Author: Momo Chan

I’ve been married to Nolan Sterling for three years, yet everyone in our circle still firmly believes in his carefully crafted “single and available” persona. At the company’s annual success gala, his personal assistant sang a love song dedicated entirely to him. She even got down on one knee, delivering a deeply passionate confession of her love. I thought, surely, this was the moment he would finally announce our relationship to everyone. But instead, faced with the roaring encouragement of our colleagues, he simply offered a helpless, indulgent smile, nodded, and accepted Chloe’s confession. The cheers erupted like a tidal wave, each wave louder than the last. I stood in the shadows, my entire body trembling with a cold so deep it chilled my bones. Nolan’s gaze met mine across the room. His eyes carried a sharp, unmistakable warning. But this time, I didn’t pull him aside to demand an explanation like I usually did. I just stood there and clapped along with the rest of them. “Congratulations, Director Sterling. Congratulations, Chloe.” “Such a happy occasion! Doesn’t this mean the Director owes everyone here a round of drinks on his tab?” … The moment the words left my mouth, the crowd’s cheering grew even more frantic. Nolan’s brows knotted together. He shot me a covert, furious glare. But, trapped by the sheer enthusiasm of the crowd, he had no choice but to bite the bullet and pull out his black card, paying for a massive round of expensive champagne for everyone. When he finally made his way over to me, he waited until no one was looking, grabbed my arm, and dragged me into the breakroom. “Why are you joining in and making a scene? Do you have any idea how much money I just dropped buying drinks for this entire department?” “What kind of tantrum are you throwing now?” He genuinely believed my comments out there were just me being petty. I forced a bitter smile. I wanted to speak, but it felt like something was suffocating me, blocking my throat. I couldn’t force a single word out. I just let out a heavy sigh. “Nolan, we’ve been married for three years. You promised me.” “You promised that once your career stabilized, we would make our relationship public. What exactly are you doing right now? Are you cheating on me?” Nolan’s eyes had been darting toward the breakroom window, nervously checking if anyone was listening. Hearing my accusation, his head snapped back to me. “What kind of nonsense are you spewing?!” Realizing his voice had spiked, he forcibly swallowed his anger. “Harper, yes, I made a promise.” “But have you stopped to think about your mother? If I hadn’t been financially supporting her treatments, do you really think she’d still be alive today?” “I have to climb higher. I have to make more money. Otherwise, how many months of her medical bills do you think your pathetic little salary could cover?” Every single word he spat out hit my eardrums like a physical blow. “So you accept Chloe’s confession right in front of my face? What am I to you? I am your wife!” I growled, keeping my voice low but fierce. This only made Nolan angrier. “Can’t you be a little understanding?! If it weren’t for me these past few years, your mother would be dead and buried by now!” I had heard these exact words countless times over the years, but they had never ripped my heart apart quite like this. In Nolan’s eyes, our marriage, our home, our entire future… They would always, always be secondary to his ambition. And all of this was simply because Chloe was the CEO’s daughter. That was why he desperately maintained his single persona, while brazenly flirting with Chloe in front of the entire company. He was affectionate with her right in front of my eyes, yet he demanded that I be “understanding.” From the day we started dating to the day we got married, he had always been this intensely ambitious. After we got married, he even took control of all my bank accounts, insisting he manage our finances. As he worked harder and harder, and the money piled up, his heart grew colder and colder. Whenever we had an argument, he always, without fail, weaponized my terminally ill mother’s life against me. “Then give me back my bank cards. From today on, my mother doesn’t need a single cent from you…” My words were cut off by the sound of the breakroom door being pushed open. Chloe leaned against the doorframe, looking at Nolan and me with a surprised expression. Nolan immediately took a huge step away from me, acting as if nothing had just happened. “Oh, Manager Vance, you’re here too. I was looking everywhere for you guys. I thought something was wrong.” Chloe beamed a massive smile, walking over and naturally intertwining her fingers with Nolan’s. She affectionately pressed her cheek against his. “I’ve already told my parents about us. They want to meet you.” I could clearly see the flash of absolute ecstasy in Nolan’s eyes. He instinctively shot me a glance, then tightened his grip on Chloe’s hand. “Of course. I’m available whenever they are.” My hands, hanging loosely at my sides, clenched into tight fists. My nails dug deep into my palms; only the sharp, stinging pain kept me grounded in reality. Chloe walked over to me and shoved a thick, bulging envelope into my hands. She flashed a radiant, triumphant smile. “Manager Vance, you work so closely with Nolan and handle so much. Consider this a little bonus for all your hard work.” As soon as she finished speaking, Nolan gently pulled her away. Before he walked out the door, he didn’t even spare me a single glance. I was left completely alone in the breakroom. Outside, the celebration continued to rage. The notifications in the company group chat were exploding with congratulatory messages for the new couple. I looked down at the hidden photo album on my phone. It was a scan of our official marriage certificate photo. He had forbidden me from using it as my lock screen, so I could only hide it deep in my camera roll. Every time I looked at it, I somehow convinced myself I could hold on a little longer. I stared at that photo with its bright red background for a very long time. Then, I uploaded it directly to the company’s internal message board. I had endured this for three years. I had absolutely no strength left to keep pretending. It took exactly one day for that photo to circulate to every single screen in the building. When I walked into the office, the way my coworkers looked at me was entirely different. The relentless, hushed whispers drifted into my ears from every direction. [What the hell is going on? Manager Vance and Director Sterling are married?] [Then what was all that yesterday? Chloe is the other woman…?] Some of the bolder employees walked right up to my desk and asked me directly. “Manager Vance, you never mentioned you were married. Is that photo photoshopped?” Before I could even open my mouth to answer, Nolan summoned me into his private office. The moment the door clicked shut. A splash of scalding hot water was thrown directly into my face. Nolan’s face was twisted with absolute fury. He violently smashed the glass mug onto the floor right at my feet. The flying shards of glass sliced a shallow cut near the corner of my eye. Drops of blood hit the floor. “Harper, are you intentionally trying to ruin me?!” “Didn’t I explicitly tell you that absolutely no one could know about our marriage?! The entire company is gossiping about it right now!” “Did you even stop for one second to think about how this would affect Chloe?! Everyone out there is calling her a homewrecker!” I wiped my face. The skin where the boiling water had hit was searing red. “I just posted the truth. Is telling the truth a crime?” I didn’t feel I had done anything wrong. “Are you afraid of losing face, or are you just terrified of ruining your perfect image in Chloe’s eyes?” “Does the CEO’s precious daughter know she’s sleeping with a married man?” Nolan’s lips parted, a flash of undeniable guilt crossing his eyes. He aggressively rubbed his temples, then, predictably, brought up my mother. “Don’t you dare forget that your half-dead mother is currently laying in the most expensive VIP suite at that care facility, being kept alive by the most expensive imported drugs.” “If I get suspended over this scandal, how the hell are you going to pay her medical bills?!” I let out a dry, exhausted chuckle. The fatigue weighing on my soul felt infinitely heavy. Always this. It’s always this. “Give me my bank cards back. I can pay my mother’s medical bills myself.” Nolan looked at me in shock, which was quickly replaced by utter contempt. He let out a mocking scoff. He marched over to his safe, pulled out a thick, heavy stack of hospital bills, and slammed them onto his desk. “You want to settle accounts with me? Fine! Let’s go through it line by line. Let’s see exactly how much money you and your mother have bled from me!” He stabbed his finger at the stack of bills, speaking through gritted teeth. Only then did I realize that from the day we got married until this exact moment, he had meticulously tracked every single penny he had spent on me. Three years ago, when he asked me to marry him, he had looked me in the eye and said: Your mother treated me like her own son. She saved my life once. I will give everything I have to help her. He did keep his word. But Nolan turned that help into a weapon to control me. Every time. Every single time. Whenever I did the slightest thing that displeased him, he weaponized my mother’s life against me, forcing me to surrender over and over again. He climbed higher and higher, eventually becoming the highly respected Director Sterling everyone admired. And then he told me: “Harper, my career is on a massive upward trajectory right now. I can’t let the executives know we’re married. It’ll ruin my image as a fully dedicated company man.” “You have to understand. Mom’s life is more important than anything else right now.” I believed him. I watched him meticulously build his “single, eligible bachelor” persona, while simultaneously getting closer and closer to his new assistant, Chloe. Whenever I confronted him about it, he would look at me with sheer impatience and say: “Chloe is the CEO’s daughter. She is going to inherit this entire corporation one day.” “I’m just trying to climb the ladder and secure our financial future. What exactly am I doing wrong?” The office door was violently shoved open. Chloe burst into the room, her eyes completely bloodshot. She held up her phone, the screen displaying our marriage photo, and screamed at Nolan. “Nolan Sterling! You lied to me?! Are you two actually married?!” Nolan didn’t miss a beat. He shook his head with absolute conviction. “No, I have always been single. Harper has already admitted she made a terrible mistake. She’s going to issue a public clarification right now.” His expression didn’t change as he pulled out his phone and opened a live security feed. The camera was pointed directly at my mother’s hospital bed. He lowered his voice into a vicious, lethal whisper. “The private nurse at the hospital works for me. If you don’t go out there and clarify this right now, I will order him to pull her oxygen tube.” My pupils dilated in sheer, unadulterated terror. I stared at him, unable to believe what I was hearing. “Nolan?! Have you lost your fucking mind?!” Nolan raised his hand, counting down on his fingers. “Three. Two…” “Fine.” I clenched my fists so tightly my nails drew blood. The agonizing, tearing pain in my chest was the only thing reminding me I was still alive. I stood in the center of the bullpen, facing the entire company, and confessed. “I photoshopped that image. Director Sterling and I have absolutely no romantic relationship whatsoever.” Because of my “confession,” Nolan was immediately reinstated and cleared of all suspicion, while I was indefinitely suspended pending an investigation. As I packed up my desk into a cardboard box, I could feel the malicious stares piercing my skin like needles. The hushed whispers had escalated into open, blatant verbal abuse. “I knew Harper was shady. She’s been acting so desperate for a sugar daddy lately.” “Exactly. Director Sterling always said he was single. How could he possibly be married to someone like her? She was clearly trying to force his hand and be the other woman.” “She’s so disgusting.” I bore the brunt of their malice, fleeing the corporate building like a cornered rat. When I finally got back to our apartment, my phone buzzed with a text from Nolan. [Harper, no matter what happens, we are still husband and wife. Once my promotion to VP is finalized, I’ll fix all of this, and I’ll cut ties with Chloe completely.] [Just wait a little longer. You have my word.] Staring at those empty promises, I realized I didn’t believe a single syllable anymore. I don’t know who did it, but someone had recorded a video of my forced confession and leaked it onto the internet. Overnight, I became the city’s biggest laughingstock. “Tarnishing the company’s reputation.” My suspension was quickly converted to a termination for cause. I didn’t even receive a severance package. The internet mob relentlessly attacked me, flooding my social media with vile, degrading insults. Some deranged vigilantes even tracked down my address and splashed red paint all over my front door. I was terrified to step outside. Every single day, people would gather outside my door and scream abuse. “You desperate, homewrecking slut! If you want money so badly, go find an old creep to pay you!” “People like you are the absolute scum of society!” No matter how I tried to defend myself, no one was willing to listen to the truth. I sat on the couch, completely hollowed out, scrolling mindlessly through Nolan’s Instagram. He had just posted a new carousel of photos. Aside from a series of romantic couples’ portraits with Chloe… There was a close-up shot of two hands, both wearing matching Cartier diamond rings. The diamonds caught the light flawlessly. The caption read: [The love of my life.] I covered my face with my hands, hot tears pouring through my fingers. I grabbed my heavy glass water bottle and hurled it violently at the massive framed wedding portrait hanging on the wall. The glass shattered, raining down in a thousand pieces. I took a deep, shuddering breath and dialed the number of a lawyer friend. “Draft divorce papers for me and Nolan Sterling. I want to completely maximize my financial settlement.” “He committed adultery. I have irrefutable proof.” During the days I spent finalizing the divorce strategy, Nolan never came home. He never even called. A week later, it was company payday. When I was terminated, HR had assured me that my final month’s base salary would be paid out normally. But when I checked my bank account, the only deposit was a pathetic $200 attendance bonus. At the exact same time, my former colleagues in the departmental group chat were throwing a digital party, celebrating Chloe for single-handedly closing a massive, highly lucrative corporate contract. I stared at the signature on the finalized project brief. A deafening ringing filled my ears. That was the contract I had literally drank myself into a stomach hemorrhage to secure during a brutal negotiation dinner. I was the one who had built the relationship with that client from the ground up. If that commission had paid out to me, I would have had enough money to cover my mother’s bills. I wouldn’t have needed Nolan’s money anymore. My hands shook violently as I tried to message the client, confused as to why they had signed early without me. But the message bounced back. The client had blocked my number. I called Nolan. The phone rang and rang, but he didn’t pick up. It wasn’t until my nineteenth call that the line finally connected. Before I could even speak, the sound of heavy, rhythmic breathing came through the speaker. Chloe’s voice, thick with annoyance, snapped at me. “Harper, you’ve been fired. Could you stop harassing my boyfriend?” “Can’t you take a hint?” I instinctively slammed the ‘End Call’ button. But those repulsive, wet sounds kept echoing in my brain. The hand holding my phone was trembling uncontrollably. A sharp, piercing agony radiated from my heart, spreading through my entire body like venom. But reality didn’t give me a single second to catch my breath. My phone rang again. This time, the caller ID showed the hospital. It rang relentlessly, sending me into a blind panic. “Hello…” “Ms. Vance, there has been a critical incident regarding your mother.” I don’t even remember how I made it to the hospital. The attending physician met me with a terrifyingly grim expression. “When our nurses did their rounds, they discovered that your mother’s oxygen supply had been disconnected.” “We investigated immediately. The private nurse hired by your husband admitted to doing it. He stated that he was acting under your husband’s direct orders.” The doctor forwarded an audio recording to my phone. “Your mother’s condition is extremely critical. She’s been moved to the emergency surgical wing and requires an immediate, high-risk operation to stabilize her.” “However… there are insufficient funds in her account to proceed…” The doctor’s voice was heavy with profound regret. I tapped play on the audio file. It was unequivocally Nolan’s voice. He said: “I’ve spent enough money keeping that old woman alive, and honestly, she’s tired too.” “Find a window when no one’s looking and pull the oxygen. Yeah, Harper agreed to it too. It’s what she wants.” The world tilted on its axis. My knees buckled, and I had to grip the edge of the doctor’s desk just to keep from collapsing onto the floor. “I… I never said that… I would never say that…” My voice was incredibly hoarse, tearing at my throat. The doctor’s eyes remained filled with deep pity. “Can’t you please just start the surgery? I’ll go get the money right now, I swear!” “Ms. Vance, I’m so sorry, but you have to understand our position. Hospital policy dictates…” I couldn’t lose my mother. I absolutely could not survive that kind of pain. She was the only family I had left in this world. After frantically signing the consent forms, I sprinted to the billing department. But the balance on my debit card wasn’t even enough to cover the anesthesia. My salary, my savings—it was all sitting in an account controlled entirely by Nolan. I texted Nolan over and over and over again. He didn’t reply to a single one. Gritting my teeth, I used a hospital landline to call his cell. Finally, the call connected. “Nolan, my mom needs emergency surgery right now! Transfer my salary to me, and my commission from the contract…” Before I could finish, Nolan replied with a slow, arrogant drawl. “Didn’t I just pay her facility bill last week? Why does she suddenly need emergency surgery?” “Stop making up these pathetic lies just to get my attention, okay?” I knew he wouldn’t believe me, so I took photos of the critical condition notice and the surgical authorization form and texted them to him. “She needs surgery because the nurse you hired pulled her oxygen! Nolan, you are responsible for this!” The line went dead silent for a moment. Perhaps a flicker of guilt finally hit him, because his tone lost its aggressive edge. “Got it.” He hung up the phone. I stared at the clock on the hospital wall, pacing the hallway in agonizing panic. But minute after minute ticked by, and the money never hit my account. My mother’s breathing grew weaker and weaker. They had already attempted to resuscitate her once, but the monitors showed she was still in the critical red zone. My phone screen lit up. I scrambled to open it, praying it was a bank notification. Instead, it was a photo from Chloe. A picture of her and Nolan lying in bed, their fingers tightly intertwined over the sheets. [So sorry, Harper! The money is going to have to wait a bit. Let us finish what we’re doing first, okay? 😉] It felt like I had been plunged into an icy abyss. At that exact moment, the life support machines in my mother’s room began blaring a frantic, continuous alarm. The crash team rushed in to resuscitate her again. But this time, there was no miracle. She stopped breathing. Her heartbeat flatlined. She was gone. The doctor walked out, removing his mask, and offered a grim, apologetic shake of his head. “I’m so sorry for your loss. We did everything we could.” Ding. My phone chimed with a bank transfer notification. I stared at the screen for a very, very long time, my mind completely detached from reality. The sheer absurdity of the world felt suffocating. The money had arrived. But my mother would never, ever need it again. “I sent the money. Now you and your mother need to behave and stop causing trouble.” “Harper, these next few days are critical for me. I’m meeting with the CEO and the board to negotiate my VP salary package and finalize the promotion.” “Once that’s done, I’ll come straight home. Just trust me one last time, okay?” A long string of voice notes arrived, his tone laced with that familiar, manipulative coaxing. I didn’t listen to the rest of them. Instead, I attached the finalized divorce settlement—the one demanding he leave the marriage with absolutely nothing—and sent the PDF directly to Nolan. “I don’t need it anymore, Nolan. We are done.”

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My husband parked in my assigned spot again. The front of his SUV was angled sharply over the yellow line, obnoxiously taking up two spaces. This was the third time. I didn’t call him right away to come down to the garage and move it. Instead, I took a quick video and posted it on my Instagram Story. A second later, the new 22-year-old intern I was mentoring—a guy who bragged about having had eighteen ex-girlfriends—sent me a direct message: [Hey, based on my experience, this is super sketchy. If you still want to make it work with him, call him to come move it. If you’re done with him, march straight upstairs, open the bedroom door, and make sure your phone is recording.] My hands and feet went ice-cold. I went upstairs with my heart pounding in my throat, only to find my husband calmly sitting on the living room sofa, typing away on his laptop. I peeked into the bedroom. Nothing. No anomalies. I was just about to breathe a sigh of relief, thinking I was overreacting again. But when I looked back at him, my stomach dropped. The tie he was wearing when he left the house this morning wasn’t this red polka-dot one. Plus, he only ever worked in his home office… I placed my purse on the entryway console, swapped my heels for slippers, and tried to keep my voice steady. “You parked in my spot again.” “I got an urgent email from a client on my way back and had to revise a pitch deck. I parked in a rush. I was going to move it when you were close to home. Give me a minute to finish this, and I’ll head down.” Sterling’s tone was relaxed. He answered slowly, completely unbothered. “Don’t worry about it. I parked in visitor parking.” I suppressed my racing heartbeat and sat down on the armchair opposite him. “Why are you working in the living room?” “The desk lamp in the office is broken. The bulb kept flickering.” Sensing my gaze, Sterling stopped typing and looked up. “What’s wrong?” “Where’s your other tie?” He looked down, a sheepish, helpless smile crossing his face. “I had a lunch meeting with a client and spilled some coffee on it. You bought me that tie for our anniversary, so the second I got home, I rushed to hand-wash it.” He gave me a sweet, pleading look. “I was clumsy. Don’t be mad, okay?” I glanced toward the laundry room. Sure enough, a blue striped tie was hanging on the drying rack, dripping water onto the tiles. It all made sense. Every single piece of it made perfect sense. But my mind was a chaotic mess. I subconsciously started biting my thumbnail. “Have you been too tired lately?” I didn’t even notice Sterling getting up. He knelt in front of me, gently pulling my hand away from my mouth. He let out a soft sigh, pulled me into a hug, and rested his chin on the top of my head, gently patting my back. He knew. My anxiety was acting up again. “Come on.” “Where?” Sterling took my hand and led me into his home office. He flicked the switch on the desk lamp. It flashed twice and died. The desk was spotless. The trash can was empty. There were no suspicious traces anywhere. “Feel better now?” He held my shoulders, his voice incredibly soft and gentle. I nodded, then shook my head. I didn’t know. He didn’t get angry. He led me back to the sofa, went to the kitchen to pour a glass of warm water, and pulled a bottle of pills from the cabinet. Anti-anxiety medication. Prescribed by my psychiatrist three years ago. I had stopped taking them a long time ago, but he always kept a refill handy. He held two pills up to my lips. A violent surge of agitation boiled up inside me. I slapped his hand away. The water glass tipped over, splashing warm water all over his shirt. Sterling froze. A flash of utter exhaustion crossed his eyes. My breath hitched. But, true to form, he calmly picked up the glass, grabbed some paper towels to wipe the coffee table, and smiled as he ruffled my hair. “I’ll go make you some pasta.” I pulled my knees to my chest, curled up on the sofa, and watched his back as he moved around the kitchen. My eyes burned. I felt terribly guilty, but I couldn’t stop my brain from spiraling: Is Sterling cheating on me or not? Three years ago, I asked that exact question a thousand times. The answer was: No. But the process of proving it almost cost me half my life. And now? Was I going to torture him and myself all over again? I didn’t sleep a wink that night. I tossed and turned, analyzing his explanations about the parking spot and the tie until my head felt like it was splitting open. The next morning, Sterling left early. He left breakfast on the counter with a sticky note drawn with a smiley face. I didn’t touch a single bite. I stood in the laundry room, staring at the half-dry tie. I took it down and examined it. It was mostly clean, but on the back of the narrow end, right near the brand tag, there was a tiny, crusty white spot. Coffee stains are brown. Even if it didn’t wash out completely, it would be faint yellow. It wouldn’t be white. The tie was dripping wet yesterday, which meant he washed it in a frantic rush. But if it was just coffee, he could have tossed it in the hamper for the dry cleaners. Why was he so desperate to scrub it out by hand the second he walked through the door? Driven by some dark intuition, I lifted the tie to my nose. Beneath the heavy scent of laundry detergent, there was a faint, distinct smell… The sour-sweet scent of baby formula. Clutching that tie, the last thread of sanity in my brain snapped. I stumbled into the storage closet, digging through dusty cardboard boxes until I found it—the hidden nanny cam. When I finally found the perfect spot to mount it on Sterling’s bookshelf, I froze. There was already a sticky residue of double-sided tape right there. Left by me. Three years ago. My fingers were numb. My lips were numb. Three years later, and I had never actually been “cured”… But I wasn’t always this “sick.” Three years ago, Sterling was promoted to Department Director. He hired a new executive assistant. I didn’t think much of it until a friend who worked at his company sent me a photo from their corporate weekend retreat. It was taken secretly. Sterling was manning the barbecue grill, and standing right beside him was a woman with a low ponytail, gently using a tissue to wipe the sweat from his forehead. The body language was intimately blurred. [Penelope, do you know this new assistant?] my friend texted. I zoomed in on the photo and recognized the face. Rachel Dawson. Sterling’s college girlfriend. When we started dating, he didn’t hide his past. He was upfront about her, claiming she was his only serious ex. I was actually very calm at the time. That night, when Sterling came home, I placed the photo on the kitchen island. He didn’t hide it. He said Rachel had been working as a hotel waitress. He ran into her by chance, saw she was struggling, and since his department needed an assistant, he gave her the job. “Wiping the sweat was a lapse in boundaries on my part. I am so sorry.” His attitude was incredibly sincere. The very next day, he even brought Rachel to me so she could apologize in person. I accepted it. But a thorn remained in my heart. And that thorn finally drew blood the day I found a pair of black pantyhose shoved into the gap between his passenger seat and the center console. “Rachel’s pantyhose snagged and tore on our way to a major client pitch. It was a bad look for the company, so we stopped at a pharmacy and she changed in the car.” Sterling’s expression was perfectly normal. He explained it with infinite patience. He said Linda, the Finance Director, was also in the car with them. He said Rachel shoved the torn pair into the seat gap in a rush and forgot to throw them away. Linda actually vouched for him. She even sent me a voice memo confirming the story. But I didn’t believe it. I wanted to rip that thorn out completely. I stormed into his corporate office. When I pushed his door open, Rachel was pouring him a glass of water. I snatched the glass from her hand, threw the water directly in her face, and pointed at her nose, screaming that she was a homewrecking slut. Rachel didn’t say a word back. She just stood there and cried. The entire office floor watched me. That was the first time Sterling ever lost his temper with me. He slammed his schedule logs, GPS data, and sign-in sheets from the client pitch onto his desk. “The evidence is all right here! What more do you want from me?!” But I couldn’t hear reason. From that day on, I demanded he report his every move. What time did he leave? What time did he get to work? Who was he eating lunch with? What meeting was he in? If he didn’t answer my call within an hour, I would lose my mind and call him twenty times in a row. I installed cameras in our house. I hid a nanny cam in the study. I needed to watch his every single second at home. Everyone around us pitied him. “Sterling has it so rough.” “Rachel is a completely innocent victim in all this.” “Do you think his wife… has mental issues?” I knew what they were whispering. But I couldn’t stop. Until the day I forced him to personally process Rachel’s termination papers. Usually so mild-mannered, he finally snapped. He shattered a coffee mug against the wall and screamed something at me—I can’t even remember the words now. I only remember stepping backward, tripping over the leg of the coffee table, and falling hard onto the floor. Blood… so much blood pooled beneath me. It wasn’t until I woke up in the hospital bed that I found out I had been pregnant. Twelve weeks. The baby was gone. Strangely, the loss brought a terrifying wave of clarity. It was like a blistering fever had finally broken. The doctor said my massive emotional swings were likely exacerbated by pregnancy hormones, especially during the volatile first trimester. Sterling fell to his knees by my hospital bed. For the first time, he cried in front of me, gripping my hand like a lifeline. “Penelope, I surrender. It’s all my fault. I just don’t want you to get hurt anymore.” Rachel was fired. Sterling swore to God we would never have another crisis of trust. But my heart was a tangled mess of guilt and confusion. When I looked back at the cold, hard facts… had I been the one making a psychotic scene over nothing? I felt a deep, gnawing unwillingness to accept it, but I was too terrified to question it. Sterling didn’t cheat. Wasn’t that a good thing? I spent an entire year recovering. Therapy, anti-anxiety medications, rebuilding my life piece by piece to return to normal. Everyone comforted me, saying young couples go through dark phases, and once you get past them, it’s smooth sailing. But today, three years later, I was crouching in the study, staring blankly at the hidden camera in my hand. The green light was on. It was ready to record. I suddenly felt like I couldn’t breathe. Three years ago, this was the exact step that started my descent into madness. And now, I was standing at the exact same crossroads. Was the faint smell of baby formula on a necktie enough for me to drive myself insane a second time? I closed my eyes and rested my forehead against the edge of the bookshelf. The hard wood dug painfully into my skin. Two voices were going to war in my head. Penelope, how much longer is this nightmare going to last? I left work early and waited in the lobby of Sterling’s office building. When I saw him step out of the elevator, laughing and chatting with a few colleagues, I walked up to him. “Sterling.” He saw me, and his smile faltered for a fraction of a second. “Penny? What are you doing here?” “We haven’t had dinner together in a while. I came to pick you up.” I linked my arm through his and smiled at his coworkers. “Sorry to interrupt your post-work drinks. I’m stealing my husband for the night.” The coworkers exchanged subtle, awkward glances and politely laughed it off. One person looked down, avoiding my eyes entirely, while a younger guy instinctively took a half-step back, almost as if he were afraid of me. The memory of my hysterical meltdown in this exact building three years ago had probably become legendary office lore. Sterling said goodbye to his team, naturally wrapped his arm around my shoulder, and guided me toward the parking garage. At dinner, I asked casually, “Have you been busy lately? Did that project from last week wrap up?” “Yeah, we closed it. This week is mostly following up with new clients. A lot more networking dinners.” “Was Wednesday night a networking dinner too?” “Yeah. Took a client out to play golf.” I nodded, pretending to suddenly remember something. “Oh, right! I heard you had your assistant run to the grocery store for you? What did you have her buy?” Sterling’s chopsticks froze in mid-air. He set them down, looking at me, his tone dropping a few degrees. “When were you talking to my assistant?” “When I was waiting for you in the lobby today. The receptionist had her come out to keep me company.” “She’s a fresh grad. She doesn’t know anything,” he said, staring at me as if trying to confirm my mental state. I smiled. “Relax. I’m not a monster. I didn’t give her a hard time.” I looked down, poking at the food in my bowl but not eating it. “I just feel like… the distance between us is getting wider.” Silence stretched over the table for a few seconds. Sterling reached across the table, covering my hand with his. His thumb gently stroked my knuckles. “I’ve just been swamped with work lately. I’m sorry.” I shook my head and didn’t push further. When we got home that night, I told him I needed some space and insisted on sleeping in the guest room. Sterling stared at me for a long time but didn’t force the issue. I locked the guest room door, leaned against the headboard, and opened my phone. I stared at the screenshots of the store receipts over and over. That afternoon in the lobby, the young assistant had been terrified. She clearly knew my reputation, and her hands were literally shaking when she poured me a glass of water. I didn’t interrogate her. I just made small talk, casually slipping in: “I heard you’re always running errands for Sterling. Sounds exhausting.” The poor girl smiled in absolute relief, assuring me it was no trouble, and eagerly showed me screenshots of the grocery lists on her phone to prove it. I asked her to text me one of the screenshots and left it at that. Now, I zoomed in on the image, reading line by line. Bottled water, printer paper, manila folders, espresso pods… all perfectly normal office supplies. Teething biscuits, one box. Organic fruit puree pouches, two packs. I opened an app, searched the brand of the fruit puree, and scrolled through the reviews. Hundreds of moms posting photos, raving about how much their toddlers loved them, saying they bought them constantly. I stared at those reviews until my eyes burned dry. At noon the next day, I showed up at the reception desk of Sterling’s company holding an insulated lunch bag. When he walked out of a conference room and saw me, he visibly froze. Colleagues walking by recognized me. They sped up their pace, only whispering to each other once they were a safe distance away. “Why is that woman here again? Mr. Brooks has it so rough being married to her…” “It’s terrifying. Her need for control is psychotic.” Sterling frowned at the whispers. He grabbed my shoulders and quickly ushered me into his private office, shutting the door. “Why are you bringing me lunch in the middle of the workday? Aren’t you exhausted?” “I took the day off.” I placed the insulated bag on his desk and unzipped it. “Try the bento I made you.” He looked at me, the crease between his brows deepening. “Penny…” “Just open it and look.” He stared at me for a few seconds. Unable to talk me out of it, he popped the lid off the bento box. The moment the lid came off, he went rigid. “What is this?” Half a bowl of teething biscuits. Half a bowl of fruit puree. I smiled warmly. “Baby food.”

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“Does it mean that your foster sister, Lily Vance, told you exactly why your father, Mark Sterling, only bought things for her and not for you?” Detective Evans stared at me intently, her expression strictly professional. She had her hair pulled back into a tight, no-nonsense ponytail. I met her scrutinizing gaze, swallowed hard, and gave a heavy nod. “Yes. And it wasn’t just once.” From the moment I woke up in the school nurse’s office, I had been immediately transferred to the local police precinct. I looked up at the ceiling of the interrogation room, wiped a tear from the corner of my eye, and let out a bitter, self-deprecating laugh. “Did she know how cruel it was to show off like that in front of me?” I held up my hand toward Detective Evans, spreading my fingers. “Five,” I said. “My daily allowance for food was five dollars.” “Chloe, I’ve done the math. You’re a girl, you don’t eat that much. Five dollars a day is plenty for your meals.” “Look, if you eat breakfast at home, it’s healthy and nutritious. And you can cook for me and your sister at the same time.” Under the dim, yellow light of our cramped kitchen, my father wore a gentle, reasonable smile. He spoke to me as if I were an adult, as if we were having a rational conversation between equals. I stared at the tips of my worn-out sneakers, finally gathering the courage to speak up. “But Dad, I have to get to school. I’ll be late.” “If you’re going to be late, then wake up earlier!” His voice suddenly spiked, sharp and aggressive. I flinched, shrinking back from him. His eyes widened drastically, the whites showing, looking like they might pop out of his skull. But just as quickly, the manic look vanished, replaced once again by that gentle, reasonable smile. He said, “Chloe, I know you’re a good girl. Now that your sister has moved in, we have another mouth to feed. Dad has a lot of financial pressure. You’re going to help Dad out, right?” “Detective Evans, do you know what my sister’s daily allowance was?” I pulled myself back from the memory and looked at the detective. “Mark, I really want to go to Olive Garden,” the memory of Lily Vance echoed in my mind. Her long hair cascaded down her back, her pale face looking incredibly wronged, her eyes misty with unshed tears. She looked so pitiful. She bit her lower lip. “My mom used to take me there every week.” My dad’s heart broke instantly. He panicked, rushing to comfort her. “Okay, okay. I’ll take you.” “Really?” Lily burst into a radiant smile through her tears. “Thank you, Mark! You’re so good to me. You’re such a good man.” I thought they would at least take me with them. But Lily’s eyes grew red again. “But Mark… my mom only ever took me.” So I watched them drive off together, and I watched them come back loaded with shopping bags. Lily’s face was flushed with excitement. “Mark, you don’t think I’m spending too much of your money, do you?” My dad waved his hands frantically. “Silly girl, what are you talking about? You’re just so mature. Spending my money means you treat me like family! From now on, whatever you want, you just tell me. I’ll make sure you get it.” “Thank you, Mark. No… thank you, Dad. You’re the best.” In the interrogation room, I looked at Detective Evans and said, “There was no limit.” “My father, Mark Sterling, placed zero limits on his foster daughter Lily’s spending.” My lips trembled. The tears I had forced back countless times finally broke free, streaming down my face. I abruptly stood up and slammed both my fists onto the metal table. “I am his biological daughter, and I got five dollars a day! I was starving every single day! I had no snacks, no new clothes! I had to buy groceries, cook the meals, do the laundry, and wait on them hand and foot! And all I got was five dollars!” “But her? She had everything! She ate at Olive Garden until she was sick of it, and she would rather throw the leftovers in the trash than let me have a single bite! Why?! Why was it like that?!” The officers beside me and my homeroom teacher, who was sitting in on the interview, quickly rushed forward to calm me down. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Detective Evans’s jaw tighten. She gestured to a colleague, they whispered, and the colleague quickly stepped out of the room. “Chloe,” Detective Evans closed her notebook and looked at me. “We will investigate everything you’ve said. You need to understand that you are responsible for the statements you make. Do you understand?” She turned the computer monitor toward me. It displayed the transcript of our entire conversation, typed out verbatim. I sneered and swatted the monitor away. “You think I hate her, that I resent her, so I’m framing her and making up lies. Is that it?” I looked around the room at the adults. “That’s what all of you think, right?” I clenched my fists and raised my voice. “Yes! I hate her! I despise her! Why shouldn’t I?! She stole my father! She stole everything that was supposed to be mine!” “Detective Evans, Mrs. Miller… my dad loves her. He doesn’t love me. I am his actual flesh and blood, and he doesn’t love me.” My emotions were spiraling completely out of control. “Lily’s mom abandoned her and ran off. My dad felt sorry for her because she didn’t have a mother. But Mrs. Miller… my mom died! I don’t have a mother either! I’m the one who doesn’t have a mother!” “But my dad didn’t feel sorry for me. He didn’t love me.” “He only loved Lily.” “He only loved my sister! He only loved her!” I broke down completely, becoming hysterical, crying so hard I almost dry-heaved. Mrs. Miller, my teacher, pulled me into a tight, heartbroken hug. “Chloe, don’t cry. Your mom is looking down from heaven, and she’d be so sad to see this.” Mrs. Miller’s eyes were red. “If your mom saw you like this, it would break her heart.” I forced myself to repeat the agonizing truth. “My dad loved her. But later on… I started noticing something was wrong. My dad would stare at Lily’s back when she walked away. He would get lost in thought… he would… he would brush his hand against her arm…” “Then, one night, I got up to use the bathroom, and I heard my dad… I heard him moaning Lily’s name in his bedroom.” “Lily… Lily… In that moment, I finally understood why my dad treated her so well.” “My dad was in love with her.” Huge, heavy tears rolled down my cheeks. I clutched my chest. “So no matter how much I hated her, I didn’t want to hurt her. After all…” I fell silent for a moment before continuing. “After all, she was exactly my age. She was just a kid back then.” “Back then, she used to ask me, confused, ‘Why?’ She couldn’t understand why my dad treated her so amazingly well.” “But… but… I knew why.” “I just didn’t know how to tell her. She was only sixteen. She was a minor.” I looked at Detective Evans, my voice trembling, thick with nasal congestion, on the verge of breaking completely. “Detective Evans, please. Help me. But… help her too. She was only sixteen.” “My dad loved her.” “The way a man loves a woman.” “She was only sixteen years old. She was a child.” “Honestly, everything that happened today… Lily and I planned it. We couldn’t think of any other way to ask for help.” My voice floated softly through the interrogation room, drifting up and circling the space, before settling heavily into the hearts of everyone present. At that exact moment, in an interrogation room at the other end of the hallway… My father, Mark Sterling, sat with a look of utter confusion on his face. “Why was I brought to the police station to give a statement?” Meanwhile, Lily Vance was just walking out of the forensic medical examination center, escorted by her homeroom teacher and a police officer. She was pale as a ghost as she got into the back of a squad car. I walked out of my interrogation room and sat on a bench in the main lobby, waiting for Lily to arrive. When the clock on the wall read 10:35 AM, Lily walked through the front doors. I immediately stood up, rushed to her side, and announced loudly: “Lily, don’t be scared! I told the police everything!” As I pulled her into a hug, I whispered clearly into her ear: “Lily, I told them we planned this whole thing. So, tell me… do you want to say you were dating my dad? Or do you want to say he was just creeping on you one-sidedly?” When I pulled back, I gripped her hands tightly, giving her a half-smile that didn’t reach my eyes. “Actually, you’ve been seducing him this whole time, haven’t you… stepmom?” She stared at me, her face completely drained of blood, like she was looking at a demon. “You…” “Aren’t you scared?” I cut her off before she could speak. “Go on. Tell them the truth. Tell them how innocent you are.” I watched Lily walk into the interrogation room. I watched her take step after step into the destiny I had meticulously woven for her. Back then, hiding in the shadows, I had watched them laugh together. They looked so genuinely happy. I knew that Lily’s “happy life” had begun. Expensive watches, expensive bags, expensive phones, expensive times. While I wore my dead mother’s oversized, faded t-shirts. An empty stomach, endless household chores, late-night studying, and a childhood stolen from me. My life had been miserable for entirely too long. So, Lily, your happy life is over now. This time, it’s my turn to be happy. That’s fair, right? The police investigation moved faster than I expected, and Lily’s ability to read the room and adapt was exactly as I had predicted. She mixed truths with lies. She used the truth to build a fortress of lies. But who could blame her? My dad “loved” his foster daughter so, so much. The thousand-dollar iPhone, the two-thousand-dollar bag, the three-thousand-dollar necklace, the four-thousand-dollar watch, the weekly trips to Olive Garden—all sharply contrasting with the severely malnourished biological daughter. “After my mom left, he took me in. I was so grateful to him.” “Why did he treat me so well?” “It was him. He came into my room at night.” “He said he’d buy me things. Whatever I wanted.” “He gave me his debit card. He said we were a family.” “I spent his money because I wanted to punish him.” “He is a monster.” Under Lily’s testimony, my father transformed from the “Neighborhood Saint” into a vile, predatory monster. Even without hard physical evidence. The medical examiner could only confirm that Lily was no longer a virgin; they couldn’t scientifically prove that the person responsible was my father, Mark Sterling. But Lily said it was him, so it was him. Stack after stack of bank statements proved that Lily and my father had a financial relationship. They couldn’t prove it was hush money, but Lily said it was, so it was. Interviews with the staff at Olive Garden confirmed that Lily and Mark came in together frequently. They couldn’t prove it was a date. But Lily said it was, and she said she was “forced” to go. So they were forced dates. “He said my mom left, so he didn’t have a wife anymore, and I had to make it up to him.” Lily spoke through her tears. Her statement, documented in black and white, and her blurred-out interview footage, took the local news by storm. With that, her foster father—my biological father—was nailed firmly to the cross of public opinion. The day the police issued the official press release, our small, working-class city exploded. Overnight, it was all anyone could talk about. The local newspaper published a front-page exposé using pseudonyms for the key figures, detailing the entire sickening case. On the local news channels, legal analysts fiercely debated whether “the absence of physical evidence is sufficient to secure a conviction,” turning it into a prime example for true crime shows. Online, people claiming to be “insiders” or “friends of the victim” crawled out of the woodwork, trying to piece together a version of the truth that fit their own twisted imaginations. In every coffee shop and on every street corner, everyone was talking about it. My father, Mark Sterling, was a predator. A villain. A disgusting piece of trash. Back at the old apartment complex, the neighbors were busy condemning the “sick bastard.” The old man from the sixth floor sat in his wheelchair and spat aggressively on the ground. “A hypocrite! A shameless, sick bastard!” Meanwhile, I was staying at Mrs. Miller’s house. The ceiling fan spun in slow, lazy circles. Mrs. Miller handed me a slice of watermelon, her eyes full of concern. “Chloe, don’t pay any attention to what’s happening out there. The most important thing right now is to focus on yourself. Your grades have always been top of the class. Don’t worry, the school is already fast-tracking your full-ride scholarship applications. You just stay here with me and focus on your future.” “Thank you, Mrs. Miller.” I took a bite of the watermelon and looked at her. “Mrs. Miller, when I leave for college, I’m never coming back here.” Mrs. Miller patted my head gently. “I understand.” The day before my high school graduation, my father was officially indicted. Legally, when establishing a conviction for statutory rape, the prosecution must consider a totality of evidence. Yes, the victim’s testimony is critical, but a conviction rarely rests on testimony alone. There needs to be corroborating evidence—signs of a struggle, a disrupted crime scene. Physical evidence is key—DNA, fluids, torn clothing. Witness testimony is also crucial if anyone else was present. Only when these pieces form a complete, unbroken chain proving a crime occurred can a guilty verdict and sentence be handed down. If it’s solely a ‘he said, she said’ situation with zero corroborating evidence, securing a conviction is incredibly difficult. But my father just loved his foster daughter way, way too much. Every single piece of evidence from their past corroborated his “malicious intent.” All the preferential treatment he showered on her, the things that were carved into my soul, the memories that repeated on a loop in my nightmares—they were finally dragged out into the daylight. Documented in black and white in police reports, they became the final straws that broke his back. His own biological daughter testified that he “loved” his foster daughter. Because Lily was a minor at the time, my father was sentenced to a heavy term: 7 years in state prison. In the courtroom, Lily pointed a shaking finger at the defendant’s table where my father—her foster father—sat, crying hysterically. “It was him! It was him!” “He came into my room late at night and touched my legs!” I couldn’t help it. I let out a sharp, genuine laugh. She had told the lie so many times, she actually believed it herself now. Lily’s mother, Sarah Vance, had also resurfaced for the trial. She was even more dramatic. Taking advantage of a distracted bailiff, she actually charged the defendant’s table and lunged at Mark Sterling. “You bastard! You sick animal! How could you do this to my daughter?! I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you!” Wow. She looked exactly like a devastated, fiercely protective mother. Assuming, of course, you ignored the fact that she had viciously slapped Lily across the face in the hallway when she found out there wouldn’t be a massive civil settlement payout. “I didn’t! I didn’t!” In the courtroom, my dad denied it over and over again. “I just treated her like a daughter!” “I was just trying to be a good person!” “I was just trying to be a good person!” He kept repeating it, right up until the prosecution started presenting the mountain of corroborating evidence. Security footage from Olive Garden: the two of them sitting across from each other. The most prominent thing on the table wasn’t the pizza, but a massive bouquet of red roses. “Yes, they came in almost every week, always requested the same booth. I remember them clearly,” the restaurant manager testified. “When he bought the watch, they came in together,” the jewelry store clerk testified smoothly. “Mark doted on that girl. He gave her the best of everything, while completely neglecting his own biological daughter. As neighbors, we saw it, but we were too afraid to say anything,” the old man from the sixth floor testified as the neighborhood representative. … I watched as piece after piece of evidence was presented. Every single one was a snapshot of their happy, loving past as “father and daughter.” And my father, Mark Sterling, sat frozen in horror at the defendant’s table as his own displays of affection were weaponized against him. As if sensing my gaze, his head snapped toward the back row of the gallery, looking directly at me. I was genuinely curious. In that moment, was he shocked by the sheer volume of “evidence,” or did he finally realize the monumental debt he owed me? It didn’t matter. What mattered was that I could never forget that my mother worked herself into an early grave. She was driven to her death by this “Saint” of a man. I lost my mother when I was very, very young. “Yes, I saw my father go into Lily’s bedroom late at night,” I stated calmly from the witness stand. His face turned ashen and dead, looking exactly like my mother did when she used to come home from her grueling shifts, sitting on the front steps. Ashen, dead, and utterly consumed by despair. “Yes. I plead guilty.” He finally broke. He whispered the words, followed immediately by the heavy, definitive slam of the judge’s gavel. My father, Mark Sterling, was sentenced to 7 years. My foster sister, Lily Vance, became known around town as “the girl who got abused by her dad.” Before I left town for college, I saw Lily one last time in the stairwell of the old apartment building. She was wearing an incredibly revealing outfit, looking me up and down. “Chloe, you’re heading off to college, huh?” “These days, a college degree is useless. You’ll max out at a generic office job making four grand a month. What’s the point?” She kept rambling, and I just listened quietly. Then, I asked her a question. “You’re actually incredibly jealous of me, aren’t you?” Her expression froze. But a second later, she burst into a loud, exaggerated, theatrical laugh, acting like I had just told the funniest joke in the world. I laughed along with her. “Jealous of you? Jealous that you’re poor? Jealous that you don’t have a mom?” I pulled my mother’s framed funeral portrait out of my backpack and looked at her. “Of course you’re jealous of me. Before my mom died, she hid away enough money to pay for my entire college tuition. And she left me the deed to this apartment. What did your mom leave you?” My mother went to heaven. But Lily’s mother was going to drag her straight down to hell. After the trial, Sarah didn’t take Lily away to start fresh in a new city. Instead, she abandoned her right back where she started. Lily had no source of income. She had nowhere to go. With her back against the wall, she had no choice but to return to the old apartment building. And so, under the shocked gazes of the neighbors, she transitioned from a tragic victim to a willing, cheap commodity. She tried to explain, over and over, that she was a victim of circumstance. But the looks she received grew increasingly predatory and vile. She didn’t realize that you can’t just brush off vicious rumors. She didn’t realize that once you validate the premise, it stops being a rumor and becomes an accepted fact. The moment she pointed the finger at her foster father, she became the other half of that dirty, sensational headline. When she walked by, there were hushed, dirty whispers. When she stopped, men would call out her name and laugh lewdly. She stopped leaving the apartment. She locked herself inside. But the door would be knocked on late at night. Men would stand outside her window, calling out to her. “Open up, Lily! Come out and play!” Sometimes it was one guy sneaking around; sometimes it was a whole group of them. She had no income. She couldn’t support herself. She didn’t have a mother to protect her. Her “rich girl” persona was entirely shattered, so she was too terrified to show her face at school, even though the district would have provided her with emergency housing and a bed. A parasitic vine cannot survive a storm. But she wasn’t born a parasite; her mother just never taught her how to be a tree that could stand on its own. How incredibly tragic. Finally, one day, she opened the door. “You really had no idea, did you?” I pulled the strap of her cheap tank top back up her shoulder, my voice a low whisper. “Your mom really did abandon you and run off.” In her slowly dilating, horrified pupils, I saw the reflection of my own faint smile. “All it took was one afternoon. I waited until the neighborhood gossips were sitting in the courtyard, went to the corner bodega to buy a soda, and ‘accidentally’ let slip a massive, top-secret piece of information.” My mind drifted back to that day. “Hey, Mr. Johnson, give me three Cokes. Don’t open them, I’m taking them to a friend’s house.” The gossips nearby chimed in. “Oh, you have a friend over there?” “Yeah! And their family is super important, so I can’t show up empty-handed.” “Important? What does your friend’s family do?” I pretended to think hard. “I don’t know exactly… but they work at the city zoning office. The department that decides which neighborhoods get demolished and bought out by developers.” “Oh! Well, ask them if our complex is getting bought out!” I acted shy. “I can’t ask that! I’m just a kid.” One of the nosy women got annoyed. “This kid doesn’t know how to network at all. How is she going to survive in the real world?” I grabbed my Cokes and stormed off, pretending to be angry. Then I spent the entire afternoon sitting in front of my mother’s grave. A few days later, I found a beat-up, abandoned sofa on the street and dragged it back to the apartment. The noise of me hauling it up the stairs made everyone poke their heads out their doors. “Chloe, why are you hauling that junk up here? When the developers buy us out, you won’t be able to take it with you anyway.” I flashed a brilliant smile and announced loudly, “Don’t worry, Mrs. Smith! My friend told me I can live here comfortably for a long, long time. Our complex isn’t getting bought out! The real estate boom is over. The real money now is in tech stocks and crypto, not buying up old land!” That day, the rumor that the buyout was canceled spread like wildfire, half-believed but heavily discussed. Sarah came knocking to verify. “Chloe, is what your friend said true?” I had never shown Sarah or her daughter an ounce of respect, so I gave my usual annoyed response. “Believe whatever you want. If you don’t believe me, go down to City Hall and ask them yourself.” “City Hall? Like they’d let regular people like us in there,” she muttered as she walked away, heading straight for Lily’s room. I was absolutely certain she had bought it, and was going to discuss her exit strategy with her daughter. If I had been polite to her, she would have suspected a trap. Sure enough, a few days later, Sarah packed her bags and vanished. “Your mom thought the massive developer payout was a bust, so she ran. She ditched her dead weight—you—to go find her next mark,” I told Lily, enunciating every word. “Did your mom tell you she was just going to go make some quick cash and come back for you? Don’t believe it. She lied to you.” “She abandoned you.” “Oh, and by the way, I should probably tell you… this complex is actually getting bought out by a developer next month. They’re tearing it down. You’re about to be homeless.” “How tragic. A true dead weight.” Then, I gently pulled her apartment door shut. As I walked down the stairs, I heard an agonizing, bloodcurdling scream echo from behind the closed door.

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In front of the classified cleanroom doors, my manager was throwing an absolute fit, pointing a trembling finger right at my nose and screaming at me. I had missed his voice memo because I didn’t have my phone on me. “Do you have a single brain cell in your head?! I sent you a message, and you dare to ignore me?!” I pointed at the red-lettered warning sign bolted to the wall: ABSOLUTELY NO COMMUNICATION DEVICES PERMITTED BEYOND THIS POINT. Then, I pointed to the young woman standing right next to him. It was the Plant Director’s niece, Chloe, who was currently holding her iPhone up on a ring light, aggressively live-streaming the assembly line. “Manager, company policy strictly forbids phones in the cleanroom.” The manager violently slapped my hand down. “Chloe is executing a corporate culture marketing campaign! Who the hell do you think you are to compare yourself to her? One of her videos gets tens of thousands of likes! What is a day of your manual labor worth?!” Chloe shoved her camera right into my face, her voice sickeningly sweet and dramatic. “Look at this, chat! This is exactly the kind of stubborn, rigid boomer that ruins companies. No wonder she’ll be tightening screws for the rest of her miserable life.” Desperate to kiss up to Chloe, the manager made a split-second decision. “Fine! Since you love the rules so much, you can go home and follow them all you want. Effective immediately, this facility no longer requires your services. You’re fired.” I unclipped my company ID badge and grabbed the notebook that was propping up the wobbly leg of the supervisor’s desk. It was the only handwritten, master calibration log for the entire factory. As I sat down on the city bus heading home, a piercing, deafening alarm suddenly erupted from the massive, antique German CNC machine back at the plant—the machine that I was the only person in the state qualified to calibrate. “Get the hell out! If I ever see your face in this industrial park again, I’ll call the cops!” A senior technician with ten years of seniority, fired on the spot for missing a text message. I didn’t look back. The cleanroom was blindingly bright. Two massive, high-wattage ring lights were pointed directly at people’s eyes. “Did you guys see that, chat?” Chloe squeaked into the microphone, pitching her voice up an octave. “She actually picked up that trash pile of scrap paper like it was some kind of treasure. Some people are just born to be garbage collectors, I swear.” I stepped over the yellow hazard line. My steel-toed boots clicked heavily against the epoxy floor. As I walked past the German 5-axis CNC machining center, I stopped. The machine was humming, but the frequency was wrong. That machine had insanely strict voltage requirements. Right now, Chloe’s live-streaming setup, her two massive ring lights, and two phone chargers were all plugged directly into the machine’s dedicated, isolated power supply. That specific circuit was meant exclusively for micro-millimeter precision calibration. My right thumb twitched. I instinctively reached out to check the hydraulic pressure dial. “What the hell are you looking at?!” Manager Davis lunged forward, physically blocking the machine. “Trying to sabotage company property?! Evelyn, you are terminated! If you touch this machine one more time, I am calling the police and having you thrown in a cell!” “Good luck, Manager Davis.” “GET OUT!” He shoved me hard in the shoulder. I used the momentum to turn around and walk straight toward the loading dock doors. Behind me, the low hum of the machine began to mix with the distinct, grinding sound of metal-on-metal gears. The lubrication supply was failing. To my trained ears, that sound was deafening. I walked out of the facility and down to the bus stop at the edge of the industrial park. A city bus, belching black exhaust, pulled up to the curb. I stepped on and tapped my transit card. The exact second the card reader beeped, a shrill, catastrophic siren erupted from the factory behind me. It was a Level 3 Critical Failure alarm. I sat down by the window. Through the glass, I saw the security guards sprint out of their booth. The workers inside the plant were running around in pure panic. The German CNC machine had completely shut down. Red warning strobes were flashing violently across the exterior walls of the factory. An abnormal shutdown meant the core spindle had automatically locked down. Besides the 16-digit hex code written in my notebook, absolutely no one on earth knew how to bypass that lock. The bus had barely driven a hundred yards. In the side mirror, a security golf cart came flying out of the gates. Manager Davis had the throttle pinned to the max, waving frantically at the bus driver, his mouth open in a desperate scream. The bus slammed on its brakes. I jerked forward in my seat. “STOP! STOP THE BUS!” Manager Davis violently pounded on the folding doors. The driver opened the doors. Davis charged up the steps and grabbed my arm. “Get off!” His face was completely twisted in rage. “You sabotaged the machine before you left, didn’t you?! The machine is dead! You aren’t going anywhere today!” Davis clamped his hand around my wrist and violently dragged me off the bus. His grip was brutal. He wasn’t treating me like a human being. The bus driver took one look at Davis’s gold “Manager” badge, quickly shut the doors, and slammed the gas pedal to the floor. It was shift change. A massive crowd of workers was bottlenecked at the factory gates. Even people from the neighboring factories were poking their heads out to watch the drama. “Search her bag!” Davis pointed at me, screaming at the security booth. The guards didn’t move. Old Frank, the head of security, glanced at the crowd. “Manager Davis, searching an employee’s personal belongings without a warrant is illegal.” “I AM THE LAW AROUND HERE!” Davis kicked Old Frank hard in the shin. “That machine costs millions of dollars! If it’s broken, are you going to pay for it?! She definitely stole a microchip or slashed a wire! If you don’t search her, you’re all fired!” Old Frank took a step back and fell silent. A few younger guards hesitantly stepped forward. “I’m sorry, Evelyn.” I tightened my grip on the strap of my canvas tote bag. Before the guards could even reach me, Davis violently snatched the bag from my shoulder, ripped the zipper open, turned it upside down, and shook it violently over the pavement. Everything crashed onto the asphalt. My glass water bottle shattered. A half-empty pack of tissues scattered in the wind. Two pink, wrapped tampons landed right on top of the pile. A few wolf-whistles echoed from the crowd of male workers. The sound of hushed, mocking whispers drilled into my ears. I stared at my belongings on the ground, keeping my spine perfectly straight. “Well, well, what do we have here?” Chloe squeezed through the crowd, shoving her selfie stick right into my face. “Look at this, chat! This is what happens when you try to sabotage a company. Her bag is literally just full of garbage.” She aimed the camera lens directly at the tampons on the ground. “Bringing this kind of gross, private stuff into a sterile cleanroom? So disgusting.” The comments on her live stream were scrolling at lightning speed. Davis didn’t find any stolen microchips or wire cutters. The only thing he saw was the notebook. It had landed splayed open on the wet asphalt. “Is this what you stole?!” Davis snatched the notebook off the ground and flipped through a few pages. “Looks like alien chicken-scratch.” He couldn’t understand a single word of it. But he noticed that I had been fiercely protecting it earlier. “Give it back,” I said, holding out my hand. The sky had darkened ominously. Thunder rolled overhead, and the rain suddenly began pouring down in sheets. Davis raised his arm high. He violently chucked the notebook into a muddy puddle by the curb. He stepped directly onto it, grinding the sole of his leather dress shoe into the pages. Black mud soaked instantly into the paper. The fountain pen ink was completely destroyed by the rainwater. The meticulously recorded calibration data turned into a massive, illegible blur of black ink. “Garbage belongs in the garbage dump.” Davis spat on the ground. The rain was coming down hard now. The crowd of onlookers retreated under the security awning. No one said a word. I crouched down. Rainwater blurred my eyelashes. My fingers dug into the wet, mushy pages. I picked it up and tried to wipe it with my sleeve. It only smeared the black ink further. “Stop wiping it.” Davis opened an umbrella, holding it over Chloe, while his own shoulder got soaked in the rain. “Evelyn. The machine is flashing completely red. You are coming back inside to fix it right now. If you can’t fix it, that’s millions of dollars in damages. You couldn’t afford to pay that off if you sold both your kidneys.” I stopped wiping the book. I stood up straight. Rainwater dripped steadily from my chin. “I have already been terminated, Manager Davis.” I stared him dead in the eye. “Since it’s garbage, you can fix it yourself.” I turned around. Behind me, the piercing shriek of the machine’s alarm cut right through the torrential rain. His phone was violently vibrating in his pocket. It was the client, screaming for their order. “You ungrateful bitch!” Davis threw the umbrella aside and frantically waved at the guards. “Arrest her! Lock her in the security booth! Until that machine is fixed, nobody is leaving this property!” Two guards grabbed me by the arms. I didn’t fight back. Even if he locked me in a cage, there wasn’t a single person on this earth besides me who could fix that machine. The security booth had nothing but a cheap wooden desk and a folding chair. The roar of the rain pounding against the window was deafening. My uniform was completely soaked, clinging heavily to my back. I curled up in the folding chair, pressing my elbows into my knees, tightly clutching the dripping, mud-soaked notebook to my chest. When the 5-axis CNC center goes into a voltage-anomaly lockdown, if the system isn’t bypassed and reset within twenty minutes, the hydraulic pressure system suffers a catastrophic overload. The machine being destroyed was the least of their problems. Clamped inside that machine was a three-million-dollar piece of aerospace-grade aluminum. The minute hand on the wall clock ticked forward. The door violently slammed open, hitting the wall with a loud crack. Davis burst into the room. His tie was ripped loose, and the collar of his dress shirt was soaked in nervous sweat. Behind him trailed a group of junior technicians who usually walked around with their noses in the air. Right now, they were all shrinking into themselves, staring intensely at their own shoes. “THE PASSWORD!” Davis slammed both hands brutally onto the wooden desk, making the metal thermos jump. “WHAT IS THE RESET PASSWORD FOR THAT STUPID PIECE OF JUNK?!” I hugged the notebook even tighter. “There is no password.” It was a hardcoded, base-level logic bypass code. There was no simple “6-digit pin.” “BULLSHIT!” Davis pointed a shaking finger at the technicians cowering behind him. “They tried everything! The system is hard-locked! It requires a master-level override command! You are the only person who has it!” The technicians shrank back even further. They were perfectly happy swapping out drill bits and refilling coolant, but the second it came to complex system calibration—the actual dirty, exhausting work—they ran faster than anyone else. “Chloe is still live-streaming!” Davis paced the tiny room in frantic circles, his wet shoes squeaking aggressively against the linoleum. “The machine won’t stop screaming! It’s so loud she can’t even sing for her viewers! The client called asking why the background noise is a literal emergency siren! How the hell am I supposed to explain that?!” “That is the equipment overload warning.” “In exactly ten minutes, the pressure valves are going to rupture.” I looked up at him. “When that happens, it won’t just be loud. People are going to die.” The fat on Davis’s face violently trembled. He yanked his phone out of his pocket, pulled up a video, and shoved the screen inches from my face. On the screen, a blonde, blue-eyed German executive was slamming his fist on a boardroom table, screaming in broken English about triggering the 3x penalty clause for breach of contract. Five million dollars. “Did you hear that?!” “Evelyn! If the company has to pay this fine, I am going to the cops and pressing charges against you for premeditated sabotage and destroying industrial infrastructure!” From the hallway outside, Chloe’s voice echoed loudly. She was holding her phone high in the air. “Listen to this, chat! Do you hear how evil this woman is? She got fired, so she’s trying to drag the entire factory down to hell with her! She’s just jealous because I’m young and pretty, and because my uncle is the Plant Director!” She squeezed into the tiny security booth and latched onto Davis’s arm. “Dave, stop wasting time talking to her. Just call the cops.” Davis didn’t say a word. If he called the cops, the first thing they would do is investigate the electrical load failure, and the entire blame would fall squarely, 100% on his shoulders. His eyes darted around the room before he suddenly bent over, bringing his face uncomfortably close to mine. “Evelyn. I’m going to give you one chance.” “Director Vance is on his way right now.” “You are going to walk out there, fix the machine, drop to your knees on Chloe’s live stream, and publicly confess that you deliberately sabotaged the equipment.” “If you do that, I won’t press charges.” He lowered his voice to a venomous whisper. “Otherwise, I will make sure you rot in federal prison for the rest of your life.” A wave of stale cigarette breath hit my face. I glanced at Chloe, who was currently pouting her lips at her front-facing camera, and calmly wiped the muddy water from my notebook onto my sleeve. “Sure.” I looked directly at Davis. “Then we’ll wait for Director Vance to get here.” Before the words even finished leaving my mouth. BOOM! A deafening, explosive boom detonated from the direction of the cleanroom. The glass windows of the security booth rattled violently. Davis’s legs instantly gave out. He collapsed hard onto the floor. The technicians behind him turned the color of wet cement. The pressure valve had ruptured. Davis scrambled up from the floor like he had been electrocuted. “Did… did it explode?!” He stumbled backward, trembling uncontrollably. I glanced out the window at the thick plume of white steam billowing out of the factory roof. “Not yet. That was the primary release valve. There’s still a secondary backup.” Davis lunged forward, grabbing me by the collar of my uniform, his knuckles digging painfully into my throat. “FIX IT! IF YOU WANT TO DIE, DON’T DRAG ME DOWN WITH YOU!” He violently hauled me out of the booth. I stumbled after him, struggling to keep my balance. The cleanroom was completely engulfed in blinding white steam. The air was thick and suffocating with the acrid stench of atomized hydraulic fluid. Chloe had retreated to the far wall by the main breaker box, her phone still held high in the air. Seeing me get dragged in, she instantly shoved the camera lens toward me. “Chat! We caught the terrorist!” She pointed dramatically at the hissing, screaming machine. “Look! This is all her fault!” Davis violently shoved me toward the main control console. “Do it! Now! Director Vance is going to be here any second! If he walks in and this machine isn’t fixed, I will literally kill you!” The massive steel loading dock doors began to roll upward. A black Audi A6 came tearing into the warehouse, slamming on the brakes, the tires shrieking as they left thick black skid marks on the polished epoxy floor. The driver’s side door flew open, and Robert Vance, the Plant Director, vaulted out of the car. He slipped on the wet floor and nearly face-planted onto the concrete. His white dress shirt was completely soaked by the rain, clinging tightly to his stomach. Several Chief Engineers sprinted in right behind him. “WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?!” Vance’s roar completely overpowered the shrieking alarms. He stared in absolute horror at the machine, which was now flashing blood-red emergency strobes, his eyes bulging out of his skull. “Uncle Robert!” Chloe threw herself at him, tears streaming down her face with perfect, dramatic timing. “I was so scared! It’s all Evelyn’s fault!” She pointed a vicious finger at me. “She was mad that she got fired, so she sabotaged the machine! She almost blew me up! Look at my dress, it’s ruined!” Davis wiped the rain and sweat off his face and scurried over to Vance. “Director! I tried everything! Evelyn holds a grudge against the company, refused to run the maintenance protocols, and actively tried to destroy the facility!” Vance was panting heavily. His furious gaze swept over the screaming machine, over Chloe, over Davis. And finally, it locked onto the dedicated, isolated power supply outlet on the wall. Plugged directly into that highly sensitive circuit were the two massive, thousand-watt ring lights, with thick, heavy extension cords trailing all across the wet floor. The veins on Vance’s neck looked ready to burst. Chloe tugged on Vance’s wet sleeve. “Uncle Robert, tell the security guards to arrest her! I’m going to sue her for…” SMACK! Vance swung his arm with everything he had and delivered a brutal, open-handed slap directly across Chloe’s face. Chloe spun 180 degrees from the impact and collapsed hard onto the floor. Her phone flew out of her hand and smashed onto the concrete, the screen instantly shattering into a spiderweb of cracks. Davis stood there with his mouth hanging open, entirely speechless. Chloe clutched her burning cheek. “Uncle… you hit me?” Vance pointed a trembling finger at the power outlet. “Live-streaming inside a classified, restricted-access cleanroom?! Plugging commercial ring lights into a micro-voltage industrial outlet?!” “ARE YOU TRYING TO BLOW THIS ENTIRE BUILDING OFF THE MAP?!” Vance turned around and slowly looked at me. He bent at the waist, bowing a full, perfect ninety degrees. “Evelyn. I am begging you. Save us.”

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Three years into my marriage with Tristan Vance, everyone around us still firmly believed his carefully crafted “single and available” persona. At the company’s annual success gala, his personal assistant sang a love song dedicated entirely to him. She even got down on one knee, delivering a deeply passionate confession of her love. I thought, surely, this was the moment he would finally announce our relationship to everyone. But instead, faced with the roaring encouragement of our colleagues, he simply offered a helpless, indulgent smile, nodded, and accepted Chloe’s confession. The cheers erupted like a tidal wave, each wave louder than the last. I stood in the shadows, my entire body trembling with a cold so deep it chilled my bones. Tristan’s gaze met mine across the room. His eyes carried a sharp, unmistakable warning. But this time, I didn’t pull him aside to demand an explanation like I usually did. I just stood there and clapped along with the rest of them. “Congratulations, Director Vance. Congratulations, Chloe.” “Such a happy occasion! Doesn’t this mean the Director owes everyone here a round of drinks on his tab?” … The moment the words left my mouth, the crowd’s cheering grew even more frantic. Tristan’s brows knotted together. He shot me a covert, furious glare. But, trapped by the sheer enthusiasm of the crowd, he had no choice but to bite the bullet and pull out his black card, paying for a massive round of expensive champagne for everyone. When he finally made his way over to me, he waited until no one was looking, grabbed my arm, and dragged me into the breakroom. “Why are you joining in and making a scene? Do you have any idea how much money I just dropped buying drinks for this entire department?” “What kind of tantrum are you throwing now?” He genuinely believed my comments out there were just me being petty. I forced a bitter smile. I wanted to speak, but it felt like something was suffocating me, blocking my throat. I couldn’t force a single word out. I just let out a heavy sigh. “Tristan, we’ve been married for three years. You promised me.” “You promised that once your career stabilized, we would make our relationship public. What exactly are you doing right now? Are you cheating on me?” Tristan’s eyes had been darting toward the breakroom window, nervously checking if anyone was listening. Hearing my accusation, his head snapped back to me. “What kind of nonsense are you spewing?!” Realizing his voice had spiked, he forcibly swallowed his anger. “Harper, yes, I made a promise.” “But have you stopped to think about your mother? If I hadn’t been financially supporting her treatments, do you really think she’d still be alive today?” “I have to climb higher. I have to make more money. Otherwise, how many months of her medical bills do you think your pathetic little salary could cover?” Every single word he spat out hit my eardrums like a physical blow. “So you accept Chloe’s confession right in front of my face? What am I to you? I am your wife!” I growled, keeping my voice low but fierce. This only made Tristan angrier. “Can’t you be a little understanding?! If it weren’t for me these past few years, your mother would be dead and buried by now!” I had heard these exact words countless times over the years, but they had never ripped my heart apart quite like this. In Tristan’s eyes, our marriage, our home, our entire future… They would always, always be secondary to his ambition. And all of this was simply because Chloe was the CEO’s daughter. That was why he desperately maintained his single persona, while brazenly flirting with Chloe in front of the entire company. He was affectionate with her right in front of my eyes, yet he demanded that I be “understanding.” From the day we started dating to the day we got married, he had always been this intensely ambitious. After we got married, he even took control of all my bank accounts, insisting he manage our finances. As he worked harder and harder, and the money piled up, his heart grew colder and colder. Whenever we had an argument, he always, without fail, weaponized my terminally ill mother’s life against me. “Then give me back my bank cards. From today on, my mother doesn’t need a single cent from you…” My words were cut off by the sound of the breakroom door being pushed open. Chloe leaned against the doorframe, looking at Tristan and me with a surprised expression. Tristan immediately took a huge step away from me, acting as if nothing had just happened. “Oh, Manager Harper, you’re here too. I was looking everywhere for you guys. I thought something was wrong.” Chloe beamed a massive smile, walking over and naturally intertwining her fingers with Tristan’s. She affectionately pressed her cheek against his. “I’ve already told my parents about us. They want to meet you.” I could clearly see the flash of absolute ecstasy in Tristan’s eyes. He instinctively shot me a glance, then tightened his grip on Chloe’s hand. “Of course. I’m available whenever they are.” My hands, hanging loosely at my sides, clenched into tight fists. My nails dug deep into my palms; only the sharp, stinging pain kept me grounded in reality. Chloe walked over to me and shoved a thick, bulging envelope into my hands. She flashed a radiant, triumphant smile. “Manager Harper, you work so closely with Tristan and handle so much. Consider this a little bonus for all your hard work.” As soon as she finished speaking, Tristan gently pulled her away. Before he walked out the door, he didn’t even spare me a single glance. I was left completely alone in the breakroom. Outside, the celebration continued to rage. The notifications in the company group chat were exploding with congratulatory messages for the new couple. I looked down at the hidden photo album on my phone. It was a scan of our official marriage certificate photo. He had forbidden me from using it as my lock screen, so I could only hide it deep in my camera roll. Every time I looked at it, I somehow convinced myself I could hold on a little longer. I stared at that photo with its bright red background for a very long time. Then, I uploaded it directly to the company’s internal message board. I had endured this for three years. I had absolutely no strength left to keep pretending. It took exactly one day for that photo to circulate to every single screen in the building. When I walked into the office, the way my coworkers looked at me was entirely different. The relentless, hushed whispers drifted into my ears from every direction. [What the hell is going on? Manager Harper and Director Vance are married?] [Then what was all that yesterday? Chloe is the other woman…?] Some of the bolder employees walked right up to my desk and asked me directly. “Manager Harper, you never mentioned you were married. Is that photo photoshopped?” Before I could even open my mouth to answer, Tristan summoned me into his private office. The moment the door clicked shut. A splash of scalding hot water was thrown directly into my face. Tristan’s face was twisted with absolute fury. He violently smashed the glass mug onto the floor right at my feet. The flying shards of glass sliced a shallow cut near the corner of my eye. Drops of blood hit the floor. “Harper, are you intentionally trying to ruin me?!” “Didn’t I explicitly tell you that absolutely no one could know about our marriage?! The entire company is gossiping about it right now!” “Did you even stop for one second to think about how this would affect Chloe?! Everyone out there is calling her a homewrecker!” I wiped my face. The skin where the boiling water had hit was searing red. “I just posted the truth. Is telling the truth a crime?” I didn’t feel I had done anything wrong. “Are you afraid of losing face, or are you just terrified of ruining your perfect image in Chloe’s eyes?” “Does the CEO’s precious daughter know she’s sleeping with a married man?” Tristan’s lips parted, a flash of undeniable guilt crossing his eyes. He aggressively rubbed his temples, then, predictably, brought up my mother. “Don’t you dare forget that your half-dead mother is currently laying in the most expensive VIP suite at that care facility, being kept alive by the most expensive imported drugs.” “If I get suspended over this scandal, how the hell are you going to pay her medical bills?!” I let out a dry, exhausted chuckle. The fatigue weighing on my soul felt infinitely heavy. Always this. It’s always this. “Give me my bank cards back. I can pay my mother’s medical bills myself.” Tristan looked at me in shock, which was quickly replaced by utter contempt. He let out a mocking scoff. He marched over to his safe, pulled out a thick, heavy stack of hospital bills, and slammed them onto his desk. “You want to settle accounts with me? Fine! Let’s go through it line by line. Let’s see exactly how much money you and your mother have bled from me!” He stabbed his finger at the stack of bills, speaking through gritted teeth. Only then did I realize that from the day we got married until this exact moment, he had meticulously tracked every single penny he had spent on me. Three years ago, when he asked me to marry him, he had looked me in the eye and said: Your mother treated me like her own son. She saved my life once. I will give everything I have to help her. He did keep his word. But Tristan turned that help into a weapon to control me. Every time. Every single time. Whenever I did the slightest thing that displeased him, he weaponized my mother’s life against me, forcing me to surrender over and over again. He climbed higher and higher, eventually becoming the highly respected Director Vance everyone admired. And then he told me: “Harper, my career is on a massive upward trajectory right now. I can’t let the executives know we’re married. It’ll ruin my image as a fully dedicated company man.” “You have to understand. Mom’s life is more important than anything else right now.” I believed him. I watched him meticulously build his “single, eligible bachelor” persona, while simultaneously getting closer and closer to his new assistant, Chloe. Whenever I confronted him about it, he would look at me with sheer impatience and say: “Chloe is the CEO’s daughter. She is going to inherit this entire corporation one day.” “I’m just trying to climb the ladder and secure our financial future. What exactly am I doing wrong?” The office door was violently shoved open. Chloe burst into the room, her eyes completely bloodshot. She held up her phone, the screen displaying our marriage photo, and screamed at Tristan. “Tristan Vance! You lied to me?! Are you two actually married?!” Tristan didn’t miss a beat. He shook his head with absolute conviction. “No, I have always been single. Harper has already admitted she made a terrible mistake. She’s going to issue a public clarification right now.” His expression didn’t change as he pulled out his phone and opened a live security feed. The camera was pointed directly at my mother’s hospital bed. He lowered his voice into a vicious, lethal whisper. “The private nurse at the hospital works for me. If you don’t go out there and clarify this right now, I will order him to pull her oxygen tube.” My pupils dilated in sheer, unadulterated terror. I stared at him, unable to believe what I was hearing. “Tristan?! Have you lost your fucking mind?!” Tristan raised his hand, counting down on his fingers. “Three. Two…” “Fine.” I clenched my fists so tightly my nails drew blood. The agonizing, tearing pain in my chest was the only thing reminding me I was still alive. I stood in the center of the bullpen, facing the entire company, and confessed. “I photoshopped that image. Director Vance and I have absolutely no romantic relationship whatsoever.” Because of my “confession,” Tristan was immediately reinstated and cleared of all suspicion, while I was indefinitely suspended pending an investigation. As I packed up my desk into a cardboard box, I could feel the malicious stares piercing my skin like needles. The hushed whispers had escalated into open, blatant verbal abuse. “I knew Harper was shady. She’s been acting so desperate for a sugar daddy lately.” “Exactly. Director Vance always said he was single. How could he possibly be married to someone like her? She was clearly trying to force his hand and be the other woman.” “She’s so disgusting.” I bore the brunt of their malice, fleeing the corporate building like a cornered rat. When I finally got back to our apartment, my phone buzzed with a text from Tristan. [Harper, no matter what happens, we are still husband and wife. Once my promotion to VP is finalized, I’ll fix all of this, and I’ll cut ties with Chloe completely.] [Just wait a little longer. You have my word.] Staring at those empty promises, I realized I didn’t believe a single syllable anymore. I don’t know who did it, but someone had recorded a video of my forced confession and leaked it onto the internet. Overnight, I became the city’s biggest laughingstock. “Tarnishing the company’s reputation.” My suspension was quickly converted to a termination for cause. I didn’t even receive a severance package. The internet mob relentlessly attacked me, flooding my social media with vile, degrading insults. Some deranged vigilantes even tracked down my address and splashed red paint all over my front door. I was terrified to step outside. Every single day, people would gather outside my door and scream abuse. “You desperate, homewrecking slut! If you want money so badly, go find an old creep to pay you!” “People like you are the absolute scum of society!” No matter how I tried to defend myself, no one was willing to listen to the truth. I sat on the couch, completely hollowed out, scrolling mindlessly through Tristan’s Instagram. He had just posted a new carousel of photos. Aside from a series of romantic couples’ portraits with Chloe… There was a close-up shot of two hands, both wearing matching Cartier diamond rings. The diamonds caught the light flawlessly. The caption read: [The love of my life.] I covered my face with my hands, hot tears pouring through my fingers. I grabbed my heavy glass water bottle and hurled it violently at the massive framed wedding portrait hanging on the wall. The glass shattered, raining down in a thousand pieces. I took a deep, shuddering breath and dialed the number of a lawyer friend. “Draft divorce papers for me and Tristan Vance. I want to completely maximize my financial settlement.” “He committed adultery. I have irrefutable proof.” During the days I spent finalizing the divorce strategy, Tristan never came home. He never even called. A week later, it was company payday. When I was terminated, HR had assured me that my final month’s base salary would be paid out normally. But when I checked my bank account, the only deposit was a pathetic $200 attendance bonus. At the exact same time, my former colleagues in the departmental group chat were throwing a digital party, celebrating Chloe for single-handedly closing a massive, highly lucrative corporate contract. I stared at the signature on the finalized project brief. A deafening ringing filled my ears. That was the contract I had literally drank myself into a stomach hemorrhage to secure during a brutal negotiation dinner. I was the one who had built the relationship with that client from the ground up. If that commission had paid out to me, I would have had enough money to cover my mother’s bills. I wouldn’t have needed Tristan’s money anymore. My hands shook violently as I tried to message the client, confused as to why they had signed early without me. But the message bounced back. The client had blocked my number. I called Tristan. The phone rang and rang, but he didn’t pick up. It wasn’t until my nineteenth call that the line finally connected. Before I could even speak, the sound of heavy, rhythmic breathing came through the speaker. Chloe’s voice, thick with annoyance, snapped at me. “Harper, you’ve been fired. Could you stop harassing my boyfriend?” “Can’t you take a hint?” I instinctively slammed the ‘End Call’ button. But those repulsive, wet sounds kept echoing in my brain. The hand holding my phone was trembling uncontrollably. A sharp, piercing agony radiated from my heart, spreading through my entire body like venom. But reality didn’t give me a single second to catch my breath. My phone rang again. This time, the caller ID showed the hospital. It rang relentlessly, sending me into a blind panic. “Hello…” “Ms. Harper, there has been a critical incident regarding your mother.”

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I had just posted a vacation photo with my boyfriend on Instagram when a “Loyalty Tester” slid into my DMs. “Babe, your boyfriend looks like a player. Send me his handle. I’ll run a loyalty test on him for free, how about it?” “Are homewreckers really this bold and self-righteous nowadays?” I replied. After I rejected her, she immediately took a screenshot of our chat, posted it on TikTok, and played the victim. Within hours, thousands of netizens flooded my DMs, cursing me out. To keep the peace, I swallowed my pride and posted a public apology, stating I just wanted a quiet, normal life. But she and her followers decided my apology was proof of a guilty conscience. They insisted I was terrified, and she boldly declared she was going to test him anyway to “save” me. A few days later, the Loyalty Tester smugly posted a screenshot showing she had successfully added my boyfriend on Snapchat. The caption read: “Easy catch. Your man isn’t exactly a saint, babe~” I looked at the post, but all I felt was pity for her. Her new post went viral. Within an hour, it hit ten thousand likes. I stared at the two screenshots in the post. The first was her friend request: “Hey handsome, this is me in the pic. Add me?” The second was a chat interface. She had blurred his username, but I recognized the profile picture instantly. It was a photo of me, taken during our vacation just a few days ago, smiling radiantly at the camera. The comment section was an absolute bloodbath. Hordes of netizens rushed in to mock me. “@Chloe, come look at this! Do you recognize the guy flirting in someone else’s chat?” “Where is that clown who was defending him? No wonder she got so defensive over a free loyalty test. Her precious Prince Charming belongs to the streets.” “Stop hiding, pick-me girl. Come out and beg the tester for an apology.” As the internet demanded, I was tagged in the top pinned comment, right beneath the Loyalty Tester’s smirking emoji. Watching the comments grow increasingly vile, I couldn’t hold back anymore. I posted a response: “I appreciate everyone’s concern for my relationship. However, my boyfriend and I have known each other since high school. We’ve weathered a lot of storms together. I know his character, and I have absolute faith in our relationship. If things ever fall apart, I won’t hesitate to walk away. But until then, I will not subject him to some twisted psychological test, and I do not welcome anyone trying to interfere in our relationship.” Seeing a wave of rational users upvoting my response, I breathed a sigh of relief, praying the mob would disperse. But the Loyalty Tester immediately replied with a crying video: “Babe, I don’t want to ruin your relationship! I’m just terrified of seeing a sweet girl get manipulated by a toxic man. I just wanted to help!” The moment she spoke, her army of followers descended, and the narrative violently shifted again. They decided I was just a desperate, pathetic “doormat” who couldn’t bear to let go of a cheater. They started mocking my post, turning it into a copypasta template, laughing and calling it a “masterclass in delusion.” Even the few comments wishing us a long, happy relationship were downvoted to oblivion. Staring at the vicious, stinging words, my chest tightened. Finally, I just turned off my phone. That evening, I came home exhausted from work. The moment I walked through the door, I saw Mason leaning back on the sofa, staring at his phone with a faint, handsome smirk on his face. Hearing my keys, he instinctively flinched. He quickly placed his phone face-down on the cushions and coughed awkwardly. “Chloe, you’re home early today?” “Yeah. Were you chatting with someone?” “Just one of the bros.” My heart sank. He was lying. Mason had a specific tell—every time he lied, he blinked rapidly. I forced myself to rationalize it. We were adults; everyone is entitled to their privacy. I pretended not to notice. I sat down and started complaining about the drama at my corporate job, just like I usually did. Mason listened quietly, just like he usually did. But his eyes kept darting back to his phone. After talking for ten minutes without getting a single response, a sudden wave of exhaustion washed over me. Remembering the internet circus from earlier, I couldn’t help but test the waters. “Mason, did anyone… weird try to add you online today?” He smiled casually. “Nope.” Hearing that single word, my heart plummeted into the abyss. I subconsciously gripped the hem of my shirt, desperately trying to shake the paranoid thoughts from my head. Mason and I had been through a lot. It wasn’t like other girls hadn’t tried to shoot their shot before—college underclassmen, flirty coworkers—but he had brutally rejected every single one of them. Why would a random internet troll suddenly destroy what we had? Besides, I knew exactly what kind of man Mason was. Comforting myself with that thought, I let out a breath and went to the bedroom to rest. But the moment I opened Instagram, I saw the Loyalty Tester had just dropped a new update. “You poor, naive girl. My heart breaks for you.” I was instantly drawn to the cover photo. It was a screenshot of her chat with Mason. At first, it was just her awkwardly trying to make conversation. But once she “discovered” that Mason loved playing Valorant, they instantly hit it off. He even invited her to a duo queue. After the match, the chat showed him praising her gaming skills, saying she was way better than his “clueless girlfriend” who didn’t know how to play. My grip on my phone tightened until my knuckles turned white. It was true. Mason was an incredible gamer, and I was absolute garbage at it. Whenever we played together, I dragged him down, and he had to constantly save me while reassuring me it was fine. Knowing I was a liability, I eventually just stopped playing with him altogether. The internet mob arrived on cue. “Oh my god, she’s still not dumping him?!” The comments aggressively tagged my handle. “She’s the ultimate pick-me. What do you expect? She’s perfectly happy eating garbage.” “Poor OP, having to force herself to flirt with such a disgusting guy just to prove a point.” The Loyalty Tester replied sweetly: “Babes, it’s not hard work. I just want to help my sisters see men for who they truly are.” The internet erupted in applause, showering her with digital hugs. “The OP is a literal angel. Too bad the pathetic girlfriend is too blind to appreciate it.” “It’s okay,” the tester replied. “Some girls are smart, and some girls are just a little slow. We need to be patient. I’ll keep working hard until she finally wakes up.” She attached a cute finger-heart emoji. Moved by her “heroic” mission, her follower count skyrocketed overnight. I clicked on her profile. Her entire grid was dedicated to exposing other people’s boyfriends. Every cover photo had the words “CERTIFIED TRASH” stamped across it in bold red letters. The comment sections were filled with cheers and women thanking her for saving their lives. So, was it my turn now? Just then, I heard the bedroom door open. I looked at Mason as he walked in. The lighting cast shadows across my face. I asked him one more time: “Mason, I can trust you, right?” Mason tilted his head in confusion, then smiled, walking over and pulling me into a warm hug. He affectionately nuzzled his forehead against mine. “Of course you can.” “Okay. I trust you.” I put my phone down and turned off the lamp. For the next few days, I stayed off social media, and Mason didn’t show any strange behavior. I figured that once the internet found a new target to bully, the mob would naturally disperse. But a few days later, while I was taking a coffee break after a client meeting downtown, I spotted a familiar back across the outdoor promenade. Tall, broad-shouldered, wearing a sleek black leather jacket. He stood out in the crowd. And standing out just as much was the stunning woman beside him. She was wearing a form-fitting black slip dress, smiling radiantly as she clung to his arm. It was the Loyalty Tester. I gripped my handbag tightly and marched forward. Just as I got close, the Loyalty Tester suddenly let go of his arm and scurried away, as if trying to avoid suspicion. Mason turned around. He looked at me, a mix of shock and panic flashing across his face. “Chloe? What are you doing here?” My gaze shifted from him to the retreating figure of the woman, my voice freezing cold. “Who was that?” He avoided my eyes. “Just an aggressive street promoter. She wouldn’t stop trying to sell me cologne.” “Then what are you doing all the way out here?” Mason owned a high-end automotive tuning club. He was usually at his shop all day. Today, he had driven an hour across the city. He smiled softly. “I heard you had a client meeting in this area. I was waiting for you to finish so I could take you to dinner.” He pulled out his phone to show me a reservation at a wildly expensive, incredibly romantic restaurant. Even though the overly dramatic, candlelit decor wasn’t really my style, I appreciated the gesture and agreed to go. The food was actually fantastic. By the end of the meal, my mood had significantly improved. Bored, I pulled out my phone to check if the internet drama had finally died down. The very first thing on my feed was a new post from the Loyalty Tester. “Babe, you ate my food.” The photo attached showed me sitting happily at the romantic restaurant, chatting with Mason. Mason happened to have his head turned away from the camera. From that specific angle, his back looked somehow lonely and distracted. I whipped my head around to look at the spot where she must have taken the photo, but the area was already empty. My good mood instantly evaporated. A wave of suffocating irritation washed over me. I accidentally glanced at the comment section, reading the sarcastic, mocking quotes from her followers. A lump of pure, unadulterated rage lodged in my chest, completely trapped. Right on cue, the Loyalty Tester sent me a DM. Her tone was still dripping with that fake, patronizing pity. “Babe, I assume you saw it. I bet that trashy man told you I was just a promoter, didn’t he?” The fire in my chest exploded. My typing was aggressive: “I am warning you for the last time. I do not need your so-called loyalty tests. Stay the hell away from me and my boyfriend!” The Loyalty Tester replied with breezy arrogance: “Every woman acts exactly like you when forced to face reality. But it’s fine. I know that in a few days, you’ll be on your knees thanking me.” “Enough. Let me make this clear: intentionally inserting yourself into someone else’s relationship, regardless of your pathetic excuses, makes you a homewrecker.” She replied with a melodramatic sigh: “Fine. I’ll just help you test him a little longer.” She vanished offline. I was so furious I wanted to throw my phone across the restaurant. I looked up. Mason had just checked a message on his phone. He looked at me apologetically. “Chloe, work just blew up. I’m really sorry, but I have to go.” He threw cash on the table and rushed out. I looked out the restaurant window. I watched him get into his sports car in the valet lane. Just as he pulled up to the curb, a woman slipped into the passenger seat. The angle obscured her face, but she was wearing a form-fitting black slip dress. I sat alone at the table for a long time before finally remembering I needed to head back to the corporate office. When I walked in, the pitch deck I had assigned to my team that morning was still sitting half-finished on a desk. “What is the meaning of this? I assigned this at 9 AM, and it’s still not done?!” I slammed the folder onto the desk. A few junior employees lowered their heads in silence. But in the corner, Leo, the new Gen-Z intern, was scrolling on his phone and let out a loud, mocking snicker. “What’s so funny?” He lazily lifted his eyes and turned his phone screen toward me. It was the Loyalty Tester’s newest post. The algorithm was pushing it so hard that everyone in my office had seen it. “Supervisor Chloe,” Leo drawled, a smirk playing on his lips. “You’re getting publicly humiliated and cheated on for the whole internet to see, and you’re coming in here to take your anger out on us?” The other employees didn’t look the least bit sympathetic. Their eyes were dancing with suppressed laughter. Just then, the department director pushed the door open. Seeing the absolute chaos and the untouched pitch deck, he lost his mind and screamed at all of us—but aimed the brunt of his fury at me. I kept my head down and took the verbal beating, not daring to defend myself. Behind me, the intern was secretly snapping photos of me getting yelled at. When he was finally done screaming, the director pointed a lethal finger at my face. “Chloe, I am warning you! Your pathetic personal drama is severely damaging the company’s image. Clean up your mess in one week, or you’re fired!” He slammed the door and left. I tried to reassign the tasks. My team listened half-heartedly before sluggishly returning to their desks. But the second I stepped out for a breather, I saw that they had already leaked the photo of me getting screamed at to a gossip forum, laughing about it in the comments. That night, I dragged my exhausted, heavy body home. When I opened the door, the apartment was pitch black. I flicked on the lights. Sitting on the coffee table was a handwritten note. “Chloe, I had to head out of town for an emergency. Take care of yourself. I’ll bring you back a present.” I pulled out my phone and dialed his number. It went straight to voicemail. My iMessages were left on Delivered. I sat on the sofa for a moment, then subconsciously opened Instagram. Sure enough, pinned to the very top of the Loyalty Tester’s profile was a brand new update. “Invited by a certain gentleman to go on a trip for a few days! I’ll be doing a paid, exclusive live stream of the final loyalty test results for all my sisters!” Attached was a selfie of her holding a first-class boarding pass. The internet lost its collective mind. Even when they realized they had to pay to access the live stream, thousands of people eagerly bought tickets, declaring they would gladly pay for front-row seats to this drama. A mob flooded my comment section, demanding to know if I was finally going to dump him. I held my ground, pinning a stern message directed at the Loyalty Tester: “I know exactly what kind of man my boyfriend is. I am asking you to stop harassing us. I am telling you this for your own good.” Unlike before, the mockery shifted into a wave of condescending pity. Armchair psychologists began dissecting my entire digital footprint, psychoanalyzing me. Some claimed I was a victim of childhood neglect, which is why I was desperately clinging to a toxic man. They urged parents to love their daughters so they wouldn’t end up like me. Others said I was just pathologically stubborn, terrified of losing face, and willing to swallow poison just to prove the internet wrong. I was too exhausted to argue. I closed the app. Suddenly, a friend request popped up from an anonymous account. As soon as I accepted it, they sent me a stealth photo of Mason, followed by a GPS pin. “He’s here.”

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The young girl at the front desk of the Starlight Indoor Playground checked her system, looked up, and smiled. “There are two kids registered under this membership card. Should I page both of them to the front?” I froze. I only have one son. “Two?” “Yep,” she said brightly. “A two-and-a-half-year-old boy named Leo Davis, and a three-year-old girl named Chloe Vance.” She swiped the tablet to turn the screen toward me. The registered guardian for the little girl was listed as: Sarah Davis. The emergency contact was: Mark Vance. I had no idea who this Mark guy was. But I absolutely recognized the check-in photo in the top right corner of the screen. It was my wife. She was holding a little girl, and a man with short hair was standing right beside her. All three of them were smiling at the camera. They looked exactly like a happy, picture-perfect family. The timestamp on the photo: Last Saturday. Last Saturday was the day my wife told me Leo went absolutely crazy in the ball pit and was sweating through his clothes. Leo is two and a half. That little girl was three. Which meant that before my wife even gave birth to my son, that girl was already born. My grip on my phone tightened until my knuckles turned completely white. I raised it and took a clear photo of the screen. … “Sir? Sir?” The girl at the front desk was still trying to get my attention. “Which child would you like me to page for you?” I forced the corners of my mouth up into a tight, mechanical smile. “Never mind. I gave you the wrong phone number.” As I turned and walked out the glass doors of the playground, the afternoon sun was so bright it stung my eyes. Behind me, I could hear the muffled sounds of kids playing—screams of joy and laughter all blended together. I didn’t know who Leo was currently playing with in there. And I didn’t know which child Sarah was standing next to right now. On my phone screen, I zoomed in on the photo I had just taken. I zoomed in again and again. The little girl’s facial features… they looked just like Sarah’s. Especially her eyes. Leo has those exact same eyes. I sat in a coffee shop directly across the street from the playground for forty minutes. At the forty-first minute, Sarah walked out the front doors holding Leo’s hand. Just Leo. She buckled him into his car seat and started the engine. I dialed her number. It rang twice before she answered. “Hey honey, we just finished playing. Leo was sweating like crazy, so I’m going to take him to get cleaned up first. We’ll be home a little later.” “Okay.” I hung up the phone. Her SUV didn’t turn north, toward our house. It turned south. I flagged down a taxi and pointed. “Follow that white SUV.” The driver glanced at me in the rearview mirror but didn’t ask any questions. The white SUV eventually pulled up to the security gates of a high-end, gated townhouse community on the south side of the city. The Emerald Estates. We lived in a modest suburb on the north side. I watched as Sarah carried Leo, swiped an access card at the pedestrian gate, and walked right in. She did it with the effortless muscle memory of someone walking into her own home. I memorized the name of the community. She finally brought Leo home at 8:00 PM. He had clearly been given a bath, and he was wearing clean clothes. But it wasn’t the spare outfit I had packed in his diaper bag. It was a little blue hoodie with a cartoon race car embroidered on the chest. I had never seen it before in my life. “Where did Leo get this hoodie?” I asked. Sarah kicked off her shoes into the entryway closet. “Oh, I just grabbed it from a boutique next to the playground. His other shirt was completely soaked in sweat.” “How much was it?” “I don’t remember. Like thirty bucks, maybe?” When she walked away, I checked the tag on the collar. Jacadi. A premium European children’s brand. The retail price for their hoodies is usually around $120. I didn’t say a word. I warmed up a bottle of milk for Leo and rocked him to sleep. Later, Sarah was lounging on the living room sofa, scrolling through her phone. I watched her through the crack in the bedroom door. She was smiling. Smiling warmly at whatever was on her screen. When she talked to me these days, she almost never smiled like that. After she finally went to bed and fell asleep, I didn’t try to touch her phone. I knew she had a complex passcode, and if I got locked out, it would only alert her that I was suspicious. Instead, I opened my laptop and logged into the county’s public property tax records database. I typed in Sarah’s Social Security Number. I work as a financial controller; I have all our sensitive information memorized. When the search results loaded, a loud, high-pitched ringing filled my ears. Emerald Estates, Unit 1403. Registered Owner: Sarah Davis. Date of Purchase: Three and a half years ago. Three and a half years ago. We had only been married for six months. Which meant that before the honeymoon phase of our marriage was even over, she had bought a luxury townhouse on the south side of the city. And I knew absolutely nothing about it. Monday morning, I dropped Leo off at daycare, but I didn’t go straight to the office. I drove south to the Emerald Estates. It was a newly developed community, beautifully landscaped. There was an Amazon Hub locker right outside the main gates. I parked across the street and waited for half an hour. At 9:10 AM, a man in a black trench coat pushed a high-end stroller out of the pedestrian gate. Sitting inside was a little girl, maybe three years old. She was eating a banana, smearing it all over her face. The man stopped, leaned down, and gently wiped her mouth with a tissue. His profile was perfectly visible. It was the man from the playground check-in photo. Mark Vance. He walked over to the Amazon Hub and retrieved two packages. One large, one small. The large one was a heavy cardboard box with the logo of an expensive organic toddler formula brand printed on the side. The small one was a padded envelope. He ripped it open, glanced at whatever was inside, frowned slightly, and shoved it into his pocket. I snapped several clear photos from my car, but I didn’t approach him. I put the car in drive and headed to work. During my lunch break that day, I cleared all the search history from my personal phone. Then, I used my secure work computer to access the county’s deed and mortgage registry to look up Emerald Estates, Unit 1403. Paid in cash. $650,000. Three and a half years ago, Sarah and I had a combined total savings of barely $200,000. She grew up in a working-class family; her parents were blue-collar workers with zero generational wealth. That $200,000 was mostly money my parents had given us when we got married as a down payment for our future, plus the savings I had scraped together since I started working. I genuinely believed that money was still sitting safely in our joint high-yield savings account. That afternoon, I logged into our joint bank app. Available Balance: $6,150. I stared at that number until my eyes burned. $200,000. She had drained it down to six grand. Where did the other $450,000 to buy the townhouse come from? I ran a soft credit check on her, looking for credit cards or personal loans. Nothing significant showed up. But with my background in corporate finance, I knew that if someone paid $650,000 in cash for a property, and only $200,000 came from our savings, there were only a few ways to source the remaining $450,000. An untraceable private loan, a massive withdrawal from a retirement account, or— Someone else paid for it. That night, Sarah came home very late. She walked through the door at 11 PM, reeking of alcohol. She collapsed onto the sofa, muttering something about having one too many drinks at a client dinner. I poured a glass of ice water and set it on the coffee table next to her. “Sarah.” “Mhm?” “How’s your mom doing lately?” She rolled over, burying her face in the cushions. “She’s fine. Same old, same old.” “Do you want to take Leo to visit his grandma this weekend?” “We’ll see.” She let out a massive yawn and passed out almost immediately. I picked up her discarded coat and went through the pockets. No secret secondary phone. But my fingers brushed against a thick plastic card. A parking garage access pass for the Emerald Estates. Status: VIP Resident / Auto-Renew. The second Saturday. Sarah stuck to her routine and prepared to take Leo out for the day. “Try to be home a little early today,” I said, wiping down the kitchen counter. “I’m making short ribs.” “Sounds good.” As she bent down to tie Leo’s tiny sneakers, her sleeve hiked up, and I saw a watch on her wrist. It wasn’t the practical Citizen watch I had bought her for our anniversary. It was a Cartier. I had never seen it before. After they left, I drove straight back to the Emerald Estates. This time, I didn’t wait outside on the street. I walked right down the entrance ramp into the underground resident parking garage. I found her white SUV parked on the second subterranean level and snapped a photo of its location. Reserved Spot: B2-073. On the concrete wall next to the spot, a notice from the HOA was taped up: Please ensure all monthly parking and HOA fees are paid by the 15th. I found the elevator bank and rode it up to the 14th floor. Outside unit 1403, there was a small woven welcome mat. Resting on it were two pairs of adult slippers, one pair of toddler sandals, and— I recognized them instantly. A pair of orthopedic walking shoes. They belonged to my mother-in-law, Mary. She always complained about her bad knees and claimed this specific, ugly brand was the only shoe she could comfortably wear. I stood in the quiet, carpeted hallway for exactly three minutes. Through the heavy oak door, I could hear laughter. A little girl’s laughter, Leo’s infectious giggles, and the familiar, grating voice of an older woman: “Chloe, slow down, sweetie! Don’t steal your brother’s snacks.” Brother. She was calling Leo her “brother.” Then came Mark’s voice: “Mom, Leo really loves your baked ziti. You’ll have to teach me the recipe next time.” Mom. He was calling my mother-in-law “Mom.” A wave of icy dread washed over my spine, freezing my blood. I turned around and walked back to the elevator. I didn’t knock. It wasn’t because I was afraid. It was because I couldn’t afford to. I was completely unprepared. If I knocked on that door right now and blew this wide open, all they would do is coordinate their lies, delete digital evidence, and immediately start hiding assets. When the dust settled, I would be left with absolutely nothing, not even the right to cry about it. Driving home, I passed by a sleek, modern law firm. I parked the car and stood on the sidewalk outside for five minutes. In the end, I didn’t walk in. Not because I was hesitating. But because I was still missing the most crucial piece of the puzzle. Where did that $450,000 come from? At 4:00 PM, my mother-in-law, Mary, called me. “Hey, Arthur! Is Sarah home?” “No, Mary. She took Leo to the indoor playground.” “Oh, okay.” She paused for two seconds. “Are you guys free to drive up and visit us in the suburbs this weekend? Your father-in-law’s tomato garden is doing great this year.” “I’ll have to check with Sarah and see what her schedule is like.” “Sure, sure. I know you both work so hard. Don’t exhaust yourselves!” Her voice was so warm. Her tone so caring. Like the perfect, loving mother-in-law. Just thirty minutes ago, she was making baked ziti for another man in a luxury townhouse. Calling another man’s daughter “Chloe,” and calling my son “brother.” When the call ended, my hands were shaking violently against the steering wheel. Not from fear. From pure, unadulterated rage. On Wednesday night, my mother-in-law came over to our house for dinner. She claimed she had taken the commuter train all the way from their house in the suburbs to bring us fresh vegetables. I knew for a fact she didn’t come from the suburbs. She came straight from the Emerald Estates. I could easily prove it by checking her transit card history. Of course, I didn’t say a word. At the dinner table, she bounced Leo on her knee, smiling so hard her eyes crinkled. “Leo is such a good boy. He looks just like his mom did at this age.” “Actually, Mary, I think Leo looks a lot more like me.” “Boys should look like their dads! It’s better that way,” she said smoothly, dropping a piece of short rib into my bowl. “Arthur, you and Sarah really need to start thinking about having a second one.” Here we go again. In the three years we’ve been married, she had brought this up no less than twenty times. “You guys are still young! Have a little girl! Give Leo a sister to play with.” It felt like a golf ball was lodged in my throat. She already had a granddaughter. A three-year-old, chubby, happy little granddaughter. A child who called her “Grandma,” and who called Mark “Daddy.” And here she was, sitting at my dining table, eating the short ribs I spent three hours slow-cooking, pressuring me and Sarah to give her another granddaughter. “We’ll see, Mary. Work has been insanely stressful lately.” “Work isn’t as important as family! A man can be the best CEO in the world, but nothing beats having a sweet little daughter to come home to…” Sarah quietly picked at her food, keeping her eyes glued to her plate. I looked at her. She didn’t look back. That night, after putting my mother-in-law in an Uber, I sat alone on our small apartment balcony. Looking down, I could see the community courtyard. Under the dim, orange glow of a streetlight, a young couple was huddled together on a park bench. The year Sarah and I got married, we sat on that exact same bench. She had looked at me and said: “We’re going to build a beautiful life together. I promise.” That was three years ago. I pulled out my phone and opened our joint banking app again. Every month, Sarah’s $8,000 salary was supposedly deposited here. Our monthly living expenses were roughly $4,000. Logically, over three years, we should have accumulated around $144,000 in savings, just from her income alone. But the balance was $6,150. Where did the money go? I requested a full, itemized three-year transaction history. Every single month, a scheduled transfer of $2,500 went out to an unknown account. Account Holder: Mark Vance. Three years. Thirty-six transactions. Totaling $90,000. Then came the massive, lump-sum withdrawals: Down payment wire to the title company: $200,000. Contractor payments for renovations: $75,000. High-end furniture and appliances: $40,000. Miscellaneous Venmo and Zelle transfers to Mark: $60,000. Combined with the monthly “allowance” she was sending Mark… The grand total: $465,000. Every single dime of the savings we had built since our wedding, plus the $100,000 wedding gift from my parents—completely wiped out. The “salary” Sarah brought home every month was just a smokescreen to cover the basic household bills here. The real money, the serious wealth, was all being funneled directly into her second life. And I was the one who managed the household budget for three years. I cooked the meals, I took care of our son, I worked my stressful corporate job until 8 PM every night. She stole almost half a million dollars to fund a secret family. And I didn’t even know who bought the Cartier watch on her wrist. My temples were throbbing violently. I took a deep, shuddering breath. Enough. I had found everything I needed to find. Now, I needed a ruthless lawyer. During my lunch break the next day, I walked into the law firm I had hesitated outside of last week. The attorney who took my consultation was a woman named Jessica Hayes. She looked to be in her early forties, wore sharp glasses, and had an intimidating wall of legal volumes behind her desk. I laid every single piece of evidence out on her desk. The property tax records. The bank statements. The wire transfer receipts. The photo of the playground membership screen. The 401k early withdrawal penalties I found on our joint tax return. The hidden credit cards I uncovered using a deep-dive credit monitoring service. Jessica flipped through the documents for fifteen solid minutes before pushing her glasses up her nose. “Arthur, you work in corporate finance, don’t you?” “I’m a controller.” “Makes sense. I’ve been practicing family law for fifteen years, and I have never seen a client walk in with a paper trail this airtight.” She closed the heavy manila folder. “What’s your objective?” “Divorce.” “What are we fighting for?” “Full physical and legal custody of my son. And aggressive restitution for the marital assets she fraudulently transferred.” Jessica nodded slowly. “The townhouse in the Emerald Estates was purchased during the marriage. Regardless of whose name is on the deed, it is legally considered marital property in this state. The fact that she used joint marital funds to purchase a home for a paramour is textbook ‘dissipation of marital assets.’ Under the law, we can petition the court to award you the entirety of that equity, or force a sale to recoup your stolen funds.” “How long will the process take?” “If she fights it? Six to eight months. If this evidence is as bulletproof as it looks, and she realizes she’ll be slaughtered in court… three months, if we’re fast.” “I have one non-negotiable condition.” “Name it.” “I do not want her to have a single second of warning to liquidate or hide any remaining assets.” Jessica looked at me, her eyes narrowing in professional respect. “When do you plan on confronting her?” “When the trap is fully set.” For the next two weeks, I acted like absolutely nothing was wrong. I went to work. I cooked dinner. I warmed up Leo’s milk. On Saturday, Sarah took Leo to the playground, just like always. I didn’t follow her. I didn’t need to. I didn’t need any more evidence. I just needed the perfect execution. Jessica drafted a brutal, unyielding divorce petition. She also prepared a massive ex parte motion for a temporary restraining order on all assets. The moment I signed it and she filed it with the clerk, a judge would freeze every single piece of real estate and bank account tied to Sarah’s Social Security Number. Including the townhouse in the Emerald Estates. But I told Jessica to hold the filing. Because I had thought of a much, much better way to play this. I wasn’t just going to take my money back. I was going to make sure they all knew exactly what it felt like to have their lives completely destroyed by a lie.

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I had this whale of a client who constantly paid top dollar to commission my hand-knit scarves. Until this time, when he tipped me an extra three thousand bucks. “Make this one special. She’s my favorite.” The day after I shipped it out. My gorgeous, brooding, and totally broke boyfriend silently handed me a scarf. I stared at it. “…You knitted this?” He pressed his lips together. “Yeah. Do you like it?” I smiled so hard my teeth ground together. “I love it. Tell you what, why don’t you knit me one every single week?” I gripped the soft fabric of the scarf, gasping in feigned amazement: “These stitches, the cast-off edge… it’s incredible. Silas, you really put so much heart into this!” The more I praised him, the tighter I gripped the scarf. I was squeezing it so hard it was almost losing its shape. His slightly long bangs half-covered his dark eyes. The corners of his thin lips curled up slightly, looking a bit shy. “I’m glad you like it.” I asked, dripping with concern: “It must have taken you forever, right? It’s so detailed. For a beginner, this is honestly amazing.” I stared intently at Silas’s face. He paused for a fraction of a second, barely noticeable, and gave a soft “Mhm.” His voice was cool and clear. “It was a little difficult, but if you like it, it was worth it.” I clenched my fists, threw myself into his arms, and laughed. “I love it to death. Tell you what, why don’t you knit me one every single week?” The air in the room froze for a long moment. He agreed. “Okay.” A few seconds passed. He asked, “Are you… trembling?” Oh, I was trembling alright. Trembling with sheer, unadulterated rage. My smile grew increasingly stiff and twisted. I forced a choked sob into my voice. “I’m just so happy. This is the first time anyone has ever hand-knitted something just for me. I feel so lucky… so incredibly lucky…” By the end of my speech, I was practically grinding my teeth to dust. My eyes were red from the sheer anger. Silas awkwardly patted my back. “If you like them, I’ll just keep making them for you.” After Silas dropped me off at my dorm. I got a new notification on eBay. Z: [Knit me one every week. Can you do it?] I typed back: [Five thousand bucks a pop.] Honestly, the prices I usually listed for my custom scarves ranged from a hundred to a few hundred bucks. I’d occasionally get clients, and the transactions were usually pretty smooth. Until this client named “Z” found my page. I was in the middle of explaining the different knitting patterns and how the material costs varied, when he just randomly Venmo’d me a thousand bucks: [Just use the best of everything.] One look and I knew he was an ignorant rich guy with more money than sense! If I didn’t take his money, I’d be an idiot. After that, he became a regular. I even set up a private, thousand-dollar listing specifically for him to buy. Every time he paid, I shipped it to the address he left on his profile. It was in the same city as me. Unsurprisingly, it was in the most notoriously expensive, gated mansion community in the state. But I never, in my wildest dreams, imagined that he could be my sweet, beautiful, desperately poor, brooding boyfriend. The moment I sent the five-thousand-dollar quote. Z: [?] Me: [I’ve got a lot of commissions lately. Demand is high, so the price went up.] The other side stayed quiet for a long time. Just as I was debating whether I should unsend the message, he bought five quantities of my thousand-dollar listing. I let out a cold laugh. I immediately went on Amazon, bought a bunch of fifty-dollar scarves, had them shipped to my dorm with Prime delivery, and then planned to repackage and ship them to his address. Whatever, I was the one receiving these scarves in the end anyway. After placing the order, I opened iMessage. The only pinned chat at the top of my screen had a new message: [At work. Thinking of you.] I frowned. I immediately hit the FaceTime button. It rang for a long time, no one answered, and it automatically disconnected. Twenty minutes later, Silas texted: [My manager yelled at me for being on my phone. What’s up?] I replied: [Nothing, just thinking of you too.] But during those twenty minutes, I had already hopped on my bike and ridden down to the small diner where he supposedly worked. I walked in and asked the owner, “Hey Sarah, about that student I referred to you earlier—” Before I could even finish my sentence, the owner cut me off, her eyes wide with anger. “Don’t even get me started, Chloe. I only agreed to hire your friend because you were such a hard worker when you were here!” “Who knew he would get into a screaming match with a customer on his very first day!” “He was wearing some fancy watch on his wrist—a Patek Philippe or something? A customer saw it, joked around, and asked him to take it off so he could look at it. And your friend actually snapped back, ‘It’s broken, and if you drop it, you couldn’t afford to replace it!’” “Who knows if it was real or fake? If it’s fake, why couldn’t the guy look at it? And if it was real…” The owner clutched her chest in frustration. “Why the hell did you send his royal highness to work in a diner?! I think you were just trying to mess with me!” My body went cold. My voice trembled slightly. “Is he… is he still here?” “He quit on his first day!” the owner scoffed loudly. “Turned my diner completely upside down and didn’t even ask for his day’s pay.” I stood frozen in the middle of the diner. I didn’t know what to say. The night wind carried a sharp chill. It blew through my thin jacket, making me shiver violently. The owner waved her hand at me, her face full of disgust. “Just get out of here. I bet you two just did this to piss me off. Chloe, ask your conscience, did I ever treat you badly when you worked here? Unbelievable!” “I’m so sorry…” I mumbled awkwardly. On the bike ride back to campus. I scrolled through my text history with Silas. I knew he was poor. I knew he skipped meals to save money. So whenever I made a little extra cash from my scarves, I’d Venmo him a few bucks every couple of days. It wasn’t a lot, maybe twenty or thirty dollars at a time. But that was money I scraped together from my own meager living expenses, after putting every other cent toward paying off my family’s debts. When my deadbeat dad died, he left behind a mountain of loans. My mom and I busted our asses every single day just to make the monthly payments. I honestly thought Silas and I were two pathetic, freezing souls huddling together for warmth in a cruel world. Who knew I was just a toy in his little poverty-simulation game. And he was a CHEATER!!! All those other scarves I knitted for him before… they were all given to other people. As his “absolute favorite,” was I supposed to feel honored? But after the violent wave of rage passed, an icy calm washed over me. After some deep, strategic thinking, I decided this wasn’t the right time to expose him. After all, I was currently scamming five thousand dollars a week out of him. And I didn’t even have to knit the scarves myself. If Silas really just had a sick fetish for pretending to be poor and playing poverty-romance games, and I popped his bubble, he might get embarrassed, the novelty would wear off, and I wouldn’t get another dime! While he was still entertained, I needed to milk him for all he was worth. However. Was there a way to make his life miserable without actually breaking up with him? I racked my brain. Three days later. I called Silas. “Want to go on a date tomorrow?” He agreed immediately. “Sure.” My tone was sickly sweet. “Did you finish knitting my scarf? It’s been a few days, right? We haven’t seen each other because you’ve been so focused on knitting my scarf, haven’t you?” Silas paused for a second. “Yeah.” “Great. See you tomorrow.” The exact second I hung up the phone. I got an eBay notification. Z: [Are they done?] I glanced at my dorm desk. Sitting right there were the cheap scarves I had just picked up from the Amazon locker that afternoon. I left him on read. Z: [Expedite this.] [Can you deliver it tonight? Your shipping is always super fast, we must be in the same city.] Me: [That’s a little difficult.] He Venmo’d me five thousand dollars. Me: […Fine.] [Same address as usual?] Z: [Yes.] He Venmo’d me another hundred bucks: [For the Uber. You can drop it off yourself or hire a courier, I don’t care.] I picked up the Amazon scarf and inspected it. Honestly, the machine-knit quality was a little cleaner than my hand-knit stuff. Then I opened the Uber app to look for a package delivery driver. It was the middle of the night. My campus was miles away from his gated community, on the complete opposite side of the city. The app quoted me forty bucks. I gritted my teeth and hit request. No one accepted. I bumped the tip up to sixty bucks, waited another half hour, and still, no drivers took the bait. Bumping it higher would just be bad business. I threw on a baseball cap, dark sunglasses, and a surgical mask. I shoved the scarf into a fancy gift box and snuck out of my dorm. The gated community was massive. Even though the security guard had been expecting me and gave me directions, I still drove in circles for twenty minutes before I finally found the right mansion. I messaged Z on eBay: [I’m here. At the front door.] I pulled my cap down lower, adjusted my sunglasses, and pinched the wire on my mask. Before leaving my dorm, I had even borrowed my roommate’s perfume and sprayed a cloud over myself. I really didn’t want him to recognize me. But as I stood on his doorstep, my mind started racing. What if he did recognize me? What kind of chaotic, disastrous scene would that be? But very quickly, reality slapped me in the face. I was overthinking. A girl wearing a designer trench coat and carrying a Prada bag walked right past me. She expertly punched a code into the electronic keypad on the front door. The heavy mahogany doors swung open. A blast of heated air hit my face, carrying the heavy bass of thumping rock music. I could see a crowd of people inside. It was wild. They were throwing a massive house party. The girl turned her head and glanced at me. Her eyes dropped to the gift box in my hands. “Delivery? Who bought it? Silas? What’s inside?” She curiously tapped the box, but didn’t dare open it herself. I didn’t answer. I was too busy staring at the scarf wrapped around her neck. She rolled her eyes, bored. “Whatever. Want me to take it inside for you?” Right at that moment. A lazy, deep voice echoed from the foyer. “Why are you standing out there? It’s freezing.” The girl and I turned our heads at the same time. Silas was leaning casually against the doorframe. His slightly long bangs were pushed back, revealing a pair of sharp, untamed, arrogant eyes. The quiet, brooding, poor boy act was completely gone. His gaze briefly flickered from the girl to the gift box in my hands. “I ordered that. Bring it in for me.” The girl let out a small “Oh” and took the box from my hands. The warm, golden light from the mansion spilled out onto the porch. Silas stood up straight, about to close the door. He casually swept his eyes over me one last time, but his gaze suddenly locked onto my sunglasses. In that single, frozen second, my heart slammed against my ribs. I had rushed out of the dorm so fast I forgot to take them off. These were the exact sunglasses Silas and I had won at a carnival game a few months ago. He raised an eyebrow, his thin lips parting slightly. “You’re the seller?” I nodded stiffly. He let out a mocking scoff, offering a casual critique: “Wearing sunglasses in the middle of the night? Take the money I just paid you and buy yourself some designer frames.” I stood frozen. After dropping that line, Silas smoothly turned around and slammed the massive door shut. Cutting off the music, the heat, and the party inside. I slowly trudged back to the streetlight, pulled off the sunglasses, and rubbed the plastic frames. The cheap plastic was fading, the color chipping off unevenly. It looked incredibly weird. When we won them at the carnival, I was so excited. I thought they looked edgy and cool. I put them on and smiled brightly at Silas, asking, “How do I look?” His ears had turned bright red, and he gave a small nod. “You look beautiful.” Because he said that, I cherished these cheap plastic sunglasses. Why did they suddenly look— So tragically pathetic and hilarious? The next morning, I walked out of my dorm building. As I approached the campus dumpsters, my hand reaching into my bag, I locked eyes with Silas. When he saw me, the corners of his mouth immediately curved upward into a sweet smile. My hand froze inside my bag. I had forgotten to throw the sunglasses away last night. I was planning to toss them in the dumpster this morning. Silas walked over and gently wrapped a scarf around my neck. The exact same Amazon scarf I had bought. “Do you like it?” he asked softly. I forced a radiant smile, pulling my empty hand out of my bag. “The stitching is flawless. I absolutely love it.” His thin lips curled into an imperceptible, satisfied smirk. “I’m glad you like it.” I let him take my hand. I couldn’t even be bothered to interrogate him about his “knitting process” or his “diner shifts” anymore. He wouldn’t feel guilty; he’d just calmly and confidently invent another lie. Silas and I went to the amusement park. Right as we lined up for the first roller coaster, we bumped into a slender, very familiar silhouette. It was the girl from last night. She was wearing her designer trench coat, carrying her Prada bag. She was staring intently in our direction. I instinctively glanced at Silas. He locked eyes with the girl and gave a barely noticeable raise of his eyebrow. The girl immediately plastered a bright smile on her face and sauntered over to us. “Silas! Is this your girlfriend?” He gave a noncommittal “Mhm.” I looked at him, my expression perfectly normal. “A friend of yours?” Silas stared at the girl for a few seconds, interlacing his fingers with mine. “Not really.” “Hey.” She pouted. “Don’t act like you don’t know me.” She tapped her chin, pretending to think. “Hmm… Silas’s family is super poor, right? So back in high school, I hired him to tutor me. I guess you could call me his former employer.” As she said this, she looked at Silas, her eyes dancing with amusement. Silas’s eyelids lazily drooped. “Employer?” “Yeah. Shouldn’t you show a little more respect to the person who used to sign your paychecks? Poor. Boy.” The girl smiled brilliantly. If I didn’t already know the truth, I probably would have felt terrible for Silas right now. Having to swallow his pride and get mocked by his arrogant former boss. But hearing it now? I just wanted to laugh in their faces. Were they seriously flirting right in front of me? “What rides are you guys hitting? Let me tag along.” The girl pulled out her phone and waved it at Silas. “I actually need someone to keep me company. I’ll pay you five hundred bucks to hang out with me today. Pretty sweet deal, right?” Silas’s face instantly went cold. He glared at her. “Stop interrupting my date with my girlfriend.” The girl looked at me. “Five hundred bucks. You’re not going to let your boyfriend make some easy money?” “Do you want to make some easy money?” I asked Silas. Silas paused for exactly two seconds. “Sure.” I fell silent. I didn’t say another word. Silas rubbed his thumb over the back of my hand, lowering his voice. “I’ll Venmo you the money later.” I just smiled. Before we got on the drop tower, the attendant reminded us to take off loose items, including scarves.

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “399946”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

On the night I finally won the Academy Award for Best Actress, a troll account leaked a video of me from years ago. In it, I was heavily, undeniably pregnant. The auditorium erupted into pure chaos. Every reporter in the room shoved their microphones in my face, screaming the exact same question: “Ms. Vance, who is the father of the child?!” I turned and looked at Tristan Sterling. His face was frozen in absolute shock. The man who was famous for being coldly composed and utterly unshakable had just lost his composure in public for the very first time. I turned back to the reporters, smiled gracefully, and denied it. “I don’t have a child.” Years ago, when Tristan abandoned me to save his childhood best friend, it sealed our fate. It guaranteed that he and I would never, ever have a future together. Right before I stepped out of the limo to walk the red carpet, my manager, Chloe, gave me one final, stern warning. “If you run into Savannah Hayes, pretend she doesn’t exist. Under no circumstances are you to start drama with her tonight.” I couldn’t exactly blame her. Savannah’s financial backer was Tristan Sterling. Half of the entertainment industry was owned by the Sterling family. There used to be an ugly, unspoken rule in Hollywood: If you want to be famous, you have to sleep with Tristan Sterling. It was crude, but the reality was that any woman remotely connected to Tristan saw her career skyrocket. Except for me. I was the only woman who had publicly dated Tristan Sterling, and I was the only one who almost got blacklisted from the industry because of it. Because I had offended his precious childhood friend. For six grueling years after our breakup, it didn’t matter how hard I worked. It didn’t matter how much the public praised my acting. I never won a single award. Time and time again, I was nominated just to sit in the audience and watch someone else take the trophy. It ground away all my sharp edges. I started actively avoiding Savannah. Any script she showed interest in, I would politely decline, citing “scheduling conflicts.” Maybe my silent submission finally paid off. Or maybe, since she and Tristan were finally getting married, she didn’t want the bad karma of crushing me anymore. Whatever the reason, this year, they decided to be merciful and let a Best Actress trophy slip through their fingers and into my hands. When Chloe got the inside scoop that I was winning, she almost cried. She hugged me and said, “Victoria, the dark days are finally over.” Tristan was finally willing to let me go. Even though the breakup wasn’t my fault, I knew I could never win a war against Tristan Sterling. I had surrendered a long time ago. But less than five minutes after Chloe warned me to avoid Savannah, Savannah herself intentionally invited me to walk the red carpet alongside her. The billionaire heir’s new fiancée and his notorious ex-girlfriend. Just standing next to each other was enough to break the internet with trending hashtags. I knew exactly what she was doing. She wanted to humiliate me from every possible angle. Not just because she was Tristan’s new love, but because tonight, we were wearing gowns from the exact same luxury fashion house. The difference was, she was wearing their unreleased, custom haute couture. I was wearing a piece from last year’s ready-to-wear collection. I could already picture the Twitter threads. Her fans and my haters would tear me apart, mocking me for looking cheap and outdated. But I didn’t care. I never had any intention of competing with her over clothes. And I certainly had no delusions about Tristan ever coming back to me. If she wanted to be the stunning red rose, I was perfectly fine playing the plain green leaf in the background. But my submission didn’t seem to satisfy Savannah. She leaned in, keeping her voice low. “Victoria, do you know Tristan is coming tonight?” I didn’t. From the day we broke up, Tristan and I had cut ties completely. But just hearing his name made my heart skip a painful, erratic beat. Savannah noticed. She let out a mocking little laugh. “Don’t get any ideas. He’s only here for me. It has absolutely nothing to do with you.” “I know.” Even though the Sterling family practically owned the industry, before tonight, Tristan had never attended a single Hollywood award show. Even when we were insanely in love, he had never once shown up to support me. Savannah leaned in closer. “Tristan and I are getting married soon.” I nodded, turned to her, and offered a genuine, polite smile. “Congratulations. I wish you both the best.” My reaction was probably too soft, too boring. It completely killed Savannah’s desire to keep taunting me. Or maybe she was just in a hurry to find Tristan. The second we finished walking the carpet, she ditched me and vanished into the venue. I stayed behind, posing for the photographers and answering a few standard questions. The reporters were surprisingly disciplined. Not a single one mentioned Tristan. Our relationship had been a massive, passionate spectacle, but the ending was incredibly ugly. Tristan, the other half of the relationship, only found out he had been dumped when he saw it trending on Twitter. During a red carpet interview back then, a reporter had casually asked about how things were going with Tristan. I looked straight into the camera and calmly said four words: “We broke up.” There was no warning. No explanation. Tristan called me once after that. He didn’t explain himself. He didn’t apologize. He didn’t even ask why. He just asked one question to confirm: “Are you sure about this?” I softly replied, “Yes.” He was silent for one second, and then he hung up. I had fully expected him to be furious. He had been treated like a god since the day he was born. No one ever defied him. And yet, I dumped him, and he wasn’t even the first person to know. #TristanSterlingDumped trended at number one on Twitter for three straight days. Tristan never ordered his PR team to take it down. My agency, terrified of offending the Sterling family, paid a fortune to have the hashtag removed. But less than a minute after it was scrubbed, it was forced right back to the top of the trending list. That wasn’t Tristan being humiliated. That was Tristan sending me a warning. Sure enough, from that day forward, my career hit a massive, invisible brick wall. Until six years passed. Until Tristan’s anger finally faded. Until he and Savannah were about to tie the knot. The memories rushed back so vividly, making me feel slightly dizzy. The host called my name twice before I finally snapped back to reality. Everyone around me was cheering. Amidst the thunderous applause, I glanced down at the front row. Savannah was sitting there. The seat next to her was empty. There was no name tag on it, but everyone in the room knew it belonged to Tristan. He still wasn’t here. Good, I thought. It saves us both the awkwardness. But when I stepped up to the microphone to give my acceptance speech, I looked out at the audience, and there he was. Tristan was sitting perfectly straight in the front row. I hadn’t seen him in years. His aura had grown even colder, even more intimidating. The moment our eyes met, he looked at me like I was a complete stranger. There was absolutely zero emotion in his gaze. I steadied my nerves and delivered my speech smoothly and confidently. But right as I reached the middle of my speech, a massive commotion broke out in the audience. To call it whispering would be an understatement. People were trying to be discreet, but the gossip was so explosive that their voices instinctively rose in volume. A troll account had just leaked a video of me heavily pregnant. It was from six years ago, right after Tristan and I broke up. I had intended to throw myself into my work to numb the pain, but right before filming was supposed to start, I found out I was pregnant. I dropped out of the project and completely vanished from the public eye for an entire year. The video was security footage from the apartment complex I lived in at the time. I couldn’t remember what I was going outside for that day. But because I wasn’t wearing a mask, my face was captured perfectly on camera. As I practically sprinted off the stage with my Oscar, Chloe and my assistant rushed forward, trying to shield me and get me out of the venue. But it was too late. The press had already swarmed us. Cameras and microphones were shoved aggressively into my face, everyone screaming the exact same question: “Ms. Vance, who is the father of the child?!” I was completely trapped by the mob, unable to move a single inch. Not far away, Tristan sat in his chair. No reporter dared to get within ten feet of him. If Tristan and I were still dating, the press would have treated me with a lot more respect. I looked over at him. His face was a mask of absolute shock, and his fingers, resting on the armrests, were gripping the fabric so tightly his knuckles were white. He knew exactly who the father of the child was. Which was why the man famous for his unshakable composure was losing his mind in public for the first time in his life. I didn’t answer the reporters’ question directly. Instead, I smiled and offered a simple denial. “I don’t have a child.” There has probably never been an Oscar winner who fled the ceremony looking as pathetic as I did. The hem of my gown was trampled and muddy, and I had lost an earring in the chaos. A horde of reporters chased me all the way to the parking garage. It didn’t look like I had just won Best Actress; it looked like I was fleeing a warzone. Chloe and my assistant were terrified. It took them a few minutes in the safety of the SUV before they could finally speak. “Victoria, what the hell is going on? You have a kid? Is it Tristan’s? Where is the child now?” It was a lot of questions. I offered a bitter smile, not knowing which one to answer first. Chloe and my assistant hadn’t been with me from the beginning. Everything they knew about my relationship with Tristan came from internet gossip or industry rumors. When I vanished for a year, everyone assumed Tristan had blacklisted me. When I finally returned to Hollywood… The narrative shifted. People assumed I had been so heartbroken over the breakup that I took a year off to travel and heal. No one in the industry knew what actually happened during that year. Including Chloe and my assistant. Until they saw that video tonight. Just like everyone else, they assumed I had gone away to secretly give birth. One year. The timeline matched up perfectly. Chloe actually looked a little excited. “If Tristan comes looking for you because of the kid, you need to use this opportunity to get back together with him! He’ll guarantee you win every award in town for the rest of your life!” I shook my head. Chloe froze, then practically jumped out of her seat, almost hitting her head on the roof of the SUV. “Are you insane?! Are you trying to piss him off again?!” How could I possibly dare to do that? I shook my head to clarify. “There is no child.” I was pregnant once, yes. But I didn’t keep it. Chloe looked skeptical. The one-year gap was just too perfectly suspicious. She was about to press me further, but my assistant handed her an iPad. “Chloe, look at this.” “Did the negative hashtags explode? Those vulture journalists!” Chloe snatched the iPad, but after glancing at the screen, her expression turned bizarre. “What… what’s going on here?” There wasn’t a single negative trending topic about me. There wasn’t even a single unflattering photo of me fleeing the venue. Even though I had looked like an absolute disaster running out of that auditorium. This was Tristan’s doing. It was incredibly easy for him to destroy someone. It was just as easy for him to protect someone. Chloe rubbed her temples, overwhelmed. “Did you really not keep the baby? Then how are you going to explain this to Tristan?” Why did I have to explain anything to him? He didn’t love me. And he was about to marry Savannah. I knew Tristan would come looking for me. The video dropped like a bomb, and it involved a potential child. He was going to demand answers. I just didn’t expect him to show up this fast. When my SUV pulled up to my apartment building, he was already waiting outside. Standing in the darkness, his tall, imposing silhouette looked exactly the same as it did six years ago. The only difference was, six years ago, when Tristan saw me, he would open his arms and wait for me to run into them. Now, he just stood there, radiating a coldness that made it impossible to approach him. Chloe was nervous. As I got out of the car, she grabbed my arm. I turned back and smiled at her. “It’s fine. If he wanted to murder me or burn my house down, he wouldn’t do it himself.” “Fair point.” Chloe sighed, then urged me to have a calm conversation with him. “You survived the hardest years, Victoria. The future is bright. Please, don’t make your life any harder than it has to be!” I smiled and nodded. I waited until their SUV drove away before I started walking toward Tristan. My pace was calm, like I was walking up to an old friend. But I was the only one who knew that in the final two steps before reaching him, my heart rate spiked uncontrollably. I had loved him so deeply once. Because I loved him so much, when the earthquake hit, and he abandoned me without a second thought to save Savannah, I almost lost the will to live. Tristan knew exactly why I dumped him. But after the fact, he never offered a single word of explanation. Instead, because my public breakup humiliated him, he allowed the entire industry to mock and ostracize me for years. What could I do? He had the power and the money. Even today, knowing exactly who was at fault, I was still the one who had to speak first. “Mr. Sterling.” Tristan frowned, his voice low. “I’m still used to you calling me by my name.” I had called his name so many times in the past. [Tristan, we just wrapped filming! I’m coming to find you for dinner!] [Tristan, you’ve been on a business trip for a week. When are you coming back?] [Tristan, I miss you so much.] Six years had passed, yet the memory of exactly how I used to whine and confess my love to him was still crystal clear in my mind. A wave of inappropriate nostalgia washed over me, and I smiled, shaking my head. “Savannah told me you two are getting married soon. It wouldn’t be appropriate for me to call you by your first name anymore. Congratulations, by the way.” “Do you honestly think I can still get married now?” Tristan replied. Even if Savannah was still willing to marry him and immediately become a stepmother… The Hayes family was extremely conscious of their public image. They definitely wouldn’t allow it now. I had ruined his life again. “I’m sorry,” I apologized quickly. “Where is the child?” Tristan finally got to the point of his visit. The child that had suddenly been exposed to the world, but that no one had ever seen. He sounded frustrated, his tone much darker than before. “Why didn’t you tell me you were pregnant back then?” Because I didn’t know at first. By the time I found out, we had already broken up. “I didn’t want the baby to ruin things between you and Savannah.” Tristan let out a harsh, cold laugh. “You hid it for six years, and it got leaked anyway. Did it ruin things any less?” “I’m sorry.” I didn’t know what else to say besides those two words. When Tristan and I first started dating, someone warned me that Tristan liked his women obedient. But I couldn’t fake being submissive. I was young, and I thought one passionate romance would last a lifetime. Who could fake a personality for a lifetime? So, around Tristan, I was stubborn. I threw tantrums. He wasn’t great at comforting me, but he never held it against me, either. Usually, once I got the anger out of my system, I was fine. Back then, I was vibrant and passionate. I wasn’t the smooth, enduring, hollowed-out version of myself he was looking at now. He asked me again, “Where is the child?” “There is no child.” From the moment I saw the positive test, I never intended to keep it. A man who didn’t love me wouldn’t love a child I gave birth to. And I never had any desire to be a single mother. So, I had an abortion. A violent spark exploded in Tristan’s eyes, tearing through his usual dark, composed facade, finally letting me see the chaotic emotions raging underneath. He actually cared about the unborn child. That genuinely shocked me. Did he care because it was his flesh and blood? Or was it because, once upon a time, he had actually, genuinely loved me, even just a little bit? Tristan was angry. Even though we had been separated for six years, his habit of closing his eyes when he was furious hadn’t changed. I looked at him, feeling completely lost. I didn’t understand why he was angry. If anyone had the right to be angry, it was me. Right before we broke up, Tristan and I had both managed to squeeze five days out of our schedules for a romantic vacation in Mexico. But because he had casually mentioned our itinerary to Savannah, she showed up at our resort the very next day. I was obviously unhappy about it. But Savannah claimed their families were practically related, that she and Tristan had grown up together, and that they were like brother and sister. And since Tristan didn’t tell her to leave, I had no choice but to tolerate it. Who could have predicted that a massive earthquake would hit the resort the next day? I still remember it clearly. As we were trying to evacuate the hotel, I fell down a flight of concrete stairs. My thigh was severely bruised, and my ankle was badly sprained. Worst of all, I hit my head on the way down, and my vision blurred. Tristan initially tried to pick me up to carry me out, but then he heard Savannah screaming— “Tristan! Tristan, please, come save me!” “Tristan, where are you?! Help me!” Tristan looked at me for one second, then turned and ran toward Savannah’s voice. He left me right where I fell. He didn’t care if I could make it out on my own, and he didn’t seem to care if I died in that stairwell. Even later, when I publicly announced our breakup without telling him first, he never once offered a single word of explanation for why he did what he did. But tonight, Tristan asked me, “Do you want to hear an explanation?” I froze. That earthquake had become my worst nightmare. Every time I thought about it, my chest would physically tighten, and I would struggle to breathe. Two years ago, I starred in a movie that featured a massive earthquake scene. The director praised my performance to the heavens, saying he had never seen anyone act out the sheer, visceral terror of an earthquake so perfectly. I wasn’t acting. I was genuinely terrified. It took me a very long time to shake that feeling after filming wrapped. That night, I had nightmares about the past. I dreamed about being abandoned by Tristan all over again. I woke up drenched in layers of cold sweat. My mind was completely conscious, but my body was paralyzed; I physically couldn’t get out of bed. The next morning, when my assistant noticed I still wasn’t up, she forced her way into my room and found me burning up with a massive fever. She rushed me to the ER. Whether it was before I publicly dumped him or after, I never once asked Tristan for an explanation. Because I believed actions spoke infinitely louder than words. In a life-or-death situation, the person he wanted to save was Savannah. So, no matter how many times he said he loved me, those words were meaningless. But I also wanted to be free from the nightmares. Since he brought it up, I decided to listen. Tristan told me that the Hayes family originally had two children. Savannah had an older brother. He and Tristan had been best friends since childhood. When they were thirteen, the two boys snuck out to hang out in the city. But someone with a grudge against the Sterling family saw an opportunity. They tried to kidnap Tristan.

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My father had just passed away when I received a collection call from the hospital. “Family member of patient William Miller, Neurology Bed 23. You have an outstanding balance of $246,000. Please arrange payment immediately!” I froze. I turned to look at my father, lying peacefully in his casket, and a sudden surge of anger flared in my chest. I suppressed it and said, “You must be mistaken. We’ve already been discharged.” “I knew you people would try to deny it! You think you can just sneak out of the hospital without paying?!” “I’m giving you 24 hours. If you don’t pay up, see what happens!” I lost my temper. “Fine! Let’s see what happens!” …… I hung up and pulled out the itemized medical bills from before the discharge. By yesterday, my dad was already gone. In his final days, he was only receiving basic IV fluids. There were absolutely no expensive medications involved. $246,000? They really had the nerve to demand that. I scoffed and tossed the bills aside, deciding to ignore it. But the phone rang again. It was the same landline number. I didn’t answer. The phone buzzed relentlessly for fifteen minutes, followed by a text message. “William Miller, stop pretending you can’t hear me! You’re too old to be acting like this!” “You owe us money, and you think you can just walk away?!” I took a deep breath and typed out a reply. “William Miller has passed away. I am his son, Ethan Miller. The hospital bills were settled in full upon his discharge. I suggest you check your system carefully.” I only sent that message to leave a paper trail. Besides, the hospital issued the death certificate themselves. Are their systems not linked? Billing a dead man? This was absolute nonsense! To my surprise, my phone rang almost immediately after I hit send. I answered it, and a shrill female voice pierced my ear. “Ethan Miller, do you have no shame?! You’re using a death as an excuse to get out of paying?!” “Let me tell you something. If you don’t pay, we are calling the cops! You want to be a deadbeat? Fine, I’ll make you famous!” I kept my voice dangerously calm. “What is your name?” “None of your business! $246,000. Not a penny less!” She hung up on me. I didn’t hesitate to block the number. According to our family’s tradition, there’s a three-day viewing period before the funeral, where friends and relatives come to pay their respects. Hearing the commotion from my phone calls, a few relatives asked what was going on. I kept it brief, just mentioning that the hospital was calling about a bill. They didn’t press the issue. I assumed the hospital would eventually check their own system, realize the error, and drop it. Plus, I was busy organizing the funeral, so I just blocked their numbers and put my phone on silent. That evening, after all the relatives had arrived and I had settled them into their hotels, I finally returned home. That was when I saw it—over a hundred missed calls and hundreds of text messages. All from the hospital. The texts were littered with profanity. Just reading them, I could picture how rabid the person on the other end must have been. I shoved the abusive messages to the back of my mind and ignored them. But the very next morning, a friend sent me a video link. “Ethan, why aren’t you paying your bills? The hospital put you on blast! They’re calling you a deadbeat and saying they called the cops!” “You need to clear this up ASAP before it ruins your life!” When I watched the video my friend sent, my vision literally went dark. The video was filmed at the billing counter of Memorial Hospital. A woman in her thirties, wearing medical scrubs, was staring at the camera with red, teary eyes. “Ethan Miller! Your father, William Miller, was receiving treatment at our hospital, and you sneaked him out without paying his $246,000 medical bill! If you don’t pay this back, the hospital is going to make me cover the cost!” “I’m begging you! We’re all just trying to make a living. Please don’t do this to me!” She cried beautifully, looking like the ultimate victim. Then, she played an audio recording of our “phone call”: “Stop calling! My dad is dead! I’m not paying a dime, go ask his ghost for the money!” The voice was mine, but I had never said those words. It was blatantly spliced together! But the internet believed it. A tidal wave of vicious, hateful comments crashed down on me from every corner of social media. Following that, my phone practically exploded with calls from unknown numbers. I was completely doxxed. Someone even ordered funeral wreaths and had them delivered to my house. My poor dad never could have imagined that after his death, our house would be flooded with over thirty funeral wreaths—all bearing my name. When my mom saw them, all the color drained from her face. “Ethan, what is this…?” “Mom, I’ll handle it.” I called the police and preserved the evidence. Even though social media platforms often ignore these things, having a police report on file was much better than fighting alone. Especially since this malicious cyberbullying almost gave my grieving mother a heart attack. This meant war. Next, I hired a lawyer. The lawyer had clearly seen the viral video. It wasn’t until I laid out my phone records and my father’s death certificate that he finally broke his long silence. “You really got thrown under the bus here. But don’t worry. The evidence is solid and complete. She is going to lose!” “I don’t just want that billing clerk to lose. I want the hospital to lose! This is a catastrophic error in their internal system, and they’re making an innocent person take the fall. I am not backing down!” My lawyer drafted a strategy. As I walked out of the law firm, my phone buzzed endlessly. Unrecognized numbers. Whenever I picked up, it was a barrage of vile insults. I set my phone to reject all unknown callers and filtered out text messages from non-contacts. I finally got some peace, but the video was still spreading like wildfire. The second I walked into work, I saw the messages in the company Slack channel. Before I could even open my mouth to explain, HR issued a formal termination letter and publicly posted it on the company’s LinkedIn page. The internet cheered when they saw it. “Serves that deadbeat right! Now he doesn’t even have a job!” “Honestly, they shouldn’t have fired him. They should have just garnished his wages and sent it straight to the hospital. Now that he’s broke, he’s definitely not going to pay.” “Right? Where are the cops? Didn’t the hospital press charges? Why isn’t he in jail yet?” I didn’t bother reading any more comments. I marched straight to my boss’s office. When he saw me, he immediately waved his hand dismissively. “What are you still doing here? We don’t employ deadbeats!” I looked him dead in the eye. “I will prove the truth in due time. But you fired me on the spot without cause. I expect my full severance package.” He froze. “Severance? You’re a moral degenerate…” “I don’t care what you think of my morals,” I cut him off. “If I am missing a single cent of my legally mandated severance, I will sue this company into the ground. You claim to hate deadbeats so much—I suggest you don’t become one yourself.” His face turned an ugly shade of purple. I just gave him a calm smile, turned on my heel, and walked out. As I packed up my desk, the boss couldn’t resist getting the last word. “Keep acting tough! You’re never going to find a job this good again!” I scoffed. I didn’t know if I’d find a better job, but I definitely knew working for him wasn’t worth it. I didn’t have the energy to argue. As I carried my box of belongings to my car, my phone rang. It was my mom, her voice panicked and shrill. “Ethan, get back here right now! There’s a mob of reporters outside our house! Your father’s body is still in the living room! What is going on?!” My voice turned to ice. “I’m on my way. Wait for me!” By the time I pulled up to my house, a massive crowd had gathered. There were reporters, bystanders, and even a few police officers. The relatives who were inside looked at me with eyes full of resentment. “Ethan, what the hell is wrong with you? You can’t be doing this kind of shady stuff, especially not now!” “Exactly! If you owe them money, just pay it! Making this huge scene while your father’s body is still here… he won’t be able to rest in peace!” The reporters immediately swarmed me, shoving microphones in my face. “Ethan Miller, when are you going to pay back the hospital?!” “You claim your father passed away, but even if he’s gone, the bills don’t disappear. Paying your debts is a basic moral obligation!” “We’re here representing the hospital and the concerned public. Exactly when are you going to settle this debt?!” “I see you’re using the newest iPhone. You have money for a luxury phone, but no money to pay your dying father’s medical bills?” Facing their aggressive interrogation, I couldn’t help but let out a cold, mocking laugh. “Instead of asking me, why don’t you go ask the hospital? If I actually had an outstanding balance of $246,000, how on earth did the doctors allow me to discharge him?!” “Furthermore, I’d love to know how a man who was already dead managed to rack up $246,000 in medical bills in a single day!” A voice shouted from the crowd, “That’s on you to prove! If you have doubts, why don’t you go confront the hospital face-to-face?” “Yeah! You’re just sitting at home hosting a funeral to collect sympathy donations! You’re greedy and evil!” Hearing that, I was so furious I actually laughed. My mom rushed over, grabbing my arm. “Ethan, what is happening? Just stop fighting it.” “Ma’am, did you know your son is a deadbeat?” a reporter sneered. “Your family sneaked out of the hospital without paying, and now you’re forcing an innocent, working-class clerk to cover your $246,000 bill. How do you sleep at night?” My mom froze, looking at me in shock. “Ethan?” “Mom, don’t worry about it.” But my mom was in a panic. “No! Your father lived an honest life! We cannot owe this money! Just pay the hospital, hurry! This whole mess is because of that bill, isn’t it?” The relatives chimed in, pressuring me. “Ethan, you shouldn’t have delayed it. Just go pay them, otherwise your dad will never rest in peace.” I finally snapped. “My dad is dead! And the day after he died, the hospital somehow charged him $246,000! Who exactly was using those medications?!” My roar silenced the entire crowd. The reporters stared at me, stunned. “What did you just say?” “You don’t believe me? Fine! Let’s go! We’re taking my dad’s casket and his death certificate, and we are going straight to the hospital! We’ll confront them face-to-face! Let’s see who the real shameless scammers are!” My eyes burned. I whipped around to the pallbearers I had hired. “Boys, we’ve got a job to do. Load up the casket. We are going to the hospital right now!” The men immediately jumped up. “You got it!” I had my relatives grab the funeral banners and the floral wreaths. We were taking the whole procession. When we arrived at Memorial Hospital, the Hospital Director was already waiting at the main entrance, trying to block my path. “Mr. Miller, if you’re here to have a rational discussion, we welcome you. But if you’re here to cause a medical disturbance, that’s illegal. And you absolutely cannot bring a corpse inside.” “Exactly! It’s just $246,000! You refuse to pay, and now you’re causing a riot! The cops will be here any minute to drag you all away!” The shrill, screeching voice was instantly recognizable. I knew who she was—she was the mastermind behind the cyberbullying campaign against me. Sarah Jenkins! “Where is the itemized bill for the $246,000? Show it to me. If it’s accurate, I will write a check right now!” Sarah scoffed. “Pay now? Too late! A deadbeat is a deadbeat. You know you’re caught, and now you have to pay the penalty!” “What kind of penalty?” “$246,000, plus a fine for malicious evasion! You owe us $300,000!” I laughed at her sheer, unadulterated audacity. “Fine. Forget $300,000—I’ll pay you half a million! But I demand to see the itemized bill!” Sarah sneered and violently threw a thick stack of papers right at my face! “Read it! Let’s see what kind of excuses you can spin out of this!” She stood there with her arms crossed, looking unbearably arrogant. I picked up the papers, scanned them, and immediately started laughing. I slammed the death certificate and the medical bills down on the counter right in front of them. “My father passed away on the 1st. Your own doctors signed the death certificate on that day, and I transferred his body to the funeral home.” “On the 3rd, I processed the official discharge paperwork. On the 4th, you call me and claim I owe you $246,000. Look at your own itemized bill. On the 2nd and the 3rd, there are charges for ‘Emergency Resuscitation’ and ‘Intensive Care Nursing.’ Please explain to me how a dead man was receiving emergency resuscitation?” “How did a corpse lying in my living room rack up $246,000 in emergency medical fees at your hospital?!”

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