue simultaneously. A warning dialogue box violently popped up on the screen: Are you sure you want to delete all selected content? This action is permanent and cannot be undone. My hand hovered over the mouse. It wasn’t hesitation. It was grief. These pixels were my lifeblood. Three years of my actual life, given form. But they were trapped in a shell that didn’t belong to me anymore. When we launched the page, the company was nothing but a disorganized startup. The account was registered under my personal phone number, my personal Social Security number. Derek always said we needed to sit down and transfer the ownership to the LLC. He just kept “forgetting.” Actually, he didn’t forget. He just didn’t think it mattered. He looked at me—a thirty-two-year-old woman with bills to pay and family relying on her—and thought I was tethered to this desk forever. He thought I was nothing without the platform he graciously allowed me to build. He really thought that. I took a breath. A deep, lung-expanding breath. And I clicked Confirm Delete. A shriek shattered the quiet of the bullpen. “SHE’S DELETING THE VIDEOS!!” I hadn’t even heard Kenzie creep up behind me. Her voice was shrill enough to crack the glass partitions. Chairs screeched as the entire office stood up. Derek’s door flew open. He bolted out. “What the hell is going on?!” Kenzie pointed a manicured finger at my monitor, the blood draining entirely from her face. “She deleted them! All of them! Over a thousand videos! They’re gone!” Derek crossed the room in three massive strides. He hit my desk just in time to see the progress bar. Deleting… 87%… 92%… “Talia! Are you out of your fucking mind?!” He lunged over my shoulder, clawing for my mouse. I slammed my hand over his wrist, my grip like a vice, and shoved his arm back. “Do not touch my machine.” “Do you have any idea what you’re doing?! Do you know how much capital is tied up in those videos?! The brand deals! The ad roll-outs! We have three massive sponsored posts going live next week!” The progress bar hit 100%. Deletion Complete. One thousand, two hundred videos. Vaporized. The grid vanished. There was nothing left but a barren white screen. A ghost account with ten million followers, staring into a void. 3 Derek’s hands were violently trembling. He stared at the blank profile, the color draining from his face until he looked like a corpse in a tailored suit. “Do you… do you even comprehend that the three-hundred-thousand-dollar campaign with Lumina Beauty drops on Tuesday?” he choked out, his voice cracking. “The contracts are signed. The advance is in the bank. Where is the deliverable? It’s gone!” “Do you know we have Aura, Vesper, Blanc—half a dozen premium brands lined up? You can’t fulfill a single one! Do you know what the breach-of-contract penalties will do to us?!” I calmly stood up and slung my tote bag over my shoulder. “Derek, these sound like fantastic questions for Kenzie.” Kenzie had practically collapsed into a rolling chair, her lips trembling so hard she couldn’t form a syllable. “Didn’t you just tell me her metrics are spiking?” I asked, keeping my voice soft, clinical. “Didn’t you say she was the future of the brand?” “So let her handle it.” “Let her script it, let her shoot it, let her carry the brand deals. You’ve got ten million followers waiting for her.” Derek’s mouth opened and closed like a suffocating fish. Finally, he found his voice. “That account is company property! You had no legal right to nuke our assets! I will bury you in court!” “Do it.” I pulled my iPhone out of my pocket and tapped the screen. “The two-factor authentication? My phone number. The tax ID? My SSN. I dare you to find a single piece of paper in your filing cabinets that proves the LLC owns this IP.” He froze. Three years. For three years he had meant to change the admin rights. And he never did, because he thought I was a loyal, aging dog who would never bite the hand that fed her scraps. “Talia!” His tone violently shifted. The rage dissolved, replaced by a raw, naked terror. “Don’t do this. Let’s not be impulsive. Sit down. We can talk about the revenue split! I’ll amend it! Ten percent—no, fifteen! Just sit down!” “Thirty seconds ago, you said it was final.” “I was wrong, okay?!” I turned my back to him and started walking toward the exit. As I reached the glass doors, I stopped and looked back at the bullpen. A dozen coworkers stood frozen by their desks like mannequins in a department store. Nobody moved. Nobody spoke. In three years, none of them had ever spoken up for me, either. I locked eyes with Derek one last time. “Remember what this room looks like right now, Derek.” “A ten-million-follower account is a body, but the content is the heartbeat. You tried to rip the heart out, and all you’re left with is a rotting carcass.” “So you go take that carcass to Kenzie, and you pray she knows how to perform a transplant.” “If she even knows how to hold the scalpel.” I pushed open the door and walked out. Behind me, I heard the crash of Derek throwing something against the wall, followed by the muffled sound of Kenzie sobbing. The moment the elevator doors slid shut, I collapsed against the steel wall. My legs were shaking. It wasn’t out of fear. It was the realization that three years of my life were truly, irreversibly gone. It felt like I had just taken a knife and hacked off my own arm. But that arm had been attached to a body that was poisoning me. It was never truly mine to keep. So be it. I knew how to grow a new one. 4 I walked out of the office lobby and stood on the sidewalk for ten full minutes. I didn’t call an Uber. I didn’t start walking toward the subway. I just stood there, letting the city noise wash over me. When the wind hit my face, I suddenly felt incredibly, impossibly light. A profound lack of gravity. I hadn’t felt this way in thirty-six months. Then, my phone started buzzing violently. The industry group chats were detonating. “What the hell is going on with Curated Living? The entire grid is wiped?” “Our campaign is supposed to run on that page next week!” “The PR reps are screaming in the brand chat—” “Who did it?” “Rumor is the creative director behind it went rogue and nuked the whole thing.” “Holy shit. Legend.” I swiped the notifications away, hailed a cab, and went straight to my apartment. Once home, I took a scalding hot shower. I put on my favorite oversized sweatpants, made a cup of tea, and sat down at my desk. I plugged in my external hard drive. Three years of raw footage. Every single master script, the entire B-roll library, my proprietary hook-formulas, my lighting diagrams—it was all there. I didn’t steal this on my way out. I’ve backed up my files every single night since day one. Not because I was paranoid or plotting a coup. But because this wasn’t just “content” to me. It was my craft. I opened the app and created a new account. I didn’t use a clever brand name. I just used my name: Talia. For the bio, I typed one sentence: Spent three years building a 10M empire behind the lens. Now, I’m stepping in front of it. Then, I recorded my first video. I didn’t set up the Sony rig. I didn’t bother with a mic. I just propped my iPhone against a coffee mug on my desk and hit record. For three minutes, I just talked. I talked about grinding in the content machine for three years, single-handedly carrying the creative weight of a massive platform. I talked about the algorithms I cracked, the burn-out I survived, the exact psychology of pacing a video to retain viewer attention. I never mentioned Derek. I didn’t name the company. I just spoke with the quiet, lethal authority of a woman who knows exactly what she is talking about. I hit publish, turned my phone on ‘Do Not Disturb’, and fell into bed. For the first time in three years, I went to sleep before midnight. When I woke up the next morning, I had seventy-three unread text messages. The first was from Joanna, the VP of Marketing at Lumina Beauty. “Talia, I heard you walked. Technically our contract is with the LLC, but between you and me? We only signed because of you. Without your creative direction, we’ve already sent their legal team a cease and desist. When the dust settles, let me take you to lunch. I have a new rollout I want you leading.” The second was from Mark, my main equipment and studio supplier. “Hey T. Derek sent that girl Kenzie to deal with me this morning. She practically demanded our floor-bottom wholesale rate right out of the gate. I told her that rate was a favor to you, and asked who the hell she was. She hung up on me. Total amateur hour. If Derek thinks she’s taking your place, he’s out of his mind.” The third was from Josh, the junior editor who sat two desks down from me. “Talia, I put in my two weeks today. Derek is literally having a meltdown, smashing keyboards. Kenzie has been crying in the bathroom for an hour. The phones are ringing off the hook from sponsors and no one knows how to put out the fires. If you’re starting your own thing… please take me with you.” I read the texts, walked into the kitchen, and put some water on to boil for oatmeal. While I was stirring the pot, I opened the app to check my new account. My raw, unedited desk video? One hundred and twenty thousand views. The top comment, pinned by the algorithm: “Wait… is she the mastermind behind Curated Living?!” The replies underneath it were a landslide. “Omg that makes sense why all their videos just disappeared!” “Wait, she did all that by herself??” “Followed instantly. I’m only here for her anyway.” I locked the screen and took a bite of my breakfast. There was no rush. 5 By day three, my personal account hit one million followers. On that exact same day, Derek received his first formal lawsuit. It was from Lumina Beauty. The contract was for $300,000, explicitly guaranteeing specific deliverable dates and engagement thresholds. With an empty account, he had nothing to submit. They demanded a full refund of the advance, plus penalty fees. Total damages: $600,000. Then came the second letter. Then the third. Within a week, six major brands filed against him. The total combined damages exceeded four million dollars. I had negotiated every single one of those deals. The brands didn’t care about a shell company called ‘Curated Living.’ They cared about my eye, my conversion rates, my integrity. Derek started calling me like a manic ex-boyfriend. Thirty missed calls a day. I let every single one ring out into the void. On the fourth day, he tried calling from Kenzie’s number. I picked up. “Hello?” “Talia!” It was Kenzie. Her voice was completely unrecognizable. Gone was the saccharine, vocal-fry arrogance from the office. She sounded choked, thick with tears and panic. “Derek said you took all the brand contact sheets! And the suppliers won’t even reply to my emails—can you… please, can you just send over the handover documents?” “Kenzie, what was it you told me the other day?” Dead silence on the other end. “You said at my age, I’d be lucky to get a job bagging groceries.” “I—I was just joking…” “The handover documents are in my head, Kenzie. I can’t email them. Why don’t you ask Derek if he has them in his?” “Talia, please—” I hung up. On the fifth day, Derek was waiting by the security gate of my apartment complex. When I stepped out of my Uber, I genuinely almost didn’t recognize him. He was unshaven, his eyes sunken into dark, bruised hollows. His expensive dress shirt was wrinkled, like he’d been sleeping in his office chair. The man who had casually crossed his legs and told me to ‘step aside’ just five days ago was now leaning heavily against a concrete pillar, his posture completely broken. “Talia.” His voice was a rasp. “I can’t fix the brand deals. They won’t talk to me. You have to call them. Tell them it’s a misunderstanding, ask them to waive the breach penalties.” “They know you. They’ll listen to you.” I stopped a few feet away, clutching my iced coffee, just looking at him. “Derek, five days ago you sat in your plush office and told me the 0.1% was final.” “I’ll give you twenty percent now! Thirty percent! Just come back to the office!” “You told me I was aging out. You told me I couldn’t compete with Kenzie.” He ground his teeth together, the veins in his neck bulging against his collar. “I was wrong, okay?! I made a mistake! Just come back, name your terms, write your own contract.”

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My best friend was in a frantic rush to get out of town for some corporate retreat, and right before she bolted, she dumped her six-year-old kid—whom she’d had with a serpent shifter—on my doorstep. It just so happened to coincide with a brutal hundred-degree heatwave and a massive power outage. I was practically panting like a dog, sweat dripping down my neck. But then I looked at the little guy standing next to me. He was practically radiating cold air, blinking those huge, innocent eyes. I couldn’t help myself. I leaned down and pinched his chubby cheeks. “Tony, sweetie, your auntie is about to melt into a puddle. Can you cool me down a little?” The kid looked absolutely shocked. But then, with a soft poof, he shifted into his true form. A chubby, snowy-white, blissfully chilly little snake, coiling himself obediently around the crook of my neck. I thought I’d just hit the jackpot—the ultimate, free, portable AC unit. But before I could even fully enjoy the bliss, a few glowing, translucent lines of text suddenly flashed across my vision: [Oh my god! Is she insane? She’s literally cooling off in the waiting room of Hell!] [Does she seriously think that’s just a cute little garden snake? That is the nephew of the pureblood Frost Dragon King!] [She’s dead. She’s so dead. The Alpha Frost Dragon is arriving in exactly three seconds. Run, girl, run!] My breath caught in my throat. Before I could even untangle the “AC unit” from around my neck… The locked front door was blown entirely off its hinges by a terrifying, concussive force. But before the intruder could even take a step or unleash his wrath, the little “white snake” around my neck bristled in pure outrage. Two tiny, pure-white dragon horns sprouted from his head, and he let out a fiercely defensive, high-pitched squeak: “You let all the hot air in! I worked so hard to get Auntie cool!!” ······ 1 The weather this year was downright demonic. We were on our seventh straight day of triple-digit heat warnings. Outside, the asphalt was so hot you could have fried a strip of pork belly directly on the sidewalk. I was sprawled out on my living room floor, praying my ancient, rattling window unit AC would hold out long enough to keep me alive. Suddenly, my front door was pounded so hard it shook the drywall. I pulled it open to find my best friend, Sabrina, drenched in sweat. She shoved a massive suitcase through the threshold, dragging a neat, pale little boy by the hand. Her words tumbled out like rapid-fire artillery. “Peggy! You’re my savior! I will literally owe you my life!” “Corporate just called. I’m being sent to a mandatory, locked-down, off-site training retreat. My train leaves in twenty minutes and if I miss it, I’m fired.” “Please watch Tony for a few days!” I stared blankly at the kid. He looked about six, dressed in a ridiculously sharp little suit. Sabrina was always a bit of a chaotic storm. I knew she’d married a serpent shifter, but I had no idea their kid was already this big! Before I could ask a single question, she was already sprinting backward toward the elevator like her pants were on fire. “He’s… complicated! His father’s family is incredibly strict and controlling!” “He snuck out to visit me for a few days—whatever you do, do not let them find out he’s with you!” With that incredibly vague, terrifying warning, the elevator doors slid shut. I turned around. The little boy and I stood in the entryway, staring at each other. The brutal heat from the hallway leaked through the crack of the door, but… it was the strangest thing. This kid had just walked in from a hundred-degree inferno, yet there wasn’t a single bead of sweat on his forehead. In fact, I could feel a faint, cool aura radiating from him, like standing in front of an open freezer. “Hi, Auntie.” His voice was soft, clear, and oddly solemn. He was beautiful—like a porcelain doll. But his eyes—an incredibly rare, pale silver with sharp, slit-like vertical pupils—watched me with a wariness that didn’t belong on a six-year-old’s face. His tiny hands gripped his shirt hem so tightly his knuckles turned white. He took a small step backward, as if expecting me to reject him. I couldn’t help but laugh. I reached out and grabbed his tiny hand. Oh my god, the sensation. It was like pressing your palm against a block of rare, polished jade pulled straight from an ice bath in the dead of July. Pure, blissful, deep-chill perfection. “Tony, right? Come on in. It’s way too hot out there. Let’s get you some ice-cold watermelon!” I pulled him into the living room. He seemed entirely unprepared for a human this aggressively welcoming; his small body went rigid, and a soft, rosy flush crept up his pale ears. “…Okay,” he murmured. After rolling his suitcase into the guest room, I finally had a moment to look at him. The kid had movie-star genetics. He sat on my thrifted sofa with the posture of a little prince, and honestly, my dying window AC suddenly felt redundant. Within a two-foot radius around him, the air was crisp and perfect. “What do you usually eat?” I asked, pulling out my phone to order delivery. Tony held the spoon I’d handed him, sitting perfectly upright. “I’m not picky. Raw meat or ice cubes are fine.” My thumb froze over the screen. Raw meat? Ice cubes? Alright, shifter biology could be pretty hardcore, I knew that. But my apartment wasn’t some Neanderthal cave. I quickly opened a grocery delivery app. “No raw meat, buddy. Parasites. How about some fresh salmon sashimi, some sweet chilled scallops, and cold noodles? Sound good?” Tony blinked, his silver eyes shimmering with slight surprise. Clearly, nobody usually consulted him on dinner. He nodded softly. “Yes, please.” 2 For the next two days, Tony was an absolute angel. No crying, no tantrums, no messes. He ate on schedule, slept on schedule, and even took his own baths—though he took them exclusively in ice-cold water, leaving the bathroom smelling like a winter morning. On the third afternoon, I was curled up on the sofa with my laptop, frantically hammering out a freelance writing deadline. Suddenly, a heavy, rhythmic thudding echoed from the hallway. It wasn’t just one person. It was the synchronized, light-footed march of trained men. Definitely not my neighbors. Then, a violent, demanding knock shook my front door. Bang! Bang! Bang! “Who is it?” I called out, peeking through the peephole. Standing in the corridor were three burly men in tailored black suits and dark sunglasses, radiating pure, lethal menace. The leader had faint, iridescent scales tracing the back of his hand. I kept the deadbolt locked and asked coldly, “Can I help you?” The leader’s voice was a low, commanding rasp. “Open the door. Hand over the young master.” My stomach plummeted. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. You have the wrong apartment.” “Don’t play games, human,” the man snarled. A suffocating pressure—the heavy, instinctual aura of a powerful predator—seeped through the wood of the door. “I can smell him.” “Kidnapping the heir of our house is a death sentence. Open up now, and we might leave you in one piece.” Kidnapping?! I let out a sharp, angry laugh. These thugs had the audacity to break into a residential building and accuse me of kidnapping? “Kidnapping my ass!” I snapped, throwing the heavy deadbolts into place and grabbing the high-voltage taser I kept by the door. “I’m watching him for my best friend! Who the hell are you to roll up to a civilian apartment acting like you own the place?” “If you don’t back away from my door in three seconds, I’m calling the Shifter Registry Board. Let’s see how they handle rogue enforcers threatening humans in broad daylight!” The men outside clearly hadn’t expected a human woman to have this much backbone. The leader rattled the doorknob, finding it completely sealed. One of his subordinates leaned in, whispering, “Sir, there are cameras all over this hallway. If we breach the door and the human SWAT shows up, it’s going to be a PR nightmare. We can’t explain that to the boss.” “Now that we’ve confirmed the boy is here, we should report back first.” The leader growled, pressing his face close to the wood. “You got lucky today, human. Sleep with one eye open.” Their heavy footsteps quickly faded down the hall. A cold sweat broke out across my back. I leaned against the door, listening intently until I was absolutely sure they were gone. Only then did I let out a shaky breath and turn around. Tony was standing in the doorway of the guest room. His silver slit-pupils were fixed on the door, his tiny fists clenched so hard his arms trembled. The air around him was so cold I could see my own breath. “Auntie…” he whispered, his voice trembling with a complex mix of fear and guilt. “Aren’t you scared? They came to drag me back.” I walked over and gently ruffled his icy hair. It felt like soft silk kept in a refrigerator. “Of course I’m scared,” I admitted honestly. “My knees are practically shaking.” I gave him a reassuring smile. “But they’re not taking you from me. Your mom trusted me with you, and I don’t break my word.” Tony stared at me, his eyes wide. Then, slowly, he leaned his head forward and rubbed his cool cheek against my palm, murmuring, “Thank you, Auntie.” “One day, I’ll protect you, too.” 3 After that night, Tony and I became inseparable. The kid was just incredibly starved for affection and safety; once his walls came down, he was sweeter than sugar. But on the third afternoon, the universe decided to test me. It was 2:00 PM—the absolute peak of the heatwave. The sun was a blinding, white-hot laser beam beating down on the city. Then, a dull clunk echoed from the kitchen. My laptop screen went black. The window AC clattered to a halt. The comforting hum of the refrigerator died. A blackout. I cracked the window open, and within seconds, the neighborhood group chat on my phone was blowing up. A major substation transformer had literally exploded under the power demand. Repairs would take at least five to six hours. No AC in a hundred-degree weather. I was going to die. In less than twenty minutes, the apartment became a stifling, ninety-five-degree sauna. Sweat poured down my neck, plastering my t-shirt to my skin. I collapsed onto the sofa, panting like a stranded fish. Just as I was about to pass out, Tony walked out of his room. He was still wearing long sleeves and pants, completely dry, with a visible, misty white frost rolling off his shoulders. The moment he stepped close, the temperature around the couch dropped by at least ten degrees. I rolled my head over like a dying zombie, staring at my personal, beautiful little cooling unit. A wild, desperate idea took root in my brain. He stood there, radiating pure frosty bliss, blinking those huge, silver eyes. I swallowed hard and reached out, pinching his soft cheek. “Tony, sweetie… Auntie is literally about to evaporate. Can you… cool me down a bit?” Tony froze. His silver pupils dilated in pure, unadulterated shock, as if I’d just asked him to commit high treason. “But… but my true form is weird,” he stammered, blushing blushing. “It’ll scare you.” “Don’t be silly! Baby snakes are adorable! Smooth and chilly! Please, Tony, saving a life is a holy act. I’m literally going to cook in here!” I put my hands together, begging him with the most pathetic, heat-stroked eyes I could muster. Tony bit his lip. He looked at me, likely remembering how I’d stood up to those scary men for him, and finally capitulated. “Okay… just, don’t scream.” With a soft poof, the beautiful little boy vanished. In his place on the sofa lay a plump, snowy-white, incredibly chubby little snake. 4 “Oh my god! Look at you! You’re gorgeous!” My eyes lit up. I scooped up the chilly little serpent and draped him right over my collarbones, wrapping him around my neck. The freezing temperature pressed against my carotid artery, instantly sending a wave of absolute, heavenly relief straight to my brain. I let out a long, blissful groan and sank back into the cushions. “Tony, you are literally my savior. This is heaven.” The little white snake let out a tiny, resigned flick of his tongue. He was stiff at first, but slowly, he relaxed, coiling himself comfortably around my neck, even shifting his weight slightly so he wouldn’t press too hard on my throat. With my exclusive, organic, limited-edition AC unit secured, I spent the afternoon in absolute comfort. I ate semi-melted chilled grapes and scrolled through offline novels on my phone. The little snake lay perfectly still, enjoying the quiet. But then, a strange glitch occurred. A series of glowing, semi-transparent text lines—looking exactly like a live stream chat—began scrolling across my field of vision. [Oh my god! Is this girl suicidal? She’s literally chilling in the jaw of death!] I rubbed my eyes. Great. I was finally hallucinating from the heat. But the comments kept cascading down like a digital waterfall. [LMAO! She actually thinks that’s just a cute little garden snake?] [Look closer, girl! That’s a pureblood Frost Dragon! The actual royal bloodline of the northern shifters!] [Oh, she’s so dead. Dorian Hale, the Alpha of the Frost Dragons, has the worst temper in the entire supernatural underworld.] [He’s been tearing the city apart looking for his runaway nephew. He’s going to turn her into an ice sculpture and shatter her into a million pieces!] [High alert! The Alpha is literally three seconds away. RUN, SISTER, RUN! Or your ashes are going to be swept into a dustpan!] The smile froze on my face. Frost Dragon? The Alpha’s nephew?! I looked down, my body stiffening. The “little white snake” around my neck was currently blowing a tiny, sleepy spit bubble. Suddenly, the enforcer’s words from earlier clicked in my brain: “Kidnapping the young master is a death sentence.” He wasn’t some ordinary serpent shifter’s kid. He was the runaway royalty of the most terrifying, lethal shifter clan on the planet. A cold dread gripped my chest. Before I could even reach up to untangle the “AC unit” from my neck… The front door was blown off its hinges with a deafening crash! Boom! The heavy steel-reinforced door slammed onto the hardwood floor, sending up a cloud of plaster dust. Standing in the threshold was a tall, imposing man radiating an aura of absolute death. Silhouetted against the dim hallway light, his silver slit-eyes burned with a promise of utter destruction. But before he could even take a step or make a threat, the little white snake around my neck bolted awake. He bristled, two tiny, pearlescent dragon horns popping out of his head, and shrieked in pure, childish outrage: “You let all the hot air in! I worked so hard to get Auntie cool!!”

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1 On our fifth wedding anniversary, my husband abandoned me on a rain-drenched street corner in the middle of a torrential downpour. He had more important things to do, like watching the anniversary fireworks with his first love. When I called to confront him, his voice carried nothing but cold irritation. Instead of an apology, he sent me a link to a ninety-nine-cent trial service. “Glinda, get a grip on reality,” his text read. “If my parents hadn’t insisted on marrying a quiet, easily managed doormat, do you honestly think a girl with a fishmonger father would ever set foot in the Goldblum estate?” “If you’re so lonely, here is a ninety-nine-cent virtual boyfriend. You can talk to him all month.” “I bought this to keep you entertained. Next time you want to cry, do it to him. Stop ruining my night with Gemma!” Behind the screen, I could picture his sneer, discarding me like a stray dog begging for scraps. But I didn’t cry. I didn’t scream. I just quietly tapped the link. After adding the contact on the app, I typed with numb fingers: “What does a ninety-nine-cent monthly subscription actually get me?” I expected automated sympathy or cheap platitudes. Instead, the reply came instantly, presenting a stark, ice-cold menu: [99¢ Premium Service Package (Promo Code: First Month Free)] [1. Assist client in liquidating and transferring illicit pre-marital assets, ensuring the cheating husband is left penniless.] [2. Systematically dismantle the mistress’s reputation, leaving her completely blacklisted in high society.] [3. Provide a secure offshore tax haven to guarantee your legal claim to the entire Goldblum fortune.] “Who… who are you?” The freezing wind bit into my cheeks, but my eyes remained glued to the screen. My fingers trembled over the keypad. A random virtual chatbot found on a discount app? How could he make such absurd promises of destroying the city’s newest tech tycoon and transferring Goldblum assets? The other side didn’t answer. Three seconds later, an image popped up. It was a high-resolution wire transfer slip. A transaction from two weeks ago, routed through an offshore account. The sender was my husband, Garrick Goldblum. The recipient was an offshore real estate agency. The memo line read: [Gift for my beloved wife, Gemma Lin. Final payment for the Malibu Cove Villa.] “Beloved wife.” A dry laugh escaped my throat. I had given up my graduate studies for this man. I had lived on instant ramen for a year, pulling all-nighters to sketch designs that secured his company’s first investments. Now that Goldblum Holdings was a multi-million-dollar empire, he was using our hard-earned money to buy a beachside estate for his childhood sweetheart, calling her his “beloved wife.” The cold numbers on the screen woke me up from a five-year dream. [Take your time to think. Do not act rashly until you have established your leverage.] That was the last message. The chat fell silent. I didn’t reply. I simply turned around and walked back to the mansion that supposedly belonged to Garrick and me. The next morning. The click of the electronic lock echoed from downstairs. Garrick walked in, his designer jacket draped over Gemma’s shoulders. She was clinging to his arm, looking fragile and small. When she spotted me sitting on the living room sofa, she shrank back with practiced vulnerability. “Garrick… is Glinda mad at me? I’m so sorry. The fireworks last night were just so beautiful, and I got a bit tipsy. I didn’t mean to drag you away from her…” “Why would she be mad? She doesn’t have the right to be,” Garrick cut her off, walking over to the sofa. He looked down at me, his voice sharp with command. “Glinda, Gemma is pregnant. The doctor said she’s extremely delicate and needs absolute peace. The master bedroom gets the best sunlight, so pack up your things today. You’ll be moving to the maid’s quarters on the first floor.” I gripped the armrest of the sofa. Pregnant? He truly didn’t care about appearances anymore. If this had been yesterday, I would have thrown a tantrum, smashing the glass on the coffee table. But now, all I could see was the eighty-million-dollar wire transfer. I stood up. “Fine. I’ll move.” Garrick blinked, visibly caught off guard. A flicker of irritation crossed his face. “What kind of mind game is this?” he sneered. “Don’t think playing the quiet victim will make me feel guilty. Glinda, remember who you are. Without me, a fishmonger’s daughter is nothing in this city. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll make sure Gemma is comfortable!” I ignored him and walked into the master bedroom. I pulled out my suitcases and packed my clothes, books, and our wedding memorabilia. No tears. No drama. While they were downstairs eating breakfast, I pulled out a micro-camera I had bought at a convenience store the night before. Stepping onto a chair, I carefully hid it inside the smoke detector on the ceiling. I linked it to my phone, securing the live feed in an encrypted cloud drive. [Camera is live,] I texted the mysterious number. The response was prompt: [Patience. Let them expose themselves. Gather every piece of evidence showing him stripping marital assets. Remember, a hunter must play dead before drawing the net.] I locked my phone and dragged my bags down to the tiny service room. On the nightstand lay my hand-drawn drafts for Goldblum Holdings’ upcoming product line. I stared at them for a second, then tossed them straight into the trash. From this moment on, the Glinda who loved Garrick was dead. 2 On my third day in the service room, Garrick’s mother, Eleanor, arrived. She immediately pinched her nose as she entered the house. “Eleanor, what a lovely surprise! Please, sit down,” Gemma chimed, scurrying over with a freshly sliced fruit platter. “Oh, my sweet girl, don’t strain yourself!” Eleanor fussed, guiding Gemma to the sofa before turning a glaring eye toward me as I poured water in the corner. “Some useless hens can’t even lay an egg, yet they expect my pregnant daughter-in-law to wait on them?” “Glinda, is this how your dirty fishmonger father raised you? Dirt remains dirt, no matter how much gold you wrap it in!” I squeezed the glass in my hand, staring back calmly. “I’m finalizing the blueprints for next week’s corporate bid. I don’t have time for this.” “Oh, Eleanor, don’t be angry with Glinda,” Gemma sighed, rubbing her eyes with mock sadness. “She stays up all night drawing. It’s so hard on her. I just wanted to help look at her sketches, but I must have clumsy hands…” The front door swung open, and Garrick stepped inside. Seeing Gemma’s teary eyes, he rushed over and pulled her into his arms. “What happened? Who upset you?” “No one… I was just being careless…” Gemma sniffled against his chest. Eleanor scoffed. “Who else could it be but that ungrateful stray you took in? Gemma was only trying to help, and she gets treated like garbage!” “Garrick, I’m telling you right now, Goldblum’s reputation cannot be dragged down by a low-class street rat. Take her cards and car keys. Every single one.” Garrick frowned, walking over to me with an outstretched palm. “Hand them over.” That included the joint account card he had given me on our wedding day, which actually held my salary from working at his company. I pulled the card and the car keys from my pocket and tossed them onto the table. Garrick’s gaze drifted to the glowing computer monitor behind me. It showed the core design sketches I had spent three months perfecting for the upcoming international luxury bid. “Not bad,” Garrick muttered, turning to Gemma. “Gemma, aren’t you attending the anniversary gala as our chief designer next week? This is perfect. We’ll put your name on these blueprints. It’ll give you the perfect spotlight in front of the board.” I looked up, my eyes locking onto his. I had tolerated the financial abuse and the humiliation of moving into the service room, but now he wanted to steal three months of my sweat and blood to prop up his mistress? “That is my design!” I lunged for the computer to pull the external hard drive. “Garrick, don’t you dare!” “Get off!” Garrick shoved me back hard. I lost my balance, my forehead striking the sharp corner of the desk. A sharp sting followed, and warm blood began to trickle down my face, dripping onto the hardwood floor. I held my bleeding forehead, staring at him. Garrick flinched slightly at the sight of the blood, taking a half-step back, but he quickly recovered his cold composure. “Glinda, let’s get one thing straight. Everything you eat, drink, and wear comes from my pocket. Even your miserable life is funded by me!” “You work in my company, using my resources. Anything you draw belongs to Goldblum Holdings. Consider it paid for. Don’t push your luck.” With a swift yank, he pulled the USB drive from the port, wrapped his arm around Gemma’s waist, and headed for the door. “Come on, Gemma. Let’s go pick out your gown for the gala. We shouldn’t let this mess ruin our day.” Over Garrick’s shoulder, Gemma looked back at me, her lips curling into a triumphant smirk. The house fell dead silent. I leaned against the wall, letting the blood drip slow and heavy onto the floor. My phone buzzed in my pocket. It was the mystery contact: [Does it hurt?] [Let them steal it. It’s a gold-plated death warrant.] I wiped the blood from my brow with the back of my hand. What Garrick didn’t know was that I had embedded custom timestamps and hidden digital watermarks deep within the source code. I opened the bottom drawer and pulled out a backup drive. Let them take it. I wasn’t just going to make them spit it back out. I was going to destroy them. 3 A week later, the Goldblum Group hosted its fifth-anniversary gala and new product launch. The grand ballroom of the Regent Hotel was packed with the city’s elite. Tonight, Garrick was set to unveil the design under Gemma’s name and secure billions in venture capital. I had no gown. Eleanor had ordered the maids to throw all my clothes into the incinerator. Instead, she had tossed a catering uniform at me that afternoon. “If you still want a roof over your head, you’ll work the floor tonight. Keep your head down, do your job, and keep your mouth shut.” I stood near the edge of the ballroom, dressed in a cheap vest and slacks, holding a tray of champagne. In the center of the room, Garrick stood with Gemma, who wore the Goldblum family heirloom, a rare pink diamond necklace known as the Heart of the Ocean. They were bathed in the adoring gaze of the crowd. “Thank you all for coming,” Garrick announced, raising his glass to Gemma. “Tonight is not only a celebration of our company’s journey, but also the debut of our brilliant chief designer, Gemma Lin. She is not only incredibly talented, but she is also carrying the future of the Goldblum legacy…” The crowd erupted into applause. I watched them silently. “Oh look, isn’t that the current Mrs. Goldblum?” a group of socialites whispered, walking over to my corner with their wine glasses. “Please, she’s the catering maid now. A street rat can wear designer shoes, but she’ll always smell like the fish market.” “Exactly. Can’t even keep her husband, lost her career, and now she’s serving drinks to the woman who replaced her. How pathetic.” “If I were her, I’d have jumped off a bridge by now. Some people have no dignity.” I ignored the venom, standing perfectly still. The phone in my pocket vibrated twice. [Showtime. I’m in position.] My palms grew sweaty. I was ready. Just then, Gemma detached herself from the crowd and glided toward me, holding a glass of red wine. “Glinda,” she said, her voice dripping with sweet poison, loud enough for those nearby to hear. “You shouldn’t be working like this. Garrick was just angry. Please, go rest. Seeing you like this breaks my heart…” She reached out to grab my arm. Before her hand even made contact, she twisted her wrist, splashed the dark wine all over her white designer gown, and threw herself backward onto the floor with a dramatic gasp. “Ah! My baby! Glinda, why would you push me? If you hate me, take it out on me, but please don’t hurt my child!” She clutched her stomach, whimpering on the carpet. Instantly, a crowd gathered. “Gemma!” Garrick pushed through the onlookers, his face pale as he scooped her into his arms. He stood up, spun around, and delivered a brutal slap across my face. The force of the blow spun my head to the side, the sharp metallic taste of blood filling my mouth. “Glinda! You psycho!” Garrick roared. “If anything happens to Gemma or the baby, I will personally destroy you!” The guests began to murmur in disgust. “How malicious! Pushing a pregnant woman?” “That classless woman is just consumed by jealousy.” “Garrick should have divorced her years ago!” I wiped the blood from my lip with my thumb. My hand slipped into my pocket, gripping the backup USB. “I didn’t push her,” I said, looking Garrick dead in the eye. “You dare lie!” Eleanor pushed through the crowd, pointing a manicured finger at me. “If you didn’t push her, did she trip herself? Security! Hold this crazy bitch down!” 4 Two heavy-set security guards grabbed my shoulders, pinning my arms behind my back. “Let go of me!” I kept my spine straight, looking directly at Garrick. “There are security cameras everywhere. Pull up the feed, and let’s see who the real actress is.” “The cameras are undergoing maintenance tonight!” Eleanor spat. Of course they were. It was a setup designed to ruin me publicly. “Garrick…” Gemma whimpered, clutching her chest. “My ring! Garrick, the diamond! The pink diamond is gone!” Gasps rippled through the ballroom. “What?!” Eleanor shrieked. “It was right on your neck a second ago! You were the only one near her, Glinda! You thieving little rat, you stole our family heirloom!” Eleanor lunged forward, clawing at my catering vest. Pinned by the guards, I couldn’t move. With a dramatic flourish, Eleanor pulled a glittering diamond ring from my pocket, letting it clatter onto the floor. The room fell silent before erupting into a chorus of insults. “Oh my god, she actually stole it!” “Assaulting a pregnant woman and stealing jewelry. She’s not just pathetic, she’s a criminal!” “Trash is trash. You can’t wash away that kind of filth.” I stared at the ring on the carpet. A cold laugh bubbled up from my chest. To get rid of me, they had resorted to the most cliché, desperate setup imaginable. “What are you laughing at? We caught you red-handed!” Garrick’s voice trembled slightly as he took a half-step back. He snatched a thick folder from his assistant and threw it right at my face. “Glinda, between the assault on a pregnant woman and the theft of a fifty-million-dollar heirloom, you’re looking at a lifetime behind bars!” Garrick picked up a microphone, his voice echoing through the ballroom. “But out of respect for our past, if you sign this divorce agreement and post a public confession admitting to your crimes, I won’t call the police.” He looked down at me, smug and entirely certain of his victory. He was convinced I would beg. He thought I couldn’t survive without him. I looked down at the document. The terms stripped me of every dime and saddled me with millions in shared marital debt. As the guards loosened their grip, thinking I was defeated, I wrenched my arms free and picked up the papers. “That’s more like it,” Garrick sneered. “Sign it, and get out of my sight…” I ripped the contract in half, then tore it into shreds, throwing the confetti right into his face. “I don’t need your mercy. Call the cops,” I said. “But before they get here, maybe the guests would like to see a different kind of show.” I pulled out the USB drive and walked toward the grand projection console. “Stop her! Grab that drive!” Garrick yelled, his face suddenly pale. Several security guards rushed toward me. I slotted the drive into the console, my finger hovering over the enter key. With one press, Gemma’s fake pregnancy, the plagiarized blueprints, and Garrick’s money-laundering schemes would be broadcast to the world. Just as my finger descended, the heavy double doors of the ballroom were slammed open. The chatter ceased instantly. Every head turned toward the entrance. A line of black-suited bodyguards marched in, forming a human corridor. Then, a man walked through. The entire room went dead quiet. The man scanned the room with cold, piercing eyes. I stood at the console, my hand frozen, staring at the intruder. Garrick’s face drained of color. His knees buckled, and he collapsed to the floor. “You…” Garrick gasped, his voice shaking violently. “How are you alive… You’re supposed to be dead…”

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We were right in the middle of being intimate when my husband of ten years abruptly pulled away. “Honestly, I find this incredibly boring. You are just tedious.” The very next second, he walked straight to the guest room without looking back. When I stood outside his door, crying and begging him to open it, my son was busy pouring the warm bedtime milk I had prepared for him down the sink. “Daddy doesn’t like Mommy, so Archie doesn’t like Mommy either.” Late that night, entirely crushed by despair, the woman chose to hang herself in the study. But I am a top tier system host, born with an absolute deficit of empathy. When I took over the body, the System told me I had one wish. I pondered for a long time before speaking with icy calm. “I want to have some class.” So that very night, I did not go crying to my husband’s door again. Instead, I graced the biggest nightclub in the city with my presence. 1 The next day. Covered in a chaotic mosaic of hickeys in various shades of lipstick, I watched with great interest as Dillamond paid my bail with a face like thunder. [Ahhhhh! You stupid host, what the hell were you doing at the club last night!] [The male lead’s affection meter just dropped into the negatives! We are going to be obliterated at this rate, you jerk!] I ignored the noisy voice that had been buzzing in my head all night. Carefully, I adjusted the Burberry plaid silk scarf around my neck. I reached out and patted Dillamond’s broad, tailored shoulders. “Thanks. Whatever the fine is, I will wire you double later.” Dillamond’s spine jolted violently beneath my palm. He turned his face with great difficulty, gritting his teeth as he growled at me in a low voice. “Keep your voice down. Do you think it is glorious for Mrs. Lockwood to get caught soliciting female escorts?” I brushed it off, casually borrowing an excuse he used to give me all the time. “Nothing even happened between us.” “Stop being so paranoid.” Dillamond shook off my hand in disgust and strode ahead. “True. What could a woman like you possibly do to them anyway? You just wanted to get my attention.” A woman like me? Dillamond suddenly curled his lips into a smirk, turning back with a hint of cruel amusement. “I get it. Just because I said you were boring last night, you wanted to sneak out and learn a few tricks from other wo…” The rest of his sentence died in his throat. As his eyes swept over my entire figure, he suddenly jumped back as if stung by a hornet. He did not even bother to pick up his favorite designer sunglasses that had slipped from his face and clattered onto the pavement. He just frantically reached out, his hands trembling as he touched my waist. “Sylvia, are you insane? What did you do to yourself?” “What are these rock hard ridges on your stomach?” I shook my head and sighed to the System. “Look.” “Look at how interested he is in me now.” System: [?] [Care to repeat that? Does this look like normal romantic interest to you!] I let out a helpless, breathy laugh. Then, effortlessly, I caught Dillamond’s hands as he tried to feel further down. I pressed my long, slender knuckles against his lips, which were flushed red from agitation. I spoke with dripping indulgence. “Be good. There are too many people around, do not make a scene.” “I know you like it. Wait until we get home, and Daddy will let you take your time and look all you want.” After a burst of chaotic static in my brain, the System let out a roar of absolute despair. [What the hell are you talking about! Did the original host’s hanging cut off the oxygen to your brain too?] [And why are you acting like the dominant CEO! Dillamond is the actual male lead of this book!] I absentmindedly planted a soft kiss on the corner of Dillamond’s mouth to soothe his growing restlessness while replying to the System. “Who made the rule that there can only be one male lead? I have heard of a genre called double male leads.” Right as the System and I were deeply debating why romance novels could not have two alpha male leads, Dillamond finally snapped out of his daze and violently broke free from my grip. He frantically wiped his mouth, gagging, his eyes red as he roared at me incoherently. “Get away from me, you freak! This is disgusting. You belong in an asylum. I want a divorce!” I looked at him with profound disappointment, as if watching a street urchin throw a tantrum. “You are being entirely too unreasonable. You know I prefer my partners to have some dignity.” “I will give you some time to cool off.” Then I slipped into his Porsche parked by the curb. Without a shred of hesitation, I slammed the gas pedal to the floor. The System instantly started screaming in my head again. [Who is the one that needs to cool off!] [Did you not see the male lead looking like he was about to wet himself? How are you supposed to win his heart now that you are acting like a macho man!] [Turn the car around right now and apologize to him sincerely! Tell him you will never go to a nightclub again!] Just as the System’s pitch reached a piercing high C, a sudden notification chimed. [Book’s Abuse Satisfaction Value +20] 2 The System’s screaming abruptly changed its tune. [Wait, what?] I curled the corners of my lips into a faint smile. “I am the main character too, am I not?” “I am perfectly capable of abusing others to make myself feel good.” I left Dillamond stranded on the sidewalk and drove back to the Lockwood estate with zero guilt. As I walked through the door, the usually quiet house was echoing with sharp, piercing wails. My eight year old son, Archie, was currently burying his face in my mother in law’s chest, crying as if his heart had been shattered. “I do not care, I want Auntie Lily to be my mommy!” “Mommy is mean and bad. She never takes me to play with other kids like Auntie Lily does. Archie hates the mommy we have now.” His pale little face, which looked exactly like a miniature version of Dillamond, was completely red from sobbing. My mother in law, her heart aching, kept wiping the teardrops from his cheeks. “Do not cry, my sweet boy. Grandma will tell Daddy to bring Auntie Lily home to marry him, okay?” As she coaxed him, her own anger flared up. “If Dillamond had not been so young and blind back then, insisting on marrying Sylvia, there is no way she could have scammed her way into our family.” “Look at Lily. She is so much better. Young, beautiful, and a PhD graduate. She would be a million times better at raising a child than this useless housewife.” “When Dillamond gets back, I am going to convince them to divorce immediately!” Archie did not understand the heavy words, he just kept hiccuping. “Thank you, Grandma. Archie loves Grandma the most.” The System was pacing anxiously in my head. [Why is this little brat turning on you? The original host used to love him more than her own eyes.] [Host, hurry up and butter up this vicious mother in law. If the male lead really marries the side character, we are totally screwed!] I slightly narrowed my long, sharp eyes, shooting a dangerous glare at the crying child. I reached out with a long arm, hauling him into my embrace by his collar, and warned him in a low, husky voice. “You spineless little thing. How can a son of Sylvia shed tears so easily?” Seeing me, the deep disgust on my mother in law’s face froze into shock. “Sylvia, what the hell are you wearing? Are you trying to get yourself killed looking like some androgynous freak?” “Children do not lie. If you are unlikable, do not take your anger out on Archie!” I ignored her completely, offering my son a merciful promise instead. “By the end of this year at the latest, I will give you a few younger brothers to keep you company.” Archie froze for a few seconds. Then, terrified tears instantly flooded his eyes again. “Archie does not want brothers!” “Mommy promised Archie would be Mommy and Daddy’s only favorite child!” He looked toward his usually doting grandmother out of habit, begging for help. But upon hearing the words younger brothers, my mother in law was practically ecstatic. She brushed Archie off with a half hearted pat. “Archie, you are still too young. When you grow up, you will understand the benefits of having brothers.” “When your little brothers are born, you have to let them have their way. You need to learn how to share and never bully them.” Archie’s little face went deathly pale, and he started wailing even louder. My expression gradually turned freezing cold. I raised my hand and slammed it viciously onto the solid mahogany coffee table. “Did you not just say you wanted lots of kids to play with you? Now that I am actually going to give you brothers, why are you throwing a fit?” “Crying constantly, changing your mind every five seconds. You do not have my last name, and you do not even look like me. Why should I waste my time raising a useless child like you?” “Shed one more tear, and you will stand in the corner of the study for half an hour.” Archie stared at me in pure disbelief, then opened his mouth and howled as if his lungs were tearing apart. “Mommy is mean! Bad Mommy, ugly Mommy! Get out of my house! I want Auntie Lily to be my mommy!” I stood right where I was, my eyes as cold as if I were training a disobedient dog. “Are you done crying?” “You can sleep on the floor of the study tonight.” I grabbed the wrist of my mother in law, who was trying to rush forward to comfort him, pinning it down hard. “Do not bother playing the saint. If you love serving a prince so much, go give birth to one yourself.” “Your husband was a very generous man in his youth. If you look hard enough, you might even find a few of his illegitimate kids to bring home.” 3 I dropped like a nuclear bomb, equally traumatizing everyone in the room. The System was already jumping up and down in sheer panic inside my brain. [It is over! Host, your life is totally over!] [Great, just great. You managed to deeply offend the two people the male lead cares about the most in one breath. Let’s just pack up our bags and hit the reset button.] I remained completely unbothered. I grabbed Archie by the collar and marched him all the way into the study. I forced him to stand right in front of the noose that was still firmly bolted to the ceiling. Only then did I raise my eyes, looking at that thick hemp rope, which still bore faint, dark red stains. “Last night, you poured out the bedtime milk I warmed for you, did you not? You said you only wanted to eat things made by Auntie Lily.” Archie stiffened his neck, shivering violently in fear, yet stubbornly refusing to look at me. I lowered my head, looking at him with a sliver of genuine pity. “As you wish.” “The love you so deeply despised will never be given to you again.” “Stand here and think about it. Consider it our final goodbye.” Archie did not get the comfort he imagined. He had no idea why his mother had suddenly become so bizarre and icy. Looking utterly pathetic, he tentatively reached out, trying to hug my leg. “Mommy, Archie knows he was wrong.” I remained entirely impassive. “You already did the thing you are sorry for, so keep your apologies to yourself.” He was sorely mistaken if he thought I would act like that pitiful woman. She would have melted into a puddle of forgiveness at the first sign of a half hearted apology. Not me. Ignoring the teary eyed child, I walked into the master bedroom and dove into the soft, luxurious mattress. In the dead of night, someone pounded urgently on my door. “Sylvia! Archie is having febrile seizures from a high fever! Get up right now and take him to the hospital!” It took me a long moment to process the noise before I slowly sat up. My hands patted around the nightstand. I easily pulled out a brand new pair of industrial earplugs. Dillamond used to wear these all the time. Because he detested the sound of my light breathing and the faint rustle of my pajamas when I slept. Once I put them in. Archie’s crying and the chaotic panic of the Lockwood household instantly vanished. They worked wonderfully. Forgive everything before you sleep, hold all grudges when you wake up. When I opened my eyes again, I felt incredibly refreshed. But it seemed someone else was the one holding a grudge. I was gently biting off a strand of pasta, enjoying my morning intermittent fasting routine. Suddenly, Dillamond’s cold, impatient voice echoed from the top of the stairs. “Lily is returning from abroad today. Give me the car keys, I am picking her up from the airport.” I paused my chewing. “Archie was hospitalized last night. He relies on Lily the most. From today onward, I am having Lily move in to keep him company.” “Sylvia, do not say I did not warn you. The crazier you act, the faster whatever feelings I have left for you will disappear.” “That girl is not like you. I sponsored her education, and she just graduated and entered the real world. If you dare to use your disgusting, underhanded tricks on her…” He tapped his fingers lightly against the stair railing, looking down at me with ruthless indifference. “I would not mind letting her become Archie’s actual mother.” I remained silent, meeting his gaze. The System was already losing its mind. [Dead dead dead! We have officially entered Nightmare Mode!] [Who told you to play crazy and ruin all your relationships! You stupid host, are you trying to destroy me?] The moment Dillamond turned his back to leave. I finally stood up, staring at him without blinking. “I think, between us, we should at least have a fair competition.” Dillamond looked as if he had just heard the funniest joke in the world. A mocking sneer touched his lips. “You? You think you can compete with Lily?” “Stop making a scene, Sylvia. Just sit quietly in your position as Mrs. Lockwood. Is it not better to just take the money and forget about love?” “This is the biggest concession I am willing to make, and it is only because you gave birth to Archie.” I watched Dillamond’s arrogant, aloof silhouette. I shook my head in regret. Who said I was competing with Lily for the title of Mrs. Lockwood? I picked up the phone from the table, which had been buzzing continuously from last night all the way to this morning. Slowly and methodically, I replied to Lily’s message. [Okay, I accept your confession.]

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Monday morning. I was standing in the conference room, waiting for our new intern to finish photocopying a contract. The irritating whir of the paper shredder finally ground to a halt. She turned around, cradling a massive pile of paper confetti in her arms, looking at me as if expecting a gold star. My eyes zeroed in on the remnants of the paper. It was the original copy of the thirty-million-dollar contract we had just signed. My blood pressure instantly spiked to a stroke-inducing level. “Are you out of your damn mind?!” Her lower lip quivered, and massive crocodile tears immediately pooled in her eyes. “I… I didn’t know. You are being too mean.” Right at that moment, a string of glowing pink text suddenly floated through the air right in front of my eyes. [The CEO is angry! He definitely thinks our baby girl is so clumsy and cute!] [This is such a unique way to get his attention! She didn’t shred paper, she shredded the walls around his heart!] [So sweet! The domineering CEO is falling for his clumsy little wife!] Domineering CEO? Walls around my heart? Cute my ass! That was a thirty-million-dollar deal I spent six months negotiating! And I need these floating idiots to open their blind eyes. I am a female Vice President! 1 “VP Wright, look!” Bella held up the overflowing wastebasket with a proud smile. “Nobody has used that shredder in days. I was worried it might rust, so I shredded all the papers on the desk to keep it running.” “Aren’t I so thoughtful?” I stared at the bucket of destroyed documents, feeling the blood rush straight to my temples. “Are you completely out of your mind?!” Bella shrank back, her eyes turning red. She bit her lower lip and looked up at me through her lashes. “I… I was just trying to help…” she whimpered, her voice dripping with fake innocence. “You are so fierce, you terrified me.” Another string of glowing pink text materialized out of thin air, scrolling rapidly across my vision. [Wow! The CEO looks so hot when he’s mad! Is he just trying to cover up how fast his heart is beating for her?] [She didn’t just shred a contract, she shredded his defenses!] [Is this the legendary enemies-to-lovers trope? I am living for this!] I froze right where I stood. Through the translucent text, I could still see Bella’s pathetic, pouting face. The conference room door swung open. Mr. Harrison from Apex Dynamics had arrived early for our meeting. His polite smile completely vanished the second he saw the floor covered in shredded paper and Bella clutching the wastebasket. “VP Wright,” Mr. Harrison said, his gaze darting between me and the crying intern. “What exactly is going on here? Where is the contract?” I forcibly swallowed my boiling rage. “Mr. Harrison, my apologies. There has been a slight accident…” “VP Wright!” Bella let out a high-pitched shriek and dove right behind me. She grabbed fistfuls of my tailored suit jacket, pressing her body flat against my back. “Mr. Harrison, please don’t blame him! It is all my fault, I was just too clumsy. VP Wright was just disciplining me…” She shivered dramatically behind me, her fingers wrinkling the expensive fabric of my jacket. Given our current posture, Mr. Harrison was absolutely going to think we were engaging in some sort of twisted workplace roleplay. Mr. Harrison’s face turned dark. “VP Wright,” he said, his tone turning to ice. “I was under the impression that you were a professional.” “I had no idea your private life was so colorful that you needed to bring it into the boardroom for entertainment.” He turned on his heel and stormed out. Thirty million dollars. Six months of my blood, sweat, and tears. I had literally been hospitalized three times for exhaustion and revised the proposal over a dozen times for this project. Now, it was all gone. “VP Wright…” Bella peeked out from behind my back, holding up a cup of boba tea. “Please don’t be mad. Have something sweet to calm down, okay?” She tried to shove the sickeningly sweet drink into my hands. I should have just thrown it right in her face. The pink comments went absolutely wild. [Look! His hand is trembling as he takes the tea! He is so emotional!] [He loves her so much! Even after losing thirty million, all it takes is a cup of milk tea from his baby to calm him down!] [This is pure indulgence! This is a CEO’s true love!] I looked at Bella’s innocent face, then looked at the brain-dead comments floating in the air, and suddenly let out a cold, hollow laugh. 2 The next morning, we held an executive debriefing. The conference table was packed with directors. Declan Cross, our CEO, sat at the head of the table, flipping through the damage report with a face like thunder. I stood in front of the projector screen, my back perfectly straight, analyzing our contingency plans point by point. “The legal team at Apex Dynamics has given us a forty-eight-hour grace period. For the new clauses, I will…” The door banged open. Bella pranced in carrying a tray of black coffees. She wasn’t wearing her corporate uniform. Instead, she had changed into a tiny pink slip dress with a hemline that barely covered her upper thighs. Declan’s brow furrowed into a deep V, but he didn’t say a word. “You all worked so hard!” Bella chirped, her voice airy and overly sweet. “Freshly brewed coffee to wake everyone up.” She bypassed several senior directors and made a beeline straight for me. Seeing that walking disaster in pink approaching, I immediately took a half-step back. “VP Wright, you have been talking for so long. Your throat must be so dry, right?” I didn’t take the cup. I just stared at her. “Put it on the table.” “Oh, come on, just take it. I brewed it especially for you…” She shoved the cup forward. Somehow, her left foot tripped over her right, and she pitched forward. The scalding coffee flew out of her hands and splashed directly onto my lower half. My suit trousers were instantly soaked. Acting on pure reflex, I raised my hands and shoved her away before she could plaster herself against me. “Ah!” She fell sideways, her short skirt flipping up. She clutched her elbow, tears instantly spilling from her eyes. “I am so sorry… I am sorry, VP Wright. I wasn’t trying to seduce you… Please don’t touch me like that in here…” Dead silence fell over the conference room. Over a dozen pairs of eyes stared at Bella’s exposed underwear. Then their gazes shifted to my crotch, which was currently dripping with hot coffee. Finally, they looked at my hands, which had just pushed her away. Someone awkwardly coughed and looked down. Others exchanged subtle, knowing glances. The pink comments danced across the air. [Wet shirt play! So spicy!] [He is panicking! He felt so bad seeing his baby fall!] [He only pushed her away because he was afraid he couldn’t control his urges if she touched him!] [And look where he got wet… Hehehe!] “Rowan!” Declan slammed his hand on the table. “What the hell are you doing?!” All he saw was me shoving a crying girl to the floor. I didn’t bother wiping the stain. I didn’t even dare to move my legs. “Declan, she just threw boiling water on me.” “You were clearly trying to grab me… your hands were everywhere…” Bella hugged her knees, shivering like a leaf. “VP Wright, we are in the office. There are people watching…” Her words made absolutely no sense, but they successfully cemented the dirty rumor. Declan threw his files onto the table. “Get out.” He pointed at the door. “Rowan, go clean yourself up. Bella, you leave too.” I grabbed my folder and practically sprinted to the restroom. Locking myself in a stall, my hands shook as I unbuckled my belt. The inner skin of my thigh was an angry, blistering red. Outside the stall, I could hear hushed whispers. “Did you hear? VP Wright just sexually harassed the new intern right in the middle of the boardroom.” “I knew it. He uses his executive status to act all proper, but since he’s a guy, you know he plays dirty behind closed doors.” “That poor intern was crying so hard. I heard she spent the night in his office a few days ago…” I didn’t go to the hospital. I needed a new proposal drafted within forty-eight hours. I blindly smeared some burn ointment on my leg, wrapped it in gauze, changed into my backup trousers, and marched back to my office. At eleven o’clock. I finished inputting the final set of core data. All I had to do was run it through the modeling software, and the risk assessment would be complete. I hit the Enter key. My screen flickered. The monitor went pitch black. Three seconds later, the screen lit up again. But it wasn’t my desktop. It was a bright pink loading screen. Right in the center, in bold, cursive font, read: Love Simulator: The Domineering CEO’s Personal Secretary. The system threw up a fatal error. My hard drive light blinked frantically before dying completely. Every single file, including my local backups, was wiped clean. “Surprise!” Bella bounded into my office holding a tiny cupcake, not even bothering to knock. “VP Wright, I saw how hard you were working, so I specially installed a stress-relief game on your computer! Are you surprised?” 3 I slowly turned my head to look at her. “You touched my computer?” “Yeah!” Bella blinked her big, innocent eyes. “This game is super fun! Once you max out the affection meter, you unlock…” “Get out.” Bella froze. “VP Wright?” “Get the hell out of my office!” She stumbled back in terror, dropping the cupcake onto the carpet. Tears immediately flooded her eyes. Her mouth scrunched up. “Why are you yelling at me… I was just trying to be nice…” Pink text literally bounced in the air around her. [Our clumsy beauty is so cute! She just wants him to have a healthy work-life balance!] [Who cares about a bunch of boring data when he has his baby’s love?] [He looks so hot when he’s mad! He’s just using anger to hide how flustered she makes him!] [Kiss her! Press her against the desk and kiss her right now!] I stared at the floating words, the veins in my temples pulsing violently. “Boring data?” “That is the livelihood of hundreds of employees for the next month! It is something a brainless idiot who only thinks about being in heat could never comprehend!” I pointed directly at the door. “Disappear from my sight right now. HR will be contacting you tomorrow.” Bella’s expression stiffened. The very next second, she suddenly pitched her voice an octave higher and burst into screaming sobs. “VP Wright! Last night in your office, you clearly told me you loved how clumsy I was!” “You said I was like a little kitten! You even… you did all those things to me on the sofa… How can you just pull up your pants and pretend you don’t know me today?!” The CFO and several coworkers who were working overtime suddenly appeared at my door. They saw my face pale with absolute fury, while Bella huddled in the corner, shaking like a victim. “Rowan, this is…” The CFO adjusted his glasses, looking extremely uncomfortable. Bella wailed even louder. “I won’t leave! I gave my body to you, you can’t just throw me away! I don’t care about a title, I just want to stay by your side…” There were no security cameras inside the private offices. And I had been the only one pulling an all-nighter last night. My coworkers exchanged loaded glances, looking me up and down before turning their pitying eyes to Bella. “Rowan, this is really too much,” the CFO shook his head, turning to walk away. “You young men really need to watch your professional boundaries.” The pink comments scrolled at lightning speed. [Abuse your wife now, chase her in the crematorium later!] [10/10 execution! The rumors are locked in, he can never escape her now!] [Tonight is the perfect time to take him down!] [Sleep with him tonight! Once the rice is cooked, the domineering CEO will never be able to leave his baby!] The victory gala was held at the Grand Hyatt. Relying entirely on a proposal I had written by hand overnight, I managed to salvage the Apex Dynamics contract. To save face and show off our success, Declan invited over a dozen media outlets to the event. Bella was there too. She didn’t have an invitation, yet she was standing in the crowd wearing a plunging lace dress cut all the way down to her navel. I changed locations three times, and she followed me with a wine glass three times. Finally, in a secluded corner of the lounge, Bella blocked my path and offered me a glass of champagne. “VP Wright,” she said, pushing the flute toward me. “Drink this as an apology, and we can wipe the slate clean. Deal?” Several guests nearby turned their heads to watch. I took the glass but didn’t drink. “Too scared to drink it?” Bella leaned her body against mine. “Afraid I poisoned it?” I sidestepped to avoid her touch. Turning my back slightly, I dumped the champagne straight into the soil of a potted money tree, then raised the empty glass to my lips and tilted my head back. Five minutes later, my stomach began to burn. The chandeliers overhead blurred into glowing halos. The chatter of the crowd faded in and out. I pinched my thigh hard, but I couldn’t feel any pain. Whatever she used was incredibly potent. “Are you drunk, VP Wright?” Bella whispered right into my ear. “Let me help you.” She shoved me down a quiet corridor and into a private VIP suite, locking the door behind us. I collapsed heavily onto the leather sofa. Standing in front of the coffee table, Bella entirely dropped her innocent victim act. She reached up and violently ripped the collar of her dress. The lace tore with a loud rip. Then she messed up her hair and used her own fingernails to scratch harsh red lines down her arms. I couldn’t force a single sound past my lips. “System,” she muttered, staring at the empty air. “Has the item taken effect?” Pink comments exploded across the ceiling. [High-grade synthetic aphrodisiac deployed! You got this, Host!] [Forced love! Right here! So exciting!] [The villainous male side character has been immobilized. Please initiate the victim protocol immediately!] Bella suddenly unleashed a bloodcurdling scream. “Help! No, VP Wright, please! I am a decent girl!” She threw herself onto me, using her half-naked body to pin me down. She grabbed my paralyzed hand and forced it onto her chest. Crash! The door was kicked open. Declan, Mr. Harrison, and a swarm of reporters flooded the room. From their angle, all they could see was me pinning Bella to the couch. My face was flushed red, and my hand was aggressively grabbing her chest. Bella sobbed so hard she could barely breathe, desperately shoving at my shoulders. “He threatened me… He said if I didn’t obey him, I would fail my probation…” Declan stormed forward. “Rowan!” He pointed a shaking finger right in my face. “Look at what you have done!” He turned around and yelled at the security guards. “Call the police! Call them right now!” I opened my mouth to defend myself, but all I could do was gag on my own stomach acid. Bella shrank back and buried her face into Declan’s chest. In the blind spot where no one else could see, she tilted her head to look at me. The corners of her mouth curled up into a bright, victorious smile. The pink text completely flooded my vision. [Congratulations, baby! The villainous male side character has been eliminated!] [Now you are the terrified little bunny in the CEO’s arms!] [This is what happens when you mess with our clumsy beauty!] Right before my vision went completely black, I heard those five words echo in my mind. Villainous male side character. So I was nothing more than a stepping stone meant to add flavor to the male and female leads’ romance. I tried to raise my hand to rub my pounding forehead, but I was met with the sharp clatter of metal. My right wrist was yanked back. A pair of silver handcuffs locked me securely to the metal bedrail. Sitting in a chair next to the hospital bed was a female police officer in full uniform, staring at me coldly. “Awake?” The officer snapped her notepad shut. “Rowan Wright. You are under investigation for attempted sexual assault and workplace harassment. Given your medical condition, you are under supervised residential surveillance here at the hospital.” Heh. I closed my eyes. Villainous male side character. The entire foundation of Bella’s master plan relied on the core assumption that I was a “man.” Because I was a “CEO,” I was supposed to spoil her. Because I was a “male executive,” I was supposed to harass her. Because I was the “villainous male side character,” I was supposed to force myself on her. That so-called System had gotten my gender completely wrong. And Bella had never once bothered to question it. That was their fatal flaw. My phone was resting on the nightstand. The screen was lit up, bombarded with push notifications. Famous Corporate Executive Sexually Assaults Intern. A Beast in a Suit! The Dark Private Life of VP Wright. Survivor Bella Speaks Out: I Just Wanted to Do My Job. I didn’t even need to click the links to know the comment sections were praying I rotted in prison. People were probably already throwing red paint on my front door. “Officer.” The female cop looked at me coldly. “Save your breath for the interrogation room.” “The burn on my thigh needs a fresh dressing,” I said, slowly pushing myself up. “Also, I want to request a blood test.” The officer frowned. “A blood test?” “I was dosed with a heavy sedative last night. The residue should still be in my system. And…” I paused for a second. “I want to request that you personally conduct a preliminary physical examination on me, right here in this room.” “Check for what?” “Check my biological sex.” The officer froze. Her eyes scanned my face, completely bewildered. “What are you talking about? Your ID says…” “My ID says I am a woman,” I interrupted her. “But Bella, the media, and everyone outside this room seem to think I am a man.” The officer opened her mouth, but no words came out. She stood up, took three quick steps to the bed, and sharply drew the privacy curtain closed. Five minutes later. The curtain was pulled back. The officer’s face was rigid, a mixture of utter shock, deep embarrassment, and rising fury. “I will get a doctor in here to draw your blood immediately,” she said, her tone entirely stripped of its previous hostility. “And I will report this to my superiors right away.” I leaned back against my pillows, staring up at the blinding fluorescent lights. “Officer, I want to report a crime.” “Defamation, malicious framing, and poisoning with a dangerous substance.”

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1 Heavy snow sealed the mountain passes, burying the jagged peaks in deadly white. As the only woman to conquer Deadwood Pass’s seventy-two switchbacks unscathed, I was offered a ten million dollar rescue job. The target was stranded at the ridge’s end. I’d been there before—ten years earlier. My seventeen year old daughter and her friends were paragliding when a sudden storm forced a brutal cliffside landing. Rescue never came in time. My girl froze to death on those merciless rocks. Later, I learned my husband, James, ignored her plight. He spent millions redirecting every helicopter and snowcat to save his first love’s child—who’d only sprained an ankle. That day, I quit my tenured professorship and moved to this frozen backwater, becoming a penniless tow truck driver. For a decade, I ran that lethal highway until every icy curve and drop was etched in my bones. No one else died on my watch. Now my best friend begged me to take this job, slapping the offer on my grease stained table. I glanced at the photo—a face I’d never forget—let out a dry laugh, and dropped my keys. “Not this one.” Jess was still riding the high of a massive payday dropping out of the sky. Hearing my words, she froze, her jaw practically hitting the floor. “Wait, Sarah, are you out of your damn mind? This is ten million bucks!” “We’ve been rotting in this frozen armpit of a town for a decade and haven’t seen a fraction of that kind of cash. And you’re just walking away?” We had bled and frozen together on these roads for years. Jess wasn’t about to let me throw away a winning lottery ticket. She physically blocked the door as I tried to leave the dispatch cabin. “Sarah, wake the hell up. Go splash some freezing water on your face and think about this! Ten years ago, you dragged yourself in here looking like a stray dog. You had nothing. Your ex-husband threw you away like garbage!” “This is your golden ticket! Don’t you want to shove this massive win right in his arrogant face? Make him grovel and beg for a second chance?” I gently but firmly pushed Jess’s hand away from the doorframe. My chest felt incredibly heavy. “I don’t care about getting back at anyone. My mind is made up. Drop it, Jess. I’m going home.” “Sarah!” Frustrated by my stubbornness, Jess was practically sweating despite the drafty cabin, screaming at my back. “Even if you bail on this, you need a damn good reason! I know you. You are not the kind of person who just sits back and watches someone die!” I stopped in my tracks. Slowly, I turned to look at her, my eyes entirely dead. “Maybe I am exactly that kind of person.” Jess’s chest heaved. “We’ve known each other for a decade. Every time the scanner goes off, you never say no. You are always the first one behind the wheel. It doesn’t matter if it’s an avalanche warning or a whiteout blizzard. When the whole crew begs you to stay back, you always say a kid’s life matters more than yours.” “How could you possibly be that cold? Sarah, just tell me why.” “There is no why. Find someone else. I’m not driving.” I pushed the door open. Jess followed me out into the biting cold, violently running her hands through her hair in pure agitation. “The weather up on Deadwood gets worse every year! A few guys tried to run it a couple of winters ago and none of them came back alive. If you don’t go, nobody on this mountain will touch that route.” “Are you sick? Is it your back? Look, I’ll ride shotgun. I’ll handle the winches and the heavy lifting, you just drive.” “You have to give us something, Sarah! The girls in our crew are drowning in debt. They are waiting for a miracle, and you owe them an explanation!” Looking out at the towering, snow-capped peaks in the distance, I asked myself what had kept me coming back to these seventy-two deadly switchbacks that had claimed so many lives. It was my daughter. It was her voice, echoing in my nightmares, crying out for her mom to save her. It was the sheer, desperate will to keep her memory alive. Even when I was bleeding out in a wrecked cab, I forced myself to stay awake. I swore to myself that no other mother in this world would ever have to feel the soul-crushing agony of losing a child. Swallowing down the lump in my throat, I fought back the tears threatening to spill. “I’ll explain it to the crew myself. Just stop pushing me.” Maybe it was the absolute, raw devastation in my eyes that finally silenced Jess. She didn’t try to block my path again. “I don’t get it,” she whispered. “But you’re my girl. I believe you have your reasons. I’ll go talk to the others.” Before I could even reach my beat-up truck in the yard, my burner phone buzzed. It was a number I had spent a decade trying to scrub from my brain. “My wife and I are almost at the base of the mountain. I want to know why you’re refusing the extraction. Is it the money? I can write a check for another ten million right now.” “Or name your price. As long as you pull my daughter off that ridge, I will give you anything you want.” That familiar, suffocatingly arrogant voice pierced right through my eardrum, exactly the same as it was ten years ago. My knuckles turned white around the plastic casing of the phone. “I don’t want anything. I cannot save your daughter.” James didn’t recognize my voice. He began to shout, the polished veneer cracking to reveal a desperate, trembling panic. “You sound old enough to be a parent! Do you not have kids of your own?” “If your child was trapped in a freezing death zone, could you really just sit there and leave them to die?” 2 Leave them to die? A bitter, twisted smile crept onto my lips. Back when I found out James had diverted the entire fleet of helicopters for his first love’s kid, I had screamed those exact words at him. I had screamed until my throat bled, asking him how a stranger’s child could possibly be more important than his own flesh and blood. He was terrifyingly calm. His voice over the phone hadn’t held a single tremor. “I had the medical team analyze their vitals. Sophie has a stronger baseline constitution than Beth, so logistically, we had to secure Sophie first.” “Neither of us wanted anyone to die. It’s a tragedy, but the situation is what it is. I’m grieving too, you know.” He claimed he was grieving, yet the moment I shoved the divorce papers at his chest, he turned around and married his precious first love before the ink was even dry. “The kid up there isn’t your biological daughter, right? If she was your real flesh and blood, would you be doing all this?” James didn’t hesitate for a microsecond. “I don’t care about biology. I raised her. She is my daughter.” “And if she was my biological child? I would liquidate every asset I own and risk my own life to get her down from there.” Before I could even formulate a response, he let out a scoff of pure condescension. “Since you clearly did your homework and know I’m the CEO of Bode Holdings, you should understand that doing me this favor will set you up for life.” “I can bump the bounty to fifty million dollars. People like you couldn’t make fifty million if you worked for a thousand lifetimes.” “If you have half a brain, you’ll grab this ticket out of poverty instead of being a stubborn hillbilly and dragging your husband and kids down with you.” I actually laughed out loud. “You really are Father of the Year.” I had dreamed of my little girl more times than I could count. In the dreams, she always looked up at me with those big, innocent eyes, asking why Daddy didn’t want to save her. Why he picked a friend’s daughter over his own. I could never give her an answer. Deep down, I knew the ugly truth. James never loved me, which meant my child was never going to be his priority. “Fifty million is a hell of a lot of money. But it’s a shame. I don’t need it. Find another driver.” I killed the call and powered off the phone completely. The second I stepped out of the yard, the rest of the crew swarmed me. Rhonda, our grizzled team captain, blocked my path. “Sarah, you can’t walk away from this. Do you have any idea who’s trapped up there? The Bodes. We are dirt-poor mechanics and tow-truck drivers. We cannot afford to piss off billionaires.” Of course I knew. James and Lexi’s fairytale wedding had been plastered all over the national news. A real-life romance that made the internet swoon. Nobody remembered me. Nobody remembered my daughter. “James is Sophie’s stepdad, but he treats her like gold! And he controls Bode Holdings. He practically owns Denver!” “And Lexi Bode? She’s a world-renowned surgeon. People like that can crush us like bugs.” Jess stood there with red eyes, her voice dropping to a harsh whisper. “On top of that, they did background checks. They found out about Brenda’s kid needing a kidney transplant. Lexi said if you drive the rig, she’ll pull strings at the transplant center. Toby will have a new kidney by next Friday.” Brenda dropped to her knees right in the filthy slush, dragging her sickly son Toby down with her. She looked up at me, absolutely broken. “Sarah. Please. I’m begging you. I’ll kiss the dirt you walk on. He’s my only baby. Please save my Toby.” Toby, his face pale and swollen from the dialysis, wrapped his thin arms around my work boots. “Auntie Sarah… I don’t want to die…” James hadn’t changed a bit. He still knew exactly how to manipulate human weakness. He was still completely devoid of humanity. I stood there in silence. I pulled a crushed cigarette from my leather jacket, lit it, and exhaled a thick cloud of smoke into the freezing air. My voice came out like gravel. “Today is my daughter’s death anniversary.” Rhonda rushed to speak. “We know, Sarah, we remember! Once you get this kid down the mountain, we will all go visit Beth’s grave with you.” “Yeah!” Brenda sobbed, snot and tears freezing to her face. “You’ve saved so many kids out here! Just save Toby too! This is the only chance he has left!” Before I could say another word, the deep, aggressive roar of a V8 engine echoed through the canyon. A sleek, matte-black G-Wagon skidded to a halt right in front of us. The heavy door swung open. James stepped out into the mud, his sharp, predatory eyes locking instantly onto my face. 3 Almost immediately, naked disgust flashed across his features. He didn’t recognize me. I hadn’t seen a salon in years. After a decade of brutal mountain winters, I was no longer the radiant, soft-spoken, highly respected university professor he once knew. Right now, I was wrapped in a greasy, peeling leather jacket I hadn’t washed in weeks. My face was weather-beaten, covered in rough windburn and premature, deep-set wrinkles from squinting into snowstorms. Compared to his tailored wool overcoat and pristine Italian leather shoes, I looked like absolute gutter trash. “So you’re the so-called legendary female driver of Deadwood Pass?” He let out a short, mocking laugh. “Do you have any concept of what fifty million dollars is? It could buy your pathetic life a hundred times over.” I didn’t answer. I just took another drag of my cigarette. The passenger door opened. Lexi stepped down into the slush. Her gaze swept over me. She tried to maintain a facade of calm grace, but the elitist superiority practically rolled off her in waves. “My husband’s delivery might be harsh, but he’s stating facts. Your entire crew works yourselves to the bone year-round, and what do you bring in? Maybe thirty grand? Split five ways?” “This fifty million won’t just buy you groceries. It will catapult you into a tax bracket you can’t even comprehend. It’s generational wealth.” “Are you really going to let pride ruin your life?” I gave her a faint smile. “My answer is still no.” “Why? Give me a rational explanation.” “I don’t need one.” James’s patience snapped. He glared at me, his eyes looking like chips of dirty ice. “Bullshit. Every human action has a motive. If you’re refusing, it’s because you think you have leverage to squeeze more out of us!” Lexi’s elegant mask finally slipped, her face hardening. “Look, don’t be greedy. People who bite off more than they can chew end up choking.” “You people reek of cheap booze and desperation. All you want is to climb out of the mud and be somebody, right? I can give you that.” “Cash, status, connections. I can get your husband a cushy corporate job in Denver. Whatever he wants, I can make it happen by making a single phone call.” “And your kid. I can get them into an Ivy League feeder school. Pay for a study abroad program in Europe. I’ll even set up a trust fund for when they get married and have kids of their own.” I chuckled, the sound dry and hollow. “Married and have kids?” Beth had actually talked about that. When she was a little girl, she watched some cartoon where the kids grew up and left the parents behind. She had buried her face in my chest, crying her eyes out. “Mommy, I’m never getting married! That way, when you and Daddy get old, I can just stay with you forever so you won’t be lonely!” Someone in the crew, eager to appease the billionaires, blurted out an answer to James. “Her ex-husband cheated on her, man. And her daughter passed away.” James raised an eyebrow, crossing his arms with a smug, knowing look. “Well, your ex-husband was a smart man. A cold-blooded, heartless woman who’d watch a kid die for leverage? Any random whore off the street would be a better partner than you.” “Walking out on you was the best decision he ever made. And your kid died? Let me take a wild guess. Was it your fault?” My hands balled into tight fists, my nails digging into my palms as I glared at him with pure hatred. James didn’t back down an inch. He sneered, enunciating every syllable. “When your kid was dying, were you acting exactly like this? Stubborn, detached, playing stupid mind games until you literally dragged her to her grave?!” “Shut your damn mouth!” I hissed through clenched teeth. The sheer venom in my eyes was impossible to hide. Lexi stepped smoothly in front of him, playing the diplomat. “Excuse my husband’s temper. But since you’ve been a mother, you should be able to empathize with the absolute panic of parents trying to save their child.” She glanced at her Rolex. “The blizzard hits in exactly thirty minutes. If we delay, the extraction becomes physically impossible, and you’ll be risking your own neck.” “Playing hard to get once is a negotiation tactic. Doing it twice is just arrogant stupidity. Get in your truck. Now.” When I still didn’t move, James suddenly pointed a manicured finger right at Brenda. “You can stand your ground. But what about these friends of yours? The ones who bleed with you? Are you really going to screw them over too?” “You cross me today, and not only will her kid never see a kidney donor, I will personally guarantee that everyone standing in this yard is blacklisted.” His voice dripped with absolute malice. “Unless you can guarantee your families will never get sick, there isn’t a single hospital in the state of Colorado that will admit you. And no company in this city will ever hire you.” 4 Brenda’s face drained of all color. She practically crawled to my boots, her tears running completely dry from sheer terror. “Sarah. Sarah, please. Please, I am begging you on my life. Just say yes.” “Nobody else can drive that ridge! Have some mercy, please look at my boy!” Rhonda’s face was grim. She grabbed my shoulders, letting out a heavy sigh. “The Bodes actually have that kind of power, Sarah. You have to…” I shoved Rhonda’s hands away. I looked down at Brenda and her frail son. In their desperate bid to survive, Brenda had slammed her head against the frozen ground so hard that blood was trickling down her forehead, mixing with the dirt. “I will figure something out for Toby,” I said softly. “But this gig… I really can’t do it. My hands are tied.” Something snapped inside Lexi. She lunged forward, grabbing the collar of my heavy leather jacket, and delivered a vicious, stinging slap across my face. Every ounce of her fake, upper-class grace evaporated. “We called every single rescue outfit in the state! They all said you’re the only freak crazy enough to run this pass, and now you’re telling me your hands are tied?!” “That is a human life up there! You let her die, and you are a goddamn murderer!” I let out a dark laugh. My hand shot out, grabbing a fistful of her expensive, blown-out hair. I yanked her head back and returned the slap, twice as hard. “You’re the goddamn murderer!” James, who had just watched his wife slap me with smug satisfaction, turned purple with rage the second my hand made contact with her cheek. “Get her!” he barked. The massive private security guards he brought swarmed me, slamming me face-first into the filthy, packed snow. James stepped forward, grinding the sole of his designer shoe directly into the side of my face. “You think you can lay hands on my wife, you piece of trash? You want to do this the hard way? Fine. Tie every single one of her friends up. For every minute she refuses to drive, throw one of them off the ravine!” I struggled wildly against the heavy boots pinning me down, screaming at the top of my lungs. “Don’t you dare!” “Watch me,” he growled, pressing his shoe down so hard I could hear my own teeth grinding together against the ice. “This place is off the grid anyway. We’ll just tell the cops your little crew got buried in an avalanche during a heroic rescue attempt. Who’s gonna prove otherwise?” The guards dragged Rhonda, Brenda, and the others toward the sheer drop at the edge of the yard. The first one they pushed to the brink was Jess. Sweat soaked through her winter gear despite the freezing wind. She was absolutely terrified, screaming back at me. “Sarah! Sarah, please! I don’t want to die! I haven’t even seen my boy graduate yet!” My eyes went bloodshot. I stared at my crew, my jaw clenched so tight I tasted copper. Slowly, I turned my gaze up to James’s face. “Pull them back from the edge!” James smirked. He lifted his foot off my face and surprisingly reached down, grabbing my arm to help me up. He even brushed the dirty snow off my lapels with a patronizing smile. It was as if the psychotic billionaire from three seconds ago had never existed. “I’m so glad you’ve come to your senses. I expect you to bring my daughter back without a single scratch on her.” “Because if anything happens to her, my wife and I will get very, very creative with you.” Hearing those words, a raw, manic laughter clawed its way out of my throat. I couldn’t stop. “Is that right? Losing a kid makes you suffer? Really? Because rumor has it, the kid you had with your first wife died too.” James’s eyebrow twitched violently. “You didn’t shed a single tear for her. You finalized the divorce, married the mistress without skipping a beat, and didn’t even bother to go to the morgue to identify your own daughter’s body.” “Do you ever think about her? Does your chest ache? When you wake up in the dead of night, have you ever shed a single goddamn tear for her?” James’s lips began to tremble. For a split second, a flash of genuine, agonizing pain cut through the ice in his eyes. “Who… who the hell are you? How do you know that? Did you… did you know me before?” I spat out a mouthful of bloody saliva. “Someone as high and mighty as you? How could gutter trash like me ever know you?” “James, stop! A broke mechanic wouldn’t know us. She’s just reading tabloid garbage. Stop wasting time and get her in the truck!” Lexi grabbed my arm, practically dragging me toward my reinforced tow rig. “Get in the damn driver’s seat!” When I still refused to move my feet, she shrieked at the guards. “Throw the loudmouth off the cliff!” Rhonda screamed until her voice cracked. “Sarah, get in the truck! Are you really going to let Jess die? She’s had your back for ten years!” Jess was ghost-pale, her eyes wide with total despair. “Sarah, why?! At least tell me why before they kill me!” I squeezed my eyes shut. The pain radiating through my chest was so intense my knees almost buckled. “Because if I get up there,” I whispered, my voice trembling with a decade of suppressed venom, “I won’t be able to stop myself from wrapping my hands around her throat and choking the life out of her.” “I can save anyone in this godforsaken world. But I will never save her.”

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Our marketing agency was practically bleeding out, inches away from total bankruptcy. I was the one who pulled us back from the ledge. I spent a month practically living at the office, surviving on black coffee and sheer willpower, until I finally locked down a ten-million-dollar contract that would save all our jobs. Just hours before the official ink was supposed to dry, my phone buzzed. A notification from the company’s main Slack channel. Brittany, our newest intern, had tagged me. [Hey Nicole. No offense, but I’m just curious.] [Did you take a massive kickback on this deal?] [The company is literally failing to make payroll, and you’re secretly lining your pockets. How do you sleep at night?] Within seconds, the typing bubbles from other coworkers flooded the screen. They were backing her up. Okay. Fine. I canceled my morning alarm. I wasn’t going to sign the contract. I was going to drop the entire ten-million-dollar account directly into our little intern’s lap. Let her see exactly how those “kickbacks” taste. 1 I had worked myself to the bone for thirty straight days. When I finally got the verbal confirmation for the ten-million-dollar account, I crawled into bed, ready to sleep for a week. Suddenly, my phone started vibrating off the nightstand. At first, I smiled. I figured the team had heard the news and was losing their minds with excitement. After all, management hadn’t issued a paycheck in two months. This deal meant everyone was finally getting their back pay, plus a massive bonus. I opened Slack, my thumb hovering over the screen, ready to type out a celebratory message. Then I read the chat. My blood ran cold. Brittany, a twenty-one-year-old intern, had publicly tagged me in the #General channel. [@Nicole, no offense at all!] [I just want to know… for a ten-million-dollar account, you must have negotiated a pretty sweet under-the-table cut for yourself, right?] [Every dollar you pocket is a dollar taken right out of our bonus pool.] [Based on what I know about the industry, you’re probably taking home at least seven figures in kickbacks, aren’t you?] My fingers froze over the keyboard. Every ounce of exhaustion vanished, replaced by a spike of adrenaline. Was she actually out of her mind? Did she seriously believe I was embezzling? Earlier that afternoon, right before I left the building, Brittany had cornered me by the elevators. She had given me this sly, conspiratorial wink and whispered something about me securing a “retirement fund” from the client. I was rushing to a final pitch meeting and didn’t have time for her games. I just told her to mind her own business and stepped into the elevator. She took that as a confession. Logically, I didn’t owe a junior intern an explanation. But Brittany was a special case. She was hired under the table, bypassing HR completely. The office rumor mill swore she had deep, personal ties with our CEO. Because of her supposed status, the rest of the desperate, unpaid staff treated her words like gospel. [Wait, seriously? The company is literally drowning and Nicole is skimming off the top?] [I haven’t been paid in eight weeks! Are you kidding me?!] [We all worked on the pitch deck. If she’s taking a secret payout…] We were in the most critical window of the negotiation. If the client caught wind of internal fraud rumors, they would pull the plug instantly. I swallowed my rage, kept my professionalism intact, and typed a response to the entire company. [Every single cent of the project funding is legally bound in the contract and routed directly into the corporate escrow account. I have not received a single dime in personal kickbacks. Do not spread baseless, defamatory rumors.] That last sentence was a direct warning. 2 The Slack channel went dead silent for a few minutes. Slowly, private messages started trickling into my inbox from the core team. [God, sorry Nicole. We just panicked. We know you wouldn’t do that.] [Yeah, we know how hard you’ve bled for this agency. Just ignore her.] [Brittany is just a kid. She doesn’t know how corporate billing works.] My team wasn’t stupid. They knew my character. I let out a long breath, tossed the phone aside, and let the sheer exhaustion pull me under. I had been averaging four hours of sleep a night. I passed out the second my head hit the pillow. The next morning, I walked into the bullpen with a coffee in hand, only to be met with dead silence and averted eyes. I pulled my lead designer, Jenna, into a glass meeting room. When she told me what happened, the floor dropped out from under me. While I was asleep, Brittany had created a new, private Slack channel. She invited everyone in the company. Except me. Jenna showed me the chat logs. Brittany had spent the entire night brainwashing the staff. [I can’t stand watching her play you guys for absolute fools while you’re struggling to pay rent.] [Nicole signed a backdoor deal. The official contract shows one price, but the client is paying her a massive consulting fee on the side.] [I have an inside source.] [She already pocketed a cool million.] [That million was supposed to be our hazard pay. Why are we letting her steal food from our tables?!] Between her untouchable status as the boss’s favorite and the absolute certainty in her tone, the desperate staff swallowed the bait. [What the hell do we do? A million bucks split between us… that’s five figures each.] [I can’t believe Nicole is a thief. Does Richard know?] [Telling the CEO won’t help if we don’t have paper evidence.] [She’s smart. She probably scrubbed the paper trail months ago.] Jenna looked at me, her eyes filled with conflict. “Nicole… I don’t want to believe you’d do this to us…” My heart ached. This was my team. But the agency hadn’t paid us in two months. People were missing mortgage payments. Panic makes people turn on each other. But what was Brittany’s endgame? Was she clinically insane? Regardless of whether the rumor was true, if this leaked outside these walls, our client would drop us like a bad habit. No company wants to work with a vendor under investigation for embezzlement. If the deal died, the agency died. None of us would ever see our paychecks. I had to cut the head off this snake right now. 3 Some things need to be handled in public. I marched out of the glass room and walked straight to Brittany’s cubicle. She was sitting there, sipping an iced latte, a smug little smile on her face. She was expecting me. Before I could even open my mouth, she leaned back in her ergonomic chair and spoke loud enough for the entire floor to hear. “So, Nicole. Does your conscience hurt at all? Stealing the team’s hard-earned money?” I had no idea where she got this psychotic delusion, but everyone in the bullpen had stopped typing. Dozens of eyes were locked on me. They needed an answer. I forced my voice to remain perfectly level. “Every single financial transaction goes through the corporate accounting department. I have absolutely zero private financial dealings with the client. Every wire transfer goes to the agency. Not a single cent touches my personal accounts.” Not to mention, the contract wasn’t even signed yet. Nobody pays a bribe before the ink is dry. Brittany stared at me, letting out a sharp, mocking laugh. “No private dealings? Really?” My stomach did a slow flip. She picked up her phone and tapped the screen. A second later, a notification chimed on every single computer in the office. She had dropped a photo into the main channel. It was a picture of me, taken from a distance, walking out of the client’s corporate lobby. I was carrying a heavy, polished wooden box. The kind used to hold vintage Macallan 25 Scotch. “Look closely, guys,” Brittany announced, her voice dripping with venom. “Nicole doesn’t drink. She hates whiskey. So why did the client’s VP personally walk her out and hand her a luxury liquor box? We’re all adults here. Do I really need to spell out what was stuffed inside that box?” The implication hung heavily in the dead air. Cold, hard cash. The moment the staff connected the dots, the energy in the room shifted violently. The looks they gave me turned from doubtful to downright hostile. 4 The picture was real. But there was no money in that box. I had been running between meetings all day and the heel of my Louboutins snapped cleanly off in the client’s lobby. Their HR director felt terrible. She gave me a pair of company-branded slide sandals to wear home and handed me an empty wooden display box from a corporate gift to carry my broken heels in. Saying it out loud in my head, I realized how incredibly absurd the truth sounded. Seeing my momentary hesitation, Brittany pounced. She slammed her hand on her desk, her eyes lighting up with vicious triumph. “See?! Look at her face! She’s completely speechless because she knows I caught her!” I gritted my teeth and explained exactly what happened with the shoes. Exactly as I predicted, nobody bought it. Even Jenna, who had warned me earlier, looked away, her face hardening with disappointment. Brittany looked me up and down, putting on a highly exaggerated theatrical performance. “Wow. A broken shoe? Really? If you didn’t do it, why are you sweating so hard to invent these ridiculous stories?” She fluttered her eyelashes at me. I finally understood what it meant to be trapped in a kangaroo court. If I explained myself, I was being defensive. If I stayed silent, I was admitting guilt. A sudden, chilling calm washed over me. Playing nice in the corporate world only makes you a target. Brittany felt perfectly comfortable humiliating a senior director because she truly believed she was untouchable. “What exactly is your goal here, Brittany?” I asked softly. I still had her final internship evaluation on my desk. Regardless of who she was sleeping with, I was going to make sure she never worked in this industry again. She pouted her lips and held her hand out to me, palm up. “Spit out the kickback. Distribute it to the team. Do that, and we can sweep this little indiscretion under the rug.” She paused, letting her voice drop into a sickly-sweet threat. “If you don’t… well, I’ll just have to go to the CEO. And corporate fraud carries a pretty heavy prison sentence, Nicole.” 5 A low murmur of approval rippled through the bullpen. They were actually moved. They saw Brittany as some sort of corporate Robin Hood, risking her own internship to fight the evil management for their paychecks. One of the senior copywriters stood up, his face red with stress. “Nicole, just give the money up before the feds get involved. Split it with the floor and we’ll call it even.” “We are drowning here,” another developer chimed in. “I haven’t brought a check home in two months. My wife is threatening to take the kids to her mother’s.” “Brittany is just trying to look out for us…” Wow. Okay. “Fine,” I said, my voice cutting through the noise like glass. “Since you’ve all unanimously decided I’m a criminal, let’s take this straight to the top. Let’s go see Richard.” The sheer injustice of it made my chest physically ache. I knew they were struggling. That’s exactly why I had destroyed my physical and mental health for thirty days straight to land this account. I practically gave myself an ulcer for these people. I didn’t get a single word of thanks. Only a lynch mob. I swallowed hard, fighting the burn in the back of my throat. As I turned toward the executive suites, I caught a glimpse of Brittany’s face. A flash of pure, unadulterated victory crossed her eyes. It was so fast I almost missed it. Half the office trailed behind me as I marched into Richard’s spacious corner office. Before I could even close the door, Brittany turned on the waterworks, spinning her wild narrative to the CEO. “Richard, Nicole took a massive under-the-table payout from the client, and she’s refusing to make the company whole!” Richard leaned back in his leather executive chair. His brow furrowed deeply. His gaze swept over the angry crowd of employees before finally landing on me. His voice was dripping with accusation. “Nicole. Explain the Macallan box.” The absolute lack of hesitation in his voice—the immediate assumption of my guilt—was a physical blow. He knew me. Out of everyone in this building, he knew I had built this agency from the ground up with him. I had never taken a single penny that wasn’t on my W-2. Staring at the hostility in the room, I forced my heart rate to slow. “Richard,” I said, enunciating every single syllable. “Are you forgetting that the contract hasn’t even been signed yet? The client hasn’t wired a single cent to anyone. Brittany’s entire accusation is legally impossible.” I turned slowly, looking every single person in the eye. “Even if I was a corrupt, thieving executive, I would have to wait for the ink to dry and the funds to clear escrow before securing a kickback, wouldn’t I?” “Put yourselves in the client’s shoes. Would you hand over a million dollars in cash to a vendor before the legal documents were even drafted?” The crowded office suddenly went dead silent. A few of the developers shifted uncomfortably, the logical flaw in the witch hunt finally dawning on them. 6 Brittany didn’t miss a beat. She immediately doubled down, raising her voice. “So what?! The only reason they agreed to the deal is because of the pitch deck the team built! Anyone could have walked in there and closed the deal! Why should you get a massive payout while we starve?!” She took a step toward me, a vicious sneer on her face. “You already shook hands on the backdoor deal. You’re just waiting to sign the official papers tomorrow so the client can wire the dirty money to your offshore account!” I stared at her in utter disbelief. The mental gymnastics required to spin reality like that were staggering. But what truly shattered my faith in the company was what happened next. Richard, the CEO I had worked alongside for five years, slowly nodded. “Brittany makes a valid point.” In that exact second, all the exhaustion, the loyalty, and the late nights evaporated. A cold, heavy void opened up in my chest. All the fight drained right out of me. I let out a soft, hollow chuckle. “So that’s how it is, Richard? You, and everyone standing in this room, truly believe I’m defrauding the company?” Nobody said a word. The heavy silence was all the confirmation I needed. The ice in my veins solidified. When I spoke again, my voice was completely devoid of emotion. “Since you all think closing a ten-million-dollar account is so incredibly easy, and since I’m apparently too corrupt to handle it…” I looked right at the intern. “Let Brittany sign the master contracts tomorrow. I wash my hands of this entirely.”

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I spent thirty years battling chronic, agonizing stomach disease—a permanent condition I developed after diving into freezing water to save my drowning husband. Recently, the doctors told me it had mutated. Without immediate surgery, I would die. When my husband, Adam, heard the news, he didn’t come alone. He brought the mistress he had been hiding for decades to visit my hospital room. “Tina, the doctors ran the tests. Chloe is a perfect match. She can donate her kidney to you.” “But she has one condition. She wants a clean divorce. You walk away with nothing, and you give up custody of the kids.” He paused, a complicated expression crossing his face. “Of course, if you don’t agree to that, I could always…” “I agree.” I cut him off instantly, terrified that his mistress would change her mind. Because I wanted to live. I needed to survive to finally experience the freedom I had lost the day I married Adam thirty years ago. 01 The moment the words left my mouth, a dead silence fell over the hospital room. Adam’s expression twisted into something incredibly dark. “You’re willing to abandon your own children just for a kidney?” He let out a cold, sharp laugh. “I had no idea I married someone so heartless.” I didn’t answer. I just looked out the window. Outside, a heavy snowstorm was raging. The snow was so bright it physically hurt to look at. I squinted my eyes, feeling his heavy gaze still burning into the side of my face. I let out a long sigh and finally spoke the truth. “No matter what, Adam, I am actually grateful to you.” He frowned, looking genuinely confused. I turned my head to face him, a bitter smile tugging at my lips. “I’ve been in this hospital bed for a month. I never expected you to be my very first visitor.” “And I definitely didn’t expect you to be the one bringing me good news.” Exactly one month ago. The specialist had walked into my room, his face grim, and handed me the lab results. “Tina, your kidneys are failing rapidly. Your only chance of survival is an immediate transplant.” “You need to notify your family right now. Immediate relatives, especially your children, have the highest statistical probability of being a match.” My hands shook violently as I gripped the medical chart, but I slowly shook my head. My voice was rough as sandpaper. “Forget it. Don’t call him.” The doctor froze, ready to argue with me. I turned my face to the wall, avoiding his eyes. My son, Brian, had just fought tooth and nail to secure a VP position at Adam’s firm. He was managing multi-million-dollar accounts, right at the peak of his career trajectory. I refused to drag him down with my dying body. But late that night, the tiny, pathetic sliver of hope buried in my chest won out. I opened my phone and sent him a text. “Brian, Mom is in the hospital. I’m very sick and I need a transplant. Please don’t worry too much.” I stared unblinking at the screen, terrified I would miss his reply. I couldn’t even remember the last time I saw Brian in person. He hated my guts. Every text I ever sent him vanished into the void, completely ignored. But I thought—I hoped—that maybe, just maybe, knowing I was dying would make him care. I waited. And waited. From sunrise until the sky went black. I unlocked the screen a hundred times. Nothing. Around midnight, shivering in the cold hospital bed, I swallowed my pride and sent one last message. “Brian, can you please come sit with Mom? Just for tonight. I don’t understand any of these machines, and I’m so scared. I don’t know who to ask.” This time, the phone buzzed instantly. Brian replied. I scrambled to open the message. My hands were shaking so badly, and my outdated phone lagged, causing it to slip from my fingers and crash onto the linoleum floor. The screen shattered into a spiderweb of cracks. Through the broken glass, I read his reply. “I’m in a board meeting. Stop blowing up my phone and annoying me.” All the strength completely drained from my body. I let the phone lie on the freezing floor until the battery died. The room plunged into total darkness. The only sound left was the rhythmic, soulless beeping of the heart monitor, keeping me company through the longest night of my life. I sat up for hours until my eyes burned. Finally, I laid back and closed my eyes. I didn’t even have the energy to cry. I survived like that for a month. I lived on agonizing dialysis treatments, waiting for a donor that never came. I watched the other patients in my ward find matches, get wheeled into surgery, and go home to their families. The panic grew every single day. The suffocating terror of my own impending death slowly ate me alive. I knew I was out of time. Driven entirely by the desperate need to survive, I opened a chat history I hadn’t touched in years. I sent a message to my husband, Adam. 02 Adam stood there in silence. A flash of genuine guilt crossed his eyes. “Get some rest. I’ll go talk to the surgical team and fast-track the prep.” As he turned to leave, I finally noticed Chloe. She had been shrinking behind him the entire time, completely silent. Adam stood frozen in the doorway for a long time, staring out into the hallway. She finally reached out and tugged his sleeve. “Adam?” He snapped out of it and looked down at her. “What?” Chloe asked in a quiet, cautious whisper, “Did… did she really agree to it?” Adam nodded slowly. “Yeah. Tina agreed to sign the divorce papers.” But his face was completely blank as he said it. It was impossible to read his mind. Hearing his confirmation, a tiny, triumphant smirk flickered across Chloe’s lips. The next afternoon, Adam returned. He walked into my room holding a thick manila folder. But he didn’t pull the papers out immediately. He stood by the bed, looking down at my sickly, pale face, his expression incredibly complicated. After a heavy silence, he slowly pulled the divorce settlement from the envelope. His voice carried a rare, hesitant edge. “Tina… if you really don’t want to sign this, you don’t have to.” “I can leverage the company’s resources to find another donor. We don’t have to do it this way.” I forced a weak smile, my voice perfectly flat. “Give me a pen. I’ll sign.” He pulled the papers back, refusing to hand them over. “Tina, you’ve been my wife for decades. You built the foundation of this family. You managed the estate flawlessly. You put up with a lot of misery for me.” “The family needs you.” I looked up into his eyes and gave him a soft, genuine smile. “Adam. You don’t need me. You just need a maid who never complains.” His jaw clenched instantly. “I don’t owe you or your family a damn thing. Whatever debts I had when we got married, I’ve paid them back in blood over the last thirty years. Let me go, Adam. I couldn’t even keep the son I raised for twenty years from hating me. I have absolutely nothing left to stay for.” I didn’t wait to see his reaction. I reached out with a trembling, bruised hand and pulled the settlement out of his grip. I uncapped the pen and carefully, deliberately signed my name on the dotted line. Watching me do it, Adam’s knuckles turned white. His face darkened with fury. “Tina, after all these years, do you really feel absolutely nothing for me?!” “Do you really think thirty years of marriage is just a transaction you can write off?!” I looked at him, completely bewildered. “I just signed away my entire life so your little mistress can take my place. What more do you want from me?” “You kept her as a pet for decades. Did I ever scream? Did I ever throw a tantrum? I covered for you with your mother! I killed every tabloid rumor to protect your reputation! I played the perfect, loving wife to the entire world! I have done everything a human being can possibly do for you, Adam! Right now, all I am asking for is my life!” Adam ground his teeth together, letting out a hateful, venomous laugh. “Fine. The perfect, loving wife.” “Don’t come crying to me when you realize what you just threw away.” I stared him dead in the eye. “I will never regret this.” He turned on his heel and slammed the hospital door so hard the walls shook. The noise startled the little sparrows that usually nested on my windowsill. They took flight, scattering into the blizzard. The only living things that had kept me company for the last month were gone. Look at that, Tina. You really can’t keep anything, can you? 03 Suddenly, I had a reason to wake up in the morning. The surgical prep moved at lightning speed. Nurses came in every few hours to check my vitals, running me through the pre-op protocols. I forced myself to eat. I forced myself to sleep. Even when the dialysis left me feeling like I was hit by a truck, I fought through the nausea, desperate to get my body ready for the table. Out of nowhere, Brian sent me a text. “Keep your mouth shut about Dad and Chloe. If this leaks to the press, it will tank the company stock.” “And since you signed the papers, don’t bother contacting me ever again.” Reading his words, I didn’t feel the soul-crushing grief I expected. I just felt a profound, hollow relief. I tapped the text box, my thumb hovering over the keyboard. Slowly, I deleted the draft and locked the screen. It was better this way. From this day forward, I had no son. I started planning my life after the surgery. I was going to move to New Zealand. The private stash of money I had saved over the decades was more than enough to buy a small cottage with a garden. I pictured myself watering the flowers in the morning and sitting on the porch in the afternoon sun. But right as I was dreaming of my new life, the door slammed open. My lead surgeon practically sprinted into the room, his face completely pale. “Tina, I am so sorry. Chloe backed out. She panicked about the surgical risks and revoked her consent. She is refusing to give you the kidney.” “What?!” My chest tightened so hard I couldn’t breathe. “Doctor, are you sure?! She swore she would do it! Why would she back out now?!” The tiny flame of hope in my chest was violently snuffed out. The suffocating terror of death rushed back in, drowning me completely. The doctor looked absolutely defeated. “We tried to reason with her. But she completely lost it. She said the thought of going under anesthesia terrified her. She was hysterical. We can’t force her onto the table.” I grabbed my phone with shaking hands and dialed Adam’s number. It rang five times before he finally picked up. He sounded exhausted. “I know why you’re calling. I’m trying to talk her down, but she won’t stop crying. She’s terrified of the complications.” He paused, lowering his voice. “Tina, calm down. The surgeon told me the risks are real. I can’t force Chloe to endanger her own life. I’ll figure something else out. I promise I will save you.” He hung up. I dialed him back instantly. He sent it straight to voicemail. I called again. And again. Nothing. After thirty years of swallowing my pain, I finally broke. The tears spilled over my cheeks, soaking the hospital gown. I was one signature away from living. Why was God torturing me like this? That night, I didn’t sleep a single second. Every tick of the clock felt like a judge reading my death sentence. The physical agony of the failing kidneys combined with the absolute despair in my mind was suffocating. My body started shutting down rapidly. I lost the strength to speak. Adam never called back. He never sent an update. I didn’t have the courage to call him again, terrified he would tell me to give up. I spent every hour staring blankly at the dead leaves blowing past the frozen window. Maybe this was just my karma. Maybe I was always meant to die here. 04 A few days later. The surgeon burst into my room again, this time practically glowing with excitement. “Tina! Great news! The national registry just flagged a perfect match! And her pre-op vitals are incredible! The success rate is through the roof!” I snapped my head up, convinced the lack of oxygen to my brain was causing hallucinations. He kept talking, talking incredibly fast. “She’s a young girl in the terminal ward. She has an incurable disease and only a few days left. She signed a blanket organ donation form, wanting to save whoever she could. And her tissue markers are a near-perfect match for yours! It’s an absolute miracle!” Hearing those words, the dam broke. I sobbed uncontrollably, the tears blinding me. I grabbed the doctor’s hand with both of mine, thanking him over and over again. Thank you to that little girl. Thank you to whoever was looking out for me. The surgery went perfectly. When I opened my eyes in the ICU, the bright, warm morning sun was pouring through the blinds. I laid there in pure shock. I actually survived. After a few days of aggressive recovery, my strength started coming back. I practically begged the nurses to tell me who the donor was. I needed to see her. My surgeon finally caved and wheeled me down to the palliative care ward. “This is her room. Her name is Maya. She’s very weak, but her spirit is incredible.” When my wheelchair cleared the doorway and I saw the girl lying in the bed, my heart completely stopped. The tears instantly flooded my eyes. She looked exactly like her. She looked exactly like the baby girl I lost decades ago. The exact same shape of her eyes. The exact same smile. Even the way she pursed her lips when she breathed… it was identical. Thirty years of suppressed trauma violently ripped through my chest. I buried my face in my hands, sobbing so hard I couldn’t catch my breath. Maya saw me crying. She forced a weak, incredibly gentle smile and slowly reached her hand out toward me. “Please don’t cry, ma’am. I’m so happy I could save you. My time is almost up. Please, just promise me you’ll live a beautiful life for both of us. See the world for me, okay?” I pushed myself out of the wheelchair and stumbled to her bedside, gripping her fragile hand in mine. “I promise. I swear to God I will live for you. I will see everything beautiful in this world. I won’t let your sacrifice be in vain.” Maya smiled. It was the purest, cleanest smile I had ever seen. Like a beam of pure light cutting through the darkest night of my life. 05 I demanded an early discharge. Before I left the hospital, I calculated exactly how much cash I needed for a one-way ticket to New Zealand. I wired every single remaining cent of my life savings directly into the bank account of Maya’s parents. After the transfer cleared, I went back to the palliative ward to check on them. When they saw the deposit, they grabbed my hands, weeping uncontrollably. Maya’s mother wiped her face, her voice cracking as she confessed the truth. “Tina… Maya isn’t our biological daughter. We adopted her years ago. We have a biological son, and we barely make enough to survive. We couldn’t afford the aggressive treatments for Maya when she first got sick. We delayed it for years until it became terminal… I will never forgive myself for failing her.” “Adopted?” A violent chill shot down my spine, freezing the blood in my veins. “Tell me right now. Exactly how old is Maya?” She wiped her nose. “She’s twenty-two. When we found her, she had severe head trauma. She couldn’t remember anything about her past, and the police could never track down her real parents.” I stumbled backward, slamming my shoulder into the doorframe just to stay upright. The room started spinning. A completely psychotic, impossible thought clawed its way into my brain. I took a ragged breath, my voice barely a whisper. “I… I need to ask you for a massive favor. Please… please let me run a DNA test with Maya.” Her parents froze, exchanging a confused look. But seeing the absolute desperation in my eyes, they slowly nodded. The next forty-eight hours were pure psychological torture. I replayed every memory of Maya’s face, comparing it to the toddler I had buried in my mind. The memories I had aggressively repressed for decades came flooding back with terrifying clarity. When the lab finally called, I practically ran down the hospital corridor to grab the envelope. My hands were shaking so violently I almost tore the paper in half. My eyes locked onto the bold text at the bottom of the page.

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I booked a fifteen-thousand-dollar Valentine’s proposal gig. The bride-to-be’s vision matched my own dream exactly, with an outdoor lawn, champagne towers, and a floral castle built from imported roses. Oak trees lined the space, wrapped in fairy lights and hand-drawn heart cards crafted by the groom. By the time we finished, I was drenched in sweat, my hair stuck to my cheeks, my clothes clinging to my back. I sank onto the grass, rubbed my lower back, and sent my boyfriend a selfie. “This is the absolute minimum standard,” I wrote. Connor replied instantly with a tiny saluting dog animation. The speakers flared to life with a soft acoustic song. Before I could slip away, guests pulled off my mask and guided me into the center of the lawn. From the far end, through scattered petals, Connor appeared in a fitted grey suit. My ears buzzed, my thoughts blanked. He dropped to one knee in front of me. “Ella, the proposal you always wanted, I built it for you.” Surrounded by cheers and bursts of confetti, I watched him slide a glittering diamond ring onto my finger, still streaked with black soil from the flowers. Five days later, a formal refund request arrived on my desk. The complaint stated the arrangement was unsatisfactory, the scenery cheap, and the event far below expectations. The client’s name was Connor. 1 “Ella, will you marry me?” I had just stood there staring at Connor. His voice sounded like it was echoing from the bottom of a well, miles away, yet deafeningly close. My boyfriend of seven years was actually proposing? I should have been thrilled. I should have been crying tears of absolute joy. But I had spent the last twelve hours hauling heavy wooden props across a field. My lower back was screaming in agony. My palms were covered in tiny, stinging paper cuts and thorn scratches from arranging thousands of roses. I was makeup-free, sweaty, and smelled like fertilizer. Every single physical sensation made it impossible for me to smile naturally. People were pouring out from behind the floral arches. My best friend was there, along with our entire college friend group. They started chanting, clapping their hands in rhythm. “Say yes! Say yes!” Connor was looking up at me, his smile impossibly gentle and confident. My head was spinning. The bride-to-be with the exact same taste as me was me. I had built my own dream proposal. A tiny voice in the back of my head tried to rationalize it. You built the perfect stage with your own two hands, the man you love is kneeling in front of it, and your friends are here to celebrate. Isn’t this the ultimate fairytale ending? My throat tightened, and my voice cracked. “Yes. I will.” My hands were shaking as I reached out toward him. But then I saw the dark grime shoved deep under my fingernails. Humiliation flared hot in my chest, and I instinctively tried to pull my hand back. He didn’t let me. He grabbed my wrist, firmly sliding the ring into place. Standing up, he pulled me into a tight embrace. The crowd erupted into wild applause and shrill whistles. Camera shutters clicked frantically from every direction. I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to force myself to just soak in the happiest moment of my life, even if it had ambushed me in the worst possible way. Half an hour later, the venue began to clear out. Connor gently let go of my hand, his face falling into an expression of deep apology. “Babe, the guys at work just hit me with an emergency. I have to head out.” He kissed my forehead. “We’ll invite your parents out to a nice dinner next week and celebrate properly, just us.” Looking into his seemingly sincere eyes, a wave of hollow disappointment washed over me. But I swallowed it down and nodded. “Go handle it. Drive safe.” He turned and practically sprinted away, leaving me standing in the middle of a field with a dozen out-of-town friends. I spent the next hour booking them tables at a nice restaurant downtown, toasted them twice with a fake smile, paid the tab, and rushed back to the venue. When I got back, my assistant Lily was wiping her forehead, her smile awkward and strained. “Ella, it’s your big day. You should be celebrating with your fiancé. We can handle the teardown.” But event production doesn’t work like that. No matter how magical and breathtaking a setup is, once the client gets their perfect photos, it all has to be torn down and packed into trucks for the next gig. We were severely understaffed. If I left, my crew would be stuck here until sunrise. I took a deep breath, bent down, and picked up a heavy coil of binding wire. “If I bail, you guys won’t sleep tonight. Let’s get to work.” I threw myself back into director mode. Amidst the exhausted groans of my crew, we finally stripped the lawn back to bare grass at two in the morning. By the time I parked my beat-up sedan outside my apartment building, it was nearing 4 AM. The living room was pitch black, save for the eerie, flickering blue light of a dual-monitor setup. Connor was hunched in his gaming chair, headset securely clamped over his ears, his fingers mashing the mechanical keyboard in a frenzy. “Mid! Mid lane! Push the damn tower! Let’s go!” The victory banner flashed across his screen. He let out a triumphant whoop, ripped off his headset, and finally noticed me standing motionless in the doorway. “Oh, you’re back?” His tone was incredibly casual, like he was asking if I had picked up milk from the store. “Your massive work emergency was sitting in the dark playing video games?” My voice was hollow, trembling from pure physical and mental exhaustion. He blinked, clearly taken aback, but then his posture stiffened defensively. “Yeah. I promised the guys I’d run some ranked matches tonight. You expect me to just flake on my squad?” A violent tremor started in my hands. The sheer audacity of his words made my blood boil. “You left me entirely alone out there to clean up a massive logistical nightmare, and you came home to play games?” “Clean up what?” He scoffed, standing up. His tone shifted from defensive to flat-out accusing. “Ella, be reasonable for a second. Building sets and tearing down props, isn’t that literally your job?” 2 Your job. Those two words felt like a serrated knife twisting right in my chest. I was so furiously angry I couldn’t even form a syllable. Hot, stinging tears welled up in my eyes, blurring my vision. Seeing me cry, he just rolled his eyes and waved a hand dismissively. “Alright, whatever. It’s not a big deal, why are you being so dramatic? Go take a shower. You reek of sweat, it’s gross.” Without another word, he sidestepped around me and walked straight into the bedroom. I stood rooted to the spot. Watching his back disappear into the hallway, I felt the blood turn to ice in my veins. My phone started buzzing relentlessly in my pocket. It was the massive group chat our friends had made to share photos from the day. I opened it, and a picture loaded on the screen. Connor looked like a million bucks, tailored suit, perfect hair, the absolute picture of a successful gentleman. And right next to him was me. Wearing a faded company polo, my face shiny with grease, strands of hair plastered awkwardly to my neck. If you zoomed in, you could even see a fresh, bloody scratch on the same hand wearing the diamond ring. We looked like we belonged on two completely different planets. Josh: “Can’t believe you two are the first ones to tie the knot! So happy for you guys!” Nate: “For real, Connor texted us yesterday stressing over every detail. Told us to keep it a secret at least three times!” Stella: “Ella, I am so jealous. You bagged such a handsome guy!” A bitter, self-deprecating laugh escaped my lips. I couldn’t even begin to explain the sour, suffocating feeling in my chest. Then another message popped up. Tyler: “Man, Connor must have dropped a fortune on that setup. Really broke the bank for our girl Ella!” I stared at the screen. Tyler was right. The invoice for this specific setup was exactly fifteen grand. The Bulgarian roses alone required expedited air freight. The floral castle was a heavy-duty custom build that took my crew two full days to construct. The champagne towers used imported crystal glass. For a couple with our income bracket, that price tag was absolutely astronomical. A second later, Connor’s reply popped into the chat. Connor: “You guys know nothing. Locking Ella down was the steal of the century!” A brief, pathetic warmth flickered in my chest. But then I remembered the cold, dismissive look on his face just moments ago, and the warmth instantly died. I didn’t send a single message to the chat. I tossed my phone onto the counter and walked into the bathroom. As the scalding water beat down on my shoulders, I stared at my dark circles and pale face in the foggy mirror. Then I looked down at the glittering stone on my left ring finger. I didn’t sleep a single minute that night. I dragged myself to the agency the next morning looking like a zombie. Connor didn’t text me once. A sudden, terrifying thought crept into my mind. What if this was exactly what the rest of my life would look like after we signed the papers? Should I break up with him? But how do you just casually throw away seven years of history? I couldn’t forget how, back in college, he ran across town in a blizzard just to bring me my favorite scarf. I couldn’t forget when I was hospitalized with a brutal flu, and he sat by my bed for three days straight, refusing to sleep. I let out a heavy, ragged sigh and pulled up the design briefs for my next client. By the third night of our cold war, I was sitting at my home desk, rushing to finish a rendering. A soft knock came at the door. “Babe, open up, please? I brought that red velvet cake from the bakery you love.” My heart gave a stupid, involuntary flutter, but I kept quiet. “Ella, I know I messed up. I’m so sorry. I was being a total jerk.” His voice was thick with guilt, carrying that familiar, boyish vulnerability that always broke my defenses. I walked over and unlocked the door. Connor was standing there holding a pristine white bakery box. When he saw me, his face lit up with a brilliant, relieved smile. “I knew you couldn’t stay mad at me forever.” He gently grabbed my wrist, pulling me out to the kitchen island, and opened the box. “Eat up. I had to hit three different spots before I found a place that still had it in stock.” Watching him hover over me, so eager to please, the glacier in my chest finally began to crack. I picked up a fork and took a small bite. The rich, sweet cream melted on my tongue. It was exactly what I needed. Seeing me eat, he let out a massive sigh of relief and carefully wrapped his hands around mine. “Babe, my brain was totally fried from the screen the other night. I didn’t mean a single word I said.” “I swear on my life, it will never happen again. Okay?” He pulled me into his arms. He smelled like laundry detergent and the faint scent of cedar, the smell of home. All the grievance and fury that had been suffocating me finally found a release. I buried my face in his chest, though I kept my voice dead serious. “Connor, you better mean that.” He raised three fingers in the air, swearing a solemn oath. That night, we slept tangled together, just like we always did. The next morning, I woke up early, kissed him while he slept, put on some light makeup, and headed to the office in a genuinely good mood. I hadn’t even set my bag down on my desk when my boss, Valerie, barked my name from her office. Her face was an ugly shade of purple. She slammed a manila folder onto her desk the second I walked in. “Read it.” I picked up the paper. It was a formal dispute and refund demand. Under the reason for complaint, it clearly stated: Unsatisfactory arrangement, cheap scenery, severely fell short of expectations. Requesting a full refund. The client name at the bottom: Connor. 3 All the blood rushed straight to my head, leaving my fingertips numb. “Valerie, this is impossible. This…” “Impossible? The client is literally sitting in our conference room right now making a scene!” Valerie’s chest heaved with suppressed rage. “Ella, you were the lead director on this account. Now we have a fifteen-grand disaster on our hands. How are you going to fix this?” I gripped the edge of the paper so tightly the edges crumpled. Connor. “Let me go talk to him.” I spun around, practically sprinting down the hall, and shoved the heavy glass door of the conference room open. Connor was sitting at the head of the long oak table, leaning back with one ankle casually resting on his knee. The company’s legal consultant was sitting uncomfortably across from him. He didn’t even bother to look up when I stormed in. “Ah, Ella. Good timing.” “I was just explaining to your boss here that the venue you put together was an absolute mess. The aesthetic was incredibly tacky.” “Half the roses looked like they were bought out of a discount bin, totally wilted. And honestly? Your crew has a terrible attitude. I asked them to move a few things and they acted like I was asking for their kidneys.” He leaned forward, slamming his hand flat against the table. “Fifteen grand for that garbage? Are you guys running a scam here?” He wasn’t yelling, but every single word felt like a rusty nail being hammered into my skull. My entire body was shaking. I could barely stay upright. “Connor, what the hell are you doing?” “What am I doing? I’m exercising my rights as a consumer!” “I paid for a premium service. Do I not have the right to leave an honest review?” “Look, just because we’re engaged doesn’t mean I’m going to give your company a free pass. Business is business, personal is personal.” “The setup was trash. I want my money back. It’s completely justified.” I stared at his face. He looked like a complete stranger. The man who had been holding me tight and whispering sweet apologies just twelve hours ago was currently sitting in my office acting like a shameless con artist. “Bullshit! Connor, you signed off on every single detail of that rendering!” Valerie had hurried into the room behind me. She grabbed my arm, shooting me a frantic look, silently warning me not to curse at a client. But I shook her off. My voice dropped to a freezing, venomous pitch. “Every single flower, every piece of staging, was procured specifically to your exact instructions. You literally hand-drew the neon sign design yourself.” “And now you’re sitting here telling me you hated it?” He let out a short, arrogant chuckle and threw his hands up in mock surrender. “Oh? Is that so?” “I’m the one writing the check. If I say it sucked, it sucked.” He turned to look at Valerie, a smug smirk playing on his lips. “Besides, Ella is my fiancée.” “My proposal setup was built by the woman I proposed to. Why on earth should you people get a cut of that money?” “Process the refund right now, or I’m taking this straight to the Better Business Bureau and dragging your agency’s name through the mud for fraud.” Valerie’s eyes went wide. She slowly took a step back, distancing herself from me. In that split second, all the puzzle pieces snapped violently together. I finally understood what he meant in the group chat. Locking her down was the steal of the century. He had planned to file a chargeback from the very beginning. “Connor!” I glared at him, the name scraping through my gritted teeth. There wasn’t an ounce of shame on his face. Instead, he looked incredibly proud of himself. He leaned back in the plush leather chair, crossing his arms like he was the smartest guy in the room. “Did I say something wrong? You did the manual labor, why should they get the profit!” I was vibrating with rage. Suddenly, he stood up and threw an arm around my shoulder, making sure his voice was loud enough for everyone in the hall to hear. “Babe, it’s fifteen thousand dollars!” “You already said yes. If we get this money back, that completely covers our actual wedding ceremony! You’re the top creative director here anyway, they’ll totally waive the fee as a perk for you!” Valerie hit her breaking point. She pointed a manicured finger right at my face. “Ella, this agency has spent years building your portfolio, and you use us to run a free scam for your boyfriend?!” “How can you be this incredibly selfish?!” 4 Hearing those words, I felt like I had been dipped in liquid nitrogen. A dozen different explanations piled up in my throat, but I couldn’t choke a single one out. The logistics crew had already confirmed my timeline. The massive Valentine’s build was indeed for my own proposal, and I had technically been off the clock for hours during the actual event. I just turned my head and looked at Connor’s familiar face. It had never looked so repulsive. He hadn’t just ruined my memory of getting engaged. He was actively destroying my career. Losing fifteen grand on a single chargeback was a massive hit to the quarterly margins. Valerie’s face was completely drained of color. She refused to even look at me. “Mr. Connor, we have a signed contract for that venue build.” “You were present on-site and verbally expressed total satisfaction with the deliverables. Coming in here days later to demand a reversal is entirely unacceptable. We will not process this.” Connor let out a harsh, mocking laugh. “I only smiled for the cameras to save Ella’s face. You think I wanted to start screaming in the middle of a park?” “Now that the party’s over, you expect me to just swallow the cost of a garbage product?” I was so disgusted I actually laughed. “Connor, if you are this broke, why the hell did you sign the contract in the first place?” “You know exactly what’s in your bank account. Why play the big shot when you can’t even afford the deposit?” I looked at him, my eyes heavy with absolute, unfiltered disappointment. Something about my tone must have struck a raw nerve, because Connor jumped up from his chair like he’d been burned. “Me? Playing the big shot?” “I did all of this for you! To feed your ridiculous ego!” “You’re the one constantly sending me TikToks of these insane, over-the-top, expensive aesthetics! You think I didn’t know you were dropping hints?” “And now I’m the bad guy for trying to look out for us? You were smiling ear to ear that night! You loved the attention!” He pointed a finger inches from my nose, practically screaming. So this was it. After seven years of building a life together, this was how he saw me. To him, I was just a vain, gold-digging burden. The TikToks I sent him, the little jokes about wanting something romantic—all I ever wanted was for him to care enough to try. I just wanted to feel chosen. I took a slow, agonizingly deep breath, forcing down the acidic bile of humiliation rising in my chest. “Fine.” Just one word. “Valerie, authorize the refund.” Valerie froze, opening her mouth to argue, but I cut her off immediately. “Deduct the fifteen grand entirely from my year-end bonus.” “Give him every single cent. Full refund.” Seeing the dead, hollow look in my eyes, Valerie let out a heavy sigh and gave a tight nod. A massive, victorious grin spread across Connor’s face. He looked like a general who had just won a historic war. “See? That’s what I’m talking about. We could have skipped all this drama. Put on something nice tonight, I’m taking you to a steakhouse!” “We’ll throw this money straight into the wedding fund. And hey, you can direct the venue setup yourself again! You can make it look however you want!” I stared directly into his eyes, enunciating every single syllable. “Connor, we are done.” His triumphant smile instantly completely froze. “What are you talking about?” “I’m calling off the engagement. We are breaking up.” I gripped the diamond ring, ripped it off my finger, and slammed it down hard onto the oak table. “Keep the ring. And don’t bother going back to the apartment, because my name is on the lease, not yours.” “Take your blood money and get the hell out of my sight.”

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