Category: English

My little brother has a gift. He can hear people’s thoughts. When our parents died, our aunt and uncle both stepped up to take us in. Aunt Manon showed up looking ragged and exhausted, wearing faded clothes. Uncle James, on the other hand, was dripping in designer labels from head to toe. But Noah chose Manon. He clung to her because the voices in his head told him she was actually secretly loaded, hiding a massive fortune. As for James? His thoughts revealed his clothes were all rentals. He was just fronting, trying to look wealthy so we wouldn’t feel insecure. When James gently took my hand, Noah shot me a smug, pitying look. He whispered that if I ever wanted to wear nice clothes, I could fish his hand-me-downs out of the trash. He honestly thought he was the main character. He thought his mind-reading made him invincible, the chosen one. What he didn’t know was that I had a secret of my own. I could see the comments. A floating, glowing stream of text that told me exactly what the future held. The comments said Manon was a sinking ship. She was cursed with a toxic fate, destined to drag down anyone foolish enough to tie themselves to her. The comments also said that while James cared too much about his pride, he had a heart of gold. His luck was about to turn, and his family would slowly build a beautiful, comfortable life. Someone in the floating text mentioned that Noah relied too heavily on the voices in his head. And the biggest twist of all? His ability came with an expiration date. The moment he turned eighteen, the voices would go permanently silent. Looking at his arrogant smirk, I could already see the absolute tragedy waiting for him at the finish line. 1 The moment Manon and James stepped into the sterile hospital hallway, my brother Noah practically shoved me toward James. His expensive cologne was overpowering. Noah put on his best puppy-dog eyes and let his lip quiver. “Ollie, you go with Uncle James,” Noah said softly. “I’m younger. I can handle roughing it. You’ve always had it easier, so you should be the one to go live the good life with him.” I watched James’s face twitch with an unnatural, guilty expression. Manon, meanwhile, looked down at Noah with pure adoration and patted his shoulder. “Our little Noah is growing up,” she cooed. “Already learning how to sacrifice for his family.” James looked at Noah, his large hands awkwardly fidgeting with the hem of his rented tailored jacket. “Noah, are you absolutely sure you don’t want to come with me? Don’t you remember? I used to carry you on my shoulders when you were a baby.” Noah forced a pained, conflicted look onto his face. “Uncle James, I know you really care about me. But Ollie was always mom and dad’s favorite. He’s spoiled. He can’t survive eating scraps and sleeping on a hard mattress. As his little brother, I’m used to giving him the best of everything. Please don’t make this harder than it is. Let Ollie go with you.” With that, he gently nudged me closer to James, playing the part of the heartbroken martyr perfectly. If I hadn’t known the truth, I might have actually bought his performance. But right on cue, the glowing text began scrolling across my vision. [Bro can literally hear thoughts. He knows the uncle’s Rolex is a fake and the suit is rented! James just didn’t want the kids to feel poor.] [Manon is the real hidden millionaire here. She’s loaded.] So that was it. Noah could hear the truth. It made perfect sense now. A kid who threw a tantrum if his pillow wasn’t fluffed properly was never going to willingly choose a life of poverty with our supposedly broke aunt. Besides, I hadn’t even recognized the brand of James’s suit. Noah spotted it instantly. I knew exactly why both of them wanted Noah instead of me. Our parents had never hidden their blatant favoritism. Even though I brought home straight A’s and kept my head down, they only ever paraded Noah in front of the relatives. They painted me as the difficult child, the liar, the jealous older brother who needed constant discipline. I couldn’t exactly go door-to-door defending myself to the extended family. Over time, everyone just assumed I was a lost cause. Even now, standing over the tragic reality of our parents’ sudden passing, Manon and James had rushed here to claim Noah. I was just the consolation prize. James finally took my hand. “You’re too good for your own sake, Noah,” James sighed, his voice thick with emotion. “Are you really sure? I promise I’d give you everything I have.” He meant it. James had two daughters at home. He had always wanted a quiet, obedient son, and Noah’s carefully crafted persona fit the bill perfectly. Manon stepped in smoothly. “James, stop pressuring the poor boy. He clearly made his choice. Don’t make him uncomfortable. Besides, you need to think about Oliver’s feelings.” Only then did the two adults seem to remember I had been standing there the whole time, fading into the background like peeling wallpaper. James looked at me, a deep flush creeping up his neck. “Ollie, I didn’t mean to make you feel unwanted. It’s just that you’re older. You understand how these things work, right?” I offered a careless, easy smile. Before I could say it was fine, Noah cut in. “Don’t worry, Uncle James. Ollie has a really good memory. Just make sure you treat him well. I’ll come visit you guys when I have some free time.” A good memory. That was his coded way of calling me vindictive. Even on his way to securing a golden ticket, he couldn’t resist throwing mud at my name. James hesitated for a split second, clearly picking up on the toxic undertone. But the ink was already dry on the decision. As Noah followed Manon down the hall, he brushed his shoulder against mine. He paused, leaning in close so only I could hear. “You’re clueless, Ollie,” he whispered, a nasty grin stretching across his face. “James is totally faking it. Get ready to starve in the slums. Guys like you don’t have what it takes to live at the top.” I watched him strut away like a general who had just conquered a city. A small, genuine smile touched my lips. Because the comments were flooding my vision again. [This kid is so stupid. Manon has cash, yeah, but her fate is cursed! She’s a walking black hole. She’ll drag him down with her!] [Uncle James cares too much about his image, but he’s a genuinely good guy. His karma is insane, he’s going to strike it rich soon.] [The brother relies way too much on his mind-reading. It’s making him lazy.] [Wait till he finds out the gift vanishes on his eighteenth birthday. Poof, gone.] [Yikes. I can already smell the absolute disaster waiting for him.] I shoved my hands into my pockets. I guess we’d see if Noah could actually handle all that heavy, glittering wealth. 2 James guided me out to the parking lot and unlocked a sleek, midnight-black luxury sedan. The soft click of the doors echoing in the quiet lot. He still felt guilty for making it so obvious he wanted Noah. He glanced at me in the passenger seat, clearing his throat awkwardly. “Ollie. Please don’t hold this against me. I have my reasons, things are a bit complicated right now. But since you’re coming with me, I swear on my life I won’t let you suffer.” I didn’t know what his complicated reasons were yet. But the glowing text had confirmed his good heart. He wouldn’t mistreat me. Still, I wasn’t naive enough to blindly trust magical floating words. I was seventeen. I needed a legal guardian and a roof over my head. My plan was simple: keep my head down, study hard, and build my own escape hatch. Once I was on my own feet, I would never rely on anyone’s charity again. I decided to test the comments. I looked out the window and kept my voice perfectly flat. “Uncle James, you can return the car now.” His hands locked onto the leather steering wheel. His knuckles turned bone-white. It made sense. Truly wealthy people rarely drove themselves to pick up grieving relatives in a hospital lot. Plus, James’s worn-out posture didn’t match the crisp tailoring of his suit. He let out a long, heavy exhale. He didn’t get defensive or angry. Instead, a tired, self-deprecating chuckle escaped his chest. “You saw right through me, huh? You’re a sharp kid, Ollie. I just didn’t want you two to feel ashamed of me. Especially since your Aunt Manon…” He stopped himself, chewing on his lower lip. I knew how that sentence ended. He knew Manon was loaded, but since Noah picked the supposedly poor aunt, James didn’t want me feeling like I got the short end of the stick. He held his tongue to protect my pride. The comments were right. He was too good for this world. But if he was so selfless, why had he fought so hard to take Noah instead of me? Our parents had barely spoken to James or Manon over the years. They both lived out of state. I had no clue what their bank accounts looked like. Noah only knew because of the voices in his head. I pushed the questions away. I had spent my whole life accepting whatever hand I was dealt. If my parents gave Noah the world and gave me the scraps, I ate the scraps. I never begged. I never fought for their scraps of affection. Blood didn’t mean loyalty. Relatives could still lie. You could only ever count on yourself. James listened to me. He drove the luxury car back to the rental agency, swapped his designer suit for comfortable, faded jeans and a plain gray sweater, and walked out looking like a completely normal, tired dad. I sat in the passenger seat of his beat-up, rattling sedan. The heater smelled faintly of old coffee. He climbed in, flashing me a warm, goofy smile. “What are you craving, Ollie? Sarah and the girls probably ate already. How about we hit up that fancy burger joint downtown? The one with the crazy milkshakes?” A sudden, sharp tightness gripped my chest. Growing up, money was supposedly tight. Mom and Dad preached the gospel of saving every penny. We were never allowed to eat out. But if Noah whined about wanting a gourmet sundae, they would drop everything and drive him to the nicest diner in town. They never waited for me to get home from school. I only found out because Noah would intentionally bring his leftovers home. He would sit at the kitchen island, scraping the melting, sugary mess into his mouth with painful slowness, making sure I watched him swallow every bite. He would wait hours until it turned to liquid, just to see the hunger and jealousy in my eyes. In my mind, things like diners and milkshakes belonged to a world I wasn’t allowed to enter. James must have asked around to figure out what kids my age liked, just to make me smile. I shook my head and pointed to a dimly lit diner across the street. “Let’s just get some hot soup. I really like soup.” The things I couldn’t have back then, I didn’t want anymore. One day, I would buy everything I ever wanted with my own money. James blinked, surprised, but he nodded. A few minutes later, we were sitting across from each other in a cracked vinyl booth, waiting for our food. “You know, Ollie,” James said softly, swirling his water glass. “You really aren’t anything like what your parents said you were.” His honesty caught me off guard. It also made me realize why he had gone broke renting luxury gear just to win Noah over. If you have to take in a kid that isn’t yours, feed them, and share your home for years, of course you’d want the “easy” kid. He wasn’t malicious. He was just tired. I offered a small, quiet smile. “Time tells the truth about people.” James’s face lit up, the tension finally melting from his shoulders. “Listen to you, sounding like a philosopher. I bet you’re top of your class.” He was right. I was always at the top. Noah was always at the bottom. Once, when we were little, Noah failed a massive math test. He came home, threw himself into our mother’s arms, and sobbed until she bought him a new video game to make him feel better. That exact same day, I brought home a perfect score. I burst through the front door, waving the paper, eager to finally make them proud. But Noah saw it and started screaming hysterically. “Ollie is doing it on purpose! He just wants you to hate me! Make him stop!” That night, Noah got a bucket of fried chicken in his room. I was shoved into the basement without dinner, told to reflect on my toxic, competitive attitude. I learned the rules of the house that night. My excellence was a threat. The only way to survive was to be aggressively mediocre. From then on, I turned in blank test papers. I did the math in my head, wrote the perfect answers on scrap paper to prove to myself I knew it, and handed in nothing. I celebrated my genius in total silence. Looking at James now, seeing the genuine pride shining in his eyes over a simple conversation, my throat locked up. I stared down at my bowl, letting the steam hide the tears that fell silently into the broth. 3 When we finally pulled up to James’s house, his wife Sarah opened the door with a bright, welcoming smile. The moment her eyes landed on me instead of Noah, the smile froze into a tight, brittle mask. She grabbed James by the sleeve and aggressively yanked him into the master bedroom. I stood frozen in the narrow hallway. My chest tightened. I didn’t know if I should take my shoes off or turn around and walk back out into the cold. Thankfully, my two older cousins, Lily and Grace, bounced into the hall. They warmly dragged me inside, fighting over who got to show me my new room and forcing a plate of sliced apples into my hands. As we walked past the master bedroom, the door was cracked just enough for me to hear James’s “complicated reasons.” Sarah’s voice was a harsh, angry hiss. “You were supposed to bring Noah! You brought the delinquent? The liar? How am I supposed to fix a kid like that? I don’t have the energy!” “He’s seventeen, James! His personality is baked in. He’s ruined. We spent all that money renting that stupid car and that suit just to impress Noah, and you bring back the problem child?” James’s deep voice rumbled in defense. “He’s here now, Sarah. Let it go. He’s not what his parents made him out to be. He’s incredibly well-spoken and polite.” Sarah’s anger deflated into a long, exhausted sigh. When they finally opened the door, they found me standing awkwardly near the kitchen. Sarah’s face flushed deep red. She forced a painfully stiff smile. “Ollie. Welcome to the family.” The glowing text flared to life in the corner of my vision. [You can’t really blame Aunt Sarah. Nobody wants a teenager with a terrible reputation. They barely have enough money to survive as it is. She’s just burnt out.] [She’s a good person at heart. She’ll treat him like her own flesh and blood eventually. Noah really messed up. He threw away a family that would have actually loved him.] Reading that, the knot in my stomach loosened. Sarah wasn’t evil. She was just terrified of drowning under the weight of an awful kid. I could fix that. I met her nervous gaze and stood up straight. “Aunt Sarah. I don’t eat much. I will study hard, and I’ll take over the chores. You won’t have to worry about me causing trouble.” Just please don’t hate me. I swallowed the last sentence. As long as I proved my worth, they wouldn’t throw me out. James shot his wife a lethal glare, clearly realizing I had heard every word of their argument. Sarah looked completely lost for words, guilt pooling in her eyes. I didn’t want to drag out the awkwardness, so I picked up my duffel bag. “I’ll go unpack. Just leave whatever needs cleaning for me tomorrow.” I saw Sarah’s eyes instantly well up with tears as she stood paralyzed in the doorway. I ducked into my new room and quietly shut the door, finally exhaling a breath I felt like I’d been holding for years. I looked around. The walls were painted a soft, dusty pink. Faded pop star posters hung near the ceiling. But the bedsheets were a crisp, masculine navy blue. A brand-new desk sat in the corner, and a freshly assembled wardrobe held packs of new socks and underwear. It hit me immediately. This used to be one of my cousins’ rooms. Lily and Grace had shoved a bunk bed into the remaining bedroom just to make space. But this wasn’t done for me. Money was painfully tight, but James and Sarah had emptied their pockets to buy new furniture and sacrifice their daughters’ comfort, all to give Noah the perfect welcome. I was sleeping in the bed they built for him. I was getting his leftovers. Again. Why did he always get the best of everything without even trying? I collapsed onto the mattress. The exhaustion finally caught up with me, and hot, silent tears soaked into the brand-new pillowcase. My cracked phone buzzed aggressively against my leg. It was a barrage of videos from Noah.

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1 Clutching the thin paper of my lab results, I took a deep breath. I forced a playful smile, telling Sebastian that I was pregnant. I joked that if he did not propose soon, my little secret was going to show. Instead of the joy I expected, a mocking smirk spread across Sebastian’s face. He casually leaned back against the kitchen counter. “Babe, stop joking around. You know I’m already married. How could I possibly propose to you?” My mind went completely blank. I stared at him, convinced my ears were ringing. Without missing a beat, Sebastian pulled a leather bound marriage certificate from his inner jacket pocket and tossed it onto the marble island. His name was printed right there as the groom. Beside it, the bride’s name was glaringly obvious. Raina Coburn. He crossed his arms, defending himself with absolute confidence. He told me he knew I loved him for who he was, not for some meaningless piece of paper. Then his tone shifted. He sighed, acting like the victim. He explained that Raina was different. If he did not give her the official title of wife, she would dump him and cut off his funding. Finally, he looked at me with this sickening, pleading expression. “Hazel, you love me so much. You wouldn’t want to see me heartbroken over a breakup, right?” Tears blurred my vision. My throat felt like it was closing up. “But I’m pregnant, Sebastian.” He just let out a indifferent hum. “Right. Go get that taken care of.” He walked over and patted my cheek as if I were a disobedient pet. “I already promised Raina. My firstborn has to be hers.” I looked at the man I had loved for years, sobbing uncontrollably. “Why are you doing this to me?” Sebastian rolled his eyes, looking completely bored. “Hazel, don’t you always say true love is about sacrifice? I have feelings for Raina now. What is the big deal about making a little sacrifice for me?” He leaned in closer. “If Raina and I break up, I’ll be miserable. Do you really want me to suffer? If you actually love me, you’ll tolerate my wandering eye.” The sheer audacity of his words made my stomach churn. I bit my lower lip hard enough to taste blood. “We are done. I want a breakup.” Sebastian froze for a second. Then he burst out laughing, a cruel, grating sound. “Break up? Sure. But you are still getting rid of that kid.” His utter lack of empathy paralyzed me. Seeing me go quiet, his arrogant smirk returned. “I knew you couldn’t actually leave me. Hazel, drop the fake outrage. If you pull a stunt like this again, I will actually dump you. And crying on your knees won’t save you.” My hands curled into tight fists. My fingernails dug so hard into my palms they broke the skin. I stared straight into his eyes, holding onto one last, desperate thread of hope. “This is a sick prank, isn’t it?” He didn’t answer. Instead, his hand reached out to gently stroke my jawline. I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding. It had to be a prank. The Sebastian who loved me fiercely would never humiliate me like this. But a split second later, his hand slid down from my jaw and clamped around my throat. He squeezed, hard. I gasped in pain, my mouth opening on instinct. In that exact moment, Sebastian shoved a small pill to the back of my throat. It slid down my windpipe and dropped into my stomach before I could even process what was happening. I collapsed to my knees on the hardwood floor, clutching my neck, gagging and coughing violently. Tears streamed down my face, but nothing came up. “What did you just give me?” I choked out. Sebastian wiped his fingers on a napkin. “The abortion pill. Raina made it very clear. This problem needs to be flushed away.” My heart plummeted into an endless abyss. Within minutes, vicious cramps twisted my lower abdomen. Huge drops of cold sweat rolled down my forehead. I dragged myself into the bathroom, my body completely giving out. I collapsed onto the cold tiles. My head hit the porcelain toilet bowl with a sickening thud. Sebastian didn’t even check on me. From the living room, I could hear the loud, booming sound effects of his video game console. I was in so much physical and emotional agony that I couldn’t even cry anymore. Right then, my phone buzzed on the floor. It was a text. “Sweetheart, your father and I booked the main ballroom at The Belvedere Estate. Bring your boyfriend tonight.” I wiped a tear away with a trembling hand and typed back. “Mom, I’m coming alone. We broke up.” I had been abducted when I was five years old. It was only three days ago that I finally reunited with my biological parents. They had spent twenty years searching for me. When we finally met, they cried until they could barely breathe. That was also when I found out my real family possessed unimaginable wealth and power. My original plan was to let Sebastian propose today, and then bring him to meet my parents as my fiancé. Now, that dream was dead. The bathroom door was suddenly kicked open. Sebastian marched in, looking annoyed. “Is it out yet?” I refused to look at him. Without warning, he reached down and started ripping at my clothes. I fought back with everything I had left, but I was weak and bleeding. He overpowered me easily. I lay there in a pool of my own blood, trying uselessly to cover myself. Sebastian held his phone up, pointing the camera right at the gruesome scene. “Wifey, don’t worry. It’s gone. I saw it myself.” Raina’s shrill voice echoed from the speakerphone. “Send me the video, Seb. I need to show my friends so we know this little rat isn’t faking it.” She was going to leak the video. Blind panic surged through my veins. I forced myself up, lunging for his phone. But Sebastian just stepped back with a playful smirk. He treated me like a dancing monkey, snapping more photos of my pathetic, bloodstained state. Bitterness and despair choked me. “We loved each other for years, Sebastian. How can you be this evil?” His face went stone cold. “Do you have any idea what I went through for you? I begged Raina for months to let me keep you as a side piece. I didn’t throw you out on the street. I have been more than generous. Why are you so ungrateful?” A gut-wrenching sob tore from my throat. The room spun wildly, and I collapsed back into the blood. Raina giggled through the phone. “You know what, Seb? I finally get it. Hazel is just like that stray dog you took in a few years ago. I really shouldn’t be jealous of a dog, should I?” Sebastian immediately chimed in. “See how forgiving Raina is? Say thank you, Hazel.” I stayed dead silent. Sebastian actually stepped forward, grabbed my shoulders, and shook me hard. “Did you hear me?” I had just lost my baby. Every nerve in my body felt like it was being stabbed with needles. The shaking made me feel like my bones were snapping in half. Tortured by the pain, I squeezed two words through my teeth. “Thank you.” Sebastian finally looked satisfied. He dropped me back onto the bloody floor and walked out. Laying on those freezing tiles, the tears refused to stop. I had always known I was a foster kid. The family that took me in treated me like garbage. They beat me over the smallest things and starved me constantly. Sebastian was the one who noticed my bruises in high school. He started sneaking me portions of his own lunch every day. When the mean kids cornered me and called me a beggar, Sebastian threw punches to protect me. Once, I accidentally broke a plate while doing chores. My foster parents tied me up and beat me, screaming that I was worthless trash. When I didn’t show up to school for three days, Sebastian tracked down my address. He fought my foster parents to get to me. He was just a teenager. He got beaten black and blue, but he refused to back down until a neighbor finally called the cops. I thought about those memories constantly. My love for him was built on a foundation of profound gratitude. I gave him my soul. I gave him every penny I saved. I thought our bond was bulletproof. I never imagined he could become a monster. The bleeding was getting worse. A terrifying weakness washed over me. For a second, I thought it would be easier to just die right here on the floor. But then my biological parents flashed in my mind. They went through hell to find me. We had just found each other. I could not die. I had to survive for them. I dragged my fingers across the tile, desperately reaching for my phone to dial 911. But I was so weak I couldn’t even lift my arm. Just as my fingertips brushed the screen, heavy footsteps entered the room. Someone snatched the phone away. I tried to look up to see who it was, but the world went pitch black, and I passed out. When I opened my eyes again, the smell of cheap antiseptic burned my nose. I was lying in a rundown, back-alley clinic. Sebastian was sitting in a plastic chair next to the cot. He crossed his legs, a twisted smile on his lips. “Hazel, I saved your life again. Why are you always so ungrateful?” My voice was a raspy whisper. “How am I ungrateful?” He ignored my question. He turned to the shady doctor in the corner. “Are we done here? As long as she’s not bleeding out, she’s fine.” The doctor hesitated. “The bleeding has stopped for now, but she needs rest and…” Sebastian didn’t even let him finish. He grabbed my arm and violently yanked me off the cot. I stumbled, barely able to stand, as he dragged me outside and shoved me into the passenger seat of his car. “Where are we going?” I gasped. He didn’t say a word. The car ride was a dizzying, nauseating blur. When the engine finally cut off, I looked out the window. My breath hitched. The Belvedere Estate. This was the exact luxury venue where my parents were hosting their gala tonight. They were supposed to officially introduce me to high society. Why did Sebastian bring me here? Did he know about my parents? Before I could process anything, he dragged me out of the car by my wrist. He kicked open the heavy oak doors of a private VIP lounge. “Raina, I brought the trash.” My heart stopped. I was tossed onto the plush carpet. Sitting on the leather sofas were a dozen women dressed in couture gowns. Raina sat in the center, dripping in diamonds. When she saw me, she dramatically pulled her feet up onto the sofa, acting totally disgusted. “Seb, get this filthy woman away from me. I don’t want to look at her.” Sebastian grabbed a fistful of my hair, yanking my head back. “Don’t be scared, babe. I’ve got her handled.” He glared down at me, his eyes full of venom. “Hazel, why did you go online and post rumors calling my wife a homewrecker?” I shook my head weakly. “I didn’t.” He let out a sharp, mocking laugh. “Who else would it be? Do you really think playing the victim works anymore?” He stood up tall, pulling out his marriage certificate for the entire room to see. “Raina and I are legally married. We are husband and wife. This clout-chaser here isn’t even a decent side piece. Don’t believe a word she says.” To prove his loyalty to his rich wife, Sebastian leaned down and slapped me hard across the face. My cheek burned, but I stayed glued to the floor. I didn’t even flinch. I decided that slap repaid the debt of him saving me back in high school. We were officially even. Raina walked over in her designer heels. She put on a fake crying voice for her friends. “Hazel, Seb and I are married. Why are you so obsessed with destroying my life?” “I didn’t post anything,” I muttered. Raina leaned down, whispering directly into my ear so the others couldn’t hear. “I know you didn’t, you idiot. I made those posts myself. I did it to make Seb hate you. I wanted him to drag you here and humiliate you.” She smirked. “Do you know why I chose this venue? There is a massive billionaire gala happening in the main ballroom tonight. All the elites are here. I am going to make sure everyone in this city knows you are a dirty mistress. You will never show your face in public again.” I stared at her, my eyes wide with shock at her pure malice. Suddenly, Raina shrieked. She threw herself backward and started sobbing. “Why did you bite me!” Sebastian lost his mind. He stepped forward and kicked me squarely in the stomach. I curled into a ball as he rained kicks down on me, treating my body like a punching bag to vent his rage. When he finally backed away to catch his breath, Raina’s wealthy friends swarmed me. They dumped cold iced lattes over my head. They tossed dirty napkins and trash on my clothes. They circled me like vultures, hurling insults. “You delusional gold-digger. You really thought you could marry into Sebastian’s level?” “He’s a VIP guest of Mr. Kensington tonight. You are nothing but street trash.” “Exactly. Look around you. This is The Belvedere. You don’t even belong in the parking lot.” In my hazy, pain-filled state, I felt like a teenager again, surrounded by the bullies at my old school. But the boy who used to stand in front of me was now the one leading the pack. Suddenly, one of Raina’s friends held up her phone. “Hey guys, look what I’ve got. It’s a video of this whore getting her abortion.” The entire group gasped and crowded around the screen. The video played my agonizing screams. But nobody in that room felt an ounce of pity. Their faces were twisted in pure disgust. One of them got so worked up she kicked me in the ribs. “You are disgusting. Trying to trap a man with a baby?” Another girl laughed. “Post it everywhere. Let’s make her famous so guys know to avoid her.” Pure terror gripped me. I scrambled up, desperately trying to snatch the phone, but someone shoved me from behind. Fingers grabbed at my clothes, tearing the fabric. Flashes went off everywhere as they recorded my humiliation. “Beat the homewrecker! Teach her a lesson!” they chanted. Running on pure adrenaline, I shoved through the circle of women and bolted for the lounge doors. But I barely made it into the grand hallway before they caught up to me. They pinned me against the marble wall, slapping me and shoving their cameras directly into my face. Through the gaps in the crowd, I locked eyes with Sebastian. He stood by the lounge door, watching me get torn apart without a single shred of emotion on his face. Just as my legs gave out, a booming voice echoed down the corridor, followed by heavy footsteps. A squad of men in dark suits forcefully shoved the screaming women aside. The girls immediately started cursing. “Mind your own business! Do you want to get sued?” “What, are you sleeping with this dirty mistress too?” “We’ll get you canceled along with her!” But Sebastian’s face instantly drained of all color. He practically sprinted down the hall, bowing his head in extreme submission. “Mr. Kensington! Good evening, sir. I’m Sebastian.” The powerful man didn’t even look at him. His eyes were locked on me. His chest heaved, and he looked like he was on the verge of breaking down in tears. I forced a weak, bloodstained smile. “Dad,” I whispered. “You’re here.”

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1 Ten years later, I never expected to see my ex-wife Victoria again in a hospital. I was hit by an SUV while delivering food. Now a famous surgeon, she looked radiant. But seeing me, she immediately asked why I never found her after my discharge, saying she’d waited all these years. Before she finished, a man in a white coat approached and hugged her—Oliver Belmont, the surgeon who killed my sister on the operating table. I told Victoria she had the wrong person. As I tried to leave, she grabbed my gown, tearing it open and revealing the severe burn scars on my back. Watching her cry at the sight, I felt a deep irony. Years ago, to protect Oliver, she forged my medical records and had me locked in a psychiatric ward. I quietly pulled my gown back up, adjusting the fabric without looking back at her. “Dr. Victoria, if you are incapable of treating me, please transfer me to another hospital.” Victoria completely ignored my request. She lost her composure, stepping directly into my path to block my exit. “Andrew, what happened to your back?” She paused, her voice dropping to a trembling whisper. “How… how have you been all these years?” Just as she asked the question, Oliver finally noticed who I was. “Well, look who it is. Long time no see, Andrew.” He stepped up right beside me, reclaiming Victoria’s hand. He glanced down at the crushed delivery bag on the floor and let out a mocking laugh. “I was wondering why my lunch delivery was taking so long. Turns out you were the driver.” “Makes sense. This is exactly the kind of pathetic work you are suited for now. I know making a few bucks is hard for a guy like you, so don’t worry, I won’t report you to the app for a refund.” Victoria frowned, tugging hard on Oliver’s sleeve. “Stop it. Don’t say things like that here.” She turned back to me, opening her mouth a few times before she finally managed to speak. “Andrew, Oliver is still young. Please don’t take his words to heart.” “As for what happened back then, you have to understand. I had my reasons. I was forced into a corner.” Watching this man and woman perform their little routine, the memories of the past ten years stabbed into my brain like rusted needles. Ten years ago, Oliver was fresh out of med school and had absolutely no surgical qualifications. To fast-track his resume, Victoria broke protocol and allowed him to be the lead surgeon on my little sister’s operation. My sister, Sophie, had just been accepted into an elite prep school. She died on the operating table over a routine gallstone removal. When my mother heard the news, her heart gave out. She died of a massive cardiac arrest. My father broke down completely and jumped from the hospital roof, dying right in front of my eyes. Overnight, my entire family was wiped out. I had no idea about Victoria and Oliver’s secret affair. Frantic and grieving, I tried to go to the police. Instead, I was served with a forged psychiatric diagnosis and dragged away in a straitjacket. In that nightmare facility, I was force-fed heavy antipsychotics every single day. The slightest act of defiance earned me electroshock therapy and hours strapped down in isolation. I endured a decade of absolute hell, biting my own tongue until it bled just to keep my sanity intact. I only escaped because a massive fire broke out in the wing. I clawed my way out through the flames. I survived, but the third-degree burns permanently destroyed my body. And my brilliant mind was gone. I was no longer the fifteen-year-old engineering prodigy who had been accepted into a top-tier university. The memories made my eyes burn. But Oliver just scoffed, entirely unbothered. “Oh, come on, Victoria. Why are you wasting your pity on him?” “He never gave a damn about you. He didn’t care that going to the cops would ruin your entire medical career.” “Besides, what happened to his parents wasn’t our fault. Those two old fossils were just mentally weak.” The fragile thread holding my temper snapped. Before he could spit out another word, I spun around and smashed my fist directly into his face. “Shut your mouth!” “You are a murderer! You don’t have the right to even breathe their names!” The second the words left my mouth, Oliver shoved me violently backwards. The push was brutal. I was already severely injured from the car crash, and the back of my head slammed directly into the sharp corner of a medical cart. A blinding spike of agony ripped through my skull. My legs gave out entirely. “That is enough!” Victoria shoved Oliver back just as he raised his foot to kick me. She looked down at me, her chest heaving in silence. “What happened ten years ago was my fault. It had nothing to do with Oliver.” “You need to calm down. I will find another attending doctor for you.” “Don’t worry about the medical bills. I will compensate you.” With that, she grabbed Oliver by the arm and fled the hospital room like she was escaping a crime scene. 2 I laid on the freezing linoleum floor for what felt like hours. The doctor Victoria promised never arrived. I tried to force myself up several times, but my muscles completely refused to obey. Blood pooled beneath my head, expanding across the white tiles as my vision grew dark and blurry. Just as I was about to slip into unconsciousness, the door was thrown open. Several panicked nurses rushed in and hoisted me onto a stretcher. “Dr. Victoria is unbelievable,” one of the nurses complained bitterly. “We had an incoming trauma, and she forced us to drop everything to check Dr. Belmont for a headache!” “What could possibly be wrong with him? Meanwhile, this poor guy is bleeding out on the floor. Does she not understand triage?” The resident doctor wrapping a tight gauze bandage around my head immediately cut her off. “Shut up! You know exactly who his family is. If you want to keep your job, keep your mouth shut.” The nurse rolled her eyes in disgust but didn’t say another word. I laid on the hospital bed, closing my eyes as a wave of bitter grief washed over me. Victoria hadn’t noticed. Aside from my burned back, I also had ten severely deformed fingers. In the asylum, the orderlies had systematically broken my knuckles with a heavy flashlight, let them heal improperly, and then broken them again. When I was first committed, Oliver and Victoria played the ultimate victims on the evening news. They cried for the cameras, claiming that I had ignored explicit medical instructions and fed my sister prohibited solid food before her surgery, directly causing the fatal complication. Overnight, the public branded me a “murderer” and a “violent lunatic.” Everyone pitied Oliver and praised Victoria for doing the right thing by locking away her deranged husband. But behind the cameras, Oliver had leaned close to my ear, whispering with a sickening smile. “Give it up, Andrew. My family is loaded. Victoria needs me to get everything she wants in this world.” He even pulled out his phone, shoving a picture of Victoria sleeping peacefully naked against his chest right in my face. “You have no idea. She was so needy last night, she nearly broke me.” I lost my mind. I screamed and lunged at him, tearing at his clothes. And of course, the camera crews he had stationed perfectly caught my “psychotic breakdown” on film, solidifying his entire lie. That very night, because I refused to swallow my medication, an orderly shattered my index finger. That was how I survived a decade in hell. It wasn’t that I didn’t hate them. But I knew I couldn’t fight them. They had money, status, and power. Right now, my only goal was basic survival. I didn’t know when I passed out, but the next morning, I opened my eyes to see Victoria sitting in the chair beside my bed. There were heavy, dark bags under her eyes, and the whites of her eyes were bloodshot. She looked like she had stayed awake all night. “Andrew, I stayed here and watched over you.” She reached out, wanting to touch my arm, but her hand hovered awkwardly in the air before retreating to her lap. “I know you hate me. But you still have to find a way to live.” “You obviously can’t go back to engineering. But I can arrange a job for you here at the hospital.” She paused, avoiding my eyes. “A janitor position in the maternity ward. Fifteen dollars an hour, with full medical benefits. It is infinitely better than delivering food, and at least you won’t get hit by cars.” I stared at her for a long time. Then, I genuinely laughed out loud. “You and I both know exactly what happened ten years ago. Do you really want me to spell out your filthy, treacherous little secrets right here?” “Get out.” Her face darkened instantly, the mask of pity dropping entirely. “Andrew, do not push your luck!” I ignored her, closing my eyes and turning my head to the window. I could feel her standing over my bed for a long, heavy moment. Finally, she let out an exasperated sigh and walked out. For the next two weeks of my recovery, she covered all my medical expenses but never showed her face again. I was grateful for the peace and quiet. I foolishly believed the nightmare was over. Until the day of my discharge. I walked out of the hospital sliding doors and pulled up my delivery app to check my shifts. A bright red banner popped up. My account had been permanently banned. Panic setting in, I immediately called my dispatch manager. He answered the phone screaming. “Andrew, do you have no shame? You belong in an asylum, and you dare pretend to be normal to get a job here?” “Corporate sent down an explicit directive to terminate you. Do yourself a favor and lock yourself back up in the loony bin!” He hung up before I could reply. When I tried calling back, the automated voice told me I was blocked. My stomach plummeted. I knew exactly whose doing this was. Victoria. 3 Without the delivery job, I spent the entire week dragging myself across Boston, begging for work. But everywhere I went, people treated me like a walking plague. Some managers were incredibly hostile, literally chasing me out of their stores with broomsticks, screaming that a psycho had no business infecting normal society. Out of options, I decided to head back to the tiny, damp basement apartment I had been renting. But when I reached the front steps, I found all my meager belongings packed into trash bags and thrown onto the curb. My landlord was storming out of my unit holding the last few items of my clothing. When he saw me, he threw my shirts onto the wet pavement, spat violently at my feet, and slammed the heavy metal door shut with a deafening bang. I stepped forward to demand an explanation, but Mrs. Higgins, the sweet older lady who lived next door, grabbed my arm. Her eyes were red and watery. “Andrew, please. Have some mercy on us. Important people made it very clear that if you stay here, our entire block is going to suffer.” I froze in absolute silence. When the neighbors finally dispersed, I gathered my trash bags. Standing on the sidewalk, I realized that in this massive, sprawling city, I had absolutely nowhere left to go. Then, the rain started. It was a torrential downpour. I huddled under the narrow awning of a closed convenience store, staring blankly at the wet, neon-lit streets of a city that felt entirely alien to me. Maybe ending it all right here was the best outcome I could hope for. Just as the dark thought settled into my mind, a wave of muddy water splashed against my boots. I looked up. A sleek, black Porsche Cayenne had pulled up right in front of me. The door swung open, and Victoria stepped out, holding an expensive black umbrella. Seeing me shivering like a drowned rat, she frowned in distaste. But her voice carried a distinct note of arrogant triumph. “Why are you doing this to yourself, Andrew?” “I told you. If you just come back to the hospital with me, even as a janitor, you wouldn’t have to live like a stray dog.” I stood up straight, meeting her gaze. I didn’t offer her a single ounce of the desperate begging she was so clearly craving. My voice was dead. “And I told you to go to hell.” Victoria’s expression turned rigid. Before she could snap back, Oliver stepped out from the passenger side, wrapping his arms possessively around her waist from behind. “Victoria, why are you wasting your breath on trash like this? Let him starve. He will come crawling back to you begging on his knees when he is desperate enough.” Victoria didn’t correct him. She simply reached into her designer purse, pulled out a sleek business card, and tossed it onto the wet pavement at my feet. “Call me when you finally understand reality.” Without another word, she let Oliver lead her back into the luxury SUV. I watched the taillights fade into the rain. I left the card to dissolve in the puddle, picked up my soaked bags, and walked away. I knew exactly how Victoria operated. The moment you refused to bow to her, she would systematically destroy every avenue of survival until you had no choice but to surrender to her control. In that regard, she and Oliver truly were a match made in hell. I had nowhere to sleep. I walked aimlessly through the blinding storm. I didn’t know how far I walked. I walked until the black night slowly faded into a cold, gray dawn. When I finally stopped and looked around, I realized I had wandered all the way to the city’s outskirts. I was standing at the iron gates of the municipal cemetery. Looking at the distant hills where my parents and my sister were buried, a bitter smile cracked my frozen lips. This city wasn’t my home anymore. Everyone I ever loved was buried under this dirt. I used the last ten dollars in my pocket to buy a cheap bouquet of white chrysanthemums from a vendor. But when I approached my family’s plots, I froze. Incense was already burning. A middle-aged man was kneeling on the wet grass in front of their headstones, burning paper money and bowing his head. When he heard my footsteps, he jumped, his eyes wide with shock. Then, he cautiously spoke. “Mr. Andrew?” The moment he said my name, tears flooded his eyes. He literally crawled across the muddy grass toward me, violently shoving a bank card and a small black flash drive into my frozen hands. “Andrew, I was the surgical assistant during your sister’s operation. She died because Dr. Belmont administered a lethal dose of a contraindicated drug.” “He gave me a massive amount of hush money. My kid needed a heart transplant… I was desperate, so I took it. The rest of the blood money is on this card. And the flash drive… it has the unedited security footage of the OR and their text logs.” I gripped the flash drive, my hands shaking so violently I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t tell if it was the permanent nerve damage from my shattered knuckles, or the overwhelming adrenaline of finally, finally securing the truth. I stood in the silent graveyard for a long time. So this was it. After ten excruciating years, I was finally going to clear my name. I was finally going to get justice for the family I lost. 4 Clutching the flash drive to my chest, I sprinted out of the cemetery, heading straight for the nearest police precinct. But I hadn’t even made it three blocks down the deserted road when a blinding, agonizing strike hit the back of my skull. The world went entirely black. When I slowly regained consciousness, the smell of rust and mold filled my lungs. I was tied to a chair inside a massive, abandoned warehouse. A hulking man in a black jacket stood beside me, casually tapping a solid iron pipe against the concrete floor. His face was pure malice. Victoria stood a few feet away, looking down at me with profound disappointment. “Andrew, did you really have to push things this far?” “I am more terrified of seeing you get hurt than anyone else in the world. Why can’t you just be obedient?” I ignored her completely, thrashing wildly against the thick ropes binding me to the chair, desperate to feel my pockets to see if the flash drive was still there. Oliver finally stepped out of the shadows. He crouched down directly in front of me, pulling a small black object from his expensive slacks. He sneered. “Looking for this?” My entire body went rigid. It was the flash drive. The only piece of hope I had left in this miserable world. The blood in my veins turned to ice. I roared like a caged animal, violently jerking my body forward, trying to bite, to headbutt, to do anything to get it back. The force of my struggle snapped the rotted wood of the chair. I crashed heavily onto the concrete floor, still bound by the ropes. Oliver let out a dark, booming laugh. He casually tossed the small plastic drive onto the floor right in front of my face. “You want it so bad?” He lifted his heavy leather boot and brought it down with crushing force, grinding his heel until the plastic and the microchip completely shattered into useless fragments. “Too bad. There wasn’t anything on it anyway.” He turned to look up at Victoria, utterly victorious. “See, Victoria? I told you. He is a treacherous rat. You try to show him mercy, and not only does he spit in your face, he tries to drag you down to prison with him.” “It’s a good thing I paid some actors to stage that little confession at the graveyard. I can’t believe that after a decade in the loony bin, he is still this incredibly stupid.” My heart plummeted straight into the abyss. The very last shred of light in my soul was instantly extinguished. It was a setup. The confession, the evidence, the hope. It was all a psychotic illusion engineered by monsters. From the very beginning, they never intended to let me survive. I looked up at Victoria. Her eyes were red. She stared at me, playing the part of a wounded victim flawlessly. “Andrew, I didn’t want it to come to this. But why did you force my hand?” “Why couldn’t you just show a little empathy for my situation? Why do you have to be so horribly selfish?” Looking at the woman I used to love unconditionally, the woman I would have died for, I felt like I was looking at an alien creature. Empathy? Selfish? Because I wanted justice for my slaughtered parents and my dead little sister? Because I wanted the people who tortured me in a psychiatric ward for ten years to pay for their crimes? She didn’t give me a chance to answer. Having delivered her twisted moral lecture, she turned on her heel and headed for the heavy steel doors. “Oliver, do what you have to do.” “Just scare him. Don’t actually kill him.” With that, she disappeared into the light outside, the heavy doors slamming shut behind her. Oliver turned back to me, his face twisting into a sadistic, ugly grin. “Genius engineer? Prodigy?” He spat. “In my hands, you are nothing but a dying dog.” He flicked his wrist. The thug in the black jacket stepped forward and buried the toe of his steel-capped boot deep into my stomach. I screamed in agony, my body curling involuntarily into a tight ball. But that was just the beginning. The next second, the heavy iron pipe came crashing down on my ribs. I blacked out from the pain, only to be jolted awake by buckets of freezing water. Every time the pipe fell, I could hear and feel another bone splintering inside my body. My consciousness was fading fast. Right when I accepted that I was going to bleed to death on this filthy concrete floor, the piercing wail of heavy police sirens ripped through the air. Before Oliver could even react, the heavy steel doors of the warehouse were violently kicked off their hinges. A furious, booming voice echoed through the cavernous space. “Stop right there! You dare lay a finger on the bloodline of the Sinclair family?!”

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1 In the two years since my son was born, the intimacy between my husband and me completely evaporated. He used to be insatiable, constantly finding excuses to pull me into his arms. Now, even when I initiated the softest touch, he would subtly brush me off. Every time I swallowed my pride to close the distance, he would use the exact same gentle, apologetic tone. “Work is just suffocating me right now, Val.” I actually believed him. I thought the corporate grind was breaking his back, draining him of any leftover energy. That was until I picked up our son early from daycare, pushed open our front door, and froze at the sight of foreign lingerie scattered across our hardwood floor. Seconds later, a woman’s voice drifted from the kitchen. “Honey, your wife spends hours boiling you that artisanal bone broth, and I’m the one who ends up drinking it.” She was holding the exact thermal flask I had packed for my husband that morning. In that split second, the air left my lungs. It felt like someone had taken a baseball bat to my face. My mind went entirely blank. Instinct took over. I hurled my diaper bag straight at them. The woman’s shriek echoed off the high ceilings. But my husband, Dominic, was terrifyingly calm. He just stared dead into my eyes and delivered the final blow that shattered my reality. That was the moment I finally understood. A man’s desire never simply vanishes. It just gets redirected to someone else. … After the chaos settled, Dominic wrapped a plush towel around his waist and nonchalantly lit a cigarette. He watched my bloodless face through the drifting smoke, his voice devoid of any warmth. “Stella is just a bedmate, Val. Don’t make this bigger than it is.” Right on cue, the woman scooped up her clothes from the floor and shimmied into her dress. She twisted her waist, winking at me with sickening playfulness. “Mrs. Blackwood, I swear. Dom and I are purely…” She clapped her hands together, letting the sharp sound hang in the air. “…physical.” She puckered her cherry-red lips, leaning in to kiss his jaw. “My wife is standing right here. Leave.” Dominic shifted his weight, issuing the eviction notice with ice in his veins. “Ugh, men are all the same. Zip up your pants and suddenly you don’t know me.” Stella wasn’t even offended. She just giggled, strutting toward the door. “Mrs. Blackwood, I am so jealous you have such a considerate husband.” Every time she called me Mrs. Blackwood, it felt like she was twisting a serrated blade into my ribs. Dominic stepped closer. He reached out to stroke my cheek as if we were discussing the weather. “Why are you home early? Weren’t you supposed to be at the botanical gardens?” Our platinum wedding band was still gleaming on his ring finger. The same finger that had just been tangled in another woman’s sheets. Bile clawed at my throat. I slapped his hand away with brutal force and practically sprinted to the kitchen sink, gripping the marble edges. “Do not touch me.” Dominic’s expression hardened. The way he looked at me shifted from patronizing to downright cold. “Valerie, do you really have to be this dramatic?” I stopped splashing cold water on my face. A hysterical laugh bubbled in my chest. Since when did Dominic become someone who treated loyalty like a joke? I remembered the early days of his startup. A gorgeous young intern had slipped a hotel key card into his jacket pocket. When he came home and told me, his face had been twisted in disgust. “Cheap,” he had spat, tossing the plastic card straight into the trash grinder in front of me. “People change.” I flinched. It was as if he had read my mind. Dominic offered the words like a bored professor giving a lecture. “You changed too, didn’t you?” His eyes dragged over my body, a flash of undeniable repulsion flickering in his pupils. “You became nagging. Explosive. Exhausted and out of shape. Do you even remember the girl you used to be?” He adjusted his watch. “So if I strayed, you share half the blame.” Dropping that sickening piece of gaslighting like it was gospel, Dominic grabbed his coat and walked out the front door. Water dripped from my chin into the stainless steel basin. I honestly couldn’t tell if it was from the faucet or my own tears. Three years ago, Dominic had been the one to beg me to drop my childfree stance. “Val, a kid is the ultimate bond. Your career is already stellar, we have everything we need. Wouldn’t it be beautiful to create a life together? We’ll show him the world. We’ll be the perfect family.” He broke down my walls, but in the end, I was the only one paying the price. Pregnancy wrecked my immune system. I broke out in full-body hives. My skin stretched until angry purple scars marked my stomach. My edge in the boardroom dulled because I was running on zero sleep. Meanwhile, Dominic remained polished, handsome, effortlessly gliding between his booming business and a quiet home. In the beginning, he tried. He would bring me flowers, rub my swollen ankles, coax a smile out of me. But slowly, the effort became an inconvenience. Suddenly, a piercing scream shattered my thoughts. My heart stalled. I bolted up the stairs. Our nanny was frantic, tearing through the medicine cabinet. “Finn is having a reaction! Someone put peach juice in his sippy cup!” There was no time to think. I snatched my crying baby, whose face was already swelling into a terrifying shade of red, and sprinted to the car. By the time the ER nurses administered the epinephrine, Finn’s color finally started returning to normal. My spine hit the hospital chair, the adrenaline crash leaving me hollow. Then, a pair of blood-red stilettos stepped into my line of sight. Stella slid into the plastic chair beside me. Her smile was the stuff of nightmares. She leaned in, her voice a sickly sweet whisper. “Next time, don’t come home so early. I really hate being interrupted when I’m riding him. If it happens again, I can’t guarantee your little heartbeat over there will be so lucky.” “It was you.” My voice was dead calm, but a feral, violent rage was boiling just beneath my skin. Stella arched a perfectly shaped eyebrow, completely ignoring the accusation. “Finally getting my prescription. Dom was a little too rough with me today, left me super sore. Honestly, I’m kind of jealous you’ve had it so easy these past couple of years.” She stood up, rolling her hips as she turned to leave. I gently handed my sleeping baby to the nanny. Then I walked up behind Stella, grabbed her by the shoulder, and drove my fist straight into the bridge of her nose. “My face!” Stella hit the linoleum floor in a heap. Blood exploded down her chin as she shrieked in absolute terror. The image of my son’s purple, swollen face flashed in my mind. I raised my fist, fully prepared to break her jaw next. But a heavy body slammed into mine, shoving me back. Dominic. “Valerie, are you insane!” “She almost killed Finn!” I screamed, my vocal cords tearing. Stella’s smug, threatening face was burned into my retinas. But Dominic stepped in front of her, shielding the mistress with his own body. His voice was laced with pure acid. “You are paranoid! Nobody touched Finn! Just because your psychotic stepmom abused you when you were a kid doesn’t mean you get to project your trauma onto innocent people!” A loud ringing drowned out the emergency room. My head felt like it was splitting open. When I was sixteen, my mother took a handful of pills because of my father’s affairs. The mistress moved in before the dirt settled on the grave, and my life turned into a living hell. Slaps. Belts. Cigarette burns. I took it all in silence. Until one afternoon, my stepmom saw a teenage Dominic walking me home from school. She cracked me across the jaw. “Little tramp. Starting early, just like your dead mother.” That was the moment my soul fractured. Humiliation and blind rage took the wheel. I grabbed a kitchen knife, my knuckles turning white. But Dominic’s fists were faster. He beat my stepmom until she was a sobbing, bloody mess on the floor. “No wonder Valerie is always covered in bruises,” he had yelled. “I like her, but she hasn’t even agreed to date me! Keep your filthy mouth shut!” My stepmom went to the ICU. Dominic went to a juvenile holding cell. As the cops put him in the cruiser, he looked at me through the glass and smiled. “You never have to be afraid again, Val. If she touches you, I’ll put her in the ground next time.” Seventeen-year-old Dominic was willing to throw his life away for me. Twenty-seven-year-old Dominic just drove a knife into my chest to protect another woman. “Perfect.” The word slipped out of my mouth like a dying breath. A flash of genuine panic crossed Dominic’s eyes. “Val, wait, I didn’t mean…” He finally looked past me, realizing we were standing outside the pediatric ward. He took a step toward me. “Is Finn okay? I just saw the texts.” Before he could reach me, Stella whimpered from the floor, clutching her bleeding face. “Dom, I’m so dizzy…” Without a single second of hesitation, Dominic spun around. He scooped Stella into his arms and rushed toward the trauma doors. He didn’t even look back. The nurses and waiting patients stared at me with profound, suffocating pity. I was the punchline of a very sick joke. Midnight came and went. Dominic never came home. At some point, Stella had found my Instagram. Her stories were public. “Thank you for always putting me first.” “Words aren’t enough, so I’ll just have to show my gratitude.” The photo showed her in a sheer lingerie set, sitting on a hotel bed. You couldn’t see the man’s face behind her, but I knew the exact curve of his shoulders. It was Dominic. The last fragile string holding my heart together simply dissolved. His son had nearly died, and he didn’t care. He humiliated his wife in public, and felt no remorse. All he cared about was burying himself in a younger, tighter body. I stared at my lawyer’s contact in my phone until the screen blurred. Tears dripped onto the glass. I let out a guttural, agonizing scream and hurled the phone at the wall, shattering it into pieces. I couldn’t swallow this. The injustice of it was burning me alive. The very next afternoon, I agreed to meet Stella at a downtown café. She had a stark white bandage across her nose, but her eyes were dancing with victory. She sipped her iced latte and smirked. “Valerie, why haven’t you filed the papers yet? I really didn’t peg you as the pathetic, clingy type.” Sitting under the weight of her mocking gaze, I felt a flicker of shame. But I forced it down, pasting on a flawless, untouchable smile. “You don’t understand our history. You don’t know what we’ve survived together. That’s why I’m giving him a pass.” I played the role of the tolerant, old-money wife, dismissing the mistress like a minor pest. Stella went completely still. Then, she threw her head back and laughed. She looked at me with genuine, unadulterated pity. “Oh, honey. Let me guess. You’re talking about the time he saved you from the wicked stepmother?” My perfect smile froze. Stella pulled out her phone and hit play on an old, grainy video. It was seventeen-year-old Dominic. He looked wild, arrogant, completely alien to the man I married. Standing next to him was a teenage Stella, wearing a skin-tight red dress, looking like trouble. “Listen closely, Dom,” the younger Stella purred. “You get the little honors-student freak to fall in love with you, then you crush her. You pull that off, and I’ll let you take me upstairs.” Teenage Dominic smirked, his tone dripping with bored confidence. “Bet. Give me three months. It’ll be a walk in the park.” The rest of the audio faded into white noise. The room spun. The only thing I could hear was the frantic, deafening thud of my own heartbeat. Stella rested her chin on her hand, soaking in my devastation. “Your grand, beautiful rescue story, Val? It was just a game to get into my pants.” My vision blurred. My voice was barely a whisper. “Why? I never did anything to you.” Stella rolled her eyes. “Because you were the golden girl. Perfect grades, perfect face. I hated girls like you, walking around thinking you deserved the world.” Her expression suddenly twisted into pure venom. “And then he actually caught feelings for you! He broke the bet. You’re the real homewrecker here, Valerie! So don’t you ever sit there and judge me!” The pain in my chest was absolute. My replacement phone buzzed on the table. Dominic’s name flashed across the screen, illuminating my ghost-white reflection in the dark glass. I hit decline. I stood up, my legs feeling like lead. Behind me, Stella called out in a lazy drawl. “Don’t be a coward now, golden girl! Show a little spine! Ha!” That evening, Dominic came home early. He brought a massive bouquet of Casablanca lilies, my favorite. He looked nervous, shifting his weight before finally asking, “Why were you declining my calls?” My eyes were dead. I just stared at him, letting the silence stretch until it became suffocating. Dominic’s pulse visibly jumped in his throat. He looked panicked. “What’s wrong? Why are you so pale?” My fingers tightened around the divorce papers I had drafted that afternoon. “Is there anything you want to tell me?” Dominic froze, then forced a bright, artificial laugh. “Tomorrow is Finn’s birthday. We’re hosting it here. My parents are dying to see him, and all our friends are coming. Tell me what you want to eat, I’ll cook.” His voice grew softer, more hypnotic, as he stepped forward and pulled me into his chest. “Val, you’re the only woman I love. I swear to you, I will never agree to a divorce.” But I wanted out. I bit my tongue. For Finn’s second birthday, I would give him one last day of a whole family. Once the candles were blown out, we were done. Dominic spared no expense, turning the backyard into a carnival. He even posted a disgustingly sweet family photo of the three of us on his socials. But he underestimated how unhinged his little side piece truly was. The morning of the party, I walked out of the kitchen with a tray of drinks and froze. Standing dead center in our living room, surrounded by our guests, was Stella. She was wearing a skin-tight red dress, identical to the one from the video. She had Finn in her arms, smirking right at me. The last thread of my sanity snapped. I dropped the tray, glass shattering everywhere, and lunged at her. I ripped my son out of her grip. “What the hell are you doing here! Get out of my house!” My whole body was violently shaking as I clutched Finn to my chest. Because in that split second before I grabbed him, I saw the way her arms had swung back. She was getting ready to drop him. Dominic shoved through the crowd of confused relatives, his face ashen. He grabbed my elbow, hissing under his breath. “Val, stop overreacting.” I violently yanked my arm away. Tears burned my eyes. “Kick her out! It’s your son’s birthday! Why is your whore standing in my living room?” Dominic’s face darkened into a scowl. “Keep your voice down. She’s already here, I can’t just throw her out in front of everyone.” “Have you ever respected me for a single second of your life?” The stares of our family and friends were burning holes into my back. I felt completely exposed, like someone had peeled off my skin. Suddenly, the massive projector screen in the center of the room—which had been cycling through cute baby photos—went pitch black. When it flickered back to life, it wasn’t Finn. It was security footage of my stepmom beating me in our old kitchen. “Little tramp! Take it off! Let’s see the little slut you really are!” The abusive screams blasted through the surround sound speakers. The entire party went graveyard silent. I felt a phantom blade plunge straight through the top of my skull, nailing me to the floorboards. Dominic dropped his drink. He sprinted toward the media console, desperately yanking cords out of the wall. “Val, I swear it wasn’t me—” Of course it wasn’t him. I slowly turned my head toward Stella. She was smiling brightly, though she gave a mock-innocent shrug for the crowd. Every sound in the room faded into a dull ringing. I handed Finn to a paralyzed friend, and walked straight toward the red dress. While she was still grinning her victorious smile, I swung my arm with everything I had and cracked her across the face. “Ah!” She lost her footing and crashed backward into the glass wine cabinet. Bottles shattered, raining red wine and glass over her head. She tried to scramble up, but I planted my heel straight into her chest and kicked her back into the wreckage. “Enough!” Dominic roared, grabbing me from behind and throwing me backward. His grip was so brutal I thought my shoulder was going to pop out of its socket. He looked at Stella like she was a dying angel. I laughed, a broken, ugly sound, and slapped him square across the jaw. Dominic didn’t hit back. The veins in his neck just bulged as he absorbed the blow. Stella screeched, launching herself forward and shoving me hard in the chest. “Who the hell do you think you are! You want to play the victim in front of your little friends?” Stella screamed at the top of her lungs. “Look in the mirror! You’re the real homewrecker!” Dominic’s eyes widened in sheer panic. He lunged to cover her mouth.

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1 The Winston Group’s grand anniversary gala was crawling with the city’s elite. The charismatic emcee enthusiastically invited Dominic, the CEO, and his quote-unquote “most vital partner” to pour the ceremonial champagne tower. I stood right beside him, watching his gaze soften as he turned to the woman in the pristine white gown. Under the blinding spotlight, he extended his hand to Jasmine. “Jasmine, you have worked relentlessly these past few months. This honor belongs to you.” In my past life, this was the exact moment I played my desperate trump card. I used the tiny, newly discovered life growing in my womb and the guarantee of securing the massive Henderson account to pathetically claw back my place at his side. I thought I had won. Right up until the eve of my delivery, when Dominic paraded a heavily pregnant Jasmine into the Winston family estate and threw a divorce settlement in my face. That was when the delusion shattered. I was never a wife to him. I was a stepping stone, a tool to solidify his corporate empire, meant to be discarded the second my usefulness expired. But I had been given a second chance. And this time, I refused to play their twisted game. … I watched with dead eyes as Jasmine linked her arm through Dominic’s. Together, they walked toward the shimmering champagne tower that symbolized the Winston Group’s crowning glory. Under the brilliant lights, they looked like the perfect power couple. I quietly took a step back into the shadows. Pulling out my phone, I deleted the ultrasound report I had queued up to send him. The ceremony concluded to thunderous applause. Jasmine approached me with a crystal flute of champagne in hand. Her tone dripped with fake apology, but her eyes were gleaming with triumph. “Mrs. Winston, I am so sorry. By all rights, it should have been you up there with the CEO.” Dominic strolled over, his expression utterly indifferent. “Valerie, tonight is a critical night for the corporation. Focus on the bigger picture and stop throwing a tantrum. Jasmine has sacrificed a lot for this company. Bringing her on stage shows the employees that leadership values their hard work.” I looked at him, a faint, icy smile touching my lips. “Am I throwing a tantrum? Miss Jasmine, did I demand an apology from you? You are awfully eager to paint me as the villain. It feels a bit like moral kidnapping, don’t you think?” The smug smile on Jasmine’s face instantly froze. Dominic’s brow furrowed into a sharp V. “Valerie, watch your tone. Jasmine was just trying to be polite.” “Then I thank Miss Jasmine for her overwhelming politeness.” I cut him off, my voice dropping to a freezing temperature. “Dominic, Mr. Henderson just arrived.” Jasmine chimed in with her sickeningly sweet voice, smoothly wrapping her hands around Dominic’s arm again. “Shall I accompany you to greet him?” Dominic nodded, not even looking at me. “Valerie, come with us. It is a good opportunity for you to socialize with Mrs. Henderson.” Looking at the two of them made my stomach churn with physical revulsion. “No thanks. I am not feeling well. I am going home.” Dominic’s voice turned incredibly harsh. “Valerie, do not make a scene at an event like this.” Jasmine’s face scrunched into a mask of exaggerated concern. “Mrs. Winston, tonight is so important. If you leave now and force Dominic to handle the investors all alone, it will look terrible to the board.” I looked at her and let out a genuine laugh. “With such a capable partner by his side, I am sure the CEO will succeed in whatever he attempts tonight.” Dominic’s face turned livid. He let out a cold scoff, refused to look at me a second longer, and turned on his heel, taking Jasmine with him. Watching their retreating figures, the very last agonizing thread of my lingering attachment from my past life dissolved into nothing. “Valerie, it has been years, but you certainly have changed.” A deep, teasing voice drifted from the shadows beside me. I turned around, momentarily stunned. The man leaning against the marble pillar wore an impeccably tailored dark suit. He had forgone a tie, and the top button of his dress shirt was casually undone. There was a lazy, predatory grace about him. I had no idea how long he had been watching. “What? Forgotten me already?” “Gabriel.” I breathed his name. Gabriel chuckled, his eyes glinting with amusement. “Becoming Mrs. Winston has certainly transformed you. You are so incredibly… tolerant.” I suppressed a wave of nausea from my early pregnancy and frowned slightly. “Since when do you enjoy eavesdropping, Gabriel?” A spark of interest flashed in his eyes. He raised an eyebrow and took a slow step forward, closing the distance between us. “Eavesdropping is never quite as thrilling as… stealing someone away. Wouldn’t you agree, Mrs. Winston?” 2 A small, genuine smile bloomed on my face. “You always did have a twisted sense of humor.” Gabriel laughed softly. “Maybe. But the fiery little girl who used to drop caterpillars down my shirt would never have swallowed an insult like that.” I froze. The memories came rushing back in a tidal wave. When we were kids, Gabriel and I were neighbors. He was the quintessential heir to a massive dynasty, always perfectly groomed and aloof. I was the neighborhood terror. None of the other kids wanted to play with me. Only Gabriel. He never got mad at my endless pranks. Even when I pushed him into the mud, he would just sit there, looking up at me with that same easy, indulgent smile. That all ended in high school when his family’s empire collapsed. They moved out of the estate in the dead of night, and I never saw Gabriel again. I couldn’t help but tease him back. “You have a surprisingly good memory.” Gabriel smiled, his gaze softening as he studied my pale face. “You look terrible. Do you want me to give you a ride home?” Before I could answer, Dominic’s voice sliced through the air like a whip. “Valerie, what the hell are you doing?” I turned to look at my husband, my expression completely blank. Dominic’s face was clouded with dark, stormy anger. “Aren’t you going to explain yourself?” “Explain what?” I asked, my tone flat. Gabriel took his time smoothing out his immaculate cuffs. “Valerie isn’t feeling well. I was just offering her a ride home. Don’t overthink it, Dominic. Valerie and I go way back. We were close long before she even knew your name.” Dominic’s jaw clenched. He fought to keep his rage in check as he issued an order. “Go wait for me in the VIP lounge. We will leave together when the gala ends.” The old me would have instantly submitted. But now… “There is no need. Focus on the bigger picture. Go entertain your guests, Dominic.” Minutes later, I was standing outside the hotel. A heavy suit jacket, still retaining a man’s body heat, settled over my shoulders. Gabriel stood behind me, wearing only his dress shirt in the cool night air. “My car is right here.” I pulled the lapels of the jacket tighter around myself. I didn’t refuse. “Thank you, Gabriel.” “You were never this polite when we were kids.” I made it back to the empty mansion. The second I stepped through the grand double doors, my best friend Sienna called. “Valerie, have you seen the trending topics? Are you okay?” I pulled up the social media app. [Winston Group CEO Dominic Caught on Midnight Rendezvous with Innocent Beauty. Intimate Hotel Lobby Photos Inside.] [Dominic’s New Flame Revealed. Billionaire Protects Mystery Woman from Paparazzi.] [High Society Fairy Tale Shattered? Divorce Rumors Swirl Around Valerie.] Beneath the glaring, sensationalized headlines were high-definition photos of Dominic and Jasmine. The angles were undeniably intimate. The relaxed, genuinely affectionate smile on his face was blindingly painful to look at. I used to think he was just naturally cold. I spent years agonizing, wondering if I just wasn’t good enough, warm enough, or perfect enough to melt his icy exterior. Now I knew the truth. His coldness was reserved exclusively for me. Sienna’s voice shifted from frantic worry to absolute fury. “Valerie, I am losing my mind! What kind of sick marriage is this? I don’t understand why you put up with it. What are you even getting out of this?” “Sienna.” I cut her off softly. My voice was eerily calm. “Don’t worry. I am done putting up with it.” There was dead silence on the other end of the line. She clearly hadn’t expected me to sound so detached. “Are you serious?” Once upon a time, I was naive enough to believe I had struck gold. I thought I had actually married for love within the ruthless world of corporate matchmaking. I abandoned my own career aspirations. I chipped away at my own personality to mold myself into the perfect accessory he required. He didn’t want me interfering with the company’s daily operations. Instead, he needed me to navigate the treacherous, venomous social circles of the city’s elite wives, spinning a massive, unbreakable web of connections for his benefit. For three years. I sat through agonizingly boring symphonies with Mrs. Kensington, just so she would whisper sweet things about the Winston Group into her husband’s ear. I swallowed my pride and catered to Mrs. Henderson’s volatile temper, securing her husband’s crucial vote during the board’s most vicious proxy war. I memorized the exact birth dates, allergies, and obscure hobbies of every single socialite and heiress in the city. I delivered flawless gifts and defused countless potential PR disasters before they even sparked. I conquered high society. Everyone praised Valerie as the most elegant, capable wife a billionaire could ask for. 3 Every time I saw Dominic on the financial news, celebrating a newly acquired monopoly and watching his net worth skyrocket, I convinced myself my sacrifices were worth it. I loved him. I was willing to be the invisible woman pulling the strings in the dark. But now… I was utterly repulsed by the thought. A heavy thud echoed from the foyer downstairs. I reassured Sienna and hung up the phone. Dominic was home. Reeking of expensive scotch, he stumbled into the living room, his brow furrowed. He didn’t even notice I wasn’t waiting at the door to take his coat. He violently yanked his silk tie loose, collapsed into the imported leather sofa, and let his head fall back, rubbing his temples with his eyes squeezed shut. I stood at the top of the sweeping staircase, staring down at him with arctic indifference. “Valerie, get me some water.” He gave the order out of sheer, arrogant habit. I didn’t move a muscle. When no glass of water magically appeared, he opened his bloodshot eyes and glared up at me. The crease between his eyebrows deepened. “Valerie, did you not hear me?” I remained perfectly still. Dominic sighed, as if my very existence was a monumental burden. The accusations started spilling out of his mouth. “What was that little stunt you pulled tonight? Leaving the gala without a word? Mrs. Henderson finally graced us with her presence, and instead of acting like a proper hostess, you vanish. Do you have any idea how hard I had to work to do damage control? If the Henderson project falls through because of your petty jealousy, do you know how many millions the company will lose?” Listening to his self-righteous, arrogant rambling, I suddenly wanted to laugh. He knew exactly what I was worth. He knew exactly how much power my social maneuvering gave him. But in his eyes, my blood, sweat, and humiliation were nothing but my basic marital duty. Looking at his flushed, intoxicated face, the horrific memories of my past life flashed before my eyes. The image of him kicking me out into the freezing rain while Jasmine leaned against his chest, rubbing her swollen belly with a victorious smirk. A dark, chilling laugh escaped my throat. Dominic’s ranting ground to a halt. He stared at me in genuine shock. “What the hell is so funny?” I stopped laughing. I slowly descended the stairs until I was standing directly in front of him. My eyes were stripped of the blind devotion and the suffocating tolerance of the past. There wasn’t even any disappointment left. Just an icy, hollow void. “Dominic, you are terrified the project will fail? Terrified the company will lose money?” I leaned down, forcing him to meet my gaze. “But did you ever stop to worry about how your wife… how I… would feel seeing my husband plastered all over the internet with another woman? Did you ever wonder if it would break my heart? If it would completely shatter my faith in you?” Dominic froze. A flicker of guilt flashed in his eyes, but it was instantly swallowed by defensive rage. “The media is just making things up to get clicks. Since when have you been so incredibly irrational? You are actually taking cheap tabloid gossip seriously?” “Making things up?” A bitter sneer twisted my lips. “A CEO and his secretary. Even if you are closely aligned, it is just a working relationship. Does work require you to hold her like she is the most precious thing in the world? You have played me for a fool for three years, Dominic. Don’t insult my intelligence.” “For three years, I have debased myself, playing court jester to those arrogant wives. Without me, there is no Henderson project. Without me, you never would have gotten the Kensington board votes. Without me, Commissioner Davis would have shut down your zoning permits.” “You sit on your throne, reaping all the rewards, and then you stand on stage and give all the glory and respect to your little secretary.” I took a deep, steadying breath, suppressing the violent urge to scream. “Dominic, the free ride is officially over.” He was stunned into silence. It took him a long moment to clumsily rise to his feet. His voice was laced with dark warning. “Valerie, tonight was messy. I admit that. The PR department will scrub the internet by morning. Once the Henderson contract is signed, I will buy you whatever you want. Just drop it.” ‘Whatever you want.’ That empty promise had kept me leashed to him for years. I didn’t need it anymore. From now on, whatever I wanted, I would take with my own two hands. “Keep your money, Dominic. I want a divorce.”

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1 My son had a ceramic piggy bank he had been meticulously filling for almost two years. Ever since he laid eyes on a five-thousand-dollar, limited-edition remote-controlled race car, he refused to spend a single penny of his allowance. To scrounge up extra cash, Darren would even scour the neighborhood after school, collecting discarded aluminum cans to return for the deposit. To support his dedication, I would slip a crisp fifty-dollar bill into the slot every time he brought home straight A’s. As the ceramic bank grew heavier, Darren’s anticipation reached a fever pitch. Finally, on his tenth birthday, the bank was full. Darren threw his arms around my waist, practically vibrating with excitement. “Mom, come on, let’s smash it open together!” But when he happily cracked the ceramic shell with a hammer, the joyful atmosphere instantly evaporated. Instead of five thousand dollars in folded bills, there was nothing but a pathetic pile of nickels and dimes. I immediately reached for my phone to call the police, but my chronically cheap husband stepped right in front of me, grabbing my wrist. “Don’t be embarrassing. You’re going to call the cops over something this stupid?” “It’s a good thing the money is gone anyway! It’ll teach him not to be so greedy and materialistic!” One second, I was completely baffled by his bizarre reaction. The next second, my eyes landed on his childhood friend, Sienna, who was standing by the kitchen island. Wrapped around her wrist was a thick, blindingly new solid gold Cartier bangle. The shattered pieces of the piggy bank were scattered across the hardwood floor. Darren stood frozen in the corner, silent tears streaming down his face. Hearing his own father call him greedy terrified him so much he didn’t even dare to cry out loud. It absolutely shattered my heart. That was his money. He saved it dollar by dollar. He skipped buying ice cream with his friends, dug through recycling bins for two years, and hoarded every cent. I stared at Sienna. She had gotten completely cleaned out in her recent divorce, walking away with zero assets. She was currently living rent-free in a downtown condo I bought before I even met my husband, constantly coming over to our house for free meals. There was no universe where she could afford a solid gold bracelet. “I’m calling the police,” I said, my voice turning to ice. “I don’t want filthy thieves thinking they can walk into my home.” “Five grand is not pocket change, Marcus. Darren bled for that money. I don’t care how much it costs to hire a private investigator, I am getting my son’s money back!” Marcus’s face instantly darkened into a stormy scowl. “Watch your mouth! Who do you think you’re talking to?” “Fine, you want the truth? I took the five grand. Are you happy now?” “Sienna just found out she’s pregnant. I had to get something nice to welcome the baby!” “Instead of blowing that cash on a stupid toy car, Darren can consider it a welcome gift for his new sibling. It builds character. It’ll keep him from growing up into a spoiled brat. I think it’s perfectly fine.” Listening to Marcus justify stealing from his own child made the blood roar in my ears. “You robbed your son’s piggy bank to buy your hometown friend a gold bracelet?” “Do you have any idea how hard he worked for that money? Do you know how many trash cans he dug through to save five thousand dollars?” “Even if you desperately needed to play sugar daddy for your little friend, how dare you steal from your own flesh and blood!” Marcus was a low-level clerk at a logistics firm. He barely cleared four grand a month, yet he had an absolute obsession with playing the big-shot billionaire. When Sienna had nowhere to go after her divorce, Marcus generously waved his hand, evicted my paying tenant without my permission, and moved Sienna into my pre-marital condo. He even paid her monthly utility bills out of his own shallow pockets. When Darren needed fifty bucks for a school field trip, Marcus suddenly had empty pockets. On our wedding anniversary, I was lucky to get a grocery store greeting card. But a luxury gold bangle for another woman? He swiped his card without blinking. If he wanted to play the high roller, fine. But he had absolutely no right to fund his fragile ego with my son’s money! “God, Rachel, why are you being such a tightwad?” Sienna leaned against the counter, inspecting her manicured nails. “Marcus told me you lacked class, but I didn’t want to believe it. Besides, this bracelet isn’t for me. It’s for the baby growing inside me.” “Think of it as Darren buying his future brother or sister a welcome gift. They’ll look out for each other when they grow up. Buying a human sibling for five grand is a way better investment than some cheap plastic race car!” Marcus had looked slightly guilty under my furious glare, but the second Sienna chimed in, his chest puffed out with misplaced pride. “Exactly! I’m doing this for Darren’s own good! You’ve completely spoiled him!” He marched over to the corner, grabbed Darren by the shoulders, and shook him. “Darren, aren’t you being a little too vain?! Wanting a five-thousand-dollar toy! We are a normal, working-class family! Stop acting like you’re some trust fund baby!” Sienna stared Darren down, her heavy black eyeliner making her gaze look venomous. “Darren, you wouldn’t be that selfish, right? This bracelet is for your future sibling. If you act like a selfish little brat, nobody is ever going to love you.” Terrified, my son frantically shook his head, shrinking into himself and staring at the floor. I violently shoved Marcus away and pulled Darren behind me, pointing a shaking finger at my husband. “I don’t care what sick twisted fantasy you have going on with her, but you do not touch my son’s money! I want that exact race car sitting on this dining table by tomorrow evening.” “If it isn’t, I am filing for divorce, and both you and Sienna are getting thrown out of my condo!” Marcus’s face turned purple with rage. He hated that I had humiliated him in front of his precious childhood sweetheart. I grabbed Darren’s hand and dragged him into his bedroom, slamming the door. A perfectly good birthday party, entirely ruined. The next morning, after dropping Darren off at school, I texted Marcus a final warning. If I didn’t see that race car by dinner, we were meeting at the courthouse. By mid-afternoon, I hadn’t received a single text back. Instead, I saw a viral post dominating my social media feed. 2 #DemonChild #HormoneShotSideEffects #SpoiledBratKarma I clicked on the anonymous post. “My hometown guy promised to buy me a solid gold Cartier bangle after my divorce. But his paranoid, lunatic wife threw an absolute fit. She’d rather blow thousands on a remote-controlled car for her brat than let me have the bracelet. She orchestrated a massive screaming match at her kid’s birthday party just to humiliate me.” “I heard that kid was a miracle baby saved by heavy hormone injections. He has zero manners, he’s incredibly stingy, and he cries if you even look at him wrong. He’s honestly acting like a psychopath.” “I woke up with severe stomach cramps at midnight last night. I know that vicious little monster cursed me and my baby. I told my guy I might as well miscarry. The mom pumped herself full of so many stabilization drugs during pregnancy, the kid was born a literal demon.” At the bottom of the screen, the algorithm recommended the author based on my phone contacts. It was Sienna. My entire body started to shake with a blinding, white-hot fury. Anyone in the world could criticize my son, but she was the absolute last person who had the right! When I was eight months pregnant, I woke up with agonizing abdominal pain. I shook Marcus awake, begging him to drive me to the emergency room. Halfway to the hospital, Sienna called him in hysterics. She claimed her husband was beating her and begged Marcus to come save her. “Marcus, please hurry! Rachel just has a little stomach ache, but if you don’t come right now, he’s going to kill me! I’m going to die!” At five in the morning, on a freezing, pitch-black road, Marcus pulled over, forced me out of the car, and told me to call an Uber. By the time the ambulance finally reached me, Darren’s fetal heartbeat had stopped. I fell to my knees in the hospital hallway, sobbing, begging, pressing my forehead against the cold linoleum floor as I pleaded with the doctors to save him. I endured nearly two hundred agonizing progesterone injections and an emergency premature C-section just to bring Darren into the world alive. Marcus didn’t show up until the day after Darren was born. He walked into the maternity ward with a perfectly unharmed Sienna trailing behind him. “Jeez, Rachel, you could have at least texted me that you were going into labor,” Marcus had complained. “Oh my god, why did you take all those hormone shots without asking Marcus first?” Sienna had chimed in. Marcus stared down at Darren in the neonatal incubator, his voice dripping with disgust. “Why did you pump yourself full of those drugs? Sienna said taking too many stabilization shots causes severe brain damage. If he’s defective, we should have just scrapped him and made a new one.” I had lost my mind that day, screaming like a banshee until security dragged them out of my hospital room. If it hadn’t been for Sienna, my Darren would never have been born premature. Thinking about that memory, I quickly swallowed my prescribed blood pressure medication to keep myself from blacking out. I was just about to call Marcus when a video file popped up in our chat. I tapped play. Darren was sitting across from Marcus, his eyes wide with absolute terror. “Darren, I heard you were mad about Auntie Sienna’s bracelet. Did you curse her and her baby to die?!” Tears welled up in Darren’s eyes, but he squeezed them shut, terrified to let them fall. “I didn’t! I didn’t!” “Stop lying! Auntie Sienna heard you whispering yesterday!” “She had to go to the hospital last night because of your evil little curse! What’s next? Are you going to curse me to die too?!” Marcus’s heavy hands clamped down on Darren’s fragile shoulders, digging in hard. Darren sobbed, frantically shaking his head. “Dad, I swear I didn’t.” “So you’re not mad about the bracelet? Do you still want that race car?!” “No, I don’t! I don’t want it! Please, Dad, I don’t want it!” Before the video even finished playing, a text from Marcus chimed through. “Sienna’s stomach was killing her last night. Look at the vicious little monster you raised.” “Consider the toy car his punishment. Besides, he said it out of his own mouth that he doesn’t want it anymore, so you can’t blame me.” He ended the text with a peace-sign emoji. Staring at the pure, unfiltered terror on my son’s face in the video, my grip on the phone tightened until my knuckles turned white. I was entirely done with this marriage. I immediately contacted a few divorce attorneys. My parents had paid the massive down payment on our primary residence, and I had paid every single mortgage installment. Before I handed him the divorce papers, I was going to liquidate and secure every single asset we owned. I was going to make absolutely sure Marcus walked away with nothing but the lint in his pockets! After finalizing my legal strategy, I drove home. The moment I pushed the front door open, I saw a mountain of fast-food trash piled high on the dining table. Sienna and Marcus were lounging on the sofa, watching a movie. Darren was acting like their personal servant, bringing them water and snacks, not even daring to sit down. He just stood frozen in the corner. “Oh, Rachel, you’re finally home. Hurry up and cook dinner!” Sienna commanded. “Ever since I got pregnant, I’ve been craving sour food. It’s probably a boy. Make me a sour tomato soup, and make sure you peel the tomatoes first!” Marcus casually spat a sunflower seed shell onto the rug. “You take forever to get home from work. We’ve been starving for hours. Don’t think just because you’re some manager at a corporate office that you aren’t still my wife when you walk through that door!” “Hurry up and cook for Sienna. It’s her first pregnancy, she needs to be incredibly careful. She can’t do any heavy lifting!” I let out a dark, cynical laugh, remembering my own pregnancy. When I was six months pregnant, I was drowning in mortgage stress. I worked overtime every single day, and when I got home, I scrubbed the floors and cooked the meals entirely by myself. “When I was pregnant, I don’t remember you being this incredibly considerate.” Marcus rolled his eyes, visibly annoyed. He grabbed a handful of sunflower seeds and threw them at my chest. “Did I force you to do the chores? You chose to do them yourself! It just proves you were born with a maid’s mentality. You literally can’t sit still!” “I ask you to make one simple meal and you give me a lecture. You are so annoying.” So my eight years of grueling sacrifice and endless support were nothing but a “maid’s mentality” to him. There was absolutely zero reason to show this man any mercy. “Sienna,” I said, my voice eerily calm. “You have until tomorrow morning to pack your bags and get out of my condo. I already signed a lease with a new tenant, and they are moving in tomorrow afternoon.”

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1 My mother was one of the nation’s most elite genetic researchers. Under her proprietary genetic rating system, she classified my younger sister, Stella, as a “Tier-S” prodigy. Stella had boundless potential and required constant “energy nourishment.” I, on the other hand, was classified as “Tier-C,” a lowly “energy sink.” I was forced to survive on a pitiful fifteen-dollar allowance every month, strictly to prevent my “energy imbalance” from draining my precious sister. I believed it all. Until Stella’s graduation gala. Hidden in the shadows, I overheard my mother pitching to her biggest investor. “Nora is a wildly successful Tier-C control group,” she bragged. “The chronic nutritional restriction perfectly highlights the superiority of the Tier-S gene. Just look at her. Skinny as a rail. She is the most visceral proof of our experiment’s success.” … In the grand banquet hall, the glare of the crystal chandeliers was blinding. I stood in the corner. The old dress I wore had been washed so many times the fabric was practically translucent, the hem fraying at the edges. Stella paraded through the crowd in a limited-edition haute couture gown, her arm linked with my mother, Evelyn. When Stella finally noticed me, a flash of undisguised contempt crossed her eyes. “Oh, you actually showed up?” she asked. Her voice wasn’t loud, but it was pitched perfectly for the surrounding guests to hear. “I figured you’d be too embarrassed to show your face.” Evelyn frowned, cutting her off. “Stella, ignore her.” There wasn’t a trace of reprimand in my mother’s voice, only the sharp annoyance of having her perfect evening interrupted. “Go say hello to Mr. Donovan. He’s the biggest backer our lab has.” A waiter ushered me to a table tucked away in the darkest corner of the room. It was completely empty. That was fine by me. I didn’t have the energy to deal with their pitying or disgusted stares anyway. I was starving. To save money for study guides before my finals and college entrance exams, I had survived on a single plain bagel a day. The second the exams were over, I threw myself into a grueling temp job, working fourteen-hour shifts for two straight weeks. I picked up my fork and wolfed down the catered food, desperately trying to fill the bottomless black hole in my stomach. Right then, from the half-open door of the adjacent VIP suite, I heard my mother’s voice. She spoke in a tone I had never heard from her before. It was cold, clinical, and completely stripped of emotion. “Mr. Donovan, look at the data. Nora is the perfect test subject for my ‘Directed Genetic Resource Allocation’ theory.” My fork froze halfway to my mouth. “Tier-S genes require massive environmental energy to sustain their development. But a Tier-C gene is naturally an energy black hole. It unconsciously drains the energy from its surroundings,” Evelyn explained. “My theory is simple. We artificially and precisely restrict all resource supply to the Tier-C subject. We force her to exist at the absolute bare minimum of survival.” “By doing this, she lacks the strength to steal energy. Instead, her suppressed vitality creates an energy ‘trough,’ allowing the Tier-S gene… like Stella… to absorb ambient energy with maximum efficiency.” A sickening hint of pride crept into her voice. “Look at Nora. The chronic malnutrition has led to stunted growth, a sallow complexion, and a weak immune system. This data eloquently proves that by strictly suppressing the C, we allow the S to thrive.” The food I had just shoved down my throat suddenly turned to molten lead, burning through my insides. I heard the man they called Mr. Donovan let out a booming, satisfied laugh. “Professor Evelyn, you are an absolute genius! This theory is a goldmine!” My mother chuckled, unable to hide her smugness. “To ensure the absolute purity of the experiment, I gave her exactly fifteen dollars a month for living expenses, even during the most critical weeks before her exams.” “She was so starved she passed out right in the middle of the testing hall. She barely made it into college.” “That clinical data is absolutely priceless.” So that was it. My collapse during the exams wasn’t an accident. The hunger, the poverty, the crippling insecurity, and the sheer agony I had endured for eighteen years were nothing but cold, hard data points in her research paper. I was just a successful Tier-C control group. Mr. Donovan sounded ecstatic. “Professor, this theory needs massive backing! I’m adding another five million to your funding! We’re going to market this to every family raising a Tier-S child!” My entire body trembled. The blood in my veins turned to ice, only to boil over into a violent, raging inferno the very next second. I squeezed the glass water goblet in my hand. Crack. The sharp sound of shattering glass cut through the air. Jagged shards bit deep into my palm. Blood seeped through my fingers, dripping onto the pristine white tablecloth one drop at a time, blossoming like desperate, crimson flowers. 2 I shoved the door of the VIP suite open and stormed inside. The sight of my blood-soaked hands brought the lively conversation to a dead, horrifying halt. The fat on Mr. Donovan’s face jiggled as he stared at me in terror. My mother, Evelyn, my father, Richard, and my precious Tier-S sister, Stella, were all sitting there. My eyes bypassed everyone else and pinned Evelyn in place. “What exactly am I to you?” My voice came out ragged, trembling with a primal fury. “A control group?” “A lab rat?” “Or just a bargaining chip to score a bigger check?” Stella was the first to react. She let out an ear-piercing shriek. “Are you out of your mind, Nora? What the hell kind of garbage are you spouting?” She jumped up. “Do you have any idea how important Mr. Donovan’s funding is to Mom? Are you trying to ruin her career?” Evelyn’s face drained of color. But it only took her one second to regain her composure. A flash of utter, ruthless calculation darted across her beautiful eyes, something I had never seen before. Instantly, that ruthlessness was swallowed by a mask of overwhelming, sickeningly fake grief. She rushed over and threw her arms around me, hugging me so tight it felt like she was trying to crush my bones. “Nora! Oh, my sweet girl! How could you ever think that of your own mother?” Her voice cracked with tears, playing the part of the deeply wronged parent to absolute perfection. She gripped my shoulders, turning to explain to the bewildered investor and the rest of the VIP guests. “I am so sorry, Mr. Donovan. Please excuse her.” She wiped a dramatic tear. “This poor child… Her genetic tier is so low, it’s made her incredibly insecure and emotionally fragile. She constantly hallucinates that we favor Stella.” “As parents, our hearts are just broken over it.” My father, Richard, quickly stood up, rubbing his hands together with an awkward, apologetic smile to smooth things over. “Yes, exactly. Her mental state has been highly unstable lately. We were actually just looking into getting her a psychiatrist.” He chuckled nervously. “Please don’t take the ramblings of a sick kid seriously.” Pressed suffocatingly close to my mother’s chest, breathing in the nauseating scent of her expensive perfume, I felt my stomach heave. I struggled, but her grip was like a vice, locking me in place with a terrifying, unyielding strength. Without missing a beat, she took a delicate velvet box from her assistant and snapped it open for the entire room to see. “Look, Nora. Look at this. How could a mother ever give up on her child?” Inside the box, resting on a bed of black velvet, was a syringe filled with a luminescent blue liquid. It looked mysterious and incredibly expensive. She held the vial up high, her face a portrait of tearful devotion, addressing the room but speaking directly to me. “I led my team through countless sleepless nights, pouring my blood, sweat, and tears into developing this ‘Genomic Enhancer’ just for you!” “I never gave up on you, Nora! Once you take this injection, you’ll finally escape your Tier-C destiny. You’ll be just as brilliant as Stella!” In the blink of an eye, the entire atmosphere in the room shifted. The wealthy socialite sitting next to Mr. Donovan frowned, pointing an accusatory finger at me. “This girl is incredibly ungrateful. Your mother sacrifices everything for you, and you throw a tantrum in public?” “Right? Some kids don’t know how good they have it.” “Apologize to your mother immediately. Stop breaking her heart.” The wave of condemnation crashed over me from all sides. I looked at Evelyn’s heartbroken face, then down at the syringe glowing with that eerie blue light. At that exact moment, my heart felt like it had been plunged into a bucket of freezing ice water. 3 I stared dead at the blue liquid. Then, I locked eyes with my mother and her deeply affectionate gaze. Beneath the shimmering tears, I could see it clearly now, the microscopic glint of triumph and venomous calculation. My chest went numb. But instead of fighting her, I slowly forced my muscles to relax. I looked up, pitching my voice to sound almost naive, completely devoid of my previous rage. “If I take this shot… will I really be just like Stella?” “Will I get a five-thousand-dollar monthly allowance too?” “Will I get to wear beautiful dresses, eat until I’m full, and buy the books I actually want to read?” My questions caused a brief, uncomfortable stutter in the room’s atmosphere. The guests who had just been tearing me apart suddenly wore very complicated expressions. Evelyn didn’t hesitate. She nodded, her tone dripping with ironclad conviction. “Of course!” “Nora, the second your genes are optimized, Mom will give you everything you’ve ever wanted to make up for lost time!” “My love for you and Stella has always been exactly the same!” Standing off to the side, Stella scoffed, rolling her eyes. She muttered, just loud enough for me to hear. “A Tier-C piece of trash? Keep dreaming.” Those words were the pin that popped Evelyn’s balloon of manufactured warmth. They also killed the very last, pathetic sliver of hope hiding in the deepest corner of my heart. I reached out and lifted the syringe from the velvet box. The glass was freezing against my fingertips. I looked around the room and said, “Okay.” “To prove I’m not crazy.” “And to finally get everything I’ve been owed for the last eighteen years.” “I’ll take it.” A flash of uncontrollable glee erupted in my mother’s eyes. She even stepped forward, playing the doting parent, to help roll up the sleeve of my threadbare dress, exposing an arm that was terrifyingly thin from years of starvation. “Good girl. It won’t hurt at all. It’ll be over in a second,” she murmured softly. The surrounding guests smiled in relief, acting as if they were witnessing the beautiful, heartwarming redemption of a troubled teen. The needle gleamed under the harsh chandelier light. I positioned it directly over the prominent blue vein in my arm. Inch by inch, it moved closer. The air in the room stood completely still. But right at the exact millisecond the needle was about to pierce my skin… I violently twisted my wrist and lunged at Stella, who was standing right beside me, completely off guard! Moving at lightning speed, I locked my arm around her throat, pinning her against my chest. At the same time, I aimed the tip of the deadly blue needle straight at her smooth, pristine neck. It happened so fast no one had a chance to blink. A bright, wildly terrifying smile stretched across my face as I watched my mother’s expression shatter into absolute panic. “Since this stuff is so amazing, why don’t we let my Tier-S sister try it first?” “Who knows? Maybe this shot will upgrade her straight to Tier-SS!” “Mom, didn’t you just say your love for us is exactly the same? I insist on giving this incredible gift to my little sister!” “No!” Evelyn let out a bloodcurdling, inhuman shriek. She and my father, Richard, lunged at me like a pair of rabid beasts, all pretense gone. Their faces were twisted in pure, unadulterated terror. “Nora! What the hell are you doing?!” “Drop that needle right now! Stella’s genetic makeup is highly delicate! You cannot pump her with unauthorized drugs!” Their frantic screaming. Their utter loss of control. It told the entire room everything they needed to know. This so-called “Genomic Enhancer” wasn’t a mother’s miracle cure. It was poison meant to destroy the rest of my life. 4 Total chaos erupted. The guests weren’t stupid. Even the most oblivious among them could read the desperate panic on my parents’ faces. Their expressions shifted from entertained superiority to utter shock and suspicion. Stella thrashed wildly against my chest, screaming at the top of her lungs. “Nora, you psycho! Let me go! Mom! Help!” It took every ounce of strength I had to keep her restrained. Evelyn didn’t dare step any closer. She was terrified my hand would slip and plunge the liquid into her golden child. Standing a few feet away, her face was ghost-white as she screamed at me. “Nora! Put that down immediately! You are trying to murder your own sister!” I let out a cold, sharp laugh. “Murder?” “Weren’t you just crying crocodile tears, calling this your ultimate act of motherly love?” “What’s wrong? Does your brand of love only apply to specific people?” “Or is your love just literally toxic?” I raised the syringe higher, forcing my father to back away as he tried to flank me. Then, while everyone watched in horrified suspense, I used my free hand to pull my phone from my pocket. Evelyn’s pupils dilated in panic. She clearly thought I was going to play the audio of her pitching to Mr. Donovan. I hit play. But the voices blasting from the speaker weren’t hers and the investor’s. It was a recorded argument between her and my dad. The background noise was muffled, like it was recorded secretly near the kitchen. First came my father’s voice, cowardly and riddled with anxiety. “Evelyn, isn’t the dosage on this Neuro-Suppressant way too high? The warning label says this is strictly for highly aggressive psychiatric patients in Tier-B and above. Nora is barely a Tier-C…” “What if… what if it causes permanent brain damage?” Then came my mother’s voice, cold enough to freeze hell over. “Brain damage is exactly what we want.” “A quiet, mindless control subject has the highest experimental value.” “Otherwise, look at what happens. She actually got accepted into Yale! That is a massive insult to my entire experimental model!” “A high-achieving Tier-C subject muddies my data! It makes the investors question the universal applicability of my theory!” “Get this through your head, Richard. Stella is our only future! Sacrificing one miserable Nora to secure Stella’s success is a completely acceptable loss.” The recording clicked off. The VIP suite fell into a suffocating, deathly silence. Every single guest stared at my mother as if she were a monster wearing human skin. Mr. Donovan’s face was purple with rage. My father collapsed into a nearby chair, his lips trembling, unable to form a single word. As for Evelyn, the elegant, well-maintained veneer had completely melted away, leaving her looking hollow and ghastly pale. She stared at me. She looked like she was seeing me for the first time, or perhaps looking at a demon clawing its way out of the abyss. I thought I had won. I thought this endless, suffocating nightmare was finally coming to an end. But right then, she suddenly started to laugh. It was a slow, eerie chuckle that sounded incredibly sinister in the dead quiet of the room. “You really think this is over, Nora?”

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A notification suddenly popped up in the class group chat. It was a photo. It was a shot of me bending over to tie my shoelaces in the girls’ locker room. My collar hung loose, exposing my chest. The camera angle was deliberate, predatory, and impossible to mistake. The sender was my cousin, Sophie. Her caption was a single word. “Guess.” Every phone in the classroom vibrated in unison. Forty-something heads snapped up, their eyes locking onto me. I looked down at my own screen just as Sophie sent a follow-up message beneath the photo. “Oops, my hand slipped~” That little tilde felt like a twisted blade sliding straight into my ribs. I would soon find out that my sweet little cousin had created five separate group chats. There were 187 people in them. She had distributed over five hundred invasive photos of me. She lived in the apartment building directly across from mine. Her balcony faced my bedroom window perfectly. It took me exactly three months to send all of those people straight to a jail cell or a courtroom. That included my childhood best friend, a boy I had known for fifteen years. I did it because my grandpa, a tough-as-nails combat veteran, taught me a golden rule when I was a kid. He told me that taking a hit in life was fine, but you never, ever swallow their garbage in silence. 1 The photo sat there on the screen. I took a bite of my breakfast sandwich, looking down at the display. It was me. Last week, in the gym locker room. The angle was perfectly calculated to show as much skin as possible without showing my face. The caption read. “Guess who this is :)” That little smiley face was dripping with venom. Every phone in the room buzzed. Forty-something teenagers looked at their screens, then slowly looked up at me. It was like a synchronized military drill. Everyone was staring. Before I could even react, the second message popped up. “Riley, I’m so sorry, my hand slipped~” She actually used the tilde. Sophie. I chewed the rest of my bacon and egg sandwich and swallowed. It was from Mrs. Gable’s bakery down on Main Street, perfectly toasted on the outside and soft on the inside, the savory grease melting beautifully on my tongue. My mom always said this was my fatal flaw. Even if the sky was falling, I had to finish my food first. I set down my napkin and picked up the unopened bottle of spring water from my desk. “Sophie.” She was sitting in the third row. She tilted her head, her eyes curving into sweet little crescents. She looked innocent enough to win an Oscar. “Riley, I swear I didn’t mean to…” The entire classroom went dead silent the second the water crashed down over her head. The silence was absolute. It was like an abandoned alleyway in Old Town at two in the morning. You couldn’t even hear a pin drop. The water washed away the makeup she had spent half an hour applying, turning her face into a muddy watercolor palette. Black eyeliner streamed down her cheeks, her foundation patched and peeled, and one of her fake eyelashes hung precariously off her eyelid, trembling. Her “sweet peach” persona completely dissolved into the puddle on the floor. “Ahhhhh!” she shrieked, her voice pitching high enough to shatter the classroom windows. “Riley, are you insane?!” “Not insane.” I slammed the empty plastic bottle onto the desk. “Just helping you wash your mouth out.” “You… you…” “I’m not great with words,” I said, wiping my hands on my jeans. “But I have great aim.” A few guys in the back row erupted into laughter. Someone yelled out to Sophie to calm down, another whistled, and a few kids were literally slapping their desks in hysterics. Sophie’s eyes went red. Her lips trembled. “I was just playing a joke! If you had a problem, you could have just talked to me! Did you really have to humiliate me in front of the whole class?!” I knew this routine by heart. Provoke, play the victim, and then flip the blame. The desperate influencers hawking cheap detox teas down by the historic botanical gardens had worse acting skills than her. “A joke?” I took a step forward. She instinctively flinched backward. “Sophie, we’ve known each other for exactly three days since you transferred here, and we’ve spoken maybe ten sentences. What part of my personality made you think I’m the kind of person who enjoys being the punchline of a joke?” She opened her mouth but nothing came out. I shifted my gaze to the window seat in the front row. Tyler. I had known him for fifteen years. We practically grew up in the dirt behind the Old Town apartments. We tested into Westside High together and ended up in the same homeroom. He was athletic, possessed a sharp jawline, and half the girls in our grade worshipped him as the untouchable varsity star. Whenever anyone picked on me, he was always the first to stand up. Back in freshman year, a guy threw my backpack into the girls’ bathroom. Tyler chased him down three blocks, pinned him against the brick wall outside the downtown promenade, and forced him to apologize to my face. But this time, he didn’t move. He just sat there, his back to me, his shoulders rigid like a stone statue. I stared at the back of his head for five long seconds. He didn’t turn around. Fine. What was that internet quote? Rely on a man, and you’ll be miserable for a lifetime. I pulled my gaze away and turned to head back to my desk. That was when Tyler finally stood up. He walked over to me. His lips parted, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “Riley.” His voice was low, almost a whisper. “She just transferred here. She doesn’t know any better. Just… let it go. For my sake.” I blinked. And then I laughed. “For your sake?” I looked dead into his eyes. “Tyler, what exactly is your pride worth? Ground beef is five bucks a pound down at the local butcher. Can I trade your pride in for a couple of steaks?” The classroom roared with laughter. Tyler’s face cycled through shades of red and white, changing colors faster than a traffic light. I ignored him, bent down, and picked up a printed copy of the photo someone had dropped. I folded it neatly and shoved it into my pocket. Then I looked up and addressed the entire room. “If anyone took a picture or recorded a video of what just happened, do me a favor and send it to me. I want to keep it for my memoirs.” Harper, my desk mate since freshman year, was the first to start clapping and laughing. The laughter spread until even the guys in the back row couldn’t hold it in. I sat back down and pulled my textbook out of my bag. My palms were slightly damp. Not from the heat. It was the adrenaline. My hands were still shaking from gripping that plastic bottle. I remembered Grandpa’s words. He was the one who taught me how to throw a proper punch. His first lesson was simple. “Riley, taking a hit is fine, but you never swallow their garbage.” I wiped the sweat from my palms onto my jeans. After school, Sophie cornered me in the hallway. She had changed her clothes and redone her makeup, slipping right back into her sweet little “sunshine” routine. But her eyes were totally different. I had seen that look before. It was the look the feral cats in our neighborhood got right before they pounced on a sparrow. “Riley.” She stepped uncomfortably close, her voice sickeningly sweet. “Do you know what happened to the last girl who got a photo of herself sent to a group chat? She cried way harder than you did. She got on her knees and begged me. She begged for three straight days. And do you want to guess what I did? I recorded her begging on her knees and sent it to the entire school.” The corners of her mouth twitched upward as she spoke. It wasn’t a smile. She was actually getting off on the memory. I clenched my fists. My fingernails bit into my palms, sending sharp spikes of pain through my skin. But I didn’t move. She tilted her head, studying me like a fascinating insect pinned to a board. “Aren’t you curious who she was?” “No.” “She was from Seattle. We went to the same school,” Sophie hummed. “I heard she dropped out. They say she’s still in intensive therapy.” She let out a soft sigh, as if she were lamenting a rainy Tuesday. “Honestly, I didn’t want it to go that far. But she insisted on fighting me. When she realized she couldn’t win, she cried. When crying didn’t work, she snitched to the teachers. Tell me, doesn’t someone like that deserve exactly what she gets?” I stared at her. “Sophie, does your mother know you act like a psychopath at school?” She blinked, surprised, and then a genuine laugh bubbled from her throat. “My mom? My mom is the one who taught me. She said, whoever blocks your path, you destroy them.” A cold chill crawled up my spine. It wasn’t fear. It was the sudden, horrifying realization that she wasn’t just naturally cruel. She had been meticulously programmed to be a monster. And that was infinitely more terrifying. She patted my shoulder, playing the role of the loving cousin. “See you tomorrow, Riley.” She spun on her heel and pranced away, her twin ponytails bouncing. I stood rooted to the linoleum floor, watching her disappear around the corner. My phone buzzed. It was a text from Harper. “Riley, check the class chat now!” I opened the app. Sophie had sent another photo. It wasn’t of me. It was a screenshot of a handwritten diary page from some anonymous girl. A single line was circled in bright red digital ink. “I hate her, but I hate myself even more.” The caption read. “Guess whose diary this is :)” That same twisted smiley face. I stared at the glowing screen, my fingers turning ice cold. I closed the chat and immediately texted my cousin, Alex. He was a junior at MIT majoring in computer science. He and his frat brothers were the ones who actually coded our high school’s alumni forum years ago. “Alex, I need you to run a deep background check on someone for me.” “Who?” “Sophie. Aunt Brenda’s daughter.” He sent a string of question marks. “Aunt Brenda’s kid? Isn’t she your cousin?” “Yeah.” “What did she do?” “She set up a group chat specifically to distribute creepshots of me.” He went totally silent for a few seconds. When he replied, it was a voice memo. His usual playful tone was completely gone. “Send me everything you have. IP addresses, group IDs, screenshots. I’m on it.” I forwarded him every single screenshot I had saved from the morning. I stood in the empty hallway, looking out the window. The October sky over the city was burning a brilliant, bruised orange. A commuter train rattled by in the distance, the metallic clatter carrying on the wind. The night market down on Main Street would be setting up right about now. The smell of roasted garlic and grilled skewers was probably drifting down the block. I suddenly really wanted a hot, fresh slice of pizza. The kind right out of the oven, where the cheese burns the roof of your mouth. My phone buzzed again. It wasn’t Alex. It was Harper. “Riley, I did some digging. That group chat has 187 people in it. Tyler is one of them.” I stared at that sentence for ten solid seconds. Then I typed. “Send me the screenshot.” She sent the member list. Member number 34. Tyler. His profile picture was a shot of him playing basketball. I recognized it. I was the one who took it during the championship game last year, right after he hit a three-pointer and flashed a peace sign at my camera. I stared at that tiny circle for a very long time. Outside, the sky faded to black. Another commuter train rolled by, the metallic clatter fading into the dark. I shoved my phone into my pocket and walked out to the bike racks. As I rode down Elm Street, the autumn leaves crunched dryly beneath my tires, sounding like shattered glass. I thought of another thing Grandpa used to say. “Riley, the scariest thing in this world isn’t your enemy. It’s the person you thought would never, ever hurt you.” I didn’t understand it back then. I understood it now. When I got home, Mom was buzzing around the kitchen. The rich smell of beef stew filled the apartment. She took one look at me and paused. “Why are you so pale?” “It’s nothing.” “Nothing? You look like a ghost.” I didn’t answer. I kicked off my sneakers, walked into the kitchen, and stood right behind her. She was chopping onions, not even turning her head. “Hungry?” “Yeah.” “Give it a minute. It’s almost done.” “Mom.” “Yeah?” “If someone was bullying me, what would you do?” She put the chef’s knife down and turned to face me. The exhaust fan hummed overhead. The stew bubbled violently in the pot. “Your Grandpa always said, taking a hit is fine, but you never swallow their garbage.” She looked me dead in the eye. “Did you swallow their garbage?” I blinked, and then a slow smile crept onto my face. “No.” “Good.” She turned back to the cutting board and aggressively chopped an onion. “Now eat.” That night, I laid in bed, staring at the ceiling. I couldn’t sleep. My phone screen lit up the dark room. A text from Alex. “Got the IP trace. The admin’s location is in the Old Town grid. Same neighborhood as you.” I sat up. “Sophie lives near me?” “More than near.” He paused before sending the next text. “She lives in the building directly across from yours. Her balcony has a direct line of sight to your bedroom window.” I slowly turned my head toward the glass. The building across the street. Sixth floor. The light was on. There was a silhouette standing completely still behind the sheer curtains. I stared at that shadow for a long time. She didn’t move. I didn’t move. Then, my phone vibrated in my palm. Class group chat. Sophie. “Good night, Riley~ See you tomorrow :)” The tilde. Always that damn tilde. I placed my phone face down on the mattress and closed my eyes. Grandpa, you taught me that when something is unforgivable, you fight back. Tomorrow, I’m going to show you a war. 2 When I parked my bike at the school gates the next morning, the atmosphere felt toxic. It wasn’t the usual quiet chatter. It was the suffocating silence of a bomb waiting to go off. Harper was waiting for me by the entrance. The second she saw me, she practically tackled me, shoving her phone into my face. “Riley! You need to look at the school forum right now!” The pinned post at the top of the feed read: Riley’s Secret Menu at the Family Diner. I scrolled down. The post was a meticulously crafted fiction, claiming my family’s diner offered “special favors” after hours, and that I was the “star attraction.” It even included a photo of me working the cash register, heavily edited with a sleazy, neon-pink filter to make it look like a cheap escort ad. The comment section was an absolute dumpster fire. “No wonder she always wears tight shirts.” “That side of Old Town is sketchy anyway, I’m not surprised.” “She looks exactly like the kind of trash who’d do that for money.” I scrolled through the comments one by one. My knuckles turned white from gripping the phone. Harper’s eyes were red with fury. “How can they say this?! It’s entirely fabricated!” I didn’t say a word. Because I noticed a very specific detail. The original photo of me at the cash register was from a post I made on Instagram last week. It was locked to close friends only. That meant whoever posted it was on my friends list. I clicked on the original poster’s profile. It was a burner account, zero history. But thanks to the trick Alex taught me last night, I pulled the IP metadata. It matched the Old Town broadband network. Sophie’s house. “It’s fine,” I said, handing the phone back to Harper. “Let’s go to class.” “Fine?! They’re calling you a literal prostitute, and you say it’s fine?!” “If anyone is going to be in trouble over this, it’s them.” I pushed my bike toward the racks. “I didn’t invent the lies, so why should I panic?” Harper froze, then jogged to catch up with me. “What are you going to do?” “Go to first period. What else?” I didn’t hear a single word the teacher said all morning. I wasn’t panicking. I was just trying to solve a puzzle in my head. Why was Sophie doing this? Why did she harbor this deep, psychotic hatred for me? Was it just because our grandfather left a slightly larger chunk of the inheritance to my dad? I dug through my childhood memories. Sophie used to come to our apartment when we were little. She wore her hair in cute little buns and chased me around calling me her big sister. My mom used to peel shrimp for her at dinner, and she would eat until her face was covered in grease, smiling so hard her eyes vanished. She didn’t look like a psychopath back then. When did the switch flip? Probably the year Grandpa died. At the funeral, Aunt Brenda shattered a glass on the floor in front of the entire family. She pointed a shaking finger at my dad and screamed, “Dad was a biased old fool! Why do you get the lion’s share? Is my daughter not his grandchild too?!” Sophie had stood behind her mother, her head bowed, totally silent. I had tried to hold her hand that day. She violently yanked it away. She never called me her big sister again. During lunch, Brooke walked over to my table. She was in the grade below me, the head of the student council’s disciplinary committee, and notorious for taking zero prisoners. Rumor had it a senior tried to cut the lunch line last semester, and she literally picked up his tray and walked away with it, telling him to learn how a queue worked. “Riley.” She dropped into the plastic chair across from me. “Did you see that trash on the forum?” “I saw it.” “Do you know who posted it?” “Sophie.” She blinked, surprised. “Are you absolutely sure?” “I’m sure.” Brooke pulled her phone from her pocket and pulled up a massive file of screenshots. “My cousin sent me these. She lives in Seattle. She was best friends with Sophie’s last victim.” I took the phone. The screenshots showed a locked cloud drive titled The Collection. Inside were dozens of folders filled with invasive photos of different girls, screenshots of desperate text messages, and photos of stolen diary pages. “Sophie ruined three girls in Seattle,” Brooke said, dropping her voice. “The first one transferred out of state. The second developed severe depression and dropped out entirely. The third is the one who wrote the diary. She’s still a complete wreck.” I scrolled through the terrifying digital trophy room, a cold numbness spreading through my chest. “She keeps this cloud drive to catalog her victims. She scrolls through it late at night, like someone looking at a family photo album,” Brooke said grimly. “My cousin said Sophie isn’t right in the head. She’s a sadist. She physically gets off on destroying people.” I handed the phone back. “Why are you helping me?” Brooke looked me dead in the eye. “Because my cousin told me the girl who dropped out is still in intensive therapy. She wakes up screaming from nightmares about Sophie’s face. I refuse to sit back and watch you become another casualty.” I let the silence hang for a moment. “I won’t be a casualty.” “I know,” she said, standing up. “But when you need an army, you call me.” She took three steps, then turned back around. “Oh, by the way. That forum post dragging your name? I already had my cousin forward the screenshots to the Seattle alumni groups. People over there are going to find out exactly what Sophie has been up to very shortly.” I stared at her in shock. “When did you do that?” “First period.” She walked away without looking back. “Stop trying to carry the world on your shoulders when people are trying to break your spine.” By first period after lunch, a new post had erupted on the school forum. Sophie, Do You Have the Guts to Tell Us What You Did in Seattle? Brooke didn’t post it. I did. I organized all the screenshots Brooke gave me and laid them out like a prosecutor presenting evidence to a jury. The Collection drive, her expulsion records from Seattle, the testimonies of the three victims. I kept the sensitive details redacted, but the message was devastatingly clear. The comment section immediately violently turned against her. “Holy shit, she’s a serial stalker?” “No wonder she transferred. She was chased out of town.” “What the hell is ‘The Collection’? That is actual serial killer behavior.” “I thought she was a sweet girl, turns out she’s a poisoned apple.” But there were still a few cowards defending her. “Riley is probably no angel either. Why would Sophie only target her?” “Do you have proof for any of this? Spreading rumors is a crime, you know.” “Takes two to tango. Riley definitely provoked her.” Harper was so furious she was ready to wage war in the comments, but I grabbed her wrist. “Ignore them.” “But they’re—” “They don’t matter.” I stared at the screen. “Only one person matters right now.” Sophie. Half an hour after the post went live, she texted me. “Riley, are you investigating me?” Followed by a smiley face. “I’m so scared~ But honestly, what you found is just the tip of the iceberg. I have so many more pieces in my Collection. Do you want to see them?” I took a screenshot of the threat. Then I typed my reply. “The master password to your cloud drive. It’s the anniversary of your dad’s fatal car crash, isn’t it?” She didn’t reply. I had bet everything on that guess, and I won. I didn’t actually know her password, but I knew her father had died in a horrific wreck when she was twelve. It was the deepest, most agonizing wound in her life. It was the one thing she refused to let anyone touch. I touched it. I pressed my thumb right into the wound. She panicked. That was all I needed. After the final bell, I marched straight to Mr. Brown’s office. He was the school counselor and head of discipline. A forty-something, balding man with a beer belly that looked like he was six months pregnant. His greatest talent in life was sweeping problems under the rug. If kids got into a fistfight, he blamed both of them. If a girl got harassed, he told her to “dress more modestly.” I blocked the doorway to his office. “Mr. Brown, I need to file a formal report.” He paused mid-sip of his coffee, looking annoyed. “About what?” I shoved my phone in his face, displaying the forum posts and the group chats. “Sophie is spreading malicious sexual rumors about me, distributing unauthorized intimate photos, and operating a cyber-harassment ring involving over a hundred and eighty students.” He set his mug down, frowning heavily. “Students have little disagreements all the time. I’ll pull Sophie in for a chat tomorrow.” “A chat?” “Riley, do not blow this out of proportion. It looks bad for the school’s reputation.” I stared at his shiny, balding forehead. It reminded me of a quote I read online: You can never wake a man who is only pretending to be asleep. “Mr. Brown,” I said, projecting my voice so every single teacher in the faculty lounge could hear me clearly. “I am going to the police station right now. And when the detectives come to this school to investigate a massive digital sex crime, I will tell them that you explicitly instructed me ‘not to blow it out of proportion’.” All the blood drained from his face. A young female teacher sitting at the next desk nervously whispered, “Mr. Brown, this actually sounds incredibly serious…” He shot her a lethal glare, then turned back to me, forcing a plastic, terrified smile. “Riley, you misunderstood me. What I meant was—” “I understood you perfectly.” I spun around and walked out the door. “And the cops will, too.” As I marched down the hallway, I could hear him stammering behind me, “Wait—get back here!” I didn’t stop walking. I left the campus, got on my bike, and rode straight to the local precinct. It was a ten-minute ride. I parked my bike outside and stared at the heavy glass doors for three seconds. The golden badge on the wall gleamed in the late afternoon sun. Grandpa always said, If you’re in real trouble, you find the uniform. The badge hits harder than any fist. Inside the lobby, a young female officer looked up from the front desk, blinking in surprise. “You’re here by yourself?” “Yes.” “What do you need to report?” I slid my phone across the counter. “A student took non-consensual intimate photos of me, built a distribution network of over a hundred and eighty people to share them, and has engaged in severe cyberstalking. She also tracked me to my home address and sent me photos of my mother through my window.” The officer picked up the phone, swiped through a few screenshots, and her entire demeanor shifted. “Wait right here.” She disappeared into the back offices. Five minutes later, a man walked out. He looked to be in his forties, with a square, hardened jawline. He was wearing plainclothes, but he carried himself with the heavy, exhausted authority of a veteran detective. “Riley?” “That’s me.” “Come with me.” I followed him into a cramped interrogation room. He offered me a chair and handed me a paper cup of water. “I’m Higgins. You can call me Officer Higgins.” “Nice to meet you.” He sat across the metal table, studying me. “You came down here alone?” “Yes.” “Do your parents know you’re doing this?” “Yes. My mom told me to come.” He nodded slowly. “Walk me through it. From the beginning.” I laid out the entire timeline. Sophie being my cousin, the bitter family inheritance drama, the three broken girls in Seattle, the twisted Collection drive, the locker room photos in the class chat, the escort rumors on the school forum, and finally, the creepy surveillance photos of my mom in our kitchen. I talked for nearly an hour. Officer Higgins didn’t interrupt once. He just sat there, occasionally scribbling notes on a legal pad. When I finally finished, the room was quiet. He looked up. “Do you have the digital proof for all of this?” “I do.” I unlocked my phone and walked him through the digital graveyard. The IP traces, the server logs, Sophie’s threatening texts, the forum archives, the Seattle chat logs. He looked at every single image meticulously. When he was done, he leaned back. “You’ve got a very smart brother,” he noted. I smiled faintly. “He’s an MIT computer science major.” Higgins nodded approvingly. “You mentioned she had three group chats?” “More than three.” I remembered the data Alex had pulled the night before. “She set up five different encrypted groups across different grade levels. The total member count…” I took a breath. “Is over five hundred people.” Higgins’ pen stopped moving. He slowly looked up at me. The air in the room suddenly felt incredibly heavy. “Over five hundred?” “Yes.” He put the pen down, leaned back in his squeaky chair, and stared at the ceiling for a long time. Then he stood up. “I’m taking this case.” I was stunned. “Just… like that? You’re taking it?” He raised an eyebrow. “What, did you want me to give you the bureaucratic runaround?” “No, no.” I waved my hands quickly. “I just… I didn’t expect it to be this fast.” He let out a dry, humorless chuckle. “Kid, do you have any idea what you just dropped on my desk?” “What?” “Cyberstalking, criminal harassment, and the mass distribution of non-consensual intimate imagery involving minors.” He ticked the charges off on his fingers. “With a syndicate of over five hundred participants. This is a severe, high-level privacy violation and digital sex crime.” He looked me dead in the eye. “With a case like this, we should be thanking you for walking through those doors.” Stepping out of the precinct, the late afternoon sun practically blinded me. I stood on the concrete steps, taking a deep breath. The air smelled like exhaust fumes and freedom. My phone buzzed. A text from Harper. “How did it go?” “He took the case.” She replied instantly. “HOLY SHIT! Seriously?!” “Seriously.” She spammed my phone with a dozen firework emojis. Then she sent another text. “Oh, by the way! The video of you verbally destroying Mr. Brown in the faculty lounge got leaked to the forum! The whole school has seen it. The comments are treating you like a god!” I opened the school forum. The pinned post had changed. Riley Destroys Mr. Brown: ‘The Cops Will Hear You Tell Me to Keep Quiet!’ The shaky cell phone video showed me standing in the doorway, while Mr. Brown sat at his desk looking as pale as a ghost. The comment section had done a complete 180. “This girl is an absolute savage!” “Brown finally got checked! So satisfying to watch.” “I stand with Riley. What Sophie did is legitimately evil.” “Where are all the losers who were defending Sophie yesterday? Real quiet now, huh?” I watched the video loop once, then shoved the phone back into my pocket. I unlocked my bike and pedaled toward home. Riding down Elm Street, the autumn wind sent yellow leaves skittering across the pavement. A street vendor was selling hot pretzels on the corner, the smell of warm dough and melted butter filling the street. I pulled over and bought one. I sat on a wooden park bench, tearing off chunks of the steaming pretzel. It was warm. It was perfect. Grandpa was right. Life is like a hot pretzel. It might look twisted and salty on the outside, but if you bite down hard enough, it’s warm and soft on the inside. My phone buzzed. A text from Alex. “I found something else. Sophie didn’t just build five groups. She built a VIP group. Strictly for the most invasive, explicit material.” “How many people?” “Twenty. Handpicked by her. People she trusted to keep their mouths shut.” I chewed a piece of dough slowly. “Tyler is the admin of the VIP group,” Alex’s text read. I stopped chewing. “What did he post?” “Seven messages. The last three were private DMs sent directly to Sophie.” Alex’s digital tone felt heavy. “It was the raw, uncropped photos of you changing in the locker room.” I stared at the empty street in front of me. The commuter train rattled by in the distance. The sunlight reflected off the steel tracks, blindingly bright. A memory flashed in my mind. Tyler, seven years old, grabbing my hand to pull me across this exact street. He had looked back at me and said, Riley, don’t be scared. I’ve got you. His hand had felt so warm back then. Now, there was nothing left but cold, rotten betrayal. “Riley?” Alex called my phone directly, his voice tight. “Are you okay?” “I’m fine.” I tossed the rest of the pretzel into a nearby trash can. “Alex, I need you to do one more thing for me.” “Name it.” “Export every single chat log from that VIP group. Don’t miss a single keystroke.” “Done.” I hung up, got back on my bike, and rode the rest of the way home. The wind whipping past my ears was freezing. But inside my chest, there was a fire burning hot enough to melt steel.

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Opening my eyes, I found myself back on the exact day I was supposed to sign my life away. In my previous life, I listened to my wife, Serena, blindly. But the very second she got my signature on the asset transfer, she conspired with her lover to orchestrate a fatal car crash, sending me plunging into the freezing river. What I could never forgive, what truly damned her in my eyes, was what she did next. She cut off the funding for my critically ill mother’s life-saving medication, leaving her to die in agony. And she ruthlessly terminated our three-month-old unborn child without a single ounce of remorse. Right now, Serena walked into the bedroom holding a warm glass of milk. She forced a luxury fountain pen into my palm, her voice dripping with sickly sweet affection. “Babe, if you just sign this paperwork, I’ll finally believe you truly love me.” I stared at her hypocritical, beautiful face for a few seconds before a cold chuckle escaped my lips. Then, without a moment of hesitation, I signed my name on the dotted line. 1 She leaned down and pressed a kiss to my cheek. “You’re the best husband in the world! I’m going to go make you a special breakfast!” Clutching the documents, she practically skipped out of the bedroom, her footsteps light and eager. I watched her back, the smile on my lips vanishing inch by inch. I picked up my phone. It rang twice before my assistant answered. “Transfer all core patents to my mother’s name immediately,” I ordered. “Empty the corporate liquid funds and route them into our offshore accounts. Work through the night, bypass the standard auditors, and leave absolutely zero trace.” The line was dead silent for two seconds. “Understood, Mr. Wright.” I hung up the phone and let out a long, heavy breath. In this life, I was going to make them pay in blood. During the day, I played the part of the doting, oblivious husband to perfection. Serena cooked, flirted, and chatted with me, wearing her mask of the perfect, loving wife without a single flaw. She even rubbed her flat stomach, her eyes turning convincingly red as she whispered softly. “Babe, we’re going to have a beautiful baby soon. I’m going to give you the healthiest, perfect little angel.” I smiled and agreed, but my eyes were completely devoid of warmth. Deep in the middle of the night, a faint rustling sound woke me. The space beside me in bed was empty. I didn’t move. I waited until she tiptoed completely out of the master suite. Then, I slid out of bed and followed her barefoot, silent as a ghost. The study door was left slightly ajar, a sliver of yellow light spilling onto the hardwood floor. I pressed my back against the wall and held my breath. From inside, I heard Serena’s voice, trembling with suppressed excitement. “He signed it! He actually signed it!” Next came the voice of her lover, Derek, oozing with greed and malice through the video call. “Let me see it!” Just as I thought. They couldn’t waste a single second once they had my assets in their sights. “Once he’s dead, this estate will be enough to keep us living like royalty for the rest of our lives!” Serena’s eyes practically glowed with avarice. Derek’s next words made my blood boil so hot I nearly kicked the door down to snap his neck. “The brakes are already rigged. We just wait for him to take the coastal highway out by Westridge Canyon. There are so many blind hairpin turns out there. Once he goes over the cliff, not even God could save him.” The phantom sensation of freezing river water flooding my lungs and choking the life out of me surged back into my mind. “His mother burned through twenty grand at the clinic just this month,” Derek continued. “The second Gideon is dead, the first thing we do is pull the plug. We can’t have her fighting us in probate court for the leftover assets.” Serena frowned slightly. “Isn’t that a bit too cruel? It is his mother, after all…” “Cruel?” Derek scoffed. “You didn’t think it was cruel when you scraped his parasite of a kid out of your stomach, did you?” Serena went dead silent. I clenched my fists so hard my nails dug into my palms. My heart felt like it was being crushed in a vice, the pain so intense I could barely breathe. I silently retreated to the bedroom, slipped under the covers, and closed my eyes. The next morning, Serena woke up earlier than usual. She stood in my walk-in closet, meticulously picking out a dark grey casual suit for me. With feigned innocence, she casually made a suggestion. “Babe, the weather is gorgeous today. Why don’t we take a drive?” “How about Westridge Canyon?” I sneered internally, but my face remained perfectly calm. I nodded. “Sure. I’ve been exhausted lately. A drive to clear my head sounds perfect.” 2 “Then it’s a date!” Serena’s eyes lit up. She quickly added, “You should take the Aston Martin. It’s been sitting in the garage forever. It needs a good run.” “Whatever you say.” She nodded in satisfaction and turned back into the closet to change her outfit. Serena, were you really that impatient? I pulled out my phone and shot a text to Marcus, my head of security. “Are we ready?” Marcus replied instantly. “Everything is in position.” I deleted the text thread and slid the phone back into my pocket. Before I left the house, Serena thoughtfully adjusted my tie and pressed the keys to the Aston Martin directly into my palm. “Drive safe, honey. I’ll be waiting for you right here.” I leaned down and placed a flawless, deceptive kiss on her forehead. “Okay. Wait for me.” Wait for the spectacular gift I had prepared for you. The sports car roared out of the gated community, speeding toward the western outskirts. I didn’t drive fast. I intentionally idled at several traffic lights, giving Serena more than enough time to confirm I was on the road. Checking the rearview mirror, I spotted a black sedan tailing me from a distance. It was Derek’s men. I let out a cold laugh and slammed my foot on the gas. Half an hour later, I pulled into an abandoned gas station near the canyon, the prearranged swap point. A black SUV was already idling in the shadows. Sitting in the driver’s seat was my most trusted operative, Jax, a former professional stunt driver. “Bail out at the second hairpin turn. Are you sure you can pull this off? They are tailing me tight. We can’t afford a single mistake.” Jax took the keys to the Aston Martin and flashed a confident grin. “Mr. Wright, I could do this blindfolded.” I patted his shoulder, got into the SUV, and drove off in the opposite direction. … At ten o’clock sharp, breaking news alerts flooded every screen in the city. BREAKING: Gideon Wright, Chairman of Pinnacle Group, missing after fatal car crash off Westridge Canyon cliff. Presumed dead. I was sitting in my heavily fortified safehouse. A massive wall of monitors illuminated the dark room, broadcasting live feeds from my corporate headquarters and my private estate. Everything was right under my nose. On one of the screens, I watched the living room of my own house. Serena was collapsed on the sofa, clutching her phone, crying hysterically. “Husband… how could you leave me all alone… I don’t want to live without you…” I watched her performance with ice in my veins. The doorbell rang. Serena instantly wiped away her fake tears and practically sprinted to the door. Derek stood on the porch, holding a bottle of vintage champagne. “Get in here!” She yanked him inside, slammed the door, and ripped the curtains shut. She began jumping up and down like a lunatic. “It worked. It really worked!” Derek wrapped his arms around her waist, a massive, arrogant grin on his face. Suddenly, Serena pushed him away. She marched to the center of the living room, ripped our massive wedding portrait off the wall, and smashed it onto the floor. She stomped on the glass twice. “Just looking at him makes me sick.” She bent down, ripped my face out of the canvas, tore it in half, and tossed it into the trash can. “I’m hiring a crew tomorrow to gut this place. We’re hanging our wedding photos up instead.” Derek frowned slightly. “Gideon is only listed as missing. He hasn’t been legally declared dead yet. We have to wait out the legal probation period.” Serena’s eyes darted around, calculating. “I’ll file a petition for an expedited death certificate. I’ll tell the courts he suffered from severe clinical depression and had suicidal tendencies.” “I’ve already bribed the medical examiner. We’ll have the court order in three days.” “Once I inherit his company, it won’t matter even if he magically survives.” Derek gave her a thumbs-up. “I always knew I picked a brilliant woman.” Serena smiled smugly, wrapping her arms around Derek’s neck. “So… does that mean we can finally celebrate?” Derek scooped her into his arms and carried her toward my bedroom. Sitting in the glow of the monitors, I casually picked up my teacup and took a slow sip. Serena. Derek. Enjoy the high while it lasts. Because the higher you climb, the harder you will shatter when you fall. Especially that brilliant idea to expedite the death certificate. You just saved me a lot of bureaucratic red tape. I picked up my phone and texted Marcus. “Execute the next phase. Cooperate with her legal filings. Let her officially take over the company. Hand the empty shell right into her greedy hands.” 3 Three days later. Serena successfully forged my psychiatric records and cashed in her bribes. The moment the court finalized the death declaration, she couldn’t stop smiling. She genuinely believed the entirety of Pinnacle Group was now her personal piggy bank. From my safehouse, I watched the corporate boardroom cameras in crystal clear high definition. The atmosphere in the massive conference room was suffocating. The founding executives and core management team were all seated, faces grim. Serena slammed the forged will and the court order onto the mahogany table, her tone dripping with arrogance. “Listen up. Gideon Wright is legally dead. As of this exact moment, I am taking absolute control of Pinnacle Group!” Vice President Bennett, a loyal veteran who had built the company alongside me and owed his life to my late father, immediately slammed his hands on the table. “Ms. Serena, the probate process isn’t even fully finalized. You have absolutely zero corporate management experience. If you take the helm now, you will run this company into the ground!” Derek stepped forward smoothly, tossing a thick stack of printed documents onto the table. He offered a slimy, threatening smile. “Vice President Bennett, I have the exact paper trail of the twenty million dollars you embezzled from the corporate accounts.” “The financial crimes unit is sitting in the lobby right now. Keep barking, and I’ll have them escort you out in handcuffs.” Bennett’s face turned ash grey. He clenched his fists and fell dead silent. Seeing him back down, Serena grew even more power-drunk. She lifted her chin and barked her first order. “From now on, the finance department reports directly to me. Not a single cent leaves this building without my signature!” The moment the words left her mouth, several core executives stood up in perfect unison, exactly as I had secretly instructed them days ago. “Ms. Serena, Pinnacle Group is Gideon Wright’s legacy. We only answer to him. We resign.” Without a shred of hesitation or regret, they turned on their heels and marched toward the exit. Panic flashed across Serena’s face. She shot up from her leather chair and shrieked. “Stop right there! Who gave you permission to leave?” “I am the legal owner of this company! If you walk out that door, it’s a breach of contract! I’ll sue all of you into bankruptcy!” Ignoring her completely, the rest of the room stood up, grabbed their briefcases, and filed out the door. Within seconds, the packed boardroom was entirely empty. A heavy, dead silence settled over the room. Serena stood frozen at the head of the table, her entire body trembling with rage. Derek panicked, grabbing her arm to ask what their next move was. Serena just screamed at him hysterically. “How the hell should I know?! A bunch of ungrateful traitors! Do they think they’ll die without Gideon?!” I watched the two idiots panic on the screen. Every single one of those executives was my person. We had an agreement: the moment Serena officially claimed power, they would trigger a mass exodus. Did she honestly think a piece of paper made her a CEO? Absolutely delusional. Without the core management team, Serena and Derek were nothing but figureheads staring at an empty fortress. They were running around like headless chickens. Desperate to project power, they began a suicidal spending spree. They drained the corporate petty cash to buy luxury sports cars and designer watches. They even forged procurement contracts to siphon cash out of the accounts, turning the ledgers into a chaotic mess. Every single illegal transaction they authorized became airtight evidence for corporate embezzlement. While Serena was frantically trying to clean up the operational nightmare, she finally set her sights on my mother. The security feed captured the audio of her cold, emotionless voice as she called the private clinic. “Hello, this is Serena. Stop all billing for Gideon Wright’s mother immediately.” “Starting tomorrow, cut off all imported medications. Cancel the private suite and dump her in the general ward.” The administrator on the other end must have questioned the decision. Serena snapped impatiently. “That old hag is just wasting perfectly good oxygen. She’s better off dead anyway. That way she won’t be around to fight me for my money.” Staring at the screen, I cracked my knuckles, a dark fury simmering in my chest. In my past life, this was the exact moment my mother’s medications were cut. Three days later, her complications flared up, and she died in agony. In this life, the day after I faked my death, my private security team quietly transferred her to a world-class facility in Switzerland with round-the-clock intensive care. But this recorded phone call? This was ironclad proof of attempted murder. Tomorrow was Serena and Derek’s highly publicized “Chairman Inauguration Ceremony.” They had invited every major media outlet in the city. They wanted to officially crown themselves royalty in the grand lobby of Pinnacle Group headquarters. And I was going to make sure they remembered tomorrow for the rest of their miserable lives. 4 The grand lobby of Pinnacle Group Headquarters. Serena and Derek were desperately trying to hold together an absolutely pathetic inauguration ceremony. Pinnacle Group was currently nothing but an empty shell. But driven by pure arrogance, they had invited over a hundred journalists, hoping to use a flashy ceremony to trick new investors into bailing them out. The crystal chandeliers were blindingly bright, but the guest seating was embarrassingly sparse. The few business partners who did show up had dark, unimpressed expressions. The reporters were whispering among themselves, clearly just waiting for the circus to start. Serena clung to Derek’s arm, forcing a confident smile as she walked down the red carpet, though her perfectly manicured fingers were trembling slightly. The moment she stepped up to the podium, the microphone let out a piercing, ear-splitting feedback screech. There wasn’t even a sound technician to fix the backup audio. The entire administrative department had been reduced to two clueless interns. They couldn’t run a bake sale, let alone a corporate press conference. She cleared her throat, forcing herself to speak through the agonizing awkwardness. “Distinguished guests, members of the press. Due to Gideon’s tragic and sudden passing, I will be taking the helm of Pinnacle Group…” Before she could finish her sentence, the massive glass doors of the lobby were violently pushed open. Every single executive and manager who had resigned three days ago marched back into the building, heads held high. The entire hall fell dead silent. Serena’s face turned sheet white. She pointed a shaking finger and shrieked. “What are you doing here?! Security! Get them out!” Vice President Bennett stepped to the front of the pack, his voice booming across the lobby. “We are here to reclaim the legal management rights of Pinnacle Group!” “Serena and Derek have illegally embezzled corporate assets and maliciously terminated key management. Today, all resigned employees are officially reinstated. Furthermore, we have partnered with the board of shareholders to launch a joint legal strike!” Right on cue, the massive LED screens behind the podium flashed to life. They displayed notices of suspended core projects, massive contract terminations from major suppliers, and the staggering resignation logs. Serena’s sheer incompetence and criminal negligence were broadcast live to every camera in the room.

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In my past life, my cousin was brutally bullying an old woman. I stepped in and saved her. As a token of her gratitude, the old woman gave me a seemingly ordinary trinket known as the Siren’s Tear. Riding on the breathtaking, supernatural beauty that pearl granted me, I blew up on social media, became an A-list influencer, and eventually married into one of the country’s wealthiest legacy families. But in this life, my cousin beat me to it. She snatched the Siren’s Tear right out from under me. She smirked, triumphantly declaring that everything that was supposed to be mine would now belong to her. What she didn’t know was that the so-called Siren’s Tear was actually a magnet for pure nightmare. Becoming the flawless, adored darling of the world wasn’t her ticket to paradise. It was the beginning of a very short, very tragic life. 1 When my consciousness slammed back into my eighteen-year-old body, my cousin Jessie was just driving her designer boot into a janitor’s frail ribs. “Are you completely blind? You splashed dirty mop water all over my new skirt! Do you have any idea how much this costs? You couldn’t pay for it if you worked for a hundred years!” It was the exact same scene from my past life. The janitor was a silver-haired older woman. The sharp tip of Jessie’s shoe had caught her shin, and dark blood was welling up from the cut. Terrified of losing her minimum-wage job, the old woman didn’t dare fight back. She just kept her head bowed, muttering apologies in a thick, raspy accent. Jessie let out a disgusted scoff and spun on her heel to leave. In my previous life, I couldn’t stand watching it. I ran to a nearby drugstore, bought antiseptic wipes and bandages, and even grabbed a hot coffee for the old woman. After I handed those over, she wiped her teary eyes, called me a sweet girl, and dug into her faded uniform pocket to pull out a single bead. It was a mesmerizing, iridescent thing, but the material felt cheap. It looked like glass or resin, something you could buy a handful of for a few bucks at a flea market. “This is the Siren’s Tear,” the old woman had whispered. “Once it claims you as its master, you will become the most beautiful woman to ever walk this earth.” Back then, I thought she was just an eccentric lady telling fairy tales. But after that day, I began to bloom. It wasn’t a sudden, drastic plastic-surgery change. My bone structure stayed the same, but my features grew impossibly refined. My skin turned to flawless porcelain, my hair thickened into a cascade of midnight silk. Everyone who looked at me said I possessed an ethereal, intoxicating aura. Soon after, a few casual selfies went viral, and I skyrocketed to the top of the influencer food chain. Luxury brands begged me to be their ambassador, big-shot directors offered me leading roles, and trust-fund billionaires threw mansions and sports cars at my feet just to win a single smile from me. I never expected to open my eyes and find myself back at the exact moment the janitor was bleeding on the mall floor. Only this time, after kicking the old woman, Jessie froze. She whipped her head around, her eyes wide with a mix of utter shock and manic ecstasy. My stomach dropped. She had been reborn, too. Suddenly, Jessie swallowed her arrogant sneer. She practically scrambled to help the old woman up, a sickeningly sweet smile plastered on her face. “Oh my god, ma’am, I am so, so sorry! It was a total accident,” she cooed. “Are you thirsty? Are you hungry? I have a fresh artisanal pastry right here in my bag, please take it!” The old woman kept her head down, completely ignoring Jessie’s frantic brown-nosing, and tried to limp away. Seeing that the nice act wasn’t working, Jessie immediately dropped the facade. She snapped her fingers. The two high school boys who had been carrying her shopping bags instantly stepped up, grabbing the old woman by both arms and pinning her in place. I watched as Jessie aggressively dug her manicured hands into the janitor’s pockets until she found that iridescent bead. I took a step forward to stop her, but the two boys immediately blocked my path, puffing out their chests. With a wicked grin, Jessie slipped the pearl onto her wrist using a piece of string. The glass bead emitted a brief, blinding pulse of light before dimming back to normal. It had bonded with its new master. Jessie strutted over to me, her face flushed with the ultimate victory. “Well, Sydney, looks like the golden ticket is mine this time. Let’s see how you compete with me now.” 2 Jessie and I were technically cousins, but we grew up under the same roof. After my parents passed away in a car crash, my Uncle Robert and Aunt Martha only took me in because they didn’t want the rest of the family gossiping about them. Growing up, Jessie hated my guts. I always got higher grades, I was better at piano and art, and during parent-teacher conferences, the teachers praised my intelligence while subtly hinting at Jessie’s lack of focus. Jessie’s only weapon was her looks. I was aggressively average. I hid my face behind thick, heavy black frames and wore baggy hoodies. Jessie, on the other hand, was the undisputed queen bee of our grade. She obsessed over makeup and fashion, shining like a diamond among the drab, exhausted student body. Whenever the extended family got together for Thanksgiving, the nosy aunts would always point at us and laugh. “Our Sydney is going to be a hard worker, but our Jessie? Jessie is going to marry rich.” Every time she heard that, a smug little smile would tug at the corners of Jessie’s lips. To her, busting your ass for a paycheck was for losers. Marrying into billions was the real flex. So when I, the ugly duckling, stumbled upon the Siren’s Tear and transformed into a world-class beauty who could print money just by looking at a camera, Jessie absolutely lost her mind. I had become an untouchable goddess, existing in a realm a regular pretty girl like her could never even dream of reaching. I don’t know if she made a deal with the devil or found some dark glitch in the universe, but she managed to drag us both back to our senior year of high school. This time, with the pearl on her wrist, Jessie’s transformation began almost immediately. When we returned to school after the winter break, every eye in the hallway tracked her every move. Her skin was luminous. Her dark hair flowed like spun silk, and her eyes held a misty, seductive depth. When the sunlight hit her just right, she looked like a masterpiece painted by a Renaissance master. You could practically hear the hearts of every boy in school flatlining. They swarmed her like bees to honey. Some offered to carry her books, others ran to buy her iced lattes, begging to save her a seat in the cafeteria. Jessie soaked up the attention with soft, teasing laughs. Then, she parted the sea of boys and walked right up to my locker. She slung an arm over my shoulder, leaning in close so only I could hear. “I remember every single one of these guys begging for your number in our past life. How does it feel, Syd? Break’s over, you don’t have your little magic pearl, and you’re right back to being the pathetic, unloved ugly duckling.” I adjusted my thick, black-rimmed glasses and looked at her with a deadpan expression. “Having a horde of desperate stalkers isn’t exactly the flex you think it is, Jessie.” Jessie had been waiting to see me cry, to see me crushed. When my words hit her, her smile vanished. She took a step back, her eyes narrowing as she studied me. A second later, a malicious spark ignited in her gaze. Without warning, she threw herself backward. She tumbled down the short flight of stairs behind her, hitting the linoleum floor with a loud thud. Before anyone could process what happened, Jessie grabbed her ankle, tears streaming down her flawless cheeks. “Sydney, I’m so sorry! I know you’re mad that the choir teacher gave me the solo instead of you, but I swear I didn’t ask for it! You didn’t have to push me!” It took me a second to realize what she was talking about. I had been the lead soloist for the winter concert, but when the principal found out local politicians were attending, the choir director quietly replaced me with Jessie. He had pulled me aside, looking genuinely guilty. “Sydney, your voice is miles better, but we need stage presence. Jessie just… looks the part for the front row.” I hadn’t cared. Honestly, less rehearsal time for me. But Jessie had logged it into her mental ledger as a massive victory over me. Right now, she was sitting in a crumpled heap at the bottom of the stairs, looking fragile, delicate, and devastatingly beautiful. A crowd was already forming. With her slender hands clutching her ankle, her brows knitted in pain, and a single tear clinging perfectly to her long lashes, she looked like a fallen angel. The murmurs in the crowd quickly turned into daggers aimed at me. “What the hell, Sydney? If you’re bitter about the solo, go cry to the teacher. Why assault Jessie?” “Did you think breaking her ankle would magically put you back on stage?” “She’s always been an arrogant know-it-all. God forbid someone gets something instead of her.” The venomous whispers echoed in the stairwell. Jessie looked up at me with those big, tear-filled eyes. If beautiful people were the main characters of the universe, then these bystanders were just mindless NPCs programmed to defend her. Suddenly, the crowd parted. Danny, the star quarterback, stepped through. Danny was the boy Jessie had been obsessively crushing on since freshman year. But he was notorious for being cold and unattainable. Jessie had slipped love letters into his locker three times, and he had thrown every single one in the trash. Yet, in my past life, after the Siren’s Tear changed me, this exact same icy untouchable boy had shown up at my door with a birthday cake, nervously asking if I would wear his jersey to the Friday night game. It was the ultimate humiliation that had driven Jessie insane with jealousy. But right now, the boy who once swore he’d love me forever shot me a look of pure, unadulterated disgust. He knelt down, scooped Jessie up into his arms in a bridal carry, and held her tight against his chest. “I’m taking you to the nurse,” he said softly. The entire hallway erupted in dramatic swoons and cheers, eating up the high-school movie moment. Jessie’s face flushed a deep, pretty pink. The blush made her look even more radiant. She buried her face into Danny’s chest, throwing a triumphant, mocking glance at me over his shoulder. As Danny carried her away and the crowd dispersed, I stood alone in the hallway. Honestly, I had considered warning her about the pearl. I wanted to tell her that the Siren’s Tear wasn’t a blessing. It was a curse wrapped in a pretty bow. Whatever worldly benefits it gave you through beauty, it demanded back a tenfold price in blood and terror. If Jessie hadn’t dragged us back in time, there was a very real chance my past life would have ended with me brutally murdered on a private island. But watching her giggle in Danny’s arms, I swallowed my warning. Karma had set the table. Let her eat what she served. 3 Truthfully, I loved my life without the magic pearl. In my past life, the intoxicating rush of sudden fame completely derailed me. I drowned in the glitz and glamour of being a mega-influencer, and my grades flatlined. Uncle Robert and Aunt Martha, smelling the cash, pressured me to monetize my face immediately. They signed me up for endless brand deals, forcing me to hustle from one exhausting photo shoot to another. Billionaires invited me to their exclusive private dinners, treating me like a shiny new hood ornament to show off to their business partners. Looking back, the nights I spent draped in couture, stepping out of limos into VIP lounges, must have made Jessie want to claw her own skin off. She used to stay up until 3 AM reading the millions of comments worshipping my “god-tier genetics,” wishing she had been the one to help that dirty old janitor. But she didn’t know the reality of that life. I bombed my SATs. Uncle Robert told me college was a waste of time when I was already making millions. The grueling schedules and the internet trolls spreading vicious, fabricated rumors about my sex life destroyed my mental health. I relied on heavier and heavier prescription pills just to sleep for four hours. At those exclusive dinners, middle-aged CEOs made a game out of getting me blackout drunk, waiting until I was too dizzy to push their sweaty hands off my thighs. An Oscar-winning director sent me a script for a blockbuster movie, but folded inside the pages was the keycard to his hotel room. My aunt and uncle knew exactly what it meant, yet they pushed me to go. They even considered slipping something into my drink to make me compliant. Jessie knew none of this. She was too busy swiping my credit card, living like a royal in the Beverly Hills mansion I bought, whining about how unfair it was that I was the famous one. This time, I refused to let history repeat itself. I realized the hard way that beauty without power is just bait in shark-infested waters. But real knowledge? A degree? Skills? That was armor no one could strip away. So, I buried myself in my textbooks. Without photo shoots and stalkers distracting me, my intellect sharpened into a weapon. A week later, at the winter concert, Jessie stood center stage in a stunning white tulle dress. Under the soft blue spotlights, she looked like a pristine white swan gliding over a lake. She couldn’t hit a high note to save her life, so the choir director had secretly pre-recorded my voice and let her lip-sync. She had even wrapped a thick, dramatic bandage around her perfectly fine ankle, making sure to limp tragically when she bowed. What’s more captivating than a beautiful swan? A beautiful, wounded swan. The school was completely under her spell, which meant the hostility toward me reached a fever pitch. Jessie struck while the iron was hot. She began leaking little sob stories to her orbiters. She claimed I was pathologically jealous of her looks, constantly lying to our aunt and uncle to get her grounded. She blamed her failing grades on me, telling people I deliberately gave her the wrong study guides. After her tearful confessions, she would always add, “But please don’t be mean to Sydney. She’s my cousin. I forgive her.” It was a masterclass in manipulation. The boys’ protective instincts went into overdrive. They became crusaders for their fragile, innocent goddess, determined to punish the wicked witch. Thumbtacks and dead insects started appearing in my locker. I came back from the bathroom to find my backpack thrown out a third-story window. Someone spray-painted “SYDNEY IS A DIRTY TRAMP” in neon red letters on the brick wall by the gym. Whoever bullied me the most got the ultimate reward: a soft, teary-eyed smile from Jessie and a whispered, “Thank you for protecting me. You’re so brave.” When no one was looking, she’d turn to me with a wicked smirk. “Look at that, Syd. I don’t even have to lift a finger to ruin your life.” Of all my tormentors, Danny was the most vicious. In my past life, I had asked him what he liked about me. He had looked me dead in the eye and said, “I love everything about you, Sydney. Your brain, your humor, your kindness. Everything.” He never mentioned my looks. Now, my brain, humor, and kindness were exactly the same. Yet Danny ordered his football buddies to shove me onto the wet tiles of the locker room. He stepped on my hand with his heavy cleats, grinding down hard. “If I hear you even look at Jessie the wrong way,” he growled, “I’ll snap your fingers.” Through the blinding pain, a dark, cynical laugh forced its way out of my throat. “Do you really love her, Danny?” He blinked, thrown off by the question, before sneering. “Obviously.” “What do you love about her?” He paused, then echoed his words from another lifetime. “I love everything about her.” I laughed so hard tears pricked my eyes. Oh, Jessie. Beauty is the ultimate blindfold. Whoever wears it can never see the world for what it truly is. When I got home that day, Jessie noticed my bruised, swollen hand. She sipped her green juice and smiled. “How does it feel? You were so in love with Danny in the last life. Getting stabbed in the back by your soulmate… hurts, doesn’t it? Tell me all about it.” She was starving for my misery to validate her choices. I didn’t say a word. I just dropped my gaze to the pearl resting on her wrist. She noticed my stare and yanked her arm back. “Don’t even think about stealing it. You know damn well it won’t work.” I knew. Once the Siren’s Tear bonded, it was locked to the host’s soul. I knew this because Jessie had tried to steal it from me in the past life. She had drugged me, cut the string, and taken it, but the moment she walked out the door, the pearl materialized right back on my wrist. But I didn’t want it back. I was looking at the mesmerizing, swirling colors inside the glass. A faint, jagged black vein had appeared in the center of the bead. It was the mark of the curse, the physical manifestation of impending doom. And it was getting darker by the day. Jessie followed me up the stairs, still taunting me, right up until I pulled an envelope out of my battered backpack. It bore the crest of Columbia University. In my past life, I never made it to college. This time, my early acceptance letter was in my hands. “Oh, look at that,” Jessie scoffed, though a flicker of annoyance crossed her eyes. “Going to an Ivy League. I guess without your magic cheat code, you have to grind yourself to the bone just to end up as some corporate drone making a flat salary. I’ll make your yearly income in one sponsored post.” Jessie was desperate to be famous. Her big break came sooner than expected. The school was filming a promotional video, and the principal, still mesmerized by her concert performance, personally selected her as the lead. In the video, Jessie wore a simple varsity jacket, her hair tied back in a messy ponytail. But her devastating, unearthly beauty pierced right through the screen. She looked like the purest, most unattainable fantasy of youth. The video hit TikTok and YouTube. It exploded. Overnight, she was crowned the internet’s newest “It Girl,” gaining millions of followers in a matter of days. Agents, talent scouts, Hollywood producers, and luxury brands flooded her DMs. Jessie eagerly dove headfirst into the life I had lived. But she quickly hit a brick wall: the reality of the work. To shoot a high-end commercial, she had to stand in six-inch stilettos for fourteen hours straight under blistering studio lights, holding a frozen smile while a director yelled at her. Movie sets were worse. Being forced into freezing water tanks while on her period was the baseline. Creepy producers cornered her in trailers, heavily implying that her career would disappear if she didn’t sleep with them. For someone determined to build an empire, this was just the price of admission. But Jessie refused to suffer. In her mind, a true beauty was meant to be pampered, kept in a velvet box, and fed peeled grapes. She broke down crying to Aunt Martha and Uncle Robert. “Working hard is for losers. I don’t want to do this anymore! Why should I kill myself working when I can use this fame to catch a billionaire?” Since Jessie was their biological daughter, they didn’t treat her like the cash cow they had turned me into. They stroked her hair and fully supported her plan. Jessie began meticulously filtering through her wealthy suitors. A high school star like Danny was practically a peasant to her now. She was fending off advances from platinum-selling artists, tech CEOs, and old-money aristocrats. I already knew exactly who she was going to pick. Sure enough, weeks later, the tabloids exploded with leaked paparazzi footage of Jessie dining with Preston Kensington, the second son of the notoriously powerful Kensington empire. In the video, Preston—usually known for his icy, ruthless corporate persona—was practically a golden retriever around her. He opened her car door, draped his bespoke suit jacket over her shoulders, and held her hand as they walked into a Michelin-starred restaurant, gazing at her like she was the only woman on earth. At that exact moment, I was sitting in a quiet, sunlit library at Columbia University, scrolling through the article on my laptop. A group of girls at the next table were whispering excitedly. “Oh my god, Preston Kensington. He’s literally American royalty. Yale grad, trust fund baby. Jessie is living the dream.” One girl rolled her eyes. “She’s just an Instagram model with a pretty face. No way a Kensington actually puts a ring on that.” Another quickly shot back, “Are you blind? Look at her! Men would start wars for a face like that.” I closed my laptop. People were so delightfully naive. In my past life, I was the one holding Preston Kensington’s hand. The day our relationship went public, Jessie locked herself in her room and smashed every mirror, perfume bottle, and piece of electronics she owned. She felt she had definitively lost. No matter what she did, she could never marry a man more powerful than Preston. The old family prophecy—that she would marry rich while I worked hard—felt like a cruel joke. It was during my romantic “getaway” with Preston that Jessie somehow found the loophole to rewind time. … Even though Jessie had been nothing but a nightmare to me, I genuinely owed her a massive thank you. Because if she hadn’t reset the timeline, I would have died a horrific, bloody death at Preston’s hands on a private island in the Caribbean. … Because of that unintentional rescue, I decided to give her one final warning. During the summer break, as Jessie was excitedly packing her Louis Vuitton trunks to move into Preston’s cliffside mansion, I leaned against her doorframe. “Rich people don’t get rich by being stupid, Jessie,” I said quietly. “At their level of power, beauty isn’t a scarce resource. They can buy any model on earth. Think about it for a second—why would Preston Kensington actually marry you?” The words barely left my mouth before—smack! Jessie slapped me so hard my glasses flew off my face. “Who the hell do you think you are, Sydney?” she shrieked, her face twisted in ugly rage. “Are you implying I’m not good enough for him? You’re just sick to your stomach because I’m getting the billionaire and you’re getting a student loan!” I rubbed my stinging cheek. I wanted to tell her that Preston never planned on marrying me, either. In my past life, I always had a gut feeling something was off about him. But his family’s conglomerate owned the parent companies of half my brand deals. If I dumped him, my career was over. So, when he asked me to fly to his private island in the Caribbean for a “romantic vacation and exclusive photoshoot,” I went. By the time the alarm bells in my head got loud enough for me to try and run, it was too late. A needle plunged into my neck. I woke up strapped to an altar in a damp, stone cellar under the island estate. I was stripped bare, surrounded by chanting figures in robes. …

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