Category: English

1. Three in the morning. The widow next door was banging on my door, saying her son had a fever and she needed to borrow some medicine. My husband, Thomas, a doctor who’d just fallen asleep after a grueling late shift, was up and out the door in an instant. He didn’t come back for half an hour. “It’s not easy for Jenna, raising a kid on her own,” he said, shrugging off his coat. “The fever’s finally broken, thank God.” When I didn’t respond, he sighed, a familiar wave of weariness washing over his face. “I know you don’t like me getting close to other women, Claire, but this was a life-or-death situation. It’s my duty.” Normally, I would have nodded and said I understood. But not tonight. Instead, I spoke with a calm that felt foreign even to me. “I want a divorce.” … Thomas’s hands froze, the motion of taking off his jacket halting mid-air. His face was a mask of exhaustion. But just as quickly, he smoothed his features, stepping forward to pull me into his arms. “What, are you jealous? C’mon, all my energy goes into my work and into you. There’s no room for anyone else.” He held me, his voice a low, placating rumble. “You can be mad at me, but don’t say things that hurt, okay? You know better than that.” It was a gentle scolding, the kind you’d give a petulant child. There was a time I found that tone intoxicatingly charming. Tonight, it just made my skin crawl. I pushed him away, a flicker of disgust in my heart. “I’m not being petulant.” “I’m serious about the divorce.” His eyes locked onto mine, a response forming on his lips before dissolving into another sigh. The living room fell silent, the only sound the soft cadence of our breathing. Finally, he broke the stillness, taking my hand and rubbing the back of it with his thumb. “Claire, I know I’ve been distant lately, but work has been insane. And your birthday… I didn’t mean to forget. Your gift is already on its way.” He leaned in, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. “Once this crazy stretch is over, I’ll take you on that trip we talked about, just the two of us. Get away from it all. Okay? You know I was on my feet for almost twenty hours today, right? Be good. No more of this…” His eyes were shot with red, a testament to his fatigue—and, I supposed, to the wound I had just inflicted. He was making perfect sense. By all accounts, pushing this further would make me seem unreasonable, ungrateful even. But I pulled my hand away, my voice laced with a scorn that surprised us both. “Thomas, I said I want a divorce. Are you deaf, or just stupid?” My voice was sharp, cutting through the quiet room. “Monday is in two days. I expect you to take the day off. We’ll meet at the courthouse. You will…” Before I could finish, a dark flush crept up his neck. With a frustrated roar, he threw his coat to the floor. It knocked over a crystal glass on the entryway table, which shattered on the hardwood. Shattered. Just like us. The crash seemed to sober him. The anger in his eyes was replaced by a deep, aching disappointment, but he held on to his patience by a thread. “Claire, this isn’t you. Even if you were serious about this, there has to be a reason, right?” His voice cracked. “It can’t be because I gave Jenna our Tylenol, can it? A high fever in a kid can cause seizures. It can be fatal. I’m a doctor. Was I supposed to just let him die?” His words struck a nerve. A tremor ran through me, and my hands clenched into tight fists. “Yes, that’s exactly why!” I spat, the hatred in my eyes so raw it felt like I was staring at a crime scene. “A man and a woman, alone in a room in the middle of the night. You disgust me.” The fight, now raw and loud, had woken the neighbors. And among them was Jenna. Her eyes were red-rimmed and she looked utterly lost. Before I could process it, she dropped to her knees in front of me. “Claire, please… did I cause a misunderstanding by asking for medicine so late?” she pleaded, her voice trembling. “There’s nothing going on between me and Thomas. It was just… it was too late to get a cab, and I knew Thomas was a doctor, so I thought you might have something…” Two other neighbors emerged from their apartments, drawn by the drama. Their whispers quickly turned into open condemnation. “Look at her. So pretty on the outside, but her heart is pure poison.” “He’s a doctor, for God’s sake! He was saving a life. What kind of person gets jealous over that?” “Dr. Hayes must have done something terrible in a past life to end up with a wife like you!” The chorus of accusations washed over me. I lowered my head, a shield against their glares, but inside, a cold, bitter laugh was echoing. 2. The growing crowd and escalating noise prompted someone to call building management, and the small mob dispersed. Thomas grabbed my wrist, his grip like iron, and pulled me back inside. “Claire, you were just joking, right?” he pressed, his eyes searching mine, desperate. “Those things you said… you didn’t mean them. I’ve given medicine to neighbors before. You’ve never been like this. I don’t believe you would…” His whining grated on my ears. I cut him off, not with words, but with the sharp crack of my palm against his cheek. “If your head’s not right, go get it checked,” I said, my voice dangerously low. “Don’t come barking at my door.” “And I’ll see you at the courthouse on Monday. Don’t make this any uglier than it has to be.” Without another word, I turned and slammed the bedroom door in his face. It was the first time I had ever left him so utterly stripped of his dignity, with no way to save face. Even his legendary patience had its limits. I heard him kick the door, a muffled thud of frustration. “Claire, there’s a line, and you’ve crossed it! This is insane!” he roared from the other side. “I’m not agreeing to a divorce. So you can forget about it!” Then, the sound of the front door slamming shut. The violent noise echoed through the apartment, but inside me, there was only silence. A profound, unprecedented calm. Was it finally ending? I didn’t waste any time. I packed a small bag with my essentials and started searching for a divorce lawyer online. I didn’t sleep a wink. As dawn broke, the apartment was empty. Thomas was gone, but on the coffee table sat a bouquet of flowers. It was his signature move. For years, every fight we had ended this way. He’d buy me flowers, cook my favorite meal, and we’d wordlessly agree to move on. But this time was different. This time, I was done. I picked up the beautifully wrapped bouquet and noticed something odd. It was supposed to be nine roses, but there were only eight. I didn’t have to wonder where the missing one had gone. After tossing them in the trash, I headed for the door, but my foot caught on something jutting out from under the edge of the rug, making me stumble. I bent down and picked it up. It was a tube of lipstick—the newest, not-yet-released shade from Dior. My friend, a beauty influencer, had been raving about it for weeks. My job was conservative; I hadn’t worn a color that bold in years. But Jenna, I recalled, loved bright red lipstick. … Just then, my phone rang. It was one of Thomas’s colleagues from the hospital. “Claire, you need to get down to the hospital, now,” he said, his voice tight with urgency. “Thomas’s had some kind of sudden allergic reaction. He’s in bad shape. We need a family member to sign off on the procedure.” His parents lived hours away; they’d never make it in time. I drove to the hospital. But when I arrived, standing before a crowd of his worried colleagues, I played my hand. My only one. “I’ll sign,” I said, my voice clear and steady, “as soon as he signs the divorce papers.” The room went silent. Then, it exploded. One of our mutual friends, his face contorted in disbelief, called me a heartless bitch. “Don’t you get it? The only reason he was testing that new trial drug was to get a few extra vacation days approved to take you on that trip! And this is how you repay him? Are you even human?” “We all see how he worships you,” another chimed in. “Whatever this is about, can’t you just talk it through? Why blow everything up like this?” “Pull yourself together, Claire. We heard about last night. Thomas did the right thing. It’s his job to save people, and that kid’s life was on the line. You can’t divorce him over something like that!” From the hospital bed, Thomas watched me, his eyes filled with a bottomless despair. “Claire… I don’t want a divorce,” he rasped, his voice weak. “I’ll be more considerate of your feelings. I promise. Please… don’t do this.” He struggled to sit up, reaching a trembling hand out to me, his eyes welling with tears. It was a performance that would have melted any heart. But I remained rooted to the spot, unmoved, my voice as cold as ice. “Sign the divorce agreement and the asset division forms, and I’ll sign the surgical consent.” The room erupted again, the insults flying like poisoned darts. “You monster! He could die, and all you can think about is money?” “It’s true what they say, isn’t it? Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Why isn’t it you in that bed?” But through the cacophony of their rage, I heard another sound. A small, almost imperceptible noise from behind the partition curtain of Thomas’s cubicle. As every eye in the room fixed on me, I strode forward and, with one swift motion, ripped the curtain aside. 3. Jenna gasped, clearly not expecting to be discovered. She scrambled to compose herself, her words tumbling out in a rush. “Claire, don’t get the wrong idea! After the fever broke last night, I was still worried, so I brought him to the ER for a proper check-up.” She gestured around the crowded room. “They’re swamped, there are no private rooms. They’re just putting patients wherever they can fit them. I had no idea Thomas was in the same cubicle.” “I know you don’t like me,” she finished, her voice laced with false sincerity. “As soon as my son wakes up, I’ll ask a nurse to move us. I won’t cause any more trouble for you two.” Just as she’d said, a small boy was asleep in the adjacent bed, his cheeks flushed. Jenna’s performance was flawless—the concerned mother, the considerate neighbor, the innocent bystander. Before I could even speak, Thomas jumped to her defense. “Jenna, the boy needs his rest. Don’t trouble yourself. If you’ve done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear. We both know we’re innocent…” Suddenly, the fight drained out of me. It all felt so pointless. The scathing words I had prepared died on my tongue. I let out a cold, humorless laugh. “You’re right. You’ve done nothing wrong…” My voice dripped with a loathing so thick it was almost tangible. “I just find you filthy. And that’s why I want a divorce.” The color drained from Thomas’s face. He stared at me, his expression a mask of profound disappointment. “Claire, how long are you going to drag out this petty nonsense?” he pleaded. “All I did was give a sick child a box of Tylenol…” His voice rose, cracking with desperation and rage. “Is this because you can’t have children of your own? Is that it? You can’t stand to see anyone else with a healthy kid?” He’d gone too far. The words, flung in the heat of the moment, hung in the air like poison. A friend standing nearby shoved him hard. “Thomas, what the hell is wrong with you? That’s too much.” Realization dawned on his face. He looked at my hands, which were shaking uncontrollably, and his eyes filled with regret. “Claire… I… I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bring that up…” Five years ago, Thomas made a rookie mistake during surgery. A premature baby didn’t survive. The father, broken by grief, came to the hospital with a knife, looking for revenge. I had just arrived to bring Thomas his dinner. In the ensuing chaos, Thomas grabbed me and used me as a shield. A long paring knife pierced my abdomen. The baby I had been carrying for three months was gone. My uterus was so severely damaged that I could never have children again. Afterward, Thomas had knelt by my hospital bed, slapping his own face until it was bruised, his body wracked with gut-wrenching sobs. “Claire, it’s all my fault. I’m a monster. How could I…” he’d choked out between tears. “I swear, I’ll spend the rest of my life making it up to you. We don’t need kids. I only need you.” Now, those words were nothing but a bitter joke. My silence seemed to terrify him more than any outburst. He ripped the IV needle from his arm, ignoring the protests of the nurses, and stumbled toward me. He collapsed at my feet, his voice a desperate plea. “Claire… it was a slip of the tongue. I didn’t mean it… Please, I’m begging you, don’t divorce me. I can’t imagine my life without you. What would be the point?” For a fleeting moment, I was transported back five years, to that hospital room. The scene was almost identical. The only difference was me. My face was a mask of ice. I kicked him squarely in the chest. “Get off me.” “And don’t ever call me that again. It makes me sick.” “Sign the divorce papers, or don’t. I have a thousand ways to ruin your life. Go ahead and test me.” With that, I turned and walked out of the room without a backward glance. Halfway down the hall, I stripped off the jacket he had touched and threw it in a biohazard bin. As I stepped out of the hospital, I heard someone call my name. It was Lily, a new friend from my apartment building.

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I let my sister Rachel choose a wedding dress from my bridal boutique. As she left, a new intern stopped her, demanding $30,000 for the gown. Rachel explained, “I’m the owner’s sister. I don’t pay.” The intern rolled her eyes. “Nice try. Our boss has no sister. You’re just a freeloader.” She blocked Rachel’s path, threatening, “Pay now, or I’ll rip the dress off you and throw you out naked!” Rachel called me, stunned. I rushed over and heard Maria, my longtime manager, supporting the intern as she threatened Rachel. “Wise up,” Maria said coldly. “This is our boss’s wife. Cross her and regret it forever.” The intern pinned Rachel down, smugly accusing her of scamming. I froze, chilled. Immediately, I canceled my husband’s credit card and called him. “Have I been too good to you, Mark?” I asked, my voice low and dangerous. “Or did I give you too much money to chase other women?” 1 When my sister’s call came in, I was just about to drive over to the boutique. “What did you say?” I asked, trying to keep my voice steady. “The new intern, Jessica, is claiming she’s the boss’s wife?” I let out a disbelieving laugh, shaking my head. “Didn’t you tell her you’re my sister?” The next thing I heard was the sharp, ugly crack of a slap, followed by Rachel’s cry of pain. My blood ran cold. I screamed Rachel’s name into the phone, but my voice was drowned out by Jessica’s shrill shouting. “This boutique belongs to my husband!” she shrieked. “You think I wouldn’t know if my own husband had a sister?” Maria’s voice, cold and mocking, followed right after. “Listen, sweetie, I’ll be straight with you. You’ve really messed with the wrong people today.” “This boutique belongs to Mr. Collins,” she continued, the lie rolling smoothly off her tongue. “And the woman you’re looking at is Mrs. Collins! The real owner’s wife! If you wanted to walk out without paying, you should’ve come up with a better excuse!” Their arrogant words echoed in my ears, a knot of dread tightening in my stomach. Just a week ago, on our wedding anniversary, my husband, Mark—who never showed the slightest interest in my boutique—had come to me with a request. “Honey, there’s a girl from my old neighborhood whose family I’m close with. She just graduated and can’t find a job,” he’d said, his voice earnest. “Her mom called me, and you know, for old times’ sake, I told her I’d help. Could you… could you let her work at your boutique?” He must have seen the hesitation in my eyes, because he quickly held up four fingers in a solemn vow. “I promise you, Evelyn, she’s a real go-getter, sharp as a tack. You’ll love her!” “Fine,” I’d said, giving in. I then forwarded Jessica’s resume to Maria, my most trusted employee. Now, the line to Rachel went dead, the last sound I heard being a furious curse from Jessica. My mind racing, I urged the driver to speed up, simultaneously pulling up the live security feed from the store on my phone. The image sharpened, and my breath caught in my throat. Jessica had Rachel pinned to the floor, her face contorted in rage as she slapped my sister again and again. “You wear a dress from our store and refuse to pay? That makes you a thief! A common freeloader!” Jessica screamed. “For a piece of trash like you, even beating you to death wouldn’t be enough!” Rachel struggled, but she was no match for Jessica’s brute force. What sent a wave of pure fury through me, though, was the sight of Maria—my manager of three years—acting as Jessica’s willing accomplice. She was crouched beside them, flipping through a ledger with a grim look of satisfaction. “Mrs. Collins, I’ve done a quick tally of the last three months,” Maria announced. “This little bitch has taken over a dozen dresses from the store. The total value is well into the hundreds of thousands.” Maria’s words were like gasoline on a fire. Jessica’s rage intensified. She grabbed Rachel by the throat, her voice a venomous hiss. “You say you’re my husband’s sister? Sister?” she spat. “What’s your real relationship? Before I showed up, just how many dresses did you steal from my store?” The scene made me tremble with a rage so potent it was hard to breathe. Seeing Rachel’s face, already swollen and red, sent a spike of pain through my heart. I dialed Mark’s number. I needed to ask him just how the sweet, capable girl from his neighborhood had turned into a violent maniac who dared to call herself the owner of my boutique. He picked up almost immediately, his voice light and cheerful. “Evelyn! Shouldn’t you be sketching designs right now? What’s up? Miss me already?” I took a deep, shaky breath. “Mark, I’m going to ask you one question. What, exactly, is your relationship with Jessica?” “Why is she telling everyone that she’s Mrs. Collins… your wife?” The other end of the line went completely silent. All I could hear was the faint hum of static and the sound of his heavy breathing. His silence was an answer in itself, and it fueled my anger. “Mark, answer me!” I snapped. “Have I been too good to you? Given you so much freedom and money that you thought you could get away with keeping another woman on the side?” He chuckled, a low, condescending sound. “Evelyn, we’ve been married for years. Don’t you have even a little bit of trust in me? Look, I don’t have time for your games. I have a meeting to get to.” The line went dead. When I tried to call back, it went straight to his voicemail. 2 In that moment, fury burned away every last shred of reason. Without hesitation, I called my executive assistant. “Revoke Mark Collins’s position as COO, effective immediately. Have security escort him out of the building. And freeze his corporate card.” Designing gowns was my passion, but I couldn’t run my fashion empire and my boutique at the same time. Mark had stepped in, promising to manage the corporate side so I could focus on my creative work. To thank him, I’d gone against the advice of my board and promoted him to Chief Operating Officer. I’d even given him a supplementary card to my personal account with no spending limit. A flicker of doubt crossed my mind. Was I being too impulsive? The memories of our good years washed over me, a painful contrast to the present. “We’re here, Ms. Hayes.” The driver’s voice jolted me back to reality. I stormed out of the car and shoved the boutique door open. Everyone inside froze. Jessica glared at me, her expression a mask of irritation. “Who do you think you are, barging in like that? Don’t you know how to knock?” I ignored her, walking straight to my sister on the floor. Rachel grabbed my hand, her grip desperate as fresh tears streamed down her bruised cheeks. “Evelyn, you’re finally here,” she sobbed. “What is going on? Who is this woman?” Her voice was weak, but Jessica heard every word. Her eyes, now fixed on me, narrowed with malice. “So you’re the sister this little tramp was talking about? Evelyn Hayes?” Maria looked at me, a flicker of surprise in her eyes. “Ms. Hayes, I didn’t realize she was your sister.” Her surprise quickly curdled into contempt. “I know you’re the lead designer here, but that doesn’t give your family a free pass to freeload.” I let out a cold, humorless laugh. As I helped Rachel to her feet, I pointed to the red marks on her face. “Did you do this?” I asked, my voice dangerously calm. Maria swallowed hard, a brief flash of guilt in her eyes before she hardened her expression. “She’s lucky we didn’t call the cops! Do you have any idea how many expensive dresses she’s stolen from this store, using your name? And on top of that, she had the audacity to claim she was Mr. Collins’s sister right in front of the real Mrs. Collins!” She punctuated her speech by spitting on the floor beside my sister. “Absolutely shameless! Doesn’t she know her place? Trying to impersonate family in front of the real deal!” Jessica, puffed up by Maria’s defense, crossed her arms, her posture dripping with arrogance. She scanned me from head to toe with a dismissive sneer, her eyes finally landing on my designer handbag. “That bag,” she demanded. “Where did you get it?” I glanced down at the bag in my hand. “And why would I need to explain that to you?” I shot back. “Furthermore, who told either of you this boutique belongs to Mark Collins?” This boutique was my baby. I’d poured my heart, soul, and the very first big check I ever earned into creating it. Suddenly, a thought struck me. “Is it because his name is on the business registration as a co-owner? Is that why you think he owns the place?” The idea was so absurd I almost laughed. “If that’s the case, let me clear things up for you. This boutique is—” “I asked you a question! Where did you get the bag?” Jessica shrieked, her face turning a blotchy red with rage. “Answer me, Evelyn!” Faced with her unhinged questioning, I drew myself up to my full height. “My husband bought it for me.” “You’re a liar!” In the next second, Jessica lunged, grabbing a fistful of my hair. “You stole it! That bag was supposed to be mine!” “You’re a thief!” she screamed, her voice cracking. “No wonder your sister is one too! It runs in the family! I’m going to teach you both a lesson you’ll never forget!” 3 My priority was protecting Rachel, who was still weak and shaken, so I didn’t fight back as hard as I could have. My face stung as Jessica’s nails raked across my skin. Seeing me get attacked, Rachel forgot her own pain and threw herself at Jessica, pulling her off me. That gave me the opening I needed. I seized the opportunity and landed several hard slaps across Jessica’s face. One against two, Jessica was quickly overwhelmed. “Maria, are you blind?” she screeched, flailing. “Don’t just stand there! Help me!” Maria, suddenly caught in the crossfire, hesitated. Her eyes met mine, and the predatory glare I gave her seemed to root her to the spot. “Maria, have you completely lost your mind?” I said, my voice low and cutting. “Think for a second. Who gave you Jessica’s resume? In all the years you’ve worked here, have you ever seen another manager besides me?” My words hit their mark. A visible wave of panic washed over Maria’s face. Even Jessica paused her assault, breathing heavily. “Don’t be ridiculous!” she panted. “This store belongs to my husband, Mark Collins. I wouldn’t have stepped foot in this place otherwise!” A dawning horror crept into Maria’s expression as she processed what I’d said. She took a shaky step back. “But… Mrs. Collins,” she stammered, her voice trembling, “your file… it was Evelyn who gave it to me.” When I first opened the boutique, the high salary and benefits attracted a flood of applicants, including the daughters of several business partners. I turned them all down. They were unqualified and hadn’t bothered to submit a proper resume. So when Mark sent me Jessica’s file, I hired her on the spot, assuming she was properly vetted. The atmosphere in the room grew thick with tension. Maria looked utterly lost, her eyes wide with a fear she could no longer hide. Jessica stared at me, her chest heaving. “What did you say?” she whispered, then a cold, cruel realization dawned on her. “I get it now.” With a sudden burst of strength, she shoved me backward into a rack of gowns. “Tell me!” she snarled, her face inches from mine. “You’ve been sleeping with my husband behind my back, haven’t you? You pathetic homewrecker! You’re the other woman!” The absurd accusation seemed to clear the fog in Maria’s head. “So that’s what this is about!” she exclaimed, her loyalty snapping back to Jessica. Jessica snatched my handbag and threw it violently to the floor. Not satisfied, she began stomping on it with her high heel, grinding the expensive leather into the polished wood. “This bag!” she seethed. “Mark promised this bag to me for my birthday! How did it end up with you? You must have seduced him! Coaxed him into giving you what’s rightfully mine!” “A homewrecker and a thief! You two really are a perfect pair of sisters!” With Maria now joining the fray, and me trying to shield Rachel, I was at a clear disadvantage. Jessica seemed to know it, yanking my hair with vicious glee. I could feel the tearing sting at my scalp. Just then, the door flew open. “Everybody freeze!” a stern voice commanded. “Police! Who is Evelyn Hayes?” 4 A wave of relief washed over me at the sound of the officer’s voice. Maria and Jessica immediately stopped, their hands dropping to their sides. “I am!” I called out, stepping forward. “I’m Evelyn Hayes. I’m the one who called.” I’d dialed 911 right after Mark had hung up on me. Thank God they’d arrived when they did. With the unhinged state Jessica was in, I dreaded to think what might have happened to me and Rachel. But before I could say another word, Jessica burst into tears and launched into a performance for the police. She pointed a shaking finger at Rachel. “Officer, this woman was trying to steal a dress from my store! I caught her red-handed! Is it a crime to stop a thief?” Maria immediately jumped in, nodding vigorously. “It’s true! If we hadn’t caught her, the store would be out thirty thousand dollars!” Rachel gripped my arm, her jaw set stubbornly. “This is my sister’s store! I wasn’t stealing anything!” “Liar! It’s my husband’s store!” Jessica shrieked back. Cutting through the chaos, I stepped toward the lead officer, pulling out the official ownership documents for the boutique from my briefcase. I then recounted the events of the past hour calmly and factually. To my utter disbelief, when I mentioned Mark’s name, Jessica collapsed into a fit of dramatic, gut-wrenching sobs. “Officer, I know I shouldn’t have hit her!” she wailed. “But I was hitting the other woman! The woman who’s trying to destroy my family! She seduced my husband! Doesn’t a woman have the right to defend her marriage?” The officer looked utterly bewildered. Finally, he sighed and decided to take all of us down to the station. In the precinct’s mediation room, Jessica continued her act, crying about how she was the real victim. “All I did was slap a homewrecker a few times!” she sobbed to the officer. “A woman like her, with her morals? Back in the day, she would have been shamed publicly! You have to understand!” I had reached the end of my patience. I opened my purse, took out my marriage certificate, and slid it across the table to the officer. In that moment, I was grateful for my odd habit of keeping the certificate in my car’s glove compartment ever since we got married. I’d slipped it into my bag before leaving the car, and now, it was my trump card. “Mark Collins and I are legally married,” I stated, my voice firm. “Officer, I have nothing more to add. As for her assault, I will not be settling this amicably. You can proceed with charges as you see fit.” But then, in a move I never saw coming, Jessica pulled out her phone and confidently swiped to her photo gallery. “Officer, that certificate is a fake!” she declared. “I have the real one right here! See for yourself!” I leaned forward, my heart beginning to hammer against my ribs. On her screen was a crisp, clear photo of a marriage certificate. With her name, and Mark’s. What the hell was going on? Did Mark have an identical twin I never knew about? The thought was absurd. No one would give twin brothers the exact same name. Rachel squeezed my arm, her whisper urgent. “Evelyn, what’s happening? Did Mark marry both of you?” The officer, clearly stumped by this unprecedented situation, placed my certificate and Jessica’s phone side by side on the table. “Alright,” he said with a heavy sigh. “This is something that needs to be cleared up face-to-face. You need to get Mark Collins in here.” Since I had presented the physical document first, the officer gestured for me to make the call. The irony was bitter. Mark’s phone rang and rang, unanswered. When it finally connected, it was his assistant. “Mr. Collins is in a meeting. Please do not call this line again.” He hung up. The sound of the dial tone was punctuated by Jessica’s smug, triumphant laughter. Beside her, Maria shot me a look of pure contempt and flashed a middle finger. “So, you’re the fake one after all,” she sneered. “And to think you were acting so high and mighty.” I tilted my chin toward Jessica. “Your turn.” Jessica raised a perfectly sculpted eyebrow and dialed. The call connected in less than ten seconds. “Honey,” she whimpered into the phone, her voice thick with fake tears. “I’ve been attacked! I’m at the police station!” A knot of anxiety tightened in my gut. Finally, a familiar voice came through the speaker. “Don’t worry. I’m on my way.” That voice—his voice—extinguished the last flickering ember of hope in my heart. Rachel shook my arm, her eyes wide with confusion. “Evelyn, what is happening?” I could only shake my head, my mind a blank slate of shock and betrayal. Under Jessica’s gloating, victorious gaze, the long, agonizing wait began. Half an hour later, a familiar figure rushed into the room. Mark went straight to Jessica, pulling her into a protective embrace. “Jessica, are you okay?” he asked, his voice laced with concern. “Who did this to you? I’ll make them pay!” “That would be me,” I said, my voice flat and cold. I watched his entire body go rigid. He turned around slowly, his face draining of all color when he saw me. “Ev… Evelyn?” he stammered. “What are you doing here?”

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Returning from a business trip, I scored a lucky upgrade to first class with my points. I had barely settled in when a man in a sharp suit pointed a finger right in my face and told me to get the hell out and go to economy. He claimed he’d been sitting in this exact seat for five years, that it was practically his, and as far as he was concerned, my ticket was worthless. If I didn’t move, he’d have me thrown off the plane. His arrogance was breathtaking. A flight attendant hurried over, trying to placate me. “Mr. Place is one of our Platinum Elite members. Perhaps you wouldn’t mind…?” I stood my ground. On what planet was my ticket worthless? Just then, the captain’s voice crackled over the intercom. “Will the passenger in seat 1A please come to the cockpit immediately.” 1 Every head in the cabin swiveled to look at me. Mr. Place and the deceptively sweet-looking woman clinging to his arm exchanged triumphant smirks. The flight attendant let out a sigh of relief and gestured for me to go. “Ma’am, the captain would like to see you.” Her tone practically screamed, The party’s over for you. I took a deep breath, stood up, and followed her toward the front of the plane. Mr. Place’s taunting voice followed me down the aisle. “Why are you even wasting time talking to her? Just have security drag her off.” He scoffed. “Do you have any idea how much money I lose for every minute you waste?” My steps faltered. I turned and shot him a look of pure ice. The cockpit door opened. The captain and co-pilot sat inside, their expressions grim. “Ma’am, hello.” The captain pointed to an empty jump seat. “Please, sit.” I sat, cutting straight to the chase. “Captain, my seat is 1A. My ticket is legal and valid.” The captain nodded, his face unreadable. “We’re aware of that. However, Mr. Place is one of our most valued VIP clients.” “The revenue he generates for this airline annually is thousands of times the price of your ticket.” “Furthermore,” he continued, “he has made it explicitly clear that if he cannot sit in 1A today, he will immediately terminate all of his contracts with our company.” I almost laughed out of sheer disbelief. “So? So you’re going to sacrifice the legitimate rights of an ordinary passenger to appease your corporate god?” “Is this the official philosophy of your airline?” The co-pilot frowned, his voice edged with impatience. “Ma’am, we’re not negotiating with you.” “Right now, this entire flight is being held up because of you. You are wasting every other passenger’s time.” “You have two options,” he said, holding up two fingers. “One, you accept our compensation package and voluntarily move to an economy seat.” “Two, we will be forced to remove you from the flight for ‘causing a disturbance.’” I stared at them, incredulous. “Causing a disturbance? Me?” “That man is the one throwing a tantrum, and you’re pinning the blame on me?” The captain sighed, adopting a more conciliatory tone. “Ma’am, we’re just employees trying to do our jobs. Please try to understand.” “Mr. Place is a very powerful man. We can’t afford to cross him.” “How about this,” he offered. “We’ll refund you three times the price of your ticket and add fifty thousand miles to your account. How does that sound?” “That’s the most generous offer we can make.” Looking at his supposedly “sincere” face made my stomach turn. I took out my phone and, right in front of them, turned on the voice recorder. “Let me be clear. I am not changing seats, and I am not getting off this plane.” “If you attempt to remove me illegally, I will release this recording, along with a full account of everything that has happened today, to the public.” My voice was low and steady. “Then we’ll see what’s more important: your VIP client, or your company’s reputation.” The captain’s face turned to stone. The co-pilot shot to his feet, pointing a finger at me. “Are you threatening us?” I met his glare without flinching. “I am simply defending my rights.” The cockpit fell into a dead silence. After a few tense seconds, the captain waved his hand, signaling the co-pilot to sit down. He stared at me for a long time, so long I thought he was about to call security. Finally, he picked up the intercom, his voice cold as steel. “Inform Mr. Place to return to his assigned seat. We are preparing for takeoff.” The weight in my chest finally lifted. When I walked out of the cockpit, Mr. Place and his companion were standing in the aisle, waiting to gloat. The sight of me walking out, calm and composed, wiped the smug looks right off their faces. A flight attendant scurried over, bowing and scraping to Mr. Place. “Mr. Place, I’m so sorry, but the captain said… could you please return to your seat for now.” His face was a thundercloud. He glared at me, his eyes burning with a look that could skin a person alive. “Fine. You win,” he hissed, the words squeezed through his clenched teeth. “But you just wait.” He spun around and slammed himself into seat 1B. The plane finally took off. I thought that was the end of it. I had no idea it was only the beginning. After we landed, I went to baggage claim. I waited by the carousel for a full hour, watching as every other passenger retrieved their luggage. My own silver suitcase, however, never appeared. My stomach dropped. A terrible feeling washed over me. 2 I immediately went to the baggage claim office. A staff member typed on his computer for what felt like an eternity before looking up with an apologetic expression. “Ma’am, the system shows that your luggage was not on this flight.” Panic flared in my chest. “That’s impossible! I watched the agent check it in at the counter myself!” “I still have the claim tag right here!” I handed him my ticket and the tag. He double-checked, his brow furrowing. “That’s strange. There’s no record of this bag being scanned into the system.” “It’s as if… it never even made it onto the plane.” My mind reeled. I remembered Mr. Place’s parting words: But you just wait. Could he…? “I need to see the security footage,” I demanded, my voice sharp. “I want to see all the surveillance video from the check-in counter and the baggage sorting area for my flight!” The staffer looked uncomfortable. “Ma’am, we don’t have the authority to access the footage from the sorting area.” “We can file a request for the check-in counter footage, but it will take time.” “How much time?” “If you’re lucky, a day or two. If not… maybe three to five days.” I was shaking with rage. My suitcase didn’t just contain clothes; it held all the crucial documents and samples for my business meeting. If it was lost, the damages would be catastrophic. Just as I was about to lose it, the last person I wanted to see appeared in the distance. It was Mr. Place and the woman, whose name I now knew was Vivian. They weren’t just passing by; Vivian’s gaze lingered on me for a moment before her face arranged itself into a mask of innocence. “Joanna, darling, what a coincidence! Did you just land too?” she cooed, her fake smile suggesting the unpleasantness on the plane had never happened. I gave her the silent treatment. She didn’t seem to mind. Her eyes fell to my empty hands, and she covered her mouth in mock surprise. “Oh my, Joanna, where’s your luggage?” “Don’t tell me it’s lost! That’s just awful. It’s so inconvenient to be without your things when you’re traveling.” Her little act fueled my fury. “Did you and Place have something to do with this?” Vivian’s eyes flickered. “Darling, whatever are you talking about? I don’t understand.” “Mr. Place is a very busy man. He doesn’t have time to worry about a little squabble on an airplane.” She paused, her tone shifting to one of casual bragging. “Marcus is here to close a nine-figure deal with a titan of the industry.” “He has no time to waste on petty matters.” I stared daggers at her. “It had better be that way.” Vivian smiled, then leaned in close, her voice a conspiratorial whisper only I could hear. “A little friendly advice, Joanna. Don’t waste your energy.” “If Marcus doesn’t want you to find something, you’ll never find it.” She straightened up. “Sometimes, a person just has to learn what’s good for them. Otherwise, you might lose more than just your luggage.” With a wink, she sashayed back to Mr. Place’s side. He wrapped an arm around her waist, shot me a look of pure contempt and mockery, and they swept away. I stood frozen, ice spreading through my veins. Anger, humiliation, and helplessness washed over me in a suffocating wave. I pulled out my phone, my hands trembling as I dialed the airline’s customer service number. Come hell or high water, I was going to get answers. 3 The phone rang for a long time before someone picked up. In the calmest voice I could manage, I recounted the entire story, from the confrontation over the seat to my missing luggage. The customer service agent’s voice was sweet and scripted. “Okay, Ms. Hayes, we’ve logged all the information you’ve provided.” “Regarding the seating issue, our records show the captain resolved it for you on board.” “As for your luggage, we will launch an immediate investigation. Please keep your line open.” “How long will the investigation take?” I pressed. “Well… we can’t give you a precise timeline at the moment, but we will contact you as soon as we have any news.” What followed was an endless, maddening wait. One day. Two days. Three. The airline’s call never came. It was as if my complaint had been dropped into a black hole. Every day I went to the baggage office at the airport, and every day the answer was the same: “It’s still under investigation.” When I demanded to see the security footage, they gave me a carousel of excuses. “The technician in charge of surveillance is on vacation.” “The system is down for maintenance.” “It appears the footage from that day has been overwritten.” I knew they were stonewalling me. In their eyes, the whims of a top-tier VIP client were far more important than justice for an ordinary passenger. What I had lost wasn’t just a suitcase; it was my dignity, ground into the dirt by their indifference. I was exhausted and stressed. The deadline for my project was fast approaching, and without my documents and samples, I was dead in the water. Just as I was about to give up hope, I received a call from an unknown number. “Hello, is this Ms. Hayes?” a low, feminine voice asked. “This is she. Who’s calling?” The woman on the other end chuckled. “Who I am isn’t important. What’s important is that I know where your luggage is.” My heart leaped. I sat up straight. “Did Mr. Place put you up to this?” “Marcus is a very busy man. He doesn’t have time for you,” the voice purred, dripping with a sickening mix of triumph and pity. “It’s me. Vivian.” “Joanna, darling. Your things? I have them right here.” My hand tightened around the phone. “What do you want?” “Oh, nothing much,” Vivian said, her tone growing playful. “I just feel so sorry for you, I thought I’d show you a way out of this mess.” “Tonight. Eight o’clock. The Grand Hyatt, Presidential Suite, room 8888.” “Marcus will be waiting for you.” “You come over, get on your knees in front of us, and apologize. Properly. Three times, head to the floor.” “If you’re sincere enough, maybe Marcus will be in a good mood and give you your things back.” “In your dreams!” I was shaking with fury. “I’m calling the police! This is extortion! It’s theft!” Vivian burst out laughing as if I’d told the funniest joke in the world. “The police? Go ahead. Call them. What proof do you have?” “Do you have any evidence that we took your bag?” “Don’t be a fool, Joanna. In this world, without proof, your words are just noise.” Her voice turned sharp. “And one more reminder. Those documents of yours… they seem pretty important, don’t they? It would be a shame if they were to get… damaged. Or worse, leaked. Can your company afford that kind of loss?” It was a naked threat. Shameless, vile, and despicable. “Oh, and one more thing,” Vivian added. “Come alone.” “If you try any tricks, you’ll regret it.” She hung up. I stood there, gripping my phone so tightly I thought it might shatter. Rage and humiliation were two venomous snakes, gnawing away at my sanity. Should I go? If I went, it would be a complete debasement. If I didn’t, my job, my entire career, could be ruined. I paced the room, my mind a chaotic storm. I unlocked my phone, intending to call someone, anyone, but the screen was still on the call history. And looking at the unknown number, my heart suddenly stopped.

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On Halloween night, the club brought eight strangers together in an empty classroom for Truth or Dare. The rule: confess to a “murder.” Not wanting to ruin the mood, I made up a clumsy crime story. The gloomy guy next to me muttered about pushing his cousin into a well as a kid. A sweet-faced freshman timidly admitted to poisoning her friend’s moisturizer with acid over a crush. Another, bookish student calmly described dissolving his stepmother over a denied allowance. I thought everyone was just trying too hard to fit in. After the game, we returned to our dorms. The next morning, police sirens woke me. The academic building was sealed off. My advisor, pale with terror, informed me the seven others from the game were all dead—each matching their confessed “crimes.” On my desk, police found a blood-drawn smiley face and a note: “Eight players, seven confessions. Only you, the liar, are spared.” 1 The incessant wail of sirens and the murmur of a crowd below my window finally dragged me from sleep. My head was splitting, as if I’d chugged a bottle of cheap vodka the night before, even though I’d only had a few sips of a soft drink. I stumbled to the window and peered down. My breath hitched. The quad below was a sea of flashing blue and red lights. Police cars were everywhere. The old, decrepit academic building where we’d been last night was wrapped in yellow caution tape, its entrance swarming with uniformed officers, their faces grim. A crowd of students huddled at a distance, whispering, their expressions a mixture of fear and morbid curiosity. My heart began to pound a nervous rhythm against my ribs. What happened? A fire? A break-in? Just then, a sharp, urgent knock rattled my dorm room door. Standing outside was Mr. Davison, my advisor, his face a shade of gray I’d never seen before. Flanking him were two police officers, their sharp eyes sweeping over my small room. “Ivy Morgan?” Mr. Davison’s voice was hoarse. “Are you alright?” “I’m fine, Mr. Davison. What’s going on down there?” I asked, confused. The older of the two officers spoke, his tone all business. “Miss Morgan, please get dressed and come with us. We have some questions for you.” A cold knot of dread tightened in my stomach. I followed them downstairs, my legs feeling strangely disconnected from my body. The closer we got to the old academic building, the stronger the smell in the air became—a faint, cloying mix of sweet rust. They led me to a makeshift incident room in a nearby administrative office. More police were inside, and the air was thick with a tension so heavy it was hard to breathe. “Ivy Morgan, did you attend a freshman mixer in room 304 of the academic building last night?” a senior-looking officer asked. The insignia on his shoulder told me he was in charge. I nodded. “Yes. It started around ten, I think.” “And after it ended? Where did you go? Who were you with?” “It was almost midnight when we finished. We all just went back to our dorms. I walked back alone, got ready for bed, and went to sleep.” I answered honestly, the knot of dread in my stomach twisting tighter. “Officer, what happened?” The senior officer exchanged a look with my advisor. Mr. Davison swallowed hard, his voice trembling when he spoke. “The seven other students… who were in room 304 with you last night… they… something happened to them.” My mind went blank. A roar filled my ears. “Happened? What do you mean?” “It means they’re all dead,” the officer said, his voice cold and blunt, each word a shard of ice in my ear. “Time of death is estimated between one and three this morning. Causes of death… vary. But they were all brutal.” Seven people… all dead? The seven students who were alive just last night, laughing and making up horrible stories… gone? 2 My legs gave out, and I nearly collapsed. A female officer caught me just in time. “We’ve checked the security footage,” the senior officer continued, his eyes locked on mine, leaving no room for evasion. “You were the first to leave room 304, and you did go straight back to your dorm. But we need you to recount every detail of last night, especially that ‘game.’” I sat in the chair they offered, my hands ice-cold. A policewoman handed me a cup of hot water, but I couldn’t feel its warmth. I forced myself to calm down, to remember. I started from the beginning, from the moment I walked into that classroom. When I got to the strange icebreaker game—“Truth or Dare”—I paused, then explained the rule: We all had to confess to a ‘murder’ we’d committed. Across from me, the officer’s brow furrowed. “So, you were playing a game… where you described murders you’d committed?” His voice was laced with disbelief and suspicion. “Not real murders!” I explained hastily. “We all knew it was just a role-playing thing, like a murder mystery game! Our club is the Suspense and Detective Society, and it was Halloween night. A game like that is supposed to be thrilling…” “Fun? Thrilling?” a younger officer, taking notes, muttered under his breath, his eyes wide with incredulity. I swallowed, unable to respond. I just kept talking. I told them about the cliché hit-and-run story I’d made up. Then about the gloomy guy, Kevin, who had mumbled about pushing his smarter cousin into a well. Then the sweet-faced girl, Tina, who had timidly confessed to mixing acid into her friend’s face cream. And finally, the nerdy guy, Ryan, who had adjusted his glasses and calmly described dissolving his stepmother with chemicals. “…I just thought they were all being overly dramatic,” I said, my voice trailing off as I saw the expressions on the officers’ faces grow darker and darker. The senior officer held up a hand, stopping me. “Are you sure… that these stories were ‘made up’?” “Weren’t they?” The chill that had been creeping up my spine shot straight to the top of my head. He didn’t answer directly. Instead, he took several crime scene photos from a folder and slid them across the table. He covered most of the images with his hand, but the small corners that were visible—a twisted limb, an unnatural discoloration, a blurred, dark red background—were enough to make my stomach churn. “According to the preliminary report,” the officer said, his voice low and steady, every word a hammer blow to my nerves, “Kevin’s body shows signs consistent with death by drowning.” “Tina’s face was severely corroded by a chemical agent. An overturned jar of face cream was found next to her.” “And Ryan… what’s left of him is a partially dissolved mass of human tissue, consistent with exposure to a strong acid.” My breath caught in my throat. A wave of cold washed over me, freezing me to the bone. Could it be? The stories they told last night… they weren’t stories at all? They were their deepest, darkest, bloodiest secrets. “No… that can’t be! How is that possible?” I stammered, shaking like a leaf in a storm. “Who would confess to something like that? Especially in a game?” “We’re wondering the same thing,” the officer said, his gaze as sharp as a scalpel. “Why would seven people, on the same night, during a game, suddenly confess to deeply hidden crimes? It doesn’t make sense.” A terrifying thought crossed my mind. I shivered. “Officer, is it possible… that the classroom is haunted? I mean, everyone on campus knows that building is spooky!” Yes! That had to be it! What else could explain how so many people were killed in one night, each in a different, specific way? But my suggestion only made the officer’s expression more grim. He leaned forward slightly, the pressure of his presence almost suffocating me. “Ivy, during the game, did you notice anything unusual? Anyone being coerced? Or perhaps something that might have affected their state of mind? Like… food? Or a drink?” A drink? I suddenly remembered the club organizer, a student council member named Mark. He had handed out cups of a strange-colored juice. It had a weird, bitter taste. I’d only taken a few sips before putting it down. “Yes! There was a drink!” I said, grasping at the straw. “Mark gave everyone juice! It tasted strange! Maybe there was something in it?” The officer immediately made a note and spoke into his radio. But the preliminary feedback came back quickly. The remaining juice had been collected for testing, but other sealed bottles of the same brand found at the scene appeared to be fine. And besides, the drinks had been purchased by Mark. And Mark… he was one of the dead. His cause of death… decapitation. His head had been stuffed inside his own stomach cavity. The officer turned his gaze back to me. “Even if the drinks were drugged, getting seven people to confess to murder simultaneously is… highly improbable. Ivy, think carefully. Did anything else happen during the game? Anything at all? For instance… what did you do?” I shook my head frantically, my thoughts a chaotic mess. Something special? What could I have done? I was just another player! Just then, there was a knock on the door. Another officer entered and handed the senior officer a clear evidence bag. Inside was a single sheet of paper. It was a piece of lined paper, torn from a notebook, folded in half. It was stained with dark red, irregular speckles. The senior officer put on a pair of gloves and carefully unfolded it. His pupils contracted slightly. Then, slowly, he turned the paper so I could see it. Drawn on the paper, in the same dark red, almost black, dried liquid, was a crooked, childish smiley face: :). And below it, written in the same substance, were a few chilling words: “Eight players, seven confessions.” “Only you, the liar, are spared.” 3 A cold, formless fear wrapped its fingers around my heart and squeezed. I couldn’t breathe. “What… what is that?!” My voice was a high-pitched squeak. “We found this inside the desk where you were sitting—third row, by the window, in room 304.” The officer’s voice was like ice. “Preliminary tests confirm the substance on the paper is human blood. It was written sometime between ten and twelve last night, during your game.” He stared at me, his gaze trying to pierce through to my soul. “Forensic analysis has confirmed that the handwriting on the note is yours, Ivy. Now, would you care to explain… what this ‘bloody note’ is all about?” Blood rushed to my head, then receded just as quickly, leaving me ice-cold. Human blood? “No, that’s not right! That was a prop we used in the second half of the game!” I shrieked, scrambling backward in my chair, trying to get away from the ominous piece of paper. “Mark told me to write it! He gave me the ‘paint’! I didn’t know it was blood!” “Mark told you to write it?” the officer repeated, his eyes narrowing. “But the blood on this note belongs to him.” He paused, each word landing with the weight of a sledgehammer. “‘Seven confessions’ refers to the seven victims who confessed to their crimes. And ‘you, the liar’… Ivy, you were the only one who claimed your murder story was ‘made up.’” “Because it was!” I was on the verge of tears. “Officer, you can check! I’ve never been in a car accident in my life, let alone killed someone! Anyone who knows me can tell you that!” “We will, of course, verify your story,” the officer said, his tone unwavering. “But the facts are this: seven people who confessed to murder are dead, and their deaths mirror their confessions. The one person who claimed to be lying survived, and a note with a very specific message was found at her seat.” He leaned forward, his arms braced on the table, creating an intimidating posture. “It’s too much of a coincidence, Ivy. It’s so coincidental that it feels like a carefully orchestrated… declaration.” I stared at him, bewildered. “What… what does that mean?” The younger officer closed his notebook and interjected, “It means there was no mysterious mastermind. The so-called ‘game’ was a setup, designed by you.” “You used some method we haven’t yet identified—maybe drugs, maybe psychological manipulation—to induce the seven victims to confess their deepest secrets while in a suggestible or uncontrolled state.” “Then, after they confessed, you executed them, one by one, in a manner corresponding to their secrets.” “Finally, you faked this note to deflect suspicion onto some supernatural force or a non-existent ‘judge,’ thereby clearing your own name. Because you knew your story was the only fiction, making you ‘innocent’ and thus, ‘spared.’” The string of accusations exploded in my head like a series of bombs, leaving me shattered and cold. “You’re crazy… You’re all crazy!” I screamed, tears finally breaking free. “Me, alone? One girl? How could I possibly kill seven people in one night, in seven different ways? It’s not possible!” “Oh?” The senior officer let out a cold, humorless chuckle. “Is it really not?” He produced another file.

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1 My mother-in-law had been accidentally poisoned. She was knocking on death’s door, and I, the only toxicologist in the city who could save her, was her last hope. I had just hung up the phone and was about to leave when my husband, Aiden, blocked my path. “Today’s the grand opening of Nina’s Terror Dome,” he said, his voice laced with annoyance. “If you take off, who’s going to play the penniless NPC?” My face hardened. “The golden window for the antidote is thirty minutes. One second late, and your mother could die.” Aiden just rolled his eyes. “If your janitor mom kicks the bucket, she kicks the bucket. I’ll throw some extra cash at her funeral, big deal. But if you dare cause a scene today, I’ll ruin you.” His female bestie, Nina, draped herself over him with a playful laugh. “What’s the hurry, Dia? Itching to sneak out and meet some other guy? Look at that long face, longer than when you’re getting off. Right, my big boy?” I almost laughed at their shamelessness. It clicked. Aiden thought the one dying was my mother. “Fine,” I said, my voice eerily calm as I put the case containing the serum back down. “I won’t go.” Aiden blinked, clearly taken aback. He probably expected me to burst into tears, to beg him, or to make a desperate run for the door. He sized me up, a frown creasing his brow. “Scared, are you? Good. Nina’s grand opening is a hell of a lot more important than your worthless mother.” Nina giggled, playfully punching his chest. “See? I told you my big boy knows how to train a woman. I bet you broke her in bed to make her this obedient. That new position you tried on me last time had my legs sore for three days!” They collapsed into a fit of laughter, grabbing at each other. I cleared my throat. Aiden’s patience snapped. “What now, Dia? Just let your filthy, foul-smelling mother die. The stench of piss and shit just clings to her.” He sneered. “Did she poison herself digging through another dumpster for dinner? Honestly, why would you even go? To collect her corpse? Just flush it down a sewer and be done with it.” I had always told myself that Aiden was just being influenced by Nina, this toxic “one of the guys” type of woman. That his cruelty was a temporary lapse in judgment. But I never imagined he would think it was my mother who was dying. And that my mother’s life, in his eyes, was worth less than the grand opening of Nina’s tacky haunted house. The disgust was suffocating. I pulled out a chair and sat down. “Fine. I’m not leaving. Your good time is what’s most important. What’s a life in comparison?” Aiden stared for a second, the contempt in his eyes deepening. “Glad you know your place. So you finally admit your stinking mother’s life is cheap.” Nina cackled, hanging off Aiden like a vine. “It’s for the best you see reality, Dia. I bet your mom is just trying to scam some money before she croaks. Were you planning to rush over and grab your cut before she stopped breathing?” Aiden basked in her attention, letting her hands roam over his body. “Let me tell you something, Dia. I invested thirty million dollars in this Terror Dome. It’s my gift to Nina. If you dare ruin our mood, I won’t just let your mother die. I’ll make sure your entire family joins her.” Just then, Aiden’s phone rang. He answered on speaker, his voice dripping with irritation. “Is this Mr. Blackwood? Your mother is fading fast! If Dr. Hayes doesn’t get here with the serum, there’s nothing more we can do!” That’s when Aiden exploded. He lunged at me, grabbing my arm so violently that the serum case I was holding clattered to the floor. “Don’t you dare compare that old hag to my mother!” he roared into the phone. “If she’s going to die, tell her to get on with it! Call and harass me again, and I’ll burn your damn hospital to the ground!” He slammed the phone down and, in a fit of rage, brought his heel down on the serum case. The delicate vial inside shattered, the sound echoing the final snap of my mother-in-law’s lifeline. To create that single, tiny vial, my team had spent three years locked in a lab. We’d failed over a thousand times, burning through enough funding to buy ten of his ridiculous theme parks. That was the only finished dose in existence. Aiden, however, looked triumphant. “Just let your broke-ass mom rot and stink up the hospital,” he sneered. “If it weren’t for that pretty face and the fact that you put out in bed, do you think you would have ever married into the Blackwood family?” Nina stood on her toes and kissed his chin. “Isn’t it a good thing your mom’s dead, Dia? Now we won’t have to deal with her constantly trying to leech off us. Last time, she asked me to find her a job sweeping a park, said she could collect an extra twenty bottles a day! Can you believe it? So pathetic!” I had to laugh. The annual interest from my mother’s trust fund alone could buy out the Blackwood family ten times over. Who the hell did they think they were? The Blackwood business was a sinking ship I had secretly bailed out because I felt sorry for him. Ever since I was kidnapped as a child, the resulting trauma had made my mother insist I keep my identity a secret. And here he was, using my money to buy gifts for Nina while humiliating me for my supposed poverty. The audacity was breathtaking. “Whether you want to save a dying person is your business,” I said, my voice dangerously low. “But if you dare insult my mother again, don’t blame me for what happens next.” Aiden’s face twisted in a sneer. “Are you threatening me? Don’t want to collect your mother’s corpse anymore? I’ll have you know, her dying today is a sacrifice to bless the opening of Nina’s Terror Dome!” His friends chimed in. “Yeah, Ryan! The park opens tonight! We still haven’t tested that new extreme horror theme.” Aiden glanced at me, then waved at his bodyguards. “Since you’re so eager to run your mouth, you can be Nina’s test subject!” I fought, but they were too strong, pinning me to an operating table in a room designed to look like a biohazard lab. Nina stood over me, holding a massive, prop syringe. “Welcome to my laboratory of horrors!” she announced to the room. “Today, we will be conducting a thrilling live experiment!” The crowd roared with laughter. “Damn, this is good! The effects are amazing. I’m gonna live-stream this; it’ll create a huge buzz for tonight’s opening.” Just then, my phone, still in my jacket pocket, began to ring incessantly. Annoyed at the interruption, Aiden snatched it. His eyes fell on the caller ID: “Chairman Hayes.” With a roar of fury, he smashed the phone against my head. “You’ve got some nerve, Dia! Already found yourself a sugar daddy!” Nina poked him in the chest. “A Chairman, huh? You’re really something, Dia. Stringing my big boy along while you’re hooking up with some old geezer on the side?” Her voice turned venomous. “I bet you killed your own mother on purpose, just to scam some cash so you could run off with your new rich boyfriend!” As she spoke, she drew a viscous, unnerving liquid from a beaker into the syringe. “Let me teach you a lesson, you shameless whore.” Aiden’s eyes gleamed with excitement. “Great idea, Nina! Later, we’ll strip her naked and lock her in a cage for all the visitors to see!” Hearing this, Nina lunged, aiming the needle straight for my neck. But the escape artist training from my childhood kidnapping hadn’t faded. In a fluid motion, I broke the rope bindings and twisted, redirecting the syringe and plunging it deep into the back of her hand. “AHH!” Nina’s scream was bloodcurdling. The skin on her hand began to corrode, sizzling as white smoke rose from it. “My hand! My hand!” she shrieked in terror. Her friends, who had been laughing moments before, backed away in horror. “What the hell? I thought that was a prop!” “Is… is that real acid?” Panic seized Aiden. He rushed to Nina, cradling her and kissing her rotting hand, before turning on me and slapping me across the face. “You bitch, Dia! You dare hurt Nina! If you don’t get on your knees and beg for her forgiveness right now, I swear I’ll make sure they never even find your mother’s ashes!” At that moment, a commotion erupted at the entrance. “Dr. Hayes! We tried calling you a dozen times! We had to use your phone’s GPS to find you!” Several paramedics rushed in, their faces grim. “The patient was still holding on, waiting for your serum, but on the way here…” One of them sighed heavily. “She’s gone. We’ve brought the body for the family. You should start making arrangements.” Aiden looked disgusted. “God, Dia, your mother is relentless even in death.” Nina, her face a mask of pain and hate, screamed, “They brought the corpse here? Well, isn’t that a grand opening gift! A special guest of honor for the premiere!” Her twisted joke broke the tension, and the friends started laughing again. “Aiden, you’re a genius! A real corpse as a prop for opening night? The publicity will be insane!” “It does stink a bit, though. What is that smell?” Aiden pinched his nose, then kicked the gurney with disgust. “Get this unlucky trash out of here! Can’t even die in peace!” The body rolled off the gurney and hit the floor with a sickening thud. The face was swollen and purple, completely unrecognizable. But Aiden had found a new source of amusement. He grabbed my hair and forced my face down toward the corpse on the floor. “Dia, if you get on your knees right now and bark like a dog to apologize to Nina, I might consider sparing your mother’s remains. Otherwise, she’s going to be the Terror Dome’s first real ghost!” The pain in my scalp was excruciating. But all I could feel was a strange, dark amusement at the scene unfolding before me. I slapped his hand away. “You’re the one who’s so good at acting like an animal. Why don’t you show me? Let’s hear what a pair of dogs in heat sound like.” Aiden’s face contorted with rage. “You dare talk back to me, you bitch!” He lifted his foot and brought it down hard, stomping on the head of the corpse. I just smiled. “Aiden, I only ever said ‘my mother’ was poisoned and dying.” “What if,” I continued, my voice sweet as poison, “the head under your foot isn’t my mother’s… but yours?” He threw his head back and roared with laughter. “My mother? Dia, has grief finally broken your brain? My mom is on vacation in Europe. You’re wishing death on her now?” He sneered. “Let me tell you, the entire world could die before my mother does. Comparing your dumpster-diving, filthy old hag to my mother is like comparing heaven and hell.” Nina clutched her blackening hand, her eyes spitting venom. “Don’t waste your breath on her, big boy! She’s doing it on purpose! Look what this bitch did to my hand! Chop up her dead mom! Do it now!” Aiden’s eyes turned murderous. He grabbed a fire axe from a wall display and raised it over the body. “Whatever my precious Nina wants, she gets. These limbs will look great in the haunted house tonight. Give the guests a touch of realism!” The heavy, wet thud of the axe echoed through the room, over and over. But I just laughed. Aiden was truly, stupendously idiotic. I couldn’t wait to see his face when he found out whose body he was currently dismembering. He was still gloating. “How about that, Dia? This is your mother’s final contribution to our Terror Dome. You should be thanking me.” “I’ll give you one last chance. Get on your knees, chop off the hand that hurt Nina, and I’ll let you collect what’s left of your mother.” He reached for me. I grabbed a heavy iron skillet from a nearby prop table and swung it with all my might into his face. The impact sent him staggering backward, blood gushing from his nose. Everyone froze, stunned into silence. Nina pointed a trembling, corroded finger at me. “You hit my big boy! Get her! Cut off her hands and feet!” The bodyguards started to move, but Aiden wobbled back to his feet. He wiped the blood from his face, his eyes glowing with a terrifying, manic light. “Good. Very good,” he hissed. “It seems I’ve been too kind to you. You’ve forgotten what you are.” He grabbed the severed head of the corpse and began dragging it toward the back courtyard. The guards seized me, forcing me to follow. In the courtyard was a massive industrial shredder. “Dia,” Aiden snarled, his voice a low growl, “since you refuse to learn your lesson, you can watch your mother get turned into pulp!” He switched on the machine. With a triumphant roar, he tossed the dismembered body parts into the grinder. The machine roared to life, a gruesome fountain of blood and viscera spraying everywhere. Aiden stood beside it, drenched in the gory mess. He even spread his arms wide, reveling in it. “HAHAHA! DO YOU SEE THAT, DIA? THAT’S YOUR MOTHER’S FINAL FATE! GROUND TO A PASTE! YOU WON’T EVEN BE ABLE TO COLLECT HER ASHES!” He turned his head, his crimson eyes locking onto me. “Now, it’s your turn!” Just as he raised the axe and charged toward me, the courtyard gates burst open. My father-in-law rushed in, his face pale with urgency. He swung his cane, cracking it across Aiden’s face. “Your mother is dying, and you’re stopping Dia from saving her?” he screamed, his voice breaking. “Where is her body? The hospital said they delivered the body! Where is it?”

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The third year of our marriage, Austin came back. For the first time ever, Victoria didn’t eat dinner at home. She just grabbed her coat and left for the airport. She didn’t come home that night. I found Austin through Victoria’s Instagram follows. I refreshed the page. A new post had just gone up. [Finally back home. Surrounded by my love and my friends.] In the picture, Victoria was leaning into Austin, both of them smiling for the camera, flanked by people I recognized as her friends. I turned off my phone. I closed my eyes. And I closed my heart. 1 After work, I ate dinner out, then took a long walk along the riverfront before finally driving home. A light was on in the window. Victoria was back. I opened the door and stood in the foyer, changing my shoes. In a rare gesture, Victoria came over, took my coat and bag, and hung them on the rack. “Why are you so late tonight?” she asked. “I tried calling, but you didn’t answer. I asked your assistant, and he said you left the office hours ago.” She hesitated. “Have you eaten? I made…” Doing these things, saying these words—that was usually my role. Tonight, she had taken my part. I held up a hand, cutting her off. “I’m tired. I have an early meeting tomorrow. I’m sleeping in the guest room tonight.” Walking past the living room, I saw the dining table was set with a full spread of dishes. There were even candles. What was this? A guilt-ridden attempt to make amends for spending last night with Austin? It was disgusting. I pushed open the guest room door without breaking stride. Victoria called out behind me. “Leo. What were you going to say last night?” I turned. The warm light cast soft, deceptively gentle shadows on her exquisite face. I had looked at that face for years and never grown tired of it. But the moment I saw it in that intimate photo with Austin, it had become unrecognizable. “I forgot.” I lowered my eyes and went into the bedroom. Lying in bed, my hand drifted to my chest. Last night, at dinner, I had been about to tell Victoria about my promotion and raise. But she took a call, dropped her fork, and grabbed her keys and coat, rushing out the door. “Something came up at the office,” was all she’d said. I sat at the table, waiting. I waited until the food grew cold and lost its color. Then a friend texted me. Austin’s back. On a strange impulse, I went to Victoria’s Instagram and opened her ‘following’ list. It was easy to find him. A minute ago, he had posted. [Finally back home. Surrounded by my love and my friends.] In the photo, he was pressed close to Victoria, both of them looking at the camera, surrounded by her closest friends. Friends who, in three years of marriage, Victoria had never once introduced to me. Whenever I’d tried to get to know her circle, she’d dismissed them as a “bad influence” and changed the subject. After a while, I stopped asking. I scrolled further back. I saw that for years, they had been in constant, intimate contact. The university he attended abroad? She had arranged it. The apartment he lived in? It was in her name. Even the steady stream of charges from high-end boutiques and five-star hotels on his European getaways—she had paid for it all. I never knew Victoria’s famous thoughtfulness could be so easily transferred to someone else. That night, I scraped everything from the dinner table into a garbage bag and took it outside for the stray cats. Click. The guest room door opened. I rolled over, shutting my eyes tight. The mattress dipped beside me. A chill ran down my spine as Victoria slipped under the covers. My body went rigid, my hands clenched into fists against my chest. A moment later, an arm snaked around my waist, and a warm body pressed against my back. A wave of revulsion washed over me. I shot upright, flicking on the bedside lamp. The sudden glare made Victoria squint. She sat up, her expression turning sour. 2 We grew up together in the same upscale neighborhood, Evergreen Hills. Our relationship felt inevitable. The summer after high school graduation, she confessed her feelings for me. It was more of a formality; we both knew where it was headed, and we fell into a relationship with ease. But that was also the year my mother brought home a boy a year younger than me—her illegitimate son. My father had been dead for less than six months. The woman I had known as a gentle, loving wife and mother was suddenly a monster wearing a familiar mask. We had a terrible fight. I told her this house wasn’t big enough for both of us. It was Austin or me. She just gave me a cold, hard look. “Do what you want.” I took the money my father had left me, packed a few changes of clothes, and walked out. I arranged for a dorm room at the university and never spoke to my family again. A year later, thanks to a hefty donation from my mother, Austin enrolled at my university. He was all smiles to my face, but behind my back, he played petty games, poisoning my relationships with friends and classmates. He even used my mother’s connections to squeeze me out of my position in the student government, then sauntered over to gloat about it. I never cared. Anything or anyone that could be so easily taken from me wasn’t worth having in the first place. And there was one person he could never take, no matter how hard he tried. Victoria. Austin pursued her relentlessly, even making a public declaration of his love for her. He befriended everyone in her circle just to keep tabs on her schedule, engineering “coincidental” run-ins at the library, the dining hall, the gym. He kept a gushing “secret love diary” on his blog, detailing every glance and word from Victoria as a sign of her hidden affection. He was a moth, desperately flinging himself at a flame that wanted nothing to do with him. Victoria complained to me constantly about his creepy behavior. She publicly told him to get lost, her face a mask of ice. She wanted nothing more than to be rid of him. But Austin was persistent, an unkillable cockroach. For three years of college, he was a constant, buzzing presence in our lives. I almost started to believe he was truly, deeply in love with her. Until he came to me one day and said, “It’s only a matter of time. She’ll fall for me, and she’ll betray you.” I scoffed at him. Anyone could see how much Victoria loved me. When I was living in the dorms, she rented an off-campus apartment for us. She wanted to have every meal with me. I loved the almond croissants from a little French patisserie downtown, but they always sold out before I could get there. So Victoria, a girl who had never known a day of hardship, would get up at the crack of dawn to stand in line for me. The pastry was still warm when she handed it to me. We both loved to travel, but I was lazy about planning. She handled everything—booking hotels, mapping out sights, buying tickets, packing our bags. All I had to do was follow her. … We had a lifetime of shared memories. I couldn’t imagine her ever betraying me. After graduation, Austin went abroad to study. I thought his chapter in our lives was finally over. But his social media told a different story. In the third year of his relentless pursuit, Victoria’s attitude toward him had changed. 3 I pulled back the curtains in the guest room. The night was dark and moonless, without a single star in the sky. Victoria sat on the bed in silence. Finally, her patience wore thin. A hint of irritation crept into her voice. “What is wrong with you?” That flicker of guilt she felt had bought me this much of her forbearance. It was a new record. As her company grew, so did her temper. It had been a long time since she had tried this hard to placate me. In the past, I would have given in by now, chalking it up to her being stressed from work. But now, I was done making allowances for anyone. I turned, leaning my back against the window. “Who were you with last night?” “I told you, I had a work emergency. Who else would I be with?” she snapped back. “When did you get so paranoid?” I just looked at her, my expression unreadable. I had always believed she was devoted to me, a woman of principle. I never questioned her travel schedule, always giving her the space she needed. But she had always volunteered the information, chattering excitedly as she had me pack her bags. Only now I knew that she had taken the suitcase I’d so carefully packed for her and boarded a flight to see Austin. A flash of guilt crossed her face, but she quickly masked it with a fresh wave of indignation. “Is this an interrogation? Do you need me to call my entire team in so you can check my story?” “No need. You can go now. I need to rest.” She wouldn’t admit it. After hiding it for so many years, she wasn’t about to let it all unravel so easily. And I didn’t have the energy for a confrontation. Her infidelity was a thorn in my heart, of course. All those years of love… the pain was real. But my rational mind told me it was better to know the truth now than to live in a lie. A clean break was the best path forward. Unable to stand my coldness, Victoria stormed out, slamming the door behind her. The confrontation left me wide awake. I opened my laptop to deal with some leftover work. When I graduated from college, my mother called, begging me to come home. She had been diagnosed with brain cancer and didn’t have much time left. When I got to the hospital, she was struggling just to get out of bed for a glass of water. She was skeletal. The housekeeper told me the company had been in trouble, and my mother had worked herself into the ground, collapsing in her office. By the time they got her to the hospital, it was too late. In the face of death, all my old resentments seemed to melt away. I started to remember the happy times from my childhood. How she would lift me onto her shoulders and play horsey. How she’d come home from work with strange and wonderful snacks in her briefcase. How, when I was older and she had more time, she would spend hours in the kitchen, making a rich, savory fish soup just for me. … She had wronged my father, but she had, in her own way, loved me very much. I took over the failing company. My life became a relentless cycle between the office and the hospital. And Austin, after going abroad, was never heard from again. 4 The next morning, I dressed and left the bedroom early, hoping to avoid Victoria. But my luck had run out. As I stepped out, she was placing a bowl of oatmeal on the dining table. It was as if last night’s fight had never happened. She smiled and waved me over for breakfast. Then, she walked toward me and pulled a small box from her pocket. Inside was a watch. Another custom piece from a master watchmaker. She’d given me one every year for the past three years. All to cover the long, pale scar that ran across my left wrist. It happened just before we got married. We were scouting a project in a remote mountain village. On the way back, the car’s brakes failed on a steep descent. We went careening down the slope, crashing into a large tree that stopped us from flipping into a ravine. The driver’s side took the full impact. Victoria was knocked unconscious instantly. My door was jammed shut. I had to use my tablet to smash the window and crawl out. Victoria was slumped over the steering wheel, her face covered in blood. Both our phones were smashed. I managed to drag her from the wreck, and in the process, a piece of torn metal from the car door sliced deep into my wrist, leaving the scar that was now a permanent part of me. The road was deserted. I had no choice but to carry her, to drag her, falling again and again, until we finally reached a main road where a passing driver called for an ambulance. I collapsed from exhaustion right there on the pavement. When I woke up, Victoria was by my hospital bed, her eyes bloodshot. Soon after we were discharged, she proposed. I had always been so confident in our love. It never occurred to me that her proposal wasn’t born from love, but from guilt. I took off the old watch. She instinctively reached out to put the new one on. I pulled my hand away, gently tracing the raised, uneven line of flesh on my wrist. “Don’t. I’m not wearing them anymore.” Her hand, holding the new watch, froze. “Why?” “I don’t like them.” Victoria was speechless. I had never liked wearing watches; they felt like shackles. I only wore them because she had gone to such great lengths to have them made. Now, there was no reason to wear one at all. I pressed the old watch back into her hand and went to the foyer to put on my coat. “Leo.” I turned back. Her expression was complicated, her words caught in her throat. “Maybe… I could pick you up from work today.” I rolled my eyes, opened the door, and left. 5 At the office, my assistant, Liam, was acting strangely, hovering around me nervously. It wasn’t until the elevator reached my floor that he finally stammered it out. “Mr. Hayes… Mr. Evans is waiting for you in your office.” Mr. Evans was a major shareholder in the company and a man my mother had trusted implicitly. Liam’s nervousness was out of place. Something else was going on. I nodded to show I understood and pushed open my office door. Mr. Evans was standing in front of my desk. And sitting in my chair—my chair—was Austin. A mocking smile played on his lips. “Brother. I’m back. Aren’t you going to welcome me?” “You didn’t even come back to see Mom before she died. What are you doing here now?” Austin picked up a framed photo of me from the desk, studied it for a moment, and then let it slip from his fingers. It shattered on the floor. He walked over to me, his eyes glinting with malice. “Oh, I wanted to come back. But Mom told me not to, unless Mr. Evans called for me.” Mr. Evans smiled kindly and gestured for me to sit on the sofa. As if I were the visitor. “Leo,” he began, “before she passed, your mother entrusted me with her will. She instructed me to wait until the company was back on stable ground before making it public.” “Now that the company is thriving, the time has come. You and Austin are her only sons. In consideration of Austin not being with her for most of his life, your mother decided that he will inherit the company. You will inherit the family home and 5% of the company’s shares.” The heat was on in the office, but a chill crept up my spine. My body felt the pain and betrayal before my mind could even process it. I watched Mr. Evans’s mouth move, but the words were a dull roar in my ears. I mechanically took the will. The handwriting was hers. From somewhere, Austin produced a small audio recorder, his eyes filled with venom as he pressed play. My mother’s voice, weak but clear, filled the room. “The company is in bad shape. You stay abroad and focus on your studies. Don’t come back. Your Uncle Evans will wire money to your account. When your brother has rebuilt the company, he will call you back at the right time to take over. If the company fails… then you definitely shouldn’t come back. As long as you stay away, the debts won’t find you. The money I’ve left you will be enough to last a lifetime.” “Mom is gone now. You have to learn to take care of yourself. Find someone who will truly love you.” Before she died, my mother had gripped my hand and told me the company was her and my father’s life’s work. She made me promise to bring it back from the brink of death. I promised her I would. For that promise, I had hustled for clients, begged for investments, worked myself to the bone. I had humbled myself at endless dinners, navigated a world of sharks and sycophants. I had worked until I ended up in the emergency room, answering emails with an IV drip in my arm. … After countless sleepless nights, I had dragged the company back from the abyss. And now, they were telling me that everything I had fought for was nothing but a joke. So much for the idea that people’s final words are always true. I fled to the restroom and stood there for a long time, waiting for my hands to stop shaking. When I returned to the office, I was completely calm. “I want the 5% of shares liquidated at today’s market value and transferred to my account. Along with all the salary, bonuses, and dividends I am owed for the past several years. I want it done immediately.” Austin looked at me, a flicker of disbelief in his eyes. This was not the breakdown he had been hoping for. Mr. Evans hesitated. “That’s not possible today. It has to go through the proper channels.” “You have one hour,” I said, my voice level. “I’m sure you wouldn’t want any… reputation-damaging stories about the company to appear online, would you?” I had rebuilt this company with my own two hands. I knew its every strength and every weakness. If I wanted to, I could send it spiraling back to where it was years ago. I wouldn’t do it—too many good people’s livelihoods depended on it. But they didn’t know that. They couldn’t take that risk. Sure enough, a few minutes later, Mr. Evans called an employee into the office. An hour later, a string of transaction notifications lit up my phone. I picked up my bag and walked to the door. An annoying voice called out from behind me. “Leo. Victoria will be mine, too.” I turned and looked at his triumphant face. In that moment, he just looked pathetic. Desperately trying to prove his worth, to feel like he existed. It was the mark of a profoundly insecure man. I smiled, my voice laced with indifference. “Whatever.” The color drained from his face.

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On my wedding day, I suddenly developed the ability to read minds. I was listening to my husband’s heart as he smiled, gently taking my hand to place the ring on my finger. Lyle Whitman sends over this sacrificial lamb and thinks he can just walk away with the Sterling project? He’s dreaming. My head snapped up, my eyes wide with shock. My hand trembled so violently that the ring slipped from his grasp, clattering onto the floor. Daniel looked at me, his expression a mask of tender apology, as if it were all his fault. Clumsy oaf. Born to be slaughtered. 1 The wedding had been arranged just three days ago, a decision made by my stepfather, Lyle Whitman. His company was teetering on the edge of a cliff, its cash flow frozen solid, bankruptcy breathing down his neck. Desperate to resurrect his failing business, Lyle had been pulling every string he could, trying to marry me off to secure a financial lifeline. He’d used my mother as leverage, forcing me to meet six different men in the span of two weeks. There was a fifty-year-old pig in a suit, greasy and obese; a sadistic trust-fund brat with a violent streak; and a mogul with a wife in New York and mistresses scattered across the country. They were all willing to take me, but none of them offered a price high enough to satisfy Lyle. Until Daniel Thorne appeared. He made Lyle an offer that made his eyes gleam with greed. The one condition: the wedding had to be within three days. Lyle agreed instantly, practically tripping over himself in his haste to deliver me to Daniel’s bed that very night. But Daniel, surprisingly, wasn’t in such a rush. He insisted on following every pre-wedding custom, step by step. He even made sure we were legally married before the ceremony. So, until this very moment, I had seen him as a perfect gentleman—polished, handsome, and deeply respectful. I had even allowed myself to believe in love at first sight, a fairytale I desperately wanted to be true. Until I heard the chilling truth echoing in his mind. He hadn’t married me for love. He’d married me to set a trap, a meticulously planned scheme to ruin my stepfather. This was a war between titans, and I was just a pawn on their board. 2 The ceremony continued, oblivious to the storm raging inside me. Cheerful, romantic music filled the air, and every face in the crowd was wreathed in smiles. Especially Daniel’s. He took my hand, his body bending in a graceful arc as his long, elegant fingers retrieved the fallen ring. As he looked up, his eyes were deep pools of devotion. “I’m so sorry,” he murmured, his voice a velvet caress. “I wasn’t holding it properly. I’ve troubled you, my dear.” This whole charade is dragging on forever. I mechanically straightened my finger, letting the cold metal slide into place. The sound of my own gulp was so loud, I was sure it cut through the music. When it was my turn to place his ring, I was a bundle of nerves, my movements cautious and fawning. “Mr.… Mr. Thorne, if you’re busy, you can leave. I can handle the reception toasts by myself.” My sudden, docile compliance seemed to catch him off guard. A flicker of confusion crossed his features before it was washed away by that practiced, charming smile. “Nothing is more important than our wedding,” he said, his voice smooth as silk. “Come, let’s go.” He took my hand and led me to face our friends and family, raising a champagne flute in a toast. Playing games with me? We’ll see about that when we get home. My heart sank. 3 My attempt to curry favor had spectacularly backfired. I spent the rest of the reception in a state of terrified silence, moving like a puppet on a string. After the festivities, I was whisked away to our new home, the bridal suite. The room was a cliché of newlywed bliss, dripping with the kind of opulence only serious money can buy. It had everything a lavish wedding demanded. Except people. The five-story mansion was a hollow, echoing shell. Not a single soul was present. It was clear a “pawn” like me wasn’t expected to just sit around prettily, waiting for the groom’s return. I found my suitcase in the second-floor bedroom, changed into a comfortable set of sweats, and scrubbed the thick makeup from my face. A long, hot shower washed away the last vestiges of the charade. Feeling refreshed and seeing the sky darken, I made my way to the kitchen. Over the years, trailing my mother through her three marriages, my culinary skills had become my most developed talent. With each new husband, she would lose herself in a whirlwind of romance and hedonism, leaving me to fill the role of the unpaid housekeeper. Some of my stepfathers, however, weren’t content with just a housekeeper. They’d wait until my mother was out, and their hands would start to wander. Lyle was one of them. Which is why, after learning of Daniel’s true intentions, a small, dark part of me was actually looking forward to the show. Love from a man was irrelevant. Usefulness was all that mattered. 4 The kitchen was barren. Not even a bottle of water. I did a quick tour of the mansion and came to a simple conclusion: Daniel wasn’t coming back tonight. And he intended for me to go hungry. I had some money on my phone and could have easily ordered takeout. But that would shatter the “helpless idiot” persona I apparently projected. Arousing the suspicion of a man as sharp and calculating as Daniel would be a fatal mistake. I put my phone away and returned to the bridal suite. On a small table, four small dishes of dried fruits and nuts were arranged, a traditional wedding touch. I scooped a pocketful of dates and almonds, went downstairs, and boiled a pot of water. The living room was a sea of crimson silk and satin, but the garish color only amplified the cold emptiness of the space. Assuming I was alone for the night, I kicked off my shoes, propped my feet up on the plush leather sofa, and settled in with a cup of hot water and a handful of wedding snacks. Just as I was starting to relax, a voice popped into my head, dripping with condescension. The little fool must be crying her eyes out by now. 5 Suddenly, the water and dates lost their flavor. Scrambling before Daniel could walk in, I shoved the snacks into a drawer beneath the coffee table and splashed some of the warm water from my cup onto my face to mimic tears. The front door creaked open. I turned, my expression carefully crafted into one of pure, pathetic misery. A smug, silent laugh echoed in his mind. He approached, his movements fluid and graceful, a gentle, concerned smile playing on his lips as he leaned down. Just as I thought… any minute now, she’ll break and call Lyle. That, I couldn’t do. Lyle was just like him—a gentleman on the surface, a monster underneath. Calling him for help was out of the question. But I had to sell the performance. I let my lower lip tremble and squeezed my eyes shut, willing tears to come. Then, I heard Daniel’s inner voice, laced with disgust: What the hell is that stuck on her tooth? His gaze immediately shot to the coffee table in front of me. A small trickle of water was seeping from a crack in the wood. He reached for the drawer. In a flash, I shot to my feet. “I want to go home to my mom!” Daniel’s hand froze. His expression was one of mild confusion. His inner voice was pure schadenfreude: Hah. Scared her so badly she’s talking nonsense. Alright, then. I’d play along. “There’s no one here,” I whimpered. “I’m scared. I want to go back to my house.” Daniel’s mind: From now on, you’re not taking a single step out of this house. Me: …House arrest? Outwardly, he took my hand, his touch surprisingly gentle, and sat beside me on the sofa. “Isla, we’re newlyweds. You can’t go back to your parents’ house just yet. And look, I’m here now, aren’t I?” I decided to test the waters. “Will… will you be leaving again?” “I’ll stay with you,” Daniel promised, his voice a soothing balm. Just wait. Soon you’ll be begging me to leave. 6 I instinctively clutched my clothes tighter. What the hell is he planning to do? Daniel blinked, his eyes practically overflowing with manufactured tenderness. “Are you cold?” He made a move to take off his suit jacket. Ugly creature. You really think I’d touch you? Hah. You dream just as big as your stepfather. Well, thank God for that. I wasn’t interested either. I let out a huge sigh of relief and grabbed his jacket before he could take it off. “I’m not cold. I’m just… I’m just a little hungry.” A wave of triumphant laughter roared in his mind. His words, however, were laced with pity. “Hungry? Oh, that is a problem. We’re quite far from the city, and there are no restaurants around here. The kitchen…” “The kitchen is empty,” I finished for him. I watched him struggle to hide a satisfied smirk and felt a sudden urge to twist his head off. After “comforting” me, Daniel went upstairs to shower. Before he left, he gave me one last, “soulful” look and whispered, “Wait for me.” I smiled back. Bring it on, I thought, answering his silent scheming. I’m not afraid of you.

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My author girlfriend, Sonia, in another fit of writer’s block, swept the dinner I’d handmade for her off the table. Just then, text floated into my vision, shimmering like a heat haze: 【She regretted it the moment she did it. Look at the guilt in her eyes… my heart is breaking.】 【If he just goes and hugs her now, she’ll be so moved.】 Sonia… felt guilty? Moved by me? Mustering my courage, I gently brushed my fingers against hers. “It’s okay. Do you want me to make you something else?” Her eyes, when they met mine, were chips of ice. “What, are you addicted to playing maid for me, you useless trash? Can’t you see I’m pissed off right now? Get lost!” She shoved me away with her foot. Staring at the palm of my hand, now pierced by shards of broken porcelain, a profound sense of exhaustion washed over me. This one-man show… I was tired of it. … I said nothing, just quietly retrieved the first-aid kit and began bandaging my hand. 【You can see the pain in her eyes, she’s heartbroken for him…】 【Just give in already! She’ll definitely apologize and help you with that cut!】 【She’s a born loner, bad at communicating. Can’t this useless boyfriend at least open his mouth?】 I glanced at Sonia. She still wore that same cold expression, as if the world owed her a million dollars. There wasn’t a hint of concern in her face. It was laughable that I’d actually believed the floating comments. Just as my heart was turning to stone, Sonia pushed her laptop towards me. “It won’t turn on. Take a look.” This was her usual way of making peace—she never apologized directly. But this time, I wasn’t going to play along. I pushed the laptop back. “I’m your maid, not your IT guy. Find someone else.” 【This guy is such a jerk! She’s already extending an olive branch, what’s his problem?】 【A genius author is willing to humble herself for him, and he’s still not satisfied? I hope she dumps this loser!】 She bit her lip, then deliberately stepped barefoot into the broken porcelain on the floor. “There,” she said, her voice tight. “Can you forgive me now?” My breath hitched. I rushed forward, sweeping her up into my arms to clean the wound. “Sonia! Are you insane?” Seeing her hurt, I couldn’t help it. My heart still ached for her despite myself. Ignoring the stream of digital abuse floating in the air, I held her close. That night, her protégé, Cox, sent me a text. She was drunk, he said. I needed to come pick her up. I rushed to the private room at the bar, only to find Sonia perfectly sober, complaining to her friends about me, her “free live-in maid.” Her friends laughed, asking her to find them one, too. Sonia shook her head, her tone serious. “You couldn’t.” A wave of relief washed over me. “You could never find one that pathetic!” she crowed. “Honestly, whenever I’m mad, all I have to do is play the victim, and he comes crawling right back.” The comments exploded. 【She’s so good to him! She’s willing to let a loser like him be her personal assistant just to keep him by her side!】 【She’s just saying that! She was bragging about how great he was at first, then got scared her friends would try to steal him, so she started putting him down!】 I felt none of the love the comments were deciphering. I just felt like a joke. A chill ran through me, rooting me to the spot. It wasn’t until I met Cox’s mocking gaze that I snapped out of it and pushed the door open. Sonia tensed when she saw me. “You heard that?” I nodded, and she said, with a dismissive wave, “It was just a joke. Don’t take it seriously.” The last flicker of hope in my heart died. She was a genius author, clueless about everything outside of writing. To take care of her, I had given up everything. And in return, I was her free maid, the punchline to a joke for her friends’ amusement. A bitter laugh escaped me. “Was it really just a joke, Sonia? Or was it what you truly think?” She said nothing, her jaw tight as if holding something back. 【He’s being such an ass. She already explained, why is he still throwing a fit!】 【She’s about to cry… Can we get a new main character, someone more considerate?】 【Yeah, Cox seems pretty nice.】 Cox, as if summoned by the comments, stormed over and grabbed my collar. “You’re going too far, man! I told you she was out with us tonight. You didn’t have to come here and check up on her!” Rage flared in my chest. I swung my fist, connecting squarely with his jaw. “You’re the one who—” “Enough!” Before I could finish, Sonia threw her arms out, shielding Cox with her body. “This is between us! Don’t drag other people into it!” I stepped toward her instinctively. “He’s the one trying to cause trouble!” She thought I was going to hurt her precious protégé. She shoved me hard, sending me stumbling to the floor. Then she grabbed the thermos of soup I’d brought for her and hurled it at me. “Don’t you dare touch him!” Stars exploded behind my eyes. I took a deep, shuddering breath and asked her one last time, “Are you really choosing to attack me, for him?” Her hands were clenched into fists. She said nothing. 【She was clearly just trying to stop a fight from breaking out! How can he be mad about that?】 【I feel so bad for her… no good deed goes unpunished!】 Was that really it? Just then, Cox dropped to his knees in front of me. Facing away from the others, a sly grin spread across his face, but his voice was thick with tears. “I’m so sorry! This is all my fault for meddling!” Sonia gently helped him up. “It’s not your fault. You don’t have to apologize.” Once he was on his feet, she pointed a finger at me, her voice ringing with fury. “He’s the one who should be apologizing!” The woman who had just spoken so softly to her protégé was now looking at me with absolute contempt. “Apologize!” she demanded. “If you don’t, we’re breaking up.” I was frozen. She was going to break up with me over another man. 【Don’t do it! She doesn’t mean it!】 【Just say you’re sorry! She’ll forgive you if you just apologize!】 There it was again. The comments, always using her supposed hidden love to emotionally blackmail me. I was always the one apologizing. This time, I was done. Looking at Sonia’s cold, expectant face, I gave a calm nod. “Fine. Let’s break up.” Her breath hitched. She shook her head slightly, as if in disbelief. I took the other container out of the insulated bag I’d brought. “Drinking on an empty stomach is bad for you,” I said, holding it out. “I made you a late-night snack.” A smug smile touched her lips, a look that said, I knew it. One of her friends whispered, “Jeez, I thought he was actually going to break up with her. He just came crawling back again.” “Who else would want a loser like him?” Sonia looked triumphant as she reached for the container. “Hmph. Fine, I forgive you this time. But next time, don’t you dare—” Just as her fingers were about to touch it, I pulled my hand back. Right in front of her, I tipped the contents directly into the trash can. “I figured you wouldn’t need food made by a useless maid.” She stomped her foot in fury. “Fine! Be a dog with some pride, then! Once you’re gone, don’t you dare come back!” As I walked away, I heard one of her friends ask, “Shit, you think he’s really not coming back this time?” Sonia’s voice was nonchalant. “Don’t worry. He’ll come crawling back within three days. A parasite like him… how could he ever leave me?” After I left, I called my father. “Well, well. Decided you can spare a moment for your old man? Wasn’t it you who cut off the family for that woman?” “Dad,” I said, my voice cracking despite myself as the weight of my wasted years hit me. “I was wrong.” I took a deep breath, the decision finally solidifying. “Dad, I’ll do it. I’ll agree to the alliance with the Langleys.” My father sighed on the other end of the line. “Good. It’s not too late for you to wake up. Isabelle is a good girl. Don’t you dare fail her.” After hanging up, I started packing my things. I was struck by how little I actually owned in this apartment. I used to buy little trinkets to decorate the place, telling myself it was to make it feel more like a home. In reality, it was a desperate attempt to assert my own existence here. In the eyes of her friends, I was just a roommate they could ignore. Gradually, my little decorations had filled every corner. Until the day Cox stayed over and casually remarked, “Sonia, your taste is terrible.” The next day, she threw all of my things out, telling me never to buy such useless junk again. Later, she asked me why all the gifts she’d given me had disappeared, wondering if I was so broke that I’d secretly sold them. I just nodded and took the blame, never telling her she was the one who had thrown them all away. As I was about to leave, the door opened, and I came face to face with Sonia. Cox was right behind her. A smirk played on her lips. “What’s this? Weren’t you breaking up with me? Why are you still here, clinging to my apartment like a stray?” I ignored them and tried to push my suitcase past. But Sonia grabbed the handle, blocking my way. “Stop. Open the suitcase. I need to check it.” I froze. This Sonia felt like a stranger. “What do you mean? You think I’m a thief?” 【He’s so dense! She obviously doesn’t want him to leave! This is her way of keeping him there!】 【She even brought Cox back to apologize, and this guy doesn’t appreciate it at all…】 Keeping me here? Apologizing? I shook my head, a bitter taste in my mouth. The scorn in her eyes said it all. They opened the suitcase and tore through my belongings, turning everything upside down. “Are you done?” I asked, my voice cold. Just then, Cox pulled out a dress shirt from the bottom of the case. “Sonia, look at this…” Sonia glanced at it, and then her hand cracked across my face. “I was wondering where this shirt went! So you’re the one who stole it!” I held my cheek, stunned and hurt. “What are you talking about? You gave that to me for my birthday!” Sonia let out a sharp, derisive laugh. “Are you deaf? I just told you to try it on, not that it was yours!” A wave of sadness washed over me. “And I thought it was the first real gift you’d ever given me.” Meeting Cox’s mocking gaze, I answered calmly, “If it’s yours, then you can have it back.” Just like I’m giving you back, I thought. But my answer didn’t satisfy her. She threw the shirt in my face. “Have it back? It’s already filthy. How can I take it back?” “Filthy?” I started to explain. “I’ve never even worn it—” Her eyes were filled with disgust. “Anything you touch is filthy, you useless waste of space.” 【This guy is so pathetic. He steals a gift and makes her clean up his mess.】 【Even I understood that. She just meant that Cox is a germaphobe.】 While I was still processing the floating comments, Cox suddenly lunged forward and dumped the entire contents of my suitcase onto the floor. “Sonia, let me help you check if he stole anything else!” And then he found it. His eyes lit up when he saw the small, velvet ring box. He presented it to Sonia like a prize. She stomped her foot. “So you really are addicted to stealing!” She snatched the box and ripped it open, only to freeze when she saw the 10-carat diamond ring inside. Then she scoffed. “A loser like you could afford a diamond ring? Where did you steal this from?” My hands trembled at my sides. But I managed to keep my voice steady. “I bought that with my own savings. It’s an engagement ring. I was planning to propose to you tomorrow night, at seven, at the International Grand Hotel.” She gave me a suspicious look. “Is it secondhand? Or fake?” I never imagined that her first reaction to an engagement ring would be that. I was shaking with rage. “Are we done here?” I bit out. She grunted, then nodded with a look of satisfaction, as if I had finally learned my place. She kicked my scattered belongings toward me. “Well, if you’re going to propose, then stop with this drama. Clean up the house like a good boy and wait for me to come home for dinner. I’m going with Cox to get you a proper gift.” 【She’s all talk! She’s obviously going to get him an engagement gift!】 【This loser is finally acting like a human being. It’s a good thing Sonia was willing to sleep at Cox’s last night just to give him some space to cool down.】 【She was crying on Cox’s shoulder all night… I’m so glad her suffering is finally over.】 Reading the scrolling text, I couldn’t help but laugh, a hollow, bitter sound. So she had been cheating on me all along. And I, like a fool, had been played by both her and these phantom words of love. I turned away, not wanting her to see the devastation on my face. She didn’t even glance at me. She just linked her arm through Cox’s and started to leave. Before she closed the door, she reminded me to buy extra groceries. “Cox is staying for dinner tonight. Consider it your apology to him.” As if I were truly her maid, and not the man who loved her. Using the last ounce of strength I had, I said, “Sonia, I’m done.” She didn’t even pause. The only reply was the slam of the door.

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A simple outpatient procedure. That’s all it took to kill my mother. My father, a leading expert in medical malpractice, personally handled the review. The official conclusion: my mother had secretly eaten before the operation, leading to fatal complications. The hospital and the lead surgeon were cleared of all responsibility. When he told me the results, my father’s eyes were bloodshot, his voice trembling with self-reproach. “I’m to blame for this, too, Ava,” he’d choked out. “I should have watched her more closely before the surgery.” He added, “But the surgeon was my star pupil. Her skills are impeccable.” After the dust settled, I went to claim my mother’s body. What I received was a hollowed-out shell, most of her organs harvested. My father’s prized protégé, Lana Wells, produced an organ donation form, supposedly signed by my mother beforehand. I looked at the clumsy forgery and laughed. The next day, I started a global livestream. The title was: “Live Masterclass: Human Anatomy by a University Professor.” Except this time, the subject on the table was very much alive. It was my father’s star pupil, Lana Wells. 1 The broadcast, hosted by the youngest professor at the nation’s top medical university, went viral instantly. The viewer count skyrocketed past one hundred thousand. On the cold, gleaming steel of the dissection table, Lana Wells was strapped down like an animal for slaughter, stripped bare. Her wrists and ankles were bound, a thick cloth gagged her mouth. In stark contrast, I was dressed in full surgical attire, every professional instrument laid out, ready for a live dissection. Realization of what was about to happen dawned in her eyes. A terrified, muffled whimper escaped her throat. The livestream chat exploded as viewers understood they were watching a living person on the table. [Wait, WHAT?! Is she alive? This is straight-up murder!] [Alive? I thought I was seeing things!] [Look! She’s moving!] [This is horrific. I can’t watch.] A collective gasp went through the audience. The tension was palpable. But no one was more tense than Dr. Marcus Thorne, my father. Because the person I was about to dissect was his beloved protégé. On a screen in my lab, his face was projected, neck craned, his complexion a deep, panicked red. “Ava! What in God’s name are you doing?” he yelled. “Let Lana go, right now!” “I’ve already been through the official review! The surgery failed because your mother ate beforehand. The food aspirated into her lungs, and she suffocated. It had nothing to do with Lana!” I glanced up at his frantic face on the monitor and let out a cold, humorless laugh. “The daughter of a medical dynasty, forgetting the number one rule of pre-op? Don’t eat or drink?” I said, my voice dangerously calm. “You underestimate her.” “Or,” I added, my eyes locking onto the camera, “do you just think I’m an idiot?” I picked up a scalpel from the tray, its edge catching the light with a sterile glint. I pressed the tip gently against Lana’s abdomen. The chat erupted in fury. [This isn’t a masterclass, it’s a vendetta! Your mom died in a surgical accident, the surgeon didn’t murder her! What gives you the right?!] [The medical review was conclusive. You’re just in denial, taking it out on the surgeon. Who the hell do you think you are!] [Dr. Thorne is a renowned expert! He reviewed his own wife’s case and admitted it was the patient’s fault. What more do you want?!] [Your mom died because she was stupid. Everyone knows you don’t eat before surgery. It’s common sense!] [Exactly. And a mother like that raised a professor at a top university? Who would ever trust a doctor taught by her?!] The internet mob was almost unanimously on his side, their digital pitchforks aimed squarely at me. I ignored them. Gripping the scalpel, I made a clean, decisive incision across Lana’s stomach. The wet, tearing sound of flesh parting filled the stream’s audio feed. The viewers lost their minds. [Call the cops! She’s killing her!] [Someone get a location trace on this stream! Now!] But their hopes faded quickly. My lab was in a remote, overseas location. Triangulating my position would involve a mountain of international red tape. Enough time, I thought, to take Lana apart piece by piece. As I pulled the incision open like a zipper, I leaned down, my voice a cold whisper in her ear. “Where did you start when you harvested my mother’s organs? The heart, was it? And the corneas last?” I smiled. “That’s no fun. Let’s do it in reverse.” I raised the scalpel, aiming for Lana’s eye. That’s when Marcus Thorne finally broke. “Wait!” he screamed. “Stop! I have something to say!” 2 The blade froze, a hair’s breadth from Lana’s tear-filled, terrified eye. On the screen, my father’s face was ashen, his breathing ragged. He swallowed hard, beads of sweat trickling down his temple. “Your mother… she ate before the surgery on purpose,” he stammered. “Because… because she didn’t want to live anymore.” “She had depression!” “She didn’t have the courage to end her own life, so she forced someone else’s hand!” His voice, now laced with a tearful, dramatic tremor, began a masterful performance for the hundred thousand viewers. “Ava, my dear, I never dared to tell you,” he sobbed, his words catching in his throat. “Your mother suffered from depression for years. Every day was agony for her…” “But I never, ever thought she would choose to end it all on the eve of her surgery.” His tears were perfectly timed, landing like emotional bombshells in the chat. [I’m actually crying. What a noble man. Dr. Thorne has been through so much for his wife and daughter.] [He’s one of the good ones. A hospital director, a top expert, and so devoted to his family. It’s a tragedy he was cursed with such a foolish wife and a deranged daughter.] [Am I the only one who doesn’t get it? If you want to die, just do it. Why drag the surgeon down with you?] [Seriously. That poor doctor had the worst luck in the world getting assigned to her case.] The flood of online sympathy for him threatened to drown me. But I just smiled. Holding Lana’s head steady, I made a swift, precise cut and removed her cornea. Blood sprayed across my face, a grotesque, crimson mask. The chat exploded again. [She’s a monster! Pure evil! She should be drawn and quartered!] [What is wrong with you?! Your mother is dead, why are you torturing someone else?!] [Oh my God, someone please save that poor doctor!] I casually tossed the cornea onto the floor and ground it into a pulp under my heel, just to be sure. On the screen, Marcus Thorne’s face had gone from ashen to the color of death. He shot up from his chair, slamming his fist on the desk. “AVA! YOU’RE INSANE!” “WHAT MORE DO I HAVE TO SAY TO MAKE YOU BELIEVE ME?!” “Let her go! LET HER GO!” Seeing their beloved Dr. Thorne so heartbroken sent his online cheerleaders into a frenzy. [If someone doesn’t stop this psycho, a brilliant talent that Dr. Thorne spent years mentoring will be lost forever.] [Such a waste. She was the star pupil of an expert! Destined to be one of the best in her field, and now she’s going to die at the hands of this maniac!] [Dr. Thorne must be in agony.] [Forget Dr. Thorne, I’m in agony watching this.] [You crazy bitch, let her go!] Their screams were useless. My scalpel wasn’t listening. Its tip drifted slowly toward Lana’s other eye. A low, sinister laugh rumbled in my chest. “Still not telling the truth, are we?” As my words faded, the pressure of the blade increased, about to pierce her other eye. “Ava!” Suddenly, a familiar voice, thick with anguish, cut through the chaos. I looked up. It was Mrs. Gable. The old housekeeper who had served my mother for decades. She was more of a grandmother to me than anyone. “Mrs. Gable?” I froze, the scalpel in my hand finally faltering. She rushed toward the camera on their end, her face stained with tears. In her hands, she held a pile of prescription bottles—antidepressants. She dumped them all out in front of the lens. “Ava, listen to me!” she cried. “Your father… he isn’t lying! Your mother was depressed. For a very long time.” 3 My hand, usually rock-steady with a blade, trembled uncontrollably. Beneath the tip of my scalpel, Lana sucked in a sharp, terrified breath as fat tears rolled from her remaining eye. I straightened up, my own eyes welling with tears. But I blinked them back, forcing the moisture away, my gaze hardening as I stared back at the camera. “Mrs. Gable,” I said, my voice dangerously low. “How much did he pay you? How much did it take for you to betray the woman you watched grow up?” “She was like your own daughter!” I slammed my hand on the instrument tray. “What happened to you?” Mrs. Gable’s face went pale. Her mouth opened, but no words came out. Marcus seized the opportunity. “Ava, you have to accept reality!” he pleaded. “Mrs. Gable has shown you the proof! Why are you still so delusional?” I stared at the collection of pill bottles on the screen. They were pristine, unopened, some still in their pharmacy bags. A bitter laugh escaped my lips. “The daughter of the Crawford medical dynasty, whose first lesson in life was to cherish it above all else,” I began, my voice rising with each word. “The woman who told me every single day, ‘As long as you’re alive, there’s hope. Never, ever give up on your life.’” “You expect me to believe a woman like that wanted to die?” As my fury peaked, my hand shot out. With surgical precision, I carved out Lana’s other cornea. Even with the gag, she let out a piercing, guttural scream. The dark, twisted heart in her chest hammered against her ribs as if trying to break free. The gruesome act sent the livestream into another meltdown. [She’s lost it! Completely insane! A medical genius is now blind because of this monster! This is unforgivable!] [How have they not found this psycho yet?! Somebody save Dr. Wells!] [SHE TOLD YOU YOUR MOM KILLED HERSELF! ARE YOU DEAF?!] [Do you have a persecution complex? Your mom committed suicide, and you just have to find someone to blame? If you can’t handle her death, go join her! Stop destroying other people’s lives!] As always, I ignored the digital noise, my eyes once again fixed on the screen, cold and menacing. “Dr. Thorne, if you don’t start telling the truth, her kidney is next.” “Can you really bear to watch your star pupil be dismantled, piece by piece?” I tilted my head, a predatory smile playing on my lips. Marcus Thorne clenched his jaw so hard the muscles in his face quivered. I kept smiling. “I’m starting the countdown.” “Ten. Nine. Eight…” His face grew even paler. “What is wrong with you! I’m telling you the truth!” “Five. Four. Three…” Panic flashed in his eyes. “I’ll say it again, let Lana go!” “Two. One…” I raised the scalpel, my gaze dropping to Lana’s exposed abdomen. “Ava!” A weathered, urgent voice echoed through the speakers. A voice that stopped my hand mid-air. “Professor Albright?” I whispered. “What are you doing here?” 4 Appearing on the screen was the face of a man I revered. He was the one who had taught me how to hold a scalpel, who had walked me through the intricate map of the human body, who had spent countless nights with me in the lab, pushing the boundaries of medicine. Seeing him awakened a soft, vulnerable part of me I thought was long dead. I slowly lowered the scalpel, my vision blurring with tears. “Ava!” he cried, his voice laced with pain. “Don’t do this! Please, don’t be impulsive!” “Do you have any idea what you’re doing?! If you kill her, you’re not just ending her life—you’re destroying your own!” He was leaning so close to the camera it was as if he was trying to reach through the screen and stop me himself. My hand, still holding the bloody scalpel, felt impossibly heavy. My shoulders slumped. “Professor,” I said, my voice barely a whisper. “I don’t have a career anymore.” “This dissection… this will be the last procedure I ever perform.” I looked up, my eyes meeting his through the lens, filled with an unstoppable, grim resolve. Seeing my expression, he slammed his fist on the table in frustration. “You foolish girl!” “Let me tell you the truth,” he said, his voice heavy with resignation. “I was part of the review team for your mother’s case. She really did die because she ate before the surgery!” “You’ve always trusted me more than anyone, Ava. When have I ever lied to you?” The viewers pounced on his words. [See! Even your own mentor is saying it!] [That’s the final nail in the coffin. You have nothing left to say, do you? Facts are facts, and you can’t change them no matter how much you kick and scream!] [Your mother was an ignorant psycho, and so are you!] [Eating before surgery. It’s an open-and-shut case! It’s her own damn fault she’s dead!] [Give it up already and let Dr. Wells go!] The tears in my eyes vanished, replaced by a chilling cold. I looked at the screen. “Professor,” I said softly. “Can I still trust you?” “Tell me, why are you lying for him? What does he have on you?” The chat went wild again. [Oh for God’s sake! Are you serious?!] [So Mrs. Gable was bribed, and your mentor is being blackmailed? You’ve watched way too many soap operas! You’re completely delusional!] [Have you been drinking the formaldehyde?!] I tightened my grip on the scalpel and leaned close to Lana’s ear. “Time to say goodbye to a kidney,” I whispered. “Don’t worry, it won’t hurt a bit. My mother got through it. So can you.” I straightened up with a smile and moved the blade toward her abdomen. Just as the tip was about to break the tissue, Professor Albright panicked. “Ava!” he yelled. “You don’t believe me? Fine! But you have to believe your mother, don’t you?!” “You’ll believe her own words, won’t you?!” My pupils contracted. My hand stopped. Professor Albright quickly pulled out his phone and played a video. On the screen, my mother, dressed in a hospital gown, was about to be taken into surgery. Her face was pale, but her eyes, looking into the camera, were as gentle as I remembered. “Ava,” she began, her voice soft. “My sweet baby girl.” “There’s something I’ve never told you…”

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The boy who tormented me at school became my brother. By day, he’d shove me into a bathroom stall at school, his laughter echoing with my humiliation. By night, he’d sit in front of our parents, ruffling my hair with a gentle, loving smile. My nightmare had followed me home. 1 Caleb Vaughn slipped into my room at one in the morning. He stood there, hands shoved in his pockets, a look of satisfaction on his face as he watched me cower in the corner. “Good girl,” he murmured. “You didn’t lock the door tonight.” … I’d locked it yesterday. The next morning at school, he cornered me in the girls’ bathroom and cut my bra strap with a pair of scissors. Now, in the suffocating darkness of my room, he sauntered toward me. His face was a study in perfection, but when he smiled, all I saw was a demon crawling up from the abyss. He gripped my chin, his other hand moving with practiced ease to the buttons of my pajama top. His fingers paused, tracing the delicate line of my collarbone. A strange, searing heat bloomed under his touch, and I flinched, an involuntary shudder that only earned a cruel, mocking chuckle. He leaned in, his body pressing close, his breath hot against my ear. “Right here,” he whispered, the alien warmth of his voice seeping through my skin, a poison spreading through my veins. “How about we tattoo my name on you?” Panic, sharp and blinding, ripped through me. I shoved him away with all my might. He straightened up, shrugging with an air of casual indifference. “I’m just kidding.” …But every one of Caleb’s “jokes” had a way of becoming my reality. His eyes scanned my closet, landing on a simple sundress hanging on a hook. He pointed. “Wear that tomorrow.” Yes. After Caleb Vaughn became my stepbrother, he began to control everything. Even what I wore. 2 Caleb Vaughn hated me. I knew this with absolute certainty from the first day I transferred into his class. He was the student council president, a top-ten student, handsome and popular. He had the entire school eating out of the palm of his hand. Which made it terrifyingly easy for him to turn my life into a living hell. It started with social isolation. The moment everyone realized Caleb had it out for me, I became a pariah. No one would even look at me. Then, the violence began. Caleb himself rarely laid a hand on me. He didn’t have to. He had an arsenal of other, more creative ways to grind my dignity into dust, to make sure I could never hold my head high again. He took scissors to the long hair I’d been growing for years, then held my head, forcing me to watch my own shattered reflection in the mirror. He had his cronies scrawl obscene words on my desk in permanent marker, their raucous laughter filling the classroom as I tried in vain to scrub them away. The constant harassment made it impossible to focus on my studies. My grades plummeted. And they were always there, waiting for the teacher to hand back our tests, ready to shout my failing scores to the entire class. So when my dad told me the woman he was marrying had a son—and that son was Caleb Vaughn—I felt my world collapse. 3 “From now on, he’s your brother.” My dad clapped him on the shoulder, pushing him toward me. Caleb’s lips curved into that familiar, charming smile. “Caleb’s a great student,” my dad continued, oblivious. “If you have any trouble with your homework, you can just ask him.” So that night, Caleb “tutored” me. He stood behind me, leaning over the desk, his fingers brushing the edge of my paper in a gesture that was meant to look helpful. A good, caring brother. But under the table, his knuckles were pressing, slowly and deliberately, into the small of my back. “You can tell your dad everything I’ve done to you,” he whispered, his voice a low threat. “But I think you can guess what the consequences will be.” … The next morning, I didn’t wear the dress Caleb had chosen. At the breakfast table, he simply raised an eyebrow, saying nothing. He was a master of disguise, always playing the part of the perfect, well-behaved son in front of our parents. But by the front door, in the blind spot near the shoe rack, his mask slipped. He kicked the toe of my sneaker. “Didn’t I tell you to wear the dress?” “…” I bit my lip and finally looked up at him. “Why do you have to do this to me?” We were complete strangers before my dad met his mom. His hatred for me was so direct, so visceral, and it made no sense. He didn’t deign to answer. Instead, he leaned down, his eyes boring into mine. “You don’t listen?” A slow, predatory smile spread across his face. “You’re screwed.” … 4 I thought if I could just stay in the classroom, surrounded by people, I might be safe. I might escape his games for one day. I underestimated him. After morning exercises, I returned to my desk and reached into my pencil case for a pen. My fingers brushed against something soft and squirming. I peered inside, and a choked scream died in my throat. I flung the case away from me as if it were on fire. The one thing I’m terrified of—bugs. And my pencil case was filled with writhing, hairy caterpillars. Some fears are primal, a revulsion that’s both physical and psychological. For me, the mere sight of a bug is enough to make my skin crawl, my entire body break out in a cold sweat. I scrambled backward, knocking over my chair with a loud crash. I was terrified. Genuinely, gut-wrenchingly terrified. But as I huddled in the back of the room, my fear became everyone else’s entertainment. “Jesus, what was that?” “Dave, what did you put in her pencil case? Look at her, she’s freaking out.” Caleb walked in just then, a stack of papers in his hand. He saw me, and a look of mock concern crossed his face as he crouched in front of me. “Hey, you’re actually crying.” His thumb gently brushed against my eyelid, and I jerked my head away. That, apparently, was the wrong move. His fingers tightened on my jaw, forcing me to look at him. “Such a goddamn coward.” “…” For the rest of the afternoon, his friends loitered near my desk, snickering. I kept my head down, terrified they were going to plant more bugs on me. “Hey,” Caleb’s voice came from behind me as school let out. “You mad at us?” He toyed with the keychain on my backpack. “You never used to get mad, no matter what we did.” I took a deep, shuddering breath and stood, turning to face him. “Caleb, do I have some kind of history with you that I don’t know about? Why are you doing this to me?” The setting sun caught in his eyes, creating a sliver of brilliant, beautiful light. He smiled, a look of pure, gentle affection. “You’re so cute.” … Psychopath. 5 My dad raised me on his own. He always said I was too quiet, too withdrawn, that I never told him anything. He was right. I have an incredible capacity for endurance. The fact that I’d survived two years of Caleb’s relentless bullying without a complete mental breakdown was proof of that. For the most part, I had learned to ignore them. But the bugs… that had crossed a line. So when we got home, I gave him the silent treatment. His “good brother” mask started to crack. I expected an explosion, but instead, after his shower, he just walked into my room. “Tch. Still mad?” he asked, his tone laced with something I couldn’t quite decipher. I kept my head down, focusing on the math problem in front of me, and ignored him. “You know, I wasn’t the one who put the bugs in there,” he continued, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. “If I’d known you were that scared of them…” He leaned closer. “…I would have made sure they appeared in a much more… exciting way. Right?” It was like a whisper from a demon’s lips. And then, to my horror, he ruffled my hair, a grin in his voice. “Problem four is wrong. No wonder you’re so stupid.” … I gritted my teeth and angrily scratched out all my work on the page. His only response was a soft, mocking laugh. 6 The next day, the boy who put the bugs in my pencil case apologized to me in front of the whole class. He stammered through his words, but the fresh bruises on his face told the real story. I kept my eyes on my textbook and didn’t look at him. My desk was still covered in the filthy words they’d written, but they’d taken it a step further. They’d given me the most broken-down desk in the classroom. It wobbled every time I tried to write. Frustrated, I pressed down harder, and it let out a loud squeak. Suddenly, a hand pressed down on the corner, steadying it. Caleb was crouching in front of me. He folded a piece of paper and wedged it under the short leg. “…” He was acting strangely these past few days. I knew better than to think he was showing me mercy. In my experience, when Caleb eased up, it just meant he was planning something much, much worse. He stood, hands in his pockets, and looked down at me. After a long moment, a slow, lazy smile spread across his face. … Today was my birthday. In previous years, it had always been a day I looked forward to. But this year, there was Caleb. That evening, our new family went out to a nice restaurant to celebrate. The cheerful atmosphere couldn’t distract me from the oppressive presence of the boy sitting next to me. Under the table, his leg kept brushing against mine, not by accident. When it was time to blow out the candles, he even reached over, his fingers giving my waist a light, playful tap. … My dad got me an e-reader. His mom gave me a necklace. And Caleb gave me a bottle of perfume. The gift box felt a little heavy, but I didn’t think anything of it at first. I never wanted a second look at anything he gave me. The moment we got home, I tossed it into a corner of my room. Until midnight, when he pushed my door open. He moved through my room with a practiced stealth that was deeply unsettling. I frowned at his smiling face. “Aren’t you going to look at my gift?” he asked, leaning casually against the doorframe. I’d already opened it at the restaurant. He must have seen the confusion on my face because he added with a smirk, “There’s a second layer.” … Caleb always knew exactly how to humiliate me. My dear brother’s birthday gift. The first layer was a bottle of perfume. The second layer was a collar. A dog collar. … I glared at him, but his smile was infuriatingly pleasant. “Custom-made. Took three months. Don’t you like it?” He strolled over, lifted the collar from the box, and held it around my neck. The cool, smooth leather brushed against my skin. He tilted his head, his smile widening. “Perfect fit.” I shoved him away. I knew this was what he wanted. He loved to see this look in my eyes. Humiliated. Furious. Helpless. The more I suffered, the more he thrived. 7 When the results of the next exam came back, I stared at the pathetic scores. I’ve never been good with numbers. Subjects like math and physics have always been a struggle. The paper had already been passed around the entire class. By the time it reached me, it was crumpled and worn. After class, the teacher called me to her office. Someone else was already there. If I was consistently second to last, he was consistently dead last. I’d barely seen his face all semester; he always kept himself hidden in the corner of the classroom. “You two are the worst in my math class,” the teacher said, her sharp gaze piercing through her glasses. “I’ve arranged for someone to help you. I expect you to study hard.” She looked at both of us. “The three of you will be a study group. If you have any questions, you ask Caleb Vaughn. Got it?” … Caleb Vaughn. The ringleader of my tormentors was now my tutor. I watched as he walked into the office, the teacher clapping him on the shoulder, her face full of hope. He just smiled and looked at me. I could already imagine it. This wasn’t a study group. This was the beginning of a new nightmare. … The afternoon sun streamed through the classroom windows. Caleb was sitting on the desk in front of me. “What the hell, man? You’re really gonna tutor these two idiots?” one of his friends joked from behind him. The other boy in our “study group,” the one who always seemed to be curled into a ball, was named Leo Roth. He was huddled in the corner now, trembling. I knew he was a frequent target of the same group of bullies. And I suspected he might have some genuine learning difficulties. “Alright, let’s look at the first problem,” Caleb said, picking up my test paper with a theatrical flourish. My attention, however, was on the boy beside me. He was shaking so badly that his desk was vibrating. “Hey.” I snapped back to reality as Caleb’s foot kicked my desk. He stood over me, long-limbed and arrogant, hands in his pockets. “Are you looking at me or at him?” “…” We locked eyes for a long moment before he broke into a grin. “One of you got a 21, the other got a 12. You two are a perfect match.” … Maybe it was Caleb’s taunts about my grades, but when my dad saw my test scores that night, he blew up. “You used to win gold medals in the math Olympiad in elementary and middle school, remember? What happened to you?!” …It was true. The awards were still hanging on my bedroom wall. But now, the sight of numbers just gave me a headache. I stared at the test paper. I knew it took me longer to understand math than other students. I couldn’t even apply the formulas correctly. Because my dad had insisted, Caleb was now in my room, officially sanctioned to tutor me. He leaned against my desk. I braced myself for another round of insults, but he just said, softly, “Ask me if you don’t understand something.” … I thought the sun must have risen in the west. Then his mom walked in with a plate of fruit. “I’m so glad to see you two getting along so well,” she said, beaming. Caleb’s mom was a kind, elegant woman who had always been incredibly nice to me. She’d told me once that Caleb had a younger sister before… but something happened. She had passed away. Because of that, she was always worried that Caleb and I wouldn’t get along. “Alright, you two study hard. Caleb, make sure you help your sister.” The moment his mother was out the door, Caleb’s face changed. He leaned over me from behind, his fingers slowly, deliberately, pinching my earlobe. “Leo Roth,” he murmured, saying the name of the trembling boy from that afternoon. “How about you seduce him?” … I couldn’t understand the twisted logic of his mind. What was he trying to achieve? “I—” The word “no” was still on my lips when he grabbed my chin. He narrowed his eyes, his thumb stroking my jaw. “If you refuse, I’ll post those pictures from the other day on the school forum.” He was talking about the pictures he took in the bathroom after he cut my bra strap. I shoved him. “Go ahead. I don’t care.” 8 I didn’t care what other people thought of me. And in the end, Caleb never posted the pictures. But he wasn’t the type to give up. A rumor started circulating that Leo and I were a couple. Then one morning, I walked into the classroom to find our names scrawled across the blackboard in huge letters, a giant heart drawn between them. The sight was met with a chorus of jeers and laughter. “Those two? Together?” “You’ve got to be kidding me.” “Look, the lovebirds.” My name became inextricably linked with Leo’s. When a teacher called on me, someone would yell out Leo’s name. During morning exercises, they would deliberately push me into him. “You know, I think he’s actually starting to like you,” Caleb said that night, crouching by my bed. “I saw him looking at you today. The tips of his ears were red.” His hand closed around my throat, the pressure slowly increasing. “But he probably doesn’t know…” His grip tightened, just enough to make my heart pound. “…that the girl he likes looks like this in front of me.” I stared at him, my eyes burning with hatred. After a long, agonizing moment, his fingers loosened, stroking the side of my neck. Caleb always smiled so gently. But the words that came out of his mouth were pure poison. “You know something, Stella?” he whispered. “You were made for a collar.” … He was using an innocent boy to trample all over my dignity, to grind it into the dirt. I had told myself that if I was already in hell, I couldn’t drag anyone else down with me. But it was too late. … The next day, as I was being shoved against a wall, the contents of my backpack being dumped onto the floor, Leo suddenly rushed in and pulled me away. This was their usual routine. Accuse me of stealing money, then empty my bag to “prove” it. No one expected Leo, the timid, quiet boy, to intervene. Whistles and catcalls erupted behind us. Leo pulled me along, running blindly, as if he had no idea where he was going. I stared at the back of his head. His hair was getting long. He stumbled, and I almost went down with him. His glasses fell to the ground. I bent to pick them up and found myself looking directly into his eyes. … He always hid behind a thick curtain of bangs. It was the first time I’d ever really seen his face. I didn’t know what to say. I had never seen such beautiful eyes. A pale, smoky grey, so light they seemed translucent, but with an unnerving emptiness within. They were so striking that for a moment, I forgot to breathe. “You…” I finally managed, my voice barely a whisper. “You shouldn’t have done that.” I don’t know if he understood what I meant. He just pressed his lips together and said nothing. When we got back to class, the room erupted in a storm of teasing. But after that day, Leo started being… nice to me. He seemed oblivious to the malicious taunts of the other students. He brought me breakfast. He secretly left candy in my desk. Every time he did something kind, every time he looked at me with those innocent, unknowing eyes, a fresh wave of guilt washed over me. Caleb had won again. No matter how I struggled, he always got what he wanted. Now, he was enjoying building me up with a fragile, beautiful illusion, just so he could be the one to shatter it. 9 Our parents were going on a business trip for a week. Which meant I would be alone in the house with Caleb. For seven days. My body trembled at the thought. Caleb, sitting next to me on the sofa, just lowered his eyes and smiled. The first night after they left, he blocked me at my bedroom door. The vast, empty house was unnervingly quiet, and a flicker of fear ignited in my chest. He leaned against the doorframe, tilting his head as he looked at me. “You know why they haven’t been messing with you lately? Because Leo’s been taking the hits for you.” If the devil had a face, it would be Caleb’s. “It’s a shame you didn’t get to see it. The way they kicked him against the lockers.” “If you have a problem, take it out on me!” I lunged forward and grabbed the collar of his shirt. He simply reached up and slowly, gently, covered my hand with his. He must have felt the tremors running through my fingers, because he let out a low chuckle. “You haven’t fallen for him too, have you?” I stared at him, grinding my teeth so hard I thought they would crack. “Caleb, why are you doing this to me?” With every step he took forward, I took one back, until my back was pressed against the cold, hard wall. “Well,” he whispered, his face inches from mine. “Why don’t you fight back?” His fingers closed around my wrist. He was like a demon, peeling back the layers of my soul, asking the one question I could never answer. Why didn’t I fight back? I knew the reason. I had always known. It was because I… Something was clawing at the edges of my memory, a truth I had buried long ago. But in that instant, Caleb raised his other hand and gently stroked my hair. He leaned in, his smile disarmingly innocent. “Sleep with me,” he murmured, “and I’ll leave him alone. Deal?” Caleb was testing my limits, one by one. And in the end, he would make a shocking discovery. I didn’t have any. … Caleb’s bed was bigger than mine. When he pulled me down onto the mattress beside him, it didn’t feel cramped. And when he said sleep, he actually meant sleep. “You have to keep your promise,” I said, my voice flat, staring at the empty floor. Moonlight filtered through the blinds, casting fractured, painful slivers of light across the room. “Leave Leo alone.” He was lying behind me, closer than he had ever been. I could feel the heat of his body. His knuckles brushed against my shoulder blade. He let out a soft laugh and pulled me tighter against him. “Why are you so nice to him?” He waited a long time, but I didn’t answer. He must have known I wouldn’t. He toyed with a strand of my hair, then sighed, his breath warm against the back of my neck. His next words were so quiet, they were barely more than a whisper, a dreamlike murmur lost in the darkness. “To be honest, I’m a little jealous of him.” … 10 To his credit, Caleb was a man of his word. As twisted as it was to force his own sister to sleep in his bed, he kept his promise. He never laid a hand on Leo again. The bullying at school, for the most part, stopped. In the dead of night, I listened to the steady rhythm of his breathing, then slowly, carefully, I slipped his arm off me. I crept out of bed and made my way to his desk. There was something I needed to confirm. For the past few nights, after he fell asleep, I had been searching his room. I was sure he would have kept it somewhere. Finally, in the back of the third bookshelf, I found a small, wooden box with a combination lock. It looked old. I tried a few different number combinations, but none of them worked. I frowned, considering my options. Maybe I could sneak it out and pry it open. A cool, clear voice broke the silence behind me. “The combination is 0604. Her birthday.” …Caleb was standing right behind me, watching me. When he wasn’t smiling, his face was a mask of cold, severe indifference. The moonlight poured into his eyes, making them look like polished, emotionless stones. I lowered my head and entered the code. The lock clicked open. Inside were a few trinkets, small mementos. I didn’t bother trying to understand their meaning. I was looking for one thing. And then I found it. A photograph. I was right. All those years ago… Caleb’s sister… It was my fault she died.

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