Category: English

My mom was forced into a divorce. The instigator was my aunt. Because she only wanted me, my mom was forced by my aunt to leave with nothing. On the day of the court verdict, in front of everyone, I declared that I wanted to live with my dad. That year, I was 12, and my revenge had just begun. 1 The one who “successfully usurped the throne” was my biological aunt. She was only 26 that year, with a pretty face, a seductive figure, and eyes full of cunning. Unfortunately, such a “beauty” had never found a match. Most likely because she had a cousin whose father was unknown. My grandparents worried sick about her. Even on their deathbed, they urged my mother to take good care of her “immature” sister. To fulfill her parents’ dying wish, my mother kindly took care of my aunt. I didn’t expect my aunt to climb straight into her brother-in-law’s bed. My mother, who had always been gentle and mild, couldn’t bear the sight and fell ill immediately. Young as I was, I still remember her tearful, “tragic” display by my mother’s bedside. “Sister, I really couldn’t control my feelings…” “Besides, for all these years, Robert… I mean, brother-in-law and I have had feelings for each other.” “Moreover, this isn’t the first time he’s done something like this.” A paternity test completely destroyed any remaining love my mother had. It turned out that my cousin, whose background was unknown, was actually my half-sister! The double blow from her husband and sister made my mother bedridden. My aunt was still the same aunt, but I finally saw clearly the wolf’s eyes she couldn’t hide under sheep’s clothing. Young as I was, it seemed I grew up in an instant. During the height of summer, whenever my aunt came, she would always cry her eyes out, asking my mom not to be too hard on them for the child’s sake. Just when my mother thought she still had a shred of conscience and wanted to “settle it internally” for my sake, Unexpectedly, her real thought was… “Sister, just divorce brother-in-law.” “Your daughter has already enjoyed the warmth of a family for 10 years, it’s time for our Mia’s turn.” “Mia, quickly beg your aunt!” She dragged her 5-year-old cousin right up to my mom’s sickbed. “Please, Auntie, you already have a sister, please give Mia’s daddy back to Mia.” My cousin was really “a big drama queen in a small body.” While bowing to my sick mother, she actually started crying directly. Ha, how shameless. 2 Although my mother felt uncomfortable, what happened had already happened. In the eyes of my shameless aunt, she had gained the upper hand. She stopped going to the job she had been introduced to, stayed at our house every day, and stubbornly demanded an explanation. “Anyway, the child is here. You can kill us or do whatever you want.” My aunt pushed my cousin forward, looking as if she were at our mercy. “Auntie, I beg you, don’t hit me.” My little cousin was even more ridiculous. Her eyes were like faucets; her acting skills were so refined she could cry in three seconds. For a time, the house was always filled with the child’s crying and my aunt’s roaring, making everyone anxious and restless. In such an environment, my mother was both annoyed and agitated. Over the next few days, I continued to hear arguments between her and my father. Those unbearable truths painted a “dirty picture of adults.” For several days in a row, whenever night fell, I couldn’t sleep, so I could only wander aimlessly around our old house. My father’s ancestors had always been in business, and by his generation, they were already wealthy. Since my parents got married, I had been living in this old house left by my grandparents. Even if some of the wood had problems, my father would rather seal off the rooms than dismantle them easily. “This place holds all my childhood memories. If I tear it down, it will lose its flavor.” My father was a sentimental and nostalgic person, and he was very gentle and considerate to my mother. To be honest, my dream used to be marrying a man like my father. But I didn’t expect that without the filter, my father would turn out to be even more unbearable than an ordinary person. Below the stairs, I caught a glimpse of my father sitting alone at the bar, drinking. During the few days my mother was exhausted, he also looked increasingly haggard. “Robert, why aren’t you sleeping yet?” A soft female voice came. Late at night, I caught sight of the figure I had already guessed. My aunt, wearing a light green silk nightgown, stood under the light, stretching her waist, graceful and charming. “I can’t sleep, do you want a drink with me?” She held a bottle of wine in one hand and held a slender wine glass with the other. When I grew up, I often wondered why my father fell for it back then. After thinking about it, the only answer is—human frailty. The more concentrated the mind, the easier it is to get distracted. There are no absolutely rational people in the world, especially in an environment full of temptation. Never fight against human nature; you will inevitably lose terribly. 3 After Mia’s identity was exposed, my aunt moved in openly. My mother’s complexion worsened day by day, but apart from shedding tears, there seemed to be no substantial progress. My aunt took root in our house with unprecedented speed. She gradually replaced the servants and the driver. By the time my mother reacted, she had no one available by her side. My father, probably also “too lazy to argue,” just hid at his company. Only my mother and I were left at home. Every day at the dining table, my aunt and Mia acted more like the true masters of this house; even the seats were swapped. “What exactly are you trying to do?” My mother’s spirit was near collapse, but my aunt was still smiling. “Sister, I just want Mia to have a better life. You’re a mother too, you definitely understand me.” My aunt’s foxy eyes were smiling, but that touch of ruthlessness always sent a chill down my spine. It wasn’t just my mother; Mia’s “invasion” towards me also slowly began. She said she liked my room and moved in. She didn’t kick me out but insisted on sharing the room with me. Every evening after dinner, she would always call my father’s office and then quickly hang up after I entered the room. “Sister, do you know? I’ve envied you so much since I was little. Every time you came to grandma’s house, you wore different clothes.” “At that time, I really hoped you would grow up faster, so that when you couldn’t wear those clothes anymore, you could give them to me.” “But now, I have new clothes too.” She held up a long dress and showed it to me. The floral long dress reached her ankles; it was clearly my size. Mia’s behavior was bizarre and confusing, tormenting me constantly. Finally, my mother lost her composure, sat down with my aunt, and laid her cards on the table. She asked what it would take for my aunt to leave. I thought my aunt would fly into a rage out of humiliation, or even tear off her mask, but what happened was unexpected… “I’ll leave this afternoon, the tickets are already bought.” My aunt answered very straightforwardly; let alone my mother, even I was stunned. “Sister, take care of yourself.” “Are you really…” “Really, I mean what I say. Even if you beg me, I won’t come back.” The next day, my aunt did indeed leave with Mia. Everything happened so fast, but it dissipated with unusual ease. “Chloe, everything that happened recently is over.” My mother’s comforting smile looked exceptionally weak. Looking back at the few months since my aunt arrived, it really felt like a nightmare. Autumn wind blew in from the window, and I felt a bleak chill. The green plants my aunt gave us when she arrived had grown, and their leaves were swaying with the wind. Will she really leave so simply? My doubts were confirmed three days later. My father, who had been hiding for weeks, finally returned home, but it was to argue with my mother. It turned out my aunt had anonymously reported my father. “If it weren’t for my friend at the stock exchange tipping me off, do you know how serious the consequences would be? Can you stop provoking your sister? You really know how to cause trouble.” My father was truly panicked. So much so that he even forgot why my aunt came in the first place. Helpless, my mother still called my aunt. She didn’t answer the whole day; it wasn’t until late at night that my mother’s phone kept ringing. “Sister, you were looking for me.” “What exactly do you want? Where are you now? Let’s talk this over properly.” “You’re asking me to come back, right? Then I’ll set the conditions. Divorce. Except for the child, you take nothing.” Compared to my mother’s hoarse voice from anxiety, my aunt’s voice was noticeably light and thin. Ringing in the quiet midnight, it had an indescribable eeriness. Like a death warrant from a grim reaper. It suffocated my mother like she was dying. 4 Sure enough, the consequence of my mother’s compromise was divorce, leaving with nothing. My father also “kindly” stated that my mother could take me away; mother and child are connected by heart, he understood. Leaving with nothing? Although I was still young, from the reminders of others, I still understood that my aunt wanted to drive my mother out of the house. She didn’t want to give my mother a single penny of the money that should have belonged to her. My mother could also go to court and sue my father for bigamy, but she still didn’t want me to have a tainted father, so she chose to endure. I wanted to urge my mother to sue; I wasn’t afraid of my father having a stain. But my mother insisted that I was small and my considerations were not comprehensive enough. Ultimately, during the divorce mediation, when the court pronounced the verdict, to my mother’s astonishment, I chose my father. Because I wanted to protect my mother; she absolutely must not have nothing. Because she couldn’t get my inheritance rights, my mother finally calmed down and proceeded with the divorce mediation with my father, ultimately taking away a small portion of my father’s net worth. The scene I caused in court really made my aunt panic for a while. Her wishful thinking was not perfectly realized because of my sudden change, but soon, she accepted this fact. “If you like calling me aunt, keep calling me that. If you don’t, you can call me whatever you want.” “The family has its rules; call me what you should.” My father, “freshly remarried,” was completely bewitched; every word he spoke was defending my aunt. “Then sister should just call her mom with me.” Mia also blinked her big eyes, looking innocent. Since my mother was forced to leave, I got to see my aunt’s methods. In terms of understanding my father, my mother really couldn’t compare to this “latecomer.” Compared to my mother’s care and interaction as a wife, her attitude towards my father was more like to a boss. She could easily control my father’s emotions and state her demands at the most appropriate time. My aunt was like boiling a frog in warm water, step by step restricting my father’s emotions. My aunt provided the best emotional value to my father, but to me, it was endless psychological suppression. My aunt would from time to time “display family warmth” in front of me. But when my father wasn’t around, she would mock me in various ways. Fortunately, I, who understood my situation, learned self-control. When it was really unbearable, I went to see my mother. As long as my mother was there, my life wasn’t too hard; for my mother, I had the courage to persevere. My aunt would grow old, and I would eventually grow up too. When that time came, I would be able to protect my mother completely. Having a clear goal, I put all my energy into my studies. My studies were as good as ever, and I could win places in various competitions. But not long after, using “my health” as an excuse, my aunt gradually reduced my various skill classes. Without money to renew the fees, I had to say goodbye to the things I liked, but Mia walked my old path and became the “beloved pupil” of those teachers. Even so, my aunt was still worried about me “overusing my brain.” In my first year of high school, she rarely studied my various grades. Without my consent, she arbitrarily changed my career direction, switching from liberal arts, which I liked best, to science. “I’m doing this for your own good.” Every time, she would strike me and then smile brightly at me. I looked at her; she gradually got crow’s feet, but that ruthlessness was only more terrifying than before. I knew the reason why my aunt was restraining herself was that she hadn’t gotten her biggest “bargaining chip” yet. Just half a year after I entered school, I finally heard the news. “Sister, I’m going to have a little brother.” Mia happily announced to me. This time, she didn’t even bother saying “we,” but directly used the word for herself. After being away from home for half a year, I finally learned that my aunt had been pregnant for over 7 months. Even though she was an older pregnant woman, she put a lot of thought into it, and the pregnancy was very stable. 5 Shortly after learning about my aunt’s pregnancy, I took advantage of the weekend to visit my mother. After the divorce, my mother, who got the dividends, quickly started a new life. With growing experience, my mother started her own small business. Although it couldn’t compare to my father’s industry, compared to her past life as a full-time housewife, it was a “qualitative leap.” I occasionally met with my mother; she was still gentle, but the light in her eyes was somewhat diminished. “Mom, actually, after so many years, if there is a suitable person, you can remarry.” I had this idea long ago. But I was too young before to dare mention it to my mother. Now, my aunt is about to secure her position in the family completely because of her child, while I, who originally thought I could drive this mother and daughter out of the house after I grew wings, in fact, not only made no progress, but my aunt is now “elevated by her child.” “I’m tired, I’m not looking anymore.” My mother stroked my face, very affectionately. “When you get into college, you can date, and then mom will check them out for you.” “I’m not looking, I’ll just be with mom for the rest of my life.” I shyly snuggled in my mother’s arms, enjoying a rare moment of warmth. As the sun set, I also said goodbye to my mother. She stood behind me, waving and telling me to be careful crossing the street. A pregnant figure entered my mother’s shop after I left. Three minutes later, my mother rushed out crying. She was too sad; tears overflowed her eyes, blurring her vision. When I turned around and ran forward, I only heard a loud bang, and after a huge impact, my mother’s crying abruptly stopped. Not far away, my aunt was sticking out her pregnant belly, looking at all this with an innocent face. 6 Six years later. Looking at the Golden Glory Building in front of me, I smiled comfortably. I had been back here for a week, but I hadn’t contacted anyone. Now, I was no longer the little orphan girl who lost her mother, but a top student from Yale with an MBA. Giving up a high salary in the US, I resolutely chose to return to my home country. Everything was because of a man I had never met. That person was the “ideal son-in-law” my aunt had her eye on. I heard my aunt had secretly arranged for him to interact with Mia for a long time, just waiting for Mia to graduate to finalize this matter completely. That man was very mysterious; after checking for a long time, I didn’t know much either. I heard he was someone from the province’s largest enterprise—the Sterling family, a year older than me. “Aunt, your daughter should taste the suffering my mother went through.” I found my father’s old “rival,” and with his help, I passed the interview at the man’s company using a completely clean identity. “Miss Vance, please wait a moment, the president’s meeting will be over in half an hour.” Today was the final round of my interview for the president’s secretary position. In the office behind me sat my examiner for today. He was also my aunt’s most desired “ideal son-in-law,” Mia’s future “fiancé.” Since she gave birth to a son six years ago, my aunt’s status as a wealthy wife has been secured. Mia also became the veritable eldest miss of the Wang family. At this point, everything is ready except for a decent marriage. As for me, not only because I wasn’t 18 at the time and my inheritance could only be kept by my guardian father, I was also “sent overseas for further study overnight” by my aunt without a penny. I lost not only my mother but also my surname, which was changed to my mother’s maiden name. “My sister left early, we must leave a memento.” From then on, I was logically kicked out of the scope of heirs. In a foreign land, without even a high school diploma, I managed to earn my pre-university tuition by washing dishes in Chinatown. For six years, I didn’t contact anyone. Naturally, they didn’t pay attention to me either. My aunt would never know that, thousands of miles away, I still thought of “her” all the time. Over the past few years, my father and she seemed glorious, but in reality, it was just an empty shell. I had originally intended to wait until their foundation was a bit more solid before returning. But now… Calculating the time, I stood up and walked towards the pantry. When I returned to the waiting area with a coffee, the door to the president’s office happened to just be closed. I knocked on the door. “Come in.” A pleasant male voice sounded from inside, gesturing for me to enter. “Hello, President. I am Chloe Vance, here for the secretary interview today.” I placed the coffee cup on the desk, but the man didn’t even look up. I carefully examined the man’s face. He looked very young, yet carried the aura of a king in power. To be honest, my aunt really had a good eye for choosing men. But would a “little white flower” like Mia really be this guy’s type? 7 The man was looking at documents on his own, not paying any attention to me at all. After a long while, he finally tapped the coffee cup lightly with his fingernail and then looked up at me. “I don’t like subordinates who take matters into their own hands.” The implication was that he was asking me to leave. “Today is Wednesday. What you wanted to drink should be Blue Mountain…” “But I don’t have the right to use the key to your exclusive locker, so I could only choose the best beans available on the counter.” “This cup is Mandheling, best for refreshing.” Rumor had it that Sterling Group was negotiating an acquisition with Sudilai Chemical, and the stock market was changing every day. Presumably, he must have been incredibly busy pulling all-nighters recently. “You can go out now.” This time, he scrutinized me carefully. At the moment I closed the door, I caught a glimpse of him picking up the coffee cup from the corner of my eye. I smirked. It seemed the result of my interview should be pretty good. … Just as I was about to celebrate my initial success, a late email disrupted my plan. “Sister Chloe, I’m sorry, I sent you the wrong photo.” The hacker I hired apologized profusely to me. Looking at the smiling but very unfamiliar face on the screen, my expression completely froze. If the man on the screen was my actual “brother-in-law,” then who did I meet today? Soon, I found out the answer. “I originally wanted to flirt with a rookie, but stepped on an eagle’s wing.” It turned out my aunt’s appetite wasn’t that big. The one she set her sights on was not the current big boss of the Sterling Group, Arthur Sterling, but his nephew—Julian Sterling. Legend has it that Julian lost his mother when he was young and was deeply involved in the battle for family assets, almost becoming a discarded pawn. Fortunately, he had a powerful uncle. Arthur, who was only in his twenties at the time, not only helped him protect his maternal family’s property but also set a trap for his brother-in-law’s company, slowly eating away and swallowing it up. Because of his childhood experience, Arthur has always carefully protected his nephew, not letting him fall deep into the complex business world. Julian, who only held a sinecure, was kind to others and had a very honest and sincere temperament. The face I interviewed with today appeared in my mind. He looked decisive and resolute, with “Don’t Mess With Me” written all over him from head to toe. “Really, he’s obviously an older guy, why does he look so young… If you had an old face, would I have made such a blunder?” There was no way around it; I had already flirted with him, so the only plan for now was to stay in the company first. 8 In the days that followed, while exposing my “shortcomings,” I continued to secretly collect information about Julian. This time, I didn’t make any more mistakes. Fortunately, Julian also worked at Sterling Group, just in a different department. My “feigned clumsiness” quickly wore out Arthur’s initial “good impression.” A week later, I received a suspension notice from HR. “Miss Vance, starting tomorrow you will no longer be the president’s secretary. If you are willing to accept a reassignment, you can still stay in our company.” No matter what, I had to stay first. I held my patience, started from the bottom, and constantly paid attention to internal transfers within the company. Through round after round of promotion exams, I finally got my wish and became the assistant to the Marketing Director, Julian. HR also finally sent the transfer order. Heh… Brother-in-law, it’s really hard to get to see you. … And just like that, I became Julian’s assistant. At work, I performed impeccably in professional aspects, but in human relations, I occasionally made some insignificant little mistakes. “Your family must have protected you very well; you can’t even read the room.” “I’m sorry, Director, it won’t happen again next time.” I looked a bit frustrated and lowered my head in anger. But the kind-hearted Julian wasn’t angry at all and even comforted me. “It’s okay, you don’t have to come to this kind of social event next time.” I was just about to argue, but instead received a look of affirmation from him. “Everyone has what they are good at, you don’t need to mind.” “…” In fact, Julian was the one who was best protected. So much so that he couldn’t see through my little tricks even once. Over time, my persona as a “confused elite” was firmly established. In today’s era of big data, I had already clearly figured out Julian’s preferences. Science shows that the so-called “dream lover” in people’s hearts is actually the idealized self that they have not yet reached. Men and women use the combination of “love and marriage” to fulfill the regrets in their hearts. I wasn’t sure if Julian would “make do and try” with Mia, but getting him to sincerely accept this marriage would be no easy task. Especially after I had already worked hard to mold an image infinitely close to his “dream lover.” … Late autumn was approaching, and the cemetery had become unusually desolate. Standing in front of the tombstone, the autumn wind blew the hem of my coat. My mother’s face on the tombstone was still beautiful, but it could no longer respond to my calls. “Chloe, is that you?” My father’s voice came from behind. The eye drops I deliberately put in took effect; after the soreness, tears fell right on cue. “Dad?” Turning around, my face was full of astonishment, and I took off my sunglasses. The man in front of me had long lost his bossy spirit from my memory; he had a potbelly, and his hair was slightly sparse. They say you are influenced by the company you keep. He really looked more and more like my aunt.

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When I woke up in the hospital, I was facing a handsome stranger. He babbled a whole bunch of things at me. I didn’t react at all. When he mentioned that we couldn’t get our marriage license for the time being, my brain finally started working again. “What marriage license?” I blurted out instinctively. “Our marriage license, Chloe. Did you hit your head and go stupid?” He reached out to touch my forehead, his movements incredibly natural. Is this a joke? I’m a beautiful young girl who just finished her high school finals. I’m not even of legal age to get married yet! Where did this scammer come from? 1 “Doctor!” I shoved the guy away and stretched my neck, yelling, “Doctor, come quick! There’s a bad guy here!” The doctor arrived quickly, followed by two nurses. They gave me a huge sense of security. I hid behind the kind-looking older doctor and loudly tattled. “I don’t know this guy! He’s trying to trick me into marrying him! He’s a human trafficker!” The handsome young man looked exasperated. “I know you’re mad. Getting the license is just delayed, not canceled. Mia didn’t mean to hurt you either. Don’t blame her—” “Where’s my phone?” I cut him off, looking at the doctor. “I need to call my parents.” “Your parents?” The guy frowned. “Your injury isn’t serious. There’s no need to alarm them. Seattle is far; it’s not easy for them to make the trip.” I was dumbfounded: “We’re not in Seattle?” The handsome guy was also dumbfounded. The doctor cleared his throat. “I was just about to tell you. The fall wasn’t too serious physically, but she hit her head. There’s some bleeding causing a hematoma that’s affecting her memory.” “Affecting my memory?” I muttered. “You mean, I have amnesia?” The doctor nodded: “Yes. But don’t worry, as the hematoma slowly dissipates, your memory will gradually return.” The handsome guy spoke up: “How long will that take?” “It’s hard to say. Could be a few months, could be a year or two.” I noticed the handsome guy visibly relaxed. After the doctor left, he picked up a women’s purse from the chair next to the bed, pulled out a phone, and handed it to me. “Since you have amnesia, there’s no rush for the license. But I really am your boyfriend. If you don’t believe me, look at the photos on your phone.” Lighting up the screen, the first thing I saw was the time and date in the center. 2025! But my memory was still stuck in the excitement of checking my scores after the finals. Six years had passed! 2 My attention shifted to the lock screen photo. It was a close-up selfie of two people cheek-to-cheek. The two people in the photo were me and the handsome guy standing in front of me. I unlocked the phone and opened the gallery. There were many photos of him. Judging from the angles, most were taken secretly. There were shots of him playing basketball, his profile while drinking water, and him sleeping with his head on a desk… “You actually took this many secret photos of me?” The guy leaned closer, his tone smug. “Now do you believe we’re a couple?” I pushed him away expressionlessly: “But I have absolutely no memory of you in my head. Stay away from me!” “Oh, then let me introduce myself.” His phone chimed. He picked it up and glanced at it, unable to hide the joy in his eyes. He typed a reply, his attention entirely on his phone, his tone casual. “I’m Ethan Vance. The boyfriend you stalked and shamelessly chased for a whole year before finally getting…” With a few simple sentences, he summarized my experiences over the past few years. As soon as I started college, I set my sights on Ethan, a rich kid, and became his ultimate lapdog. I followed him around constantly, impossible to shake off. I obeyed his every word. My behavior was high-profile and bold. Everyone at the university knew me. After more than a year of relentless pursuit, I actually succeeded. Ethan, the playboy, after a few brief flings and dumping several girlfriends, finally agreed to my pursuit. The whole school was taking bets on how long it would take for him to dump me. But surprisingly, a month passed, years passed, we graduated college, and we still hadn’t broken up. Recently, after I finished my master’s degree, Ethan even agreed to my proposal. He, who never posted on social media, made a high-profile announcement that we were getting our marriage license. Yesterday, we went to the courthouse together. At the entrance, he was called out. It was his childhood friend, Mia, who had been abroad for years. She bit her lip, grabbed his arm, and asked: “Can you not get married?” Angry, I got into an argument with her. In the scuffle, she tripped me. My head hit the steps, and I passed out. When I woke up, I was the amnesiac me of today. Ethan was still looking down, replying to messages, the corner of his mouth slightly raised. “Mia didn’t do it on purpose, and you just have amnesia, no serious physical harm. Don’t be unreasonable.” “She’s coming to visit you later. Be magnanimous and treat her nicely.” “She and I are just childhood friends who grew up together. Stop being jealous over nothing.” I took a deep breath and reminded him: “Did you forget? I have amnesia.” “To me right now, you are a complete stranger. Why would I be jealous?” Ethan put his phone in his pocket and leaned over me. His eyes were full of certainty. “Back then, it was love at first sight for you. You said my face was perfectly sculpted to your aesthetic.” “So don’t worry, you’ll fall in love with me all over again.” 3 I looked at the face mere inches from mine. Almond eyes, high nose bridge, thin lips, a sharp jawline. There was a hint of rebelliousness in his features. He gave off the vibe of an untamed boy from a comic book. He was indeed very handsome. But to say he was “perfectly sculpted to my aesthetic” was an exaggeration. I could only say he fit my aesthetic. He was a handsome guy. But my taste in handsome guys wasn’t limited to one type. I like almond eyes, but I also like fox eyes. Thick eyebrows and big eyes are nice, but there are plenty of handsome guys with monolids too. Pale, sweet “golden retriever” boys are lovable, but rugged guys with a bronze tan have their own charm. So, how could I have become his lapdog just because of his looks? I was absolutely certain his physical appearance didn’t hold that much attraction for me. While I was lost in thought looking at his face, a coquettish female voice came from the doorway. “What are you guys doing?” Snapping back to reality, I saw Ethan immediately straighten up, take two steps back, and eagerly put distance between us. He looked toward the door: “Mia, you’re here!” Saying that, he took the fruit basket from her hands and placed it on the small table next to the hospital bed. “Look, Mia even specially bought fruit for you. Stop being so petty!” The girl named Mia was wearing a floral dress, tall and slender. Her wavy long hair fell to her waist, her makeup was flawless, and she wore rimless glasses. She had an elegant, intellectual beauty. “Chloe, I’m sorry. Everything yesterday was my fault for causing you to get hurt.” Wearing stiletto heels, she walked to my bedside in three quick steps. Without giving me a chance to speak, she continued on her own. “I really didn’t mean it, I was just a little anxious.” “I didn’t want to ruin your wedding either, but Auntie specifically told me I had to stop you.” “You have to be understanding of her. After all, the Vance family has a massive business empire, and there are too many people approaching with ulterior motives. It’s only natural for Auntie to be afraid that you’re only after Ethan for his money.” “I don’t want you guys to get married right now either, but my reasons are different from Auntie’s.” “In my opinion, marriage is a serious matter. At the very least, both sets of parents should meet, right?” “You bypassing both families to get the license, isn’t that too childish?” “Also Chloe, even though Auntie refuses to see you, for Ethan’s sake, you should work hard to get her approval.” “Lowering your stance for love and pleasing your future mother-in-law isn’t shameful.” “How could you not even be willing to try, and just instigate Ethan to get the license directly?” “One more thing, I need to make my stance clear. Although Auntie has tried to set me and Ethan up more than once, I only see him as a younger brother and have absolutely no other thoughts.” I swallowed hard. Holy crap. That’s a lot of information to process. I need a moment to digest this. 4 My brain went into overdrive, quickly extracting useful information from Mia’s words. First, Ethan isn’t just an average rich kid; his family is extremely wealthy. Wealthy enough to create a massive class divide between him and me, who comes from a middle-class family. Second, our relationship did not have the support of our parents. Especially his mother, who suspected I was after Ethan for his money. She refused my requests to meet. Lastly, Mia subtly flaunted her extraordinary relationship with the Vance family. She and Ethan are childhood friends, so their family backgrounds should be similar. Most importantly, Ethan’s mother is her godmother. They have a close relationship. Ethan’s mother always wanted Mia to be her daughter-in-law. In just a few short sentences, she managed to provoke me and show off. This Mia is not simple. “Don’t worry, Mia. She has amnesia now and doesn’t even remember me. We won’t be getting the license anytime soon.” Ethan stared fixedly at the person in front of him, his gaze greedy, as if he couldn’t get enough of looking at her. Mia glared at him: “How many times do I have to tell you? Call me ‘sister’. I’m older than you!” “What do those few months matter?” Ethan grinned, “I’m going to call you Mia, what are you going to do about it?” It was like watching a puppy demanding affection from its owner. As someone who usually loves shipping couples, I felt slightly nauseated. Right now, I just wanted these two to get out of my sight as quickly as possible. “I want to rest. You guys should leave!” I started issuing eviction orders. Mia pursed her lips, sounding aggrieved: “Chloe, do you dislike me? I’ll leave right now.” Ethan grabbed her as she turned around. “You’re overthinking it. She’s probably just tired. We won’t bother her sleep anymore!” Without bothering to say goodbye to me, his supposed girlfriend, he pulled his childhood friend and left directly. He didn’t even consider that, having just woken up from being unconscious for over ten hours, how could I possibly sleep? However, their departure was exactly what I wanted. I picked up my phone and started investigating my situation. Because I didn’t believe a single word Ethan said. I had just quickly glanced through the photos on the phone. Most of them were secret photos I took of him, but there were also some photos of us together. In every single photo together, including the lock screen where our faces were pressed together, I had a slight smile. That’s the problem. I never just smile slightly for photos; I always show my teeth in a big grin. The person who knows me best is myself. Looking at those photos, I could tell those smiles weren’t genuine. I was forcing a smile. Or rather, I was putting on a performance of being happy for someone else to see. 5 There was one more crucial thing. I had someone I liked. Ethan had his older childhood friend. I also had my childhood sweetheart. Liam Hughes. The boy I grew up with. My companion, my older brother figure, my best friend. Throughout my life, his presence was everywhere. He was a genius scholar, the “perfect child” in every parent’s eyes. A dazzling existence like a star wherever he went. The most handsome guy you’d spot instantly in a crowd. The patient childhood friend who tutored me all the way to my good high school finals score. He was the one I had liked since my first flutter of teenage romance. We liked each other. We had already agreed to go to the same university. And start dating freely as soon as we got to college. With someone who amazed my entire youth right there, how could I possibly fall in love with anyone else? I picked up my phone and started dialing the familiar number from my memory. “The number you have dialed is not in service,” the automated voice reminded me. Impossible! Like a crazy person, I dialed the number over and over again. Over and over again, I listened to the mechanical voice from the receiver. How could this be? How could the number I had dialed countless times, the one I knew by heart, be out of service? I opened the phone gallery again and looked through it from beginning to end. It was entirely filled with that stranger, Ethan! Notes, memos, university intranet, various chat apps, I checked them all. Starting from my freshman year six years ago, my life was entirely consumed by Ethan. There was no trace of Liam. Did my amazing, prominent childhood sweetheart just vanish into thin air? Oh right, Mom and Dad. I called my mom. “Chloe? Did you finish all your graduation paperwork? When are you coming home?” Thank goodness, it was the voice I knew. Before I could speak, my mom started chattering away. “If you haven’t decided on a job yet, don’t rush. Come home and relax for a bit, then look slowly.” “And that boyfriend of yours, you’ve been dating for a few years now, right? Bring him home for us to meet when you have time.” “I’ve mentioned it a few times before, and you always found excuses to refuse. What, is he unwilling to come back with you?” So, I had been dating Ethan for years and hadn’t met either set of parents. His parents looked down on my status and refused to meet me. As for my side, was it that Ethan didn’t want to come meet my parents, or was it that I myself didn’t want to bring him? On the phone, my mom was still asking about my health, asking if I had lost weight again recently, and telling me to stop dieting. “Mom, where did Liam go?” I suddenly asked. The voice on the other end came to an abrupt halt. 6 It took a while for my mom to seem to find the name in her memory. “Liam? Why are you suddenly asking about him? Didn’t their whole family move abroad?” “Old Mr. and Mrs. Hughes too, it’s like they evaporated after moving abroad. They haven’t been back to our hometown once in all these years.” “We lost contact years ago.” “Speaking of which, you and Liam used to be stuck together like glue when you were little. We all thought you two would end up dating.” “Who knew that as soon as you started college, you fell for someone else, and Liam’s family just moved abroad.” “It’s a pity for you two childhood sweethearts. I really liked Liam. If he had been my son-in-law, I would have been a hundred percent satisfied!” It seemed my mom didn’t know what happened between me and him either. I chatted absentmindedly for a few more minutes and then hung up. Lying in the hospital bed, I briefly organized my experiences from the past few years. After the college entrance exams, the day the scores came out, I excitedly went looking for Liam. I wanted to tell him that I could go to the same university as him. My memory stopped on the road running towards his house. Waking up again, it was today, six years later. I had already graduated with my master’s. As soon as I started college, I fell for a guy named Ethan, went crazy for him, lost my mind over him. Shamelessly chased him for a year before finally getting him. Judging from Ethan’s condescending tone, I was clearly the subordinate in this relationship. I don’t understand. Even if I had moved on to someone else, my IQ should still be intact. Why would I do something so brainless? What happened six years ago that turned me into this? Could it be that someone transmigrated into my body? No, I had seen several photos of handwritten course notes I took in the phone gallery. The handwriting was exactly the same as mine. Using different colored highlighters for different key points was also my personal habit. It was evident that I took my master’s courses seriously and didn’t slack off on my studies. In my chat history with my advisor, he mostly praised me. I didn’t let my “love brain” delay my studies. This discovery made me breathe a sigh of relief. However, if even an absurd hypothesis like transmigration was ruled out, how could I explain my madness over these past few years? While I was thinking, I felt the need to use the restroom. I got up and went to the bathroom. Pushing the door open, facing me was a mirror hanging on the wall. Seeing myself in the mirror, I froze. It was still my face, but why had I lost so much weight? No wonder on the phone, my mom asked if I had lost weight again. She used to always remind me to eat less, saying I wouldn’t look pretty if I gained more weight. The old me couldn’t be called fat, but I was definitely not skinny. My face used to be round, with a bit of baby fat. Fair skin, good complexion. Liam always said my cheeks were like peeled eggs, supple and bouncy. And now? My cheeks were actually sunken in slightly from being so thin. My arms were as thin as bamboo sticks. Could it be that Ethan likes slim girls, so I dieted for him? What kind of willpower would that take?! I’ve always had a good appetite since I was little. I loved snacks, BBQ, cakes, desserts, and boba tea. I gave all of that up for Ethan? Too crazy, I couldn’t believe I was capable of doing that. I walked to the toilet and pulled down my pajama pants. Looking at my thighs, I froze again. It seemed it wasn’t just a simple matter of dieting. My thighs were crisscrossed with multiple scars. I had self-harming tendencies! 7 “Miss Smith, you can’t leave the hospital yet! You still need an IV drip this afternoon!” the little nurse yelled while chasing after me. “I have something to do! I’ll come back this afternoon!” I waved at her as I ran. The shopping app on my phone had my delivery address. It turned out I had rented a place on the university campus. Even though I had graduated, yesterday’s purchase history showed items were still being delivered there, meaning I hadn’t moved out yet. I called a cab and headed straight to the apartment on campus. I had the keys in my bag. Walking into the apartment, I confirmed at a glance that this was my place. The decorations, the potted plants, the plushies, the snacks in the fridge—they were all things I liked. The clothes in the closet were all styles I favored. Once again proving that for the past six years, that person was indeed me. No transmigration involved. Following my past organizing habits, I started searching the desk area. Finally, in a document folder in the drawer, I found a stack of medical records. Over the past few years, I had seen a psychiatrist, and more than once. According to the medical records, I had moderate depression and self-harming tendencies. The doctor’s conclusion was that, because the patient refused to cooperate and confide, they had not yet found the cause of the illness. In other words, I was depressed and self-harming, I felt something was wrong with me, so I went to see a psychiatrist. But facing the doctor, I refused to speak what was on my mind, preventing the doctor from making an accurate diagnosis and therefore unable to provide an effective treatment plan. This was very contradictory. Since I went to see a psychiatrist, I obviously wanted to save myself. Why didn’t I confess everything to the doctor? Could it be that someone stopped me from confiding in the doctor? I had to find out what happened over these past few years. I called my mom and asked her to take photos of every page of my high school yearbook and send them to me. Back at the hospital, sitting on the bed, I started calling my former high school classmates one by one. Asking them if anyone could contact Liam. I even asked our old homeroom teacher and subject teachers. Unfortunately, no one knew where he was. In the evening, Ethan called and said he was having his family’s housekeeper deliver food to me. He was busy and wouldn’t be coming over. For the next two days, he didn’t show up again. But every meal was delivered on time. Even when I was discharged, I didn’t see a shadow of him. Back at the university, I spent a whole day walking around the campus. This was once the shared goal of Liam and me. We agreed to apply here together, and then officially start dating. The result was, only I came. Why didn’t he come here as promised? If he didn’t come to this university, why did he go abroad? Why did he vanish? And what had happened to him? 8 That night, I turned on my laptop and started searching my online footprint over the past few years. Ethan called. “I heard from the housekeeper yesterday that you were discharged when she brought you lunch. How is it? Your body’s fine now, right?” “It’s fine!” I stared at the computer screen, brushing him off. “Since you’re fine, run an errand for me! Go to the wine cabinet in my house and grab a bottle of wine. I’ll send you a picture of it in a bit.” A very natural tone. He must have ordered me around like this a lot in the past. “Not going.” I hung up immediately. A few minutes later, he called again. I didn’t answer, and the phone kept ringing. I picked it up, annoyed: “What do you want? I told you I’m busy!” “Chloe, you’ve got some nerve, talking to me like that?” “Just a reminder, I have amnesia. To me, you’re a stranger. Why do you think I’d listen to you?” I asked. “Oh, I remember now, you have amnesia. I was wondering why you, who used to be so obedient, suddenly grew a spine.” He chuckled lightly. “So, stop bothering me, OK?” I hung up. The next second, I received a message from him on WeChat. “Are you sure you’re not coming?” Followed by a photo of a little bear keychain. “This is yours, right?” “Do you still want it?” I stared at the little bear in the photo, stunned. This was a gift Liam gave me in our senior year of high school. This little bear keychain was originally one of the prizes he won for placing first in the grade. He put the prize box in front of me and told me to pick what I liked. Inside were a fountain pen, a notebook, an electronic English dictionary, and more. I instantly fell in love with this little bear. A month after I attached this little bear to my backpack, I made it into the top ten of the grade for the first time in a mock exam. I even joked with Liam that it was my lucky star protecting my grades. I said I would keep it on my bag forever. How did it end up with Ethan? Ethan offered an explanation: “When you fainted that day, it fell at the entrance of the courthouse. Mia picked it up.” “If you want it, be a good girl and go get my wine.” I went to Ethan’s house, used the passcode he gave me to open the door, grabbed the wine he wanted, and then rushed to the private club he was at. When I pushed the door open, the noisy chatter stopped instantly. Everyone stopped what they were doing and looked at me. Including Ethan and Mia sitting in the center of the sofa. A slacker-looking guy spoke up: “Yo, didn’t they say Chloe had amnesia? How come she’s still at your beck and call?” Another chimed in: “Maybe submission to Ethan is already encoded in her DNA. Even with amnesia, she can’t forget her instincts.” “Sigh, Ethan’s charm is just too powerful!”

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I loved wearing short white skirts, my wardrobe was perpetually a soft mix of pink and white, and everyone always said I was sweet and obedient. He dyed his hair red, was rebellious, and had a terrible temper. He was my older brother’s best friend. Every time we met, I would hide behind my brother to greet him. Distant and reserved. No one knew I liked him. 1 During the summer break of my sophomore year in college, my parents went traveling, so I had no choice but to stay at my brother’s apartment. At this hour, my brother was at work, but I knew his apartment passcode. Rolling my suitcase, I opened the door, only to hear someone inside speaking with a cold sneer. “Why don’t you let your unborn sibling play instead?” “What I mean is, you might as well go back into the oven and be remade.” A familiar voice. I stopped in my tracks. I recognized it. It was him. Arthur was my brother’s best friend. They had hung out since middle school, and I knew they had always been close. But I didn’t expect him to be living in my brother’s apartment. Arthur started playing esports in high school, and after retiring, he became a gaming streamer. That voice just now—he was definitely cursing out his teammates on stream. I understood immediately because I watched his streams every day. I was his top donator. No one knew. I softened my movements and went to the room my brother had prepared for me. It was still a cozy room in pink and white hues, filled with plushies. I didn’t plan to go over and bother him, but before I could finish unpacking, someone knocked on the door. Turning around, I saw Arthur leaning lazily against the open doorway, his narrow eyes glancing my way. “Didn’t you say you were arriving tonight?” Obviously, my brother had given him a heads-up but hadn’t told me. I didn’t know why, but facing him always made me feel a bit guilty. Maybe it was because I liked him. “My roommates all left early, so I changed my ticket.” I have mild social anxiety, but I also like being around people. Arthur pulled out his phone and glanced at it. Three o’clock. He raised an eyebrow. “Hungry?” He had always treated me like a younger sister, taking care of me just like my actual brother did. I nodded. “I’ll order takeout in a bit.” He let out a scoff. “Your Brother Arthur is standing right here, and you’re going to order takeout?” “You actually know how to cook?” I looked at him with bright eyes, a bit pleasantly surprised. I always thought he was lazy and had no interests other than gaming. Arthur lifted his chin. “Wait here.” 2 To be honest, I didn’t have high hopes for Arthur’s culinary skills until I saw a fragrant bowl of scallion oil noodles on the dining table. “You actually cooked.” I sat down reservedly, feeling a bit embarrassed yet surprised. He gave a short laugh. “Eat up. I’m going to go rank up.” I ate the noodles he cooked, watching him take long strides and cross the room in two or three steps. For the past six months, while I was at school, I could only watch him in his stream. Other female fans could brazenly call him “Hubby.” But even typing those two words made my face turn red. I felt like a hopeless case. He was streaming upstairs, and I was downstairs, eating noodles while secretly opening his stream. He had just restarted his broadcast, and fans in the chat were asking where he went. Unlike his usual cold and arrogant demeanor, he raised an eyebrow and smiled slightly. “I was afraid the silly cat at my friend’s house would starve to death.” He deliberately lowered his voice, so I hadn’t heard it at all downstairs. The chat was curious about how cute the kitten must be for him to be in such a good mood after feeding it. He lowered his eyes, clicked to start a game, and gave an ambiguous smile. “It’s pretty cute.” His voice came through the phone, making my heart pound wildly. Where was there a cat? It was just me. 3 My brother came back that evening, looking exhausted and apologetic as he said to me, “I have to fly to the US tomorrow for a business trip. I’ll hang out with you when I get back.” Then he turned to Arthur, telling him to take good care of me. I saw him casually say “Hmm,” his back to us as he continued cooking. My brother was still telling me to stay up late less, but I couldn’t hear a word of it. The thought of being alone with him for half a month made me lower my head, feeling a mix of anticipation and nervousness. “Arthur, take good care of my sister, or I’ll kick you out when I get back.” “I’ll starve her,” he retorted to my brother in a mean voice. My brother laughed out of exasperation, walked over, and pretended to hit him. The two of them bantered for a bit. I sat at the dining table, watching them laugh. I felt a bit envious of my brother. I didn’t think I could act so naturally around him. When I woke up the next day, my brother had already left. Looking at the worried messages he left on my phone, I washed up and went downstairs to make some instant noodles. Halfway through eating, Arthur came downstairs. My brother had mentioned before that he had terrible morning sickness. Seeing him looking full of hostility and annoyance, I swallowed my greeting and silently buried my head in my noodles, not daring to make a sound. “Little Chloe, you’re not very polite.” I blanked for a moment, looking up under his dissatisfied gaze with an embarrassed smile. “Morning.” He leaned in, gave it a look of disgust. “No nutrition. Wake me up tomorrow to cook.” It was as if he specifically came down just to say that to me, and as soon as he finished, he went back upstairs. I looked at his tall, lean back in confusion. Did he specifically come down just to snap at me? But Arthur always had a bad temper, so I didn’t think much of it. At noon, Arthur came downstairs with messy hair to cook. Hearing the noise in the living room, I spoke up apologetically, “Sorry, Arthur, for troubling you.” He scoffed, not even turning his head as he snorted coldly, “Not even calling me Brother. Watch out, I might starve you.” I chuckled quietly from behind. Arthur was fierce, but his bark was worse than his bite. “You wouldn’t.” His back seemed to stiffen for a moment. Then he brought the dishes over and said in a fierce tone, “Get your ass over here and eat.” 4 He was fierce, but his cooking was delicious. Coming down to eat on time every day was the only interaction I had with him these past few days. Even though I hadn’t said many words to him, I was incredibly happy. I got to see him every day. When he cooked wearing an apron, I would prop my chin up and watch from behind, secretly raising my phone to take a picture of his back. I didn’t have any photos with him, only some large group photos from my brother’s gatherings. I kept all of them, along with the occasional sneaky photos from over the years. My finger tapped lightly, the screen flashed, paused, and the flash went off. I was terrified, frantically turning my phone around as he looked back. “What are you doing?” He held a spatula in his hand, his handsome face looking very grumpy. I stammered, raising my phone slightly. “S-selfie.” I didn’t know if he believed it, but he frowned at me for a good while before turning back to continue cooking. I breathed a sigh of relief and quickly turned off the flash on my phone. Damn it, when did I turn the flash on? I was still feeling frustrated and guilty, not daring to look up. So I also didn’t see him send a message to my brother. “Is your sister complaining about me?” A reply came instantly. “Chloe is very well-behaved; she wouldn’t complain.” He snorted and retorted, “Not well-behaved at all.” She sweetly called everyone else “Brother,” except for him. The other side seemed exasperated, pausing for a moment before replying. “Is it really true what they say, that you hate Chloe?” “Everyone likes her and says she’s sweet. You’re the only one who thinks she isn’t.” The food was ready. He plated it and placed it on the table. The girl, looking very soft in her pink and white pajamas, obediently served herself rice under his gaze, then blinked at him. As if asking if she could start eating. He chuckled and spat out one word. “Eat.” I smiled at him, picked up a piece of cola chicken wings, and praised him enthusiastically. “Arthur, the cola chicken wings you make are really delicious.” I deliberately softened my voice, which somehow sounded a bit like acting cute. A bit embarrassing. We weren’t close enough for me to act cute with him. The corners of his lips seemed to tilt up, but his tone was still fierce: “If it’s delicious, then hurry up and eat. Why all the nonsense.” Like a cat with its fur standing on end. I was surprised to find that Arthur actually really liked being praised. 5 Just when I thought Arthur and I were getting along a bit better because of my compliments, I saw him coming downstairs impatiently in the evening. Seeing me actually downstairs, the hostility between his eyebrows seemed to dissipate a bit. “Going out for a bit. I’ll bring you dinner back tonight.” He twirled the car keys in his hand and explained to me. His hands were long and handsome. My gaze lingered for a second, and I nodded obediently. Arthur glanced at me, seemingly very satisfied with my obedience, his steps even becoming a bit lighter. When he came back that night, he brought me a rice bowl dish. He hurriedly went upstairs to stream, his expression still looking a bit poor. I was a bit curious, but didn’t dare ask, so I opened his stream. I heard him turn on his camera with a dark face. He stayed silent for a moment before telling the chat, “Company request. Playing duos today.” He was very skilled and always streamed solo, carrying the team single-handedly. Occasionally, he would play duos with former teammates or male streamers he was close with. Before the fans and I could react, an account with a cute pink avatar suddenly invited him to team up. He accepted without batting an eye, but his expression was still very poor. The female streamer on the other end turned on her mic, her voice sweet and sugary. Fans in the chat explained that she was also a streamer in the gaming section. I didn’t watch other gaming streamers besides him, so it was normal that I didn’t know her. But he was playing duos with another girl. Even knowing it was his job, I was still a bit unhappy. The game started, and I listened to them talk while eating. Actually, it was just the female streamer talking the whole time; he completely ignored her. The female streamer had quite a few fans. Seeing his terrible attitude, they started cursing him in the chat. “Our Frosty is so sweet. Why is this straight guy giving her attitude?” “Feeling bad for Frosty.” “Taking my Frosty away, stay away, you grumpy guy.” The chat was a complete mess. The female streamer didn’t seem affected. She was still acting cute, asking him to let her have the blue buff, and her character had even run over to him. But he took the blue buff without a change in expression and went to the side lane to help gank without looking back. The chat rolled even faster. He glanced at the screen and said sparingly: “You having the blue buff is useless.” His own fans were all laughing, typing “hahaha” and calling him a straight guy, while the female streamer’s fans were going crazy with anger. Many of Arthur’s old fans knew that he had a sharp tongue and did whatever he pleased, so they weren’t surprised that he didn’t give up the blue buff. It was exactly the kind of thing he would do. The chat was cursing so viciously. I couldn’t stand it and threw a bunch of special effect gifts. The chat started saying things like “Long time no see, top donator sister.” He glanced at it twice and said coldly, “Thanks for the gifts.” I kept my head down, eating the food he brought back, and smiled, my eyes curving, when I heard his “thanks.” One game ended quickly. I don’t know if the female streamer noticed his overly cold attitude, but she made an excuse and said she was done playing. His expression slowly softened after the female streamer left. Anyone with eyes could see how much he disliked her. The chat was full of “hahaha,” asking if he didn’t like soft girls. Arthur usually wouldn’t respond to these, but today he looked at the chat and paused for a second. “I like them.” The chat paused for a moment, then started scrolling even more vigorously. “Like what!” “So you do like soft girls?!” “Then why were you so mean to Frosty.” He scoffed. “Does that even count as a soft girl?” He thought of the girl downstairs. She ate slowly, much like the videos of rabbits or hamsters eating that he scrolled past online. Very well-behaved. None of them ate as well as he did. It was just that she was occasionally disobedient, afraid of him, and wouldn’t call him “Brother.” So he likes soft girls. My mind was a mess, thinking of countless possibilities that made the corners of my lips curl up. But if he liked me, how could he be so indifferent? A couple of days ago, my brother even sent me a message, worried that our relationship wasn’t good, telling me to hang around him less. I sighed and threw the empty takeout box into the trash can. 6 A couple of days later, he made breakfast and was about to go out again. He said the same thing, that he would bring lunch back for me. I wanted to say that I could actually just order takeout, but he didn’t even give me a chance to speak. He just left after saying that. I had some snacks for lunch. Later, feeling a bit bored while waiting, I wanted to play a game for a while. As soon as I logged on, I received many team invitations. I accepted my roommate’s. I didn’t expect that after I joined, she pulled a senior from our club in as well. The senior was a nice guy and took good care of us, but I could tell he was interested in me. I usually avoided him, rejecting him both explicitly and implicitly. I didn’t expect to run into him again today. “I haven’t played a game with Chloe yet.” The senior smiled and turned his mic on first, and my roommate immediately clicked start. The senior’s gaming skills were good. After he got a triple kill, my roommate and I smiled and praised him. “Triple kill! You’re awesome, Senior.” The apartment door clicked open. Just as I finished speaking, I locked eyes with Arthur, who was walking in carrying takeout boxes. From the phone, the senior was still modestly saying it was nothing special, and then a clear voice came through: “Chloe, come get the blue buff.” I saw Arthur’s face visibly darken. He raised an eyebrow and placed the takeout boxes in front of me. I said “No need” into the mic and quickly turned it off. “You’re back.” He gave a cold laugh. “Obviously.” I smiled awkwardly. He suddenly leaned in and asked, “Little Chloe, are you dating someone?” It was out of nowhere, but I felt his words were dangerous. I hastily shook my head, not wanting him to misunderstand. “I’m playing with my roommate and a senior. We’re all friends.” He seemed to breathe a sigh of relief, reached out and messed up my hair, warning me fiercely: “Better not be. If you are, watch out, I’ll tell your brother.” My heart was beating very fast. After he went upstairs, the senior and my roommate asked me on my phone why I stopped talking. I inexplicably looked down and smiled, turned on the mic, and told them I wasn’t playing anymore. I felt like he cared about me a little bit. 7 That evening, after dinner, Arthur suddenly asked me if I wanted to play a game together. I was stunned. Besides the times when my brother was around and dragged us both to play, I hadn’t played alone with him before. Plus, he usually streamed after dinner. “Aren’t you streaming?” He leisurely poured a glass of water. “I am. Do you mind?” Didn’t his fans all say he had no taste, that he didn’t even like soft girls like Frosty? He was going to show them who really had no taste. I was very nervous, but the opportunity was rare. “I don’t mind.” He went upstairs, and I followed him with my phone. My heart was thumping. It was my first time in his room. Clean and tidy. He set up his equipment in a moment, then told me he started the stream. I hid in a spot the camera couldn’t see and softly said “Hmm.” I felt an inexplicable sense of shyness. Like we were dating behind the fans’ backs. Even though we weren’t yet. His mic picked up sound very well. The fans must have heard and asked if there was someone else with him. “Yeah, carrying my friend’s sister today.” I didn’t know what the chat was saying, but I heard him chuckle. I really wanted to click into his stream and take a peek, but I didn’t dare. The game started. His rank was very high. Afraid of being cursed at by my teammates, I picked a support hero. This entire game, I experienced both tension and a magical feeling. Listening to his clear voice talking to me for the whole game. “Follow me.” “Take the blue buff.” “I’ll come pick you up.” “Don’t be afraid, wait for me.” Was it because I was sitting next to him? I actually felt that the person who was usually cold in the stream was exceptionally gentle. When the game ended, he took a moment to look at the chat, seemingly in a very good mood. The sister is way sweeter than that female streamer! “You guys are right.” Is it really a friend’s sister? It’s not a girlfriend? “Yeah, friend’s sister.” Friend’s sister. I gripped my phone tightly, and the little bit of secret joy I couldn’t hold back just now instantly vanished. 8 Before heading back to my room after playing, I composed myself and told him he didn’t need to get up specially to make breakfast for me tomorrow morning. Arthur had just turned off his equipment. He looked back and gave me a deep look. “Why?” I didn’t dare look at him. I grabbed my phone and ran out. “No reason, just felt it was too much trouble for you.” Everything was fine while we were playing the game just now. Arthur watched the girl’s retreating figure and frowned imperceptibly. When I went downstairs the next day, as expected, I didn’t see anyone. That tiny bit of hope in my heart instantly plummeted to the core. He had always been rebellious. I had never seen Arthur be so obedient. I lowered my eyes, feeling a bit disappointed. “What are you dawdling for? Eat.” Just as I was slowly walking to the kitchen door, he pushed the door open, his bony, handsome hands steadily holding a bowl of noodles. I couldn’t help but show some joy. “Why did you…” Before I could finish, he reached out and pressed me down into a seat at the dining table. “How much do you hate me, Chloe?” His tone was very bad, as if he was suppressing anger. I turned to look at him. “I don’t.” How could I possibly hate him. He fiercely messed up my hair and placed the bowl of noodles in front of me with a thud. The sound wasn’t loud, but the action was scary. He did it on purpose. “Do you know how expensive my hands are? Cooking for you every day and you’re still complaining.” He was acting fierce. I softened my voice, feeling wronged: “I wasn’t complaining…” “If you weren’t complaining, why did you say that last night?” They had finally gotten a little bit closer, and she was knocking him back to square one again. Arthur was not one to admit defeat. When playing games, making a comeback against the wind was what excited him the most. The same went for her. He had always preferred to finish things quickly. But with her, he was slow and cautious, terrified that if he showed even a little bit, she would run away. “You’re tired from streaming, and you have to get up to cook for me instead of catching up on sleep.” “It’s exhausting, Arthur.” Besides a bit of pique last night, I really did feel it was hard on him, and there was no need for him to get up so early just to cook for me. Hearing this, he let out a scoff, leaned down, and pinched my cheek fiercely. “I want to.” He was always like this, looking fierce but actually not using any force at all. I covered my face and dodged, pursing my lips with a bit of distaste. “Learning bad habits instead of good ones.” My brother had loved pinching my cheeks since we were kids, making me cry several times but never tiring of it. He got better as we grew up, but occasionally he would still pinch my cheeks to tease me. He had always just watched the two of us siblings mess around from the side. I didn’t expect him to pick this up too. Arthur smiled and went upstairs. “See you at noon, Chloe.” I hummed an acknowledgment and buried my head in the noodles. I also hid the corners of my lips that were curving up. I liked him even more.

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The first time I saw our new neighbor, the floating text materialized out of thin air. [This poor female lead. Her parents despise her, her brother loathes her, her husband discarded her, and now she’s dying of cancer.] [To think she survived being bullied in high school and sexually harassed by her boss, only for everyone to blame her. Maybe death really is her only escape.] [Do it. Jump off the roof. End this miserable, unloved life.] I stared at those blood-chilling words hovering in my field of vision like a translucent live-stream chat. Then, I looked at the girl standing on the edge of the roof—a girl so utterly hollowed out, there wasn’t a single spark of light left in her eyes. I lunged forward, grabbed her by the collar, and yanked her hard onto the safety of the concrete. Without missing a beat, I pulled out my phone and dialed the girls. “I need the sharpest tongues we’ve got. We’ve got a war to win. Hustle!” 1 From those floating comments, I pieced together the absurd reality: I was living inside a trashy, tragic romance novel—the kind where the heroine suffers endlessly just so the men in her life can feel guilty later. And the girl I’d just dragged off the roof was Summer, the protagonist. She was pure-hearted, kind, and hardworking. But because of a million contrived, tragic reasons, her twenty-odd years on this earth had been nothing but suffocating darkness. She had tried to save herself a thousand times. Yet the very people bound to her by blood and law—her so-called family and her husband—kept shoving her back into the abyss. Her voice had been entirely stripped from her. She believed the only way to prove her innocence, to finally be heard, was to die. Oh, you foolish, sweet girl, I thought. What on earth could possibly be more important than breathing? So you lost an argument? Big deal. We’ll just help you scream louder. As an NPC in this universe—one of the neighborhood busybodies whose only apparent literary function was to gossip and play cards—I possessed a very specific set of skills. And if there’s one thing a seasoned American woman cannot stomach, it’s seeing a good girl bullied. “Listen to me, honey,” I told her, cupping her pale face. “Some people are just born trash. If you don’t curse them out, they’ll think your silence is an invitation to walk all over you.” “You don’t even have to lift a finger,” Marge chimed in, already rolling up her sleeves. “You just need to know that there isn’t a soul alive that a pack of pissed-off old women can’t handle.” “Man, woman, young, old—doesn’t matter,” Shirley added, waving a dismissive hand. “We sit our asses down, kick off our shoes, and start clapping our hands. I guarantee we’ll have those bastards trembling in their designer loafers.” “They will never dare look at you sideways again! And don’t you worry about the cost, sweetie. Cursing people out is entirely free. We consider it vocal cardio. Don’t you dare feel guilty!” The girls practically tripped over each other bragging about their past “victories,” terrified Summer might underestimate our sheer, unadulterated audacity. Of course, while our mouths ran a mile a minute, our hands were just as busy. Diane was sweeping and mopping the apartment. Helen was aggressively chopping vegetables in the kitchen. The rest of us had already corralled Summer at the table and set up the Mahjong tiles. Summer held her tiles with a blank, shattered expression. Amidst our chaotic, deafening chatter, just as she was trying to figure out what tile to discard, her phone buzzed. It was Carter. Her brother. The second she answered, the vitriol bled through the speaker, slicing through the noise of our apartment. We froze, and I immediately reached over and tapped the speakerphone button. “Summer, who the hell do you think you are, skipping work?” Carter barked. “Your little stunt just cost the company a ten-million-dollar account. How exactly do you plan on paying us back for that?” Summer flinched. The tiny furrow between her brows deepened, and the absolute grayness swept back over her face, extinguishing whatever small warmth our kitchen had given her. Right then, a new comment floated past my eyes: [If she hadn’t skipped work, she would have been cornered by that disgusting executive today.] [It was Blair—the evil fake sister—who completely botched the pitch! Why is Summer taking the fall for a lost account?] [In these switched-at-birth tropes, the biological daughter always bleeds for the golden child’s mistakes!] I narrowed my eyes. I leaned right into the phone’s microphone and unleashed hell. “Let me get this straight,” I snapped. “Because Summer took a sick day, your company lost a ten-million-dollar deal? So, am I to understand that your entire corporate roster is a bunch of incompetent morons who can’t close a single contract without her?” “Good lord, Summer must be an absolute prodigy! I wonder what her compensation package looks like? Oh, wait. Three thousand dollars a month. No housing, no benefits. It’s a goddamn joke!” “You want an entry-level employee making pennies to shoulder a ten-million-dollar loss? If you’re that good at shifting the blame, why aren’t you running for President?” Summer stared at me, her mouth slightly ajar. On the other end of the line, the haughty brother was struck entirely dumb. “Who… who the hell is this? Put Summer on the phone.” I let out a harsh, venomous laugh. “I’m your worst nightmare, buddy. You want to talk to Summer? Get on your knees and grovel first. If I’m in a charitable mood, I might let a scumbag like you breathe in her general direction.” “Summer! Is this your idea of manners? Letting some stranger insult your own brother?” I cackled. “Oh, manners? You want to talk about manners? What kind of well-bred gentleman treats the girl who stole his sister’s life like a princess, while treating his actual flesh and blood like a punching bag?” “You don’t know anything!” he spat. “Summer has been a vicious, manipulative bitch since she got here. I acknowledge her as my sister, and she should be grateful for the charity!” I rolled my eyes so hard it physically hurt. “You pathetic, gaslighting loser. You can’t even close a business deal without blaming a junior employee. The dumbbells at my local gym don’t need your ‘charity,’ let alone a brilliant girl like Summer.” “If your business is failing, look in the mirror. If you needed her to save your pitch, then you call with some damn respect, not acting like you’re God’s gift to the boardroom!” “I don’t care what lies your precious little fake sister has been feeding you. Do not call this number again. As of today, Summer is fresh out of brothers!” 2 Click. I hung up. Blocked the number. Deleted the contact. A flawless, scorched-earth execution. The girls cheered, clapping their hands and telling me what a spectacular job I’d done. And there, sitting amidst the deafening warmth of a mid-morning Mahjong game, the heroine finally managed a tiny, fragile smile. “Alright, alright, clear the table! Food’s ready!” Helen hollered from the kitchen. We swept the tiles away in seconds. When the dishes hit the table, we descended like a flock of aggressive mother hens. We piled her bowl high with roasted chicken, garlic ribs, and buttery mashed potatoes until it looked like a small mountain. “Eat up. You’re practically skin and bones. You need meat on you!” “Once you’ve got your strength up, we’re taking you straight to the hospital tomorrow to get looked at.” “You’re young, honey, whatever it is, you’ll fight it. Look at me—breast cancer survivor of thirty years and I’m still raising hell.” “Finish that plate, and you’re coming to Zumba with us. I’m telling you, the one thing sickness hates most is a woman who knows how to have a good time!” “You stick with us, sweetie. We’ll make sure you never stop smiling.” Summer quietly chewed her food. Her eyes went glassy, the rims flushing a deep, bruised red. I knew what it was. She was utterly starved for love. Well, it was a good thing my girls and I had a suffocating, aggressive amount of love to give. We had enough to fill every hollow space her family had carved out of her. The next day, Marge and I marched Summer into the oncology wing. Just as the floating text had prophesied, it was late-stage cancer. The doctors told us that after a surgical resection, she would need aggressive chemotherapy and radiation. The road ahead was long, brutal, and terrifying. I looked the oncologist dead in the eye and asked for a timeline. “If she fights,” the doctor said softly, “and if we can get her through this first year… she’ll cross the hardest hurdle. After that, another ten or twenty years isn’t out of the question.” Relief washed over me. I grabbed Summer’s hand, ready to march down to billing and book the surgery suite. But Summer planted her feet. She looked down at the linoleum floor. “I don’t have the money. Maybe… maybe we should just let it be. The treatments are going to cost too much.” Right on cue, the translucent text flickered into view: [Her parents are filthy rich. Her brother is loaded. Her husband is a millionaire. But she’s practically destitute!] [It’s not that she hasn’t thought about asking them for help. But the misunderstandings are so deeply rooted, and they despise her so much, she knows they’d rather watch her die. Ugh!] I stood there for a moment, letting the silence settle. Then, I turned to Marge. “Call the troops.” Marge raised an eyebrow. “What are we doing? Robbing a bank?” I waved my hand dismissively. “No. We’re collecting a debt.” It took some doing. Summer hesitated, terrified of the confrontation, but we eventually bullied her into the passenger seat. Thirty minutes later, we were storming the wrought-iron gates of the Kensington estate. The moment we crossed the threshold into the immaculate, marble-floored foyer, Marge and Shirley put on a masterclass. They dramatically kicked off their orthopedics, dropped right onto the custom Persian rug, and made it perfectly clear: We are not leaving until we get paid. Diane and Helen unfolded the canvas lawn chairs they’d brought with them, popping open cans of Diet Coke and cracking sunflower seeds right onto the pristine floors. I stood flanked by the rest of our sharp-tongued brigade, keeping Summer tucked safely behind us as we faced our targets. Mr. and Mrs. Kensington. A housekeeper. A driver. When Mrs. Kensington—dripping in pearls and disdain—realized we were there for money, a sneer twisted her perfectly Botoxed face. She waved a manicured hand, instructing the housekeeper to fetch some cash. She literally tried to hand us each a few crisp hundred-dollar bills, like we were stray dogs she could shoo off the porch. The humiliation in the room was palpable. I could feel the heat radiating off Summer’s burning cheeks. Without missing a beat, we took those bills and tossed them right back into Mrs. Kensington’s face. She gasped, her eyes flashing with cold fury. “Summer, where on earth did you find these panhandlers? Did you really think bringing a bunch of greedy vagrants into my home would shake me down for more?” “My aunts are not panhandlers—” Summer started, her voice trembling. I gently patted her hand. I met her eyes, silently telling her: I’ve got this. Then, I squared my shoulders, flanked by my sisters in arms, and engaged combat mode. 3 “Ahem.” I cleared my throat loudly, planting both hands firmly on my hips. I tilted my chin up, took a deep breath, and let it rip. “We didn’t come here to beg for your pocket change, Patricia. We came here for justice! We did our homework. Summer has worked at the Kensington Corporation for five years. For five years, she has been denied promotions. When she asked HR, they said the CEO wouldn’t approve it. When she tried to resign, the CEO blocked it. Five years, and she is still making a pathetic three grand a month! Meanwhile, your fake daughter—who just graduated three months ago—gets fast-tracked from intern to the CEO’s executive assistant, pulling in fifty grand a month! I want to know, on what planet is that fair? Is it just blatant favoritism, or is it a malicious, targeted campaign against your own biological flesh and blood?” Mr. Kensington scowled, adjusting his tailored suit jacket with arrogant dismissal. “It is neither. Summer’s professional capabilities simply do not measure up to Blair’s. She has made repeated mistakes over the last five years. The fact that I even allow her to remain on the payroll is an act of extreme grace on my part.” I didn’t blink. I reached into my tote bag and pulled out a thick, bound portfolio Summer had prepared for me earlier, slamming it onto the glass coffee table in front of them. “Then I suggest you put on your reading glasses, Richard, and look at the actual receipts.” Mrs. Kensington’s face faltered. “What is this?” “These,” I enunciated clearly, “are the proposals, pitch decks, and executed contracts Summer has spearheaded over the last five years. While your golden boy Carter was busy playing golf and screwing around, Summer was bleeding herself dry for your bottom line. She closed deal after deal. And the commission bonuses for every single one of those contracts? Swallowed whole by Carter and your precious little Blair.” Mr. Kensington blanched, his arrogant facade slipping. “That’s impossible!” Mrs. Kensington clenched her jaw, her eyes darting nervously. “Summer, you are so desperate for cash you’ve lost your mind! You’re fabricating lies now? Carter and Blair would never stoop so low!” Hearing her parents instantly defend the people who had abused her, Summer let out a quiet, desolate laugh. It was exactly as it had always been. Under the crushing weight of their prejudice, any attempt Summer made to fight back only resulted in her own bruising. But thankfully… Today, she wasn’t fighting alone.

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On my twenty-first birthday, my parents laid a dozen glossy photographs of America’s most eligible heirs across the mahogany dining table, gently nudging me to choose a fiancé. I looked at my father and told him to just shuffle them face down and let me pick blind. Because in my last life, I hadn’t hesitated. I had reached straight for Preston Sinclair, the golden boy of Manhattan’s Upper East Side elite. The man I had loved since childhood. It wasn’t until after the wedding that I learned the truth: his untouchable first love, the fragile girl he had been forced to leave behind, had been so heartbroken by our marriage that she got blackout drunk at a dive bar and was assaulted. She attempted suicide three times. And Preston? Preston decided I was the architect of all her suffering. To avenge her, he systematically dismantled my family. He funneled the entirety of the Kensington fortune into her hands, hollowing out my legacy until there was nothing left. And in the end, when she finally crept into our garage and severed the brake lines of our car, he looked the other way. The three of us—my mother, my father, and I—died crushed in a mangled fortress of steel and shattered glass. Given a second chance at life, I reached blindly into the pile and drew Miles Davenport. The elusive, fiercely private heir to a New England shipping empire—a man who spent more time in silent retreats and studying philosophy than in boardrooms. But when I walked into my engagement party, my arm looped gracefully through Miles’s, Preston Sinclair completely lost his mind. 1 I slid Miles Davenport’s photograph across the table toward my parents. They exchanged a loaded, uncertain glance. “Stella,” my father said softly. “Your mother and I know you’ve been infatuated with Preston since you were kids. If you want us to reconsider—” I shook my head, my voice eerily calm. “If this is what fate handed me, I think I’d like to see where it leads.” Especially since I already know the bloody, gasoline-soaked ending of forcing Preston to marry me. Seeing the quiet resolve in my eyes, my parents finally nodded. “Alright. We’ll reach out to the Davenports to discuss the arrangement,” my mother said, smoothing her skirt. “But the Kensingtons and the Davenports are both legacy families. The market will react. To avoid unnecessary media circus, we keep this strictly confidential until the engagement gala.” I agreed. But secrets bleed quickly in our world. That evening, as I stepped out of my town car to attend a charity gala at the Plaza, the paparazzi swarmed me like vultures who had caught a scent. “Miss Kensington! Is it true you’re finally settling on a marriage alliance?” Before I could even blink against the strobe of camera flashes, another reporter shoved a microphone forward. “Everyone knows you’ve been devoted to the Sinclair heir for years. Can we assume Preston is the lucky man?” I lifted my gaze. Right on cue, Preston Sinclair was walking up the red carpet. Our eyes locked. Even through the sea of flashing cameras, his expression was unmistakable: a familiar, chilling cocktail of profound boredom and absolute disgust. “Excuse me. Please step aside,” he commanded. His security detail aggressively parted the sea of reporters. Without missing a beat, Preston reached out and pulled Harper Quinn into his chest. She looked up at him, her pale, heart-shaped face the very picture of delicate vulnerability. “The only woman I have ever loved, and will ever love, is Harper,” Preston declared, his voice echoing over the manic clicking of cameras. “Even if I were forced by family obligations to marry someone else, I would not give a single fraction of my heart to another woman.” Harper’s cheeks flushed a becoming shade of rose. She buried her face in his cashmere lapel, her arms tightening around his waist. A few feet away, a cluster of socialites who had always resented my family’s standing began to loudly whisper. “So what if she’s the sole heir to the Kensington empire? Preston doesn’t even want to look at her. He’d rather have the daughter of a lottery-winning nobody.” “God, she’s an embarrassment to her family name. Throwing herself at him just to play second fiddle to Harper Quinn.” The mockery grew louder. Harper tilted her head back from Preston’s embrace, finding my eyes through the crowd. A fleeting, razor-sharp smirk touched her lips before she hid it away. I didn’t react. I simply turned my head, fixing my posture, and walked into the ballroom. Of course, the universe has a sick sense of humor. The organizers seated Preston directly to my right. He dropped into his chair, radiating hostility. “Stella, I have told you a thousand times I don’t want to marry you. Why do you insist on suffocating me?” I had heard those exact words in my past life. Back then, they had shattered me. Today, they just felt exhausting. “I am not suffocating you, Preston.” He slammed his fist against the linen tablecloth. The crystal wine glasses shuddered. His face twisted with revulsion. “Then why the hell are you forcing this? You think just because the Kensingtons have more capital and social leverage, you can dictate the rest of my life?” he hissed, his voice dropping to a venomous whisper. “You are trampling on my dignity. Let me make this clear: even if they drag me to the altar, I will never look at you. Not once.” Oh, I know, I thought. You kept that promise perfectly last time. Just then, the fragile, adored center of his universe approached our table. Tears brimmed in Harper’s wide eyes. Without a word of warning, she collapsed to her knees right beside my chair. “Miss Kensington, I know you despise me,” she sobbed, her voice carrying just enough to turn heads at the neighboring tables. “But my parents are innocent. When you had your security throw them out of the country club yesterday, my father nearly had a heart attack!” She gasped for air, clutching at the hem of my gown. “Please, I’m begging you, let them be. If you want… if you need me to leave Preston so you can have him, I’ll do it. Just please…” Her voice cracked perfectly on the final syllable. Before I could even process the absolute fabrication of her story, Preston was out of his chair. He hauled her gently to her feet, pulling her behind him as he glared down at me with pure, unadulterated hatred. “Whatever is between us has nothing to do with Harper! Why would you target her family?” His self-righteous anger felt utterly bizarre. “I didn’t do anything to—” “You are exactly what they say you are,” Preston interrupted, his voice laced with venom. “Spoiled rotten since birth. You think the world is your plaything.” As the words left his mouth, a sycophantic junior executive scurried over, holding an exquisitely wrapped velvet box. “Mr. Sinclair, congratulations. A small token for your and Miss Kensington’s upcoming engagement—” Before the man could finish, Preston snatched the heavy box and, in front of half the ballroom, hurled it directly at me. “Apologize to Harper, Stella.” His chest heaved. “Or so help me God, even if my family goes bankrupt trying to keep up with yours, I will nuke this arrangement. I will never marry a woman as vicious as you!” 2 The box was wrapped in heavy, metallic foil. The sharp corner caught my jawline before clattering to the floor. A collective gasp rippled through the surrounding tables, but not a single person dared to intervene. I raised a hand to my chin. When I pulled my fingers back, my skin was smeared with bright, warm red. Looking at Preston Sinclair now, he felt like a stranger. Or rather, he felt exactly like the monster from my past life, the man who had publicly degraded me to elevate Harper time and time again. The last remaining embers of my childhood affection for him turned to ash. “I will not apologize for something I didn’t do,” I said, my voice eerily quiet, steady as a flatline. “Fine. Don’t come crying to me when you regret this!” Preston wrapped his arm protectively around Harper and stormed out of the ballroom. When my parents saw the cut on my face, they were frantic. We left immediately, and my mother had our private physician meet us at the penthouse to treat it. Sitting in my dressing room, watching my parents hover anxiously over me, a profound sense of gratitude washed over me. Thank God. The universe had given me a reset button. My parents were alive. The Kensington legacy was intact. All I had to do was stay as far away from Preston Sinclair and Harper Quinn as humanly possible. A few days later, the Davenport family’s engagement gifts arrived. The sprawling foyer of our estate was quickly buried in impeccably sourced treasures—rare art, deeds to properties, and at the center of it all, a velvet case containing a breathtaking diamond and emerald bracelet that had belonged to Miles’s great-grandmother. The sheer weight of the gifts was a declaration of absolute respect. Looking at the boxes, a painful lump formed in my throat. In my past life, the Sinclair family knew how desperately I loved Preston. They weaponized it. They told the press that they found me overbearing, that I was practically forcing their son to the altar. There was no engagement party. There was no dowry. The wedding was a sterile, rushed dinner between the two families. I remembered Preston’s parents mocking me thinly over the soup course. I remembered Preston’s icy silence. Seeing the Davenports’ overwhelming respect now only cemented my relief. To show my own respect, I decided to personally arrange Miles’s engagement attire. I was in a private, century-old bespoke tailoring house on Fifth Avenue, leaning over a heavy oak table with the master tailor to finalize the embroidery on the French cuffs. The bell chimed. Preston walked in, his fingers intertwined with Harper’s. The moment he saw me, his features hardened into a sneer. “What are you doing here?” The elderly tailor offered a polite smile. “Miss Kensington is being incredibly thoughtful. She’s personally designing the groom’s suit for the engagement.” Preston didn’t even look at the sketches. He tilted his chin up, exhaling a haughty breath. “I told you I have no intention of marrying you. I don’t care how many hoops you jump through, my mind won’t change.” He glanced dismissively at the table. “And for the record, I despise monogrammed cufflinks. It’s tacky.” I looked down at the sketch. The silver cufflink bore a sharp, elegant ‘M’. He obviously hadn’t looked closely enough. “Actually, these are for—” “Oh, Preston, look at this gown! It’s breathtaking.” Harper’s eyes were wide. She brushed past me, her fingers tracing the delicate, beaded bodice of a vintage, archive-scarlet silk gown hanging on the display form. Preston’s face instantly softened. “If you like it, we’ll have the tailor make one exactly like it for you.” “But I want to wear it tonight,” she pouted slightly, her voice dipping into a honeyed whine. “To the symphony.” Preston smiled indulgently at her, then turned to the master tailor with an entitled snap of his fingers. “Take her measurements and alter it immediately. We have a show to catch.” I frowned, stepping forward. “Preston, that is my engagement gown.” He waved me off like a nuisance. “I’m a busy man, Stella. I don’t have time to play dress-up for whatever pathetic gala your family is throwing to force my hand.” His eyes dragged up and down my frame. “Besides, Harper has the figure for a dress like that. You don’t.” Harper kept her back to me, staring at herself in the mirror. The triumphant gleam in her reflection was unmistakable. Yet, her voice dripped with fake guilt. “Oh, if Miss Kensington doesn’t want to part with it, it’s fine, Preston. A dress this luxurious… it really isn’t meant for a nobody like me.” “Don’t talk about yourself like that. The woman I love is no nobody,” Preston snapped, shooting me a venomous look. “Stella is nothing without her parents’ money anyway. Without her trust fund, she’s as common as they come.” Without asking, he pulled the heavy silk gown off the mannequin and shoved it into the tailor’s arms. The master tailor didn’t move. He simply looked at me, waiting for my instruction. His family had been dressing the Kensington men and women for five generations; we practically kept the shop in business. Seeing the tailor ignore him made Preston’s face flush with sudden, defensive rage. “Listen to me, you—” “If Miss Quinn likes it so much, let her have it.” I cut him off, my voice entirely flat. Preston exhaled, his posture relaxing slightly into a smug stance. “Since you’re finally learning how to behave,” he said, adjusting his watch, “I suppose I can tolerate having dinner with you once a month after the wedding.” He said it like he was tossing a scrap of meat to a starving dog. And in that precise moment, standing in the quiet tailoring shop, the puzzle pieces finally clicked together. I finally understood why, years ago, his attitude toward me had shifted so drastically. It happened the summer he realized the Kensington family sat at the absolute pinnacle of high society, while the Sinclairs were barely clinging to the bottom of the top twenty. When I was young and foolishly in love, I didn’t care about social rankings. I didn’t measure human worth in stock portfolios. But he did. From that summer on, he constantly brought up “my family’s money.” He relentlessly reminded me that I relied on my parents. He belittled me, mocked me, and weaponized my love for him just to tear me down. It wasn’t that he was too good for me. It was that he felt hopelessly, suffocatingly inferior. A quiet, genuine laugh slipped from my lips. “Preston,” I said, tilting my head. “What on earth makes you so incredibly certain that you are the man I’m marrying?” 3 Preston’s mouth curled into a mocking, asymmetrical smile. He looked at me like I had just told the funniest joke in Manhattan. “You’ve been trailing after me like a lost puppy since we were ten. Every time you blew out your birthday candles, you wished you’d marry me by twenty-one.” He crossed his arms. “And now that the time has come, you expect me to believe you’d look at anyone else?” Harper leaned into his side, her voice laced with poison masked as playful teasing. “Well, you never know, Pres. With the Kensington money, I’m sure every trust-fund baby in the country is lining up to marry her.” “Let them line up,” Preston sneered. “She’d still only beg to be my wife.” They turned and walked toward the fitting rooms. Before stepping behind the velvet curtain, Preston called out to the tailor. “Have the dress delivered to my penthouse when you’re done. And change those tacky cufflinks. Make them square. No initials.” The master tailor watched them go, then let out a heavy sigh. He turned to me, looking pained. “Miss Kensington… how would you like me to handle this?” “I meant what I said. Let her have it. It gives me an excuse to design something entirely new anyway,” I said, calmly pulling my stool back up to the drafting table. “And completely ignore him regarding the cufflinks. He isn’t the groom, so he doesn’t get a vote.” That evening, I attended a friend’s birthday party at a private club downtown. Halfway through the night, Harper arrived fashionably late. One of Preston’s massive private security guards trailed behind her. The guard walked right up to my booth, holding a cheap, red plastic bodega bag. He dropped it onto the floor by my heels. “Hope you weren’t waiting too long, Miss Kensington,” Harper said, her eyes gleaming with malice under the neon lights. “I was going to return the dress right after the symphony, but Preston just insisted we take a detour in the back of his Maybach…” She giggled, twirling a strand of hair. “But you’re famous for being so forgiving. I’m sure you don’t mind.” I looked down. Inside the plastic bag, the three-million-dollar vintage archive gown was violently crumpled, treated like a dirty dishcloth. Stark against the dark red silk were glaring, dried patches of white, viscous fluid. Around us, the music seemed to drop away. Some people looked on in absolute outrage on my behalf; others whispered behind their drinks, thrilled by the drama. “She brought it right to her face. If Stella doesn’t snap now, she really is pathetic for him.” “What can she do? Preston only has eyes for the influencer.” “Honestly, it’s embarrassing. The Kensington empire is going to end up in Preston Sinclair’s pocket at this rate.” I didn’t even flinch. I just flagged down a busboy. “Please take this to the dumpster,” I said smoothly, not breaking eye contact with Harper. “I’m so glad you enjoyed it, Miss Quinn.” The utter indifference in my voice was a wall her petty cruelty couldn’t penetrate. Her smug smile faltered. Robbed of her explosive reaction, she gritted her teeth, her hands balling into fists as she stormed off to the least desirable table in the back. But Harper couldn’t let it go. Less than an hour later, her Instagram account—boasting a few million followers—was trending. “The perfect night. Wearing a dress that fits perfectly, holding the hand of the man I love, listening to our favorite symphony.” The photo was a close-up of her and Preston aggressively kissing in the back of the car, his hand tangled in the red silk of the gown. The internet is ruthless. Within minutes, gossip accounts dug up my old, teenage posts where I had publicly gushed about Preston. They stitched them together into side-by-side comparison TikToks. It was a digital public execution. And on the most viral video of them all, Preston Sinclair had publicly ‘liked’ it from his official account. Memes of “Pathetic Stella” began flooding Twitter. My expression finally darkened. I opened my phone, permanently deactivated my personal accounts, and sent a single, three-word text to the Kensington PR crisis team: Burn it down. In less than ten minutes, every hashtag, every video, every mention of the situation vanished from the internet. Wiped clean, as if they had never existed. The day before my engagement party. I was walking out of the Kensington corporate headquarters when two massive men in dark suits blocked my path. Before I could call for my driver, they forced me into the back of an SUV and drove straight to the Sinclair estate. The moment I was pushed through the double doors, I saw Harper sitting on the plush living room sofa, crying hysterically. Preston was hovering over her, speaking in soft, cooing tones. But the second he saw me, his face turned thunderous. “You have gone way too far this time, Stella!” he roared. “Harper makes a harmless post, and you use your family’s muscle to have all her social media accounts permanently banned? You know her platform is her livelihood! You are trying to destroy her!” I stared at him, genuinely confused. “I told my team to scrub my name from the trends. I didn’t touch her accounts.” “Don’t lie to me! Who else besides the great Stella Kensington has that kind of power? You’re just insanely jealous of her!” “I am telling you, I didn’t—” “Are we really allowing a girl who isn’t even married yet to talk back to her husband in my house?” A sharp, haughty voice drifted down the grand staircase. Preston’s mother descended, looking at me down the bridge of her nose. She took a seat on the accent chair opposite me. Next to her, Preston’s father—a man who usually bent over backward to kiss my father’s ass at board meetings—was leaning back, legs crossed arrogantly. “Stella,” his father began, swirling a glass of scotch. “We don’t entirely approve of your spoiled, dramatic antics. But since you’re threatening suicide if our son won’t marry you, we are willing to graciously accommodate you.” He took a sip. “However, there are conditions. Your dowry—the assets transferred to the Sinclair estate upon marriage—must equal exactly fifty percent of the Kensington family’s total net worth. We have the prenup right here.” A cold, bitter laugh clawed its way up my throat. I shook my head, stepping backward to leave. Suddenly, something slammed hard into the back of my knees. I gasped in pain, my legs giving out, and crashed to the hardwood floor. Preston’s mother snapped her fingers. A maid rushed forward, carrying a silver tray with a steaming porcelain teacup. “You’ll be a Sinclair soon enough,” his mother said, her eyes flashing with cruel authority. “I think it’s time you kneel and serve your new mother-in-law a cup of tea to learn your place. That’s not asking too much, is it?” 4 “Miss Kensington. You must crawl forward on your knees to serve Mrs. Sinclair.” The maid forcefully pressed the scalding teacup into my hands. The porcelain was straight out of the kettle. The moment the blistering heat bit into my skin, I flinched, dropping the cup. It shattered into a dozen jagged pieces across the floor, splashing boiling water over my knees. “Stella! Have you zero respect for your elders?!” Preston barked from across the room. I looked down at my throbbing, blistered fingertips. Slowly, I shook my head. “I only show respect to my actual in-laws. You said you didn’t want to marry me, Preston. Which works perfectly, because I am not marrying you.” I placed my palms flat on the floor, ignoring the shards of porcelain, and tried to stand. Instantly, the two security guards grabbed my shoulders, forcing me back down. “Let go of me!” I yelled, struggling violently against their grip. “I am the heir to the Kensington family! You think you can touch me?” Mrs. Sinclair’s face contorted with rage. She stood up, marched over, and delivered a blinding slap across my cheek. The sharp sting exploded against my skin. The echo of the slap blurred perfectly with the memories of my past life—the countless times she had struck me when I was trapped in this very house. My breath hitched. I froze, paralyzed by a ghost of trauma. “Your engagement is tomorrow and you dare to speak to me like this?!” Mrs. Sinclair shrieked. “Preston, look at this animal you’re bringing into our home! Defiant, feral, completely lacking class!” Preston didn’t even look at me. He was busy stroking Harper’s hair. “She’s the one who practically begged on her hands and knees for this,” he muttered coldly. “If it were up to me, Harper would be the one walking down the aisle.” Right on cue, Harper’s tears started flowing again. “Oh, Pres. I dream of being your wife every single night. But my family is so small… we could never survive making an enemy of the Kensingtons.” Her manufactured despair sent Preston into a protective frenzy. He abandoned her side and stalked over to where I was pinned on the floor, looming over me like a judge delivering a sentence. “You wanted this marriage so badly you were willing to play dirty, Stella?” he sneered. “Fine. You want to be my wife? You will sign an agreement stating you have zero say in my personal life. You will never return to the Kensington estate. You will live here, you will serve my parents, and you will ensure Harper and I are comfortable.” A lawyer stepped forward, dropping a thick legal document onto the floor next to the broken glass. The bold header read: Asset Transfer Agreement: 50% Kensington Holdings. I curled my burned fingers into tight fists, refusing to touch the pen. When I looked up at him, my eyes were burning, bloodshot with fury. “Preston Sinclair! I am not marrying you!” Seeing my defiance, his mother saw her opening. She raised her hand and brought it down hard across my face again. “Is this the ‘elite breeding’ of the Kensington name? Raising a daughter who screams at her own husband?” she spat. “I am going to beat the manners into you today so you don’t embarrass us tomorrow!” I lost count of the times her hand struck my face. I lost track of how many times they forced my thumb onto an inkpad, trying to press it against the contract. All I knew was that when they finally grew tired and dragged me to the door, Mrs. Sinclair sneered one last command: “You are to wear black tomorrow. Harper will be wearing the white gown.” I looked back at them, my cheek bruised, my dress torn, and felt nothing but an overwhelming, hysterical urge to laugh. The next day at the engagement gala, I did not wear black. I wore the brand-new, breathtaking scarlet gown I had designed myself. My parents were mingling inside the grand hall with the Davenport family. I stood near the velvet ropes at the entrance, greeting the elite of New York society. It wasn’t until nearly noon that the Sinclair family finally arrived, walking with an entourage that demanded attention. They were dressed to the nines. Harper had her arm looped tightly through Preston’s. She was in a pure white gown, and he was in a sharp black tuxedo. They looked exactly like a bride and groom. Usually, at events like this, Preston’s father would be sweating through his suit, shaking hands and bowing to men far more powerful than him. Today, he walked with his chest puffed out, looking down his nose at billionaires, acting as if he owned the entire building. When Mrs. Sinclair spotted me in my scarlet silk, her face instantly soured. “Where are your parents?” she demanded loudly. “I need to have a very serious conversation with them about how horribly they’ve raised you!” There were senators and tech moguls walking past us. I had no desire to create a scene at my own engagement. “My parents are inside. You can go in and—” Before I could finish, Mrs. Sinclair aggressively jabbed her manicured finger into my shoulder. “You go fetch them and bring them to me!” I frowned, swatting her hand away. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Preston strolling over, his expression utterly bored. He stood next to me, turning to face the arriving guests as if assuming his role as the host. “Well, Stella, you got exactly what you wanted. I hope you’re thrilled,” he muttered under his breath, not looking at me. “But don’t let it go to your head. You managed to buy my physical presence today, but you will never, ever have my heart.” His voice was dripping with venom. He truly believed I had ruined his life just by loving him. “Preston, I think you are severely confused. Today is—” “Are you ignoring me?!” Mrs. Sinclair screeched, cutting me off. “Did you forget how you looked sobbing on your knees in my living room yesterday?!” She yanked her phone out of her clutch, tapping the screen aggressively. Suddenly, the video of me—bruised, forced onto my knees among shattered glass—started playing at top volume. She shoved the screen toward the incoming guests. The socialites paused, staring in absolute shock. A few immediately pulled out their own phones to record her screen. The paparazzi, previously contained behind barricades, smelled blood. They broke the line, rushing up the steps with microphones thrust forward. “Miss Kensington! Is this your future mother-in-law hazing you?” “Does your submission on tape signify that the Kensington empire is officially bowing to the Sinclair family?” I sucked in a sharp breath. I signaled for my own security while violently grabbing Preston’s arm. “Tell your mother to turn that off right now!” He calmly peeled my fingers off his sleeve and casually adjusted his bowtie. “If public humiliation is what it takes for you to learn how to respect my mother, then it’s a necessary lesson.” “Preston, your entire family is psychotic!” “You literally begged on your hands and knees to marry me,” he shot back, his eyes flashing with disgust. “You have zero right to insult my family.” I had reached my absolute limit. I grabbed a heavy crystal vase from the reception table, fully intending to smash it against the marble floor. But suddenly, a large, warm hand wrapped gently around my wrist. I turned. Miles Davenport stood there in a flawlessly tailored ivory suit. His eyes were perfectly calm, but the depth of the gaze he leveled at the Sinclairs was terrifyingly cold. “Mr. Sinclair,” Miles’s voice was smooth, quiet, and lethal. “Just how many lives does your mother think she has, to demand my fiancée kneel for her?”

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On the day I was supposed to marry Preston Kensington, his adopted sister threatened to throw herself off the penthouse balcony. For her, Preston abandoned me at the altar, walking out without a backward glance while I stood there suffocating in layers of couture silk and tulle. Facing a ballroom full of Manhattan’s elite, their eyes glittering with pity and mockery, I walked straight to the microphone. “Whoever steps up to this altar right now,” I announced, my voice echoing through the vaulted ceiling, “is the man I will marry today.” Three years later, Preston returned to the Kensington estate, his adopted sister in tow. I was reclining on the cream leather sofa, sipping an expensive prenatal health tonic and idly watching a series on the flatscreen. Preston’s eyes locked onto the undeniable swell of my pregnant belly. His jaw tightened, a muscle feathering dangerously in his cheek. “Whose bastard is that?” I took a slow, deliberate sip from my crystal glass, offering a faint smile. “A Kensington’s, of course.” … Preston stormed across the Persian rug, his face twisted in rage, and hauled me up by the arm. “You lying bitch! The day of the wedding, I took Paige and left. I haven’t been back in three years. How the hell could you be pregnant with my child?” A sharp laugh escaped my lips. I never said it was his. He wasn’t the only man in the Kensington dynasty. “Of course it’s not your child. You aren’t fit to be a father to my baby.” Paige gasped, pressing a hand to her chest in a practiced display of shock. “Blair! Even though Preston walked away from the wedding, he still let you keep the Kensington name. He let you live here in luxury. How could you be so shameless as to get knocked up with some stray’s baby?” My gaze snapped to her, cold and unyielding. “You’re his adopted sister, Paige. Yet you openly seduced your own brother. If we’re talking about being shameless, who could possibly compete with you two?” Instantly, Paige’s eyes welled with tears. She turned to Preston, her voice trembling. “Preston, we’ve been struggling out there for three years, keeping our boundaries, doing the right thing. And she… she gets pregnant with a bastard and makes a complete fool out of you.” The implication of being cuckolded hit Preston’s fragile ego like a match to gasoline. He raised his hand and struck me across the face with sickening force. “You whore! You get yourself knocked up and then try to throw dirt on me and Paige? Get the hell out of my house!” Pain exploded across my cheek, my vision spotting black for a few terrifying seconds. Three years ago, when Preston eloped with Paige, he left me to bear the humiliation of New York’s high society alone. Driven by pure adrenaline and rage, I had demanded a husband from the crowd. It was Preston’s uncle, Victor Kensington, who had stepped up to the altar. Victor was known as the grim reaper of Wall Street—a man whose cold, ruthless efficiency made billionaires tremble. Since the day I became his wife, doors that were previously locked flew open, and everyone who met me bent over backward to offer me their absolute best. When I finally got pregnant, Victor treated me like spun glass. He wouldn’t let a single hair on my head be harmed. For Preston to lay a hand on me today… if Victor found out, there would be blood. Partly to prevent an absolute bloodbath in the family, and partly to protect the fragile life growing inside me, I steadied my breathing. “If you both walk out that door right now, I will pretend this never happened.” Instead of taking the lifeline, Paige lunged forward, her fingers twisting violently into my hair. “She’s just guilty, Preston!” Paige shrieked. “She wants to kick us out so she can use this bastard to steal the Kensington fortune!” “So that’s your game,” Preston sneered, his eyes dark with malice. “I won’t let you get away with it.” I writhed, trying to break free from Paige’s grip, my hands instinctively guarding my stomach. “The day you ran away, Arthur officially struck you from the trust! Everything in this family has absolutely nothing to do with you anymore!” Paige let out a mocking laugh. “Grandpa was just angry. Preston is his only grandson. He would never actually cut him off.” Preston puffed up his chest, a sickeningly smug look on his face. “Grandpa told me long ago that the Kensington empire is mine.” I cradled my belly, my voice dropping to a deadly whisper. “Not anymore. The child I’m carrying is the new Kensington heir.” I thought I had made it abundantly clear. But Preston’s face contorted into something monstrous. “You really are trying to pass off some mutt as a Kensington. I’m going to teach you a lesson you’ll never forget.” He swung his hand again, a brutal backhand that sent me crashing to the hardwood floor. Panic surged through my veins. Looking at their deranged, feral expressions, a primal terror gripped me. They were going to hurt the baby. “He’s not a bastard!” I cried out, scrambling backward. “He is—” Before I could finish, Preston lunged down. He grabbed the shattered remains of my crystal glass, still coated in the thick prenatal tonic, and shoved it brutally against my mouth. “Paige and I have been living out of suitcases, starving on the streets for three years, while you sit here living like a queen off a bastard!” he roared. “You like drinking this trash so much? Drink it!” The jagged edge of the crystal tore into my lip and gums. The metallic taste of my own blood mixed with the thick liquid. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t speak. I raised my hands to fight him off, but Paige’s stiletto heel slammed down onto the back of my hand, pinning it to the floor. Agony shot up my arm. My body convulsed, but the scream remained trapped in my bleeding throat. After forcing the mess into my mouth, Preston spat on me and stood up, dusting off his hands like he had just taken out the trash. Then, Paige shifted her weight. Her thin stiletto heel moved directly over my swollen stomach. Pure, paralyzing horror washed over me. I ignored the blinding pain in my hand, grabbing her ankle with both of my bloody hands, desperately trying to hold her foot back. Victor was supposed to be completely sterile. This baby was a miracle, the result of three grueling years of specialists, IVF treatments, and quiet, heartbreaking disappointments. Paige looked down at me, a sadistic smile playing on her lips. “Look at you, Blair. You look like a pathetic bitch trying to protect her litter. It’s disgusting.” Preston stared at my stomach, his brow furrowing in disgust. “If word gets out that I’ve been cuckolded, I’ll be a laughingstock in the city. Squash that bastard, Paige.” I shook my head frantically, coughing up the thick liquid and blood. “My baby…” I gasped, my voice a broken rasp. “He is… Victor’s…” Preston froze. For a second, there was silence. Then, he threw his head back and let out a manic, booming laugh. “You really are a terrible liar! Everyone in New York knows my uncle is practically asexual. He’s sterile, Blair!” Preston sneered. “I am the only bloodline this family has. Why else do you think Grandpa practically forced me to marry you? To breed.” “Preston is the sole heir,” Paige chimed in, stepping harder on my hand. “Grandpa only froze his cards to force him to come home. It’s actually hilarious that you’d try to pin your mistake on Uncle Victor just to save your own skin.” They had been gone for three years. They hadn’t made a single phone call home. Arthur had been so profoundly disappointed in his grandson that he truly had cut him off. But looking at their dilated pupils and manic energy, I realized they were completely unhinged. Arguing with them would only get my baby killed. “I’m not lying,” I pleaded, tears cutting through the blood on my cheeks. “This is Victor’s child. If you don’t believe me, let me call him. Let me prove it.” Keeping one arm wrapped protectively over my stomach, I reached out for my phone on the coffee table. If I could just dial his number. Victor would move heaven and earth to get here. He would save us. My fingertips brushed the cold metal of the phone, but Preston snatched it away. With a violent flick of his wrist, he hurled it against the marble fireplace. It shattered into a dozen pieces. My heart plummeted into my stomach. Preston grabbed my chin, his fingers digging painfully into my jaw. “My uncle is a psycho. He’s the most ruthless man on Wall Street. If he finds out I can’t even handle a cheating wife on my own, he’ll think I’m weak. He’ll never hand the company over to me.” His eyes narrowed. “That’s why you wanted to call him, isn’t it?” “No,” I sobbed, shaking my head. “Please—” Before I could form another word, Paige pressed the tip of her stiletto into the curve of my belly. “Stop wasting time with this slut, Preston. Let’s get rid of the problem so we can go see Grandpa and claim what’s ours.” A sharp, agonizing cramp ripped through my abdomen. Inside, I felt the baby thrash frantically. A wave of maternal panic, darker and deeper than anything I had ever known, drowned out my pride. “Please,” I begged, looking up at them. “Please don’t hurt my baby…” Paige pulled out her phone and pointed the camera at me. “Get on your knees. Bark like a dog twice, and tell the camera you’re nothing but a cheap whore. Do it, and I’ll step off.” For my child, there was no line I wouldn’t cross. I dragged my battered body up, forcing myself onto my hands and knees on the glass-strewn floor. “Woof. Woof,” I choked out, my body trembling violently. “I’m… I’m a cheap whore.” Paige leaned down, a triumphant, wicked smirk on her face. “Remember when I was on my knees begging you not to marry Preston, Blair? Did you ever think you’d end up like this?” Years ago, Paige had come to my apartment, crying that she and her brother were in love, begging me to call off the wedding. But the Covington and Kensington merger involved billions in corporate assets. If I broke the engagement, my family would bear the financial ruin. I had refused her. She had carried that venom in her heart every single day since. I didn’t care about the past anymore. I looked up at them, my vision swimming. “Please… call an ambulance.” Instead of mercy, Preston drove his expensive loafer directly into the center of my back. “God, you are pathetic! You’ll do anything for this bastard, won’t you?” I slammed face-first into the hardwood. The impact sent a shockwave of fiery, agonizing pain radiating across my belly. “You said… you said you’d let him go…” I gasped, clutching the floor. Paige examined her nails, utterly bored. “I said I would let him go. Preston never promised anything.” “You used my name to live off my family,” Preston snarled. “You think I’m going to let you walk away from that?” He drew his leg back and delivered a brutal, sickening kick directly to my lower abdomen. A horrific tearing sensation ripped through me. A second later, a warm gush of dark, red blood soaked through my dress, pooling onto the floor between my legs. The frantic fluttering inside me slowed… and then stopped. A profound, suffocating emptiness eclipsed my soul. The despair was so heavy it felt like a physical weight crushing my lungs. I turned my head to look at them, my vision burning with a hatred so pure and absolute it felt divine. “Preston. Paige.” My voice was a hollow rasp, emptied of all humanity. “You are going to burn for this.” Paige stepped closer to Preston, her eyes flashing with malice. “She still isn’t sorry. I guess she hasn’t learned her lesson.” Preston smiled—a cold, dead thing. “Let’s see who burns first. Paige, get a rope.” Paige hurried into the foyer, returning moments later with heavy decorative curtain tie-backs. I tried to drag my bleeding, broken body backward, leaving a thick smear of crimson across the pristine wood. “What are you doing?” I choked out, terror flooding me anew. They didn’t answer. They were smiling. They bound my wrists and ankles together. Then, Preston grabbed the rope and dragged me out through the French doors, hauling me across the stone patio toward the infinity pool. With one swift kick, he sent me tumbling over the edge. The icy water swallowed me instantly. Bound and heavy with pregnancy, I sank like a stone. The water rushed into my nose and lungs, sealing my screams. The burning agony of suffocation overtook the pain in my body. Just as my consciousness began to splinter into darkness— Preston yanked the rope, hauling my head above the surface. “Have you learned your lesson, Blair?” he shouted from the edge. “Are you ever going to embarrass me again?” I gasped greedily at the air, coughing up water, but as I breathed, I felt a terrifying downward pressure in my pelvis. Victor and I had taken the birthing classes. I knew what this was. The trauma had triggered early labor. Even though I knew the chances were nonexistent, the primal instinct to save my child took over. “I’m sorry!” I sobbed out, treading water frantically. “I won’t do it again. Please. The baby is coming. Call an ambulance, I’m begging you!” Preston spat down at me. “Still thinking about the bastard? You haven’t repented at all.” “I am not letting that mistake walk out of my house alive!” He raised his foot to kick my head back under the water. I closed my eyes tightly, surrendering to the cold, dark end. Then, the massive iron gates of the estate blew open. Victor sprinted across the lawn, his eyes wild, his voice an earth-shattering roar. “GET YOUR HANDS OFF HER!”

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Caroline walked in wearing five-inch stilettos while I was in the middle of signing a merger agreement. She didn’t knock. That was her style. As the heads of two massive family conglomerates, we knew the geography of each other’s offices too well—her chair faced the floor-to-ceiling windows; mine was angled forty-five degrees, offering a perfect view of the glass curtain wall of her building across the street. We had grown up together, so close I could trace the arch of her eyebrows with my eyes closed. We were so close that when she said, “I want to call off the engagement,” I didn’t even pause the movement of my pen. “Reason,” I said. “I’m in love with someone else.” The nib of my fountain pen hesitated on the paper for a second. Just one second. I signed the final character, closed the leather folder, and looked up. She stood opposite my desk, spine rigid, chin slightly elevated—a posture of command she wore like armor. But her eyelashes were trembling, like a butterfly caught under the eaves before a storm. We had known each other for twenty-three years. I had seen her cry over an unsolved calculus problem; I had seen her stand at her father’s funeral without shedding a single tear. But I had never seen her look like this—cheeks flushed with an unnatural, feverish heat, eyes impossibly bright. That wasn’t the sharp, cold light of a boardroom killer. It was the manic glow of someone high on dopamine. … “Is it him?” I asked. “His name is Noah,” she said. Her voice softened three degrees when the name crossed her lips, as if she were dissolving a sugar cube on her tongue. “The one who joined the company this summer.” I remembered. Last week’s intern review. A boy standing in front of the projector, explaining user personas. His slide deck was a visual feast, flashy and modern, but the underlying data had three glaring errors. I had intended to point them out, but Caroline had spoken first: “A fresh perspective. I like the independent thinking.” She had even smiled, a rare occurrence. At the time, I thought she was just having a good day. “How long?” “One month and three days.” “And you think you know him?” “Enough.” She lifted her chin, defensive now. “He’s not like you people—obsessed with margins and bottom lines. He’s clean. He’s pure. When he looks at me—” She paused, her voice dropping to a whisper. “He doesn’t see a CEO.” I didn’t speak. Outside, the September evening light was fading, the sunset plating her silhouette in burnished orange. Twenty-three years ago, our families lived in the same exclusive gated community in Connecticut. She used to wear a sun-bleached floral dress, crouching under the old oak tree to count ants. I had walked over and asked what she was doing. She didn’t look up: “The ants are moving house. It’s going to rain.” It did rain that day. We hid in the mudroom, and she shared half a chocolate bar with me, softened by the warmth of her hand. Later, her father’s tech venture went public, and they moved to a larger estate. My father’s hedge fund caught the right tailwinds, and our families remained equals in tax brackets and influence. The engagement was set at a dinner party when we were seventeen—a half-joke made over brandy that solidified into an alliance. I remember she sat next to me that night, head bowed, aggressively stirring a bowl of crème brûlée, the tips of her ears burning a violent shade of red. From that day on, everything changed. She stopped punching my shoulder and calling me “Cole.” She stopped shoving failed test papers at me to forge her dad’s signature. She stopped calling at midnight to ask about physics. Instead, she started critiquing the color of my ties, criticizing my rapid speech patterns in meetings, and acting the perfect debutante in front of our parents. But alone with me, she turned into ice. It took me a long time to figure it out—she had taken it seriously. She had taken a drunk dinner table promise and treated it as gospel. And now, for another man, she was here to dissolve the very covenant she had spent years quietly honoring. “Okay,” I said. She froze. “…What did you say?” “I agree. The engagement is off.” I opened my drawer and pulled out the draft agreement, a document that had never actually been notarized. “It was a joke between our parents, Caroline. No need to make it a tragedy. Take it back, burn it, whatever you like.” The thin paper lay on the mahogany desk, clipped with a photo taken five years ago at a gala. She was in vintage Chanel; I was in bespoke Savile Row. We sat side by side, smiling politely, miles apart. She didn’t reach for it. “You…” Her lips parted. She looked like she wanted to ask a question but was terrified of the answer. I waited three seconds. “Anything else?” Her lashes finally dropped, heavy and defeated, curtaining her eyes. She reached out, grabbed the paper, and crushed it in her fist. The crisp sound of crumpling bond paper filled the silence. “Nothing else.” She turned and walked out. Her heels struck the marble floor—clack, clack, clack—a rhythm that faded into the corridor. The office returned to silence. I looked down and pulled the next file from the stack. The sunset outside sank behind the skyline, surrendering to the twilight. My assistant knocked and entered to turn on the lights. He saw my pen moving steadily across the page and hesitated. “Mr. Harrison, are you…” “Speak.” “Ms. Prest… she stood by the elevator bank for a long time after she left.” “Hm.” “She seemed to be waiting for you to go after her.” I flipped a page of the report. “Her new boyfriend. Is it the marketing intern?” My assistant blinked, struggling to keep up with the pivot. “Y-yes, sir. Noah Valenti.” “Competence?” “…Mediocre at best. But he’s very charming.” My assistant chose his words carefully. “Ms. Prest has been bringing him to events recently. There are rumors.” “What kind of rumors?” He didn’t dare say it. I said it for him. “That she’s lost her mind over a pretty face?” He lowered his head, a silent confirmation. I placed the signed document in the ‘Out’ tray. “Everyone has their own path.” “But sir, you and Ms. Prest have an engagement—” “Had. It’s dissolved.” My assistant’s head snapped up, shock written plainly across his face. He had been with me for seven years. In seven years, he had never seen me crack, and he wasn’t seeing a crack now. He opened his mouth, but eventually just said, “Yes, sir.” As he backed out of the room clutching the files, he couldn’t resist glancing back one last time. I was already reading the next spreadsheet. Noah didn’t quit. Not because I wouldn’t let him go, but because Caroline wouldn’t let him. She transferred him to the Executive Office. His title shifted from “Intern” to “Special Assistant to the CEO.” Rumor had it she fought the board for two hours over it, finally slamming a stack of reports on the table: “My assistant, my choice.” Her executive secretary of eight years resigned on the spot. Caroline didn’t ask her to stay. When this news reached me, I was at a charity auction for the Met. The organizers had seated Caroline and me in the same row, separated only by the central aisle. She arrived late. When she entered, heads turned—not for her, but for the man on her arm. Noah was wearing a white tuxedo. The bowtie was perfect, and a faint, modest smile played on his lips. He was undeniably handsome—clean-cut, boyish, like a poet from a liberal arts college brochure. He walked half a step behind her, projecting humility and devotion. “Who’s the kid with Caroline?” “Heard he’s the new favorite at her firm.” “Christ, look at the way he looks at her…” The whispers rippled through the ballroom like a tide. Caroline didn’t notice, or perhaps she didn’t care. She turned to say something to Noah; he leaned in close to listen, his jawline tense but soft. It was a beautiful image. Cinematic. The auction reached lot seventeen—a Ming Dynasty jade archer’s ring. Opening bid: eighty thousand. I had no interest in jade, so I prepared to tune out, but then I saw Caroline raise her paddle. “One hundred thousand.” A murmur went through the crowd. The market value was sixty, maybe seventy thousand tops. “One-twenty,” someone countered. “One-fifty.” Caroline didn’t blink. Noah tugged gently at her sleeve. His voice was low, but pitched perfectly to be overheard by the surrounding tables. “Caroline, it’s too much. I’m not worth it.” Caroline turned to him. I had never seen that look on her face before—soft, exposed, almost begging to be used. “If you like it, you’re worth it.” She won the ring for two hundred and twenty thousand dollars. She slid it onto Noah’s thumb right there at the table. He looked down at his hand, smiling shyly, like a delicate flower trembling in the wind. I took a sip of my champagne. My assistant leaned in, voice lowered. “Mr. Harrison, that ring is appraised at seventy thousand, max.” “Hm.” “Ms. Prest has always been such a disciplined investor…” “Love lowers the IQ,” I said. “It’s a physiological response.” My assistant choked on air. He looked at the couple holding hands across the aisle, then at my unmoving profile. He looked at me like I was a monster. “Sir,” he managed, “do you really… not care at all?” I placed the empty flute on a passing waiter’s tray. “She’s buying her boyfriend a gift. Why would I care?” “But you’re her fiancé—” “Ex-fiancé.” My assistant shut his mouth. When the auction ended, we moved to the dinner reception. I was heading for the bar when Noah blocked my path. He stood at the corner of the corridor, the recessed lighting stretching his shadow long and thin. His white suit was spotless, his eyes cast down in practiced deference. “Mr. Harrison,” he said softly. “I’ve admired you for a long time.” I stopped. “Caroline talks about you often. She says you’re the person she respects most. I’ve always wanted to learn from you; I’m glad I finally have the chance.” He paused, offering a sheepish, self-deprecating smile. “I know I have a lot to learn, but Caroline encourages me. I’m terrified of letting her down.” The speech was perfect. The tone was humble. It was flawless. I looked at him. He looked back, his eyes clear and wide, like a shallow stream where you can see every pebble at the bottom. “Do good work,” I said. He waited three seconds. When I didn’t add anything, his eyelashes fluttered. “You aren’t going to ask me… if my intentions with Caroline are real?” “That’s a question for her.” He pressed his lips together. The smile was slipping. “Aren’t you even curious? She broke off her engagement with you for me.” I finally looked him in the eye. He was twenty-four, maybe twenty-five. Smooth skin, innocent eyes. He had calibrated his tone perfectly—30% hesitation, 30% innocence, 40% predatory confidence. “Mr. Valenti,” I said. “That engagement was a dinner table joke between two old men. It was never legal. If she wanted to end it, I was always going to sign the papers.” He blinked, stunned. “As for whether you’re genuine—” I paused. “If she chooses to believe you, no one else has the right to comment.” I stepped around him and kept walking. From behind me, his voice drifted over, light as a sigh. “You really are a… strange man, Mr. Harrison.” I didn’t look back. At dinner, Caroline and Noah sat at the head table. She served him food, picking the bones out of his fish, placing the tenderest cuts on his plate. He whispered thank you, and she smiled—a smile that looked satisfied but exhausted, like a traveler who had finally found a place to rest her head. I sat two tables away, eating quietly. My phone lit up. Grace Miller: [How’s the auction? My mother is asking about the wedding timeline again. I told her you were busy.] Me: [Let’s discuss in person next week.] Grace Miller: [Sounds good. By the way, did you see Caroline today?] Me: [Yes.] Grace Miller: [Is she okay?] Me: [She’s in love. She seems fine.] There was a pause on the other end. Grace Miller: [Are you okay?] I stared at those three words. Outside, the November night was dark, the city grid carved up by neon and headlights. In the reflection of the glass, my face was a blank sheet of paper. Me: [I’m always okay.] December. The Prest Group Annual Gala. I was invited as a strategic partner. In previous years, Caroline and I would walk the red carpet together. This year, her plus-one had changed. Noah wore a custom suit, his cuffs fastened with the limited-edition Cartier links she had won at auction the week before. He stood by her side, smiling like polished jade, handling the media’s questions with rehearsed grace. “Mr. Valenti, what is your relationship with Ms. Prest?” He lowered his eyes, ears turning a charming shade of pink. “I am Ms. Prest’s assistant.” Caroline grabbed his hand, looking straight into the camera. “He is my boyfriend.” The flashbulbs nearly blew the roof off the ballroom. I stood on the periphery of the crowd, holding a glass of red wine I hadn’t touched. My assistant leaned in, voice barely audible. “Sir, PR is asking if we should suppress the trending topics.” “No need.” “But this affects your reputation—” “What reputation?” I turned to him. “My relationship with the Prest Group is purely commercial. Her romantic life is her freedom. It has nothing to do with me.” My assistant looked like he was going to explode. He stared at me, started to speak, stopped, and finally choked out, “Mr. Harrison, are you… a monk?” “Did you achieve nirvana in a past life?” I placed the wine glass on a passing tray and patted his shoulder. “Stop watching so many soap operas.” Halfway through the gala, Noah took the stage. Speaking as the “Special Assistant to the CEO,” he presented the quarterly results for the group’s digital transformation. The PowerPoint was exquisite—smooth animations, curated stock photos. But the data. There was a glaring logical fallacy in the user acquisition cost column. I frowned. Caroline sat in the front row, looking up at him, her eyes shining. She didn’t see the error. Or rather, she didn’t want to see it. The speech ended to thunderous applause. Noah bowed and left the stage. As he passed me, he slowed down. “Mr. Harrison,” he said, turning his head slightly so only I could hear. “Caroline told me you used to walk the red carpet with her every year.” I waited. “She said she wasn’t happy then,” he said. “But she’s happy now.” There it was. The long, drawn-out performance, the constant, deliberate flexing—it was finally out in the open. I looked at him. There was a secret smirk in his eyes, like a cat that had finally stolen the cream. “Mr. Valenti,” I said. “Do you know how long I’ve known her?” He hadn’t expected a question. He faltered. “Twenty-three years,” I answered for him. “In those twenty-three years, I know exactly when she was happy and when she wasn’t. I don’t need you to tell me.” The smile on his face stiffened. “Also,” I said, stepping past him. “Next time you run the numbers, triple-check them. That logic error in your deck? Anyone who bothered to do the math in their head caught it.” Silence behind me. I didn’t look back.

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“Natalie, the fireworks! They caught your house—your parents are still inside!” It was New Year’s Eve, the kind of night where the air feels brittle with frost and expectation. My childhood friend, Hailey, had insisted we go out to celebrate. She wanted a spectacle, something to mark her “return” to our small town, so she’d dropped nearly two thousand dollars on professional-grade pyrotechnics. I’d watched her line them up along the dry brush at the edge of my property, my stomach doing slow, anxious somersaults. I tried to talk her out of it, pointing out how close they were to the porch, how the wind was picking up. She’d just brushed me off with a sharp, practiced laugh. “I know what I’m doing, Nat. Lighten up for once.” She didn’t wait for an answer before she struck the match. I couldn’t watch. Feeling a headache coming on, I retreated to a neighbor’s house to play cards, trying to drown out the booms with small talk. I hadn’t even finished my first hand when she burst through the door, breathless and wild-eyed, screaming that my parents were being burned alive. I froze, the cards slipping from my numb fingers. My parents? That was impossible. I was the only one spending the holidays at the house this year. … My first instinct was that this was one of Hailey’s twisted jokes. She’d always had a flair for the dramatic, a need to be the center of every tragedy. “Hailey, stop. My parents aren’t—” “I’m serious!” she shrieked, grabbing my arm so hard her nails dug into my skin. “I’m not lying! We have to go, now! The fire is out of control!” She hauled me toward my house. Before we even cleared the treeline, the heat hit me—a physical wall of shimmering, orange air. The fire had turned the Victorian structure I grew up in into a skeletal furnace. Neighbors were frantic, tossing buckets of water that vanished into steam before hitting the flames. Above the roar of the fire, I heard it: a low, guttural moaning from inside the house. Someone was screaming a name, the sound muffled by the crackle of burning cedar. My heart hammered against my ribs. If my parents weren’t home—and they shouldn’t have been—then who the hell was in there? I reached into my pocket, my fingers trembling as I tried to dial 911. Before I could hit ‘call,’ Mr. Henderson, the head of our local neighborhood association, intercepted me. He looked haggard, his face smeared with soot. “Natalie, honey, your parents… they’re trapped. The fire’s too hot. We’ve tried everything, but…” He trailed off, wiping a hand across his red-rimmed eyes. “You need to prepare yourself.” I looked at the house. Through the shattered parlor window, I could see two silhouettes wreathed in flame, thrashing in a desperate, final dance of agony. A wave of nausea rolled over me. Even if it wasn’t my parents, I had to save whoever was in there. But as my thumb hovered over the emergency button, Mr. Henderson snatched the phone right out of my hand. “No, Natalie. You can’t call the police.” I stared at him, bewildered. “What are you talking about?” “Our town is in the final running for the ‘Safest Heritage Community’ grant,” he said, his voice dropping to a frantic whisper. “If word gets out about a fatal fire caused by illegal fireworks on New Year’s, we lose everything. The funding, the reputation… we can handle this ourselves. We’ll get the fire out.” I opened my mouth to scream at him, but Hailey was suddenly there, flanking me. “He’s right, Nat. Don’t make a scene. Look at everyone helping you—if you call the cops now, you’re basically stabbing the whole neighborhood in the back. Just let them put it out. That’s all that matters right now.” Their logic was insane, a product of small-town desperation and warped priorities, but the roar of the fire was louder than my thoughts. I didn’t fight them. I grabbed a bucket and joined the line. We fought the flames until three in the morning. When the last ember finally hissed into silence, the air was thick with the cloying, sweet-metallic scent of charred meat. Two blackened shapes were carried out on stretchers and covered with white sheets. Hailey didn’t wait for me to process it. she collapsed into the dirt, wailing into her hands. “Natalie, I’m so sorry! Your poor parents… I never should have lit those fireworks. I didn’t think… I didn’t know your house was the only one that would go up. Please don’t hate me.” She was performing, making herself the victim before I could even find my voice. Two people were dead, and she was worried about being blamed. I clenched my fists, the grief and rage finally bubbling over. “I warned you, Hailey! I told you it wasn’t safe, but you had to have your ‘moment.’ Now my house is gone, and people are dead. Do you think an apology fixes that?” Hailey looked up, her eyes swimming with well-rehearsed tears, and sobbed even harder. One of the neighbors, a woman named Mrs. Gable, stepped forward to shield her. “Honestly, Natalie, shouting won’t bring them back. You’re being cruel.” “Exactly,” another man added, crossing his arms. “It’s just bad luck. Everyone else’s house is fine. Maybe your place was just a tinderbox. You can’t pin that on Hailey.” Then, Mrs. Gable let out a long, airy sigh. “And look on the bright side, dear. At least you won’t have to worry about the cost of assisted living anymore. That’s one hell of a silver lining, isn’t it?” I felt the blood drain from my face. “What did you just say?” “I’m just saying, the elder-care burden is halved! You should be thanking her for the closure.” “You’re disgusting,” I whispered, stepping toward her. I wanted to tear that smug look off her face. Mr. Henderson stepped between us. “Enough. Natalie, don’t take it out on her. She’s just… being practical. Look, you can stay at my place for a few days. We take care of our own.” Hailey reached out, catching my sleeve. “Stay with me, Nat. It’s the least I can do. I’ll be your family now. My parents can be your parents. Please?” I looked at her. Her eyes were darting everywhere but at me. I remembered the fireworks—how she’d aimed the Roman candles directly toward my roof, laughing like it was a game. A cold realization began to settle in my gut. Mr. Henderson kept pushing. “Let’s just get the bodies to the funeral home for a private cremation before the sun comes up. No need for an autopsy, no need for the county coroner to get involved.” He signaled for a few men to lift the stretchers. I smiled, a cold, hard thing. “There’s just one problem, Mr. Henderson. My parents didn’t come home for the holidays. Those two bodies? They aren’t mine.” “I think we should call the police and see who they actually belong to.” The entire group froze. The silence was absolute. Hailey was the first to break it. She scrambled to her feet, pointing a trembling finger at the sheets. “That’s impossible! Who else would be in your house? You’re just saying that because you want to call the cops! Natalie, for God’s sake, have some perspective! Is your pride really more important than this town’s future?” Perspective? I couldn’t believe the words coming out of her mouth. What was even more chilling was the way the rest of the neighbors nodded, their eyes turning cold and accusatory. Mr. Henderson frowned, his voice laced with a hidden threat. “Natalie, I know you’re grieving, but don’t make this difficult. If you turn this into a crime scene, nobody in this town is going to help you with the burial. You’re a young woman—you think you can handle this alone?” “It’s over. We’re burying them in the local plot at dawn. Simple as that.” He barked an order at the men, but it was New Year’s Day, and the grim reality of handling charred remains had dampened their enthusiasm. Nobody moved. Hailey shoved me toward them. “Natalie, don’t just stand there! Give them some cash for the trouble. Don’t you know how things work? You’ve been in the city too long. You owe these men at least a thousand each for the hazard pay.” “Pay up. It’s your family. Do the right thing.” A thousand dollars each? It wasn’t “hazard pay”; it was an extortion tax to keep me quiet. Suddenly, ten men found the energy to step forward, holding out their Venmo codes like vultures. I didn’t move. I raised my voice, letting it carry through the cold morning air. “I told you. Those aren’t my parents. I don’t know who those people are.” Hailey’s face contorted. From the back of the crowd, Mrs. Gable scoffed. “Stop lying! I saw your parents at 8:00 PM last night! I waved to them in the driveway!” “Me too,” another woman chimed in. “We were all at the end of the block. We saw them go inside. Why would we lie about that? It’s bad luck to lie about the dead.” Their certainty was terrifying. My head started to throb. My parents had told me they were staying in the city. But why would all these people insist they were here? Hailey gripped my shoulder, her voice dropping to a faux-sympathetic coo. “Nat, I know it’s hard to accept. But everyone saw them. If you don’t believe us, why don’t you just call them? Prove us wrong.” My hands began to shake uncontrollably. Someone thrust a phone in my face—a grainy doorbell camera clip from a neighbor’s house. It showed two people, dressed in my parents’ winter coats, waving to the street before entering my front door. I fumbled for my own phone and dialed my father. Straight to voicemail. My heart hammered against my teeth. I dialed my mother. Ringing… ringing… no answer. I tried five more times. Nothing. I took a shaky breath and called my older brother, my last hope. He picked up on the third ring. “Natalie? It’s five in the morning, what’s up?” “Jack,” I whispered, my eyes burning. “Did Mom and Dad go back to the house last night? To the old place?” Jack chuckled on the other end. “Yeah, Dad was obsessed with those two sea bass he had in the deep freeze there. He insisted on having them for New Year’s dinner. I drove them down myself last night. Why?” The air left my lungs. The phone slipped slightly from my ear. I could hear my nephew crying in the background, and then the line went dead. I looked at the two white sheets. My knees turned to water. Hailey caught me, pulling me into a suffocating hug while whispering in my ear. “Just give them the money, Nat. Let them rest. It’s almost over. Everyone is waiting.” I was shaking with a mix of horror and fury. I knelt in the dirt before the stretchers. After a few jagged breaths, I reached out and peeled back the sheet. I wanted to find something—a ring, a watch—that would tell me it wasn’t them. But the fire had been too thorough. They were unrecognizable. I broke down, sobbing into my hands. Behind me, I felt Hailey’s hand on my back, and I could swear I heard the faint, satisfied click of her tongue. “It’s okay, Nat. It’s over now.” Over? How could it be over? If she hadn’t lit those fireworks, they’d be alive. I reached for my phone, intent on calling the authorities, grant be damned. Hailey slapped the phone out of my hand. “I said no police! Are you deaf?” I reached for the phone again, and she kicked it three feet away into the ash. I felt a surge of pure, primal adrenaline. I stood up, ready to swing at her, when a voice drifted from the driveway. “Natalie? What is everyone doing on our lawn so early?” I spun around. My mother and father were standing there, holding a grocery bag, looking perfectly healthy and utterly confused. If my parents were standing there… then who was under the sheets? The silence that followed was heavy, suffocating, and punctuated only by the sound of Hailey’s jaw hitting the floor.

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Word on the street was that the moment the Huntington heir graduated, his parents gifted him ten million dollars and a ten percent stake in the family empire. I sat in my cubicle, gnawing on a stale bagel I’d saved from the day before, practically drooling with envy. I ran the numbers in my head. Even if he never lifted a finger for the rest of his life, just living off the interest and dividends, he’d be pulling in a cool six million a year, easy. For a pathetic, corporate drone like me, getting paid to do absolutely nothing was the ultimate dream. It was the summit of my existence. Then came the day the Chairman and his family found me. They told me I was their biological son, lost for twenty-three years. My buddy warned me, “Look, Wes. Families with that kind of money? They have rules. Dozens of them. You won’t survive it. Besides, they’ve raised Tristan for over twenty years. They won’t have any real feelings for you.” I flashed him a jagged, cynical grin. “It’s fine. I’m not in it for the love. I’m in it for the cash.” I was whisked away to the Huntington estate. On the drive over, the butler briefed me on the lay of the land. … The Huntingtons had three children: the eldest daughter, Harper; the second daughter, Blair; and the third son, Tristan. After I went missing all those years ago, Mrs. Huntington—Catherine—was inconsolable. To fill the void, they went to an upscale orphanage and adopted a boy. That was Tristan. Tristan was smart, sensible, and achieved straight A’s effortlessly. He had grown up basking in the adoration of his parents and sisters. The moment the car pulled up to the manor, I was blocked at the entrance by the second daughter, Blair. She raked her eyes over me, her gaze lingering on my cheap sneakers and worn-out jeans with undisguised disgust. She scoffed, looking at me sideways. “So. You’re Wes?” I nodded and pointed to the butler beside me. “Apparently. That’s what they tell me. But you can still call me by my real name, Wes Miller.” She sneered, a cold, sharp sound. “You look like trash. You don’t even compare to Tristan’s little finger.” She took a step closer, her perfume expensive and overpowering. “Give up now. Even if you’re back, you will never replace Tristan. This family only has one son, and that is Tristan! You can’t compete with him in anything.” “I’m warning you,” she hissed, lowering her voice. “Know your place. Be polite to Tristan. Don’t do anything that makes me hate you. Otherwise, I have a million ways to make you disappear.” Without waiting for a response, she spun on her heel and marched into the villa. I rolled my eyes at her retreating back. Who cares if she hates me? I’m here to secure the bag, not to fight for affection. Once I get the money, she won’t have to chase me out; I’ll be on the first flight to the Caribbean. Tristan, the adopted son, got ten million and ten percent of the shares just for graduating. As the biological son, asking for an extra two million wouldn’t be excessive, right? I was about to push the heavy oak doors open when they were pulled from the inside. A guy about my age stood there. Our eyes locked. He quickly plastered a radiant smile on his face, grabbing my hand with an enthusiasm that felt rehearsed. “You must be Wes!” “Come in, come in! Mom and Dad are waiting for you!” No surprises here. This was the legendary Tristan—high EQ, high IQ, the golden boy. He ushered me into the living room. On the plush velvet sofas, an elegant middle-aged couple immediately stood up. When she saw me, Catherine Huntington froze. She walked slowly toward me, her manicured fingers trembling slightly as she reached out to touch my face. “Wes… is it really my Wes?” Then, she pulled me into a desperate, crushing hug. “Mom has finally found you.” “All these years… did you have a hard life out there? I’m so sorry… Mom is so sorry…” I had prepared myself for a cold reception, but being suddenly embraced by this stranger who smelled like lavender and money… it stirred something complicated in my chest. I grew up in the system. I had never felt anything resembling familial love. Just as I was calculating the appropriate emotional response, the sound of shattering glass cut through the air, pierced by Tristan’s high-pitched scream. Everyone’s attention snapped to him instantly. He was sprawled on the floor, clutching his elbow, sobbing. “Mom… it hurts…” Drops of blood hit the pristine white marble floor. Catherine immediately released me and rushed over to him. Her eyes were filled with panic and heartache. “Tristan!” “Quick! Call the doctor!” Mr. Huntington, Richard, crowded around too. Once he saw the blood, he turned and roared at the hovering maids. “How do you do your jobs? Why did you let the Young Master pour the tea himself?!” Tristan grabbed Richard’s arm with his good hand, his voice trembling. “Dad, don’t blame them. I was just thinking… since my big brother is back, I wanted to pour him a cup of tea personally.” “It’s my fault. I’m too clumsy. I missed a step.” He leaned weakly into Catherine’s arms, defending the servants. He looked like a fragile angel. Anyone seeing this would feel their heart break for him. The family doctor arrived quickly. After a simple bandage job, Blair wasn’t satisfied and insisted they go to the hospital for a full check-up. Naturally, the whole family prepared to escort him to the ER. As they were heading out the door, Catherine seemed to remember I existed. She turned back, looking apologetic. “Wes, I had prepared a welcome dinner for you, but this… with Tristan…” Before she could finish, Blair stomped back, grabbed her arm, and cut her off. “Oh, come on, Mom. Why bother with a feast for a gutter rat? The priority is Tristan! He lost so much blood, aren’t you worried? Let’s go!” Two seconds later, I heard the heavy thud of the front door slamming shut. Instantly, the massive villa was silent. Just me. I sat on the sofa, glancing around the opulent room. My hand brushed against a leather-bound book on the coffee table. A photo album. I opened the first page. Tristan, holding a coconut, smiling brilliantly on a white sandy beach. Then came summer camps, international math competitions, and the whole family surrounding him for birthdays, blowing out candles on cakes that cost more than my rent. Most of the photos were from 2013. I was twelve that year. I hit a growth spurt in middle school. The orphanage was crowded, resources were thin. To make sure I got enough to eat, I went to the cafeteria right after school to help the lunch ladies wash vegetables in exchange for leftovers. While I was worrying about starving, he was vacationing in Fiji with his parents and sisters. Comparison really is the thief of joy. I sat in that living room until nearly midnight. There was no sign of them returning. I decided to head back to my apartment. I grabbed my bag and stood up just as the door opened. Catherine walked in, supporting Tristan. She looked surprised to see me. “Wes? It’s so late. Where are you going?” “It got late, and you guys weren’t back. I didn’t know where I was sleeping, so I figured I’d go home.” Hearing my answer, she paused, guilt flashing across her face. “Mom was just busy and forgot.” “Tch. Stop playing the victim,” Blair sneered from the doorway. Catherine turned to the housekeeper behind her. “Mrs. Higgins, take Wes to his room to rest.” “Mom, let me take my brother,” Tristan volunteered, stepping forward. Catherine smiled at him, relieved. “Tristan is always so sensible. Go ahead, take your brother up.” Tristan walked up, grabbing my hand with that practiced familiarity, and led me upstairs. He pushed open the door to a bedroom on the second floor. “Brother, you can stay in this one.” I looked inside. It was spacious, warm, beautifully decorated. Before I could speak, Blair dashed up and blocked the doorway. “No! This is Tristan’s room! Tristan, why are you giving your room to this hillbilly?” “People like him are manipulative. You’re too kind, don’t let him bully you!” Tristan looked at her, feigning a scolding tone. “Blair, the room Mom prepared isn’t as big as mine. I figured… Brother has suffered so much out there for years. I’ve replaced him here, enjoying all this happiness. Now that he’s back, I should compensate him.” “I occupied his spot. It’s time to give it back.” He turned to me, his eyes wide and fearful. “Brother, you won’t blame me, right? Don’t worry, I’ll return everything that belongs to you. I’ll give you whatever you want. Just… please don’t chase me away.” “I just love Mom and Dad so much. I can’t bear to leave them…” Jesus. So Tristan wasn’t just a golden boy; he was a master manipulator. A text-book “Pick-me” boy. “Nonsense! What replacement? You are my son, Tristan Huntington!” Richard Huntington had appeared behind us. Hearing Tristan’s speech, he barked out the words sternly. He walked over and ruffled Tristan’s hair. “Silly child, don’t think like that. Your mother and I raised you by hand. To us, blood doesn’t matter. You are the child we love the most.” Hearing this, Tristan’s eyes instantly filled with tears. He turned and clung to Richard’s arm, whining affectionately, “Dad, of course I’m your son. I just feel bad for Brother, and I don’t want to leave you guys…” While they enacted their touching father-son moment, I walked to the room next door and pushed it open. It was fine. Smaller than Tristan’s, but clean and bright. A hell of a lot better than my rat-hole apartment. “I’ll take this one.” Tristan froze, opening his mouth to protest, but I cut him off. “Relax. I don’t rob people of their things.” Without waiting for a reaction, I tossed my bag inside and shut the door. Reviewing the day, I realized that aside from Catherine showing a flicker of maternal instinct, the rest of them viewed me as an intruder. Rumor had it that the Huntington empire was originally Catherine’s family business. Richard had married into it. After the old patriarch died, and Catherine showed no interest in business, the reins were handed to Richard. But in this house, Catherine still held the purse strings. Which meant my strategy was simple: Suck up to Mom. Human beings die for wealth just as birds die for food. I’d treat this like a job. I gave myself one year. Get ten million cash and the shares, then I resign and vanish. The next morning, there was a knock on my door. It was Mrs. Higgins. She said the eldest sister, Harper, was back, and Madam wanted me downstairs. When I got down, the family was happily distributing gifts Harper had brought back. Harper saw me and paused, then picked up a gift box from the table and handed it to me. “You must be Wes. This is a gift I brought back from Europe. It’s the same as Tristan’s.” “Thanks,” I said politely, taking it. It seemed she was slightly more decent than Blair. I opened it. A diamond-encrusted watch. It looked heavy. Expensive. Harper was generous. She went onto the “Safe List.” Just as I was mentally calculating the resale value, Tristan shouted to someone off to the side, “Margot! Can I come to your birthday party the day after tomorrow?” I realized there was a stranger sitting on the sofa. She was beautiful, with an air of effortless arrogance. Old money. Perhaps sensing my curiosity, Harper introduced her. “This is my best friend, Margot.” Margot turned, her eyes meeting mine. For a split second, shock flashed through her gaze. But a moment later, her expression shifted. Her eyes crinkled into a smile, and she waved at me. “Hello there, Wes.” Tristan’s smile stiffened. “Oh, Margot,” Catherine interjected eagerly. “Tristan cares so much about your birthday. He’s been preparing a gift for months. If you don’t invite him, he’ll be heartbroken for ages!” Margot smiled politely. “Sure,” she said, her voice cool. “The more the merrier. Harper, bring both your brothers.” Tristan looked at me with disbelief, then forced a smile. “Don’t worry, Margot. We’ll definitely be there!” After Margot left, Tristan’s face fell. He sat on the sofa looking like a kicked puppy. Seeing this, Catherine pulled a black card from her purse and handed it to him. “Don’t be sad. She agreed, didn’t she? That’s huge progress compared to how she used to treat you.” “Take Mom’s card and go to the mall. Buy some new clothes, get a facial. Our Tristan is so handsome; you’ll make sure Margot can’t take her eyes off you!” “Don’t worry. The position of Margot’s husband belongs to our precious Tristan.” He took the card, glancing at Catherine with wide, teary eyes. “Thank you, Mom.” Catherine then noticed me standing there. She looked me up and down, a flicker of awkwardness crossing her face. “Um… Wes, maybe you should go buy some clothes too?” I looked at her and said bluntly, “I’m broke.” She seemed to remember something, pulled out her phone, and tapped on the screen. A moment later, my phone buzzed. Bank notification: Account credited $200,000. I glanced at the unlimited black card in Tristan’s hand. Still playing favorites, I see. I thought for a second, then put on my best pathetic face. “I’ve never been to a party like this. I don’t know how to dress so I won’t embarrass the family. Do I need jewelry?” Catherine paused. Then she nodded fervently. “Right, right. This is your debut as a Huntington. You need to look dignified.” She turned and went into her bedroom. A moment later, she came out holding a velvet box. She opened it in front of me. Diamond cufflinks. They sparkled so hard I almost squinted. She handed them to me. “Here. Wear these. I didn’t have a welcome gift prepared for you when you came back. Consider this Mom’s compensation.” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Tristan’s face twist in shock and rage. I suppressed my excitement and took the box with feigned politeness. For the first time, I called her Mom. “Thank you, Mom.” Hearing that, she beamed so hard I thought her face might crack. These cufflinks were worth at least half a million. She wasn’t just a mom; she was an ATM. Calling her ‘Mom’ was the least I could do.

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When my mother asked which man I wanted to marry into the Sterling family, I didn’t choose Julian this time. Instead, I chose his uncle, Sam Sterling. My mother looked at me, her expression a mix of confusion and concern. After all, everyone in the elite circles of North Heights knew that Julian and I were childhood sweethearts. I had spent ten years following him like a shadow, loudly proclaiming to anyone who would listen that I wouldn’t marry anyone else. I offered her a bitter, weary smile. My mind drifted to my previous life—the years spent in a hollow marriage where Julian never touched me. I had spent those years convinced he suffered from some secret, shameful illness, going to great lengths to protect his dignity. It wasn’t until our golden wedding anniversary that I accidentally stumbled into the basement vault he had forbidden everyone to enter. The walls were covered, floor to ceiling, with thousands of candid photographs of my cousin, Stephanie. In that moment, the truth shattered me. He wasn’t cold; he just didn’t love me. He never had. Since the universe had seen fit to give me a second chance, I decided to step aside and let them have each other. But later, when I walked toward his uncle in a Vera Wang gown, Julian’s face turned deathly pale. And then, he lost his mind. … Three days after the engagement was finalized, I ran into Julian at an upscale lounge. His friends saw me walk in and immediately began to snicker, their eyes gleaming with mockery. “Look, Julian, your little shadow is back!” “Hey, Nancy, the contract is signed, isn’t it? Do you really need to keep him on such a short leash? Can’t the guy even grab a drink with the boys?” When Julian saw me, his irritation was palpable. He looked at me as if I were a stain on his expensive suit. “Nancy, are you really that desperate?” he hissed, stepping close enough for me to smell the bourbon on his breath. “Going behind my back to get our families to settle the contract? Now everyone in the city thinks we’re engaged. You really outdid yourself this time.” The disdain in his eyes used to make my heart ache. Now, it just felt like a dull, distant noise. I took a slow breath and spoke calmly. “I didn’t need your permission. Because the man I’m marrying isn’t you.” The room went dead silent for a heartbeat before erupting into laughter. Julian’s friends were practically doubled over. “Julian, man, go comfort your little fiancée!” one of them wheezed. “Or she’s going to find an even crazier way to get your attention!” Julian frowned, his ego clearly bruised by my lack of tears. “Nancy, is this a new game? Playing hard to get?” He scoffed, stepping into my personal space. “Marrying into the Sterlings? If it’s not me, who else could it be? You’ve been screaming about being my wife since you were in pigtails. Everyone already considers you my property.” He leaned down, whispering harshly into my ear: “I’ll let the engagement thing slide. But remember this—I’ll give you a grand wedding to keep the families happy. But the legal papers? The actual marriage license? I’m saving that for the woman I actually want.” I looked up at him, stunned. In my last life, Julian had followed his family’s orders perfectly. We had signed the papers and married almost immediately. Did he… remember? Was he reborn, too? Before I could read the expression on his face, Stephanie arrived. The moment she saw Julian and me standing together, her eyes welled up with practiced precision. “Nancy… Julian…” she sobbed, her voice trembling. “I heard you’re… you’re getting married soon. I didn’t bring a gift, but I just wanted to wish you… wish you both a lifetime of happiness.” Before she could finish, she turned and ran out of the lounge, crying. “Look what you did!” Julian snarled at me. He didn’t spare me another glance before charging out after her. When they finally returned, they were holding hands, fingers interlaced. Stephanie’s lips were swollen and red, and there was a very deliberate, dark hickey on Julian’s throat. The crowd watched me with hungry eyes, waiting for the explosion. In the past, if I saw another woman so much as breathe near Julian, I would have caused a scene, screaming and crying until he looked at me. Julian stepped in front of Stephanie, shielding her, his face set in a look of defiant anticipation. He was waiting for me to break. But minutes passed, and I just sipped my sparkling water. Julian looked surprised, then let out a cold, mocking laugh. “I see you’ve finally grown some sense. At least you aren’t making a fool of yourself tonight.” When the party ended, Julian caught me by the arm. “It’s late. It’s not safe. I’ll drive you.” I didn’t decline. A free ride was a free ride. As I walked toward the car, I moved for the front passenger door, but Julian blocked me, his body a solid wall. “Sit in the back,” he said curtly. He then held the front door open for Stephanie, ushering her in with a gentleness he had never shown me. “I’m so sorry, Nancy,” Stephanie chirped from the front seat, looking back with a faux-pitying smile. “Julian is just so worried about me. He knows I get car sick if I’m not in the front.” I said nothing and climbed into the back seat—exactly where I had intended to sit anyway. The entire drive was filled with their hushed giggles and whispered inside jokes. At a red light, Stephanie leaned over, pouting, asking Julian to help her apply lip gloss. They lingered, their faces inches apart, their breathing becoming heavy and synchronized in the quiet cabin of the car. Suddenly, Julian glanced in the rearview mirror, as if remembering I was there. When he saw me staring blankly out the window, completely indifferent, his expression shifted. His jaw tightened, and he slammed the car into gear, his mood turning inexplicably foul. When we reached my house, I moved to get out, but Julian caught my wrist again. He shoved a small jewelry box into my hand, his tone condescending. “Fine. Stop with this ‘indifferent’ act. It’s beneath you.” He sighed. “This bracelet is your engagement gift. Just be a good girl, and I’ll give you the wedding. At least in the eyes of the city, you’ll be my wife.” I looked at the box, then at him. “And the marriage license? Who are you signing that with? Stephanie?” Julian’s temper flared, though there was a flicker of smug satisfaction in his eyes. “I knew you were faking. I’m warning you, Nancy—don’t you dare say a word of this to our parents. What Stephanie and I have is beyond your understanding. She’s fragile, she’s kind, and she doesn’t have a manipulative bone in her body. If you hurt her, don’t blame me if I call off the wedding entirely.” I almost laughed. He was so cowardly, so afraid to stand up to the Sterling patriarchs, yet he framed it as if I were the villain in his tragic romance. I didn’t answer. I simply turned and walked into my house. The second I closed the door, my phone buzzed. It was a video from Stephanie. In the video, Julian was carefully fastening a diamond necklace around her neck. I recognized the brand—a luxury boutique. I realized then that the bracelet Julian had shoved at me was likely a “gift with purchase” from that very necklace. The camera tilted. Their lips met, and the wet, rhythmic sound of their kissing filled my quiet hallway. “Nancy,” Stephanie’s text followed. “Julian told you, right? After the wedding, he’s signing the papers with me.” “Think about it—a marriage that isn’t legally recognized means no inheritance. No rights. I think it’s my turn to be the billionaire’s wife this time around, don’t you?” My blood ran cold. Stephanie had been reborn, too. No wonder they were moving so fast. In the previous life, they had hidden their affair for decades. Now, they were trying to rewrite history together. I looked down at my phone, remembering the business trends from my past life. After Julian and I “married,” the Sterling Group had suddenly exploded with new contracts and unprecedented growth. Everyone said I was his lucky charm. I had lived in that lie for fifty years before seeing those photos. My mother came into my room then, her voice soft. “Sam is coming back from London in five days.” I felt a spark of genuine hope. In my last life, Sam Sterling—Julian’s uncle—had never married. He was the ghost of the family, a powerful, silent figure who lived mostly abroad. I remembered him as a kind, older-brother figure from my childhood. Marrying him felt like finding a safe harbor in a storm. The next day, I went to my “secret garden”—a private glass conservatory on the rooftop of my family’s office building. I had spent years filling it with exotic blooms, all of them Julian’s favorites, in a desperate attempt to please him. Now that my future husband had changed, the garden needed to change, too. I spent the next few days clearing out the old and planting the flowers Sam preferred—deep blue hydrangeas and white lilies. I stepped away to the breakroom for a coffee, and my phone pinged. I opened Instagram to see Stephanie’s latest post. My heart stopped. The photos showed my conservatory in ruins. My carefully tended flowers were snapped at the stems, petals scattered like blood across the floor. In the center of the carnage, Julian was holding Stephanie, both of them beaming at the camera. “Julian knew I needed a place for my photoshoot, so he found this hidden gem for me! It feels so good to be loved!” I sprinted back to the roof. Inside, Julian was plucking a stray jasmine bloom—one of the few left—and tucking it behind Stephanie’s ear. “This is my private space!” I screamed, my voice cracking. “How dare you bring her here? How dare you destroy my garden!” Stephanie flinched, her eyes instantly brimming with tears. “Julian… did I do something wrong? Why is she so angry? I’m so scared…” Julian stepped in front of her, his face darkening. “Nancy, quit the theatrics. You grew these flowers for me anyway, didn’t you?” He gestured vaguely at the wreckage. “I was bored of your little obsession with this place. What does it matter if Stephanie uses it for a few photos? Stop making everything about you.” I looked at the crushed lilies on the floor, my eyes stinging. “Who said these were for you? I was preparing this for my future husband!” Julian let out a sharp, mocking bark of laughter. “Give it a rest, Nancy. We all know I’m the only man you’ve ever wanted. I’ve already agreed to marry you—stop acting like a brat.” I looked at the broken petals and began to cry. Just then, a crew of workers began hauling in massive crates of sunflowers—Stephanie’s favorite. As they began to unpack them, the air became thick with yellow pollen. My throat tightened instantly. My skin began to flush a violent red. Julian knew. He had known since we were ten years old that I was deathly allergic to sunflower pollen. But his eyes weren’t on me. He was busy directing the workers, his face lit up as he watched Stephanie twirl among the bright yellow blooms. Suddenly, Stephanie let out a small gasp. “Julian… I think I scratched my finger on one of Nancy’s roses. It hurts…” Julian’s face twisted into a mask of maternal worry. He swept her up into his arms, then turned to me, his voice a roar of fury. “Nancy! Even your flowers are as spiteful and vicious as you are! If Stephanie gets an infection from this, I swear to God, you’ll pay for it!” He turned and carried her out, ignoring the way I was clutching my throat, my face turning purple, my hand reaching out to him in a desperate plea for help. I don’t know how long it took me to crawl out of that room. Every breath felt like swallowing glass. When I finally reached my medication in the office below and the air began to return to my lungs, the cold truth settled in my gut. In the past, I thought Julian just didn’t love me. I never realized he was capable of watching me die for the sake of a scratch on Stephanie’s finger. I leaned against the wall, shaking. Thank God. Thank God I wasn’t marrying him. I took several hours to compose myself. Tonight was the formal family dinner to welcome Sam back. I needed to look perfect. I needed to make a good impression. When I reached the underground parking garage, I saw a car rocking rhythmically in the distance. As I got closer, I recognized Julian’s silver Maserati. The driver’s side window was half-down. Julian had Stephanie draped over his lap. Her eyes were glazed, her body moving in a slow, steady rhythm. Even though I no longer loved him, the sheer audacity of it—doing this in the family garage before a formal dinner—made my chest tighten. Julian opened his eyes and locked onto mine. A flicker of panic crossed his face, but it was gone in a second. Instead of stopping, he reached up, brushed a strand of hair from Stephanie’s face, and kissed her deeply, moaning loudly enough for the sound to echo off the concrete walls. He was doing it on purpose. He wanted to break me. I looked away, climbed into my own car, and drove toward the Sterling estate. On the way, I stopped to pick up a silk tie I had ordered for Sam. I arrived at the mansion at the same time as Julian. As he stepped out of his car, I could see discarded wrappers on the floor of his passenger seat. He saw the gift bag in my hand and his smirk returned, full of smug entitlement. “Bought me a gift? Let me see.” I pulled the bag behind my back, my pulse racing. “It’s not for you.” He chuckled, lighting a cigarette and blowing a cloud of smoke toward me. “I saw you in the garage, Nancy. I know you’re dying inside.” He leaned against his car. “I told you already. You get the wedding. Stephanie gets the license. She’s the one making the sacrifice here, really.” He flicked ash onto the pavement. “She’ll be my legal wife. What we do is natural. She’ll probably stay at our house sometimes. You’ll have to get used to it. It’s for your own good, really—keeps the family name intact.” The level of his delusion was staggering. I turned to walk away, but he grabbed my arm. “Listen. My uncle Sam is going to be there tonight. The whole family answers to him. This dinner is serious.” He leaned in, his voice dropping to a low warning. “I’m giving you enough face by showing up. If the elders ask about the marriage license, you tell them we’ve already signed it. Understand?” “Also, Stephanie’s finger is still sore. After dinner, you’re going to apologize to her. If you don’t… well, I can always call off the wedding before it’s official.”

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