Category: English

Victoria was pregnant with her male assistant’s child. On our ninth wedding anniversary, she brought him home. Her instructions were delivered with an air of casual indifference. “Alex has a picky palate. From now on, his three meals a day can’t be repetitive.” “He’s a light sleeper, and you snore too loudly. Pack your things and move to the guest room.” I didn’t say a word. I just picked up the suitcase I had already packed and walked calmly toward the front door. The butler tried to intervene, but a cold sneer from Victoria stopped him in his tracks. “Let him go,” she said, her voice dripping with contempt. “He’ll come crawling back like a dog within three days.” Her words drew laughter from our guests. Right there, in front of me, they made a ten-million-dollar bet on how long I would last. The consensus was that I wouldn’t even make it through the night before I was back, begging her to let me in. But they didn’t know. They didn’t know that the Maybach, sent by the one person who still cared, was already waiting for me just beyond the gate. This time, I was really leaving. 1. As I was about to step out the door, Victoria’s voice cut through the air. “Samuel. Leave your bracelet. Alex has been having nightmares lately.” The jade bracelet was the last thing my parents left me. She met my reddening eyes, her own gaze as cold as ice. “Name your price.” What was the price of nine years of a marriage that had ground my dignity into dust? I couldn’t be bothered to calculate it. I only knew the consequence of refusing her last request—when I’d refused to give Alex my ski goggles on the slopes, her bodyguards had stripped me bare and left me to freeze on the mountainside. I slipped the heirloom from my wrist and slid it onto Alex’s. “I wish the three of you a lifetime of happiness,” I said, my voice even. “And peace.” For the first time all night, Victoria seemed to offer an olive branch. “Samuel, if you just learn to behave, our child can be your child, too.” The words had barely left her lips when the bracelet on Alex’s wrist suddenly slipped, shattering on the marble floor. A shard sliced into his leg. “Alex!” Victoria cried out, rushing to his side, her face a mask of panic. She barked at the butler to call the family doctor. The other guests watched the scene unfold, their faces painted with amusement at my expense. It wasn’t just them. I found it laughable, too. Just last night, my chronic heart condition had flared up. As I collapsed, gasping for breath, Victoria was on her way out to go stargazing with Alex. She stepped right over my convulsing body without a second glance. The last thing I heard before I lost consciousness was her order to the butler. “Have the entire living room disinfected. Alex is coming home tomorrow, and I won’t have him smelling this filth.” My hand tightened on the handle of my suitcase. I turned to leave, but she grabbed my wrist, her face a thundercloud. “Apologize.” “What—” Before I could finish, she shoved me to the floor in front of Alex. My knee landed on the sharp fragments of jade, and blood bloomed against the white stone. Seeing the blood, Victoria released me with a look of disgust. “You deliberately broke Alex’s bracelet and got him hurt. Don’t you think you owe him an apology?” “I’m sorry.” The words had become my mantra in this marriage. The soup is too bland, I’m sorry. I worried you were drinking too much and texted you, I’m sorry. I accidentally saw a text from Alex asking you to a hotel, invading your privacy, I’m truly sorry… I bit the inside of my cheek until I tasted blood, then forced myself to my feet. I bowed deeply to Alex—once, twice, three times. Then I turned my dead eyes to Victoria. “Is that enough?” I asked softly. She saw the blood on my lips, and her chest heaved with a sharp breath. “Samuel, the Old Man isn’t here to protect you. Who are you putting on this pathetic, disgusting act for?” Before I could answer, the doctor rushed in. Victoria pushed me aside like an inconvenient piece of furniture and led him to Alex. While her world revolved around him, I walked out the door. The moment I cleared the villa, I heard a sharp double honk. Seeing the silver sedan outside the iron gates, I quickened my pace. But before the gates could open, two bodyguards appeared out of nowhere, grabbing me and dragging me back inside. They threw me into the study. Victoria had me tied to a chair. She ordered the doctor to insert a needle—one as thick as a child’s arm—into my vein. Through the half-open door, I heard the doctor’s frantic whisper. “Ma’am, Mr. Lee and Mr. Fang both have the rare RH-negative blood type, but Mr. Lee has a history of heart disease. Forcing a blood transfusion could induce acute shock. We should go to a hospital…” “I don’t need your advice,” Victoria cut him off, her voice glacial. “Your only job is to make Alex well. I’ll handle the rest.” I heard her footsteps approaching and closed my eyes. “Does it hurt?” Her voice was uncharacteristically gentle. “Just bear it a little longer. It’ll be over soon.” I turned my head away, unwilling to waste another word on her. After they had drawn 800cc of my blood, my lips were turning blue. Just then, Alex, lying in the master bedroom, let out a weak cough. At the sound, Victoria’s hand shot out, stopping the doctor from removing the needle. “Take more. Double it.” The doctor, sweating profusely, pleaded with her. “Ma’am, any more and you could kill him!” She hesitated for two seconds. “Alex’s health comes first.” “But—” “Just do it,” I interrupted the doctor, my voice a hollow rasp. “Finish it, and let me leave.” Victoria stared at my bloodless face, her eyes flashing with a cold fury. She opened her mouth, about to demand if I was done with my tantrum, if I was really going to leave home over such a small matter. But then, a frail voice drifted from the bedroom. “Tori~” And just like that, she was gone. Two days later, I woke up in a hospital bed, having been admitted for shock. The first thing I saw was Victoria, sitting in a chair by my bed, reviewing a stack of documents. Our eyes met and held for a long moment. Expressionless, she brought a bowl of porridge to my lips. I shook my head. “I can do it myself.” She watched me quietly eat half the bowl before asking, “Are you feeling unwell anywhere?” I ignored her question. “Please give me my phone.” My tone must have been too distant. She froze for a few seconds before calling the butler to have my phone brought over. She noticed the screen lit up with missed calls. “Who was that?” she asked sharply. She never used to ask so many questions. A flash of annoyance crossed my mind. “Someone you don’t know.” She undid the top button of her silk blouse and looked down at me, her eyes cold. “Samuel, how long are you going to keep up this childish act? You think you can walk all over me now?” In the past, her anger would have sent me scrambling to appease her, to figure out what I’d done wrong. Now, I just pointed at her own vibrating phone. “It’s Alex.” A smile touched her lips. As was her habit, she stepped out into the hallway to take the call. The moment she left, my phone rang. I answered. Before I could speak, the anxious voice on the other end burst out, “You said you were coming! Samuel, did you change your mind?” “No, I didn’t. There was just… an incident.” “An incident? What happened to you? That’s it, I’m flying back right now—” I cut him off, my voice low. “Just give me a few more days.” Victoria returned to the room just as I ended the call. She saw the faint, unfamiliar smile on my lips, and a strange tightness constricted her chest. But she had just promised Alex she would go pick out a crib with him. There was no time to ask who I was talking to. It must be that cousin of his, she thought. He’s the only one left who still talks to him. She gathered her files. “Samuel, something’s come up at the office. I’ll be back tomorrow,” she said coldly, not even glancing back as she left. She didn’t come back the next day. Or the day after. But thanks to our mutual “friends,” my phone was constantly flooded with photos and videos of her and Alex. She took him to banquets and business dinners, acting like a teenager in the throes of first love, eager to show off her new partner to the world. The day I was discharged, Victoria posted a nine-photo collage on her social media. In it, she and Alex were kissing passionately in a hot air balloon against a romantic sunset. I left a comment: 【Wishing you both a long and happy life, and a healthy baby soon.】 Ten minutes later, my phone rang. It was her. I didn’t answer. Half an hour later, after finishing my discharge paperwork alone, I saw them. They were standing outside the obstetrics and gynecology department. I overheard a young nurse at the reception desk say to her, “Mrs. Fang, your husband is so good to you! He’s here for every single appointment. He even warms up the ultrasound gel in his hands so you won’t get cold.” The other pregnant women in the waiting area looked on with envy. I remembered, against my will, that we once had a child, too. A child Victoria had aborted in secret. The day she did it, Alex sent me a voice message. “Tori lost a bet to me. Does this mean she can only have my children from now on?” Before I could even process it, Victoria herself had called me, not to explain, but to scream at me for being petty and stupid. “Samuel,” she had spat, “a pathetic waste of space like you, what makes you think you’re worthy of having my children? If I’m going to have a child, it will be with someone who has good genes!” … Snapping back to the present, I was about to take a different route when Victoria spotted me. “What are you doing just standing there?” she demanded. I looked down, instinctively explaining, “I wasn’t following you. It’s just a coincidence. Sorry to disturb you.” “Wait.” As the word left her lips, a flash of jealousy crossed Alex’s eyes. He tightened his arm around Victoria’s waist and smiled at me. “Mr. Lee, thank you so much for the blood. I was feeling so dizzy, but now I’m all better. Tori, why don’t we let Mr. Lee come home with us? Please?” Victoria gave Alex a look of pure adoration. “Anything for you, my sweet, kind Alex. Whatever you say.” Since I needed to get my luggage anyway, I didn’t refuse his “kindness.” Inside the spacious, dark car, I soon found what Alex wanted me to find. Tucked in the crevice of the seat was a pair of lace underwear. “Oh! How did this get here? Tori, I must have forgotten to clean up…” Alex feigned embarrassment, snatching the underwear and carefully tucking it into his pocket. Victoria playfully punched his chest, all the while watching my face for a reaction. When she saw none—no anger, no pain—the tightness in her chest from the hospital returned, stronger this time. “Samuel, you’ve been staring at your phone since we got in the car,” she said, her tone sharp with an unfamiliar jealousy. “Are you talking to your cousin? Or someone else I don’t know?” I had just finished booking my flight. I turned off the screen. “Just reading the news.” Her brow furrowed even deeper. In a swift motion, she snatched the phone from my grasp. “What’s the password?” she demanded. “My birthday.” Nine years of marriage. Such a simple six-digit number. She tried over and over until the phone locked her out. She never got it right. The rest of the ride was silent. The car had barely stopped at the villa when Victoria felt a wave of morning sickness. Alex helped her back to the master bedroom. He played the part of the man of the house perfectly, ordering the chef to prepare all of Victoria’s favorite foods. As she came downstairs later, she saw my lonely figure heading toward the guest room. After a moment’s thought, she told the chef, “Make a few of Mr. Lee’s usual dishes as well. And set the table for three.” In the guest room, I opened my suitcase. All my clothes had been slashed to ribbons. Thankfully, my passport and other documents, tucked in an inner layer, were untouched. I gathered my papers, ready to leave for good, but Alex was blocking the doorway. He held a black canister, his eyes raking over me with contempt. “Samuel, you have more patience than I thought. I’ve moved into your house, humiliated you in front of our entire social circle, and you’re still clinging to her like a leech.” “Then again,” he sneered, “that old hag grandmother of yours finally kicked the bucket last month. Without her protection, I guess Tori is the only lifeline you have left.” A cruel memory sparked in his eyes. “You know, that day you were crying, begging Tori to send the helicopter to take you to the hospital to see your grandmother one last time? Do you know why she refused?” He grinned. “Because she had promised to take me to the beach to watch the sunset.” He held up his phone. “This picture of us kissing? We took it right then.” Smack. I knocked the phone from his hand. My own hands, moving before I could think, closed around his throat. The canister fell from his grasp, and the acrid sting of gasoline filled the air. In the struggle, Alex frantically fumbled with a lighter and ignited the fuel on the floor. Flames erupted. Thick smoke filled the room. Weakened from my hospital stay, I was quickly overcome, my body going limp as I collapsed. Through the roaring fire, I heard her voice. “Samuel!” It was followed by the frantic shouts of the staff. “Ma’am, it’s too dangerous! You can’t go in! Wait for security to bring the fire extinguishers!” “Get out of my way! Samuel is in there!” She burst through the flames. But then she saw him. She saw Alex, also on the floor. “Tori, save—” He didn’t need to finish. She ran to him without a moment’s hesitation, scooped him up, and turned to leave without a single glance in my direction. Half an hour later, after she had soothed and settled Alex, Victoria searched the entire villa. She couldn’t find me. That night at the airport, I mailed a package, then boarded a flight to London, my lungs aching with each cough. Just before takeoff, I received a text from her: 【I don’t have time for your hide-and-seek games. Alex has a check-up at 10 AM tomorrow. You be there too. For a lung scan.】 I didn’t reply. I simply removed the SIM card and turned off the phone. Victoria, from this day forward, we will never meet again. …

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Lisa left in the middle of our anniversary dinner again, claiming there was a problem at work. I didn’t try to stop her. I just calmly finished my own meal. Later that night, I saw a new post on her childhood friend’s feed. It was a photo of Lisa’s hands, sleeves rolled up, placing a dish on a table. The caption read: Stomach flu is the worst. Huge shoutout to Lisa for saving me and making dinner. Guess that’s the confidence you get knowing you’ll always show up when I need you. This time, I didn’t call her to start a fight. After that, whenever she had to ditch me to take care of him, I stopped protesting. I just smiled and said it was okay. It went on like this, until her friend sent me a photo of them playing the Pocky game, their faces inches apart. I didn’t react at all. That’s when she finally panicked. Her eyes were red, her voice a mix of panic and hurt. “Why aren’t you angry?” 01. Lisa had only taken two bites of her steak when her phone rang. “It’s work,” she said, already grabbing her purse. “I have to go.” “Okay. Go on.” I cut off a piece of my own steak and savored it. Tender, juicy. Perfectly cooked. Lisa seemed surprised by my calm demeanor. She frowned. “I’ll bring you back a gift.” And with that, she was gone. I calmly finished my meal. A small pang of regret hit me—our last anniversary dinner, and we couldn’t even finish it together. Back home, a new post from Joshua, her childhood friend, popped up on my feed. It was a photo of Lisa’s hands, sleeves rolled up, placing a dish on a table. The caption: Stomach flu is the worst. Huge shoutout to Lisa for saving me and making dinner. Guess that’s the confidence you get knowing you’ll always show up when I need you. I shut off my phone, got into bed, and went to sleep. Sometime in the middle of the night, the soft beeps of the keypad lock woke me. I tensed for a moment, then relaxed when I realized it was Lisa. As I drifted back to sleep, I felt a presence by my bed, as if someone was watching me in the dark. The next morning, I showered and made breakfast. Just as I was setting my plate on the table, Lisa walked into the dining room. She glanced at the sandwich and orange juice, a flicker of confusion on her face. “You… you didn’t make breakfast for me?” She hated Western-style breakfasts, and since I was never in the mood to cook two different meals in the morning, I had always made us a traditional breakfast we both liked. “Ah, sorry. I forgot,” I said, taking a bite of my sandwich. “You can just order something or grab a bite on your way to work.” I finished my meal quickly, ready to leave. When I looked up, her face had hardened. “I know you’re mad that I lied to you yesterday,” she began, her voice tight. “But you used to get so dramatic, I was scared to tell you the truth…” “I’m not mad.” “Joshua’s stomach flu was acting up again, and he lives alone. I was worried, so I—” “—I’m really not mad.” “Can you please stop this? I’ve told you a million times, I only see Joshua as a brother. Why can’t you just understand that?” “I’m really, truly not mad at you!” My voice rose, sharper than I intended. I saw the shock on her face and softened my tone. “I get it, I do. But I have to get to work. We can talk when I get back.” Without waiting for a response, I walked out the door, leaving her standing alone in the quiet apartment. 02. At work, my boss, Ms. Evans, called me into her office to talk about the overseas assignment again. “Liam, this is a fantastic opportunity. The location is great, it’s safe… Just give it some more thought, please.” She had tried to convince me for weeks, laying out the salary, the benefits, the career growth. But every time, my feelings for Lisa held me back, leaving me unable to commit. But now… I looked up at Ms. Evans, at her expression that was one part disappointment, one part frustration. “I’ve thought about it, Ms. Evans,” I said, my voice clear. “I’ll take it.” A wide smile spread across her face. Seeing her so pleased, knowing I hadn’t let her down, felt like a weight lifting from my chest. After work, I grabbed dinner by myself before heading home. To my surprise, Lisa was already there. That was a rare sight. “You’re home late,” she said, her expression unreadable. She handed me a small, wrapped box. “Anniversary gift.” “Oh,” I said, taking it. “Thanks. I’m sorry, I completely forgot to get you something. I’ll make it up to you, okay?” Her face seemed to darken. “Liam, can you just listen to me calmly for a second?” she pleaded. “I’ve told you before. Joshua and I grew up together. He moved to this city all by himself, and it hasn’t been easy for him. I promised his parents I’d look after him.” I could feel the anger simmering beneath her words, but I genuinely didn’t understand why. “Don’t get worked up. I know. I understand.” “If you have something to say, just say it! Stop acting like this!” Her voice cracked with frustration. “How many times do I have to tell you we’re just like brother and sister? Why won’t you believe me? If I wanted to be with him, why would I be with you?” I tried to soothe her. “Calm down. I’m not angry. I really do believe you.” “You…” She took a deep, shaky breath, her chest rising and falling. Finally, she said, “I’m hungry.” “Sorry, I already ate on my way home. Why don’t you order some takeout? Or there’s food in the fridge if you want to make something.” The only answer I got was the slam of her bedroom door. 03. I was almost asleep when Lisa came back. She walked in and just stood there, staring at me. “It’s raining outside.” “Hmm? You should probably dry your hair then. Or just take a hot shower.” She was soaked, but I didn’t understand the point she was trying to make. Her voice filled with disbelief. “I didn’t have an umbrella. I was out for five hours! It’s pouring! Weren’t you worried at all?” She took a step closer. “You’re not usually like this. Whenever we fought before, if I stormed out, you’d call me, or you’d call my friends to see if I was okay. At the very least, you’d leave a light on in the living room and wait for me to come back. But today? Five hours, and not a single call from you!” I kept my voice gentle. “I didn’t call because you’re an adult. You know how to take care of yourself. Besides, I didn’t want to embarrass you by calling all your friends to track you down.” Her face froze. She must have remembered her own words from a long time ago. “Can you stop? I’m a grown woman, I know what I’m doing! Do you have to blow up my phone like some psycho? And why are you harassing my friends? Do you have any idea how they make fun of me because of you?!” I remembered that day clearly. I had spent hours frantically searching for her, and the moment I finally found out she was safe, that was the thanks I got. Not relief, not gratitude, but a furious tirade. But I wasn’t interested in digging up the past. The handover for my new assignment was starting, and I was just… tired. “Look, just go take a shower so you don’t catch a cold,” I said, turning away. I went into the master bedroom. My mind was buzzing with work, and it took a long while before I finally drifted off. In the haze of sleep, I thought I felt a hand brush against my cheek, followed by a soft sigh. Then, the mattress dipped beside me. 04. Lisa seemed genuinely angry this time. She started leaving early and coming home late, actively avoiding me. No texts, no calls. I was more than happy for the peace and quiet. The last thing I wanted was more drama. But after five days of silence, a message from her popped up on my phone. [I’m cooking dinner tonight. Come home and eat.] Honestly, I was stunned. Cooking had always been my job. I remember once, I tried to be playful about it, whining about how tired I was of always being the one to cook. She had just hugged me and cooed, “But my cooking is so bad it might put you in the hospital. Besides, I love eating the food my amazing boyfriend makes.” Blinded by love, I never questioned the contradiction in her words. I spent my evenings after work poring over recipes, trying to perfect her favorite dishes, collecting my fair share of cuts and burns along the way. I was so wrapped up in the sweet satisfaction of her enjoying my cooking that I didn’t think twice. Not until Joshua let it slip that Lisa was actually a fantastic cook. That led to one of our biggest fights. Lisa’s reaction, as always, was ice-cold. “Joshua can’t cook, and he’s a picky eater. You don’t expect him to live on takeout, do you? He’s not like you, you’ll eat anything. I’m just taking care of my brother. You’re a grown man, stop expecting people to cook for you. If you think cooking for me is such a chore, then don’t. It’s not like I need you to.” And after that? I think I let her half-hearted apology smooth things over, and I forgave her. What’s that saying? Love doesn’t just make you blind, it makes you an idiot. Never a truer word was spoken. Still, I texted back: [Okay.] We were on the verge of breaking up anyway. If possible, I wanted it to be amicable. The moment I opened the front door, I heard Lisa’s cheerful voice from the kitchen. “Liam! You’re home! Go wash up and relax for a bit, dinner’s almost ready.” I sat at the dining table, a strange mix of emotions washing over me.

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1 The Northwood High acceptance letter trembled in my hand—not from excitement, but the familiar weakness of years underfed. I rushed to the rotary phone in our rundown farmhouse, heart pounding as I called my “construction worker” parents in the city. Only a hollow dial tone answered. I just wanted to tell them I’d gotten into the county’s best school. To ask if they’d come home for Christmas. Then translucent text flickered before my eyes: 【God, the irony. Her parents are taking her brother to Disneyland】 【Her dad’s “Cross Construction” just landed the West End contract】 【Brother gets new iPhones while she uses this relic】 【The “grandma” who calls her worthless? A $2k/month actress】 Sixteen years abandoned with a woman who hated me— All of it, A lie. I hung up the phone and walked back into the yard like a puppet with its strings cut. The woman I called Grandma was perched on a rickety old stool, snapping beans. She saw me and her cloudy eyes narrowed into slits. “On that phone again? How many times do I have to tell you, long distance costs a fortune! Your parents are out there breaking their backs on some construction site, and you’re just throwing their money away!” I stared at her harsh, wrinkled face, my own lips trembling uncontrollably. The words from the pop-up echoed in my head, and I had to ask. “Grandma,” I began, my voice barely a whisper. “You’re… you’re not really my grandmother, are you?” Her hands froze mid-snap. A second later, she hurled a handful of wilted bean ends at me. “What nonsense are you spouting now, Lia? Are you crazy? Of course I’m your grandmother, you stupid girl!” She struggled to her feet, jabbing a bony finger at my face. “I swear, all that reading has turned your brain to mush! Always lost in your own stupid fantasies! Now get your ass over there and slop the pigs!” I didn’t move. I just held her gaze, watching the flicker of panic that flashed in her eyes before she could hide it. The comments appeared again. 【She’s rattled. Look, she can’t even meet your eyes.】 【Keep it up, lady. The Academy owes you an Oscar for that performance.】 Wordlessly, I turned and walked toward the pigpen. The acrid stench hit me in a wave, and I fought back the urge to gag. Could the pop-ups be telling the truth? But what were they? And why could I see them? That night, I lay on my lumpy mattress, the thin wood planks digging into my back as I tossed and turned. From the next room, I heard the faint, furtive sounds of my “grandmother.” Holding my breath, I slipped out of bed and pressed my ear against the cold, damp wall. “Hello? Sean? It’s me.” “It’s Lia… she was acting strange today.” “She asked me straight up if I was her real grandma. I shut her down, of course, but the girl’s sharp. I’m worried she’s onto us.” “Yeah, you and Reina should probably come down tomorrow.” “And remember… dress the part. You know. Don’t blow our cover.” BOOM. The last thread holding my world together snapped. It was all real. My parents were rich. All these years, leaving me here… it was all part of a script they had written for me. A twisted play, and I was the unwilling star. I crawled back into bed, pulling the musty, patched-up blanket over my head as silent, hot tears streamed down my face. I remembered the winters so cold my hands and feet were covered in frostbite that itched and burned, while she kept the only coal brazier in her own room. I remembered the other kids in their new clothes, while I wore stained hand-me-downs my mother mailed me, the sleeves inches too short, earning me a semester’s worth of mockery. I remembered the time I had a fever so high I couldn’t lift my head off the desk, and she’d just glanced at me and said, “Drink some hot water, you’ll be fine.” All this time, I thought we were poor. But my suffering wasn’t born of poverty. It was born of cruelty. They were living a life of luxury with my brother in the city, while I was abandoned in this desolate place, “raised” by a stranger paid to keep me miserable. What a sick, twisted joke. My eyes ached from crying, and my heart turned to a block of ice, bit by bit. Tomorrow. When they came back. I would tear down this disgusting, sixteen-year-long charade with my own two hands. 2 The next day, with the sun high in the sky, the squeal of tires on the gravel road announced their arrival. A shiny black sedan, polished to a mirror gleam, sat awkwardly at the end of our muddy dirt path. The driver’s door opened and my father, Sean, stepped out, followed by my mother, Reina. They were dressed in faded, worn-out work clothes, their faces artfully smeared with dirt and their hair a mess. They looked every bit the part of weathered, downtrodden laborers. Last, my brother, Theo, slid out of the backseat. He took one step, and his pristine white sneakers sank into a patch of mud. He wrinkled his nose in disgust, his voice just loud enough for me to hear. “Seriously, Mom, Dad? This is where she lives? It’s a total dump. A dog wouldn’t even live here!” His words were a dagger to my heart. A place a dog wouldn’t live in. I had lived there for sixteen years. I studied my parents, their performance flawless. But I could see the truth beneath the costume. The hands that signed contracts and held fountain pens, even smudged with dirt, were too soft. Their fingernails were clean, the skin on their necks smooth. These were not the hands and bodies of people who did hard labor for a living. “Lia!” my mother, Reina, cried out, quickly clamping a hand over Theo’s mouth. Her face was a mask of weary love and guilt. “Oh, honey, we’ve missed you so much! Let me look at you, you’re all skin and bones!” She opened her arms for a hug, but I instinctively took a step back. Her embrace hung, empty, in the air between us. My gaze drifted past them, fixating on the offensively clean, expensive car. “Mom, Dad,” I said, my voice hoarse. “You… you have money now? You bought a car?” I pressed on, my voice pleading. “Can you take me to the city for high school?” My father’s smile faltered for a fraction of a second before he replaced it with a folksy grin. “Don’t be silly! Dad just borrowed this from his boss at the construction site. He heard you got into Northwood and wanted to show you off a bit.” “Besides,” he continued, falling back into the old, tired script, “the city’s expensive, Lia. And your brother’s schooling costs a lot. You just stay here for now…” Always the same excuses. I lowered my eyes, hiding the bitter sarcasm I felt. Borrowed. Right. At lunch, my “grandmother” served a chicken stew, a rare treat. Theo stared at the chipped enamel bowls and the patches on my clothes, his lip curled in a permanent sneer. He refused to sit next to me. “Mom, I don’t wanna sit next to her,” he whined. “She stinks. I bet she has fleas.” A flash of embarrassment crossed my parents’ faces. Reina quickly pulled Theo between her and my dad. “Theo, that’s enough! That’s your sister!” After the meal, my mother pulled a thick wad of cash from her pocket and pressed it into the old woman’s hand. “Mom, here’s two thousand. Thanks for all your hard work this month.” She gestured toward me. “Lia’s starting high school, so she’ll need more things. Make sure you get her some good food, don’t let her go without.” I watched the exchange, a cold laugh bubbling in my chest. This was her salary. The payment for her acting services. And I knew that of that $2,000, I wouldn’t see a tenth of it. For years, I’d done whatever I could to scrape together money for tuition and books. I’d foraged for herbs in the mountains, washed dishes at the diner in town, and even hauled bricks at a real construction site one summer under the blistering sun. My hands were a permanent mess of blisters that burst and reformed, over and over. Every time I’d called to ask for money, they’d tell me their pay was late, or that Theo was sick again, or that life in the city was even harder than life in the country. Eventually, I just stopped asking. I thought they were truly struggling. But now I understood. They weren’t giving me a life of hardship; they were giving me a carefully calculated performance of it. My eyes fell to Theo’s feet. The white sneakers had a bold, red swoosh on the side. I recognized it instantly. The richest kid in my class had the exact same pair. He’d bragged to everyone that his parents had paid a fortune for them, a special order from the city. They were called Nikes. And they cost two thousand dollars. Two thousand dollars. That was more than my entire living allowance for two years. My two years of suffering were worth less than a single pair of his shoes. My hand clenched around my enamel bowl, the chip in the rim digging painfully into my palm. I couldn’t take it anymore. I snapped my head up, my eyes red-rimmed and blazing as I stared them down. “You’re rich, aren’t you?” My voice was choked with tears. “You left me here to suffer on purpose, didn’t you?” Sean’s face darkened, and he slammed his hand on the table. “Lia! What has gotten into you?” Reina shot up, pointing at me. “Have you lost your mind? We’re out there working like dogs to pay for your education, and this is the thanks we get? You stand there spouting ungrateful nonsense! When have we ever done you wrong?” “Done me wrong?” A broken, hysterical laugh escaped my lips. I pointed a trembling finger at Theo’s shoes. “His shoes cost two thousand dollars! I haven’t even had that much to live on for the past two years! And you call that treating me right?” My parents froze. For a moment, they were speechless. Then my father’s composure returned. His face was a cold mask. “They were a hand-me-down from my boss’s son. He was going to throw them out. You don’t know anything, so stop making things up.” My mother caught on instantly, secretly pinching Theo’s arm. He immediately put on a pitiful expression. “Yeah, sis! You have no idea what I had to go through just to get these old things!” I watched the three of them, a family of actors, and a cold certainty settled in my stomach. It didn’t matter what I said. They would never, ever admit the truth. 3 That afternoon, my parents announced they had to get back to the “busy construction site in the city.” As they were leaving, a wild, desperate idea took root in my mind. I was going to see this “construction site” and this “hard life” for myself. I remembered watching my father stuff a sack of farm-fresh produce into the trunk before he left. He had opened it. “My stomach hurts,” I mumbled, clutching my abdomen and dashing for the outhouse behind the main building. The moment I was out of sight, I moved, silent and swift as a shadow. The trunk wasn’t fully latched. With every ounce of my strength, I pried it open just enough to squeeze through the gap, pulling it shut behind me. Through a tiny crack, I saw the old woman waving goodbye from the doorway, a tender expression on her face, as if she were sending off her own beloved children. I curled into a ball in the darkness, my heart pounding against my ribs. The engine rumbled to life. In the car, my family finally dropped their masks. “That was too close,” my mother, Reina, said, her voice shaky with relief. “That damn girl’s eyes… it was like she wanted to eat us alive.” “I think she knows,” my father, Sean, grumbled, a note of irritation in his voice. “We almost blew our cover.” “Thank God I thought of that excuse about my boss’s son,” he continued. “Otherwise, we would’ve been screwed.” “This is all your fault!” Reina snapped. “I told you not to let him wear those Nikes! I told you, when we come here to play our parts, we have to go all in!” “Mom, how is this my fault?” Theo whined, his voice dripping with entitlement. “This whole place is disgusting! There isn’t even a decent road! I’m throwing these shoes out the second we get home. They’re contaminated with poor-people germs!” He paused, then added, “Dad, Mom, why don’t we just… bring her to the city? It’s not like we can’t afford it. We’ve got plenty of empty rooms in the villa.” My breath caught in my throat. A flicker of hope? “Absolutely not!” My father’s voice was sharp, cold, and utterly devoid of warmth. “Have you forgotten what the psychic in Sedona told us? That girl, Lia, she’s a jinx, born to drain our fortune. Her life force is too strong. We have to keep her poor, keep her miserable, to channel all the bad luck onto her and away from us. The moment she gets a taste of our wealth, our luck will turn, and we’ll lose everything!” My mother quickly chimed in. “He’s right, Theo, don’t you get soft on us now. Don’t you remember when you were little? Every time she got a fever, your father’s business would take a hit? The psychic was clear: Lia is our curse. She has to suffer in the countryside to absorb the bad karma for our family!” Curled in the suffocating darkness, a chill colder than any winter wind washed over me. So that’s what I was. Not a daughter, not a sister. I was a sacrifice. A human shield to be kept in squalor to ensure their prosperity. “Oh, I get it,” Theo said, a note of dawning understanding in his voice. “Well, I definitely don’t want to go back to being poor.” He sealed my fate with a casual, thoughtless finality. “So, for my sake… for our family’s sake… I guess it’s better if she just stays miserable out there.” His words were as light as a feather, but they crushed my heart into dust. I bit down hard on the back of my hand, stifling the sob that clawed its way up my throat. Superstition. I’d learned about it in school, a relic of a bygone era. I never imagined my own family, my own flesh and blood, would condemn me to a living hell for something so meaningless. An eternity later, the car stopped. I peered through a crack in the trunk, and the sight that greeted me stole the air from my lungs. This wasn’t some worksite dorm. It was a three-story mansion with a manicured lawn and a sprawling fountain. I watched the three of them get out, casually punch a code into a keypad, and wait as an ornate iron gate swung open. This was their home. I waited a few minutes, giving them time to get inside, before I pushed open the trunk, slipped out, and darted through the gate just before it closed. The inside was even more opulent than I could have imagined. Crystal chandeliers, marble floors, a sweeping spiral staircase. A housekeeper in a crisp uniform was polishing the floor. “Welcome home, Mr. and Mrs. Cross, Master Theo,” she said respectfully. I scrambled for cover, diving under a massive, formal dining table draped with a long tablecloth that concealed me completely. “Hey, Maria, get me a Coke!” Theo demanded, tossing his backpack onto a plush sofa and flopping down like he owned the world. The coffee table was littered with colorful bags of imported snacks, their foreign labels a language I couldn’t comprehend. I thought of the moldy bread I’d eaten to save money, of the bitter wild greens I’d dug up just to have something in my stomach. I watched as my mother, Reina, shed her shabby work clothes for an elegant silk dress, spritzing herself with expensive perfume. “I have an appointment with Mrs. Chen for facials. I won’t be back for dinner.” My father, Sean, disappeared into a walk-in closet and emerged moments later in a tailored suit, his hair slicked back. “I have to go back to the office. I’ve got a major contract to sign tonight.” So this was their “construction site.” This was their “hard life.” Just then, my father’s phone rang. He answered it, and his calm, confident expression vanished. “What?!” he yelled, his voice cracking. “Lia’s gone?! You’ve searched the whole village?!” “You don’t think she… she followed us to the city, do you?” My mother and Theo’s faces went white with panic. “Quick! Check the car! The trunk!” They spun around, ready to bolt for the door. And in that moment, I slowly, deliberately, crawled out from under the table. I brushed the dust from my patched clothes, my voice a dry rasp. “No need to look.”

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Noah Thorne asked me if I wanted to marry him. A one-year contract marriage. The pay: one million dollars, with all daily expenses covered. I accepted with giddy excitement. But one year turned into another, and then another. Ten years passed, and he never once mentioned a divorce. Just when I started to think he might have actually fallen in love with me, he left me seventy million dollars and died. I was flooded with relief. Finally, I could live my dream life: rich, no husband, and no kids. Later, I received a box of Noah’s belongings. Inside was an AI robot dog. As a joke, I named it Noah. It said: “Karina, I’m sorry that I love you.” 1 On our tenth wedding anniversary, Noah died. Just before he passed, he asked me, “Karina, is there anything you want to say to me?” I paused for a moment, then blurted out, “Don’t forget to transfer this year’s million-dollar payment.” A man can die, but he can’t skip out on his final paycheck. When it comes to money, I’m relentless. Noah was silent for a long moment, then he suddenly smiled, a spark igniting in his clouded eyes. “Karina,” he whispered, “I love that about you. It’s good.” I tried to smile back, to joke with him like I always did. But Noah had already closed his eyes, and no matter how many times I called his name, he wouldn’t wake up. The smile froze on my face. “Goodbye, Noah.” I watched, impassive, as they wheeled him into the morgue. I went through the motions of the funeral, a perfect, grieving widow, without shedding a single tear. It was only when Noah’s younger brother, Ethan, handed me a box that my composure cracked. Inside was a debit card with a seventy-million-dollar balance and a small robot dog. My calm expression shattered, not from grief, but from pure, unadulterated joy. Noah had already paid me for the full ten years. Why would he leave me another seventy million? “All of this… for me?” Ethan nodded. “That’s what his will said.” He added, with well-meaning sympathy, “Karina, he’s gone. Try not to be too sad.” Sad? Why would I be sad? I was ecstatic! I could barely contain my laughter. I didn’t know why Noah had left me so much money. Maybe it was guilt, or pity. He was, after all, a deeply kind man. Ten years ago, I had held a knife to him and demanded money. He had just looked at me with his gentle eyes and asked, “Are you in desperate need of money? If so, I can offer you a job.” The job was to marry him. He promised he would never force me to do anything I didn’t want to. He just needed a wife in name only, to fend off his parents’ incessant matchmaking. I agreed. I didn’t care about marriage; I only cared about the money. But Noah was always apologizing. He said he was holding me back, wasting my life. He was a soft-hearted man. It made perfect sense that a man like him would leave me seventy million dollars. And since only a fool would turn down free money, I took it without a second thought. Lost in the euphoria of my newfound wealth, I completely forgot about the unassuming robot dog. Sitting alone in the vast, empty living room, I stared at my bank balance on my phone and, out of habit, asked, “Noah, what am I supposed to do with seventy million dollars?” The room was silent. And then I remembered. Noah was gone. And it was wonderful. No one to nag me anymore. No one to disapprove of my bad habits. When I first married Noah, I went on a spending spree. I’d take one bite of a cake and throw the rest away. I bought the gaudiest jewelry, the most expensive, brand-name dresses and shoes. Everyone mocked my lack of taste, and I became a source of constant embarrassment for him. But Noah never got angry. He would just check on me, his voice full of concern. “Did you eat too much? Are you feeling bloated? Do your ears hurt from those heavy earrings? Are your feet blistered from those heels?” He would gently place my feet in his lap and dab iodine on the sores. “Karina,” he’d say softly, “you have to understand. Money is for making yourself comfortable, not for making yourself miserable.” After that, he started planning my days, from my studies to my entertainment, from my diet to my exercise. He meticulously sculpted me, transforming me from a wild weed into a cultivated rose. Everyone thought he was madly in love with me, that I had won the lottery of a lifetime by marrying him. But I knew the truth. He didn’t love me. He just needed a suitable wife. And now that he was gone, I didn’t have to be Mrs. Thorne anymore. I could do whatever I wanted. 2 I went to the one place Noah hated most: a grimy, chaotic nightclub. I booked the best table, ordered the most expensive champagne, and watched the sweaty, muscular men in the boxing ring. To be honest, Noah was never my type. He was too refined, too fragile. A little exercise would leave him red-faced and gasping for breath. I preferred my men sunny and strong. I used to tease him about it all the time. “Noah, you need to work out. You need to live a long, long life.” “You want me to live a long life?” he’d ask, a strange light in his eyes. “Of course! You’re my meal ticket.” In that moment, I could have sworn I saw a flicker of something in his beautiful, almond-shaped eyes—a mixture of resignation and relief. After that, he started jogging and going to the gym with me. But he seemed to be naturally frail. No matter how hard he tried, he remained alarmingly thin. Now, I realize it was because he was sick. “Bored, beautiful? I can keep you company.” A young boxer, fresh from a win, sauntered over to my table, flexing his glistening muscles. I forced the image of Noah from my mind. He was gone. I didn’t have to adhere to the moral code of a married woman anymore. It was time to enjoy myself. I smiled and downed my drink in one gulp. The burn of the alcohol as it slid down my throat was punctuated by the whistles and catcalls from the surrounding crowd. It was a familiar symphony of chaos, vulgarity, and darkness. I was getting drunk. I pulled the young boxer down to sit beside me, my eyes hazy. “Tell me, handsome, how much for a night?” He couldn’t suppress a greedy smile, but he still feigned propriety. “I’m not like that, beautiful. I just like you.” Like. The word instantly killed my mood. I knew, with absolute certainty, that no one could ever truly like me. My mother, unable to bear our poverty, had left us. As she held me tight, her tears soaking my shoulder, she had sobbed, “Karina, my sweet Karina, as soon as Mommy has money, I’ll come back for you.” After she left, my father unleashed all his bitterness and rage on me. He rented me out to an underground boxing ring. “This girl of mine,” he’d boast, “she’s tough. You can hit her as hard as you want, she won’t break. A real bargain!” I became a human punching bag for two hundred dollars a session. There wasn’t a single inch of my body that wasn’t bruised or broken. The only time my father showed me any affection was when he collected his payment, when he would “generously” buy me a small cupcake. That’s when I understood. My father didn’t love me. He loved money. And to earn his love, I had to earn him a lot of it. After I married Noah, he was so generous with me that I had to ask. “Noah, are you giving me all this money because you want me to like you?” He had just stroked my hair and corrected me gently. “Karina, remember this: love isn’t something that can be bought or sustained with money.” I looked into his clear, honest eyes and mumbled, “I know.” And I did know. Noah Thorne didn’t want my affection. He was always so kind, so gentle. His rejection was just as soft, but it was a rejection nonetheless. I should have known better. Who would ever want the love of someone so broken? When I turned eighteen, my body had blossomed into a woman’s curves, and the looks from the men at the gym changed. Their gazes became lewd, their touches exploratory and disgusting. I begged my father to take me away, but he was too busy counting his money. I tried to run, but the owner of the gym caught me. His face was a mask of lust as he lunged at me. 3 He was overconfident. He forgot that being able to take a punch meant I also knew how to throw one. As he tore at my pants, I delivered a crippling blow to his groin. I ran to the police station and reported him. He was sentenced to three years in prison. But my reputation was ruined. I was kicked out of the gym. With no more liquor money coming in, my father’s abuse escalated. “You’re a slut, just like your mother!” he’d scream. “It’s your fault for having a body like that! You’re a shameless whore, seducing married men!” Even my own father said it. So, of course, everyone else believed it. They spat on me, beat me, drove me out of town. I had no education, no skills, and a body covered in hideous scars. No one would hire me. So I found work as a bouncer at a nightclub. I thought time and distance could bury the ugliness of my past. So when a coworker confessed his feelings, promising me a home, a normal life with marriage and children, I gambled. I gave him all my savings, believing he was sincere. He took the money and left, running away with the girl he truly loved. I overheard him later, talking to a friend. “That freak? Being liked by her is disgusting. If it wasn’t for her money, I wouldn’t have even bothered to pretend.” That’s when I finally understood. No one wanted my heart. Not my father. Not my coworker. And not Noah. I hate the word “like.” I smashed my glass on the floor. The young boxer at my side went pale. “This is so boring,” I muttered. I stumbled out of the club and into a taxi. The moment I got home, I went straight to the bathroom to wash off the stench of smoke and alcohol. Otherwise, Noah would find out and start nagging me again. He was like an old man, always gently but relentlessly trying to correct my bad habits. I realized I had forgotten to grab a change of clothes. “Noah,” I called out automatically, “can you bring me my pajamas?” Silence. I froze, the washcloth still in my hand. How could I have forgotten again? He was gone. The first time I came home drunk after we were married, I was a complete mess. I had thrown up all over myself. It was Noah who cleaned me up. When I realized what was happening, I instinctively tried to cover myself. “Noah… is it ugly?” I whispered. I knew how hideous my body was. The scars disgusted even me. But Noah just gently touched the scar on my brow, then pulled me into his arms. He bathed me with a tenderness I had never known, dried me off, and helped me into my pajamas. “Karina,” he said softly, “your body isn’t a test to be graded. Do you understand?” I looked at him, confused. “It belongs to you. You can use it to feel the warmth of the sun, to enjoy the thrill of running, to taste delicious food… Karina, don’t ever judge yourself through someone else’s eyes.” It was the first time anyone had ever said anything like that to me. It was the first time someone had looked at my body without a trace of disgust. On impulse, I leaned in and kissed him. It was quick, light as a feather, almost a mistake. But to Noah, it was a grave error. For the first time, I saw anger and frustration on his gentle face, mixed with an emotion I couldn’t decipher. In that instant, the warmth that had been blooming in my chest turned to ice. How could I have forgotten? He didn’t want my love. But he was so kind, so gentle, that he was constantly, unintentionally, pulling me in. This was wrong. I pretended it had been an accident, a slip. “This tub is so slippery,” I joked. “I almost chipped a tooth. You’re going to have to pay me extra for this.” Noah, ever the good sport, just nodded. “Okay. Whatever you say.”

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1 On the way to the hospital for a placental abruption, our car collided head-on with a wedding limousine. I was thrown from the vehicle, a pool of blood spreading beneath me. Through a haze of pain, I watched my husband, Ethan, ignore me completely. Instead, he cradled another woman in his arms, whispering to the driver, “Just run her over. The payout for a fatality is less.” As he spoke, the car lurched forward, straight towards me. I was run over, again and again, until my legs went numb. During the emergency surgery, my husband’s phone was unreachable. But he was there, sitting in the hospital corridor just outside. I could still hear his voice, laced with a chilling relief. “It’s for the best if they can’t reach me. If she dies, we pay less.” … “The patient is in her third trimester. The impact from the collision has made her condition critical. There’s no time to wait for family consent. Page every available doctor to the OR now.” “And get on the phone with every hospital in the city. We need blood reserves on standby in case things go south.” I could hear the head surgeon barking orders, but Ethan, my husband whose phone was perpetually off, paid me no mind. His hands were clasped tightly around the hand of the woman in the wedding dress. “It’s okay,” he murmured to her, his voice a tender caress. “I’m here.” The woman was trembling, but Ethan’s only response was a dismissive, “It’s not that serious. Every woman has babies. If something happens to her, it’s just her bad luck.” In that moment, I almost hated the hyper-acute hearing that comes before death. It allowed me to hear every curse Ethan uttered against me and our unborn child. He wanted us both dead, a neat and tidy tragedy closed with a small payout. If my family tried to make a scene, he had a team of lawyers ready to handle it. In the end, I would be nothing but a box of ashes. Throughout the entire ordeal, he never once came over to even check if it was me, even though I was lying right in front of him, carrying his child. A single glance would have been enough. But he just said the sight of me was too disgusting, that the fat spilling from my wounds would upset the woman in white. He covered her eyes and led her away to a bench far from the chaos. In that instant, every illusion I held about Ethan shattered. The man who had wept with joy when I told him I was pregnant, the man who called everyone he knew to say that marrying me was the happiest day of his life—that man was dead. A minute before the nurses wheeled me into surgery, I saw Ethan’s parents rushing into the hospital. They didn’t run towards me. They ran to Ethan and the woman. His mother’s voice was frantic. “What happened? Are you hurt? Daisy, you can’t get hurt! How would your godmother ever explain it to your mom?” And then she started to cry. The way she held that woman felt so foreign, so strange. The image was burned into my mind even as my vision blurred and the world faded to black. The lights in the operating room were terrifyingly cold, hanging like pale ghosts above me. I could hear the hushed whispers of the doctors and the orderly clatter of instruments as the nurses counted them out. “Massive blood loss. The placenta is exposed. We need to perform an emergency C-section, but we risk a fatal hemorrhage…” “Has anyone been able to contact the patient’s family?” “No. The husband’s phone is still off. We can’t get through to anyone else.” A heavy sigh followed that announcement. A nurse added, “The patient was in a taxi on her way to an appointment when she noticed signs of placental abruption. The collision with the wedding car happened on her way here.” “She’s this far along and her family let her take a taxi by herself? What were they thinking?” Then the anesthesia took hold, and I sank into unconsciousness. I don’t know how difficult the surgery was. I only know that when I woke up again, the room was filled with exclamations of awe. “It’s a miracle. A genuine miracle. To wake up after losing that much blood…” After the head surgeon confirmed my condition was stable, he had me sign the consent forms myself. As I signed, I glanced at the time. A full week had passed. I looked at the surgeon. “My husband?” 2 “We were never able to get in touch with your husband.” A bitter laugh escaped my lips. Never able to get in touch… what a joke. Then, the doctor’s expression turned somber. “The baby was born alive,” he said gently, “but he was born with… complications. He passed away two days ago.” Clatter. The pen fell from my hand. I grabbed the doctor’s arm, my voice a choked sob. “I… I want to see him.” The doctor exchanged a look with the nurses. They decided to let me. They placed me in a wheelchair and slowly pushed me out of the room, down the long corridor to the hospital morgue. He was in a small, refrigerated drawer. When they pulled it open, I saw his tiny hands, clenched into tight fists. He looked exactly as I had imagined: a perfect, high nose, a small mouth, a dusting of soft, light hair, and faint, golden eyebrows. I reached out to hold him. My fingers met only ice-cold stillness. It was only when I touched him that I saw the stitches on his tiny arm. The doctor explained softly, “During the accident… when you were run over repeatedly… the child was born with his limbs already…” I looked up at him, the meaning crashing down on me. My baby, born alive, had been born with severed limbs. Even if he had survived, he would have been disabled for life. In that moment, the dam broke. I had been trying to steel myself, to accept his death. But I couldn’t accept this. Every single one of my prenatal check-ups had been perfect. The doctors had all said he was developing beautifully. And he had been born… in pieces. No mother could remain calm in the face of such a horror. Ignoring the protests of my own healing body, I insisted on holding him. The cold of his tiny form was shocking, but in my mind, I could still hear his cry, still feel his little hand gripping my hair. Of course, it was all a fantasy. The next thing I knew, I was being carried back to my room by the nurses, having cried myself into a dead faint. I don’t know how many times I wept in that room. It was only when the police came to ask about the details of the accident that I found my voice again. “It was them!” I screamed. “They said it would be cheaper to kill me than to pay for injuries!” “Do you have any proof?” I shook my head. I had been pinned, helpless. How could I have proof? The officer then told me that according to the traffic cameras, I was the one who had run the red light. Worse, while I was still in surgery, Ethan had already taken the woman, Daisy, on a honeymoon. He had left everything in the hands of his lawyer. When the lawyer saw me, he froze. “Mrs. Thorne! What… how are you…?” His eyes widened in realization. “So, the pregnant woman Mr. Thorne’s car hit was… you?” I nodded weakly. The lawyer sat down awkwardly. When I insisted, for the third time, that he contact Ethan, he finally sighed. “It’s no use. Mr. Thorne has his phone turned off. He said he wants to give Ms. Daisy his undivided attention, to make up for her last birthday, which was ruined.” Ms. Daisy. So, the woman in the wedding dress was Daisy. The one I had only met a few times. His childhood friend, Daisy Shen. Her last birthday? Was that the day I found out I was pregnant? I had called Ethan home. I’d then received a furious call from Daisy, screaming that I had stolen her “Ethan” and ruined her birthday. Even Ethan’s parents had berated me, calling me petty and demanding I apologize to her. It was then that I learned the truth. Daisy’s parents lived abroad, and Ethan’s parents had raised her. Growing up, everyone had assumed she would be Ethan’s wife, their future daughter-in-law. Until I came along. Ethan had fallen head over heels for me, insisted on marrying me, and thrown all their plans into disarray. 3 For that, his entire family blamed me. On our wedding day, Daisy had even attempted suicide. She was revived, but the message was clear. And this time, according to the lawyer, Daisy had wanted a grand, fairytale wedding for her twenty-fifth birthday, with Ethan as the groom. So the whole family had conspired to lie to me. They left me, on the verge of giving birth, at home alone while they all went off to celebrate Daisy’s sham wedding. Even Ethan’s closest friends were there. Everyone knew. And no one thought it was wrong. They all kept the secret from me. Thinking of this, I couldn’t help but laugh. A hollow, broken sound. After explaining, the lawyer presented me with the compensation agreement Ethan had drawn up for the accident. “Mr. Thorne was unaware that the victim was you at the time. This settlement is based on standard legal procedure. Please, take a look…” he said, his voice trailing off. “And this is the compensation claim Mr. Thorne is making against you… of course, since you are currently married, I will hold onto this for now.” I scanned the pages, one by one. The lawyer, trying to lighten the mood, glanced at the baby clothes by my bed. “Ma’am, how is the little one doing?” “Stone dead.” The words hung in the air. The lawyer stared at me, stunned. I finished reading and tossed the file aside. “I reject all of these terms. I will be filing a lawsuit. You may leave.” Not long after the lawyer left, my phone, against all odds, rang. I thought it was the lawyer, that he had finally reached Ethan. I answered, only to hear Daisy’s voice. “Sister-in-law,” she chirped, “I just made a birthday wish, and Ethan promised he would make it come true. Can you guess what it was?” I didn’t answer. She chuckled softly. “What’s wrong? Are you sad your baby died?” In that instant, every hair on my body stood on end. She knew. She knew it was me. “I knew it was you all along,” she purred. “That’s why I deliberately called Ethan away. It’s what you deserve for ruining my last birthday. Besides, if Ethan really loved you, why wouldn’t he answer your messages? Why wouldn’t he pick up your calls?” Just as she finished, another voice came from her end of the line. It was Ethan. “Daisy, I have to go back. Your sister-in-law is pregnant, and I’m worried about her. Especially after… after hitting that woman. I just have this bad feeling.” “Ethan, just one more day. Please? Are you going to abandon your Daisy?” I heard Ethan hesitate. I hung up the phone. A day later, I was lying in my hospital bed, waiting for the doctor’s check-up, when I heard a commotion outside. Ethan was back. He was with his parents. “Son, you’re finally back! Can we turn our phones back on now?” “You have no idea, the baby of that woman you hit was torn to pieces. I was so worried something had happened to Chloe, but I was afraid to call and ruin your plans. I’ve been waiting for so long.” “I wonder what kind of soulless thing that woman’s family did for her baby to die so horribly, born without its limbs.” As his mother’s words faded, I pushed open my door. “Yes,” I said, my voice echoing in the hallway. “I wonder what kind of soullless thing they did, for the baby to be born without limbs, with his intestines spilling out…” 4 The moment our eyes met, Ethan froze. After repeatedly confirming with the doctors and nurses that the pregnant woman he had run over again and again was, in fact, me, he suddenly collapsed to his knees. His parents, who had just been mocking me for losing my child, calling it my karma, went visibly pale with shock when they realized that child was the grandchild they had been so eagerly awaiting. Ethan was a crumpled heap on the floor. It took a sedative injection to get him calm enough to lie down. “I didn’t know it was you,” he whispered, trying to take my hand. “I… I really didn’t know.” He stammered, but that was all he could manage to say. He didn’t know. Right. He hadn’t even bothered to look. When I was on the ground, begging for help, he was the one who suggested running me over. And now he wanted to pass it all off as a tragic accident. His eyes were red-rimmed as he slowly pushed himself up. He looked at me. “Chloe, at the time, I was just thinking of the simplest solution. It wasn’t that I actually wanted you to die. You used to be a lawyer, you know how these things work, car accidents…” He trailed off, unable to finish the sentence. Yes. As a lawyer, I knew he had made a calculated decision. But he saw that I was pregnant, and he still made that choice. He ran me over without a shred of mercy, even as I screamed for help, even as I begged. I remembered it all. It was seared into my brain, a memory I could never erase. His parents sat nearby, their eyes now filled with a simmering resentment directed at me. Ethan’s mother spoke first. “Can’t you even carry a baby properly? Ethan is gone for one week, and you manage to screw everything up, even get the baby killed. Chloe! Our family is cursed to have a daughter-in-law like you.” “We were just helping Daisy celebrate her birthday. We were gone for a short time, and you deliberately cause trouble. Tell me, did you do this on purpose? Did you want to use the baby to punish us?” Her words twisted everything, placing all the blame on my shoulders. Their celebrating with Daisy was perfectly reasonable, but my losing the baby was a malicious act on my part. “Was it just a celebration?” I asked, my eyes locked on Ethan. A fresh love bite was visible on his neck, not even bothering to be concealed. The ring on his finger wasn’t our wedding band. He fumbled with it, trying to pull it off, but it was stuck. Just then, Daisy burst into the room. She rushed to Ethan’s side, pressing his hand down to stop him from removing the ring.

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For the holidays, my mother booked me a flight to visit the underprivileged student she’d been sponsoring for years. It was supposed to be a nice gesture, a chance to spread some holiday cheer. The moment I stepped off the plane, the student and his friends ambushed me, stealing my phone, my wallet, and all my identification. Then they dragged me to a godforsaken compound in the middle of nowhere and threw me in a cell. I wept, begging him to let me go, pleading with him to remember my mother’s kindness. But he just laughed and told me I was my mother’s gift to him. A New Year’s present. I was trapped, hopeless. Then, a commotion outside my cell. The boss of the entire operation was making his New Year’s rounds, inspecting his territory. I caught a glimpse of him through the crack in the door. My heart stopped. It was my father. My father, who had been missing for five years, the man who had loved me more than life itself. 1 “Dad!” I screamed with every ounce of strength I had, just as the door was closing. But the student, whose name was Jack, was faster. He clamped a hand over my mouth while another one of his thugs kicked me square in the chest. A spray of blood erupted from my mouth. I felt something shatter inside me, a wave of agony that stole my breath and my voice. “What the hell are you screaming about?” the thug snarled. “Trying to claim you know the boss? You got a death wish?” My vision swam. Through the haze of pain, I saw my father’s back as he walked away, surrounded by his entourage, completely oblivious to my cry for help. “She’s got a strong set of lungs on her,” Jack said with a cruel smirk. “Let’s starve her for three days. That should quiet her down.” He crouched down, his face inches from mine. “My godmother told me her daughter was a top student, real pretty. Said men fall all over themselves for her. The perfect bait for a honey-trap scam.” I couldn’t process it. These words couldn’t have come from my mother. In the lonely, rain-swept nights after my father disappeared, she would hold me and tell me I was the only thing she had left in this world. How could she give away her only treasure? “No,” I rasped, my voice barely a whisper. “My mom would never do that.” Jack grabbed a fistful of my hair, yanking my head back. “Open your damn eyes and see the truth.” His voice dropped to a possessive growl. “I’m a hell of a lot more important to your mother than you are. Every single night since your deadbeat dad vanished, I’m the one who’s kept her company.” He shoved his phone in my face, forcing me to read his chat history with my mother. She called him ‘baby.’ She asked when he was coming to spend the holidays with her. Jack had replied that he hadn’t met his quota yet; he was one body short and couldn’t leave. And my mother’s reply: Then I’ll just send you my daughter to make up the numbers. Jack’s response: You’re a wicked woman. I like that. I squeezed my eyes shut, a wave of despair washing over me. The woman who had called me her precious daughter, her everything, was this cold, ruthless monster. She had sold her own child, the daughter she’d raised for twenty years, just to please her lover. The betrayal was a pain far sharper than any physical blow. It coiled in my gut, a grief so profound I curled into a ball on the filthy floor and sobbed. My only hope of escape was my father. I had to find a way to see him. Jack was about to leave the reeking, blood-spattered room when I shot out a hand and grabbed his ankle. “Jack, please, just let me see your boss. I’m telling you the truth, I’m his daughter. His name is Silas. My name is Stella!” Jack and the two hulking guards at the door burst into mocking laughter. “You’re really desperate, aren’t you? Yeah, the boss’s name is Silas. But he doesn’t have a daughter. Never has.” How could I prove it? My mind raced. Then, I remembered. The scar on his chin. “My dad has a scar on his chin! He got it saving me when I almost fell off a ski lift!” One of the guards froze. He leaned in and whispered something in Jack’s ear. “Jack, the boss really does have a scar on his chin. You don’t think…?” “Lots of people have scars! I’ve got one!” Jack tilted his head back to show them, then his eyes narrowed with sudden rage. “Stella, are you playing games with us?” He stomped his foot down hard on my hand, grinding it into the concrete floor. The agony was excruciating, a white-hot scream tearing from my throat. 2 One of the guards joined in, kicking me repeatedly in the stomach. “You little bitch, trying to scare us?” “Let’s see how you like being played with!” He produced a long, wicked-looking needle from his pocket. He grabbed my other hand, the one pinned under Jack’s boot, and without hesitation, plunged the needle deep into the soft flesh under my fingernail. A piercing shriek echoed through the corridor. Instinct took over. I flailed, my free hand beating against Jack’s leg. “You dare to hit me? I’ll show you what happens when you fight back!” He lifted his other foot and brought it crashing down on my struggling hand. Jack was a big man, and his full weight came down on the fingers I used to play the piano. Crack. Crack. I heard the sickening snap of bones. The pain was blinding. My body convulsed, drenched in a cold sweat. I was losing consciousness. Suddenly, a sharp knock echoed on the heavy door. “Jack, stop! The boss is making his New Year’s rounds. He doesn’t want to see any blood today. He’s on his way here now.” The voice was… familiar. Jack and the guard tensed. “Jack, we can’t screw this up. The boss is ruthless. If we piss him off, we’re dead.” I could hear footsteps approaching from the hallway. It was my father. He was coming. This was my only chance. The primal urge to survive surged through me. As Jack and the guard opened the door to leave, I scrambled to my feet. I kicked Jack hard in the back, sending him stumbling forward, and scrambled through the gap he’d created. The moment I burst out of the room, the sunlight was so bright it was blinding. I squinted, my eyes barely able to open. Through the sliver of vision, I saw him. My father, not far away, shaking hands with one of his men, a glass of wine in his hand. I summoned every last bit of my strength and screamed, “Dad! Help me!” The next second, my voice was muffled. Jack, clutching his back, had scrambled to his feet. He clamped a hand over my mouth and dragged me back into the dark, hopeless room. “You little shit! You think you can trick me?” “Looks like I didn’t hit you hard enough!” My hands were useless. I could only kick and buck, finally managing to head-butt him hard enough to make his nose bleed. “Dad!” I screamed again. I saw my father turn, his head tilting as if he’d heard something. And then, a heavy object crashed against the back of my head. The world went black. When I woke up, every inch of my body was a landscape of pain. I was covered in a warm, sticky film of my own blood. I was back in the cell. Jack and the guards were gone, probably outside waiting for my father. “Dad!” I cried out, my voice raw. “Come save me! It’s Stella!” I used my elbows to drag myself across the floor to the door and started kicking it with my feet. My hands were broken, useless. But the sound of my foot hitting the metal door was loud, thunderous. He would have to hear it. And he did. The next moment, I heard his voice, a voice I hadn’t heard in five long years, from just outside the door. “What’s going on? Who’s that yelling for their dad?” “It’s nothing, boss,” Jack’s voice answered smoothly. “The new ones are always like this. Crying for their mommy and daddy.” “This one’s just particularly unruly. See? She broke my nose. Went against your ‘no blood’ rule for the new year.” “You go on and greet the others, boss. I’ll go shut her up.” The door flew open, slamming into me and knocking me to the ground. “I told you to shut your goddamn mouth!” Jack dragged me by the hair to a small table in the center of the room. The guard pried my mouth open and forced me to bite down on the corner of the table. Then, the guard’s thick, powerful hand slammed down on the back of my head. Again and again. Blood filled my mouth, dammed up by the table’s edge. I felt my teeth crack, and I swallowed the broken pieces. I couldn’t make a sound anymore, my tongue felt like it had been shredded. 3 Jack spat on my face. “There. Nice and quiet now.” I lay on the floor, a broken, bleeding mess, only able to make soft, whimpering sounds of agony. I couldn’t say his name anymore. “Tie her up. Put a bag over her head. I’m sick of looking at her face.” Just as they finished binding my hands and feet and pulling a black hood over my head, my father’s voice filled the doorway again. “I thought I said no blood on New Year’s. What is all this?” Dad! It’s me! It’s your Stella! But I couldn’t speak. I could only writhe on the floor like a worm as my blood soaked through the hood and dripped onto the concrete. I was so close. So close to the father I had missed for five agonizing years. “It’s the new year,” my father said, his voice cold. “I don’t want to have to kill anyone today. You two, watch yourselves. If I see something like this again, there will be consequences.” “Yes, yes, of course, boss.” He was leaving. Again. We were so close, yet a world apart. I was truly going to die here. “What’s wrong with you two?” the familiar voice from before spoke again. “Didn’t I tell you to stop?” Jack, furious, kicked me again in the stomach. I could only curl into a ball, whimpering. “Sir,” Jack said, his voice full of false deference. “This woman is insane. She keeps insisting the boss is her father.” “I’ve been in this compound for years. The boss has never even had a woman, let alone a grown daughter! She’s just trying to escape.” The man’s voice sharpened with alarm. “Take the hood off her. Now!” Jack hesitated, then ripped the black cloth from my head. “You goddamn idiot!” The man roared, his voice filled with fury. He kicked Jack so hard in the stomach that he crumpled to the floor, unable to get up. “She is the boss’s daughter! That’s Stella!” My vision was a blur of blood and tears. I forced my eyes open, trying to focus on the man standing before me. And my dead heart lurched back to life. It was my father’s best friend. My Uncle John. He had known me since I was a child. He would save me. He had to. A sob broke from my throat. Uncle John, please, help me. But the next words out of his mouth shattered my last sliver of hope. “Shave her head. Now. We can’t let the boss recognize her.” His voice was cold, pragmatic. “If he does, everything we’ve built for years will be destroyed.” Without a word, Jack grabbed a pair of clippers and began shearing off my hair. Uncle John crouched in front of me, studying my face intently. “It’s not enough. You can still tell it’s her. You’ll have to cut up her face.” “But sir,” Jack protested, “we were going to use her for the honey trap.” “Is your life more important, or the money?” John snarled. “Do as I say!” Jack took a blade and began to carve into my face. The sharp steel bit deep into my skin, and hot blood streamed down my ruined cheeks. I was unrecognizable, my breath coming in shallow, ragged gasps. “That should do it,” John said. Then, as if struck by a thought, he grabbed my ankle. His eyes fell on the silver locket tied with a red string. It was a gift from my father on my twelfth birthday. A good luck charm. In the center, he had carved a single star. It was his blessing, his wish that I would live a life of peace and happiness. “Are you trying to get us all killed?” John hissed. “Why didn’t you get rid of this?” He ripped the locket from my ankle and tossed it to a guard. “Be smart about it. Don’t just throw it away in the compound. If the boss finds it, he’ll have your head.” “Yes, sir!” But the guard had barely taken five steps when a chilling voice stopped him in his tracks.

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1 The nanny wanted to become the lady of the house. She secretly taught my son to call her “Grandma.” She was always lecturing me like a mother-in-law, pushing me to have a second child. “If a woman doesn’t have children, is she even a woman?” she’d say. When I finally had enough and tried to throw her out, she declared with arrogant pride, “You’re the one who should get lost. I’m Asher’s real mother!” My husband and I stared at each other, utterly horrified. “Since when,” we both stammered, “was he an illegitimate child?” … I got off work early and went to pick up my three-year-old son, Finn, from his preschool. As I approached the school gate, I saw our nanny, Mrs. Quinn, holding his hand. She held a lollipop in front of him, her face a mask of grandmotherly affection. “Finn, darling, what did I teach you to call me yesterday?” Finn hesitated. Mrs. Quinn dangled the lollipop tantalizingly. “Grandma!” he chirped immediately. “That’s right! Grandma’s good boy! Here you go.” Watching this exchange, my face went cold. Mrs. Quinn was a long-time fixture in my husband Asher’s family. She hadn’t just raised Asher; she had once saved his life. Now, she had volunteered to look after our son, Finn. The entire family respected her deeply. But my relationship with her was… strained. It had gotten particularly bad about a month ago, when Asher and I decided to enroll Finn in an early education program. When Mrs. Quinn found out, she cornered me. “Zoey,” she said, her tone casual but her eyes sharp, “Finn is three now. Don’t you think it’s time for you and Asher to start thinking about a second child?” I was completely blindsided. Asher’s parents had divorced years ago. I had no mother-in-law. Since marrying into the Vance family, Mrs. Quinn had taken it upon herself to act as the family matriarch, constantly lecturing me. Asher respected her, and since her meddling was usually minor, I let it slide. But now she had crossed a line, pushing me about having more children. I didn’t bother to hide my displeasure. “Mrs. Quinn, that is not your place to ask.” She ignored my irritation. “I know you young people are shy about these things. But having babies is a race against time. A woman over thirty has a much harder time conceiving.” Her voice warmed to her subject. “Where I come from, a woman should have at least three to five children. And it’s best if they’re all boys.” As her pronouncements grew more and more outrageous, I raised my voice to cut her off. “Mrs. Quinn, let’s be clear. You are a nanny. That’s all.” Even Asher’s own mother had never pressured me. Seeing the anger in my eyes, Mrs. Quinn finally, reluctantly, fell silent. But I never imagined she’d hold such a grudge. A nanny, secretly coaching my son to call her “Grandma.” If any of our friends heard that, they’d think I was cheating on Asher! 2 I suppressed my fury, forced a pleasant expression onto my face, and walked over. I buckled Finn into his car seat first. Then I turned to Mrs. Quinn, my face a cold mask. “Mrs. Quinn, a person should know their place,” I said, my voice low and even. “I shouldn’t have to teach you what you should and shouldn’t do, should I?” I was giving her one last chance to save face by not spelling it out. But she didn’t take it. She jutted out her chin and reprimanded me. “Zoey Vance, is that any way to speak to an elder? I raised Asher. He’s like a son to me. In the old days, I would have been his wet nurse. It’s only right that Finn calls me ‘Grandma’!” She sniffed. “It’s just like I thought. Someone from a common family like yours has no manners.” I was floored. What kind of twisted logic was that? By her reasoning, if she nannied for a few more families, she’d have children all over the city. I was done arguing. I held up my phone. “I wonder what Asher will think when he finds out he has a new mother.” The Vances treated their staff well, but not so well that they’d let a nanny walk all over them. Thinking I had recorded her, Mrs. Quinn’s face finally changed. Her tone softened, and she mumbled an apology. “Don’t let it happen again,” I said coldly. … Later that evening, I was still mulling over Mrs. Quinn’s recent behavior. When I first married Asher, she had been respectful, keeping to her duties. That all changed about a month into our marriage, when she found Asher in the kitchen late at night, making me a snack. The look on her face had curdled instantly. The next day, while Asher was at work, she confronted me. “Zoey, you have a perfectly good pair of hands and feet. How could you order Asher around like that?” I was baffled. “He’s my husband. Making me a bowl of noodles is hardly ‘ordering him around.’” “No, no, no,” she corrected me, her expression deadly serious. “It is the natural order of things for a woman to serve a man. Besides,” she added, her voice dropping conspiratorially, “Asher is the heir to the Vance family! If people found out he was waiting on you, they’d laugh him out of town!” I was stunned by her archaic mindset. What century was she living in? She was a relic from a bygone era. I tried to reason with her, my temper still in check. “Mrs. Quinn, it’s not ‘waiting on me.’ It’s called taking care of each other. That’s what married couples do.” She just sighed and shook her head. “A girl from a common family. You’ll never understand. The Vances are a prominent family. You can’t compare them to common folk. I think you should quit your job and learn how to be a proper wife.” 3 Before I could protest, she shoved a pile of laundry into my arms. It was Asher’s from the day before. “From now on, you will be washing all of Asher’s clothes,” she instructed. “His underwear and socks must be washed by hand. And when he leaves for work in the morning, you must be up to see him off.” She paused, then added, “That three-thousand-a-month job of yours is pointless. Just quit and focus on taking care of Asher at home. The most important thing now is to get pregnant.” I stared at her, dumbfounded, as she prattled on. This fossil wasn’t going to be reasoned with. So, I threw the clothes right back at her. Especially the two smelly socks. They hit her squarely on the head and face. The pungent odor of a man’s sweaty feet is not a pleasant one. Mrs. Quinn shrieked like a scalded chicken. “Zoey Vance!” I just shrugged, a cold smile on my face. “Whoever wants to wash them can wash them. I’m not doing it.” That was our first major confrontation. I told Asher about it that night. He promised to talk to her, reminding me that she was a long-time family employee and deserved another chance. Of course, he said, if I wanted her gone, she’d be gone. But we were newly married, and I didn’t want to cause a huge scene. I relented. After that, Mrs. Quinn seemed to understand that I wasn’t a pushover, and she backed off. Until I got pregnant. That’s when she started acting up again. 4 When we found out I was pregnant, the whole family was ecstatic, especially Asher, who had always wanted a daughter. But it was Mrs. Quinn’s reaction that surprised me the most. She wept with joy, clasping her hands together in prayer. “Asher has an heir! Thank you, ancestors!” She was more emotional than my own mother-in-law would have been. Not only that, she started doting on me, fussing over my every need, cooking me elaborate meals. The tension between us began to melt away, all because of the tiny life growing inside me. Until I was seven weeks along. One day, Mrs. Quinn grabbed my arm, her face taut with anxiety, insisting we go to the hospital. I was confused. “Didn’t we just have a check-up last week?” She smiled. “We’re not going for a check-up. We’re going to find out if the baby is a boy or a girl. If it’s a boy, we’ll keep it. If it’s a girl, we’ll get rid of it. The firstborn must be a son!” I snatched my hand away, horrified. “Mrs. Quinn, have you lost your mind? My child’s fate is not for you to decide. You’re just a nanny in this house. This has nothing to do with you!” My outburst left her red-faced and sputtering. She bit out, “I’m only doing this for your own good!” “Why don’t you mind your own business?” I retorted sharply. “The Vances give you an inch, and you think you’re the queen of the castle. You have no say over my child!” My words were merciless. Mrs. Quinn was fuming, but there was nothing she could do. I waved a dismissive hand and banished her from my room. I was about to insist on hiring a new nanny, but Mrs. Quinn beat me to the punch with a preemptive strike. 5 After I became pregnant, I started taking a nap every afternoon. That day, I had just fallen asleep when a sharp pain shot through my fingertip. I’m terrified of pain, and it jolted me awake. I opened my eyes and found myself staring into a pair of cold, narrow eyes. I screamed, grabbing whatever was on my nightstand and hurling it at the figure. Only when I heard a familiar cry of pain did I realize it was Mrs. Quinn. Her forehead was bleeding where an object had struck her, and her chin was cut. In my panic, I had even ripped out a chunk of her hair. She was a complete mess. “Mrs. Quinn, what are you doing?” I demanded, my voice trembling. She stammered, unable to form a coherent sentence. Then I saw the test tube in her hand and the syringe on the floor beside her. It all clicked. She hadn’t given up. She had snuck into my room while I was sleeping to draw my blood for a gender test. I couldn’t believe it. She was a nanny, not the lady of the house. Why was she so obsessed with my pregnancy? Asher was furious. This was his first child. He wouldn’t tolerate anyone, regardless of gender, trying to harm it. Mrs. Quinn was finally scared. Scared of being thrown out for good. She tearfully reminded Asher of how she had saved his life, begging for forgiveness. She banged her head on the floor until the carpet was stained red. Finding a good nanny isn’t easy, and Asher hadn’t been feeling well himself lately, so I agreed to give her one more chance. After that incident, Mrs. Quinn did seem to behave. She took good care of Finn over the years, and I stopped thinking about replacing her. But I was wrong. Her ambition to be the “mistress” of the house had never died. 6 Lately, I’d noticed Finn seemed withdrawn and unusually clingy. I assumed it was just trouble adjusting to his new school. Until tonight. As I was tucking him into bed, he looked at me with red-rimmed eyes. “Mommy,” he whispered, “please don’t leave. I don’t want Daddy to get me a new mommy.” My heart sank, but I kept my voice gentle. “Mommy’s not going anywhere. Who told you Daddy was going to get a new mommy?” He was silent for a long time before his voice came out in a choked sob. “It was Grandma Quinn. She said she’s going to be my real grandma soon. And that if you don’t behave, Daddy will get me a new mommy.” A fire ignited in my chest. Not only was Mrs. Quinn defying me, she was threatening my son. And what did she mean, “she’s going to be my real grandma soon”? I pushed down my anger and questions and focused on comforting my son. “Don’t you worry, Finn. Daddy would never, ever replace Mommy.” After reassuring him until he finally fell asleep, I couldn’t stop thinking about what he’d said. A bizarre thought popped into my head. Had Mrs. Quinn started something with my father-in-law? What other explanation could there be? My father-in-law had been a bit of a playboy in his younger days. When Asher was ten, a mistress had even shown up with an illegitimate son of the same age. Asher never went into detail, but the mistress and her son were sent packing. His wife, heartbroken, had insisted on a divorce. My father-in-law, suddenly repentant, had been trying to win her back ever since. For years, his life had been nothing but work and futile attempts at reconciliation. Given his history and heartbreak, it seemed unlikely he’d fall for the aging Mrs. Quinn. But then again, some people have strange tastes. Maybe years of rejection had changed his palate. It was the only way Mrs. Quinn’s recent behavior made any sense. She was acting like she was already the lady of the house. A shiver went down my spine. I shook Asher, who was sound asleep beside me. “Wake up! If you keep sleeping, you’re going to have a new baby brother!” Asher’s eyes fluttered open. He rolled on top of me. “What? Honey, you want to give Finn a baby brother? I’d better get to work!” “Asher!” My protest was swallowed by his kiss.

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1 The day billionaire Jason went bankrupt, he tried to jump off a skyscraper. There I was, his trophy wife of five years, clinging to his leg in tears. He looked moved—until I spoke: “Don’t jump! My Birkin payment hasn’t cleared!” His face darkened instantly. Later, after a truck sent him flying, I whispered by his hospital bed: “Honey, Cartier has a new ring. Just 10 years of DoorDash to afford it!” Even in a coma, his eyelid twitched in rage. Floating comments called me a gold-digging parasite. They shut up fast when I funded his comeback with millions. No protagonist halo? Fine—I’ll steal the spotlight myself. “Jason, don’t jump! The final payment on my new Birkin hasn’t cleared yet.” Jason turned to look at me, pure shock on his face. “Why are you still here?” I doubled down on my act. “You promised you’d take care of me for life! You can’t go back on your word, no matter what!” The live comments continued to float past my eyes. [> OMG I see why he hates her later. She so deserves it.] [> He’s about to jump and all she can think about is bags and money. The ML is living a tragedy.] [> How else can they show how kind the real female lead is? When he jumps, she’ll appear and save him. I can’t wait!] My lip twitched as I read them. It was a long shot, but I had to try. I tightened my grip on Jason’s leg. He stared down at the river of traffic below, rubbing his temples. “I’m bankrupt, Chloe. I can’t support you anymore.” “There’s a card on the desk in the bedroom. It has five hundred thousand dollars on it. The pin is your birthday. Just go.” I couldn’t see his expression, but it was the first time I had ever heard such a defeated tone in his voice. Even on the brink of death, he was still thinking about leaving me a way out. I tugged on the hem of his shirt, my voice firming with resolve. “No! If worst comes to worst, I’ll support you!” At that, he whipped his head around, his eyes a storm of complex emotions. Before he could answer, I pressed on. “Today is our fifth wedding anniversary. I got you a present!” The wind on the rooftop suddenly howled, making his dress shirt flap violently against his frame. It made him look even more precarious. After a long moment, the man asked in disbelief, “You… got me a present?” In five years of marriage, Jason had given me countless gifts. This was the first time he’d ever heard of me getting one for him. I held out my hand. “Let’s go home, okay?” He hesitated, then finally, his hand met mine. The comments shrieked. [> Wait, what? Why is the side chick stealing the female lead’s lines?] 2 Back home, Jason stared speechlessly at the “gift” I presented. I held up the latest, skintight designer dress, pressing it against Jason’s broad chest for measurement. “Hmm,” I said with a serious expression. “I think it’s a little small.” Then, with feigned distress, I added, “And they have a strict no-return policy. Oh, well. I guess I’ll just have to wear it myself.” A choked laugh escaped Jason. He turned without a word and headed straight back to the rooftop. Before I could even react, he had vanished around the stairwell corner. I stomped my foot in frustration, letting out a sharp cry. “Jason! You cheapskate!” His magnetic voice drifted down from above. “I left my phone up there. I’m just getting it.” That dress added another two thousand dollars to Jason’s debt. To make ends meet, he had no choice but to start delivering food. But no matter how busy he was, he always rushed home at noon to cook for me. Looking at the man in the bright yellow delivery uniform, drenched in sweat, who could believe that just ten days ago he was a Wall Street titan worth billions? He expertly tied an apron and began chopping vegetables in the kitchen with practiced ease. This entire shoebox apartment was smaller than the master bathroom in our old penthouse. I was curled up on the couch, munching on the mango slices he’d prepared for me, scrolling through the eight-figure balance on my banking app. This was all just pocket money Jason had given me over the years. Then there were the designer bags and jewelry stuffed into half the apartment. All told, it was a small fortune. A pang of guilt made me glance toward the kitchen. I found him with his shirt off, a thin, pink floral apron the only thing covering his torso. Broad shoulders, a narrow waist, and a sheen of sweat highlighting the solid lines of his muscles. He looked like some kind of sinfully hot domestic god. My heart skipped a beat, and my foot kicked the coffee table. “Ow!” 3 Jason heard the noise and rushed over, crouching down to gently massage my foot. “You don’t have to go through this with me, Chloe. I’ll pay back the money for the dress. You should… find a better path for yourself. Don’t waste your time on me.” His eyes were downcast, his voice muffled. I put on my most wounded expression. “I haven’t even complained about you being poor, and now you’re trying to kick me out!” Jason opened his mouth to explain that wasn’t what he meant, but I cut him off with a torrent of accusations. “I get it! You think I spend too much, and now you regret it, don’t you? What did you say when you married me? You said you’d support me forever, and now you want to dump me for some frugal, stay-at-home type, is that it? You heartless bastard!” Jason had to clamp a hand over my mouth to stop the stream of nonsense. His voice was tight, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he struggled to find the right words. “I just feel like I’m making you suffer.” “The apartment is small and damp, the food isn’t great, we can only afford discounted fruit…” “Chloe, you deserve a better, happier life than this.” Normally, when the sugar daddy goes broke, the sugar baby packs her bags and runs. But after five years, it was impossible not to have feelings for him. He was handsome, rich, and ridiculously generous. He was always busy, disappearing for days at a time, but when he returned, it was always with a shower of diamonds and gold. And most importantly, even at his lowest point, his last thought was of me, leaving me every penny he had left. I couldn’t leave. I didn’t want to leave. I grabbed the collar of his apron, flipped him over, and pressed him down onto the sofa. Then I planted a loud, firm kiss on his sexy, thin lips. “You said you’d support me for life. Not a minute less, not a second less. I’m stuck with you, Jason.” A dense cloud of comments materialized before my eyes again. [> Damn, girl is eating good. Let me tap in for a chapter or two.] [> Not gonna lie, the side chick and the ML are hot together. I kinda ship it.] [> Sis, don’t go down that road. The ML belongs to the FL. This won’t end well for her.] [> Btw where is my girl?? Don’t let this evil woman fool you, Jason! The FL is your soulmate!] [> The original plot where they met was already ruined. The next scene is the ML getting humiliated while delivering food. The FL is supposed to show up there.] I pretended not to see them and deepened the kiss, holding Jason’s chin. I watched his eyes flutter nervously, a deep blush spreading from his ears down his neck. Taking advantage of a gasp for air, Jason gently pushed me away. “Ch-Chloe, the soup is on the stove! I-I have to check on it!” [> AAAAAH! A cold-blooded killer in the boardroom, a pure-hearted puppy for his wife! What is this heavenly man?!] [> Okay, the ML and his little drama-queen-trophy-wife are actually kinda cute. I’m in.] [> I’m in too.] [> People, stop letting your morals be guided by hot faces!] [> Don’t ship it, you guys. The side character is destined to be killed off by the plot. You’re just setting yourself up for heartbreak.] I had started seeing these bizarre, floating comments a long time ago. At first, I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me. But when the things they talked about started coming true, one after another, I had no choice but to believe them. From their chatter, I learned that my world was a novel. And I was the disposable side character. A mere plot device to advance the love story of the main characters. First, I was the selfish contrast to the female lead’s kindness. Later, I was the obstacle that would strengthen their bond. After seeing the comments, I tried desperately to change the story. But often, the plot would take over, turning me into an unconscious NPC, a puppet on a string. Like the day Jason stood on that rooftop. The plot was forcing me to follow my script: grab the money and run. And Jason was left to face his despair alone. But at the last second, the comments woke me up. And when I saw them mention the exact time the female lead was supposed to appear, a plan began to form in my mind. 4 Jason continued to work from dawn till dusk, delivering food. I was lounging at home, blissfully eating a small cake he’d just brought back for me, when the comments suddenly appeared: [> It’s today! The villain finds out the ML is a delivery guy and orders a cake for the FL’s birthday just so the ML has to deliver it. Then he’s going to humiliate him!] [> My girl is about to make her entrance! Damsel saving the hero! I’m so ready for this!] [> Once the FL appears, Chloe the cannon fodder is done for.] [> I suddenly feel a little bad for Chloe. The first thing the ML did after a big order was buy her a cake. She must think he really loves her, not knowing that personal feelings get erased by the power of the plot.] The day had finally come. I quickly grabbed a hefty-looking designer bag and rushed to the city’s largest hotel. A welcome sign for the female lead, Seraphina Thorne’s, birthday party stood at the entrance. As soon as I walked in, I spotted that familiar splash of yellow. Jason, with his broad shoulders and long legs, couldn’t hide his handsome figure even in a delivery uniform. He was pushing a towering, multi-tiered cake when a group of rich young men blocked his path. The leader was Asher, the villain the comments were talking about. Asher looked Jason up and down, his face a mask of contempt. “Jason, you forced me out of the country back then. I never thought karma would be such a bitch, and so quick.” “Tsk, tsk. Look at you. Pathetic as a stray dog.” The group erupted in laughter. After being overshadowed by Jason for so many years, Asher was eager to kick the man while he was down. To add to the fun, Asher’s friend, Kyle, chimed in. “Hey, Ash, did you hear the best part?” “Jason’s broke, but his little gold digger is still sticking around!” Another guy added, “What a waste! Can he even afford to keep a woman on a delivery boy’s salary?” The laughter grew louder, more piercing. Seeing Jason remain silent, Kyle provoked him further. “How about this? I’ll give you a million dollars. You send that little wife of yours to my place. If she keeps me happy, I’ll…” Jason’s chest heaved. He swung a fist, sending Kyle sprawling to the ground. “You dare hit me?!” The surrounding bodyguards swarmed forward, pinning Jason to the floor. Kyle wiped a smear of blood from his lip, then strode forward and kicked Jason hard in the stomach. “You think you’re still the untouchable king of this city? You can’t protect anyone now.” Jason gritted his teeth, his eyes burning with hatred. “Whatever you have a problem with, you deal with me.” Asher shot Kyle a meaningful look. Kyle understood immediately. He pulled out his phone, aimed it at Jason, and sneered. “I don’t want to make things hard for you. Just get on your knees and crawl through my legs, and I’ll leave your precious little tramp alone.” “What do you say?” [> Using a woman to threaten the ML. The villains are as trashy as ever.] [> This is it! They have to humiliate him so that when the FL steps in to save him, he’ll fall in love at first sight and she’ll become his one true love.] [> The poor ML. Why do they always have to torture him before giving him a tiny bit of happiness? Is that the only way love can happen?] [> Seriously…] [> That’s just how these novels work. How else would it be interesting?] The comments started arguing amongst themselves. I breathed a sigh of relief seeing a few sane voices. If people were questioning it, it meant things could change. Just as the villains were forcing Jason to his knees, and just a second before Seraphina was about to step forward to save him, I charged in. I stormed in, swinging my two-hundred-thousand-dollar handbag like a medieval flail and started wailing on Kyle and Asher’s thick skulls. “Crawl through your daddy’s legs? Well, your daddy’s right here! Get to kneeling!”

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The company’s cash flow had seized up. The final project payment, the one I’d promised would be on time, was going to be a month late. I called in Zoe, the girl I’d been sponsoring for years. She was my foreman’s daughter, working as an intern in my office since graduation. I chose my words carefully. “The money isn’t going to come through on schedule. It might be another month. Could you let your dad know? I don’t want him to worry.” But the next day, the crew smashed up my office. “You swore on your life!” they roared. “The project’s done, and now you’re saying you’re broke?” My eyes found Zoe. She was in tears. “All I know is the company has no money right now,” she sobbed. “You can’t pay, and I can’t lie for you. It’s a matter of my character.” 1 My office had been ransacked. I’d just gotten home from a business trip when the call came. By the time I arrived, the place was a disaster zone. The heavy desks and chairs they couldn’t break were violently shoved out of place, creating a chaotic maze. Smaller things—mugs, binders, files—were shattered and strewn across the floor like confetti. Computer monitors were smashed, their screens a spiderweb of cracks, glittering under the fluorescent lights. The moment my staff saw me, it was as if their spine had snapped back into place. They all rushed toward me. “We couldn’t stop them. They beat up all three security guards.” “They smashed my computer! My data…” “A whole week of analysis, gone. Just… gone.” Before I could say a word, they emerged from my personal office. A dark, angry mass of a few dozen men, a thundercloud rolling ominously toward us. They had come straight from the construction site, still wearing their hard hats, their clothes splattered with flecks of concrete. These men had worked for me for three years. In my memory, they were always cheerful, salt-of-the-earth types. Now, their faces were grim masks of fury. Some of them even held shovels, their knuckles white. I couldn’t imagine what could have driven them to such destructive rage. A second later, one of the workers answered my unspoken question. He stomped toward me, his voice a low growl. “So you’re the one who won’t pay?” He lunged, his hand reaching for my arm, but one of my guys moved faster, tackling him to the ground. Pinned, the man still struggled, his eyes locked on mine, desperate to drag an answer out of me. His aggression ignited a fire in my own team. “You think you can touch our boss?” “Just because we haven’t hit back doesn’t mean we won’t!” The men on my side squared up, stepping forward. The two groups stood in a tense standoff, a spark away from exploding into a full-blown brawl. It was only then that the foreman, Mr. Miller, stepped forward. He took a long, noisy drag from his cigarette, the tip glowing like a malevolent eye. “Quiet!” he barked, his voice raw and powerful. The restless crew instantly fell silent. I’d barely spoken to him over the years. My only real memory of him was from a visit to his home last year—a small, worn-down house with a couple of rooms. He’d bowed his head, his gratitude overflowing. “Thank you, Ms. Blackwood. Thank you for sponsoring my daughter all these years. She never would’ve made it to college without you.” Now, he stood tall, the timid man from my memory completely gone. He looked down at me, his gaze cold. “You said you’d pay the second the project was finished. Well, it’s finished. And now you’re saying there’s no money.” He paused, letting the accusation hang in the air. “What is that, if not a lie?” 2 His words were a signal. The rest of the crew joined in, their voices a rising chorus of anger. “Yeah, a damn lie!” “My whole family is counting on that paycheck!” “Liar! Liar! Liar!” But I never said I wouldn’t pay. I said it would be delayed, a month at the most. In that instant, I knew exactly where the problem lay. I forced my voice to remain steady, my anger a tight knot in my stomach. “Get Zoe in here,” I told my assistant. At the mention of his daughter’s name, Miller took another drag of his cigarette, his eyes fixed on me. “Let’s keep this professional. This has nothing to do with Zoe. This is about you refusing to pay us what we’re owed.” Zoe appeared moments later, looking flustered. I held my temper in check. “What, exactly, did you tell your father?” The question was barely out of my mouth before she burst into tears. “I just told him you can’t pay right now! I can’t lie! The company accounts are empty!” My legs almost gave out from the sheer force of my frustration. This was a delicate matter that should have been handled by HR, but I’d trusted her. I thought that coming from her, the news would be easier for the crew to swallow. I had sponsored her for five years. She was the foreman’s daughter. It was the one task I thought was foolproof. And she’d managed to detonate it, twisting my message into a declaration of bankruptcy. She was still crying, and some of the workers who knew her started to comfort her. “Don’t cry, Zoe. We know you’re on our side.” I gripped the edge of a displaced desk, my knuckles white. My voice was a low, dangerous hiss. “What did I tell you, Zoe? I said it would be delayed a month at most. I said I would pay.” She sobbed, her words a messy defense. “But you can’t pay now! I can’t lie about that! It’s a matter of my character!” 3 My hand shot out, grabbing the nearest thing—a glass tumbler. CRASH! It exploded against the wall, and my frayed sanity shattered right along with it. I pointed a trembling finger at Zoe. “Your character? You want the entire company to vouch for your damn character? This was one simple thing, and you couldn’t even do that right! What did I say? And what did you say? I said the money was coming!” Zoe cried harder. “Just tell me! Which part of what I said was wrong?” “Go out there and ask! Find me one construction company that doesn’t have payment delays! I’m late by one month! One month!” A hot wave of anger surged through me. I lunged forward, my hand raised. For years, I had treated her like a little sister. I never imagined she would stab me in the back like this. Before my hand could connect, Miller caught my wrist, his eyes bulging with rage. “You dare lay a hand on my daughter?” I ripped my arm from his grasp and let out a cold, bitter laugh as I looked at the hostile crowd. “The company’s funds are tight right now, but you will be paid. One month, at the latest.” A wave of murmurs rippled through the crew. “So she’s not refusing to pay, just late by a month?” “The last company we worked for, we waited half a year for our money.” “A month? That’s not bad at all…” They were all from Zoe’s hometown. I remembered my first visit to their village three years ago. The villagers had brought me fresh fruit, and I noticed the dirt caked under the nails of the woman who handed them to me. She saw me looking and shyly wiped her hands on her clothes. “I washed them,” she’d said, embarrassed. That single, simple gesture moved me. I decided then and there to help them. The whole village was full of hardworking people with few skills beyond manual labor. I paid for their travel and housing and put them on my payroll immediately. The standard rate for a laborer in Oakridge was three hundred dollars a day. I gave them four hundred. I made sure they had cold water on hot days and hot meals delivered for lunch, personally checking the quality of the food before it was sent out. I never imagined that after all that, a two-week delay would lead them to not just question me, but to demolish my office. Even after I clarified the situation, the tension in the room didn’t dissipate. “It’s a trick,” someone muttered. “She’s planning to skip town.” 4 That single sentence was like a drop of water in a vat of hot oil. The murmuring crew erupted once more. Amid the chaos, someone turned to Zoe. “Zoe, you tell us. We trust you. Is she going to pay or not?” I looked at her, my heart sinking. Between sobs, she answered. “Uncle, the company really can’t pay right now.” A suffocating weight pressed down on my chest. My own staff couldn’t take it anymore. “Zoe, tell them!” my assistant, Mia, snapped. “Has our boss ever been late with your pay before?” These men had been with me for three years. Every single time a project ended, I paid them immediately, faster than anyone else in the business. This was the very first delay, and this was how they reacted. Miller’s gaze hardened as he looked at me, and in that instant, he delivered his verdict. “Sorry, Ms. Blackwood. I’ve got hundreds of men to answer to. I can’t afford the risk.” He threw his cigarette to the ground. “Either you pay us now, or we’ll keep making trouble. We’ll camp out right here, in front of your office. Let’s see you try to do business then.” The world swam, dark spots dancing in my vision. For three years… even a dog, if you fed it every day for three years, wouldn’t bite you if you missed one meal. But these men, over a single delayed payment, were ready to tear me apart. In all of Oakridge, no one treated their crews like I did. They were doing this because I was a woman, and they thought their numbers gave them the power to bully me. I had been up all night dealing with work, skipped breakfast, and walked straight into this mess. I was swaying on my feet, but in that moment of weakness, a cold clarity washed over me. If a dog bites you, you get a new dog. Especially when it comes to laborers, who were a dime a dozen. I steadied myself, my voice clear and firm. “How much? Tell me the number.” “Four and a half million dollars.” Seeing me soften, he quickly added, “Look, it’s hundreds of us, working for over four months straight. Our families depend on this…” “Enough,” I cut him off. I took a step forward, and immediately, a wall of workers closed in around me, as if they were afraid I’d make a run for it. “I’m going to my office to make a phone call.” Only when I was inside did I see the full extent of the damage. Files were dumped on the floor, drawers had been emptied, and important documents were torn to shreds. I walked through the wreckage to my desk. Standing amidst the ruins, I picked up my phone and started making calls. “Mr. Lee, it’s Evelyn. I was wondering if you were free this afternoon…” “Catherine, it’s me. I need to ask you a favor…” “Ben, it’s Evelyn…” Twelve calls. Twelve times I had to swallow my pride, something I hadn’t done since I was a child. Through the glass wall of my office, I could see my employees, all of them looking down, unable to meet my eyes. The workers, on the other hand, stared at me like a pack of wolves, waiting to tear a piece of flesh from my bones. I transferred the money, every last cent. Then I walked out, holding my phone. “It’s all there. Check it.” 5 Miller confirmed the transfer on his phone. He looked up at me, a smirk on his face. “See? You had the money all along. Why make us go through all this trouble?” I changed the subject. “The police are on their way. Let’s calculate the damages. You’ll be paying for them.” They must have anticipated this when they started smashing things. A few of them looked angry, but no one argued. While we waited, Zoe spoke up. “Evelyn… let them go. They have another project lined up. Every second they’re here is a loss for them.” I shot a sideways glance at her. One of the workers, thinking she had a point, started to shuffle toward the door. Mia, seeing the look on my face, brought me a glass of hot water. I took a sip before speaking. “You don’t need to go back to the site.” Miller finally looked at me directly. “What’s that supposed to mean, boss?” “You’re all fired.” Flick. The sound of a lighter. Smoke curled up into the air. Through the haze, Miller’s voice was laced with contempt. “Ms. Blackwood, we’re halfway through the new project. It’s not right to fire us now.” Zoe looked at me, her voice pleading. “Evelyn, they’ve been with you for three years.” I held the warm glass in my hands and looked at her. “So have you. You’re a big girl now. Pack your things and be out of my house by tonight.” She fell silent. In the dead quiet, Miller threw his half-smoked cigarette to the ground, where it landed on a pile of shredded paper. A small wisp of smoke began to rise. I poured the hot water from my glass onto it. The water hissed, extinguishing the glowing ember and the threat of a fire. I looked at the man. “Get out.” 6 They left. All of them. That night, I worked frantically to hire a new crew. The extra hundred dollars a day I offered meant I found one quickly. The new foreman gave me his word there would be no trouble. By the time I finished, the sky was already turning a pale gray. The apartment was still a mess. I realized Zoe hadn’t come back to pack at all. The next morning, she was waiting for me at the office, a resignation letter in hand. She was wearing a brand-new outfit, the designer logo loud and conspicuous. My eyes fell on the handbag she was carrying. It was bright purple crocodile skin, an ostentatious piece that screamed old money, not the taste of a young woman. I recognized it. It cost close to sixty thousand dollars. In Oakridge, there was only one prominent single man old enough to appreciate a bag like that, and he was a widower who had remained single for years. All the other men in that circle had kids her age. I had sponsored her for five years, watched her grow from a timid girl into a young woman. My voice was harder than I intended when I asked, “Where did you get the bag?” She stammered, “Evelyn… that’s none of your business, is it?” None of my business? I was the one who drove her to college for her first semester. I bought gifts for her roommates so she wouldn’t feel left out. I had guided her through every major decision she’d ever made. And now, it was none of my business. My face hardened. “Where. Did. You. Get it.” Cornered, she finally broke. “My boyfriend gave it to me.” I pointed a finger at her. “He gives you a gift like this, and you have any idea what you’re expected to give him in return?” She looked at me, genuinely confused by my anger. “Return? What do I have to return? He gave it to me because he likes me.” It was never that simple. Teenagers giving each other milk tea, I could believe that was innocent. A sixty-thousand-dollar handbag? There were always strings attached. She continued, her voice gaining a defiant edge. “Evelyn, you sponsored me all this time so I could make something of myself, right? So I could make money? Well, I have. This bag, this outfit… do you have any idea how much they cost?” Was that why I sponsored her? I sponsored her because she had stood before me with tears in her eyes and said, “I have good grades. I just want a chance to learn.” Now, she was proudly showing off her new clothes, a smug look on her face. “Do you know how much this dress costs? It’s more than I would have made in years working for you.” I grabbed the cup of coffee off my desk and, without a word, poured it over her head. The hot liquid streamed down her face, dripping onto her expensive dress. It wasn’t enough. I snatched a pen from my desk, grabbed the purple bag from her, and started scribbling furiously all over the exotic leather. “What are you doing?” she shrieked, trying to wrestle it away from me. Black ink smeared across her arms, but she ignored the stains on her skin, frantically trying to wipe the marks off the bag. “What is wrong with you?” I ignored her, threw the ruined pen on the floor, and walked back to my desk. I took out my checkbook and wrote out a check. My head was throbbing. I pressed my fingers to my temple and held up the check. She immediately fell silent. The sharp click of her heels on the floor echoed in the quiet office. My hand was suddenly empty. She had snatched the check and placed the ruined handbag on my desk. “Evelyn,” she said, her voice laced with a bitter triumph, “you must really look down on me right now, don’t you?” I kept my head in my hands, saying nothing. “Everyone has different goals in life,” she continued. “I don’t think I’ve done anything wrong.” She didn’t think she’d done anything wrong. “Zoe,” I called out as she turned to leave. I pushed myself up and walked toward her. A storm of anger had been brewing inside me since the moment I saw my trashed office. I raised my hand. CRACK. The sound of my palm striking her cheek echoed through the office. She clutched her face, the door wide open. No one dared to look our way. Everyone knew how much I had valued Zoe, how I had personally mentored her, desperate for her to learn the ropes and stand on her own two feet. I couldn’t understand how she had become this person. Zoe held her cheek, a cold smile spreading across her lips. “Evelyn, every penny you ever gave me, I will wire it back to your account. This isn’t over. You just wait.” She walked out, head held high. Mia peeked her head around the corner. “Boss? Are you okay?” I dragged myself back to my desk. The defaced purple handbag sat there, a monument to my failure. I reached out, picked it up, and hurled it into the trash can. As it hit the bottom with a dull thud, the world went black, and I collapsed. 7 When I opened my eyes, Mia was sitting by my hospital bed. She looked like she was bursting to say something. “Spit it out,” I said. She was young and impulsive. Someone else in the room tried to shush her, but it was too late. The words tumbled out. “The new crew got into a fight with Mr. Miller’s crew.” A nurse came in to check on me. “Let’s not talk about work right now,” she said kindly, changing my IV bag. “You need to rest. Eat on time, sleep on time. All these late nights will catch up to you when you’re older.” I nodded obediently. As soon as she left, I turned back to Mia. “The reason.” The others in the room tried to signal her to stop. “Boss, you need to rest. It’s a small thing.” But this was why I’d hired her. She was smart, bold, and fresh out of college, unafraid to say what needed to be said. She pressed her lips together, trying to hold it in, but failed. “Our water truck was on its way to the new site, and it had to pass by the place where Miller’s crew is working now. They blocked the road and ambushed it. The driver was scared, so he stopped, and they just… stole all the water. The whole shipment. Our new foreman took some guys to get it back, and they beat them up. Our guys have to work this afternoon, so they just bought some antiseptic and went straight to the site. The new foreman said it’s not a big deal and he didn’t want to bother you, but it is! That was thousands of dollars worth of water!” She was talking a mile a minute, her voice thick with righteous anger. I understood. Before I could respond, there was a knock on the door. It swung open before I could answer. “Ms. Blackwood! We came to see you!” It was a few of the old workers, carrying a fruit basket. Miller was with them. I would have welcomed a visit, but the moment he sat down, his words dripped with sarcasm. “Thank you, Ms. Blackwood. Thank you so much.” His voice was full of mock gratitude. “Thank you for letting us go. We’re making eight hundred a day now! You have no idea how happy the guys are.” He was practically beaming. “The new boss, he’s a young guy. Generous, open-handed. Not a penny-pincher like you. We’re building a villa for him. A real villa!” His men snickered. Miller continued, “And since leaving you, my Zoe’s found herself a wonderful boyfriend. We’ve all landed on our feet. We really have you to thank for all this.” His words were laced with poison, but I ignored them. After the laughter died down, the worker who had first tried to grab me in the office spoke up, his tone suddenly serious. “Now that we’ve had our fun, let’s talk business.” All eyes turned to him. He stared at me. “We worked for you for three years. Turns out, the real rate for this work is eight hundred a day. You were paying us half. We can’t even imagine how much you pocketed.” He paused, then delivered the real punchline. “We’re here to get paid.” My staff exploded. “Get paid? For what?” “Go ask around! See what the real rate is! We gave you everything, paid time off for bad weather… we were practically a charity!” “A couple of days building a villa has fried your brain!” Miller ignored them, flicking ash from his cigarette. His face was a grim mask. “We’re here to get paid. You owe us for the three years of work you shorted us. You pay us the difference, and we walk away.” “Eight hundred a day,” he repeated, his voice low and menacing. “You do the math. We’ll wait.”

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The Scorch had arrived. Surface temperatures soared past 150 degrees Fahrenheit, and the first wave of humanity was preparing to evacuate to the Arctic Citadel. As a leading scientist, my husband, David, was granted a priority ticket that included a spot for his spouse. Everyone assumed he would take me without a second thought. But the name he wrote on the application form wasn’t mine. It was his graduate student’s. “She’s a young girl I’ve mentored,” he’d said, his tone casual, almost dismissive. “She has no family, no one to look after her. I can’t just leave her here to burn.” He submitted the form without a single glance my way, his words a shard of ice in my heart. “June, you’re different,” he continued, his voice devoid of emotion. “You’ve always been tough. I have faith you can survive until the second transport wave.” A bitter smile tightened my lips. I said nothing. That night, as the temperature climbed ever higher on the global feed, I calmly made a phone call. “You once told me you’d grant me one wish, no questions asked,” I said, my voice steady. “Does that offer still stand?” 1 There was no hesitation on the other end. “Always.” I took a breath, my voice barely a whisper. “Can you get me two tickets for the Ark? For my mother and me. On the first transport.” A chance at survival. A ticket was a prayer answered. He couldn’t make a firm promise, but his words were a lifeline. “I’ll do everything I can.” Just as I hung up, David walked in, his eyes still glued to his phone. “Who were you calling?” he asked. I was too tired to even invent a lie. “Someone about tickets,” I said, my voice flat. He didn’t even look up. “There are only a few hundred tickets for the first wave. You won’t get one. If it were possible, I would have already arranged it for you.” My fingers tightened around my phone. Of course, he knew how priceless they were. And still, he had cast me aside for his student without a moment’s hesitation. When I didn’t respond, he finally lifted his head. “June, don’t worry. I’ve already put your name down for the second wave. You’re not going to die.” I listened to the radio announcer’s grim report of the rising heat and let out a silent, scornful laugh. Everyone knew that in the Scorch, every day you waited was another tick down on your chances of survival. The apocalypse loomed, and perhaps it was the suffocating anxiety, but a desperate sliver of hope made me ask, “David, for the sake of my mother—the woman who sponsored your education for six years—can’t you at least take her? She’s old, her health is failing. She won’t last long here.” A heavy, unbearable silence filled the room. We hadn’t turned on the lights, and in the gloom, I couldn’t make out the expression on his face. We had been married for seven years, but we had known each other for far longer. We grew up on the same street, childhood friends who became inseparable. Then, the summer before high school, David’s parents were killed in a car accident. My mother, her heart aching for the lonely boy, took him in. In an era of scarcity, where every grain of rice was counted, she somehow managed to put two of us through college. The summer after we graduated, David, who had always been a man of few words, made me a promise. He swore that if the world ended, he would die by my side. The summer air back then wasn’t nearly as hot as it was now, but the heat of his palm against mine had been enough to set my entire world ablaze. I squeezed my eyes shut, letting the memory dissolve like smoke. David was silent for a long time. Finally, he spoke. “June, Chloe is my most valuable assistant. I need her with me. It’s not up for discussion.” He paused, his voice dropping. “And… don’t take the things we said as kids so seriously.” A bitter laugh escaped my lips, and I swayed, nearly losing my balance. It was the Scorch, the air thick enough to cook a man alive, yet his words chilled me to the bone. Soon, the clouds parted, and a sliver of moonlight illuminated his sharp, detached features. He nudged a file folder toward me. “Here. This is for you.” I opened it. It was a divorce agreement. 2 My head snapped up, my eyes wide with disbelief. David took a slow, deliberate sip of his tea. “The first wave transport requires proof of kinship,” he explained calmly. “Chloe is only my student. That’s not enough.” My hand trembled as I picked up the paper, my teeth clenched. “So?” He adjusted his glasses, a flicker of guilt in his eyes, but his voice remained as clinical and detached as ever. “So, I need you to sign this. To divorce me. You’ll give her your status as Mrs. Blackwood, and then Chloe can board the Ark without any issues.” He finally looked at me, attempting a reassuring tone. “June, it’s just a fake divorce. A temporary marriage for the paperwork. You know you’re the only one for me. It’s just a title, it means nothing.” I lowered my gaze, a hollow laugh catching in my throat. I couldn’t remember when our conversations had shifted from the thrilling frontiers of science to the mundane grind of groceries and bills. Maybe it was a few years into our marriage. Or maybe it was the day Chloe became his graduate student. I couldn’t be sure. This was the most he had said to me in one stretch in years. And it was all to convince me to divorce him. A bitter cocktail of emotions churned in my gut. I sniffled, took the pen, and signed my name without a moment’s hesitation. Seeing my decisiveness, David’s brow furrowed, a hint of irritation in his voice. “June, once the Scorch passes, we’ll remarry.” I turned my head away, waving a dismissive hand. “You said it yourself, David. It’s the end of the world. A piece of paper doesn’t mean anything. Who knows if we’ll even be alive next month?” I met his gaze, my own cold and hard. “Maybe you should focus on saving the continent, Dr. Blackwood.” His voice grew heavy. “That’s not what I meant. Don’t throw a fit over a young girl.” I ignored him, crawling into bed and pulling the covers over my head. Thank God for the darkness. It hid the tears streaming down my face, the utter devastation that was breaking me apart. Soon, David lay down beside me, his back to mine. The familiar distance, the chilling indifference. We were inches apart, yet a universe of cold stretched between us. I silently wiped my eyes. In this heat, air conditioning units were failing everywhere, their circuits fried. No one could guarantee ours wouldn’t be next. The thought of being slowly cooked alive kept me awake for hours. Then, a sudden, jarring ringtone pierced the silence. It was David’s phone. The special tone he’d set just for Chloe. I heard a frantic fumbling as he silenced it. He must have thought I was asleep, but I could feel his tense gaze on me, even through the blanket. He tiptoed out of the room and into the living room, cracking the front door open. His voice was a low whisper. “Chloe? What are you doing here so late?” Chloe’s voice was thick with manufactured tears. “Dr. Blackwood, my AC broke… It’s so hot, I can’t stand it. I had nowhere else to go, I just… I…” I could hear the wheels of her luggage. She sounded so pitiful, so helpless. “Could I… could I please stay here for a few days?” My hand clenched the corner of the sheet. We were both waiting for his answer. Chloe and I. But just like with the Ark ticket, I already knew I would lose. The door creaked open wider. “Come in,” David said. “But be quiet. June’s a light sleeper.” Chloe’s feigned sobs turned into a relieved giggle. “Oh, Dr. Blackwood, you’re the best!” She paused at the threshold, then seemed to reconsider. “But… if you let me stay, won’t your wife mind?” David was silent for a moment, as if contemplating the profound nobility of his actions. “Don’t worry about her. You’re my student. It’s perfectly fine for you to stay for a few days.” Separated by a single door, my heart turned to ice. After settling Chloe on the couch, David started back toward the bedroom. But Chloe stopped him, her voice a soft, careful murmur. “Dr. Blackwood… you gave me the family ticket. Is… is your wife okay with that?” David’s reply was laced with a gentleness I hadn’t heard in years. “Chloe, you’re my most brilliant protégé. I need you for my research. June understands. Everything we do is for the greater good of humanity.” A cold, mirthless laugh escaped me in the dark. Once again, he had elevated his selfish desires to a noble cause I couldn’t argue against. Always so rational, so objective. It was the same way he’d always met my anger and accusations—with a calm silence that made my hysteria feel like a childish tantrum. My pillow was soaked through with tears. Just then, my phone screen lit up. It was a text message, sent silently so as not to disturb me. June, tickets secured. A private transport will pick you and your mother up in three days. 3 A massive weight lifted from my shoulders. But that night, the bedroom door never opened again. David stayed in the living room, talking with Chloe late into the night about the challenges of the Scorch. I could already imagine his excuses if I were to walk out there. Academic discussion. A mentor-mentee exchange. I’d heard it all before. It was his tired, old refrain. I no longer had the energy to push open that door. What was the point? In this heat, every burst of anger felt like it was burning a hole through my chest. I needed to conserve my strength. For my mother. For our escape. Besides, in the face of survival, love and betrayal suddenly seemed so trivial. With that thought, I finally drifted into a deep sleep. To my surprise, however, Chloe was still there the next morning. She sat at our dining table, brazenly using my plate for her breakfast. When she saw me, she gave a timid little bow, her manners impeccable. “Good morning, Mrs. Blackwood. My AC is still out… I hope you don’t mind me being here. I apologize for the intrusion.” I gave her a sarcastic smile. The blanket on the sofa was still unfolded. They weren’t even going to bother with an explanation. Or rather, they were too lazy to invent one for me. “June, come eat,” David said. He had actually cooked, playing the part of the perfect, caring husband for Chloe’s benefit. As Chloe picked up her knife and fork, my eyes locked onto the plate in front of her. We had made it ourselves at a pottery class, five years ago, for our anniversary. Etched into the bottom, almost invisible, was the promise of a lifetime he had sworn to me when we were young. That plate was a symbol of our love. And now, it was being used by another woman. Noticing my stare, David said casually, “Oh, the girl likes it. Just let her use it.” My appetite vanished. I grabbed my car keys, intending to go pick up my mother. David shot up and grabbed my arm, his voice sharp. “Where are you going? It’s 150 degrees out there. If you want to throw a tantrum, don’t risk your life to do it.” Chloe’s eyes welled up with tears. “She’s right, Mrs. Blackwood. The asphalt is melting. It’s dangerous even in a car…” I let out a heavy breath. “I’m getting my mother. Let go of me!” In the scuffle, my arm knocked against the table. The plate in front of Chloe slid to the floor. It shattered into a thousand pieces, taking the vow etched into its surface with it. David froze, a strange tightness seizing his chest. I shoved him away and walked out into the oppressive, searing heat. The streets were dead. The stray cats and dogs that once roamed the neighborhood were long gone. A blanket of silence hung over the world. I rushed to my mother’s small house in the countryside. Any later, and her old air conditioner would surely fail. But when we returned home, I was met with a scrutinizing glare. David quickly masked his expression, taking my mother’s luggage with a respectful nod. “Mrs. Lane.” My mother smiled warmly at him. After she was settled, David pulled me aside. His face was a thundercloud. “June, I need to remind you of something. This is an apocalypse. Resources are scarce. Our food supply won’t last forever with an extra person.” His voice was low, but every word was a blow. “Four mouths to feed is… a lot.” I stared at him, unable to believe what I was hearing. He… how could he? He was complaining that my mother was a burden. Disappointment twisted into a sharp pain in my chest. “David, she’s my MOTHER! She’s the woman who sponsored you for six years, who treated you like a son!” My voice cracked. “How could you say something so heartless?” He adjusted his glasses, his face a mask of cold logic. “June, I’ve calculated every single ration. I’m just stating a fact.” There it was again. That infuriatingly calm, rational expression. My anger felt like punching a pillow. But I couldn’t take it anymore. “David! Then tell Chloe to leave! Why is my mother the ‘extra’ one? Have you lost your conscience?!” At the mention of Chloe, his voice suddenly rose. “THAT’S WHY I’M TRYING TO DISCUSS IT WITH YOU!” He thrust a piece of paper at me—a schedule. “Smaller meals, stretched out over the next three days. After Chloe and I leave, you and your mother can figure out the rest on your own.” I didn’t even look at it. I snatched the paper from his hand and ripped it to shreds. In the other room, my mother was looking at Chloe with a puzzled expression. “Honey,” she asked me, her voice laced with uncertainty. “Who is this young lady?” David’s posture tensed. He instinctively moved to stand slightly in front of Chloe, a silent, protective gesture. I watched them, a profound weariness settling over me. To me, David had always been a distant star—cold, remote, and untouchable. But now I saw the truth. His light just wasn’t meant to shine on me. Not wanting to worry my mother, I forced a smile. “Mom, she’s one of David’s students.” My mother visibly relaxed, her face breaking into a relieved grin. “Oh, what a lovely girl.” She looked from me to David. “So, in three days, we’re all leaving together, right?” Her question, so innocent, hung in the air. I saw David’s expression freeze for a fraction of a second. I answered for him. “Mom, go pack your things. Don’t bring too much. Ten kilograms per person is the limit.” My mother beamed, patting my hand. “Alright, alright. You should get packing too, dear. I’m so glad we can all go together. That’s just wonderful.” “Yeah,” I mumbled, turning toward my bedroom. David followed me in, closing the door heavily behind us. He ran a hand through his hair in frustration. “Did you tell your mother she’s coming with us? How am I supposed to solve that, June? Where do you expect me to get two more tickets?” His voice rose. “You’re lying to her, you know that.” I just smiled. It wasn’t a lie. We were leaving. And after that, we would have nothing more to do with him. 4 David’s brow furrowed. “What are you smiling about, June?” His eyes narrowed with suspicion. “Are you doing this on purpose? Trying to back me into a corner, to force my hand into taking your mother?” I opened my suitcase on the bed, not sparing him a single glance. “Don’t worry,” I said, my voice flat. “My mother and I won’t interfere with your two spots on the Ark.” I began dumping my belongings into the suitcase, then went to the closet and started pulling out old keepsakes—anniversary gifts, photo albums—and tossing them into the trash. In the apocalypse, they were just junk. Including all the sentiments attached to them. David picked up a small, stuffed bear from the trash—our third-anniversary gift. His face darkened. I didn’t want to talk to him anymore. I packed my things and moved them into the guest room with my mother. The next three days were tense. Resources were tight, and each meal was just a small cup of water and a protein bar. But on the last night before our departure, I woke up thirsty and saw Chloe in the kitchen, using precious ice cubes from the freezer to soothe her face. I said nothing, but the moment she saw me, her eyes filled with tears. “Mrs. Blackwood… my skin was just so dry… I just wanted a little hydration… I’m sorry, I won’t do it again…” David, drawn by the noise, came out and shot a cool look in my direction. “June, she’s just a kid. Don’t be so hard on her.” I was stunned. Just yesterday, he was complaining that my mother was a burden, and now it was clear he was saving our rations for his “kid.” My eyes met Chloe’s over his shoulder. The feigned vulnerability on her face slowly hardened into a triumphant, knowing smirk. I was too exhausted to fight. I simply collected my and my mother’s rations and returned to my room. David started to reach for me, but then let his hand fall, that strange, suffocating feeling returning to his chest. The third day arrived. I hauled our luggage to the designated pickup point, my mother leaning on my arm. When David saw me, he immediately pulled me aside, his voice tight with agitation. “June, do you really have to follow me? Are you this desperate?” “I already told you, you and your mother are on the second transport! Can’t you understand plain English?” “Besides,” he added, his voice rising in a crescendo of self-righteousness, “even if I didn’t take Chloe, and I took you instead, would you really abandon your own mother? I’m doing this for your own good!” Once again, he was launching into a tirade on behalf of Chloe. A bitter, self-mocking smile touched my lips. “Who’s following you? I told you, you don’t have to worry about our tickets. I have my own way.” David’s brow tightened. He grabbed my arm. “June, you haven’t worked in years. What ‘way’ could you possibly have? Can you stop being so stubborn?” His words almost made me laugh. The single research fellowship at the Institute all those years ago… it was mine. I gave it up so David could have his career. I wrenched my arm from his grasp. “David, please don’t make me regret every single moment I spent believing I wasn’t blind.” He stared at his empty hand, his face twisting in anger as he shouted, “June, everything I’ve done is the result of careful consideration! Why can’t you just trust me one more time!” Not wanting my mother to hear, I pulled my luggage away from him. “You don’t need to worry about me.” David opened his mouth to say more, but just then, a sleek, armored vehicle rolled to a stop in front of us. The Noah’s Ark. I helped my mother toward the ramp. David panicked. “June, are you insane? You don’t have a spot! Are you planning to storm the vehicle?” He shot a look at Chloe. “Get on, quickly, before someone takes your seat.” Chloe flashed a smug smile and hurried forward. But as she stepped onto the ramp, an official in a crisp uniform blocked her path, checking a datapad. “Apologies, ma’am. This transport was chartered by Director Quinn to collect Ms. June Vance and her mother. Please do not interfere with our duties.” In an instant, the color drained from David’s face. He looked like he’d been struck by lightning.

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