Author: Momo Chan

1 For the three years I was with Devin, my entire calendar revolved around our anniversary. I waited for it with a knot in my stomach, because that was the day he handed down my annual score. Our first year, he cupped my cheek in the dim light of his bedroom, his voice soft and melodic. “Summer, you’re wonderful in every way. You just don’t have that effortless, sexy silhouette.” So, I got an eight. Our second year, he gifted me a silk slip dress two sizes too large. When I went to bed angry and turned away from his touch, he sighed and said I had an exhausting habit of making mountains out of molehills. My score dropped to a six. Our third year, his college sweetheart, Serena, returned to the States. Devin started spending his nights at dive bars, drinking himself numb. When I finally confronted him, he accused me of being petty, narrow-minded, and utterly incapable of empathy. That year, I plummeted to a four. For three years, I genuinely believed I was the broken one. I thought if I just cooked better, shrank myself smaller, and loved him with enough devotion, I could finally earn a passing grade. Until tonight. Serena got married today. Devin came home completely obliterated, collapsing into my arms and slurring that I was the only woman he truly loved. But when his phone fell from his coat pocket and unlocked on the duvet, I saw a photo pinned to his Notes app—a woman with high cheekbones and dark, expressive eyes who looked eight-tenths like me. Beneath the picture, he had typed a single sentence: True love has no rubric. In my heart, Serena will always be a perfect ten. Standing by the edge of our bed, the truth struck me with the force of a physical blow. The perfect score I had nearly killed myself trying to reach wasn’t something I had failed to earn. It was a prize that had been given away years before I ever walked into the room. I swallowed the burning bile in my throat, opened my laptop, and quietly clicked Accept on the job offer waiting for me in Chicago—eight hundred miles away. Then I turned back to the bed, shoved his drunken weight off my hip, and whispered into the dark: “Devin, from this second on, your score with me is zero.” The screen of Devin’s phone lit up against the sheets in relentless, erratic pulses. A group text from his fraternity brothers: You had the balls to corner Serena and kiss her outside the alumni bar last month, but you didn’t have the guts to object at the altar today? Weak, man. A cold spike drove straight through my chest. So that was what happened that night three weeks ago. He had come home with swollen, raw lips, swearing he’d had a sudden allergic reaction to the cilantro in his takeout. I had thought it was strange—he’d never had a herb allergy before—but I loved him, so I believed him. I had even opened my Notes app and typed Devin: severe cilantro allergy! into my phone so I’d remember when ordering groceries. There were thirty-two entries in my Notes app, every single one of them dedicated to Devin’s preferences, his shoe sizes, his migraine triggers. In Devin’s phone, there were sixty-four entries. Every single one was about Serena. The screen buzzed again. Back in college, none of us thought anyone would ever replace Serena. Life’s wild. Summer’s nowhere near Serena’s league, obviously, but she’s obedient and takes care of him. Good enough to settle down with. I closed my eyes. I remembered the first time Devin introduced me to those friends. While I was in the bathroom, I had overheard them laughing, comparing me to his ex. Back then, Devin had cut them off sharply: Summer is my girlfriend. If you guys actually respect me, you won’t say another word about her. After that night, his friends had always been polite to my face. But now I realized that politeness was just a courtesy they extended because Devin had asked for it. And if they were talking like this again behind my back, it meant Devin had stopped defending me a long time ago. I looked down at him sprawled across our mattress, my vision blurring with hot, stinging tears. “Devin.” He let out a low groan and rolled over, his heavy arm blindly wrapping around my waist. “Who’s better?” I asked, my voice cracking before I could stop it. “Me or Serena?” The question sounded pathetic even to my own ears. I hated myself for asking, hated that I was still begging for a comparison. Devin buried his face into my stomach, inhaling deeply, and mumbled into the cotton of my shirt: “Serena…” The fragile tether holding my sanity together snapped. A wave of profound nausea washed over me, and I shoved him away so violently his head bounced against the headboard. His phone buzzed again. This time, it wasn’t a standard alert. It was a customized chime I had never heard before—soft, bright, and deliberate. I looked down at the notification banner. Serena. Devin, I was going through our wedding registry deposits tonight. Someone sent a cash gift of $1$10,240.00 directly to my account. Was that you? I knew it was. You’ve always been entirely too generous with me. I know I broke your heart when I left for London without saying goodbye. And I know I hurt you by coming back and going through with this marriage. It was a family arrangement my mother set up years ago, and I couldn’t get out of it. But please believe me—my heart has always belonged to you. My blood ran cold. Thirteen thousand, one hundred and forty-five dollars and twenty cents. It wasn’t a random number. It was an old romantic code, but more importantly, it was the exact balance of our joint savings account—the “Future Home Fund” we had spent three years building twenty-dollar transfers at a time. Half of that money came from my overtime paychecks. And for three years, the most expensive thing Devin had ever bought for me was a thirty-dollar canvas tote from a farmers market. Wiping the wetness from my cheeks, I picked up the phone and hurled it squarely at his chest. “You absolute bastard!” The impact jolted him awake. He blinked up at me, his eyes bloodshot and unfocused, completely blind to the tears pouring down my face. Or maybe he saw them and simply didn’t care. He tried to pull the duvet over his shoulders, but when he realized he was still wearing his suit jacket and oxfords, he frowned in annoyance. “You didn’t undress me or wipe me down?” he slurred. For three years, in my desperate pursuit to be the perfect ten, I had nursed him through every hangover, stripping off his muddy clothes, pressing warm washcloths to his face, and leaving electrolyte water on his nightstand. A bitter knot formed in my throat. “Why don’t you call Serena to play maid for you?” Devin’s brows knit together. Through the haze of bourbon, he let out a scoff. “As if she’d ever do something like that.” A dry, hollow laugh escaped my lips. Of course. I had forgotten the note in his phone: Serena is meant to be worshipped like a queen. I was just the domestic help he slept with. “Devin, look at me,” I said, my voice rising in pitch. “I’m your girlfriend. You swore to me there was nothing left between you two, but everyone knows you’re still obsessed with her. Am I an idiot to you? Have I just been a joke this whole time?” The raw anger in my voice finally pierced through his stupor. He picked up his phone, glanced at the open screen, and let out a long, exhausted sigh. “There really is nothing going on, Summer,” he said, his tone infuriatingly level. “She’s a married woman now. What could possibly happen between us?” “Nothing? You sent her thirteen grand of our house savings! Most of that was my money! What right did you have to give it to her?” His eyes shifted away for a fraction of a second before hardening into defensive irritation. “Summer, you’re overreacting again. Keep this up, and I’m taking points off your score. You hit zero, and we’re done.” In three years, no matter how bad our fights got, neither of us had ever uttered the word breakup. He used to hold my face and tell me, Once you say that word, it’s a dagger you can never pull out of the wall. I’ll never say it to you. And yet, here it was. Broken without hesitation for a woman who wasn’t even his. I stared into his eyes, searching for a single trace of the boy who used to look at me like I hung the moon. I looked for a long, quiet minute. There was nothing there. Three years, and the love I thought we built had evaporated into thin air. Or perhaps it had never existed at all. I had simply been a warm, convenient body filling the vacancy left by someone else. Seeing my silence, Devin seemed to realize he had pushed too far. His expression softened into a rehearsed gentleness. He reached out and brushed a tear from my cheek with sickening tenderness. “Hey. I didn’t mean it. No deductions. I know you’d never actually leave me. Don’t cry, baby.” I jerked my face away from his palm. Fresh tears spilled over. “I want to break up, Devin.” His hand froze mid-air, a flicker of genuine irritation crossing his features. “Stop throwing a tantrum. Yesterday you were talking about booking our wedding venue, and now you want to break up? I’m not buying it.” He was right. Twenty-four hours ago, I had been curled against his side on the couch, happily scrolling through rustic barn venues on Pinterest. Then his phone rang. The display flashed with a customized pink heart emoji. My contact in his phone was just my full name: Summer Reynolds. The caller was Serena. Devin answered immediately, putting it on speaker without even thinking. Serena’s breathless, frantic sobs poured through the speakers. “Devin… please, you have to come get me. He’s trying to touch me… I told him I wasn’t ready for our wedding night, and he got aggressive. I’m so scared…” Devin shot up from the bed, panic written all over his face. “Serena, stay where you are. Lock the bathroom door. I’m calling an Uber right now.” I lunged forward and grabbed his forearm with both hands. “Don’t you dare go. She has a husband. Legally, morally, emotionally—it is not your place to go there.” Serena’s crying grew louder through the receiver. Devin lost his mind. With a vicious shove, he threw me off him. “Summer, you’re a woman too! How can you be so heartless?” My balance gave out. I fell hard against the corner of the heavy wooden nightstand, the sharp edge slamming directly into my forehead. A flash of white light blinded me, followed by a throb of agonizing pain. I sat on the floor, clutching my temple, watching his silhouette vanish through our front door without a single backward glance. The questions died in my throat. My head throbbed, but the pain in my chest was infinitely worse. The next morning at ten, the HR director from the Chicago firm called to finalize my relocation package and start date. After hanging up, I sat on the edge of the mattress, staring blankly at the framed photo on my nightstand. It was from the night he asked me out. We were at an outdoor beer garden with friends, and he had suddenly produced a single red rose, his face flushed red. I hadn’t known back then if the blush was from the alcohol or from genuine nervousness, but the sight of it had permanently etched itself into my heart. I wiped my dry eyes. I had loved the ghost of who he was. But that ghost was gone. I walked into my current office downtown and submitted my immediate resignation. As I packed the last of my desk into a banker’s box, my coworker, Megan, stopped by my cubicle. “Summer? What happened to your forehead? That’s a terrible bruise. Did you fall? Do you need to go to urgent care?” I caught my reflection in the glass partition. A dark purple knot had blossomed above my left brow. “I’m actually on my way to the clinic right now,” I murmured, forcing a tight smile. Megan, who knew Devin and I were together, nudged my arm gently. “Devin must be losing his mind seeing you like that. Go get it checked out.” A hollow, self-deprecating smile touched my lips. I checked my phone. From the moment he walked out last night until now, he hadn’t sent a single text. Not one missed call. Instead, his best friend had posted an Instagram story an hour ago: Backing up my boy no matter what. In the background reflection of a glass doorway, Devin was holding Serena in a fierce, bone-crushing embrace, burying his face into her hair like a drowning man breaking the surface. A lone tear splashed against the screen of my phone. My forehead began to ache with a dull, rhythmic pulse. I dropped the phone into my purse, hailed a cab, and headed to the university hospital clinic. “Devin, this is all my fault,” a woman’s trembling voice drifted through the corridor as I approached the minor trauma unit. “If you hadn’t come to protect me, you wouldn’t have gotten into a brawl with him. Look at all this blood…” I stopped outside the half-open door of the examination room. Through the glass, I saw Devin sitting on the exam table. A nasty gash ran along his hairline, dried blood streaking down his jaw. Serena was leaning over him, delicately dabbing the wound with an antiseptic wipe. Around the ends of her dark, wavy hair was a small, dusty-rose velvet scrunchie. My scrunchie. Two years ago, Devin had taken it from my wrist during a road trip, laughing and calling it a silly accessory, but insisting on wearing it around his own wrist like a promise. He had sworn he would never take it off—that it was his lucky charm, that he only slipped it off to shower and put it right back on. Now, it sat in Serena’s hair. The sight burned my eyes worse than any open flame. “Did you… just run out on your girlfriend last night?” Serena asked softly, tilting her head with calculated innocence. “Is she going to be mad at you?” Devin seemed to drift for a second, a faint, condescending smile playing on his lips. “Summer? No. She’s gentle. Her whole world revolves around me. She’s probably sitting at home right now making dinner, waiting for me to walk through the door. She won’t stay mad.” Then he suddenly flinched, reaching out to gently take the cotton swab from her fingers. “Wait—you’re allergic to iodine. Don’t touch the solution. Let me do it myself.” Three years apart, and he remembered her contact allergies down to the chemical compound. Yet in the three years we lived together, I had told him at least ten times that I was severely allergic to cephalosporin antibiotics. Once, when I had severe strep throat, he bought me a generic cephalosporin prescription from the pharmacy, and I ended up in the emergency room in full anaphylactic shock. Every time, he promised he’d never forget again. And every time, he forgot. A metallic taste filled my mouth. I realized I had bitten through my lower lip. The pain shocked the tears out of my eyes, clearing my vision just as Serena turned and saw me standing in the doorway. “Oh,” Serena said smoothly, stepping toward the door with an air of delicate triumph. “You must be Summer.” Devin spun around on the table. The moment his eyes landed on me, his face twisted into an immediate barrage of defensive anger. “Are you tracking me now? Seriously? I told you there’s nothing going on between Serena and me! Why do you have to be so paranoid all the damn time?” The metallic blood sat heavy on the back of my tongue. Devin, I thought, staring at him, if you had looked at my face for even a single second, you would have seen the purple swelling across my forehead. Where was the boy who used to panic when I got a tiny paper cut opening a package? Serena stepped between us, playing the gracious mediator. “Devin, don’t yell at her. She’s just insecure. It’s understandable. After all, you and I were together for ten years. We’re practically family.” Ten years. She emphasized the words with surgical precision. The room seemed to tilt. Ten years. Devin had told me they dated for two years in college. His friends had backed up the lie. They had all conspired to keep me in the dark, treating me like a naive clown dancing for their amusement. My heart crumbled into dust. “How many other things have you lied to me about?” Devin’s breath grew heavy with impatience. “I lied so you wouldn’t spiral! Look at how hysterical you’re being right now. You should be thanking me for protecting you from your own overthinking.” The cold, self-righteous arrogance in his voice pushed me past my breaking point. I lunged forward, slamming my fists into his chest. “You coward! You don’t have a shred of human decency!” In the scuffle, Serena suddenly stepped into the fray, and before I could even register her movement, she threw herself backward onto the linoleum floor with a dramatic, piercing shriek. I froze. I hadn’t even brushed her shoulder. It was an embarrassingly cheap parlor trick. But Devin bought it instantly. He shoved me backward, his eyes wild with venom. “Summer, I swear to God you’re turning into your psychotic mother!” The words hit me like an executioner’s blade. My entire body went completely numb. He knew. He knew that when I was sixteen, my father’s shameless affairs had driven my mother into a severe psychological breakdown, landing her in a permanent psychiatric care facility. He knew how the kids at school had ostracized me, whispering that I was born from ‘crazy blood.’ It had been the deepest, most suffocating trauma of my youth. I had wept in his arms late at night, peeling back my deepest scars, and he had kissed my forehead, swearing, No one will ever hurt you like that again. I’ve got you. And now, he had taken that very blade and twisted it into my heart. The tears stopped. The pain receded into a vast, terrifying hollow. On the floor, Serena curled into a ball, clutching the hem of Devin’s jacket. “Devin… my stomach hurts…” Without another glance at me, Devin swept Serena into his arms bridal-style and sprinted down the hall, shouting frantically for a doctor. As the sound of his footsteps faded, my phone vibrated in my palm. An unknown number. It was a text message from a man identifying himself as Serena’s new husband. Attached was a photo of an ultrasound report showing a four-week pregnancy. Underneath, a short message: I haven’t touched her since she got back to the country. I think you and I both know whose child this is. A dull, thudding ache hit my chest, but alongside the ache came an overwhelming sense of liberation. I turned around, walked up to the pharmacy window to collect my burn ointment, and took a cab back to our apartment. I pulled my two large suitcases from the closet and began methodically packing my life into them. My flight to Chicago was originally scheduled for tomorrow evening. I opened the airline app, paid the fee, and moved it to tonight. I was done playing a bit part in someone else’s tragic romance. Your score with me is zero, Devin. Forever.

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1 In the eyes of Austin’s family and circle of friends, I was the cold-blooded monster. The shrew. The gatekeeper from hell. What none of them knew was that every cruel word, every icy refusal, and every door slammed in someone’s face had been privately scripted by Austin himself. We had spent ten years perfecting our silent choreography. I was the shield he used to deflect inconvenient favors, deadbeat friends, and toxic family demands. When he narrowed his eyes across a dinner table, it was my cue to manufacture an argument and drive his freeloading buddies out of the house. When he touched the bridge of his nose during an after-work gathering, I was supposed to call him in a manufactured rage to drag him away from expensive poker nights. He got to play the longsuffering, devoted golden boy. I bore the brunt of the venom. Until the night he brought his childhood friend, Shane, into our living room. Austin had put on his usual performance, his voice trembling with manufactured distress while his left eyelid fluttered in a frantic, unmistakable rhythm: “Babe, please. Shane lost a hundred grand at the tables. If he doesn’t clear the debt by tomorrow, the loan sharks are going to take his house. His whole family is going under. Can’t we just lend him something to keep him afloat?” Following the script we had run a thousand times, I kept my face impassive and delivered a flat, ruthless refusal. Shane left our house in a daze of utter despair. The very next day, his home was seized, his wife took their child, and his entire life unraveled into ash. That night, Shane broke into our bedroom. He stood over me with a butcher knife, screaming through his tears as the blade came down again and again: “You heartless bitch! If you hadn’t left me to die, I wouldn’t have lost everything!” I bled out in the dark, gasping for air on my own ruined mattress. And Austin? Austin didn’t even demand justice. He signed a letter of leniency for Shane in court, playing the magnanimous, grieving saint. Then he took the deed to my premarital house, cashed out my private savings, and buried me. Three months later, he remarried the widow down the block. At his second wedding, slurring through his champagne, he laughed to an old classmate: “Honestly, Shane did me a favor. Got rid of Rachel cleanly, and all the money fell right into my lap.” When I opened my eyes again, the smell of fresh floor wax filled my nostrils. Shane was sitting on our sectional, head in his hands, begging for a lifeline. And Austin was standing right behind him, furiously blinking his eyes at me. I didn’t blink back. Instead, I turned around, walked over to my handbag on the entryway console, and counted out ten thousand dollars in crisp hundred-dollar bills. When I placed the stack on the glass coffee table, Shane’s jaw dropped so hard I thought it might dislocate. He stared at the money, his trembling hands frozen midway in the air, before his eyes darted cautiously toward Austin. I knew that look by heart. Did your dragon of a wife just lose her mind? Austin’s left eyelid twitched violently. A flicker of genuine panic and bewilderment broke through his carefully rehearsed face of distress. He had expected the routine: the sharp scoff, the dismissive wave of my hand, the cold command for Shane to leave our home. Then he would walk Shane to his car, offer empty sympathies, shed a few brotherly tears, and spend the next hour complaining about what a tyrant I was. I pushed the stack an inch closer to Shane. “Take it,” I said, my voice steady. “It’s all the liquid cash I have in the house right now, but it’s yours. I’m not going to sit here and watch your family end up on the street.” Shane’s bloodshot eyes welled with tears. His hands shook violently as his fingers finally closed around the envelope. “Rachel… God, Rachel, thank you.” His posture collapsed. His knees buckled, threatening to hit the hardwood floor right in front of me. I caught him by the elbow before he could sink, holding him steady with a firm grip. “Don’t do that,” I said quietly. “No kneeling. Just take this, pay off the worst of the immediate interest, and stop gambling. Go home and be the husband Carrie deserves.” Shane looked up, wiping his face with the back of his sleeve, bewildered gratitude warring with a decade of conditioned perception. “I swear to God, Rachel. I’m done. I’ll never touch a card again.” He paused, looking between me and the frozen statue that was my husband. “I just… I thought you always…” Always. Always the shrew who hoarded every cent. At the Miller family reunions, I was the one relegated to the kids’ table because none of the adults wanted to sit next to the cold-hearted woman who supposedly monitored her husband’s bank account. When someone started a holiday gift exchange pool and I happened to draw a twenty-dollar gift card, Austin’s relatives would sneer behind their napkins: “Look at Rachel grabbing the scraps. As if Austin doesn’t give her enough allowance.” None of them ever knew that Austin was the one grabbing my phone under the table to snatch those digital redemptions. The moment the front door clicked shut behind Shane, the mask melted from Austin’s face. He snatched his ceramic mug off the counter and slammed it down onto the table. The tea sloshed over the rim, pooling on the polished mahogany. “Rachel! What the hell was that?” I wiped my hands on a kitchen towel and turned to meet his towering glare. “What was what?” He stepped closer, his shadow stretching over me under the recessed lights, his jaw clenched tight. “That money! You know damn well he’s throwing it into a bottomless pit! He’s a degenerate gambler! We’re never seeing a single dime of that ten grand again!” I tilted my head, looking at him with mild amusement. “So that means I’m supposed to play the villain on cue?” He choked on his breath, startled by my tone, before trying to dial it down into his usual patronizing rhythm. “We’ve had an understanding for years, Rachel… That’s how this works.” “Right,” I interrupted, my voice dropping to a cool, razor-thin register. “For years, you’ve worn the halo while I took the stones. You get to be the loyal friend, and I get to be the heartless bitch who keeps your wallet locked in a safe. Today you blinked your little signal, but I decided not to play. He’s your lifelong buddy, isn’t he? If your brotherhood is so sacred, why weren’t you willing to spare ten grand to save his life?” Austin’s face flushed from pale chalk to a mottled, ugly crimson. His lips worked silently before he spat: “That’s completely different! You’ve always backed me up before—” “Before was before,” I cut him off. “I had an epiphany today. Standing by and watching someone drown has a way of coming back around to kill you.” I weighed the word kill carefully on my tongue. He didn’t catch the nuance. He merely assumed I was having an inexplicable emotional tantrum. His expression hardened into a contemptuous sneer. “Save the Mother Teresa routine. That ten grand came out of our joint funds, Rachel. You handed it out like charity without my permission.” I gave him a slow, mocking smile, mimicking the gentle, browbeaten lilt he always used when talking to his friends about me. “Joint funds? Don’t you tell everyone in this town that you hand your entire paycheck over to your wife and let me spend whatever I want because you’re just so whipped?” Austin went rigid. His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. He had said exactly that. To his bowling buddies, to his business partners, to his mother. He loved the pathetic, long-suffering aura it gave him. He thrived on the pitying glances other men gave him over beers. He closed the distance between us, leaning down until his breath brushed my forehead. “What is wrong with you today?” I looked straight past his shoulder toward the empty hallway. “Nothing. Just realized that being the good person feels surprisingly clean.” I stared into his eyes, remembering the cold iron of the blade piercing my ribs in the dark. In my past life, I had been pathetic enough to believe we were partners. That our marriage was a fortress and I was simply guarding the gates against freeloaders so he could focus on his career. It wasn’t until I lay in my own blood, listening to him sign a waiver to commute his friend’s sentence, that I realized I was never his partner. I was his designated scapegoat. A consumable asset. Austin lowered his voice, his tone shifting into an urgent, manipulative plea. “Rachel, think about the dynamic we’ve built. Without you drawing the hard line, how am I supposed to keep these people from bleeding me dry? How do I say no without ruining my business network?” “So I’m supposed to carry the reputational stench for the rest of my life?” “Well, who else?” The words slipped out of him before he could censor them. Catching himself, he immediately softened his eyes. “Rachel… honey. You know I need social capital for my commercial consulting firm. Reputation is everything in my line of work. You work from home; you don’t have to navigate local politics. What does it matter if people think you’re strict? Haven’t I always treated you well at home?” I didn’t answer. I just watched him. The silence made him squirm. He averted his gaze, running a hand through his hair. “Fine. The money’s gone, no use crying over spilled milk. But next time—” “Next time, I’ll lend it again,” I said softly. “Rachel!” “Austin,” I whispered, holding his gaze until his pupils contracted. “In another life, I followed every single one of your orders. And it ended very badly for me.” He frowned, genuine irritation flickering across his forehead. “What are you babbling about?” I didn’t explain. I turned on my heel and walked toward the stairs. At the landing, I stopped and leaned back against the wall, closing my eyes. It had been barely three hours since I woke up in this living room, and I had already snapped the first thread of fate. Ten thousand dollars wouldn’t solve all of Shane’s problems, but it was enough to keep the loan sharks from kicking down his door tonight. He wouldn’t lose his mind. He wouldn’t come back with a knife. And that brought another thought to the surface—a memory that had always felt slightly off. The night Shane murdered me, Austin had claimed he had an emergency client meeting at the office. But his boutique consulting firm had been bleeding clients for months; there had been no work for weeks. Why was he really away that night? A cold knot tightened in the pit of my stomach. I walked down the hall and pushed open the door to his private home office. During our marriage, I had respected his so-called “creative boundaries” and rarely set foot inside. But respect was a currency meant for the living, not for a man who had left me to die. I sat in his ergonomic leather chair, woke the desktop computer, and grabbed the mouse. The desktop was littered with mundane PDFs—quarterly tax filings, vendor agreements, generic pitch decks. I clicked into the Recycle Bin. Near the bottom sat an unnamed file marked for permanent deletion. I restored it, double-clicked, and waited. When the document opened on the monitor, the breath evaporated from my lungs. It was an accidental death and dismemberment policy from a major underwriter. Insured party: Rachel Miller. Primary beneficiary: Austin Miller. Payout: Three million dollars. My hands began to tremble against the edge of the desk. At the bottom of the last page, the signature line bore my name. The handwriting was unmistakably mine—the slight tilt of the R, the elongated tail of the h. Then I saw the execution date. Three months ago. The memory hit me with the force of a physical blow. Three months ago, I had been bedridden with a 103-degree fever from severe influenza. Austin had sat by my bedside, stroking my hair with gentle fingers, handing me a pen and a stack of papers: “Babe, the mid-year corporate filing needs a spousal asset verification for the business loan. Just sign here, here, and here. Go back to sleep, I’ll handle the rest.” I took a slow, shuddering breath and dragged the PDF back into the trash bin, choosing not to empty it. My heart hammered against my ribs, heavy and sickeningly loud. Austin’s late-night “overtime” on the night of my death hadn’t been a coincidence. He had calculated every single variable. He had known Shane was on the brink of an armed breakdown. He had pushed me to refuse the loan, knowing Shane would direct his homicidal fury entirely at me. And when I was gone, Austin would walk away with a three-million-dollar check, a fully paid-off house, and the public adoration of a devoted husband who forgave his wife’s killer out of the goodness of his heart. It was immaculate. I walked out of the office. The lower floor was dark; Austin had already left the house. I pulled out my phone and tapped out a message to Shane’s wife: Carrie, did Shane get home? Put that ten thousand in a separate account right now. Don’t let him near a casino. If you guys need help with the kids’ school supplies or groceries, call me directly. Don’t go to Austin—he has too many business dinners and won’t be able to help. A moment later, an audio message popped up. I pressed play, and Carrie’s choked, sobbing voice spilled out: “Rachel… thank you. Oh God, thank you. Shane came through the door and dropped to his knees. He gave me the cash. He swore on our daughter’s life he’s never gambling again…” I held down the microphone button, keeping my tone gentle: “Keep your head up, Carrie. Reach out to me if things get tight.” The next morning, I stepped out onto the driveway to pick up the morning paper and caught the voice of my mother-in-law, Diane, leaning over the fence chatting with a neighbor. “—you should have seen Carrie’s eyes, swollen like plums,” Diane was saying, half-scoffing. “Telling everyone that if Rachel hadn’t handed over the cash, they wouldn’t have had money for baby formula. Miracles never cease. Rachel actually opening her wallet? Usually, her face looks like everyone owes her a million bucks.” Seeing me walk down the path, Diane turned, crossing her arms with a tight, disapproving smirk. “Well, Rachel. Three months ago when Austin went to his older brother Marcus to ask for his thirty-thousand-dollar loan back, he told us you were breathing down his neck, demanding five thousand in interest. Funny how you’re suddenly so generous with deadbeats outside the family.” Marcus had borrowed thirty thousand dollars from our joint savings a year ago to put a down payment on a duplex. We had agreed on an interest-free, informal repayment schedule. I had never once asked Marcus for the money back. I certainly hadn’t asked for five grand in interest. Three months ago. The exact timeline of the insurance policy. I looked at Diane, keeping my voice quiet and measured. “Diane, I never asked Marcus for that money back. And I never asked for a cent of interest.” Diane snorted, dismissing me with a wave of her hand, and strutted down the sidewalk. After she was gone, I didn’t go to work. I spent the afternoon at a downtown café, making three separate calls: one to the state insurance commissioner’s fraud hotline, one to a private handwriting analyst, and one to the local precinct’s domestic crisis desk. By the time I returned home, twilight had settled over the suburb like a bruise. Austin was sitting on the living room sofa, the room dark except for the amber glow of his cigarette. His face was rigid with fury. “My mother called me today,” he said, not looking up as I took off my coat. “What kind of lies did you feed her?” “Just the truth,” I said, setting my purse on the counter. He let out a dry, venomous laugh and stood up, towering over me in the dim light. “What is your game, Rachel? First you give Shane ten grand to make me look like an asshole, then you go poisoning my mother against me. Are you deliberately trying to blow up my life?” I met his glare evenly. “Austin, why were you so desperate to squeeze thirty grand out of Marcus three months ago? Is your firm going under?” His pupils contracted into pinpricks. “Since the second quarter, your share of the mortgage has been weeks late,” I said, my voice level, dissecting him piece by piece. “Last month, you said the Audi was in the shop for a transmission overhaul, but it never came back. You sold it wholesale to cover a short-term business debt, didn’t you?” Austin’s cheek twitched. The suave, composed facade was cracking, revealing the panicked animal beneath. “Fine!” he snapped, throwing his hands in the air. “You want the truth? The firm is four hundred thousand in the hole! Creditors are calling me every morning! Months ago, I dropped hints every single day for you to take out an equity loan on this house to keep me afloat, but you acted like you couldn’t hear me! What choice did I have? I had to get Marcus’s loan back! If I asked him myself, my mom would have had a stroke, so I had to use your name!” I pulled a folded piece of paper from my bag and dropped it squarely onto his chest. It fluttered down onto the sofa cushions between us. The printed insurance policy. “And what was this for?” I asked quietly. “I wouldn’t mortgage my house, so you decided my corpse was worth more?” Austin stared at the paper as if it were a venomous snake. When he looked back up, his eyes were bloodshot, his voice cracking into a frantic, high-pitched defense. “If you had just agreed to sell the house, that policy would have sat in a drawer forever! It was a contingency! A worst-case scenario!” He sounded entirely righteous. Tears of self-pity actually welled in the corners of his eyes. Looking at this man—the man whose ring I had worn for a decade—I felt no rage. Only an overwhelming, suffocating sense of absurdity. When he saw that I wasn’t softening, the self-pity vanished from his face, replaced by a cold, desperate malice. He stepped forward, blocking my path to the front door. “Since we’re laying all our cards on the table,” he whispered, his voice dropping into a raspy growl, “I’ll give you two options. One: you sign the premarital house over to the bank as collateral tomorrow morning, and we weather the bankruptcy together. Or two: you have an unfortunate accident tonight, the three-million-dollar policy clears, and I promise you a gorgeous funeral with fresh lilies every single anniversary.” A chill raced up my spine. He lunged forward. I backed away, my heels hitting the threshold of the second-story balcony. The cold evening wind whipped around my neck. One hard push, and the concrete patio below would do the rest. Austin’s fingers closed around my throat, cutting off my airway as he lifted me backward against the railing: “Don’t blame me for being ruthless, Rachel. You’ve played along for ten years. You can play along one last time.” As my feet left the deck, the front door downstairs was kicked off its frame with a thunderous crash. Heavy boots pounded up the stairs, and a harsh flashlight beam sliced through the darkness, pinning Austin in its glare. “Police! Step away from her and put your hands behind your head! Austin Miller, you are under arrest for attempted murder and insurance fraud!”

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In my fifth year as a prisoner of war, my memories were little more than shattered glass, scrubbed and rewritten by enemy neuro-scramblers. When the System finally rebooted in my head, I was squatting in the camp yard with a dozen other starving inmates, scraping gray slop from a rusted trough. “Host! Gideon Cole’s corruption index has hit ninety-eight percent. He is on the verge of triggering the Fourth Interstellar War. You are the only one who can stop him!” Gideon was my husband. Of course I wanted to go back. But I looked down at my emaciated wrists, then reached up to touch the jagged, hollow scar at the base of my neck. I gave a dry, inward shake of my head. “I don’t have a scent gland anymore. I can’t calm him down with pheromones. Besides, he’s moved on. He doesn’t love me anymore.” The System wailed in absolute panic: “You can! You have to! You’re the only one!” 1 What was I supposed to do? I scraped the last stringy bit of wild greens from the bottom of the tin bucket, sucked the grease from my dirty fingers, and lay back down on the cracked concrete floor. Five years ago, Tessa Ward had been top-tier—a rare, radiant Omega with a future and a gentle scent of sweet clover. Now, I was just Inmate 89757. A broken husk rotting in the mud. Saving the galaxy was far beyond my pay grade. In my mind, the System kept pitching desperate promises: “Host! If you just get close to him, if you wake up whatever conscience he has left, I can restore your appearance! I can even rebuild your scent gland!” I stared into a stagnant puddle beside my shoulder. The reflection staring back was horrifying: hair like brittle straw caked with grime, hollow cheeks smeared with grease, collarbones protruding like dry branches. My teeth were loose from years of scurvy. “Forget it,” I replied. I scooped a mouthful of murky water with my chipped tin bowl, swished it around my gums, and swallowed. “He’s the Supreme Marshal of the Coalition now. He’s surrounded by pristine, soft Omegas smelling like expensive perfume. What am I going to do, crawl up to him like a beggar just to be humiliated?” “Only your pheromones ever worked on his mental instability!” “I told you, the gland is gone. It was carved out. I don’t even remember what I used to smell like. Right now, I smell like sour mud and pig feed. If he caught a whiff of me, he’d vomit.” “He is going to incinerate entire star systems!” “Let him,” I muttered, tucking the tin bowl under my shirt against my bare ribs. It was my only worldly possession. If I fell asleep without guarding it, another inmate would bash my skull in to take it. “This universe has been rotten for a long time anyway.” The System wouldn’t let it go: “Host, this is a galactic crisis! Tell me what cheat codes you want—invulnerability, physical enhancement—I’ll authorize anything!” I let out a faint, dry scoff. Eight years ago, when it forced me into Gideon’s bed with electric shocks, it hadn’t spoken to me with anywhere near this level of deference. 2 Eight years ago, I was just an ordinary civilian who had barely stepped foot onto a college campus when the “Villain Redemption System” latched onto my spine. I asked why it chose me. Back then, the System didn’t bother answering. It simply set a timer in my skull and pulsed high-voltage current through my nervous system, forcing me onto a transport ship bound for the outer rim—a wasteland scrapyard planet where an eighteen-year-old Gideon Cole was surviving on scraps. I had soft hands back then. I was terrified of pain, terrified of dying. So I went looking for him in tears, offering to share half my ration packs. At the time, Gideon was an untouchable pariah, kicked into the dirt by every scavenger in the yard. His gaze was feral, shadowed, and dead. I was scared to death of him. But I was more scared of the System’s shocks. When the voltage surged from the base of my spine into my brainstem, it caused complete motor failure. Once, I lost control of my bladder right in front of him. Gideon crouched beside me in the rust and watched me for a long, quiet minute. Then, without a word, he unzipped his heavy canvas jacket and tied it around my waist. The jacket was filthy, stiff with engine oil and patched ten times over, but it hid the stain on my trousers. He stood up, dusted the rust from his knees, and walked away without looking back. I sat in the dirt and wept for half an hour. Then I wiped my face, chased after him, and handed him my ration pack for the next day, too. I later learned he had been on that scrap planet for thirteen years, since he was five years old, digging through the carcasses of downed battleships just to trade for nutrient paste. He didn’t trust a soul. He didn’t need anyone. The System’s directive was clear: Make Gideon Cole dependent on you. I thought it was impossible. But I went to him every single day. If I didn’t go, I was shocked; after being shocked, I dragged myself back. I had nothing clever to say, so I just sat by the stripped hull of whatever freighter he was salvaging, chewing my hard biscuits. He worked with his wrench; I chewed in silence. One afternoon, I fell asleep leaning against a bulkhead. When I woke up, someone had propped a slab of corrugated metal over my head to shield me from the sulfur wind. It took three months of this before Gideon spoke a complete sentence to me. He stared down at me and asked, “What do you actually want from me?” I opened my mouth, nearly blurting out that a machine in my head was torturing me. In the end, I swallowed the truth and whispered, “I think you’re handsome.” It wasn’t a lie. Gideon froze, his dark eyes locked on mine for an eternity. Then he turned on his heel and walked away. The next morning, he left a sealed canister of purified water by my boots. On a junk planet, clean water was worth more than human life. I held that canister against my chest, my throat aching with unshed tears. In my mind, the System chimed: “Affection +5! Host, keep up the good work!” I cursed the voice silently and drank the water. 3 After that, things moved quickly. Gideon was conscripted during the border mobilization. I followed him from the scrap wastes to the Coalition’s forward military perimeter. He was born for war. Taking apart enemy squads came as naturally to him as stripping starship carburetors. Within two years, he rose from an infantry private to a major. I was registered as his dependent, working twelve-hour shifts in the field hospital changing bandages for the wounded. It wasn’t an easy life, but at least we weren’t eating hard biscuits in the dust anymore. Sometimes I felt a pang of regret about my abandoned medical degree. But then I looked at the triage ward and thought: wasn’t the point of studying medicine to keep people alive? It felt like enough. 4 The day Gideon marked me, acid rain was dissolving the outer plating of the garrison. He had just pulled back from a catastrophic breach on the perimeter. His combat uniform was half-burned away, exposing raw, blistered flesh across his chest and shoulders. When I started yelling at him for throwing his life away, he grabbed my wrists, pinned me against the concrete wall, and sank his teeth straight into the scent gland at the nape of my neck. The pain turned my vision white. But the moment his dark, heavy Alpha pheromones flooded my system, my knees buckled. He caught me, burying his face in my hair. He smelled of burnt polymer and ozone, his entire body trembling with the aftershocks of battle. I asked him why he marked me so suddenly. He didn’t answer. Later, I dragged the truth out of his adjutant: during that morning’s vanguard assault, Gideon’s entire squad had been wiped out. He was the only one who crawled out of the crater. I never brought it up again. If he didn’t want to talk, I didn’t ask. That was our rhythm. He fought on the line, and at night, he slept with his arms locked around me. I heated his rations, dressed his chemical burns, and shook him awake whenever the night terrors took over. The System’s mission parameters had long been cleared. His affection rating was maxed out; his villain index was flatlined at zero. Yet I stayed. The System asked me why I wouldn’t leave. “Get lost,” I told it. When it pressed, I told it I would find a way to rip it out of my brain. It finally shut up. The truth was simple: I loved Gideon Cole. I couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment it happened. Maybe it was the rusted sheet of metal blocking the wind, maybe it was the canister of clean water, or maybe it was the way his eyes searched for me first the second his boots touched the hangar floor. 5 The Third Interstellar War ignited the year Gideon made colonel. The air-raid sirens wailed seven or eight times a day. At first, people scrambled for the deep shelters. Eventually, when everyone realized the orbital plasma strikes penetrated the bunkers anyway, we stopped running. During those months, the System remained completely silent. Even an artificial intelligence seemed to recognize that face-to-face with absolute annihilation, metrics like “affection points” were a bad joke. Then high command issued the final breakout order. Gideon was appointed commander of the vanguard spearhead. It sounded like an honor; in reality, it was a suicide detail. His task was to punch directly into the enemy’s main fleet to draw their fire, buying time for the evacuation transports carrying the political brass and core scientists to slip through the secondary jump gate. As a low-level military dependent, I wasn’t on the passenger manifest. I never expected to be. 6 That night, the sirens were eerily quiet. The horizon glowed a dull, apocalyptic orange from distant atmospheric fires. The barracks door clicked open. Gideon stepped inside carrying the scent of cordite. He wasn’t wearing his formal tunic, only a black combat tank top. He walked over to my cot without turning on the lamp. I sat there in the shadows, looking up at him. He had lost weight; his jawline was razor-sharp, his dark eyes threaded with burst capillaries. We stared at each other in the dim light for a long moment. Suddenly, he bent his knees and buried his face against my stomach. It was an awkward, desperate posture. He was too tall, his broad shoulders hunched rigidly, his short, coarse hair prickling against my thin shirt. His arms wrapped around my waist, locking so tight it bruised my ribs. “Tessa… I’m terrified,” he whispered. I froze. I had never heard Gideon Cole use that word. To the brass and his men, he was an unfeeling, lethal machine. The System had once classified him as a predatory sociopath. Yet here he was, shaking like a child against my lap. I realized then that he was only twenty-one—younger than me. He had spent thirteen years crawling through trash heaps, clawed his way up through blood and fire, only to be handed a death warrant. Of course he was scared of dying. “Tessa,” he choked out, his voice muffled against my clothes. “They refused my transfer request for you. They won’t let you on the ships. I’m afraid… I’m terrified I can’t protect you.” Something inside my chest cracked open—raw, heavy, and aching. I raised my hands and cradled the back of his head. “Don’t be scared, Gideon. I swear to you, I’ll survive.” He lifted his face slowly. “You don’t hate me for being useless?” I reached around his neck, pulled him down, and kissed him. He stiffened, instinctively pulling back so he wouldn’t crush me. But I didn’t let go. That night, I climbed into his lap. And that night, I let him complete a permanent mating bond. Before that, he had only ever given me temporary marks. He used to say that in a war zone, if he died, a permanent bond would leave me an outcast—incapable of accepting another Alpha, suffering through fatal withdrawal agony. But he was marching into the slaughter. I needed him to understand: there was no one else. He had to stay alive to come back to me. 7 When I woke, Gideon was fully geared. He pressed his heavy silver dog tags into my palm and whispered, “Wait for me.” I clutched those tags and waited in the sub-level bunker for seven days. On the eighth day, the garrison fell. The enemy breach teams found me, and they found the deep mating scar at the base of my neck. To an invading force, the bonded partner of a notorious Coalition vanguard commander was a prized trophy. The interrogators demanded to know the deployment coordinates of Gideon’s surviving battlegroup. I told them I didn’t know. They beat me until my ribs cracked. When they asked again, I gave the same answer. Eventually, they grew tired of asking. They strapped me down to a cold steel table and cut the scent gland from my neck. No anesthesia. When the scalpel severed the nerve cluster, I bit clean through my tongue. The taste of hot copper filled my mouth, but it couldn’t drown out the agony. The moment the gland was torn free, the invisible tether linking my mind to Gideon snapped. The low hum in my blood went dead. The silence in my head was terrifying. I couldn’t feel him anymore. Through the ringing in my ears, I heard the officer drop the bloody instrument into a metal tray with a sharp clatter. “I really don’t understand what she was holding out for,” the man said, wiping his fingers. “Word just came through from our forward scouts. Her Alpha abandoned this perimeter days ago and broke through with the high-command transport.” A guard handed him a towel. “Sir, why leave her behind if he had clearance?” “Why do you think? Are you stupid?” The officer let out a contemptuous laugh. “He made brigadier general on the other side. Three different senate families are already lining up their purebred Omega daughters for him. You think an ambitious war hero wants a low-born stray with an unregistered bond dragging down his political career?” 8 The System had long vanished after fulfilling its protocol. Yet somehow, I stayed alive in the labor camp. I survived on a single, stubborn breath of something I couldn’t name. Every day, I hauled debris with the other prisoners, fought for scraps of rotten broth, and slept on frozen concrete. When someone died, their body was dragged out at dawn, and a new prisoner took their cot by dusk. I held on like that for five years. Until today. I was chewing on a raw, frozen tuber when static crackled through my auditory cortex. For a second, I thought I had finally lost my mind, which felt like a relief—insanity meant no more remembering. Then the synthetic voice boomed: “Host! I’m back!” I swallowed the bitter pulp and said, “Get lost.” The System didn’t leave. It began blaring updates about Gideon: his corruption rating was at 98.7% and climbing. It claimed he was mobilizing the entire Coalition armada against the neutral sectors, that a Fourth War would turn billions into ash. It babbled on, offering to unlock god-tier perks. “What good are perks?” I asked quietly. “When someone stops loving you, no cheat code will make them look at you twice.” Beside me, a prisoner missing an ear rolled over in the dirt. He dug grime from between his bare toes and sniffed his fingers. I turned my back to him, staring at the gray wall. “He’s the Supreme Marshal now. If I tried to get near him, his honor guard would shoot me into red mist.” “Don’t say that! He’s your husband! If you can’t reach him, no one can!” “Gideon announced his engagement a year ago. It was broadcast on every interstellar relay. You’re a supercomputer—didn’t you see the holovids?” There was a cracked, low-res monitor in the camp yard that occasionally played Coalition surrender terms. A year ago, standing in line for spoiled grain bread, I looked up. Gideon was standing at the top of the senate steps in a black ceremonial uniform. Beside him stood an Omega in white silk—fair skin, glossy hair, a delicate hand resting on his forearm. Gideon looked down at him. The resolution was terrible, so I couldn’t see his eyes. But he didn’t pull his arm away. That was all I needed to see. I took a bite of the sour bread that day. The sand in the flour ground hard against my molars, but it was fine. Gideon had made the sensible choice. Who would remember a rotting, broken corpse in a trench when they had a pristine life waiting for them? “That engagement was a political cover! He’s only ever cared about you!” the System shrieked. “Trust me, he’s about to glass three colonized planets!” “Then I definitely shouldn’t go,” I thought, closing my eyes. “I don’t want to get caught in the blast radius.” Suddenly, the perimeter sirens tore through the camp. My body reacted before my mind did, jerking upward. My spine struck the concrete wall, sending a dull ache through my ribs. All around me, crippled inmates scrambled to their feet—men with missing limbs, blind eyes, hollow bellies—all bowing their heads in practiced terror. Blinding spotlights swept across the yard from the main gates. I raised a dirty forearm to shield my eyes. The heavy chain-link fences were obliterated as armored personnel carriers smashed through the perimeter. Mud and black water sprayed into the air. Troopers in matte-black tactical armor swarmed the compound, their rifles raised, red laser sights painting the mud. “Down! Hands behind your heads! On your knees!” 9 I dropped instantly, pressing my forehead against my knees and locking my fingers behind my neck. When my dirty nails brushed the cratered scar on my nape, I flinched. The one-eared man beside me was shaking so violently his teeth clicked. “What’s happening?” he whispered. “I don’t know,” I murmured. “Probably an execution detail.” “I still have half a crust left in my pocket.” I glanced at him sideways. “If they shoot you first, can I have it?” He muttered a curse under his breath. A pair of high-gloss combat boots stepped down from the lead vehicle into the mud. The camp director came sprinting across the yard, slipping in the slurry and dropping directly onto his knees before those boots. “M-Marshal Cole, Sir!” Even across enemy lines, raw military power demanded absolute subjugation. “Host! Host! It’s him! Your husband is here!” the System screamed in my ear. “Stand up! Run to him! Hug him!” I buried my face deeper into my knees, shifting slightly behind the one-eared man. Run to him? The twelve guards flanking him with heavy assault rifles would vaporize me before I took two steps, scraping my remains into the slop buckets. “The registry.” The voice cut through the rain. I held my breath. I had lived with that low, rasping timbre for three years; I would recognize it through a planetary bombardment. Gideon was standing less than sixty feet away. The director scrambled with a datapad. “Right here, Sir! The third transfer batch of laborers and prisoners—four hundred and twenty-one total. All accounted for.” The yard was dead silent except for the low idle of the armored carriers. “Four hundred and twenty-one,” Gideon repeated flatly. “Yes, Sir. Two died of infection last week—cremated immediately. We haven’t purged them from the central ledger yet—” “Purged?” Gideon stepped forward, his voice dropping to absolute zero. “Who gave you permission to purge anyone?” Crack. A single shot echoed. The director collapsed into the mud with a strangled gasp. Through the gaps in my tangled hair, I saw the director’s wide, unseeing eyes staring directly toward my patch of ground. My breath hitched. “Go now!” the System urged. “Just say ‘Gideon, it’s me,’ and he’ll drop his weapon and hold you!” “Shut up,” I snapped internally. “He’s executing people. I’m not trying to die today.” Gideon didn’t look at the corpse. He turned slowly, his gaze sweeping over the hundreds of shivering figures kneeling in the muck. I pressed my forehead flat against my knees. “Line them up,” Gideon ordered his lieutenant. Soldiers shoved through the crowd, slamming rifle butts into our shoulders, herding us into rough, trembling rows. Gideon started from the front, walking down the line. “Look up.” A prisoner raised his head in terror. Gideon glanced at him and moved to the next. “Look up.” My heart began to hammer against my ribs like a trapped bird. He was looking for someone. Who? Certainly not me. Perhaps an allied officer, or an undercover asset who had been captured. 10 “Host, he’s coming! Five yards! Three yards!” The heavy footsteps slowed in the mud. The one-eared inmate was on my left. Gideon stopped before him. “Look up.” The man snapped his head back, his facial muscles twitching in spasms of fear. Gideon paused for a second, then took one step to the right. The black boots entered my field of vision. “Look up.” I didn’t move. My neck felt like lead. At that exact moment, the phantom itch flared in my severed scent gland. I wanted to scratch it, but with rifles pointed at my back, I kept my hands locked behind my head. “I said, look up.” A soldier stepped forward, his heavy palm striking the back of my skull. “The Marshal gave an order! Are you deaf?!” The blow landed directly on the jagged scar tissue. A sharp, nauseating pain shot down my spine. I lost my balance and tumbled sideways into the freezing sludge. “Defiant piece of trash,” the guard spat, unholstering a shock baton. “Stand down!” Gideon’s arm shot out, catching the baton mid-swing. The guard went pale, immediately stepping back into a rigid salute. Gideon slowly crouched down in the mud. His gloved hand reached out, fingers closing firmly around my chin, forcing my face upward. My greasy, matted hair fell away from my cheeks. I opened my eyes. His face hadn’t changed much in five years, except the shadows beneath his cheekbones were deeper, his gaze colder than space. I blinked through the rain. His fingers tightened around my jawbone until it popped, the pressure making me wince. “Name.” I parted my cracked lips. My loose teeth knocked together. “Eight-nine-seven-five-seven.” His hand froze. His pupils dilated, his gaze locking onto my face—tracing my eyes, the bridge of my nose, down to the corner of my mouth where a rat had bitten me two winters ago. “Are you insane?!” the System screamed. “Tell him you’re Tessa! Why are you giving him a prisoner number?!” “He doesn’t recognize me,” I thought dull-eyed. “I don’t even recognize this face in the water.” I looked at him and rasped, “Officer… Inmate 89757. I haven’t had dinner today.” If this was the firing squad, my only wish was a piece of bread first. Gideon’s breath hitched. He abruptly let go of my jaw, and I slumped back into the mud. He stood up, turning his back to me. “Adjutant.” “Sir!” “Take her.” The adjutant stepped forward to haul me up. Before the officer could lay a finger on my rags, Gideon let out a vicious curse: “Goddammit.” He spun back around, shoved his aide aside, and scooped me up into his arms. His jaw was clenched so hard the muscles jumped. “I owe you everything, don’t I?” “See?!” the System cheered. “He knows it’s you! He’s taking you home!” I rested my dirty forehead against his shoulder and sighed. “He’s probably taking me to an interrogation cell to harvest my retinas.” “Do you have anything in your brain besides paranoia?!” “A crust of bread.” The System: “…”

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1 For our fifth anniversary, Graham took me to an immersive, industrial-grade fire simulation escape room. I am a fire survivor. Even catching a glimpse of an accidental grease fire on a cooking show makes my pulse skyrocket and my hands tremble. Yet he steered me through the heavy metal threshold, brushing off my hesitation with an easy, dismissive smile. He said it was just a game. A harmless adrenaline rush. Behind me, my younger brother, Sam, clicked the latch into place and turned the deadbolt from the outside. “Don’t be a buzzkill, Nora,” Sam chuckled through the reinforced viewing slit. “Consider it exposure therapy. You need to build some grit.” Harper Reed leaned against Graham’s chest in the dim glow of the corridor, watching through the acrylic panel as my breathing began to fracture. Her eyes danced with delight. “Look at her face, Graham. It’s so raw. Way more thrilling than anything in the movies.” Graham let out a low, indulgent laugh, his fingers absentmindedly stroking Harper’s hair. “She’s your future sister-in-law, Harper. Entertaining you for an afternoon is the least she can do.” “Exactly,” Sam chimed in, eager to validate them. “My sister is dramatic to a fault. A little tough love will finally cure her princess complex.” A cold, sickening tremor tore through my limbs. They hadn’t brought me here to celebrate five years of shared history. They had weaponized the darkest trauma of my life, turning my visceral terror into a bespoke sideshow to make Harper smile. I was done playing. I spun around and grabbed the heavy brass handle, hauling back with all my weight. The lock held firm. From the outside, the deadbolt had engaged with a final, mechanical thud. High above, hidden projectors flickered to life, casting hyper-realistic tongues of crimson and amber across the floorboards. Industrial HVAC vents groaned overhead, blasting stifling, dry heat down the back of my neck. Logically, I knew the heat was electric, the flames merely light and pixels. But logic is the first thing stripped away when the nervous system remembers death. My knees buckled. I couldn’t stop the violent shivering that seized my shoulders. I threw my palms against the door, pounding against the solid wood. “Open the door!” I screamed, the sound tearing raggedly from my chest. “Graham! Sam! Let me out!” Static crackled through the intercom speaker in the corner, followed by Harper’s muffled, theatrical giggle. “Graham… Nora’s actually crying. Is she going to hate us when she comes out?” “She’ll be fine,” Graham replied, his voice smooth and untroubled through the speaker. “Give her five minutes. She just needs to get the panic out of her system.” “Come on, Nora, stop milking it,” Sam added, his tone brimming with adolescent exasperation. “There isn’t even a real spark in there.” My fingernails scraped raw grooves into the painted doorframe. In an instant, the flickering red light in the room dissolved into the suffocating reality of ten years ago—the four-alarm blaze that had swallowed our childhood apartment building in Boston. I was sixteen, choking on black soot, when my mother used her dying strength to shove me through the heavy firedoor into the concrete stairwell. She stood on the other side of the roaring heat, her face already obscured by dense, toxic smoke. Run, Nora, she had cried out, coughing up ash. Run and don’t look back. Since that afternoon, I hadn’t been able to light a scented candle. I couldn’t sit near a patio fire pit. I couldn’t even look at photographs of charred wood without my throat closing up. Graham knew that. He had driven me to trauma therapy every Tuesday for three years. He had held me through night terrors, wiping sweat from my forehead while whispering promises that he would never let anything burn me again. And Sam knew. Sam had clung to my waist in the funeral home, soaking my black dress with his tears, swearing that we were a team—that he would protect his big sister forever. Yet here they were, standing on the other side of a locked door, peering through the glass to watch me writhe like an insect pinned beneath a magnifying glass. Oxygen felt scarce, though the room held no carbon monoxide yet. My lungs simply refused to expand. If the men who claimed to love me wouldn’t open the door, I had to save myself. I staggered toward the center of the room, grabbed a heavy wooden prop chair by its backrest, and swung it with everything I had against the door’s lock mechanism. The speaker clicked again. The venue operator’s voice filtered through, sounding uneasy. “Uh, Mr. Reed? She looks genuinely frantic. Should we override the latch?” Graham’s tone was entirely detached. “Let her swing. If she breaks the prop, put it on my American Express.” Harper let out a soft, rehearsed whimper. “She looks so terrifying right now, Graham. What if she bursts out and attacks me?” Sam didn’t miss a beat. “She wouldn’t dare touch you, Harper.” With a guttural scream, I brought the chair down on the strike plate one last time. Crack. The wooden frame splintered; the metal latch sheared off with a sharp snap. The door gave way, and I stumbled out into the cool, fluorescent-lit hallway, crashing onto my hands and knees. The rough wood had gouged deep, bleeding scrapes across my palms. A few yards away, Harper stood watching me, draped in Graham’s tailored wool coat. Seeing me crawl out, she stepped closer, a mocking smile tugging at the corner of her lips. “Wow, Nora. That was quite a performance. Graham said you looked like a lunatic in there.” I looked up at her, my vision swimming, my voice a jagged rasp. “Get out of my face.” Harper scoffed, but before I could even push myself off the floor, she let out an ear-piercing shriek and threw herself backward onto the carpeted hallway floor. “Graham!” she cried out. Graham burst out of the control room instantly, crossing the distance in three long strides. “Harper! What happened?” Harper curled into a pathetic ball, tears welling instantly in her wide eyes as she looked at me with manufactured terror. “I—I just wanted to help her up. But she hates me… she shoved me down.” She buried her face in Graham’s sweater. “It’s okay, Graham, it barely hurts. Please don’t be mad at Nora.” Sam sprinted over right behind him. Neither of them looked at my bleeding palms or my dust-streaked face. Their eyes were fixed entirely on Harper. “Nora, what the hell is wrong with you?” Sam snapped, stepping aggressively into my space. “Have you completely lost your mind?” My throat burned as if I had swallowed glass. They had locked me in an artificial inferno, and now they were painting me as the aggressor. “You trapped me in there,” I choked out, pointing a trembling finger at the splintered door. “You locked me in a cage and watched me suffocate for your amusement. And I’m the crazy one for getting out?” “It was a game!” Sam retorted, rolling his eyes in disgust. “We were literally on the other side of the monitor. You were never in any actual danger.” Graham finally looked at me, but his gaze held neither remorse nor affection—only cold, patronizing reprimand. “Nora, you know Harper has a congenital heart condition and fragile health. You pushed her to the floor over a harmless anniversary stunt. Do you have any idea how spiteful you look?” I stared at him, stunned into silence. “You locked me in a fire simulator to entertain her,” I whispered, the words tasting like poison. “And you’re calling me spiteful?” Graham pinched the bridge of his nose. “You’re out, aren’t you? You’re perfectly fine.” A bitter, broken laugh escaped my chest. “So as long as I don’t die on your watch, you haven’t committed a sin?” Harper began to sob softly, clinging tighter to Graham’s neck. “It’s all my fault… I planned this escape room because I thought it would be a memorable anniversary surprise. If Nora hates me, blame me, Graham. Please don’t fight with her because of me.” She made a show of trying to stand, only to gasp and collapse back against Graham’s chest, clutching her ankle. Graham scooped her effortlessly into his arms. Sam stepped between me and Graham, cutting off any exit. “Nora, drop the attitude. Harper went out of her way to set this up for your five-year milestone. Instead of thanking her, you threw a tantrum and hurt her. Do you just enjoy ruining everything for everyone?” I looked at my brother’s face—the high cheekbones, the stubborn jaw he had inherited from our mother. I remembered him at nine years old, clutching my hand by our mother’s open casket, sobbing that we were the only two left in the world, promising that he would grow up big and strong so he could keep me safe. Now, for the approval of Graham’s wealthy, spoiled stepsister, he had locked me in my living nightmare. “Sam,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper. “You know what fire does to me. You know why.” His jaw tightened, a brief flicker of guilt crossing his features before he hardened his expression and looked away. “That was ten years ago, Nora. Mom died a decade ago.” Graham adjusted Harper in his arms, stepping toward the main corridor. “Enough. We’re taking Harper to the clinic to get her ankle wrapped. Nora, you stay here, wash the dirt off your hands, and figure out how you’re going to apologize to Harper. Once you apologize, we’ll consider this matter closed.” I looked up at him. “You want me to apologize to her?” “You laid hands on her,” Graham said flatly. “She was hurt.” I took two steps back, shaking my head in disbelief. “I didn’t touch her. I will never apologize to that manipulative brat. If anyone owes an apology, it’s the three of you on your knees to me.” “I don’t have time for your childish ultimatums,” Graham said, his voice dropping an octave, turning razor-sharp. “I’m giving you one last chance. Apologize to Harper right now.” The coldness in his eyes sent a chill straight down my spine—a chilling realization that five years of partnership meant nothing against Harper’s whim. I took a deep, steadying breath, turning to walk toward the exit. Sam grabbed my wrist, his grip bruising. “Let go of me, Sam,” I warned, my voice shaking with rage. Sam didn’t budge. “Nora, just say you’re sorry. Is your ego really worth making this huge of a scene?” “Sam, let me go!” “It wasn’t even real fire!” he yelled back, looking at me with undisguised contempt. “Every single time something doesn’t go your way, you bring up Mom! Do you expect the entire world to tiptoe around your trauma for the rest of your life? If Mom were alive, she’d be ashamed of how pathetic and bitter you’ve become!” My hand moved on instinct. Slap. The crack of my palm across his cheek echoed through the corridor. Sam’s head snapped to the side. Graham’s face darkened completely. “Nora Collins, that is enough.” Harper buried her face deeper into Graham’s collar, weeping softly. “Graham, please, let’s just go. Nora clearly despises me. It’s my fault for thinking we could be family. Now Sam got hit because of me…” Graham looked down at Harper, his expression softening into tender reassurance. “None of this is on you, sweetheart. Nora has simply let her pride run wild.” He shifted his gaze back to Sam, his tone commanding. “Put her back in the room.” Panic flared in my chest. I jerked my arm, trying to sprint for the emergency exit, but Sam lunged forward, catching me around the waist and hauling me backward. My knee slammed hard against the metal doorframe, sending a white-hot jolt of pain through my leg. I collapsed onto the floor inside the simulation room. Harper peeked out from Graham’s arms, her voice dripping with faux concern. “What if she breaks another chair and attacks us again?” Graham’s voice was as cold as a winter frost. “Barricade it.” Two staff members, clearly intimidated by Graham’s wealth and authority, hurried over, dragging a heavy oak prop wardrobe and an iron-framed sofa across the threshold. I scrambled forward, throwing my body against the narrowing gap. “Graham! Graham, don’t do this!” He stood in the hallway, looking down at me through the crack. The man I had loved for five years didn’t flinch. There was no warmth left in his eyes—only an icy, punitive detachment. “When you’re ready to give a sincere apology,” Graham said smoothly, “you can come out.” Sam reached in and brutally pried my bleeding fingers off the door jamb. The heavy door slammed shut. Immediately, the metallic scrape of the wardrobe and sofa being wedged tight against the exterior handle reverberated through the walls. Inside, the automated simulation restarted. The overhead projectors flashed on, painting the room in simulated crimson. The vents began to pump stifling air. “Let me out!” I screamed, slamming my fists against the wood until my knuckles split. “Let me out!” After a moment, the wall speaker hummed to life. Harper’s voice drifted down, sweetly frail. “Graham, my ankle throbs so badly. When Nora shoved me, I think she really sprained it.” “I’ll ice it right now,” Graham answered gently. “Don’t worry, Harper,” Sam added over the line. “My sister is just spoiled rotten. Give her half an hour in the dark to cool off, and I’ll personally make sure she gets on her knees to apologize to you.” I froze, my hands slowly dropping from the door. My brother. The boy I had raised after our mother’s death, working two part-time jobs in college to pay for his lacrosse gear and SAT tutors. He was comforting another girl’s imaginary scrape while locking me inside my deepest hell. Suddenly, the overhead fluorescent tube flickered. A sharp, violent pop snapped above my head. A shower of orange sparks rained down from the ceiling junction box. Within seconds, a genuine, licking flame crawled out of the electrical wiring, catching onto the cheap acoustic ceiling tiles. The acrid, chemical stench of burning synthetic foam instantly flooded the small room. My heart seized. “Fire!” I screamed, throwing myself at the barricaded door with wild, primal terror. “Graham! Sam! The ceiling is on fire! Real fire!” Sam’s voice came over the intercom, dripping with irritation. “Nora, will you cut the crap? Stop performing! Can you not make everything about yourself the second Harper is hurt?” “I’m not lying!” I shrieked, coughing as grey smoke began to drift down from the ceiling. I grabbed the remains of the broken chair, battering the heavy door in a frenzy. But the oak wardrobe and iron sofa on the other side didn’t give an inch. Flames spread rapidly along the corner molding, greedily consuming the dry theatrical props. The heat pressed against my face—not the dry warmth of an HVAC vent, but the searing, predatory heat of a real blaze. My eyes burned, tears streaming down my soot-stained cheeks. “Sam! Sammy, please!” I sobbed, reverting to the childhood nickname I hadn’t used in years. “Open the door! It’s burning! The whole ceiling is burning!” Through the speaker, Harper’s voice piped up, innocent and dismissive. “Is she trying to trick us into opening the door so she doesn’t have to apologize?” Then came Graham’s voice, cold, measured, and utterly unyielding. “Nora, I gave you a way out. Stop this ridiculous theatrical routine. Say you’re sorry to Harper over the speaker, and I’ll have the staff clear the door immediately.” A fit of violent coughing tore through my chest. “Look at the monitor! Graham, look at the camera! There are real flames!” “Harper’s ankle is swollen,” Graham cut in flatly. “I don’t have time to watch your little drama.” The speaker clicked off. The smoke thickened at an alarming rate, turning from light grey to an opaque, suffocating black. Burning plastic dripped from the ceiling, igniting the curtains and the faux rug. Through the dense haze, the room warped. I was sixteen again, standing in that burning apartment hallway, watching the world turn to ash. Mom, I thought, choking as the toxic fumes seared my windpipe. Mom, help me. My trembling fingers reached for my wrist, finding the worn, red braided bracelet tied there. It was the only piece of my mother I had left—a simple cord bracelet she had woven for me the summer before she died. The red threads were already darkening with soot, but it remained anchored to my skin. I pulled my iPhone from my back pocket with shaking hands and dialed 911. I can’t die here, I told myself through the haze. I cannot die as a prop in their sick little game. I gasped my location and situation to the dispatcher, my voice cracking under the assault of the smoke. By the time the building’s real fire alarms finally began to wail down the hallway, the escape room was completely engulfed in darkness and heat. Outside the door, I heard frantic shouting and the heavy scraping of furniture being dragged across the floor. The lock, warped by the heat and jammed by my initial blows with the chair, refused to budge. Sam’s voice finally penetrated the door, stripped of all arrogance, trembling with raw panic. “Nora?! Nora, can you hear me?!” I raised a weak hand, striking the blistered wood one last time. “Help me… Sammy… please…” Heavy thuds slammed into the door as someone tried to kick it open. “Is there an oxygen mask or a respirator?!” Graham yelled from the hallway. “There’s only one emergency respirator at the front desk!” an employee shouted back in a panic. For a brief, naive second, I thought Graham would demand they slide it under the door or smash the viewing panel to get it to me. Then Harper’s choked sobs broke out in the corridor. “Graham… I can’t breathe… the smoke out here is making my chest hurt… am I having an attack?” The hallway had barely any smoke—just the faint wisps escaping through the door jamb. Yet Graham didn’t hesitate for a single second. “Don’t panic, Harper. I’m putting the mask on you right now.” My bloody fingers slid down the burning doorframe. Through the crack, I heard Sam’s voice waver. “Graham… my sister is still trapped in there.” Harper began to cough violently, her voice breathy and desperate. “Sam… I’m so sorry… my heart… it feels like it’s stopping…” Sam panicked instantly. “Nora can hold on for a couple more minutes! Let’s get Harper outside to the paramedics first!” The frantic footsteps outside receded down the hall. Silence fell over the corridor, broken only by the roar of the flames devouring the ceiling above me. They had chosen her. Even when the fire was real, even when the smoke was killing me, they chose her. I slid down onto the burning floorboards, curling my knees to my chest. My phone screen glowed in the darkness. The 911 call had disconnected. The screen defaulted back to my favorites list. At the very top was Graham’s contact. I had saved him under the label: My Home. Looking at those two words through the stinging haze, a wave of bitter revulsion washed over me. With the last strength in my trembling thumb, I pressed call. It rang four times before he answered. “Nora? Are you okay?!” “The door won’t open,” I murmured, my voice a hollow, raspy whisper. “I know, I know, the lock is jammed,” Graham said, his voice breathless as he moved. “The fire department is on their way. They’re two minutes out.” “There’s so much smoke, Graham. It burns.” “Cover your mouth and nose. Stay low to the ground.” I let out a soft, broken laugh. “Where are you right now?” Graham hesitated. In the background, Harper’s delicate whimper drifted through the receiver. Graham, hold my hand, I’m scared… Graham’s voice turned rushed and soothing. “I’m carrying Harper out to the ambulance. The second the paramedics take her, I’m coming right back in for you.” “How long is ‘right back’?” “A few minutes, Nora. Just hang on.” “Earlier, you said if I apologized, you’d let me out,” I whispered, feeling the heat blistering the skin of my arms. “What if I apologize now, Graham? Will you come back right now?” His breath hitched over the line. “Nora, this isn’t the time to play games.” “Graham… what if I die in here?” His voice spiked with sudden, angry defensiveness. “Stop talking like that! You’re not going to die!” In the background, Sam’s voice cut in, frantic and loud. “Graham, Harper’s lips are turning blue! Where is the damn ambulance?!” Graham cursed under his breath. “Sam, hold her head up! Don’t let her pass out!” A single tear tracked through the soot on my cheek. “Graham.” He sounded distracted, his attention completely pulled away. “Nora, just hold on! I’ll be back the second Harper is in the ambulance!” “Will you really come back?” A split-second pause hung in the air. That one heartbeat of hesitation was all the answer I would ever need. “Yes,” he said, the word hurried and hollow. “I swear I’ll come back.” Harper’s loud cry of pain erupted through the phone again. Graham’s voice pulled away from the microphone. “Harper, stay with me. Look at me, keep your eyes open…” He didn’t hang up the call. He simply forgot I was still listening. I dropped the phone onto the charred floorboards. I didn’t need to listen to him save someone else while I burned. I dragged myself toward the corner of the room, curling into a ball. I unfastened the blackened red cord from my wrist, clutching the frayed threads tightly in my palm. In the roar of the fire, my mother’s voice seemed to echo from the smoke. Run, Nora. Don’t look back. “I’m sorry, Mom,” I whispered into the darkness. “There’s nowhere left to run.” The flames crested the ceiling, dropping burning debris around me. My vision began to tunnel. On the floor nearby, the phone screen remained lit. Graham’s distant voice still drifted from the tiny speaker: Harper, don’t sleep, look at me… How pathetic. Five years of devotion, and I was dying alone in a locked room while he played the savior for another woman. BANG. A thunderous crash shook the door. “Structure breached! Search and rescue, move in!” Heavy boots pounded through the debris. A gloved hand cut through the thick black smoke, and a cool, pressurized silicone mask was firmly sealed over my nose and mouth. “Miss, can you hear me? Stay with me!” a firefighter shouted, lifting my limp upper body. I reached up with my last ounce of consciousness, grabbing the firefighter’s turnout coat with bleeding fingers. “Don’t…” I rasped through the mask. The firefighter leaned down close. “What did you say, ma’am?” “Don’t tell them…” I whispered, my chest heaving with cold oxygen. “Don’t tell Graham Reed… that I’m alive…” My grip slipped. Darkness rushed in to claim me. The charred red bracelet tumbled from my fingers, disappearing into the ash—a remnant of a past life, left behind in the ruins.

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1 My best friend Serena blew up her own romantic life so spectacularly that her ex threatened to throw himself off the Brooklyn Bridge if she didn’t marry him. Terrified of a subpoena—and emotional accountability—she caught a midnight flight to Saint-Tropez. Before wheeling her luggage through TSA, she grabbed my shoulders and thrust a spare keycard into my palm. “I’m leaving my canary with you. Take care of him.” To be honest, I wanted to say no. Not because I was engaged. But because Serena’s taste in men had historically resided in the absolute gutter. Yet twenty minutes later, when I unlocked the heavy double doors of her Tribeca penthouse, I didn’t find some peroxide-bleached aspiring DJ sprawled across the velvet sectional. Instead, standing by the floor-to-ceiling glass, was a man in a bespoke three-piece charcoal suit. Broad shoulders, sharp jawline, and dark, hooded eyes that felt heavy with an almost predatory gravity. I froze. Since when had Serena’s aesthetic graduated from dumpster fire to the cover of Architectural Digest? Hearing the click of the lock, the man barely lifted his chin, his expression cool and unbothered. “Summer Ellis?” “Did she… talk to you before she left?” I asked, my voice hesitant. He gave a slow, measured nod. Good. That meant Serena had already briefed him on the handoff. That saved us both an awkward conversation. “Great. Pack your things,” I said briskly. “You’re coming with me. As of tonight, I’m your new benefactor.” A dark brow arched. “Excuse me?” I paused, letting my gaze drift over the immaculate cut of his Tom Ford blazer and the understated Patek Philippe resting on his left wrist. Then I looked down at my own twenty-dollar vintage tee and faded jeans. Right. He was worried I didn’t have the liquidity to maintain his lifestyle. “Relax,” I added reassuringly. “Whatever allowance she was wiring you each month, I’ll match to the cent. At the end of the day, this is purely transactional for you. Money is money, regardless of whose account it comes from.” A low, incredulous laugh broke from his throat. “Let me get this straight. You think I’m a kept man on her payroll? And that I’m being passed around on a rotation?” “Aren’t you?” “Miss Ellis, you have clearly made a severe mistake.” I rolled my eyes. I gave him credit for the aristocratic aloofness—it was a charming bit of roleplay. But the living room was littered with framed photos of him and Serena in intimate proximity, alongside a handful of leather accessories and novelty silk ties scattered near the bar cart. I was exhausted. Suddenly, Serena’s parting words rang in my ears: He’s terribly spoiled. If you want him to behave, you have to be firm. Take the upper hand. Trust me, he likes it rough. Right. If he wanted a dominant dynamic, I could play along. I stepped back to the doorway and waved in the two private security guards I’d hired for the move. Within three minutes, we had him subdued, bundled into my SUV, and hauled up to my high-rise apartment. By midnight, he was stripped down and securely cuffed to my brass headboard. Under the dim amber glow of the bedside lamp, his physique was breathtaking—sculpted, lean, and undeniably firmer than Grant Sinclair’s. Just thinking about Grant made my chest tighten with a sharp, familiar burn. Grant had been the one to pursue me first. When he caught wind of my parents setting me up on blind dates, he had stormed into our family home, dropping to one knee before our dinner guests to propose an alliance between our two families. Everyone in Manhattan’s upper crust murmured that a man as notoriously composed and stoic as Grant Sinclair wouldn’t drop to his knees unless he was profoundly, helplessly in love. I believed them. Until the night I finally let down my walls and climbed into his lap, only for him to shove me away with ice in his veins. He looked at me with open disdain and told me his heart belonged to someone else. The marriage was purely commercial; I was never to mistake it for love. 2 The memory tasted like ash. Wanting to erase it, I leaned down and pressed my lips against the man’s warm, bare chest, kissing the hard line of his collarbone. He smelled like vetiver and sandalwood. His jaw clenched hard. The effortless composure he’d worn in Tribeca was entirely gone, replaced by a dark, simmering fury. “Summer Ellis. Release these restraints right now.” “Or what?” I murmured against his skin. “I am going to say this one last time,” he growled, the steel in his voice vibrating against my cheek. “I am not a paid escort. I am Harrison Rhodes. Serena’s older brother.” He paused, letting the silence hang. “Have you lost your mind?” Harrison Rhodes. I jerked my head back, staring at him. The Harrison Rhodes? The ruthless titan of Rhodes Capital? The single most formidable predator Grant Sinclair had spent the last three years battling on Wall Street? I had heard horror stories about him from both Serena and Grant. A corporate executioner who left wreckage in his wake. Serena—a menace in her own right—walked on eggshells whenever he was in the room. Except there was one glaring flaw in his story. Serena had explicitly told me her older brother was horribly asymmetrical, with a face so aggressively terrifying it could ward off evil spirits if hung over a doorway. This man was an absolute work of art. Ah. He was leaning heavily into the roleplay. His acting was frankly Oscar-worthy. I almost bought it. Playing along, I brought my palm down across his flank with a sharp smack. The muscle beneath was dense and responsive. “Harrison Rhodes, hm? Perfect. You’re exactly who I wanted.” “What did you say?” “I’ve had my eye on you for a while,” I whispered, trailing my fingertips up his ribs. “Grant might fear you, but Summer Ellis doesn’t.” A dark flush crept up his neck. “You are completely out of your—” I pinched his jaw between my thumb and forefinger, cutting him off. “Beg nicely, and maybe I’ll let you loose.” His teeth ground together. “Not in this lifetime.” Eventually, after a relentless barrage of teasing touches and deliberate torment, he broke just enough to mutter a strained concession. But I didn’t untie him. My hand drifted lower. Above me, his voice dropped to a lethal frequency. “Ellis. Consider the consequences. Whatever you think you’re doing, your family cannot afford the fallout. Let me go now, and for the sake of your friendship with Serena, I won’t ruin you. This is your only warning.” His gaze was suffocatingly intense. For a fraction of a second, an icy chill skittered down my spine. The sheer gravity of his presence was terrifying. Could an amateur really fake an aura that commanding? What if he actually was Harrison Rhodes? Then I remembered the family lore Serena had drunkenly shared over martinis. Harrison Rhodes didn’t care for women. Back in prep school, he had supposedly been inseparable from a close male confidant—so close their grandfather caught them in an unmistakable position in the boathouse and tore them apart. Ever since, Harrison had sealed his heart in stone. I leaned my weight over him, capturing his lips in a deep, uncompromising kiss. Beneath me, the sudden, fierce rigidity of his body betrayed his purely physical reaction. I smiled against his mouth. Caught you. He was bluffing. I pulled back slightly, breath mingling with his, quoting straight from the pulp romance novels stacked on my nightstand. “Mr. Rhodes, the second I brought you here, I stopped caring about consequences. As long as I have you under me, whatever price I have to pay is worth it.” I tapped his cheek lightly. “Besides, chained up like this, you aren’t in much of a position to threaten anyone. If I were you, I’d cooperate.” Before he could unleash another string of threats, I silenced him again. He went rigid with fury, his fists clenching around the brass bars, powerless against the cuffs. I have to admit—spoiled though this canary was, the thrill of having total control was intoxicating. It was nearly dawn when I finally rolled off him, sated and exhausted. If forced passion felt this good, I should have stopped being a saint years ago. 3 Over the next several weeks, I kept the routine ruthlessly consistent. To maintain the fantasy, I confiscated his phone, restricted his movements to the penthouse, and posted round-the-clock security at the elevators. Every evening was an elaborate exercise in wearing down his stubborn defiance until his gaze went glazed and dark. Two months slipped by in a blur of silk sheets and quiet mornings. I had no idea how Serena was faring abroad, or whether her suicidal suitor had finally moved on. She had burner accounts for everything and rarely stayed reachable. Then, out of nowhere, my phone lit up with an international FaceTime call. “Darling!” Serena’s voice crackled through the speaker. “I’m coming home next week.” “Is the drama resolved?” “Hardly,” she whispered conspiratorially. “I’m only coming back because my brother vanished into thin air. The Rhodes board is on the verge of a coup, and my father ordered me back to New York on penalty of disinheritance.” I blinked, surprised. “Harrison Rhodes is missing? Was he kidnapped?” “Most likely. God help whoever took him, though. My brother is a sociopathic machine. If the kidnappers have any survival instincts, they’d better kill him now, because if he walks out of there alive, he will systematically erase their bloodlines from the earth.” I swallowed dryly. “…Is he really that terrifying?” “Worse!” Serena said fervently. “Anyway, how’s my little canary doing?” I glanced toward the half-open bedroom door, where the broad silhouette of my companion was peacefully asleep under the linen duvet. “Your advice worked like a charm. He’s thoroughly domesticated now. Passed out from exhaustion twenty minutes ago.” I sighed softly into the receiver. “I had no idea having a pet could be this… satisfying.” Serena sounded puzzled. “A bird gives you that much satisfaction?” “A bird? Honestly, one is more than enough to drain my energy.” “Wait, what?” Serena paused, sensing a strange disconnect, but brushed it off. “Whatever works for you, babe. Let’s catch up over cocktails next week.” After hanging up, I stared at the skyline, feeling a ripple of pity for the poor soul who had crossed Harrison Rhodes. Thank goodness I had always stayed far away from that man. Behind all my bravado, I was really quite fragile. 4 By Saturday afternoon, Grant Sinclair arrived at my apartment with the finalized prenuptial agreement. When our arrangement first began, the cold reality of a loveless marriage had gutted me. But when my father’s logistics firm faced a catastrophic liquidity crunch last winter, Grant had stepped in, deploying his capital to steady the ship. That was the day I realized that romantic idealism was a luxury. Going bankrupt was far more terrifying than marrying a man who didn’t love me. I picked up the Montblanc pen, scrawled my signature across the dotted line, and slid the leather folder back across the marble coffee table. “Your turn.” Grant didn’t sign immediately. His gaze drifted to my collarbone, lingering on a faint bruise peeking out from my silk blouse. His throat bobbed. Dressed in a tailored charcoal suit, he exuded his usual cool, untouchable aura. He flicked through the pages, surprised. “You’re signing without having your legal counsel review the terms?” “There’s no need,” I said evenly. “You wouldn’t shortchange me financially. You’re too pragmatic for that.” A flicker of something complicated crossed his eyes, swiftly masked by his standard detachment. “I’m glad you’ve come to your senses.” Just then, a distinct metallic click echoed from the master bedroom. Grant’s hand froze over the documents. His gaze snapped toward the closed door, his brow furrowing. “You have company?” “Not company,” I corrected lightly. “My kept man. If I recall correctly, you explicitly stated that our personal lives would remain independent after the wedding.” Grant didn’t speak. He stared at me, the sharp angle of his jaw tightening until the muscle twitched. Then, as if realizing how ridiculous the notion was, he gave a faint, mocking shake of his head. “Is Serena crashing here?” “Serena is in Europe.” “Summer, you don’t have to fabricate a lover to get a reaction out of me,” he said, his tone dripping with patronizing patience. “Frankly, I hope you do find someone. It would save us both the trouble of your misplaced expectations.” I looked down at the table. Around Grant, my confidence had always eroded into dust. Ever since our engagement became public, the social circuit had whispered that a plain girl like me was punching far above her weight. Hear it enough times, and you start to believe it. A sudden, sharp anger flared in my chest. I looked him dead in the eye. “It’s not Serena. It’s her brother. Harrison Rhodes.” Grant froze. A beat of pure shock hit his face, instantly followed by cold derision. “Impossible.” He appraised me from head to toe with insulting precision. “With all due respect, Summer… you are not his type.” Right. I wasn’t striking enough. Just quiet, ordinary, unremarkable. When Grant had offered the alliance, my parents didn’t even ask for my consent; they treated it like winning the genetic lottery. Before I could reply, Grant gathered his papers and stood to leave. At that exact moment, the bedroom doorknob turned. 5 We both stared at the doorway. The air in the foyer instantly turned thin. Then Grant’s phone shrieked in his pocket. He pulled it out, glanced at the caller ID, and his expression darkened significantly. “There’s an emergency at the office. We’ll finish this later.” He practically bolted toward the entryway. Just as the bedroom door swung open an inch, the front door slammed shut with a heavy thud. I let out a long, ragged breath. Good. If Grant had seen the man inside, he would have instantly recognized that it wasn’t Harrison Rhodes and mocked me mercilessly for the lie. Still, watching Grant hurry out was odd. Even during market crashes, Grant maintained an unnerving calm. The only person who had ever thrown him off balance was Harrison Rhodes. But Harrison was supposedly missing. Who else could be giving Grant such a massive headache? “Who was that?” A deep, gravelly voice broke my train of thought. I turned around. Standing against the doorframe was my houseguest, a charcoal robe loosely knotted at his waist, revealing the sharp, defined planes of his torso. A very tempting view. But I was too mentally drained to appreciate it. I collapsed onto the sofa. “My fiancé. He just left.” The man froze, his dark eyes instantly turning frigid. “You have a fiancé?” “I do,” I said simply. There was no reason to hide it. Grant didn’t care, and since this man was being paid, it shouldn’t matter to him either. Instead, his expression darkened into thunderous rage. “You’re engaged, and you’ve been keeping me here? What the hell do you take me for?” “My canary.” Wasn’t that obvious? “You made me your side piece?” His hands clenched into white-knuckled fists, pure fury radiating from him. “No one has ever dared treat me like this. Summer Ellis, you are out of your mind.” I blinked. His commitment to this dominant, high-handed billionaire persona was truly extraordinary. Even after two months, the sheer force of his presence could still make my pulse jump. “Don’t be dramatic,” I sighed. “If he hadn’t left in a hurry, I was going to introduce you two so things wouldn’t be awkward down the road.” “You were going to introduce me to your fiancé?” He sounded genuinely appalled. “Do you think this is something to be proud of?” “Why are you making it sound so scandalous?” I countered defensively. “When wealthy men keep someone on the side, society calls it a perk of success. When a woman does it, suddenly it’s a crime?” I leaned forward. “Besides, Grant and I are strictly business. No feelings involved. But with you—it’s purely about passion.” He let out a harsh, incredulous breath. “So I’m supposed to thank you for reducing me to an illicit affair?” I stood up, walked over, and patted his broad shoulder soothingly. “Look on the bright side. The man with the ring doesn’t mind, so why should the man in my bed be upset?” That did it. His composure shattered completely. “Upset? You think I’m upset?” “Fine. Are you jealous?” “A Rhodes does not get jealous,” he snarled, stepping into my space. “You think I give a damn about your pathetic domestic arrangements? You flatter yourself.” I spread my hands innocently. “See? Problem solved.” 6 My stomach gave a loud, unglamorous rumble. I was starving. Ignoring his simmering glare, I stepped around him toward the dining table, picked up my fork, and sat down. Behind me, the master bedroom door slammed shut with enough force to rattle the glass sconces. And he claims he isn’t upset? As the benefactor in this arrangement, I didn’t owe him emotional coddling. I finished my lunch, spent the afternoon getting a manicure with a friend, and lingered over iced lattes trading Upper East Side gossip. Predictably, when I returned home that evening, he gave me the absolute cold shoulder. I tried to coax him, but the softer I spoke, the colder he became. When I reached out to touch his arm, he knocked my hand aside. “I’m not in the mood. Go find your fiancé.” I sighed. A pampered pet really couldn’t be given too much leeway. I straddled his lap, catching his sharp chin in my hand, and reached beneath the pillow to produce the slender leather riding crop I’d stashed there weeks ago. “Don’t make me use force again.” He went entirely still. For a moment, I thought my authority had prevailed. Then, in a blur of motion, his hands locked around my waist and flipped me beneath him. The breath left my lungs as my back hit the mattress. Looking up into eyes blazing with raw, predatory dominance, a genuine shiver rippled through me. “What are you doing?” I whispered. “You,” he said darkly. His mouth crashed down on mine, rough, possessive, and entirely unyielding, his large hand anchoring the back of my neck with iron strength. The sensory overload was staggering. Three hours later, however, the thrill had completely evaporated into sheer exhaustion. He was relentless. I was convinced this was his calculated form of retribution. “Maybe…” I gasped, my fingers digging into his sweat-sheened shoulders, “maybe you should conserve your stamina?” “If you want me to stop, Ellis, ask properly.” “I’m not asking you to stop,” I wheezed, burying my face in the pillows. “I’m just worried you’ll collapse.” He didn’t stop. At the height of it, his fingers gripped my hips with bruising intensity. In the shadowed room, his voice sounded ragged and dangerous. “Do you love him?” When faced with an impossible question, the best defense is a distraction. I pulled him down and kissed him. It didn’t work. It only made him more punishing. 7 The next morning, I didn’t wake up until past two in the afternoon. The subsequent days blurred into the same exhausting rhythm. He seemed obsessed with proving a point I couldn’t decipher. When he brought up Grant again, I deflected casually. “Arranged marriages are stronger without love. Real romance makes business messy. Besides, Grant has zero interest in me—which is the only reason you’re here.” “So the person I should be thanking for this arrangement isn’t you, but your fiancé?” I pressed my lips together. He was exceptionally argumentative for someone on an allowance. Yet, irritatingly, I found it somewhat endearing. Grant had always been generous with material things. Before our engagement, the designer bags and jewelry arrived without pause. Afterward, he set up a monthly deposit that dwarfed my father’s allowances. Aside from his absolute lack of affection, he was an ideal partner on paper. I wondered how his office crisis was going. I hoped it wouldn’t disrupt my direct deposits. According to Grant’s personal assistant, the situation was brutal—an invisible corporate heavyweight was systematically dismantling their supply chain, forcing Grant to pull eighty-hour weeks. Feeling a pang of practical concern, I typed out a polite check-in text to Grant. Sensing my distraction, the man beside me leaned down, his lips brushing the curve of my throat. “What are you thinking about?” I sighed softly. “My fiancé.” The next second, sharp teeth bit into the soft skin of my neck. I barely survived the night. The following morning, a relentless pounding at the front door shattered my sleep. My phone on the nightstand was buzzing incessantly. Groggily, I answered. Serena’s voice boomed through the speaker. “Summer! Open the damn door! I just landed and I’m standing in your hallway!” My eyes snapped open. Carefully lifting the heavy arm draped across my waist, I threw on a silk robe and sprinted to the entryway. 8 “You’re finally back!” I cried, throwing my arms around her neck the second I opened the door. “I thought you abandoned me in New York!” Serena crossed her arms, narrowing her eyes. “If you missed me so much, why did you ignore six phone calls? What were you doing in there?” “Don’t be mad,” I groaned, leaning against the doorframe. “Your canary wore me out. My legs feel like lead.” Serena looked baffled. “Taking care of a bird wore you out that much?” “You know how much stamina he has. Come in, don’t stand out here.” Stepping inside, Serena immediately froze at the sight of two bulky security guards standing post near the hallway. “Did you get involved with a cartel while I was gone?” “I had to keep your pet contained,” I explained. “What if he tried to escape?” Serena stared at me, bewildered. “Summer, that’s absurd. He has a cage. You just lock the latch.” A cage? I paused, picturing the man inside. “I mean… ordering a custom iron cage of that size felt a little extreme.” “Custom? You buy a standard birdcage at Petco! If you don’t cage it, it flies around shitting on the upholstery!” A cold, creeping sensation prickled at the base of my neck. Before I could process the surreal nature of the sentence, Serena caught sight of the dark purple marks scattered across my collarbone. Her eyes narrowed playfully. “Well, well. Did Grant Sinclair finally lose his composure?” “It wasn’t Grant. You know he doesn’t touch me.” “Then who?” “Your canary.” Serena’s expression instantly morphed from amused to deeply concerned. She grabbed my shoulders, her voice dead serious. “Summer. I told you Grant wasn’t the only man on earth, but I didn’t think you’d completely lose your mind…” She trailed off, rubbing her temples. “Forget it. How’s the situation with my brother? Has anyone found him?” “Still missing,” I said. “Serena, if he doesn’t turn up soon, the board is going to find out. But let’s not dwell on that. Come see your canary.” “Fine.” We walked down the hall and pushed open the master suite door. Inside, the morning light spilled across the unmade bed, illuminating the broad-shouldered, disheveled man sitting upright, silver restraints gleaming around his wrists where they anchored him to the headboard. Serena’s jaw dropped so hard I thought it might hit the hardwood. “Why the fuck is my brother in your bed?!”

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The day I found out I was swapped at birth，the test strip on my bathroom counter turned up with two stark pink lines. I was pregnant. If there was any silver lining to the wreckage of my life, it was that my baby’s father was Dominic Cross: an untouchable titan of the city’s criminal underworld, fabulously wealthy, and lethal enough to keep the rest of the world at bay. I was never built for struggle. I liked silk sheets, black credit cards, and effortless luxury. Swallowing my pride, I slipped the crumpled lab results into my designer coat, fully intending to corner him into a wedding ring. Then the air in front of my eyes fractured, and glowing lines of floating text scrolled across my vision like a toxic, translucent comment feed: [Does this disposable side-character really think getting knocked up means he’ll put a ring on her finger?] [LMAO. The boss only mistook a life-saving debt for love. She’s the only one dumb enough to believe it’s real.] [Our real female lead is the true heiress—the badass second-in-command who’s been disguised at his side for years! Once she finds out who her real family is, she’ll finally get the courage to drug him and claim her man!] [It’s hilarious how oblivious he is. He treats the real lead like a brother while convincing himself he loves this spoiled little brat. Just wait until the real heiress gets critically wounded trying to protect this useless parasite—he gets so furious he literally feeds her and the bastard in her belly to his pet lion…] 1 The crystal tumbler slipped through my fingers, shattering against the imported marble floor with a deafening crash. In the private courtyard of Dominic’s sprawling estate, there really was a full-grown white lion. And that lion had been a personal gift from Sloane—his ruthless, sharp-edged lieutenant, who had hated my guts from the second we met. “Baby? What did I do wrong this time?” Dominic had only turned his back for a split second. In that breath, my plan to shove the pregnancy test into his chest had dissolved into a full-blown breakdown amidst the glittering shards. A scream tore at the back of my throat—I wanted to screech at him to get rid of that terrifying beast immediately. The floating text flared across my retinas again, ruthless and mocking: [Stupid girl, go ahead and throw your tantrum! He hasn’t realized his own feelings yet. The moment you complain about that lion, he’ll realize the woman he truly cares about isn’t you!] [That lion is literally their token of unspoken devotion. He cherishes it.] [Trying to trap a syndicate boss with a baby? Idiotic. He doesn’t give a damn about an illegitimate kid. Once he finds out, he’ll probably snuff it out himself…] [Please keep pushing your luck, sweetie. Make him lose his temper so he can finally put a bullet through your head!] The demands and accusations died in my throat, choking me. Dazed, I stumbled back two steps, nearly planting my bare heel directly into the jagged glass. Dominic’s arm snaked around my waist, hauling me flush against his hard chest before I could touch the floor. He let out a ragged sigh of relief, his calloused palm gripping my hip as he leaned down to murmur against my ear. “Baby, I swear I didn’t miss that auction on purpose. Traffic held me up at the docks, and by the time I walked into the showroom, that vintage Patek Philippe was already hammered off to someone else…” “It’s—it’s fine! It’s not your fault!” Panic surged through me. My fingers crushed the medical report hidden deep inside my coat pocket, obliterating my usual demanding, imperious persona. “Dominic, you don’t owe me expensive watches. It was all my fault before… I was being selfish. I was asking for too much.” 2 Leaving those breathless apologies hanging in the air, I fled upstairs and locked myself inside the master suite. Leaning against the heavy oak door, my mind dragged me back to what the floating words had called a “life-saving debt.” Three years ago, when I first found Dominic, he was slumped beside a dumpster in a rain-drowned alley behind a downtown club, soaked in blood and barely breathing. I’ve always been squeamish, utterly repulsed by mess. But under the grime, his jawline was razor-sharp, his features striking enough to stop my heart. So I loaded him into my car and paid for the best private surgical suite in the city. The doctor said blunt trauma to the skull had caused temporary blindness. During those first weeks, Dominic was like a feral predator trapped in a cage. The moment he sensed me near the bed, he would snarl profanities. When I tried to feed him, he told me to get lost. When I tried to change his bandages, he threatened to snap my neck. I was furious. I had spent tens of thousands of dollars on this man only to be treated like dirt. So, at the end of that month, while he was drifting off under heavy painkillers, I slipped a mild sedative into his IV, tied his wrists to the wrought-iron headboard, and took petty revenge by teasing and tormenting him half to death. At first, he cursed me violently, his voice raw with fury. Halfway through, as my hands roamed his feverish skin, his curses died in his throat. By the time I was done, his Adam’s apple bobbed heavily, and his voice dropped to a dark, raspy growl: “Is that… all you’ve got?” His blind, unfocused eyes suddenly locked dead onto mine—predatory, lucid, and burning with terrifying hunger. “If your hands are tired, untie me. I’ll finish it.” …His eyesight had come back. A violent shudder racked my entire body. Legs trembling, I tried to scramble off the mattress, but he ripped through the bindings with terrifying ease. A large, scarred hand locked around my ankle, dragging me backward onto the sheets. Before I could scream, his mouth was on my throat, biting down on the sensitive hollow beneath my ear with bruising intensity. No one had ever touched me like that. Dominic held nothing back. As I sobbed and pleaded against his chest, he dragged me onto his lap, breaking me down until the morning light filtered through the blinds. 3 When it was over, I couldn’t stop crying. Losing my virginity to a bad-tempered, nameless stray… if my adoptive parents found out, they would disown me on the spot. My soft sobs eventually woke him. Terrified he would snap at me again, I slapped my hands over my ears and curled into the furthest corner of the bed. Instead, Dominic rose, shifted closer, and gently brushed away the tears streaming down my cheeks. His rough thumb was impossibly tender. “Don’t cry,” he murmured, his voice thick with gravel. “It’s on me. I was drugged, lost control… and took you.” He cupped my jaw, his dark gaze unwavering. “I’ll take responsibility. I’ll marry you.” A penniless drifter wanted to marry me? I wailed even louder, hiccuping between sobs that I’d rather die than move to some rundown trailer park, washing his dirty laundry and cooking his meals for the rest of my life. A week later, once he was discharged, he had a black town car pick me up and drove me straight to his estate. It was a private compound ten times larger than my family’s gated villa. The casual allowance he deposited into my account on day one was more than what my adoptive parents had given me in ten years. My attitude flipped in a heartbeat. I threw my arms around his neck, burying my face in his throat. “Honey… does that promise to take care of me forever still count?” Dominic’s breath hitched. He was entirely powerless against my tears, my face, and my body. From that day on, I became his little money-burning machine. I shopped recklessly, filling closets with couture, jewelry, and sports cars. Dominic never batted an eye. His only condition was that he collected his dues in our bed. Every night, he would coax whispered confessions out of me between breathless kisses, driving me to the brink of madness, only to shower me with more jewels the next morning to make me smile. Over time, I let myself believe that this was love. After all, people always say a man’s heart is wherever his money goes. So the moment I held that positive pregnancy test, my first instinct had been pure, unadulterated joy. I thought we were finally going to build a real family. Until the floating text shattered the illusion: [Think having a baby means a wedding? Dream on.] [If he wanted to marry you, he would’ve proposed years ago. Why wait?] [Annoying little parasite. The second he figures out who he truly loves, he’ll settle every single debt you owe him! When the real heiress cries, you’ll be thrown straight into the lion’s den…] For three years, I had been spoiled so thoroughly that I had forgotten the most basic truth: To the rest of the world, Dominic Cross was a cold-blooded killer who ran the city with an iron fist. 4 Dominic didn’t come upstairs that night. Crouched in the corner of the bedroom, watching the luminous text flicker and fade against the darkness, I clutched the crumpled sonogram and wept until dawn. By morning, I rubbed my swollen eyes and made up my mind. I couldn’t afford to be high-maintenance anymore. Before he woke up to his true feelings, I needed to gather whatever cash I could, keep my head down, and disappear. I walked downstairs, my mind heavy with dread, only to freeze near the grand entryway. Dominic stood near the foyer, radiating a chilling, lethal aura. He was casually wiping fresh, arterial blood from his forearm with a dark cloth, tucking a combat knife into his tactical belt. There was a streak of drying crimson along his sharp jawline. My knees nearly gave out. Before I could drop to the floor and beg for mercy, he reached into his leather coat, pulled out a velvet box containing a pristine, diamond-encrusted watch, and held it out to me with almost reverent care. “Baby. I convinced that old bastard to hand over the watch he bought for his daughter.” He stepped closer, his voice dipping low. “Can you… forgive me now?” He was covered in blood, but the watch in his palms was untouched by a single speck of dust. Looking into his dark, earnest eyes, something twisted painfully in my chest. The text flared in my peripheral vision: [Holy shit. He actually declared open war on Arthur Shaw, the second-most powerful boss in the city, just for a damn watch.] [Not just declared war—he breached their compound in the dead of night and hung Shaw by his ankles until he yielded. This blood feud is entirely on the side-character’s head.] [Too bad she’ll end up wearing that watch when they hack her hand off later… poetic justice, honestly.] My hand, which had just begun to reach out, recoiled violently. A ghost of phantom agony shot through my wrist. I rubbed it instinctively, my face draining of all color as I shook my head. “No… no, I don’t want it.” Dominic’s brow furrowed. “Why not?” He used his clean hand to gently stroke the edge of my eyelid, wiping away a stray tear. “What do I have to do for you to forgive me, baby?” “I’m not…” My fingers trembled uncontrollably. Pushing past the terror, I stood on tiptoe and pressed my lips against the corner of his mouth. “I’m not mad. And I don’t need the watch. I just… I just want you. Hubby.” In the past, I only ever called him that when he pushed me past my limits in bed. Dominic’s gaze darkened instantly. Dropping all questions, his hand locked behind my head, pulling me into a fierce, suffocating kiss. Right there in the bright morning light of the foyer, the kiss grew desperate and heavy. His large hand had just slipped under the hem of my silk sweater when the heavy front door swung open. “Boss.” The person who broke the kiss was Sloane. 5 The moment she stepped inside, the floating text exploded with excitement, praising her competence while tearing me to shreds. “Sorry, Boss. There’s an emergency at the docks that needs your personal attention.” Sloane’s eyes were slightly red as she held out a tactical folder. I took the opportunity to gently shove Dominic back. He ran both sides of the city—the legitimate corporate empire and the shadow syndicates underneath. “What could possibly be that urgent?” Dominic’s expression darkened with annoyance. He reached out, thumbing my swollen, reddened lower lip. Sloane leaned in, whispering a few terse sentences into his ear. Dominic clicked his tongue in irritation. He pulled out his phone, wired five hundred thousand dollars straight into my account for “shopping,” and only then reluctantly let me go. As he headed upstairs to change, Sloane stepped directly into my path. “Winter Holloway, when are you going to stop acting like a spoiled child?” She glared at me, the fury in her eyes barely contained. “Do you have any idea how much money the boss lost last night, how many enemies he made, just to get you that stupid piece of jewelry?!” Her voice rose, driving me back a couple of steps in bewilderment. I used to think she just hated how much Dominic indulged me. Now, I finally understood. She was a woman—and she was deeply in love with him. More than that, she was the biological daughter my adoptive parents had been desperately searching for. [Next month, when our girl gets recognized by the Holloway family, this fake heiress loses everything.] [That’s when Sloane takes back what’s hers, drugs the boss, and finally seals the deal…] 6 Her path sounded all too familiar. Wasn’t that exactly how I had started with Dominic? Terrified by the text, I spent the following weeks walking on eggshells. I stopped spending his money. I stopped complaining. When he called during the day to check in, I answered with polite, nervous monosyllables. At night, when his hand reached for my ankle, pulling me toward him, I’d shrink back with excuses: “I don’t feel well tonight. Please, not tonight…” Dominic had never forced me. Still, his appetite was relentless. Going two weeks without touching me was clearly pushing his absolute limit. Returning late from an overseas weapons deal, he didn’t wait. I woke up in the dark to the heavy weight of his body pressing down on mine, his hips already moving with relentless intent. Seeing my eyes flutter open in confusion, his breathing turned ragged, the grip on my waist tightening. “Sorry, baby. Did I wake you?” My morning temper was usually terrible. Instinctively, my hand flew up to shove his face away—then froze in mid-air. Don’t do it, I screamed at myself. Don’t hit him. You don’t want a bullet between the eyes. I slowly lowered my hand. Dominic’s eyes narrowed into dangerous slits, clearly sensing my restraint, and he drove into me even harder. Panic flared in my chest. What if this hurt the baby? Unable to kick him away, I clamped my teeth down on the back of my own hand, muffling my cries. “Dominic… please, go easy…” “You’ve been so quiet lately, baby. So obedient.” Dominic pried my hand away from my mouth, his tongue licking the bloody teeth marks on my skin before he nipped lightly at my wrist. “Problem is,” he murmured with a dark, low chuckle, “I think I liked you better when you were throwing fits.” 7 For three days straight, Dominic barely let me leave the bed. By the time he fell into an exhausted sleep on the fourth morning, I dragged my aching body up, threw on an oversized coat, and slipped out to the hospital. I had already looked into Sloane’s official records—her adoptive parents had died years ago, leaving her with no known relatives. Which meant that the moment my adoptive parents cast me aside, I would be completely alone. The only real family I had left was the tiny life growing inside me. I had to protect it. Rushing into the downtown medical center, fresh text scrolled across my eyes: [OMG, our girl’s identity got revealed ahead of schedule!] [Yes! The drugging scene must be happening tonight! The real couple is finally getting together!] [Once the boss gets a taste of the real deal, he won’t even look at the parasite. When the parasite throws herself at him later, he’ll just throw her to his men to play with…] My knees buckled. I stumbled, nearly crashing into the corridor wall. A steady hand caught my elbow. “Careful.” I swallowed hard and looked up, only to freeze. “Adrian?” He was a guy I had befriended while studying abroad in London years ago—one of the few genuine friends I ever had. Adrian stood tall in a white lab coat, his handsome face lighting up with genuine surprise. “Winter? What are you doing here?! I’ve been trying to track you down ever since I moved back…” Because of Dominic’s paranoia, my old social circle had been entirely severed. I never expected to run into an old classmate here. Abandoning my plan to bribe a random doctor, I pulled Adrian aside and begged him to run the prenatal checkup under a false name. When the ultrasound results came back, Adrian’s expression turned grim. My heart vaulted into my throat. “Is something wrong with the baby?” “The baby is fine, but…” Adrian frowned, his jaw tightening. “Winter, who is the father? What kind of monster treats a pregnant woman this roughly…?” Embarrassment burned my cheeks. I gave him a rushed, vague explanation before looking at him pleadingly. “Adrian, I heard you have connections. Can you help me get out of the country? Away from Dominic Cross…” “Baby, what did you just say?” A low, lethal voice sliced through the corridor behind me. The air instantly plummeted below freezing. I spun around to find Dominic standing at the end of the hall, his dark eyes fixed on Adrian with unadulterated venom. “Who the hell is he?” Dominic stepped forward, his tone dropping to a dangerous whisper. “And why are you in the obstetrics wing?”

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1 I made thirty-six thousand dollars a year; my boyfriend, Tyler, pulled in six figures. He used to tell me that the gulf between us wasn’t about talent, but bandwidth. Tyler was a master of parallel processing. He could run a sprint deployment on his laptop while leaving annotated feedback on pitch decks for his junior colleague, Kendra. He could drive me to my morning shift while detouring three blocks to pick up Kendra’s specialty oat milk cortado. “You’re like a single-celled organism, Nora,” he’d say, leaning across the console to tap my nose. “You can only handle one stimulus at a time.” Whenever he said that, I would bunch the fabric of my hem between my fingers, small and uncertain. He’d offer a quick, indulgent smile. “It’s endearing, honestly. But you have to pick up the pace if you want to keep up with me.” So I ran. I spent three years sprinting just to stay within his peripheral vision. Until today, when my lungs gave out. A flare-up of severe acute pharyngitis had spiked my fever past a hundred and two. My throat felt like raw gravel, every swallow sending needles into my ears. From the bedroom, I croaked out Tyler’s name, asking if he could bring me a glass of water. He walked in carrying his phone, his thumb flicking rhythmically across the glass. On his screen, a message preview glowed: Kendra asking whether a muted plum or a warm brick shade looked better on her skin tone. Tyler reached out and handed me a tumbler. It was completely empty. Not a single drop. “Drink up,” he murmured, his eyes never leaving the screen. I took the dry glass into my palms. He turned on his heel and pulled the bedroom door shut behind him. Through the wood, his easy, effortless laugh drifted down the hallway: “Definitely go with the second one.” I sat in the dim room, staring at the bottom of the glass. Maybe he was right. Maybe I was a simple, single-celled creature. I could only hold one conversation at a time. I could only do one job well. I could only love one person with the whole of my chest. Tyler lived in a web of open tabs and split screens. I couldn’t survive in that kind of noise anymore. My throat burned so fiercely that I reached over and pressed the little white smart-button stuck to my nightstand. It was a gadget Tyler had custom-coded during our second anniversary—a single press was supposed to ping a high-priority push notification directly to his smartwatch, overriding whatever he was doing. I pressed it once. Twice. A dozen times. Down the hall, the only response was the sound of Tyler’s amused voice mingling with Kendra’s on speakerphone. The sting in my nose gave way to hot, quiet tears. I kept hammering the button, over and over, with the stubborn, desperate spite of someone trying to summon a ghost. Finally, the bedroom door swung open. Before I could get a syllable past my swollen vocal cords, Kendra’s chirpy voice crackled through his phone: “Wait, Tyler! Is that the desktop chime from our shared server? You put one in your house too?” Tyler flinched, hastily lowering the volume as he stepped toward the bed and laid a hand on my forehead. “It was just a batch of prototype units from the lab,” he said softly, smoothing my hair back. “I handed out a few extras to the team.” Kendra’s laughter buzzed through the receiver. “Man, how many of us are linked to your phone? Here I thought I had exclusive VIP priority!” A dry, bitter ache caught behind my ribs. I had assumed that because I only had room for one person, the rest of the world loved the same way. I had forgotten that some people built their lives like office buildings, with enough turnstiles to let a crowd through every hour. Tears slipped over my eyelashes. Tyler snapped into the microphone, his tone sharp with defensive irritation: “Kendra, drop it. I’ll call you back.” He hung up, leaned over the mattress, and thumbed away my tears with a gentle stroke. “Don’t cry, Nora. You’ll only make your headache worse. Come here, let me hold you…” I pulled back just an inch. “Can you delete her personal number, Tyler? You guys have Slack and the corporate workspace. Can you keep her off your personal line?” Tyler paused, then handed me his phone. “Look for yourself. There’s nothing going on.” I unlocked the screen. In his private messaging app, Kendra’s contact card was saved with a tiny red heart. My contact was saved as: [Nora Hayes – Logistics, Eastern Supply]. My fingers tightened around the aluminum edges until my knuckles went bloodless. Tyler noticed where my eyes were fixed and cleared his throat. “That’s… look, with all the data breaches lately, I keep real names and departments on family contacts so if my phone gets stolen, scammers can’t phish you for ransom. Kendra’s is just an inside joke from the team.” I handed the phone back. “Never mind. Don’t bother deleting her.” “Nora, please, read the logs,” he insisted, tapping into the thread. The chat background was a candid photo of Kendra laughing over iced coffee. Six months ago, when I had asked to set our anniversary photo as his chat background, Tyler had told me: It’s too cluttered. The text bubbles get lost. Before another tear could fall, Tyler’s custom productivity app buzzed with an urgent banner: [CRITICAL TASK: Remind Kendra to redeem her DoorDash anniversary promo before midnight!!!] Beneath it, in faint gray font: [Low Priority: Nora antibiotic reminder.] Those three exclamation points felt like tiny needles under my skin. Tyler saw the alert and opened his mouth to explain, but I swallowed the sob back into my chest and forced my lips into a flat, quiet smile. “I believe you.” Relief washed over his features instantly. He let out an easy breath and leaned down to kiss my hair. “I knew my Nora was reasonable.” He pulled up his keyboard and swiftly fired off a note to Kendra about her lunch voucher. He never mentioned my antibiotics. Every question I had spent the last year swallowing suddenly had its answer. While Tyler was engrossed in his screen, I opened my phone and sent a message to Rachel Reed, my former supervisor who had left for Chicago two months ago: Rachel, that project manager position you mentioned. I want it. Tyler’s hand shot out, plucking the phone from my grip. His brow furrowed as he read the screen. “Transferring? Nora, you’re leaving Denver?” My heart gave a dull thump against my ribs. “Rachel asked me to come with her when she took the regional director role. It’s a three-tier promotion. One hundred and fifteen thousand a year.” Tyler stared at me for a beat, then reached out and pressed the back of his hand to my forehead, chuckling under his breath. “Are you delirious from the fever?” “I’m serious.” “Nora, you literally just told me you trusted me. What is this theatrical performance? Are you playing the misunderstood indie heroine now? What’s next—you pack a vintage suitcase and make me chase you through an airport on my knees?” The words I had rehearsed died in my throat. I looked at the man I had lived with for three years and realized that no amount of explanation would ever bridge the distance between what I felt and what he allowed himself to see. “It’s nothing,” I whispered. “Go back to work.” He patted my head approvingly. “Good girl. Get some sleep.” When Tyler and I graduated from college, his uncle Ray had launched a small supply-chain startup. Ray needed reliable labor, but Tyler didn’t want to get bogged down in a family venture while building his own tech career. To do his family a favor without sacrificing his own trajectory, Tyler volunteered me instead. It’s just for a few months, Nora, he had told me then. Just until he gets on his feet. A few months became three years. Every time I brought up leaving, Uncle Ray would clap my shoulder and say, We’re practically family, Nora, you can’t leave us hanging. Tyler would echo the sentiment: Don’t burn bridges with my family over a little stress. I started out answering phones and sorting inventory. By the end, I was single-handedly managing their three largest corporate accounts. My salary never changed. Thirty-six thousand a year. Barely three thousand a month before taxes. Whenever I asked for a cost-of-living adjustment, Ray smiled smoothly: Families don’t keep score over pennies. I was the only one paying for their family harmony. My phone screen lit up with Rachel’s reply: Start date is in two weeks. Send over your formal notice; I’ll sign off on the transition paperwork from this end. That night, my temperature climbed violently. By two in the morning, the fever burned through the fog in my skull. I reached across the sheets, but the other side of the mattress was stone cold. I dragged myself out of bed, drank a swallow of tap water, and looked around. Tyler was nowhere in the apartment. My skin was scorching, my pulse hammering in my ears. I picked up my phone and dialed his number. Five rings. Ten. Twenty. On the twenty-first attempt, I hung up and dialed 911. When the paramedics brought me through the ER doors and the intake triage cleared, the desk clerk handed me the copay slip: “Forty-dollar specialist copay for the attending, plus the prescription deposit.” I pulled up my banking app. Available balance: $5.60. Tyler managed our household accounts. My monthly paycheck went straight into our shared savings pool, and he distributed our spending allowances. He hadn’t transferred mine yet this week. Sitting in the plastic waiting chair, shivering under the fluorescent lights, I dialed him again. By the ninety-ninth call, the tears finally spilled over, splashing onto the cracked glass screen where my flushed, miserable face was reflected. My thumb trembled as I texted Rachel: Rachel, I’m so sorry to ask this, but could you lend me fifty dollars? I’m at urgent care with severe pharyngitis and I can’t cover the copay. Within thirty seconds, my phone chimed. A Venmo transfer from Rachel: $5,000.00. Use whatever you need. Get a cab home. I settled the bill and walked slowly down the corridor toward the outpatient pharmacy, my knees shaking. Near the specialized wound and minor burn annex, two floor nurses were whispering by the charting station. “Did you see the guy in Room Four? Talk about overkill.” “Right? The girl had a grease splatter the size of a dime on her forearm from making stir-fry, and he demanded a burn specialist consultation at two in the morning because she has ‘keloid-prone skin.’” “Must be nice to have someone that devoted.” My chest hitched. A foolish, stubborn part of my brain wondered if Tyler would ever look at me with that kind of panic. When I passed the doorway of Room Four, I got my answer. Tyler was on his knees beside the examination chair, holding Kendra’s wrist with trembling precision, dabbing silver sulfadiazine ointment onto a tiny pink spot on her forearm. “Don’t worry, Kendra,” his voice was lower and softer than I had heard it in years. “I called my cousin in dermatology. We’re getting you a full consult first thing in the morning. I won’t let it leave a mark.” I stood in the doorway, my voice coming out like shredded paper: “And what about me?” Tyler whipped around. When he saw me standing in the sterile hallway, clutching a paper pharmacy bag, his jaw tightened in immediate annoyance. “Nora? What are you doing here? I thought you said you trusted me—are you tracking my location now?” I opened my mouth to speak, but the room tilted violently. The linoleum rushed up to meet me, and my world went black. The last thing I registered before my head hit the floor was the heavy scent of sweet osmanthus drifting off Tyler’s jacket. The scent of his car diffuser. Kendra’s signature perfume. And the one botanical extract that triggered my seasonal asthma. When I woke up, the ceiling tiles were stark and white. The room was completely quiet. A nurse stepped in carrying a clipboard, her eyes softening with cautious sympathy as she handed me a medical chart. “Ms. Hayes, your bloodwork came back. You’re approximately five weeks pregnant.” She hesitated, tapping the chart. “Because you were admitted unconscious with a high fever, the attending administered heavy antipyretics and broad-spectrum antibiotics before we ran the panel. Given the dosage and the fever spike, there is a moderate risk of developmental complications.” I held the thin sheet of paper in my hand. My mind was a flat, featureless plain. Keep it? End it? The door handle clicked. Instinctively, I slipped the chart beneath my pillow just as Rachel strode in, her trench coat still damp from the morning drizzle. Her eyes swept the empty room. “Where is Tyler?” I looked down at the rough hospital blanket. “I don’t know.” Rachel pulled up a plastic chair, took out an apple from her purse, and began slicing it into neat quarters with a pocket knife. “You looked like a ghost when you texted me last night. If your worst enemy saw you in that state, they’d have sent you grocery money, let alone me.” I took a slice of apple. My throat still hurt, but the sweetness felt real. The door swung open again. Tyler walked in carrying a takeout container of chicken broth, Kendra trailing half a step behind him, a small white bandage neatly taped to her arm. Kendra offered a bright, sunshiny wave. “Hi, Nora! We brought you warm broth! Honestly, next time you feel sick, you have to speak up louder. A squeaky wheel gets the grease, you know?” I looked past her at Tyler. He avoided my eyes, fixing his gaze on the IV pole as if that could erase the ninety-nine missed calls glowing in his phone log. Kendra glanced down at her rose-gold watch. “Tyler, we need to head out if we’re going to make the appointment.” Rachel narrowed her eyes. “Appointment for what?” “It’s my birthday today!” Kendra beamed, rocking on her heels. “Tyler’s giving me the most hilarious gift. He’s renewing his driver’s license today at the downtown DMV so the expiration date matches my birthday for the next ten years! That way, whenever he pulls out his ID, he has to remember my birthday. In ten years, if we’re still working together, we can film a time-capsule video. Isn’t that wild?” I looked at Tyler. He rubbed the back of his neck, laughing awkwardly. “It’s just an office prank. She wouldn’t let it go.” I looked at the two of them, and for the first time in three years, the knot in my stomach simply dissolved. “Go ahead,” I said quietly. “Don’t let me hold you up.” The door clicked shut behind them. Rachel turned to me, her jaw clenched tight enough to crack enamel. “Are you blind, Nora? That girl is practically marking her territory on your doormat.” “I know,” I said softly. “But Tyler is holding the leash.” Tyler had never been a romantic man with me. He didn’t track anniversaries; he didn’t do surprises. On our third anniversary, when I handed him a leather-bound journal filled with sketches of our trips, his face had frozen in mild panic: Nora, I’m so sorry… work was crazy this week, I didn’t get a chance to pick anything up. I had spent three years believing he was simply built without the romance gene. Now I knew he just reserved his bandwidth for different users. I picked up my phone and called Tyler. He picked up on the second ring, his tone puzzled. “Nora? I literally just walked out.” “Tyler,” I said evenly. “If I were pregnant right now, what would you want to do?” A short, scoffing chuckle came over the line. “Nora, who taught you these guilt-trip tactics? Even if you were, there’s no way we could keep it. I’m up for the senior VP track next quarter; my career is in an acceleration phase.” “Okay,” I said, and ended the call. Rachel looked at me, her expression tight with concern. “Nora…” “Don’t worry, Rachel,” I said, looking out the window at the gray Denver skyline. “I’m done.” I stayed in the hospital for six days while my lungs cleared. During that week, Tyler ran back and forth between my room on the third floor and Kendra’s outpatient checkups on the second. When Kendra asked for fruit, Tyler brought her a bowl of sweet, deep-red watermelon cubes; the bowl he brought to my bedside consisted of the pale, watery white rind near the skin. When Kendra craved rotisserie chicken, he brought her the savory, crispy skin and thighs; the container left on my nightstand contained two dry slices of leftover breast meat. I looked up at him with a small, quiet smile. “Running low on funds? Couldn’t afford two whole chickens?” Tyler’s face flushed pink. “Nora, why do you have to be so sarcastic all the time?” On the afternoon I was discharged, Tyler pulled his sedan up to the hospital curb to drive me home. As he merged into traffic, I leaned against the headrest. “Tyler, that thirty thousand dollars of my savings in our joint money-market account. I need you to transfer it back to my personal checking.” His fingers stiffened on the steering wheel. “Why the sudden interest in the savings pool?” “Let’s get back to the apartment first,” I replied mildly. “We have a few things to sort out.” About the pregnancy. About the exit. Before we reached the highway interchange, Tyler’s console chimed. Not the standard Bluetooth ringtone, but a custom voice recording set to Kendra’s voice: “Emergency alert! The world is ending! Come rescue Queen Kendra!” Tyler tapped the screen to answer. Outside, the sky opened up into a torrential downpour. He pulled the car over onto the shoulder near an overpass and turned to look at me, his eyes full of rushed apology. “Nora… do you mind taking an Uber from here? Kendra was just discharged from her post-op physical, and she’s standing outside the clinic in the rain without a ride.” I looked at the sheets of gray water slamming against the windshield. “Transfer my money first.” Tyler quickly opened his banking app, authenticated with Face ID, and routed the funds to my account. “Done. Okay, you’re good.” I reached into the back seat to grab the spare umbrella from the door pocket. Tyler’s hand shot out, clamping down on the handle. He pressed his lips together. “There are only two umbrellas in the car, Nora.” I understood immediately. If I took this one, Kendra wouldn’t have one when he pulled up to her curb. And between the two of us, her hair staying dry was the priority. I let go of the handle. “Drop me off at the light rail station half a mile up, then. If I walk from here, I’ll be drenched before I reach the platform.” Tyler frowned at his navigation map. “That intersection is a nightmare to make a U-turn at this hour. It’ll add fifteen minutes to my route.” I looked at him for a long, quiet second, then unbuckled my seatbelt and pushed the door open into the freezing rain. “Wait, Nora—what did you want to talk about at home?” he called out through the cracked window. I pulled my collar up against the cold water running down my neck and smiled at him through the downpour. “Nothing important. Just household trivia. I can handle it myself.” Tyler gave me a quick, reassuring wave, put the car in gear, and swung back into traffic. He pulled away with such haste that his rear tires plowed through a curb puddle, sending a thick wave of muddy street water across my coat and jeans, chilling me straight to the bone. I walked the half-mile to the light rail station, water squelching in my sneakers. Standing under the platform heater, I bought a one-way Amtrak ticket to Chicago departing in three hours, and booked an appointment with a reproductive health clinic downtown for the following week. Back at the apartment, I stood in the entryway. The living room was filled with things we had bought together—the matching ceramic mugs, the framed concert stubs, the throw blankets we had chosen on Sunday mornings. None of it belonged to me anymore. I packed two suitcases with my clothes, gathered my passport and social security card, and laid my apartment key on the kitchen island. Sitting on the train as the steel wheels clicked against the tracks, I watched the jagged peaks of Colorado recede into the gray afternoon mist. I had always imagined that leaving a three-year relationship would feel like an explosion—shouted accusations, slammed doors, a catastrophic tearing of seams. Instead, it felt like turning off a light in an empty room. My phone buzzed. A notification from my banking app: Tyler Cole sent you $$1,000.00. Attached was a text: Nora, I know I’ve been scattered lately. I booked a table at that Italian place you like for eight tonight. Where do you want to grab drinks after? I accepted the deposit, closed the app, and typed out my reply: I’m not coming. It’s over, Tyler. We’re done.

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “560776”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

1 When I was nine years old, my older brother, Garrett, assaulted our upstairs neighbor. The night the police led him out in handcuffs, the entire apartment complex gathered in the stairwells and balconies to watch the spectacle. Some people spat and called him an animal. Others whispered into the dark, wondering aloud what the girl had done to invite it—after all, why would a quiet boy like Garrett fixate on her if she hadn’t given him some kind of signal? Nora never survived those whispers. Three months later, she walked up to the rooftop of the county hospital and jumped. Garrett was sentenced and sent away. My mother cried until her retinas tore, nearly losing her sight, and my father suffered a stroke that left the entire right half of his body dragging like dead weight. For years afterward, I lay awake wondering: If I had only stood in front of that door, if I had only found a way to stop him, could all those ruined lives have stayed whole? When I opened my eyes again, I was back in the entryway of our old apartment. Garrett was standing on the worn welcome mat, tying the laces of his sneakers. He glanced down at me, his expression casual, mundane. “Hazel, I’m heading out to grab a couple of beers with some guys from work,” he said. “Go to bed early, okay?” I lunged forward, slamming my small back against the heavy metal front door. My breath came in ragged, jagged gasps as I looked up at him. “You’re not going anywhere,” I said, every word clipped and hard. “You are not leaving this apartment tonight.” Garrett’s hand remained frozen on the deadbolt. He blinked, stunned by my sudden fury, and then let out a low, patronizing chuckle. “Hazel, what is wrong with you?” I cut my eyes toward the wall clock. The plastic hands ticked steadily toward eight-forty. I remembered the timeline as if it were branded into my skin. In my past life, he had stepped out the door at nine-five. At nine-forty-eight, the first scream had echoed down from the sixteenth floor. By ten-twenty-seven, the flashing red and blue lights of patrol cars had painted our rain-streaked living room windows. I spread my arms wide, wedging my heels firmly against the bottom crack of the frame, my entire nine-year-old frame trembling violently. Garrett looked down at me, his smile thinning. “Three minutes ago, you were begging me to bring you back an ice pop from the bodega. Now you’re playing guard dog?” My throat closed up, tight and burning. “Don’t go, Garrett. You’re going to the sixteenth floor tonight, aren’t you?” The remnants of his smile vanished instantly. In that fraction of a second, the sudden, dead stillness in his eyes told me everything. I was right. Nora Walsh lived in 16B. She was an emergency room nurse at the downtown hospital, working brutal, unpredictable night shifts. A month earlier, I had taken a nasty spill on the asphalt courtyard downstairs, ripping my knees open. It was Nora who had knelt beside me on the concrete, cleaning the gravel from the scrapes and bandaging the cuts with practiced, tender hands. Her fingers had been cool against my skin, her voice impossibly gentle. It’s okay to cry when it hurts, little one, she had told me. You don’t have to be brave for anybody. In my first life, I had let that gentle woman walk straight into a nightmare. This time, I refused to play dumb. Garrett’s grip on the door handle slowly loosened. “Who told you that?” I shook my head violently. “It doesn’t matter who told me. Just leave Nora alone. She doesn’t like you, Garrett. She never did.” Garrett’s face darkened, shifting into a shadow I had only ever seen in courtroom photographs. “What do you know about anything? She’s a woman walking home alone in the middle of the night. I was just worried about her safety.” My eyes burned with hot, bitter tears. “The only thing she isn’t safe from is you.” Slap. Garrett slammed his car keys down onto the wooden console table. The sharp crack made my shoulders flinch, but I didn’t move an inch. He bent down until his face was level with mine, his breath smelling faintly of cheap mints. “Hazel, I’m your brother,” he hissed. “You’re taking a stranger’s side over your own family?” I stared straight into his eyes. In my past life, our family had done nothing but protect him. After his arrest, I was the pariah at school, the girl kids pointed at in the hallway while whispering, That’s the rapist’s sister. My mother had dropped to her knees on Nora’s parents’ porch, begging them through tears to sign a plea of leniency. My father had spent the rest of his functional days muttering that he was the failure, that he had raised a monster. Back then, caught between terror and shame, I had still clung to the childish notion that he was my big brother. But after Nora jumped, all of that evaporated. That was a human life. A real, breathing, luminous life snuffed out because of his rotten entitlement. I balled my fists. “If you stop right now, Garrett, you can still turn back.” He let out an ugly, humorless laugh. “Turn back? I haven’t done anything. What the hell am I supposed to turn back from?” He reached out to shove me aside. The moment his fingers grazed my shoulder, I dropped to the floor, wrapping both arms around the leg of the heavy shoe bench, screaming at the top of my lungs: “You’re not leaving! I won’t let you!” His patience snapped. He grabbed my wrists, his fingers digging in with brutal force, dragging me across the linoleum. Pain flared through my arms. “Garrett Miller!” I screamed his full name for the first time in my life. “What’s in that black duffel bag?” His hands froze. I scrambled forward, lunging toward the black canvas bag sitting on the bench. The zipper was pulled half-open. Just as my fingertips brushed the coarse fabric, Garrett grabbed the scruff of my collar and yanked me off my feet, dangling me like a ragdoll. “Don’t touch that,” he warned, his voice dropping into a register that was entirely devoid of warmth. “Then show me what’s inside!” His eyes narrowed into slits. “Mom and Dad aren’t home, Hazel. Don’t make me hurt you.” The tears spilled over my cheeks. Mom and Dad aren’t home. That was the sole reason he had chosen tonight. Mom had gone upstate for a regional conference, and Dad had driven with her to help with the long highway commute, promising they’d be back by Sunday. Before walking out the door, Mom had cupped my face, telling me over and over to be a good girl and listen to my older brother. In my last life, I had listened. I had been so obedient that an atrocity walked right past me in our hallway, and I hadn’t asked a single question. I tilted my head back, my voice shaking with raw desperation. “Garrett, please. I’m begging you, don’t do this. I had a nightmare. I saw the police taking you away. I saw Nora dead. I saw our family falling apart until there was nothing left. I’m scared. I don’t want to lose you.” Garrett stared at me. The word police seemed to strike a nerve; a faint twitch pulled at the corner of his jaw. Slowly, the menace drained from his posture, and he crouched down, reaching out to smooth my hair. It was the familiar gesture of the brother who used to carry me on his shoulders. But his palm was clammy, cold as ice. “Hazel, stop making things up in your head,” he whispered softly. “I’m just going up there to talk to her. That’s all.” I met his hollow gaze. “If you’re just talking, why did you pack a bag?” 2 Garrett slowly shifted the black duffel behind his back. “You’re acting strange tonight,” he murmured, his eyes searching my face with suspicious intensity. “Did someone say something to you?” I didn’t answer. My mind was racing, calculating how to reach a phone. There was the landline mounted on the kitchen wall. And before leaving, our parents had placed an old prepaid flip phone in the living room drawer, strictly for emergencies. Garrett must have caught the dart of my eyes toward the television stand. He moved with chilling efficiency. Walking past me, he pulled open the drawer, pocketed the flip phone, and with a single sharp jerk, ripped the landline cord straight out of the kitchen wall jack. A wave of cold dread washed down my spine. “You’re afraid I’ll call the cops?” He glanced back at me, entirely composed now that he had neutralized the threat. “I just don’t want you throwing a tantrum.” The calmer he acted, the more terrified I became. Because I knew what the detectives had uncovered from his room in my previous life. It wasn’t just the contents of that duffel bag. It was a spiral notebook filled with twenty-two days of meticulous surveillance: Nora’s morning and evening shift schedules, the precise minutes she walked through the complex gates, which parcel locker she used, and which sections of the sixteenth-floor stairwell had broken security bulbs. This had never been an impulse. It was a calculated hunt. I looked down, forcing my voice into a small, submissive whine. “I’m thirsty. Can I have some water?” Garrett eyed me warily. “The pitcher is on the counter.” “I want warm water. The kettle’s too heavy for me to reach.” He clicked his tongue in irritation, shoved the duffel beneath his bed in the adjoining room, and turned toward the kitchen. The faucet hissed as he turned on the tap. The second his back was turned, I bolted into his bedroom. The duffel bag was shoved deep beneath the bed frame, only the nylon strap peeking out. I dropped to my stomach, hauling on the strap with all my strength. The bag was heavy. I yanked the zipper down, and its contents spilled across the floor under the dim bedside lamp. A pair of heavy black utility gloves. A roll of wide duct tape. Disposable plastic shoe covers. Two flat, filed-down tension wrenches. A pair of wire nippers. And underneath it all, a hand-drawn floor plan of the sixteenth floor. The elevator vestibule, the fire exit door, the corridor light switches, the electrical breaker panel, the front door of Unit 16B. At the bottom of the page, a single line was written in his neat, slanted handwriting: Rainy night. Renovation noise from the floor above. Nobody will check. I grabbed the metal lock-picking shims, shoving them deep into the front pocket of my school cardigan, snatched the roll of tape, and scrambled to my feet. Garrett was standing in the doorway. He held a glass of steaming water in one hand, his face pale and contorted with rage. “Give them to me.” I backed away toward the window. “Garrett, don’t do this. If you walk out that door, your life is over.” He slammed the glass onto the nightstand. Hot water sloshed over the edge, dripping onto the floorboards with a steady tap, tap, tap. “Who put these ideas in your head?” he snarled, stepping into the room. “Was it Nora? Did she tell you to spy on me?” “Nobody told me anything!” I cried. “You’re doing something terrible, and you know it!” He closed the distance between us in two strides. “What did I do that was so wrong? I bought her coffee; she threw it in the trash. I sent her messages; she left me on read. I waited downstairs just to walk her to her door, and she crossed the street like I was garbage! I just want to look her in the eye and ask why she thinks she’s too good for me!” “She doesn’t owe you anything!” I screamed. Garrett raised his hand, his face twisted in fury. I flinched, squeezing my eyes shut. The blow didn’t land. Instead, his fingers clamped around my collarbone, pinning me against the wall as he roughly plunged his hand into my cardigan pocket, tearing the metal shims from my grip. “You’re nine years old,” he spat, his voice shaking with venomous condescension. “You don’t know a damn thing about women. You don’t know what real feelings are.” Pain radiated through my bruised shoulders as tears blinded me. “I know she’s terrified of you! I know what you’re doing is a crime!” The word crime broke whatever thin tether of restraint he had left. He clamped a hand over my mouth, cutting off my scream, and dragged me out of the bedroom and down the short hallway toward the storage room—the tiny, windowless box where we kept outgrown winter coats and broken toys. I kicked wildly, my fingernails raking across the back of his hand. He cursed, shoving me violently into the dark room. The door slammed shut. Outside, I heard the metallic rattle of an old bicycle chain sliding through the door handles, followed by the heavy, decisive click of a padlock. “Garrett!” I hammered on the hollow wood until my palms bruised. “Let me out! Garrett!” His voice came through the crack, low and muffled. “Hazel, I don’t want to hurt you. Just stay quiet until I get back.” “You’re going to kill her!” I screamed into the wood. “You’re going to destroy everything!” Silence settled on the other side. Then came the sound of his deliberate footsteps. The rustle of his jacket. The rattle of his keys. The heavy clunk of the apartment’s front deadbolt turning. And then, the outer door clicked shut. The apartment went entirely silent, save for the rhythmic drumming of torrential rain against the outer walls. I slid down against the locked door, burying my face in my knees. In my previous life, at this exact moment, I had been curled up on the couch watching cartoons while Garrett peeled an orange for me. Don’t wait up for me, Hazel, he had said with a smile. And I hadn’t. And Nora Walsh had stepped out of the elevator straight into hell. 3 The storage closet was pitch-black. The electrical wiring in our old building was ancient; heavy rainstorms frequently tripped the breakers. But I knew I couldn’t afford to sit in the dark and cry. Tears were useless. In my past life, I had cried for ten years, and not a single tear had brought Nora back from the pavement outside the hospital. I scrambled across the dusty floor, feeling through the cardboard boxes until my fingers found an old metal wire hanger. I bent the hanger straight, leaving a small, rigid hook at the very tip, and dropped to my stomach. Slipping the wire through the narrow gap beneath the door, I angled it upward, blindly fishing for the dangling loop of the bicycle chain. The first try, the wire scraped against empty air. The second try, the hook caught the metal links, but my sweaty fingers slipped, and the chain swung back against the wood with a faint clink. My heart hammered in my throat like a trapped bird. Outside, the muffled groan of the building’s ancient elevator cables echoed through the walls. Was he already on his way up? Was Nora already walking down the hallway? I bit my lower lip until I tasted copper, steadying my trembling hands. The sharp edge of the wire dug into the crook of my thumb, drawing a line of warm blood that trickled down my wrist. I ignored the sting. Once. Twice. Three times. On the fourth attempt, the hook caught firmly. I held my breath, slowly twisting the wire to lift the loop off the external latch handle. Clatter. The chain slipped free, tumbling onto the living room floor. I shoved the door open and burst out. The living room was deserted. The severed telephone cord dangled uselessly from the wall. I ran to the hallway shoe cabinet, reaching for the very top shelf where my mother kept a spare set of building keys inside an old tin biscuit box. In my haste, my elbow clipped the tin; it clattered to the floor, spilling coins and safety pins everywhere. I didn’t stop to look. I grabbed the master key ring and bolted out into the public stairwell. The overhead lights in the hallway flickered once, buzzed violently, and went completely dark. My stomach dropped. It was happening exactly as it had before. Garrett had opened the utility panel and cut the sixteenth-floor lighting circuit first. In total darkness, no one could identify his face. In total darkness, Nora would think it was just another mundane power outage in an old, neglected building. I flew down the concrete stairs, skipping steps two at a time. Halfway down, my left slipper flew off into the darkness, and my bare knee slammed hard against the sharp edge of a concrete riser. The impact sent a jolt of nauseating pain shooting up my leg, but I scrambled up on all fours and kept running. The ground-floor lobby security desk was empty. Frank, the aging night guard, was likely out back clearing the storm drains. I shoved through the heavy glass exterior doors, plunging straight into the torrential downpour. Rain instantly soaked through my thin clothes, plastering my hair to my face as I stumbled across the flooded asphalt toward the bright neon sign of the corner convenience store across the lane. Mrs. Higgins was just pulling down the metal rolling shutter when I crashed into the glass counter, nearly collapsing on the wet mat. “Hazel?” she gasped, dropping her keys. “Good lord, child, what are you doing out in this weather? Where are your folks?” I grabbed the edge of the counter, fighting for enough oxygen to form words. “Phone… Mrs. Higgins, please, I need your phone to call 911.” She stared at me, bewildered. “What on earth happened?” “My brother is going to hurt someone! He’s breaking into an apartment right now!” Her face drained of color. Without asking another question, she slid the heavy landline receiver across the counter. I punched in 911. The moment the operator’s voice crackled through the line, a strange, crystalline calm settled over me—the exact rhythm and cadence of the testimony I had listened to across dozens of court hearings in my past life. “Oakridge Apartments, Building Six,” I said, my voice steady and unyielding. “Apartment 16B. The resident is Nora Walsh, an ER nurse who lives alone. My brother, Garrett Miller, thirty-five years old, wearing a black hooded jacket and carrying a black duffel bag, is breaking in. He has lock picks, utility gloves, and heavy duct tape. He left the ninth floor less than five minutes ago. He tampered with the floor’s electrical panel. Please hurry.” The dispatcher’s tone instantly shifted from routine to urgent. “Sweetheart, where are you right now? Are you in a safe place?” “I’m at the corner market across from the gate. But Nora isn’t safe. You have to send units right now.” Beside me, Mrs. Higgins had already picked up her mobile phone, dialing the building’s maintenance line. “Frank! Wake up! Get to Building Six, sixteenth floor right now! Move your ass!” I didn’t wait. I grabbed Mrs. Higgins’s mobile phone from the counter, rapidly tapping out a ten-digit number from memory. It was a phone number I had stared at for years in old case files, a number that had once belonged to a girl whose parents wept until they had no tears left. The line rang seven times. Eight times. Finally, a breathless, exhausted voice answered. “Hello?” Tears burst from my eyes, hot against the freezing rain on my cheeks. “Nora! Don’t go to your apartment!” There was a long pause. “Who is this?” “It’s Hazel, from 9B! You bandaged my knee last month! My brother is outside your door right now. He brought tools to force the lock. He didn’t come to talk to you—he’s trying to break in!” The line fell dead silent. Then, through the speaker, I heard the faint, cheerful chime of an elevator arriving at its floor. Nora’s voice dropped into a panicked whisper. “I… I just stepped off the elevator.” Every drop of blood in my veins turned to ice. “Get back inside!” I screamed into the receiver. “Press the button for the lobby! Don’t get out!” Her breath hitched. “The doors are already open. Hazel… all the hall lights are out.” In the very next second, a familiar, smooth voice drifted through the receiver from the darkness of the hallway. “Nora. You’re finally home.” 4 Nora didn’t reply. “Nora! Get back in the elevator! Push the door close button!” I shrieked into the phone. A burst of harsh static exploded through the earpiece, followed by the sickening, metallic scrape of someone bracing a boot against the rubber elevator safety sensor. I heard Nora’s sharp, terrified gasp. Then the call went dead. A high-pitched ringing filled my ears. Mrs. Higgins lunged forward, grabbing an umbrella and catching me by the arm. “The police are on their way, Hazel! You stay right here!” I twisted out of her grip with all the strength in my small body. “I can’t! I know where he’s going!” The patrol cruisers arrived far faster than they had in my past life. Piercing red and blue strobes sliced through the curtain of rain, illuminating the deep puddles across the driveway in violent flashes. Two patrolmen and a female officer leapt out before the vehicles had fully stopped. Mrs. Higgins waved her umbrella, shouting directions. Drenched and shivering, I sprinted straight up to the female officer, grabbing her tactical vest. “Sixteenth floor!” I gasped. “He cut the lights by the emergency stairwell breaker! He’s already outside her door!” The officer looked down at my soaked, desperate face, registering the sheer terror in my eyes. “Are you the one who called dispatch?” I nodded furiously. “Stay behind us,” she commanded. “Do not push forward.” I nodded, but my feet were already moving toward the building entrance. Inside the lobby, the elevator indicator was frozen on fifteen. Frank, the night super, came running from the basement corridor clutching a heavy industrial flashlight, sweat and rain dripping from his graying brow. “The damn car is jammed between floors! And the sixteenth-floor power is dead—I shouted up the shaft, but nobody answered!” A terrible knot tightened in my chest. In my previous life, several neighbors had later admitted to hearing strange noises in the hallway that night. But because the storm was loud, because the hallway was dark, and because nobody wanted to get involved in what they assumed was a domestic dispute, they had turned up their televisions. Their hesitation had formed the scaffold of Nora’s destruction. Not this time. “Take the stairs! Move!” the lead officer ordered. We charged up the concrete stairwell in a single file. I gripped the icy steel handrail, taking the steps as fast as my bruised legs could carry me. My bare left foot was scraped raw, a mixture of grit and blood smearing against the concrete, but the adrenaline surging through me completely drowned out the pain. Twelfth floor. Thirteenth. Fourteenth. The female officer glanced back over her shoulder. “Kid, stop here. It’s not safe.” I shook my head, my chest heaving for air. “I know which door is hers. I know the layout.” Seeing the fierce, unyielding resolve in a nine-year-old’s eyes, she didn’t waste time arguing, signaling for Frank to keep a protective arm behind me. When we breached the fire door to the sixteenth floor, the corridor was as black as the bottom of a well. The beam of the officer’s flashlight swept across the wall, landing immediately on the open electrical utility cabinet. The metal door hung loose, several heavy gauge wires severed and dangling. “Intentional sabotage,” the patrolman murmured grimly, drawing his service weapon. My heart felt like it was being squeezed in a vise. At the very end of the corridor, the door to Apartment 16B stood slightly ajar. Fresh, splintered gouges marred the painted wooden frame around the deadbolt. Lying on the floorboards right outside the threshold was a single white nursing clog. My breath caught in my throat. I recognized that shoe. It had been Exhibit A in the criminal trial, photographed cold and sterile under the harsh fluorescent lights of the county evidence locker. The lead officer raised a hand, signaling for absolute silence. We moved forward like ghosts. Through the crack in the door, a low, menacing voice drifted out into the hallway. “…Just shut up and listen to me. I just wanted to make things clear between us.” Then came Nora’s voice, raw, ragged, and shaking with furious tears. “Get out… Garrett, get the hell out of my home!” Tears of immense, crushing relief sprang to my eyes. She was conscious. She was fighting back. We were in time. The patrolman positioned his boot to kick the door inward. But a memory struck me like a physical blow—in my past life, Garrett had engaged the internal security chain, delaying the initial intervention just long enough to cause catastrophic harm. I pointed a trembling finger at the door gap. “The interior chain! He might have hooked the security chain!” The female officer immediately signaled Frank, who fumbled with his maintenance belt and passed forward a compact steel pry bar. From inside the apartment came a dull, sickening thud, like a body being shoved hard against drywall. I couldn’t hold it in any longer. I leaned toward the door and screamed with everything left in my lungs: “Nora! The police are here!” The room inside fell instantly, dead silent. A second later, Garrett’s voice erupted from within, cracked and hysterical: “Hazel?!” The officer drove his boot into the door. The wood shuddered violently. The steel pry bar wedged into the gap, and with a terrible screech of tearing metal, the brass security chain snapped cleanly off the jamb. The door flew open, rebounding hard against the wall. Following right behind the officers, I crossed the threshold of the room that had swallowed Nora Walsh whole in another life—and watched the darkness shatter under the flood of police flashlights.

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1 At the annual Crestmont University Philanthropy Gala, moments before I was set to present the million-dollar endowment check, a photo from my private Instagram feed was beamed onto the four-story auditorium screen. “Look at this shameless cougar!” Brooke Davies’s voice echoed through the three-thousand-seat hall, vibrating with theatrical outrage. “She spends her weekends parked by the south gates in a luxury Porsche, keeping our top research prodigy on a leash!” Murmurs rippled through the rows of faculty and donors like a sudden downdraft. “She has no right to stand on this stage and contaminate our institution!” Brooke continued, her chest heaving as she raised a fist toward the rafters. “I am officially renouncing my hundred-thousand-dollar first-place scholarship. I don’t want her dirty money. I only want everyone here to see the sickening, coercive tactics she uses to trap Lucas Montgomery!” A high-resolution text screenshot flashed onto the screen behind her: Lucas, you’d better be home by nine tonight. Don’t test me—you know the consequences. The entire auditorium erupted into an uproar. Standing in the wings, looking at that enlarged slice of text, I felt an almost surreal impulse to laugh. The campus heartthrob she was painting as a victimized boy toy happened to be my biological younger brother. “Ms. Montgomery, the presentation ceremony is about to begin. Please stand by in the stage-left wings,” Marcus Wright, the Student Union president, said as he handed me the laminated program sheet. I accepted the schedule just as my phone screen lit up with a calendar alert. Without unlocking it, I nodded. “Thank you, Marcus.” Marcus gave a curt nod, turned on his heel, and immediately approached the audiovisual technician under the pretense of double-checking Brooke Davies’s presentation slides. Within thirty seconds, he had maneuvered the technician away from the console entirely. “And now,” the master of ceremonies announced over the house system, “please welcome the recipient of this year’s premier Hundred-Thousand-Dollar Trailblazer Fellowship, Miss Brooke Davies!” A student usher in formal attire stepped onto the stage, balancing a glass crystal trophy and an oversized ceremonial check. Brooke walked to the center lectern. She had deliberately chosen an oversized, threadbare chambray shirt with frayed cuffs, looking every bit the defiant, uncorrupted scholar. But when the usher extended the check toward her, Brooke didn’t reach for it. Instead, she shoved the usher’s hands away. The crystal award tumbled from the velvet tray, hitting the polished hardwood floor and shattering into a dozen glittering shards. A collective gasp swept through the hall. “Miss Davies? What is the meaning of this?” an administrator called out from the second row. Brooke seized the wireless microphone from its stand. “I refuse this tainted cash!” she shouted, her voice trembling with righteous fury. “Even if the board expels me today, I will not stay silent while this school bows to a corrupt benefactor!” I frowned and took a step toward the stage, but Marcus and three other student council members immediately formed a human wall at the wing exit. “Students have the First Amendment right to speak truth to power, Ms. Montgomery,” Marcus whispered coldly, his eyes daring me to push past him. “No one interferes.” He shot a signal across the room toward the tech booth. The main projection wall flickered, cutting out the university crest and replacing it with a photograph I had posted to my private social media circle just seventy-two hours prior. In it, I was wearing a charcoal compression top and athletic leggings after a heavy training session, the fabric clinging to every contour of my waist and chest. Next to the image, massive crimson lettering screamed across the screen: MIDDLE-AGED PREDATOR TRAPS UNDERGRADUATE. BOUGHT WITH SILICONE AND SHAMELESS CORRUPTION. I recognized the photo instantly. Three days ago, right after I shared that post, my inbox had pinged with half a dozen bizarre follow requests from anonymous accounts: Looking gorgeous, mama. You looking for company? Drop the workout and whitening routine, queen! Before I could even process the spam, an unknown number had called my personal line: “You’re a disgusting old woman! Stuffing yourself with fake silicone just to sink your claws into our top student? Wait until your sugar-daddy husband finds out—he’ll ruin you!” The caller had hung up before I could utter a syllable. At the time, I had dismissed it as a pathetic prank call from a dialed wrong digit. I hadn’t realized it was the opening salvo of an orchestrated public execution. Down in the audience, three thousand students, professors, and board members broke into chaos. Cell phones were hoisted into the air by the hundreds, lenses glinting under the stage lights. “Is that really the donor who funded the million-dollar trust?” “Look at how she dresses on her private account… completely unprofessional.” “Disgusting. Rich predators are all the same.” Brooke pointed a trembling finger at the display, tears spilling dramatically down her cheeks. “Take a good look, everyone!” she wailed into the mic. “This woman, who uses provocative photos to fish for attention online, parks her Porsche Cayenne behind the campus science complex every single Friday! She has kept Lucas Montgomery in a predatory arrangement for months!” The screen shifted. A series of grainy, telephoto images filled the frame. They showed my charcoal Cayenne idling at the curb near the biology building, with Lucas opening the passenger door and sliding inside. The pieces fell into place with sickening clarity. The sudden influx of harassing messages, the abusive phone call—none of it was accidental. Brooke Davies had spent weeks stalking us, compiling surveillance, and waiting for the highest-profile moment of the academic year to spring her trap. I stepped forward, brushed past Marcus’s shoulder with enough force to knock him off balance, and took the spare handheld microphone from the side podium. “Miss Davies,” I spoke into the mic, my voice calm, level, and cutting clearly through the ambient roar. “I don’t know who fed you these absurd fabrications. But let me make this unmistakably clear: Lucas Montgomery is my biological younger brother. Driving him home for family dinners and paying his living expenses is standard familial support.” The vast auditorium went eerily quiet for half a beat—before a wave of derisive laughter erupted from the student sections. Brooke let out a venomous scoff. “Your brother? Ms. Montgomery, do you honestly expect three thousand people to swallow such a clumsy lie just so you can save face?” She sneered into the camera. “What kind of ‘sister’ drives a two-hundred-thousand-dollar performance vehicle to pick up a student? What kind of ‘sister’ wires tens of thousands of dollars into an undergraduate’s checking account every term?” Marcus stepped out onto the stage, planting himself firmly beside Brooke. “Ms. Montgomery, words are cheap,” Marcus declared, playing directly to the sea of cameras. “You cannot leverage your status as a donor to intimidate a whistleblower. Crestmont students are not for sale, and we do not bow to corporate intimidation!” The crowd caught fire. “Money can’t buy you a fake brother!” “Predator!” “Get off our campus!” I didn’t waste my breath yelling over the mob. My gaze remained locked on Brooke. “You gave a very passionate speech about rejecting the hundred thousand dollars,” I said evenly. “Tell me, Brooke—did you or did you not already sign the formal bank disbursement authorization in the dean’s office yesterday afternoon?” Her eyes flickered with a microsecond of panic, but she recovered instantly, cranking her volume higher. “Stop deflecting!” she shrieked. “Calling him your ‘brother’ is the oldest, most transparent cover story in the book! You control him with your wealth. You force him to do things no self-respecting student should ever have to endure!” She jabbed the remote in her palm. Another doctored screenshot dominated the screen. You must come home tonight. Don’t you dare refuse. You know what happens if you do. Brooke gestured wildly at the text. “Is this how a sister speaks to a brother? ‘You know what happens if you do’?” She looked out at the female students in the front rows, her voice dripping with calculated tragedy. “This is financial and emotional coercion. She took a brilliant, uncorrupted young man and pushed him to the brink of a breakdown! This isn’t family—it’s a predator threatening her possession!” The female students in the hall were whipped into a frenzy. “Call the police!” “Audit her bank accounts!” “I bet that whole endowment fund is just dirty money being laundered through our school!” Looking at that isolated snippet of text, I felt a sharp, cold amusement rise beneath my anger. Last Tuesday, Lucas had spent four consecutive nights in the clean room working on his federal grant defense, triggering an acute gastric ulcer flare-up. I had ordered him home to eat homemade broth and sleep twelve hours, threatening to confiscate his lab pass if he refused to take care of his health. Brooke had stripped every shred of context, turning a sister’s medical ultimatum into the manifesto of an abusive benefactor. Brooke dabbed at her dry eyes, clicking the remote again. “And this is barely the surface. Let’s see what else this philanthropist has been hiding!” More photos popped up. Marcus raised both hands, playing the noble moderator. “Everyone, let Brooke speak! As long as the Student Union stands, no wealthy donor will suppress the truth on this stage!” The photos had been cropped with malicious precision, run through high-contrast filters to obscure daylight and context. In one, I was leaning into Lucas’s jacket to fix a crooked tie outside the university gate; the angle made it appear as though I were caressing his jaw. In another, I was handing him an authorized secondary Black Card outside a bookstore, while he looked down with a fatigued expression. The heavy grading made ordinary family moments look like clandestine handouts in a dark alley. “Look at how close she gets to him!” Brooke yelled. “Lucas’s body language says it all—he’s exhausted, trapped, forced to comply!” Then came the centerpiece. A text thread where my profile picture had been blurred out, the contact label edited to read Old Woman. Come home tonight. If your allowance is running low, tell me. Don’t embarrass me out there. Wear that crisp white button-down when you see me. The messages were fragments of real conversations: reminding him to come to Sunday dinner, asking if he needed grocery money, and telling him to wear formal attire for our grandmother’s eightieth birthday. Rearranged without timestamps, they looked entirely transactional. “She doesn’t even let him save her name—she’s listed as ‘Old Woman’!” Brooke yelled. “You crush his pride, buy his silence, and treat him like an accessory!” Marcus seized the momentum immediately. “Brooke is sacrificing a life-changing sum to protect the integrity of Crestmont!” Marcus bellowed. “Ms. Montgomery, on behalf of the entire student body, I demand you offer a public apology right now and sign a formal pledge never to set foot near Lucas Montgomery again!” I walked slowly across the platform until I stood directly beneath the towering projection. I pointed up at the central text thread. “Brooke, if you’re going to forge digital evidence, you should at least hire someone with basic graphic competency.” The room quieted slightly. “This alleged screenshot is dated October 5th of last year,” I said, my voice cutting through the house speakers with surgical precision. “Yet the interface design you used features the rounded chat bubble radius and updated search icon that the messaging platform didn’t roll out until January of this year. Furthermore, look at the alignment near the dollar transfer glyph—the pixel interpolation is completely blurred, and the vertical kerning between the time headers doesn’t match the native OS font. This is a composite image stitched together from two entirely different devices.” In the front rows, several computer science students leaned forward, squinting at the display. “She’s right… look at the artifacts around the timestamp.” “That UI wasn’t live last October.” A murmur of doubt began to fracture the room’s momentum. Marcus saw the tide turning and immediately raised his phone, refusing to engage with the technical breakdown. “Don’t let her corporate double-speak confuse you!” he shouted. “I have just launched a formal referendum poll on the official Student Union verified livestream! Over eighty thousand viewers are watching this right now! We are going to let the public hold this predatory donor accountable!” The livestream viewer count ticked past one hundred thousand, the live chat a cascading blur of vitriol, doxxing threats, and demands for my arrest. Brooke stepped away from the podium, muted her wireless mic with a quick thumb toggle, and leaned into my ear. Her face twisted into a sneer of pure venom. “Lucas is the one pure, untouchable thing on this entire campus,” she hissed under her breath. “He is brilliant, gorgeous, and out of everyone’s league. What gives an aging, pathetic woman like you the right to monopolize him? You aren’t fit to wipe the dust off his shoes.” Looking into her frantic, possessive eyes, the full picture snapped into focus. This had nothing to do with justice, ethics, or student welfare. She was an obsessed stalker who couldn’t handle being ignored by Lucas, and she had resolved to destroy every woman in his orbit to clear the board. Keeping my posture perfectly straight, I tapped a quiet sequence on the sapphire crown of my smartwatch beneath the cuff of my blazer. Secure the Student Union livestream stream-key and backup the broadcast. Lock down the local AV source files on the podium hard drive. Pull all carrier call logs from my personal line over the last seventy-two hours. Freeze Brooke Davies’s entire scholarship dossier. My executive assistant’s reply vibrated against my wrist five seconds later: Stream archived. Local cache mirrored. The originating IP for the slide upload has been traced to Marcus Wright’s university credentials. I looked up at Marcus. “President Wright,” I said, using his title with deliberate formality. “If you’re planning on shutting down that broadcast, I suggest you do it now. Because in about two minutes, you won’t have the option.” “Shut it down? Why on earth would I do that?” Marcus barked into his mic, playing to the rafters. “Did you all hear that? The billionaire is panicking! She wants to censor our broadcast! She’s threatening to pull her funding to punish us for exposing the truth!” The mob surged again. “Keep the stream running!” “No dirty money!” “Get her off the stage!” A crumpled flyer sailed through the air, followed by a plastic water bottle that grazed my left shoulder and slammed into the backdrop. The auditorium was teetering on the edge of a riot. Suddenly, the heavy double oak doors at the back of the hall banged open. A broad-shouldered man in a charcoal bespoke suit strode down the center aisle, flanked by two university event coordinators and campus security officers. Whispers immediately broke out across the faculty rows. “It’s Arthur Bennett!” “The founder of Bennett BioTech? The guy who donated the genomics lab?” “Yes! He’s the chair of the external review committee for this entire scholarship program. He’s the one who gave final sign-off on Brooke’s award!” Bennett marched up the stage stairs, his expression thunderous. He snatched the microphone out of Marcus’s grip. “What is the meaning of this circus?” Bennett boomed. “Security, establish a perimeter!” The campus guards hesitated, glancing toward the university event coordinator for confirmation. Bennett’s face darkened. “If someone gets trampled, who takes the liability? Push the crowd back immediately!” The coordinator gave a reluctant nod, and the guards moved to form a barrier along the stage apron. Bennett turned his glare on Marcus. “Cut the live feed! Freeze all files on that console!” For a second, I thought the man had arrived to restore institutional order. I pointed toward the AV desk. “Mr. Bennett, I strongly advise you to preserve the raw presentation cache. We need a forensic audit of the forged chat logs and unauthorized surveillance photos.” Bennett didn’t answer me. Instead, he pulled Marcus into a tight huddle near the wings, his voice dropped to a harsh whisper. Marcus’s complexion drained of color. He leaned in, whispering frantically back. Over the ambient hum of the crowd, only scattered phrases drifted across the stage: …the original audit report… …the suppressed misconduct filing… …your signature is on the final vetting sheet… When Bennett turned back around, his demeanor had shifted entirely. His eyes settled on me, hard and defensive. “Ms. Montgomery,” Bennett said, his tone dripping with patronizing authority. “The student body is clearly volatile. For your own physical safety—and to protect the reputation of Crestmont—I must ask you to exit through the backstage service door immediately.” I looked at him, astonished by the sheer audacity. “I am the victim of coordinated, public defamation on your stage, and your solution is to sneak me out the back?” I asked. “Are you not interested in verifying the facts, Mr. Bennett?” “The facts will be handled internally,” he replied coldly. “Your continued presence on this stage is inciting a riot. As the old saying goes, where there’s smoke, there’s fire. Why would thousands of students target you specifically if there weren’t some foundation of truth?” I let out a low, cold laugh. “Who authorized the Student Union to scrape my private social media?” I demanded. “Who gave them permission to weaponize an official university channel to broadcast slander? And by what authority does an external committee advisor presume to eject the primary benefactor of this institution?” Bennett’s jaw tightened, his face flushing crimson. “I am a distinguished alumnus and the head of this evaluation committee!” he snapped. “I have gifted millions in hardware to this university. I have every right to maintain order when a donor brings scandal into our centenary hall!” He gestured toward the screen. “These students are acting out of a desire to protect campus morality. Their methods may be unrefined, but their intentions are noble! In light of these grave allegations, the university will naturally have to re-evaluate whether your endowment is fit to proceed.” Brooke seized the opening, screaming into the crowd: “You hear that? Even the board knows her money is dirty! Who knows what shadow accounts that million dollars came from!” Marcus chimed in: “I did an exhaustive web search—there is barely any public record of an ‘Audrey Montgomery’ running major venture funds! She’s a total fraud!” I pointed to the red leather portfolio resting on the presentation table beside the shattered trophy. “That endowment was fully cleared by the university’s central financial compliance office three weeks ago,” I said. “The identity verifications, corporate board resolutions, and tax filings are in that binder. Arthur Bennett, as the head of the review committee, did you even bother to open it before you walked into this room?” Bennett’s eyes darted toward the binder, then away. His pocket buzzed. He pulled out his phone, glanced at the caller ID—Office of the University President—and abruptly hit decline. I looked him dead in the eye. “I suggest you take that call before you decide who gets thrown out of this building.” Cornered and furious, Bennett completely lost his composure. “Who do you think you are, telling me how to manage this hall?” he snarled. He spun toward the AV staff. “Cut her microphone! Security, remove this woman from the platform immediately!” The technician flinched and pulled the master audio fader. A piercing shriek of feedback tore through the speakers as my mic went dead. Three security guards moved toward me. Brooke raised her fists in triumph. “Look at her! Running away because she’s guilty!” Marcus waved his arms, and several student council members unrolled a massive banner they had prepared in advance: REJECT CORRUPT CAPITAL. CLEANSE OUR CAMPUS. SAVE LUCAS MONTGOMERY. The livestream was still running, transmitting every second to hundreds of thousands of viewers. My watch buzzed again: Ms. Montgomery, legal team is on site. The University President has entered the building. A guard reached out to grab my upper arm. I deflected his hand with a sharp, rigid sweep of my forearm. “Do not touch me,” I said, my voice carrying clearly across the quieted front rows despite the dead mic. “I will gladly speak with the university administration. But you do not take operational orders from an external consultant to physically assault an invited guest.” The guards hesitated, looking awkwardly at one another. Bennett stepped forward, his voice cracking with rage. “What are you waiting for? If this turns into a stampede, it’s your badges on the line!” I looked straight at him. “You hold no administrative authority here, yet you are overriding campus staff, ignoring the university president’s calls, and shutting down an active investigation. Every single action you take right now is being recorded on that live feed.” Bennett froze. In his desperate rush to bury the situation, he had completely forgotten that Marcus’s live stream was capturing his every move in high definition. Brooke dashed down from the lectern, throwing herself in front of me. “You’re not leaving!” she screamed, spit flying from her lips. “I forwarded every single piece of evidence to Lucas ten minutes ago! He’s on his way right now to expose you! You are going to get on your knees in front of three thousand people and confess to being a predatory monster!” Marcus led the chant: “Save Lucas! Punish the predator!” The crowd took up the roar. The guards closed their circle again, looking miserable. “Ms. Montgomery, please don’t make this difficult. Just step outside with us.” Just as the lead guard reached for me a second time, the heavy rear doors of the auditorium were kicked open with a thunderous crash. The room went dead silent. Framed in the doorway stood a tall young man in a white button-down shirt. His sleeves were rolled to the elbows, his hair damp with sweat, his breath ragged. He was clutching his phone, the screen still showing an active call screen. It was Lucas Montgomery—fresh from defending his national grant presentation across campus. Brooke’s eyes lit up with wild vindication. She rushed down the aisle toward him. “Lucas! You’re finally here!” she cried, reaching out to grab his sleeve. “Don’t be afraid! We’re all here to protect you—” Lucas didn’t even look at her. He sidestepped her outstretched hands as if she were a piece of discarded trash, marched straight up the stage stairs, and shoved the two security guards away from me with a single, furious motion. He pulled me behind him, shielding me with his body. His eyes, usually so calm and academic, were laced with bloodshot fury as he swept his gaze across the three thousand people in the hall. “Who the hell gave any of you permission,” Lucas’s voice dropped like liquid nitrogen over the room, “to touch my sister?”

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My life plan was straightforward, quiet, and completely devoid of drama: spend the next forty years as an unbothered software architect, running regression tests in a dimly lit room and letting the world spin without me. Then my grandfather staged a medical intervention from his armchair and essentially threatened to haunt me if I didn’t resign from my boutique tech firm to marry Sloane Sullivan. On our wedding night, Sloane bypassed the champagne and slapped a binding postnuptial separation agreement onto the polished mahogany desk. “This is nothing more than our grandfathers’ stubborn, sentimental pact,” she said, her voice carrying the crisp, unyielding cadence of an executive delivering an earnings report. “We live strictly separate lives under this roof. I happen to be a sapiosexual, and I’ve had someone in my heart since high school. The minute he finishes his overseas venture and returns to the States, we file for an uncontested divorce.” I glanced down at the financial clause on the final page. The severance sum she was offering was large enough to keep a dedicated high-performance server cluster humming for an entire decade. Sign it? I didn’t even hesitate. “Don’t worry, Ms. Sullivan,” I told her, clicking the cap back onto my pen. “The only partner I’m interested in committing to is one I compile from scratch. Biological humans require far too much maintenance.” I hauled my dual monitors, mechanical keyboards, and reference books into the study at the very end of the second-floor hallway, closed the door, and went to work. Then came Day 101. Sloane Sullivan finally lost her composure. 1 Sloane was standing barefoot in the frame of my study door. Her auburn hair was still damp from the shower, a stray droplet of water catching the track lighting on the curve of her bare shoulder. When my gaze drifted over, I caught the slight, unmistakable tremor in her knees. A subtle, feverish flush was creeping along the pale skin exposed beneath the hem of her short navy silk slip. I forced my fingers back onto the home row, keeping the click of the mechanical switches steady. “Ms. Sullivan, you laid out the parameters on night one. Strictly parallel lives. There’s really no need for you to run an entrapment test.” She froze, clearly wrestling with her pride, the redness climbing from behind her ears down toward her collarbone. “I just wanted to verify,” she muttered, her chin tipping up defensively. “We share an entire penthouse every single day. Do you really have zero reaction? Am I… completely lacking in basic appeal?” I turn my face to her. Her breath hitched. “What are you staring at?” “Evaluating the dataset,” I said evenly. “You have plenty of appeal. In fact, you’re easily in the ninety-eighth percentile of aesthetic beauty. On any given street in Manhattan, ninety-eight out of a hundred people would turn their heads. The remaining two are legally blind.” She looked down at her toes, her voice dropping an octave. “And you? Are you in that ninety-eight?” I raised both hands in a non-committal shrug. “Like I told you on day one, Ms. Sullivan: the only companion I’m building is digital. Sloane’s expression sharpened, her corporate composure shattering into sheer exasperation. “Are you out of your mind? Can a string of Python scripts give you children? Can an algorithm keep your side of the bed warm at night?” “As of right now, conversation is about the limit of the model,” I replied with absolute sincerity. “For thermal regulation or biological progeny, we’ll have to wait until synthetic bionics catch up.” “You—!” She took two sharp, ragged breaths, spun on her heel, and stormed down the corridor. I picked up my cold mug and drained two ounces of bitter, hours-old dark roast. Something was deeply off. She had brought up her untouchable high school crush on multiple occasions. He had attended our rival private academy across town—the same district where I went to school. According to her, during a statewide mathematics championship, she had collided with him in a crowded hallway outside the examination hall. Their study binders had spilled across the linoleum, papers everywhere. When she accidentally grabbed one of his scratch sheets, she discovered that a grueling higher-order function problem she couldn’t solve had been worked out by him using five distinct proofs. To be completely candid, I thought that was pretty average work. When I was seventeen, five proofs was my baseline for a warm-up. Yet to Sloane, that fleeting glimpse of brilliance had cast him in bronze. She had carried the memory of that awkward boy with the thick tortoiseshell glasses and the messy bowl cut like a sacred talisman. The problem was, half the nerds in our prep league—myself included back then—wore that exact same haircut and wire-rimmed glasses. She had never caught his name. She lost track of him entirely until a chance encounter after college graduation put him back on her radar. During our first month of marriage, Sloane had treated our home like a corporate headquarters. She wore structured trousers and long-sleeved silk blouses, never showing an inch of skin below her wrists. Whenever she spoke to me, her tone sounded like an automated customer service ticket: Thank you for your assistance. Much appreciated. That will be all. Once, when I walked out to the kitchen island for a glass of water, she had just stepped out of the master bathroom. The moment she saw me, she practically rebounded into the doorway, holding the door ajar by an inch and politely asking me to pass before she dared to step into the common hallway. Before that night, I hadn’t even known she had a small, dark beauty mark on the inside of her left ankle. And now here she was—kicking open my heavy solid-core study door in a midnight-blue silk slip, barefoot, demanding an audit of her personal magnetism. The next morning, when I stepped out of the study, our housekeeper, Mrs. Gable, was clearing the low slate coffee table in the living room. There were three crystal tumblers sitting on the tray: two from the previous night, and one from this morning. Each was filled with an inch of unfinished bourbon. Mrs. Gable set the glasses down with a quiet clink. “Is Ms. Sullivan under a lot of stress lately? She sat out here until nearly three in the morning. She’d pour a glass, take a single sip, forget about it, and pour another. Completely lost in thought.” “Really?” “Yes. And then she was up by six-thirty, did forty minutes on the Peloton, and immediately asked if you were awake yet.” “She asked about me?” “She did,” Mrs. Gable said smoothly. “I told her the study door was still firmly closed. She just nodded, said she already knew, and walked off.” Mrs. Gable carried the tray into the kitchen. I stood in the sunlit hallway, thinking back to the very first time Sloane Sullivan had slipped off her rigid corporate track. It had happened on our forty-third night together. 2 It was just past eleven on a Tuesday when the primary database servers for Sloane’s logistics platform were hit by a coordinated, distributed zero-day attack. Her VP of Engineering had called her in a full-blown panic. Some sophisticated foreign threat actor had deployed a polymorphic encryption wrapper across their entire cluster, locking down the core database. Sloane was pacing the living room rug, her voice hushed, but the open layout carried every word. “What did Derek Shaw say?” she pressed into the receiver. “You said he had elite contacts in enterprise cybersecurity.” A beat of silence. “His cell is going straight to voicemail.” “We have until eight tomorrow morning before the regional hubs open,” she whispered, the strain cracking through her composure. “If the dispatch routing stays down, we’re looking at an eight-figure liability.” The voice on the other end must have suggested bringing in outside family resources, because Sloane fell quiet for several long seconds. “No,” she said softly, almost painfully. “He’s in the middle of a build. Don’t disturb him.” That he was me. And the quiet, uncharacteristic humility in her voice made it impossible for me to stay behind my desk. I opened the study door and nearly stepped on her. Sloane was sitting flat on the hardwood floor against the wall, looking up at me. Her hair was pulled into a messy, unraveling knot, her mascara was smudged at the corners of her eyes, and a faint coffee ring stained the corner of her lower lip. It was the first time she had ever looked vulnerable in front of me. “Did I wake you?” she murmured, pulling her knees to her chest. “I’m sorry…” “Give me the bastion host IP.” “What?” I reached down, took her company phone from her fingers, and scrolled through the crash dumps her VP had texted over. “Custom Linux kernel,” I noted, scanning the hex offsets. “They used an ARP spoofing vector layered over an asymmetric SYN flood, and now the entire partition is locked under a dynamic AES-256 container. Tell your infrastructure team to stop issuing brute-force commands. The payload has a self-mutating trigger; every failed attempt doubles the key derivation time.” Her eyes widened slightly. “You can… resolve that?” “Drop the question mark.” “I didn’t use a question mark,” she whispered under her breath. I was already heading back into the study. Sloane scrambled up and followed me inside. When she saw my vertical triple-monitor rig—lines of raw C and shell scripts flashing across seven different active terminal windows—her eyes went completely round. For the next forty minutes, Sloane didn’t make a sound. She told me later that she couldn’t understand a single line of what was on the screens, but her phone was vibrating nonstop with frantic, incredulous messages from her VP of Engineering. I traced the malicious command-and-control node back to an illicit server farm operating out of an abandoned warehouse on the south side of town. While clearing her database, I quietly deployed a reverse honeypot, mirrored their incoming traffic, and extracted their entire attack registry back to our local drive. System restored. Zero data loss. I closed the master terminal, leaned back, and took a sip of water. Sloane was staring at me as if the laws of physics had just been rewritten in front of her. “Nate,” she said, her voice dropping into a business pitch. “I’ll create an executive technical advisory role for you tomorrow. Name your compensation package.” I looked at her calmly. “I prefer writing the code I care about, Ms. Sullivan. If you ever hit an emergency, you’re welcome to knock. But I don’t do corporate payrolls. I value my autonomy.” A brief flicker of disappointment crossed her face, but beneath it was something warmer—a quiet, admiring spark. “I suppose that makes sense. A lot of true tech pioneers are like that.” She paused, clearing her throat. “Anyway… thank you. I owe you for this.” I offered a faint smile. “Next time, just walk in and knock. Sitting on the bare hallway floor is a great way to catch a cold.” She glanced down at her bare feet, and the tips of her ears flushed a deep, unmistakable crimson. 3 After that night, our strictly contractual dynamic began to fracture. On Day 47, an ultra-quiet, commercial-grade hot water dispenser appeared on the sideboard in my study. It was finished in matte black, with precision temperature controls. Mrs. Gable informed me that Sloane had ordered it directly from an industrial supplier. “Ms. Sullivan noticed that you walk all the way to the kitchen three or four times a night for hot water. She said pacing down that drafty corridor wasn’t good for you.” From my study door to the kitchen island was exactly twenty paces. From Sloane’s master suite to the kitchen was at least forty. She had lived in this penthouse for six years and had never once bought a hot water dispenser for herself. “And,” Mrs. Gable added, her face perfectly straight though her eyes twinkled with quiet amusement, “Ms. Sullivan insisted the heating element must remain on at all times. She said your stomach is too sensitive for cold beverages.” On Day 49, she knocked on my door carrying a lush, potted golden pothos. “The humidity in here is terrible,” she announced briskly, setting it down on the corner of my credenza. “Greenery reduces eye strain from excessive screen time.” She didn’t wait for a response. She dropped the planter and vanished down the hall like a startled deer. By Day 53, Sloane had established an undeclared territory on the oversized leather lounger in the corner of my study. She never announced her arrival, nor did she say goodbye. She would simply walk in with her ultralight laptop, sink naturally into the deep cushion she had slowly contoured to her body, and begin answering high-level board emails. She wouldn’t utter a word for three hours straight—silent, composed, and tucked away like an indoor cat seeking the warmest patch of carpet. On Day 55, she went a step further: she fell completely asleep. At one in the morning, having just completed an automated test cycle, I turned my chair around. Sloane was curled into a tight ball, her knees tucked against her ribs, her breathing rhythmic and soft. Asleep, the formidable CEO looked remarkably petite. I picked up a charcoal cashmere throw from the back of the sofa and draped it gently over her shoulders. She didn’t stir. I turned back to my keyboards to tackle a lingering logic bug. I worked until the gray dawn broke over the city skyline, but strangely enough, despite spending four hours in the compiler, I didn’t manage to fix a single line. 4 On Day 60, Sloane brought a bottle of vintage Pinot Noir into the study and asked if I’d have a drink with her. She said the quarterly board meeting had been exhausting and that she just needed a distraction. After barely half a glass, she had abandoned her laptop, curling sideways into the lounger and resting her feet on the low walnut coffee table. Her toenails were painted with a sheer, glossy topcoat that caught the soft ambient glow of the floor lamp. The small dark mole on the inside of her left ankle was positioned directly in my line of sight. “Sloane.” “Hmm?” “Your feet.” “What about them?” I was about to point out that resting them next to my open bowl of salted cashews was a sanitation hazard. Before the words left my mouth, she yanked her legs back in a panic, her cheeks flaming. “Do you… have some kind of fixation with feet?” I stared at her. “What?” I had zero recollection of any of those incidents. “Sloane,” I interrupted calmly. “Do you know what a good engineer spends fifty percent of their life doing?” “…What?” “Pattern recognition. Every single time you become defensive or nervous, your toes curl inward. They’re doing it right now.” She immediately looked down at her feet, then violently tucked both legs completely under the cashmere throw, the blush sweeping over her jawline. “I am not nervous.” “Sure.” “My feet are just cold.” It was mid-August in New York. The central air was holding steady at seventy-four degrees. If her feet were genuinely freezing, she was biologically reptilian. “You’ve clearly never had a real girlfriend,” she muttered into the collar of her sweater. “Did you use pattern recognition on that, too?” She rolled her eyes, deliberately changing the subject, and somehow circled right back to her untouchable high school crush. “Derek was just like you. Oblivious and hyper-focused.” For the very first time, she unlocked her phone and showed me a photograph of Derek Shaw. The picture was recent—maybe a year or two out of college. Derek was still sporting the exact same thick-rimmed tortoiseshell glasses and the oversized, slightly rounded bowl cut. I had abandoned that disastrous aesthetic the summer after high school. Was this guy genuinely an intellectual heavyweight, or just cosplay-competent? “Look at him, Nate,” Sloane murmured, her eyes softening with nostalgia. “Do you have any idea how brilliant he was back then? The state math olympiad—he solved the hardest proof with five separate methods. He was a complete prodigy. If he ever got into software engineering, he’d probably outperform you in a heartbeat.” If she had praised his charisma or his fashion sense, I would have nodded politely and moved on. But drag my engineering domain into it? That was an unacceptable system error. “Oakridge Prep?” I asked. “Derek Shaw?” “Yes! You remember him?” “I graduated from Oakridge Prep.” Sloane’s eyes instantly lit up with excitement. “Then tell me about him! I only saw him in passing back then, and we barely crossed paths after college. What else did he do? What were his legendary moments in the honors program?” I stared at her, my expression completely flat. “I don’t know him. He wasn’t anyone of note.” “What?” “Five proofs for a basic polynomial theorem is child’s play,” I said coldly. “In our graduating class, there was only one undisputed math genius, and it certainly wasn’t Derek Shaw. He wouldn’t last five minutes against my compiler.” Sloane was stunned. In the two months we had lived together, I had been unfailingly polite, patient, and restrained. She had never seen me launch an unprovoked, clinical attack on someone—least of all the boy on her pedestal. Her face flushed with indignation. “Are you out of your mind? You’re being childishly arrogant! Did you think tearing down someone I admire would somehow make me look at you differently? Derek was extraordinary, whether you want to admit it or not! I’m done talking to you!” She vanished into the hallway and shut her bedroom door with enough force to rattle the crown molding. 5 After that door slammed, Sloane didn’t set foot in my study for an entire week. She was genuinely furious. Every morning, when she put on her heels in the foyer, the sharp clicks of her stilettos on the marble were twice as loud as usual. She worked late at the office until ten every night, walked straight into the master suite, and didn’t even bother turning on the living room sconces. Mrs. Gable mentioned that she was barely touching her meals. A bowl of slow-simmered chicken broth left on her bedside table at night would still be sitting there, stone-cold, by sunrise. Yet I hadn’t lied. Back in high school, every aspiring math and science nerd in the tri-state area tried to compare notes with me. Derek Shaw wasn’t in the top ten of our class. He wasn’t even in the top hundred. Puzzled, I actually pulled up the archived records from that year’s state tournament. I hadn’t officially competed that day. I had thought the problem set was too pedestrian to bother registering for. But our AP Calculus mentor had practically begged me to travel with the team as their student captain, just so the other kids would stay calm and have someone to cross-check their solutions with in the lobby afterward. I dialed my old high school mentor that afternoon. “Mr. Harrison, do you remember a student from our year named Derek Shaw being on the olympiad roster?” “Derek Shaw?” Mr. Harrison chuckled over the line. “Good heavens, no. That year we only qualified two senior girls, and you came along as the honorary proctor and morale booster.” I froze, an unsettling suspicion taking root in my mind. Wait. Had someone bumped into me in the corridor outside the examination hall ten years ago? Back then, my skull was so packed with advanced algorithmic theories that I had barely registered the collision. I had just picked up my papers and walked away without looking up. On the fourth night of our cold war, around two in the morning, while I was running a background memory leak diagnostic, the study door swung open. Sloane was standing there, wrapped in a giant ivory throw blanket, barefoot, her hair a little wild, dark circles shadowing her lower eyelids. She said nothing. She marched directly over to the lounger, sank into it, and pulled the blanket up to her chin. “What are you doing?” I asked. “The Wi-Fi signal is stronger in this room,” she said, keeping her eyes firmly shut. Two in the morning. Coming into my study to ‘leech the Wi-Fi’ without a single electronic device in her hands. It was the worst excuse in human history, but it was her way of calling a ceasefire. She shifted in the chair, bundling the blanket tighter around her shoulders. The tips of her toes poked out from the hem of the wool—almost as if by design. Just like that, the cold war ended, and she resumed her nocturnal presence in my study. Yet a strange panic began to set in. What if she dug into the school archives? What if she figured out that the boy she had spent ten years romanticizing was actually the guy sitting across from her in sweatpants? Before our wedding, more than one family elder had pulled me aside: “Nate, don’t let Sloane’s fierce boardroom facade fool you. That girl has been fiercely loyal and intensely clingy since she was a child.” “Whoever wins her heart will have her glued to their side for life. She won’t let you out of her sight.” I felt a cold shiver run down my spine. If she realized the truth, she would never leave this study. How was I supposed to write clean, uninterrupted code with her bare feet and searching eyes lingering two feet away from my keyboard? Code was the only predictable partner I needed. I resolved to keep my mouth shut, wait for Derek Shaw to show his face, hand her off to her beloved high school fantasy, and take my generous exit payout. On our seventy-sixth day together, Derek Shaw returned to the city. I only found out by pure coincidence. I had walked over to the micro-center near her corporate headquarters to pick up a specialized external GPU enclosure. As I passed the plaza in front of her office tower, I spotted the unmistakable bowl cut. Derek Shaw. He was still clinging to that ridiculous aesthetic. Right at that exact moment, Sloane stepped out of the lobby. 6 Code was definitely better than real life. Code never generated this level of suffocating awkwardness. With a single glance, I could tell Derek Shaw recognized me instantly—and he knew that I had likely seen through his decade-long charade. Sloane was walking toward us, carrying a large iced Americano. When she saw the two of us standing near the fountain, she didn’t greet Derek first. Instead, her eyes locked onto me. “Nate? What are you doing over here?” I held up the branded electronics box. “Hardware run. There’s a specialty tech supply shop two blocks down.” Derek stepped forward, adjusting his wire frames. Sloane was about to make introductions, but Derek hastily extended a hand with an overly polished smile. “Derek Shaw. You must be Nate Campbell? I remember hearing your name back at Oakridge.” I shifted the heavy enclosure to my left hand and gave him a brief, perfunctory handshake, internally shaking my head at his sheer stupidity. Man, you should have pretended you never heard of me. If you admit you know who I was, how are you going to explain the fact that you weren’t the top dog? Sloane stood beside us, glancing back and forth between Derek and me, a sharp, assessing glint appearing in her hazel eyes. Derek turned to Sloane, his voice dropping into a smooth, familiar register. “It’s been so long, Sloane. Why don’t we grab a coffee and catch up on the old days?” I looked at the massive sixteen-ounce iced coffee already in Sloane’s hand and felt an overwhelming wave of second-hand embarrassment. This was the intellectual heavyweight she had placed on a pedestal for a decade? Furthermore, that casual “it’s been so long” triggered every pattern recognition alarm in my head. Derek had been back in the country for at least forty-eight hours. Sloane hadn’t gone to JFK to pick him up? Had she already started putting the pieces together? “I should get going,” I offered quickly. “I have a local build compiling on the server at home.” I turned to leave, but Sloane’s fingers instantly snapped around the fabric of my sleeve. “Your compilation isn’t going to blow up if you pause it for an hour,” she said firmly. Before I could protest, she had dragged me into the artisan café on the ground floor. The seating arrangement was orchestrated entirely by Sloane: she took the plush bench by the window, pulled me down directly beside her, and left Derek to sit awkwardly on the single armchair across the small marble table. The barista walked over with menus. I began to look down at the roast options, but Sloane reached across, plucked the menu straight from my hands, and closed it. “Steamed whole milk for him, please,” she told the server. “No espresso. His stomach can’t tolerate acidity.” Derek’s smile tightened, a slight twitch near his jaw. “You seem to have Nate’s routine down to a science, Sloane.” “He lives with me,” Sloane stated casually. I almost choked on my own saliva. Derek’s face went stiff. He sat there with his mouth slightly parted, scrambling for a response. “It’s a temporary arrangement,” I chimed in hastily, trying to diffuse the bomb she had just dropped. “I provide technical infrastructure support for her enterprise platform.” Under the table, the sharp toe of Sloane’s pump slammed right down on my sneaker. Then, without missing a beat, she locked her eyes onto Derek. “Derek,” she asked, her tone conversational yet dangerously sharp. “Back in senior year, during the state math competition… you didn’t end up submitting your final test packet because you thought the problems were too trivial, right?” Derek had even plagiarized my exact reasoning. Sitting right across from the actual author of that excuse, Derek’s voice lost half its volume. “Well… I never liked showing off, Sloane. Why are we suddenly bringing up high school tournaments? Let’s talk about something current.” 7 Sloane was not about to let the thread go. “Just curious,” she continued smoothly. “Nate was at Oakridge during that exact same period. He’s exceptionally gifted with advanced mathematics. Since you were both top-tier scholars in the same building, I imagine you must have collaborated often?” The trap was so obvious that even an uncalibrated chatbot could have seen it coming. Derek pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose, clearing his throat. “Of course. Nate was quite… well-known. Almost everyone in our honors track knew of him.” Sloane didn’t press Derek further. Instead, she slowly turned her gaze to me. “Then tell me, Nate. Why did you tell me you didn’t know who he was?” From the corner of my eye, I saw Derek’s hand resting on the marble tabletop, his knuckles white as he clenched his fingers. He knew he was living on borrowed time. If I simply said, “I really don’t know him,” Sloane would follow the evidentiary trail and expose him on the spot. On the other hand, if I lied and said, “Oh, my mistake, I remember him now,” I would be actively aiding a fraud and lying to Sloane’s face. I wasn’t going to compromise my integrity for this clown. “Oakridge had twelve hundred students,” I said evenly. “I didn’t pay attention to people.” Derek visibly exhaled, seizing the opening to rebuild his facade. “Yes, well, some hyper-focused students are like that. Completely absorbed in their own narrow subjects. I always preferred a more well-rounded, holistic approach to leadership.” He was actually trying to spin my introversion into his personal superiority. My fingers tightened on the edge of the table. Sloane looked at Derek, then looked at me, her eyes narrowing as if she were running a final diagnostic on two completely mismatched data sets. Just as I braced for her next cross-examination, she abruptly pushed back her chair and stood up. “Nate,” she said, looking down at me with a cold, unreadable expression. “You’re truly unbelievable.” Dropping that single line, she turned and marched out of the café. Derek immediately scrambled to his feet and chased after her through the glass doors. Through the floor-to-ceiling windows, I watched as Sloane didn’t even slow her stride, waving him off with a look of pure, icy contempt before stepping into a waiting black town car. The bad feeling in my chest was spreading fast. Having been thoroughly dismissed, Derek trudged back into the café, his face dark with suppressed fury. He planted himself in front of my table, glaring down at me. “What is your deal with Sloane? Even if you’re doing contract work for her company, why the hell are you sleeping under her roof?” I had zero interest in wasting processing power on an insecure imposter. I drained the rest of the warm milk in one pull, grabbed my GPU box, and headed out toward the curb to hail a cab. Derek followed right behind me, his voice rising in agitation. “I don’t care what game you think you’re playing, Campbell! You stay away from her! Sloane has had feelings for me since we were seventeen! You might be good with numbers, but that doesn’t mean you can replace me. I know exactly what she loves.” “What she loves?” I couldn’t help but scoff, looking at his hair. “A ten-year-old bowl cut? Aren’t you sweating under that thing in August?” Derek’s face flushed purple. “Some habits are kept for the people who matter! You wouldn’t understand! I’m warning you—pack your gear and get out of her penthouse. Do you hear me?” I opened the cab door and looked back at him with a faint, mocking grin. “Maybe you should go tell Sloane to stop having designs on me.” 8 The ride back was entirely consumed by the memory of Sloane walking away from Derek outside the café. She hadn’t looked back once. That evening, when Sloane returned home, the first thing she did was march into the study and slam a heavy ceramic mug of warm milk onto my desk. Her jaw was tight, her eyes smoldering with irritation. She didn’t say a single word, her bare feet making sharp thud-thud-thud sounds against the floorboards as she stormed right back out. I stared at the mug. I liked milk, sure, but was I expected to consume it by the gallon? Thirty minutes later, the door creaked open again. Seeing the empty mug on my coaster, Sloane let out a strange, haughty little huff. Two minutes later, she marched back in and deposited a second mug of steaming milk right in front of me. My internal system was officially flashing critical warning alerts. Another half hour passed, and as predicted, the study door swung open for the third time. Before she could grab the second empty mug, I leaned back in my chair. “Sloane. Can we talk?” The storm cloud on her face fractured slightly, the corner of her mouth twitching upward in an almost imperceptible curve. “You have something you want to say to me?” “Yes.” “Fine. Go ahead.” She moved over to the lounger, curled her legs beneath her, and rested her heels along the wide leather armrest—pointing them directly toward my desk. My eyes flicked down, then up. “Don’t look around,” she said, her ears turning pink. “Say what you need to say.” If you don’t want me to look, maybe don’t display them on the armrest. I took a steadying breath. “Derek is back in the country.” “I have eyes, Nate. Tell me something I don’t know.” “Our postnuptial agreement stated that once he returned, we would file for an uncontested divorce. Pick a morning this week that works for your schedule, and we can head down to the municipal court to sign the dissolution papers.” Sloane froze. The slight smugness on her face vanished, replaced by an absolute, rigid stillness. Slowly, she sat up straight on the lounger, her hazel eyes glistening with sudden, unmistakable moisture. “You’re in that much of a hurry?” she whispered. “I… I just don’t want to complicate your personal life, Ms. Sullivan.” “Ms. Sullivan…” She let out a sharp, self-deprecating laugh. “You really are something else, Nate.” The study fell into a suffocating, heavy silence. She stood up, her voice dropping into a flat, icy monotone. “The board is preparing for Q3 earnings. I don’t have the bandwidth for court filings. We’ll deal with it later. And don’t flatter yourself by thinking I’m lingering because of you.” She snatched the empty mug off my desk, turned toward the doorway, and threw one last bitter line over her shoulder: “Go live happily ever after with your compiler!” The divorce timeline stalled completely. A week later, the front doorbell rang. Mrs. Gable answered it. A moment later, I heard raised voices in the foyer. I walked out of the study to find Derek Shaw standing on the welcome mat, his face contorted with righteous anger. “Can I help you?” I asked. “Yeah, you can!” Derek snapped, trying to step past the threshold. “I realize you have zero self-respect, Campbell! What, can’t afford rent on a developer’s salary? Pack your junk and get out of Sloane’s home! You are actively interfering in an established relationship—” Before he could finish his sentence, a heavy

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