Category: English

My mother was the textbook definition of a hopelessly romantic heiress in a high-society melodrama. She was systematically ruined by my gold-digging, toxic excuse of a father, suffering seven consecutive miscarriages, all while genuinely believing her own body was simply too weak. As for me? I was the ultimate unlucky soul who failed to be born seven times in a row. By my eighth attempt at reincarnation, even the Lord of the Underworld lost his patience. He had the Keeper of Souls personally escort me to the mortal realm to ensure my safe arrival. And right before we left, they gifted my mother a maxed-out, supernatural ability to understand “baby talk”—the power to hear my silent infant thoughts. I thought this time, I’d finally get to kick back, relax, and live the pampered life of a princess in a trillion-dollar family dynasty. But the exact second I was born, I opened my eyes to see my toxic father, Laurence, cradling a strange baby boy. He walked right up to my mother’s hospital bed. “Sweetheart, you worked so hard,” he crooned. “Look at our son. The future heir to the Caldwell empire.” Meanwhile, I was stuffed into a hazardous medical waste bin, about to be wheeled away and incinerated. Desperate, I began screaming at the top of my lungs inside my dark, plastic prison: [You hopelessly romantic fool of a mother! That baby belongs to his secret first love, the girl of his dreams! Your real daughter is right here! Help me, Mom!] My mother, who had been gazing at him with teary, infatuated eyes, suddenly froze. … “Victoria, what’s wrong?” Laurence’s voice dripped with practiced worry. “Are you too exhausted?” My mother, Victoria Caldwell, stared at him with eyes wide with shock and confusion. Laurence cradled the boy, carefully leaning closer to the bed. “Look at his eyes, his nose. He looks just like you.” I kicked my tiny, fragile legs inside the sealed bin, which smelled suffocatingly of bleach and blood. But as a newborn, my muscles were like mush, and my frantic struggles only translated to the faintest rustle. [Mom! Don’t look at him! Look at the red waste container! I’m in here!] My mother’s face went entirely bloodless. She could actually hear me! The supernatural gift from the Keeper of Souls worked. My mother’s body shuddered violently. [Mom, that boy isn’t yours! He belongs to Sasha, his first love! If you check behind his left ear, he’s got the crescent-moon birthmark that runs in her family!] My mother’s gaze snapped to the boy. Seeing her stare at the child, the warmth in Laurence’s eyes deepened. He leaned down, gently stroking the infant’s cheek. “Victoria, you always wanted our own flesh and blood. Now that we have a son, my place in the Caldwell family is finally secure.” My mother’s fingers trembled as she parted the baby’s fine hair behind his left ear. There it was. A crescent-moon birthmark. During her first pregnancy, Sasha Mercer had visited their villa as Laurence’s “old friend.” She had accidentally exposed the exact same mark. At the time, Victoria had smiled and said, “What a unique birthmark, Sasha.” Sasha had blushed, replying, “It’s a family trait. All of us Mercers have it.” Now, that very trait was stamped on this supposed “Caldwell heir.” My mother’s breathing fractured. [Yes! See? Now do you believe I’m your real daughter? The nurse is about to throw me out like medical trash! Help!] I twisted my body inside the bin with everything I had. But because I had been deprived of oxygen from the moment of my birth, I couldn’t even muster a cry. Only a faint, pathetic whimper escaped my throat. She turned her head with sudden, terrifying speed. “Stop right there!” my mother commanded, her voice slicing through the room. The head nurse, who was slipping toward the exit, flinched. The biohazard container in her hands wobbled. “Mrs… Mrs. Croft, is there something you need?” A flicker of panic crossed Laurence’s face. He stepped forward quickly, pressing a firm hand onto my mother’s shoulder. “Darling, why are you so agitated? You just gave birth. You’re weak. You shouldn’t be moving.” My mother slowly pulled her hand back, her gaze turning freezing cold. “What is in that container?” Laurence shot a subtle, warning glance at the nurse. “Just the placenta and surgical waste. It’s dirty, blood-stained, and crawling with bacteria. We don’t want you or our son getting infected. Wheel it out for biohazard disposal, now.” “Yes, sir. Right away…” The head nurse turned to bolt. [Don’t let her leave! Mom, I’m suffocating! There are no air holes in here! If you don’t stop her, you’re going to lose me again! He’s swapping us so he can use this fake heir to steal the Caldwell inheritance!] I slammed my tiny fists against the plastic walls. But my strength was negligible, producing nothing more than a faint, dry scraping sound. My mother violently threw back her blankets, struggling to swing her legs over the edge of the bed. “I told you to stop! Are you deaf?” The head nurse froze. Laurence’s expression finally darkened. “Victoria, stop this nonsense. The delivery room has strict sterile protocols. Why on earth do you want to look at medical waste?” My mother gripped the bedrail, tears welling in her eyes. Yet, for the first time in ten years, she did not soften under his gaze. “I am the Executive Director of Caldwell Holdings. In this hospital—which is entirely owned by my family—my rules are the only rules!” The gentle facade on Laurence’s face began to peel away. “Are you throwing your family’s power in my face again?” He had used that line countless times before. Every single time, my mother would panic, immediately coddling him, terrified of wounding his fragile, working-class ego. But this time, she merely said flatly, “I just want to look.” Laurence stared at her, utterly baffled by how his usually submissive, doting wife had suddenly become so unyielding. After a heavy silence, he sighed. “Fine. If you are truly that paranoid, let Lydia check.” Lydia was my mother’s most trusted personal assistant. Laurence gestured to the quiet, unassuming woman standing by the bedside. “Go on. Inspect it.” Lydia looked up, her eyes darting away for a split second. The lid of the container was pried open just a crack, letting a thin sliver of light pierce the darkness. I forced my eyes open, trying to draw enough air to scream. If I could make even the slightest sound, my mother would hear me. I would be saved. But the severe lack of oxygen left my limbs heavy and useless. I couldn’t even open my mouth. Lydia blocked the container with her body, shielding it from my mother’s line of sight. She reached in, her hand brushing against my blood-slicked skin. “Mrs. Croft.” Lydia closed the lid without a single flicker of emotion. She turned back to the bed. “I checked. It’s just medical waste and bloody fluids. It’s filthy. There’s nothing unusual. Please, preserve your health and don’t look.” My heart plummeted into a bottomless abyss. The moment her hand had reached into the bin, I had seen it—a distinct, crimson mole on her left wrist. I had seen that mole seven times in my previous seven lives. Before my mother lost each of those pregnancies, it was always that hand with the red mole that handed her herbal tonic, adjusted the bedside humidifier, or steadied her arm on the freshly waxed stairs. It was her. I wanted to scream until my lungs burst. [Mom! Don’t trust her! Lydia was bought off by Laurence a long time ago! Look at her left wrist—there’s a red mole! She was the one behind your previous seven miscarriages!] I poured every ounce of my fading consciousness into that silent scream. My mother stared at Lydia, her voice trembling. “Lydia… did you look closely? Are you absolutely sure?” Lydia squeezed out a perfectly timed tear. “Mrs. Croft, I’ve been with you since I graduated college. My loyalty is entirely yours. How could I ever lie to you? It’s just waste. Mr. Croft is only trying to protect you from seeing something so grotesque.” Laurence chimed in, his tone carrying a wounded, weary sigh. “Victoria, do you not even trust Lydia now?” My mother’s eyes flickered with doubt. I knew how hard this was for her to believe. Over the years, under the guise of wanting an independent life, Laurence had coaxed her into moving out of the Caldwell estate, gradually estranging her from her doting father and her eight adoptive brothers. Lydia was the only confidante she had left. I had to push harder. [Mom! Wake up! During your third pregnancy, she ‘guided’ you to the yoga studio and spilled the slick oil that made you fall! During your fifth, she swapped your calming incense! During your seventh, she laced your imported prenatal vitamins with banned substances!] My mother’s gaze snapped to Lydia. Her lips trembled violently, unable to form a coherent sentence. Seven miscarriages. Seven agonizing, blood-soaked procedures. Each time, she had wept in the dark, blaming her own weak womb, apologizing to Laurence while he held her and whispered that having her was enough. It had all been a lie. “Victoria, what’s wrong? Are you in pain?” Sensing her shift in expression, Laurence stepped forward to restrain her. “Bring that container to me! I want to see it myself!” my mother rasped, struggling to rise. Yet, not a single medical professional in the room moved. This hospital bore the Caldwell name, but over the years, Laurence had systematically replaced the executive staff with his own people. Laurence forced her back onto the pillows with a heavy, unyielding grip. “Victoria Croft! Enough is enough!” His voice sharpened into a harsh, lecturing reprimand. “You just delivered the Caldwell family’s heir. Instead of resting, you are obsessing over biohazards! What is wrong with you?” Lydia joined in, sobbing. “Mrs. Croft, please listen to Mr. Croft! He has worked himself to the bone for you. You are breaking his heart!” The surrounding doctors and nurses chimed in like a rehearsed choir. “Mrs. Croft, postpartum trauma can trigger severe psychological distress.” “Please, prioritize your health. Do not look.” One heavy layer of guilt-tripping after another. Looking at this united front of conspirators, my mother shook with rage, a metallic taste of blood rising in her throat. Meanwhile, my breathing grew shallower by the second. [Mom… save me… I can’t breathe… it’s so cold…] “Get off me!” Hearing my fading voice, a fierce, primal maternal instinct erupted within her. She shoved Laurence back with enough force to send him stumbling. Barefoot, her hospital gown stained with blood, she lunged toward the container. “Give it to me!” Laurence’s face turned livid, a murderous glint flashing in his eyes. “Mrs. Croft is suffering from postpartum psychosis and having severe delusions! What are you all standing around for? Restrain her!” The VIP delivery room descended into absolute chaos. Lydia rushed forward to block her, only for my mother to strike her across the face with a resounding slap. The head nurse clutched the biohazard container, backing away toward the door. Suddenly, I felt the container shake violently. A pair of rough, rubber-gloved hands reached inside in the confusion, squeezing me tight, dragging me out of the plastic bin, and stuffing me into the deep, sweaty inner pocket of a bulky hazmat suit. My head spun from the impact. [Mom! I’m not in the container anymore! She’s hiding me inside her suit! She’s squeezing me!] My mother threw open the lid of the bin. But when she looked inside, there was nothing but a few blood-soaked medical sponges. It was completely empty. My mother froze, utterly bewildered. Laurence adjusted the lapels of his tailored suit, his face contorting into an expression of deep, wounded disappointment. “Do you see now, Victoria? What is in there besides medical gauze?” “Your wild accusations have not only endangered your recovery but shattered my heart. I’m having the chief of psychiatry come in to evaluate you immediately.” His talent for turning the tables was flawless. My mother stared at the empty bin, tears spilling down her cheeks. For a terrifying second, she began to wonder if her desperate longing for a child had finally driven her to hallucinate. No! She couldn’t give up now! Using the absolute last of my strength, I sent one final, desperate cry through our bond: [Mom… I’m not dead… I’m still in this room… I really don’t… have any strength left…] My mother’s head snapped up. The despair in her eyes hardened into a freezing, razor-sharp resolve. “Search this room. Call security. Search every inch!” The medical staff stood frozen, exchanging glances, waiting for Laurence’s command. Laurence cast a dark, threatening look at the head nurse, who shrank back. “Nobody moves!” Laurence barked. “Mrs. Croft is highly unstable and experiencing a psychotic break! Prepare a sedative. Hold her down and administer it immediately!” He was going to force her into silence. Two burly nurses approached her, holding a thick syringe. “We’re sorry, Mrs. Croft. This is for your own good.” My mother fought like a cornered animal, seizing ceramic mugs and metal trays, hurling them at anyone who came near. “Get away! Touch me and see what happens! I am the heir to the Caldwell empire!” But the nurses kept advancing. Laurence, losing all patience, lunged forward and pinned her shoulders down. “Stop resisting! Inject her!” Just as the cold steel of the needle hovered centimeters from her skin— With a deafening crash, the heavy double doors of the delivery room were kicked completely off their hinges. “I dare any of you to lay a single finger on my sister.” The room fell into a suffocating silence as the sheer gravity of his presence took over. Charles Caldwell strode in, bringing the chill of the winter night with him. Behind him marched two rows of heavily armed, black-suited Caldwell security operatives. His sharp, hawk-like eyes swept over the wreckage of the room, finally resting on the bruised, red grip-marks on my mother’s wrists. My eldest uncle’s expression turned instantly lethal. “Laurence Croft. Is this how you care for my sister?” The malice in Laurence’s eyes vanished in an instant, replaced by his usual gentle, submissive demeanor. “Charles, you’ve misunderstood. Victoria just gave birth, and her postpartum depression has triggered severe hallucinations. We were only trying to calm her down.” “I am not hallucinating!” My mother violently wrenched herself from Laurence’s grip, stumbling toward Charles and clutching his bespoke lapels. “Charles, that baby boy isn’t mine! They swapped my baby!” “She’s still in this room! I can hear her begging me to save her!” Charles’s eyes narrowed. Laurence let out a weary, practiced sigh. “Charles, you know the trauma Victoria carries from her seven miscarriages. Now that she finally has a son, she’s paranoid. If you don’t believe me, we can run a DNA test right now.” Charles glanced at the baby boy cradled in the nurse’s arms, sleeping peacefully. Tears streamed down my mother’s face. “The boy has Sasha Mercer’s family birthmark behind his ear! Charles, look!” Charles strode over and parted the infant’s hair. A moment later, his expression hardened. But Laurence was prepared, stepping in smoothly. “It’s just a common birthmark!” “Are you going to accuse me of infidelity and swapping heirs based on a speck of pigmentation, Charles? I respect you as Victoria’s brother, but at the end of the day, you aren’t even a blood Caldwell.” It was an open secret in high society: the patriarch of the Caldwell family had adopted eight orphaned boys. None of them carried the Caldwell bloodline. Charles did not immediately reply. My mother gripped his arm, her nails digging deep into his sleeve. “No! Charles, she is in here! I can hear her!” “Search the room! Just search it once!” Looking down at his sister’s pale, desperate face, Charles raised a single hand. “Search.” This time, no one dared to protest. The elite Caldwell guards immediately sealed the room. They tore apart the cabinets, checked under the bed, dismantled the ceiling vents, and searched the private bathroom. They left no stone unturned. They even overturned the medical waste bin again. I heard the heavy thud of combat boots pass by me once, then twice. They were so close I wanted to cry. But I didn’t know where I was, trapped in the dark. [Uncle! I’m right here!] But no one could hear me except my mother. As the guards shook their heads in defeat, the last spark of hope in my mother’s eyes began to die. Laurence knelt before her, his voice dripping with gentle condescension. “Are you satisfied, Victoria?” “Even Charles’s men found nothing.” “There is no stolen daughter. This boy is our son.” Charles remained silent. He gently patted my mother’s shoulder, his voice softening. “Victoria, you are exhausted. Perhaps the stress has gotten to you. Let’s get you some rest.” When even her strongest ally doubted her, my mother’s world collapsed. “Am I… am I truly losing my mind?” She fell back onto the bed, weeping hysterically. “I’m sorry… Laurence, I’m sorry. Maybe I really am sick.” A smug, triumphant smirk played at the corner of Laurence’s mouth. He squeezed her hand. “It’s alright. Just sleep.” Lydia stepped forward again with the sedative. Inside my dark pocket, I panicked. [No! Mom, don’t give up!] [I’m really here… but I’m fading…] The lingering resentment of seven unborn souls, combined with the sheer despair of being discarded like trash by my own father, boiled up inside my tiny chest. I refused to let it end like this. I hadn’t even looked at my mother yet. My trillion-dollar heiress life hadn’t even begun. I wasn’t going to die in a hazmat suit. Gathering every last ounce of life force left in my newborn body, I kicked out with all my might. A sharp, agonized shriek pierced the silence. “Ah!” The head nurse doubled over in pain, clutching her abdomen. The poorly tied sash of her medical pants snapped under the sudden impact. Thud. A tiny baby girl slid down her pant leg, tumbling onto the sterile floor.

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For eight years, Kellan tore up the asphalt, clawing his way from dusty local go-kart tracks to the glittering podium of the Apex Rally Championship. He became the living embodiment of speed, adrenaline, and reckless glory. And for eight years, I sat in the background, eating microwave ramen so he could afford new tires. On the night his funding completely dried up—the night he stood on a rooftop, dangerously close to the edge, ready to end it all—I sold the little bungalow my grandmother had left me. I took every cent I had in the world and poured it into his dying racing team. Once, after his first major victory, I leaned against his car and half-joked, “So, when do I get to ride shotgun and see what this thing can really do?” He didn’t even look at me. He just peeled off his Nomex driving gloves and clinically dismantled my fantasy. “The passenger seat is for my co-driver and telemetry data,” he said, his voice flat. “It’s not an amusement park ride. If you get in, all you’d do is scream, distract me, and create a hazard. You’d be completely useless.” I nodded. After that day, I rarely even went to his races. Until today. While his team was out on their championship victory parade, I swung by the team headquarters to grab a sponsorship deck for him. While waiting for the files to transfer on his office computer, I accidentally clicked into the cloud backup of his car’s dashcam. I found a video that definitely wasn’t shot on a sanctioned track. It was the dead of night on a winding canyon road. Sitting in the passenger seat was a young woman, laughing with total, uninhibited abandon. Kellan was driving one-handed. The look in his eyes—a cocktail of wild indulgence and reckless thrill—was a look he had never, not once, given me. The girl reached over to mess with his gear shift. He didn’t get angry. He didn’t tell her she was a hazard. Instead, he caught her hand, his lips curving into a smirk. “Hold on tight,” he murmured. “Let me show you what it really feels like to fly.” I checked the metadata. The video was recorded on the exact same day I was in the hospital, undergoing a painful endoscopy. The day he told me he couldn’t come because of a “strict closed-door training session” at the base. I closed the media player. I neatly stacked the sponsorship contracts on the edge of his mahogany desk. I pulled out my phone and quietly exited every single team Slack channel and group text. When I got home that evening, I spent an hour mapping out a solo cross-country road trip. If his passenger seat didn’t belong to me, then I would simply step out of his vehicle entirely. I would drive my own car, on my own terms, and see the world for myself. … Morning sunlight sliced through the window blinds, casting fractured shadows across the dining table. I was already dressed in a crisp pair of jeans and a lightweight sweater, sitting quietly at the table, stirring a bowl of oatmeal. Kellan walked out of the bedroom, shirtless, rubbing a hand through his perpetually messy hair. He stopped, his brows knitting together as he stared at me. “Where are you going so early?” I didn’t answer. I just took a bite of my breakfast. “Don’t tell me you’re going out to mess around with your toxic friends again,” he said, pulling out the chair opposite me. His tone dripped with that familiar, paternal condescension. “I’ve told you a hundred times, Cleo is a bad influence. You need to cut her off before she ruins you.” From the moment we started dating, he had looked down on everyone in my life. If this were yesterday, I would have fought him tooth and nail to defend my best friend. The argument would have derailed our entire morning. But today, I just lifted my eyes, looked at him for a second, and said evenly, “Got it.” My reaction unsettled him. He stared at me for a long time, long enough for me to nearly finish my bowl. He shifted his posture, adopting a forced, casual drawl. “I’ve got the Continental Championship coming up in a couple of days.” I said nothing. Thinking I hadn’t heard him, he repeated it. This time, his voice carried an expectant, almost charitable edge—waiting for me to do what I had done a thousand times before. Waiting for me to drop whatever I was doing, rush over, and meticulously pack his helmet, his fireproof suit, his HANS device, and his stomach medication. Waiting for me to beg him to be safe out there. Instead, I swallowed my last bite of oatmeal and offered a flat, “Okay.” Nothing more. The air in the kitchen went rigid. He finally lost his patience. “Aren’t you going to pack my gear?” “I have to head out,” I said, carrying my bowl to the sink. “You can pack it yourself.” His face completely froze. Right at that moment, his phone buzzed. He picked it up without a second thought. From the receiver leaked a voice so sweet it practically dripped with syrup. “Hey, Kellan! I just wanted to let you know I’ve compiled all the pace notes and checklists for the Continental race and sent them over. You have to promise me you’ll be super, super safe out there, okay?” The harsh, impatient frost on Kellan’s face melted in an instant, replaced by a devastatingly gentle smile. “Yeah. Thanks for the hard work.” He hung up, caught my eye, and immediately offered an unprompted, overly casual explanation. “That’s our new team coordinator.” I dried my hands on a towel, turned my back to him, and walked to the entryway to put on my shoes. I couldn’t have cared less. My lack of interrogation seemed to make his skin crawl. He took a few quick strides and blocked my path to the door. “Why aren’t you asking me who she is?” he demanded. “Normally, if the team hires a new janitor, you interrogate me about it.” I looked up at him. “Haven’t you always told me I’m annoying when I do that?” The words choked him. His chest heaved as he scrambled to justify himself anyway. “She’s the new coordinator. Her name is Lexi. She handles logistics and…” He rambled on, listing her qualifications. When he finally ran out of breath, I just gave a lukewarm, “Mm.” That sent him over the edge. “What the hell is ‘mm’ supposed to mean?” I thought about the dashcam footage. I thought about the dark canyon road, and the way he looked at her—like he wanted to devour the world and hand it to her on a silver platter. I let out a soft, breathy laugh and finally looked him dead in the eye. “Kellan. Do you have any idea what today is?” He blinked. For a fraction of a second, blank confusion washed over his features. He had forgotten. Today was my twenty-eighth birthday. It was also the exact date, eight years ago, when he asked me to be his girlfriend. The day he swore to me that he was going to be the best driver in the world, and that after every championship win, his victory lap would belong to me. Now, his passenger seat was occupied, and my birthday was entirely erased from his memory. I was suddenly exhausted by the sight of his face. I pushed past him toward the door. “Be home early!” he barked from behind me, the guilt masking itself as frustration. For the first time in eight years, I didn’t say yes. … At the coffee shop, Cleo slammed her ceramic mug onto the table. “Trash! I always told you he was a piece of trash!” she hissed, her eyes blazing. But as she took in my hollow expression, her voice softened. “Are you… are you really sure? Eight years, Brynn. You’re just walking away?” I stirred my latte, watching the foam swirl. “Cleo, have you ever seen him smile?” She froze. In her mind, Kellan was the brooding, arrogant prodigy who constantly looked like the world owed him blood. He never gave anyone the time of day, and even with me—his actual girlfriend—he rarely bothered to show any warmth in public. “No,” she admitted. “He always looks like he’s chewing on glass.” “I saw it,” I said quietly. “He smiled at Lexi.” Cleo fell utterly silent. I put my spoon down and leaned back against the plush velvet booth. “So, there’s no point anymore. At least he didn’t waste my next eight years. This is where it ends.” Cleo didn’t say a word. She just looked at me, her beautiful almond eyes shimmering with an agonizing pity. I knew exactly what she was thinking. She was mourning the youth I had immolated to keep him warm, grieving the absolute devastation of my unconditional surrender. I forced a smile, trying to lift the suffocating weight in the air. “Hey, stop looking at me like that. You’re making me feel like some tragic, abandoned housewife. It’s my birthday. We’re not talking about him anymore.” I grabbed my purse and stood up. “Come on. I’m taking you to my favorite spot for lunch. It’s on me.” Cleo didn’t argue. She just stood up and nodded. Her compliance actually hurt worse. Cleo was a firecracker; on a normal day, she would have cursed Kellan’s name to the heavens, dragged me to a dive bar, and forced me to take tequila shots until I forgot my own name. But today, she just walked quietly beside me. The gentler she was, the more my throat burned with unshed tears. I linked my arm through hers, faking a bright, airy step as we headed toward the restaurant. Fate, however, has a notoriously cruel sense of humor. The moment we stepped into the foyer of the upscale seafood bistro, I saw them. Sitting at the best table by the floor-to-ceiling windows, bathed in the soft, golden afternoon light, were Kellan and Lexi. Soft jazz played overhead, scoring a scene that made my retinas burn. Kellan’s head was bowed in deep concentration. He was meticulously cracking open a king crab leg, using a small silver fork to pull the pristine white meat out in one perfect piece, and gently placing it onto the small porcelain plate in front of Lexi. Lexi was beaming, her eyes crinkling into crescents as she tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear. Seeing that her hair was in her way, Kellan didn’t even hesitate. He casually lifted his wrist, slid off a plain black hair tie, and handed it to her. In that singular moment, it felt like a cold, iron grip had clamped down on my heart. I couldn’t breathe. In our eight years together, I had begged him countless times to keep a spare hair tie on his wrist for me. Every single time, he had recoiled in disgust. “I’m a grown man. I’m not walking around with a scrunchie on my arm. It’s humiliating.” But now, for a girl he had known for less than three months, he was wearing one. Cleo’s temper ignited like gasoline. Her hands balled into fists, and she hissed venomously, “Those absolute pieces of shit.” She took a step toward their table, ready to detonate. I grabbed her arm. Hard. “Don’t.” “Why the hell not, Brynn?! I’m going to rip them apart!” I shook my head. My voice was dangerously quiet, but absolute. “There is no point. I am already gone. I refuse to waste one more drop of emotion on him.” Cleo stared at me, searching my face for any hesitation, before finally backing down. This restaurant used to be my favorite place in the city, but today, the food tasted like ash. I couldn’t control my eyes; they kept drifting to the window table. Every glance was a fresh, twisting knife in my ribs. Without warning, the tears spilled over, blurring my vision. Cleo noticed instantly. She slid out of her booth, moved over to my side, and wrapped her arms tightly around me, pressing my head to her shoulder. “It’s your birthday, B,” she whispered, stroking my hair. “Don’t cry. They aren’t worth your tears.” She meant well, but the words only broke the dam entirely. “You’re right. It’s my birthday,” I choked out, burying my face in her shoulder. “You remembered. We’ve been together for eight years, and he forgot.” I don’t know how long I sat there, crying into Cleo’s shoulder. It felt like I was weeping for every overlooked sacrifice, every cold dinner, every lonely night of the last decade. By the time I finally pulled myself together and wiped my face, the table by the window was empty. Only dirty plates and crumpled napkins remained, the aftermath of a terrible joke. I looked at Cleo, my chest heavy with guilt. “I’m so sorry. I promised to treat you to a nice lunch, and instead I forced you to sit here and watch me break down.” Cleo just reached out and pinched my cheek affectionately. “Birthday girl makes the rules. You get a free pass.” A fragile smile finally broke through. “What’s the plan for this afternoon?” she asked. “I’m going home. I need to pack.” She paused. “Do you want me to come with you?” I shook my head. Some bridges you have to burn by yourself. “Okay,” she said softly. “But if it gets too heavy, you call me. Instantly.” I nodded. … When I walked back into the house I had shared with Kellan for eight years, it was empty. Everything was sickeningly familiar. The leather sofa, the glass coffee table, the abstract art on the walls—every square inch was saturated with the ghost of us. But for the very first time, I felt like a trespasser. I walked into the living room and picked up a silver picture frame. It was a photo from our first year together. We were so young, our faces glowing with a naive, unbruised kind of happiness. I traced his sharp jawline through the cold glass. Then I traced my own bright, stupidly hopeful eyes. I let go. With a dull thud, the heavy frame landed at the bottom of the trash can. I didn’t pack a single designer bag, diamond necklace, or silk dress he had bought me with his prize money. I took my essential documents, my own clothes, and my toiletries. I was just zipping up my well-worn canvas suitcase when the front door clicked open. Kellan was back. He walked into the bedroom, bringing with him a faint, alien scent of something sticky and sweet—Lexi’s perfume. He stopped dead, his eyes locking onto the suitcase by my feet. A deep crease formed between his brows, and irritation bled into his voice. “Where are you going now?” “On a trip.” He let out a sharp, incredulous scoff, as if I had just told him a hilarious joke. “Let me guess. Cleo put you up to this? You are my girlfriend, Brynn, not hers! Running around with her all day acting like you don’t have responsibilities… it’s pathetic.” I stood up straight and looked at him. “You run around all day too, don’t you?” His face darkened. “I do it for my career! For my racing! Do you think we’re the same? All you do is play around!” Play around. The words were two red-hot spikes driven straight through my sternum. When I sat on the floor of a freezing garage eating cup noodles so he could eat hot meals, where was he? When his investors pulled out and he stood on a literal ledge, who wept while signing away the deed to her grandmother’s house—the only family legacy I had left—just to buy his failing team one more season? Now he was a champion, dripping in sponsorships, and my life was reduced to playing around. My hands shook with a rage so profound it robbed me of speech. Seeing my silence, he assumed he had won. He stepped forward, grabbed the handle of my suitcase, and yanked it out of my grip, slamming it onto the hardwood floor. “You’re not going anywhere!” he roared. He stepped into my space, reaching out to pull me into his chest—planning to kiss me into submission, to end the argument the way he always did, through sheer physical dominance. I twisted my body, stepped back, and shoved him away with both hands. He stumbled back a half-step, utterly shocked. His face hardened into a mask of pure indignation. I stared him down and said, clearly and coldly, “You reek of cheap perfume. It’s making me nauseous.” He froze. The color drained from his face. Slowly, the hands that had reached for me dropped to his sides. The fiery arrogance evaporated, replaced by a sudden, nervous silence. After a long pause, he softened his voice, adopting the tone of a weary parent indulging a petulant child. “Alright. Let’s stop fighting. Tomorrow, I’ll take you to the track. The guys have missed you. And… I can introduce you to the new team members.” I looked at him. “Fine.” He exhaled a massive sigh of relief, clearly convinced he had successfully extinguished the fire. He grabbed a change of clothes and headed for the master bathroom. The sound of the shower started running. I stood alone in the bedroom, staring at my overturned suitcase on the floor. … The next day, I went to the team’s compound. Kellan was in the garage, deep in a conversation with his head mechanic. The roar of a tuned engine was deafening. The midday sun was brutal, and sweat beaded on his forehead. Out of sheer muscle memory, I unscrewed a bottle of water and handed it to him, then grabbed the microfiber towel from around my neck to wipe the smudges off his helmet visor. A chorus of wolf-whistles erupted from the crew. “Look who it is! Damn, Brynn, we thought you forgot about us!” “For real! Kellan hasn’t shut up about you, our ears are bleeding.” I didn’t smile. I didn’t say a word. I just handed him the clean helmet, my movements as mechanical as a robot running a script. Kellan put the helmet down, his expression unreadable, but the crew’s teasing only escalated. “Hey, B, you’re definitely coming to the Continental next week, right?” “Yeah, you guys are the golden couple! Gotta be there to kiss the champ!” The trap was sprung. I looked up at Kellan, waiting for his move. He cleared his throat and slung a heavy arm over my shoulders, his grip tight enough to feel like a warning. “Of course she’s going,” he announced to the room, his voice brokering no argument. “The Continental is going to be packed with media and high-tier sponsors. As my girlfriend of eight years, it’s time she made an official appearance. She needs to hold the fort down for me.” My stomach plummeted. So this was why he had compromised yesterday. This was why he swallowed his pride and brought me here. Not because the crew missed me. Not because he missed me. He was setting me up. He was using the peer pressure of his team and the weight of our eight-year history to force me into the VIP box. He needed me to play the role of the devoted, long-term partner in front of the cameras to solidify his brand’s “loyal family man” image. I didn’t nod. I didn’t shake my head. I just stood there, dead silent. The atmosphere in the garage shifted, growing incredibly awkward. Right on cue, Lexi strolled in. She was wearing a team polo that matched Kellan’s, her hair pulled back into a bouncy, high ponytail. She wore a perfectly calibrated expression of breathless apology. “Sorry, sorry, guys! I was up so late analyzing the telemetry data from the pace notes, I totally slept through my alarm.” The mechanics, eager to escape my heavy silence, immediately swarmed her. “You’re a lifesaver, Lexi! Seriously, you understand the data, you read the notes, and you can handle riding shotgun on the test runs. You’re insane.” “For real. Finally, a partner who actually keeps up with Kellan.” Those casual, offhand remarks slid under my skin like splinters. Kellan didn’t shut them down. He didn’t offer a single word of defense for me. He just cast a lazy glance at his crew and said, “Alright, settle down. Don’t take the jokes too far.” It didn’t sound like a reprimand. It sounded like permission. At lunch, we ate in the team cafeteria. Lexi carried her plastic tray over and slid into the empty seat on Kellan’s other side, completing the triangle. She poked at a salad, then casually, almost innocently, dropped a bomb. “Hey Kellan, that canyon night-run last week seriously terrified me. When we took that hairpin turn, I swore the car was going to launch off the cliff. I was so scared I grabbed your hand. You aren’t mad about that, are you?” The cafeteria went dead silent. You could hear a pin drop. Every single pair of eyes in the room ping-ponged between me, Kellan, and Lexi. Kellan didn’t even shoot a panicked glance my way. He just frowned at Lexi and said, “You’re new. You just have to get used to the speed. Next time, hold the grab handle.” Only then did he turn to me. His eyes held a flicker of annoyance. “It was just work. Don’t start making up scenarios in your head.” I looked down at my tray and set my chopsticks down. I reached into my tote bag, pulled out the manila envelope containing the sponsorship contracts I had retrieved yesterday, and slid it across the table to him. “You forgot this yesterday.” Kellan’s eyes widened. A flash of genuine shock crossed his face—he hadn’t expected me to actually do the errand after everything that happened. He opened the envelope, verified the signatures, and the hard lines of his face noticeably softened. “Look, if you still care enough about the team to do this,” he muttered, lowering his voice into a sharp, commanding whisper, “then stop acting like I’m holding a gun to your head.” He tossed the envelope onto the table. “You are coming to the Continental. Non-negotiable.” … I went. The atmosphere at the Continental Championship was electric. The air was thick with the scorching scent of high-octane fuel and burning rubber. Kellan, the heavy favorite to win, was swarmed by a barricade of flashing cameras and shouting reporters. But when it was time for the official press photos, he pulled Lexi to his side. I was shuffled backward, corralled by security to the very outer edges of the media scrum. I looked like a nameless assistant who had wandered into the frame. A broadcaster thrust a microphone into Kellan’s face, flashing a million-dollar smile. “Kellan! Every legendary driver relies on an incredible co-pilot to keep them grounded. Who’s yours?” Lexi looked up at him, her cheeks flushed with a perfect, bashful anticipation. Kellan didn’t miss a beat. “Lexi, of course.” The camera panned, and for a split second, I was caught in the background of the live feed—standing entirely alone, my face completely blank, an obsolete piece of furniture. During the pre-race interviews, Lexi played the camera like a fiddle. “Kellan’s biggest pet peeve is people who drag him down,” she chirped. “I’m just working as hard as I can to keep up with his speed, so I can prove I deserve to sit in his passenger seat.” A few of the crew members standing nearby nodded vigorously. “Yeah, Lexi is a beast. Not like Brynn. Brynn doesn’t know the first thing about cars.” “Hey, it’s normal for a WAG not to get it. Honestly, her staying out of the garage and out of our way is the biggest help she could give us.”

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I could see my wife Corinne’s “Lie Quota.” On our fifth wedding anniversary, the glowing digital readout hovering just above her head read [0/1000]. She was the perfect wife, a woman who had never told me a single lie. That is, until last month, when Kieran—the financially struggling college student her company had been sponsoring—moved into the apartment right next door to ours. Earlier this evening, she walked out the front door holding a heavy thermos of slow-braised short rib stew, telling me she was going down to feed a stray dog. I looked up. The numbers above her head instantly ticked up to [500/1000]. Half of her entire lifetime quota. Gone, just like that, on a single bowl of stew. Over the past month, the number had only climbed higher. Until today. She stood in front of me, her eyes rimmed with red, and said, “Declan, Kieran suffers from severe clinical depression. I’m just going over there to keep him company. There is absolutely nothing going on between us.” A soft, phantom “ding” echoed in my mind. Her Lie Quota had just maxed out. … “Are you really taking that short rib stew down to feed a stray dog?” I sat on the living room sofa, watching Corinne slip into her designer loafers by the entryway. The insulated thermos she held was radiating heat; she shifted it uncomfortably from her right hand to her left. “Of course I am.” “That little golden retriever mix by the dumpsters has been looking so sick lately. It breaks my heart.” She turned her head and gave me a perfectly natural, effortless smile. My eyes were locked onto the space just above her hair. Hovering there was a line of glowing crimson text that only I could see: [Lie Quota: 500/1000]. The exact second the words left her mouth, the digits flickered. [650/1000]. Another hundred and fifty points. “It’s pouring down rain out there. Any stray dog would have found shelter hours ago.” I stood up, closing the distance between us. “Where exactly are you feeding it?” Corinne’s brow furrowed, a faint edge of impatience sharpening her tone. “Down in the parking garage, obviously.” “Declan, why the interrogation tonight?” The numbers flickered again. [800/1000]. I closed my eyes and took a slow, jagged breath. “Alright. Go ahead.” The front door clicked shut. I picked up my spare keys from the entryway console, pushed the door open, and followed her out. The hallway was dead silent, the motion-sensor lights flickering to life one by one as I walked. Corinne hadn’t gone toward the elevators. She had walked straight to the end of the hall and pressed the buzzer for Apartment 302. Kieran’s place. A month ago, the twenty-two-year-old undergrad that Corinne’s corporate philanthropy program had taken under its wing had boldly moved into our building, on our exact floor. The door swung open. Kieran stood there in an oversized, slouchy knit sweater. His eyes were red and watery, looking for all the world like a startled, trembling rabbit. “Corinne… you really came.” “I thought you’d given up on me.” Corinne reached out, her hand tenderly smoothing his messy hair. Her voice was drenched in a sickening amount of pity. “How could I ever do that?” “I brought you some hot stew. Eat it while it’s warm.” That stew was made from prime, bone-in short ribs I had driven to the artisanal butcher at six in the morning to buy. I bought them because Corinne had complained of a stomachache last night and said she was craving my cooking. I had stood over the Dutch oven, tending to that broth for three exhausting hours. And here she was, taking my time, my effort, my love, and using it to coddle another man. I stepped forward and shoved the half-open door hard. “I’d love to see what this sick little stray dog looks like myself.” The heavy door slammed against the interior wall with a deafening thud. Corinne whipped around, the color draining entirely from her face. “Declan?” “Why did you follow me?” Kieran flinched backward, nearly dropping the thermos onto the hardwood floor. “Declan, please, it’s not what you think.” “Corinne just felt sorry for me. She brought me some leftovers.” He bit his lower lip, his voice laced with a pathetic, manufactured tremble. Looking at his fragile, victimized act, a wave of sheer nausea rolled through my stomach. “Did I ask you?” I snapped, my eyes drilling into Kieran. Corinne immediately stepped between us, shielding him with her body. “Declan, what the hell are you doing?” “Why are you screaming at a kid?” The crimson numbers above her head flashed violently in the dim light. [850/1000]. “A kid?” I let out a harsh, humorless laugh. “He’s twenty-two years old. Is he incapable of ordering UberEats?” “He just absolutely had to have the stew I spent three hours cooking for “you”?” Corinne froze. A flash of genuine panic darted through her eyes. “I… I just grabbed it on my way out.” “Kieran is battling severe clinical depression. He hasn’t eaten a real meal in days.” “You’re a grown man, Declan. Are you seriously going to throw a tantrum over a bowl of soup?” [900/1000]. She wasn’t even trying to make her lies sound convincing anymore, all for the sake of an outsider. “I don’t give a damn about the soup.” I held her gaze, refusing to let her look away. “I care about what you said before you walked out the door.” “You looked me in the eye and said you were going to feed a dog.” Corinne ground her teeth. “I only said that because I knew you’d overreact!” “You’ve always been biased against Kieran. If I told you the truth, you would have started a fight.” “Started a fight?” The absurdity of it knocked the breath out of me. “In the five years we’ve been married, when have I ever picked a fight over something like this?” Suddenly, Kieran tugged weakly at the sleeve of Corinne’s blouse. “Corinne, please don’t fight with your husband because of me.” “I won’t eat the stew. I don’t want to make him angry.” He held the thermos out toward me, tears literally welling in his oversized eyes. “It doesn’t matter if I starve. As long as you two are okay.” Corinne aggressively shoved his hand back. “Eat it.” “I brought this for you, and I’d like to see anyone try to stop you from eating it.” She turned her furious glare onto me. “Declan, you are going to apologize to Kieran right now.” I thought the blood rushing in my ears was making me mishear things. “Excuse me?” “You terrified him. Look at him, he’s physically shaking!” Corinne pointed a rigid finger at the boy. “He’s sick. He can’t handle this kind of hostility.” I looked at her self-righteous expression. Then I looked at the glaring red numbers hovering above her. [950/1000]. Fifty points away. Her capacity for deception was about to shatter completely. “Corinne, have you lost your damn mind?” I took a slow step backward. “You took the food I cooked, used it to play Florence Nightingale, and now you want “me” to apologize to “him”?” “Yes, you cooked it.” Corinne took a deep, patronizing breath. “But I’m the one who transferred you the grocery money this month.” “I am the one financially supporting this family. Do I not even have the right to distribute a single bowl of food in my own life?” A suffocating, deathly silence fell over the hallway. The only sound was Kieran’s quiet, performative sniffling. I looked at the woman standing in front of me—the woman I had built a life with, struggled with, loved for five years. Suddenly, she looked like a terrifying stranger. “Fine.” I nodded slowly. “Distribute it however you like.” I turned on my heel and walked out of Apartment 302. Corinne’s voice chased me down the hall. “Declan, if you walk back into our apartment right now, don’t even think about sleeping in my bed tonight.” I stopped. I didn’t turn around. “Keep your bed. Let your stray dog sleep in it.” Back inside our apartment, I left the entryway lights off. I sat alone in the pitch-black living room. Outside, the thunderstorm had intensified, heavy raindrops hammering against the floor-to-ceiling windows with a hollow, rhythmic thud. I pressed the back of my hand against my forehead. I was burning up. Since six this morning, standing over that stove, my head had felt like it was packed with cotton, my limbs heavy and aching. I had originally planned to wait until Corinne finished her dinner, then ask her to drive me to urgent care. Clearly, that wasn’t happening anymore. I fumbled through the kitchen drawer in the dark, found some ibuprofen, and dry-swallowed it. The chalky, bitter taste lingered on the back of my tongue. Five years ago, I had quit my cushy job at a major tech firm to help Corinne launch her startup. Back then, we were so broke we couldn’t even afford to turn on the heating in the dead of winter. One night, I spiked a fever of a hundred and three. Corinne had sobbed from sheer panic. She ran through a blinding snowstorm, trekking three miles just to find a 24-hour pharmacy that was still open. When she came back, her coat was soaked through, her hair frozen to her cheeks. She forced the pills past my lips and held me tightly against her chest, crying into my neck. ““Declan, you have to be okay. If anything happens to you, I won’t survive it.”” Back then, I was the only thing in her world. Now, separated by a thin wall of drywall, she was probably blow-drying another man’s hair. At 2:00 AM, the front door lock clicked. Corinne was back. She flicked on the living room lights and jumped when she saw me sitting rigidly on the sofa. “Why the hell are you sitting in the dark like a ghost?” Her tone was dripping with irritation. I looked up. The numbers above her remained stagnant at [950/1000]. “Did you finish drying his hair?” I asked. Corinne paused halfway through kicking off her shoes. “Are you spying on me?” “The walls in this luxury building are a lot thinner than you think.” I leaned my head back against the cushion, my voice raspy and exhausted. She walked over, standing over me with her arms crossed. “Since you were eavesdropping, I have nothing to hide.” “Kieran slipped in the shower and sprained his wrist.” “So I helped him dry his hair. Is that a crime?” “He’s all alone in this city. He doesn’t have anyone else.” I looked up into her eyes. “I have a fever, too.” Corinne blinked, momentarily caught off guard. Instinctively, she reached her hand out to feel my forehead. But halfway there, she pulled it back. “Did you take something for it?” “Yes.” “Then you’ll be fine.” She turned her back to me and headed toward the master bedroom. “You’re a grown man, Declan. Do you really need to be babied over a slight temperature?” “Kieran is twenty-two. He’s practically still a child.” A child. Always a child. I pushed myself off the sofa, a violent wave of vertigo washing over me. I had to grip the armrest just to stay upright. “Corinne.” I called out to her back. “Did you forget what day it is today?” She stopped in the hallway and slowly turned around. A flicker of genuine confusion passed over her features. “What day?” I pointed a shaking finger toward the dining table, where an unopened, custom-ordered cake sat in the dark. “Today is our fifth wedding anniversary.” The blood finally drained from Corinne’s face. She stared at the bakery box, her lips parting in horror. “Oh, God. Declan, I’m so sorry, I… work has just been so overwhelming lately, it completely slipped my mind.” She hurried back over, reaching out to grab my hands. “Declan, let me make it up to you tomorrow, okay?” “I’ll go buy you that vintage watch you’ve been eyeing.” I stepped back, dodging her touch. “Don’t bother.” “An anniversary isn’t something you can just backdate. Once it’s gone, the meaning is gone.” Right at that moment, her phone buzzed in her pocket. It was a FaceTime request from Kieran. Corinne answered it almost reflexively. On the screen, Kieran was sitting on his bed, hugging his knees to his chest, his eyes shimmering with fresh tears. “Corinne… it’s thundering outside. I’m really scared.” “Can you come back and stay with me?” Corinne’s voice instantly melted into a puddle of sickening sweetness. “Don’t be scared. I’ll be right there.” She hung up, spun around, and headed for the door. I reached out and grabbed her arm hard. “If you walk out that door tonight, I swear to God.” My voice wasn’t loud, but it possessed a cold, undeniable gravity. Corinne wrenched her arm out of my grip with shocking force. “Declan, stop being so goddamn unreasonable!” “Kieran is clinically depressed. What if he does something drastic while he’s having a panic attack?” “And if he does, how is that your responsibility?” I glared down at her. “Are you his mother, or are you his wife?” “Smack.” A sharp, stinging slap landed squarely on my left cheek. Corinne stood frozen, her own hand hovering in the air, looking just as shocked as I was. She stared at her reddened palm, stumbling backward a step. “You forced me to do that. You’re being disgusting,” she hissed through gritted teeth, desperate to maintain the upper hand. As she backed away, her elbow clipped the edge of the floating display shelf behind her. A small, mahogany box tumbled over the edge. “Crack.” The sound was sharp, final, and devastating. The box burst open on the hardwood floor. Inside, the antique emerald heirloom bracelet—the only thing my grandmother had left me on her deathbed, meant for the woman I would spend my life with—lay shattered into three jagged pieces. I stood paralyzed, staring at the ruined jewels. Outside, another clap of thunder rattled the glass. Corinne glanced at the broken pieces on the floor, her brow pinching in irritation. “It’s just an old bracelet.” “I’ll wire you ten grand tomorrow. Go buy a new one.” She snatched her trench coat off the sofa. “I’m going next door. You need to calm down.” At the door, she paused, her hand on the knob. “Declan, look at yourself. You’re acting like a hysterical, jealous housewife.” The door slammed shut. I crouched down in the dark, slowly picking up the shattered pieces of emerald. The fractured edges were razor-sharp. They sliced into my thumb. Dark red blood dripped onto the vibrant green stone, a stark, violent contrast. I didn’t feel the pain. I only felt that the last five years of my life had been one long, humiliating joke. “A jealous housewife?” I stared at the blood on the antique stones in my palm. “Not for much longer.” By the next morning, my fever had broken. I placed the shattered emerald pieces into a velvet pouch, sealed it in a plastic bag, and shoved it into the deepest corner of my suitcase. At 10:00 AM, I walked into Corinne’s office building. Corinne AI. I was the one who built this company from the ground up. The core algorithmic model—the beating heart of our product—was something I wrote during countless sleepless, caffeine-fueled nights. But to give Corinne more leverage and authority in front of venture capitalists, I put the company and the vast majority of the equity entirely in her name. I took on the hollow title of Chief Technology Officer. As soon as I walked onto the R&D floor, a cheer erupted from the bullpen. “Kieran, you are a genius!” “This new algorithmic structure is a masterpiece. The client just signed off on the spot!” I frowned and pushed through the glass doors. Kieran was standing at the front of the conference room, wearing a sharply tailored suit that looked entirely too expensive for an intern, holding a laser pointer against the whiteboard. He was walking the team through a code architecture. “My” code architecture. The finalized version I had submitted directly to Corinne just last week. Only now, the author’s name at the top of the deck read “Kieran Walsh.” When they saw me walk in, the room fell into a dead silence. A few of the senior engineers exchanged guilty, awkward glances. Kieran lowered the laser pointer and walked over to me, a smug, saccharine smile playing on his lips. “Declan! You’re feeling better?” “Corinne told me you were too sick to come in, so she asked me to present this proposal on your behalf.” He emphasized the words “on your behalf” with deliberate, theatrical innocence. I ignored him entirely and walked straight toward Corinne’s corner office. I pushed the heavy glass door open. Corinne was reviewing financial reports. Seeing me, she looked up, her eyes immediately darting away. “What are you doing here? You should be resting.” I tossed my iPad onto her mahogany desk with a loud clatter. “Care to explain why my algorithm is being presented out there under Kieran’s name?” Corinne slowly closed the folder and let out a long, put-upon sigh. “Declan, lower your voice. Sit down, let’s talk about this.” “I can hear you just fine standing up.” She massaged her temples. “Kieran’s probation period is ending. He needs a major win under his belt to justify a full-time offer to the board.” “You’re already the CTO. Having your name on this project is just icing on the cake for you.” “But for Kieran, this is a lifeline.” I stared at the face of the woman I used to know so intimately. “So, you took three months of my blood, sweat, and tears, and slapped his name on it?” “That is theft, Corinne.” Corinne stood up abruptly, her chair rolling back. “Theft? Don’t be so dramatic.” “We are married. What’s yours is mine, isn’t it?” “As the CEO of this company, am I not allowed to allocate internal resources where they are needed most?” The glowing digital readout above her head flared to life again. [980/1000]. “Besides, Kieran worked incredibly hard on this.” “He stayed up until 3:00 AM last night just trying to comprehend your code.” “As a senior executive, shouldn’t you be mentoring the younger generation?” A sharp bark of laughter escaped my throat. I was so furious I couldn’t even feel the anger anymore. “Mentoring?” “My version of mentoring is letting him steal my intellectual property to kiss ass with the clients?” The office door suddenly cracked open. Kieran slipped inside, carrying two artisan lattes. “Corinne, Declan, please don’t fight.” He set the coffees down delicately on the desk, his eyes instantly welling up again. “It’s all my fault. I shouldn’t have been so greedy.” “Declan, I’ll give it back to you. I’ll go tell the clients right now that it was all your brilliant work.” He turned toward the door, taking a slow, dramatic step. Corinne reached out and grabbed his arm. “Stop right there.” She whipped her head around, glaring at me with absolute venom. “Declan, are you determined to drive him over the edge?” “The client is already sold on Kieran being the lead. If you go out there and throw a fit now, do you want us to lose a multi-million-dollar contract?” Outside the glass walls, several employees were blatantly rubbernecking, trying to catch the drama. I could hear the muffled whispers. ““Declan is so petty, fighting with an intern over a credit.”” ““Right? It’s his wife’s company anyway. Who cares whose name is on the slide?”” I stood rooted to the spot, watching Corinne physically position herself as a shield between me and Kieran. The very last ember of love I had for her finally, quietly, burned out. “Fine.” I looked dead into Corinne’s eyes. “The architecture is his.” Corinne exhaled a massive sigh of relief, a triumphant, relaxed smile spreading across her face. “See? I knew you’d understand.” “I knew you’d look at the big picture.” She stepped around the desk, reaching out to straighten my collar. “I’ll clear my schedule this weekend. We’ll have a proper do-over for our anniversary, okay?” “You’ve been dying to try that new French place downtown. I’ll get us a reservation right now.” I looked up at the numbers above her head. [999/1000]. One point away. “Do whatever you want.” I brushed her hand away from my chest, turned around, and walked out of the office. Behind me, I heard Kieran’s sickeningly sweet voice. “Thank you, Corinne. And thank you, Declan.” I didn’t look back. I walked straight to my desk and booted up my workstation. I opened a hidden, encrypted folder. Inside was the foundational logic matrix for the company’s core algorithm. My fingers flew across the keyboard, typing in a single command line. “Since it’s my property, I reserve the right to recall it at any time.” I whispered it to the glowing screen. Friday night. I sat alone in the living room, staring at the two manila envelopes on the coffee table. One contained a formal “Revocation of Intellectual Property Licensing”. The other contained a “Divorce Petition”. I neatly stacked them together and slid them into a sleek leather portfolio. The clock on the wall struck eight. Corinne had promised to take me out for that French dinner tonight. My phone screen lit up. A text from Corinne. “Declan, I am so, so sorry, but Kieran is having a massive panic attack.” “The psychiatrist says he shouldn’t be left alone right now. I have to stay at the hospital with him tonight.” “Can we do the French place next week?” I stared at the pixels on the screen. I didn’t reply. Five minutes later, I received a text from an unsaved number. It was Kieran. It was a photo. In the picture, Corinne was sitting dutifully beside a hospital bed, peeling an apple with total concentration. The angle was perfectly staged to capture the soft, tender curve of her profile. The caption read: ““Some people are just destined to be the ones who are truly loved.”” I let out a soft chuckle. My thumbs tapped out three words. “She’s all yours.” The message delivered. I instantly blocked the number. The next morning, I packed two suitcases and walked out of the apartment we had shared for five years. I signed a lease on a minimalist one-bedroom on the opposite side of the city. For the entirety of the weekend, I turned my phone off and slept for forty-eight uninterrupted hours. Monday morning. I put on a crisp, charcoal suit, grabbed the leather portfolio, and walked into the lobby of Corinne AI. The young receptionist at the front desk looked at me, her eyes darting nervously. “Mr. Declan… you’re here.” “Corinne is in Conference Room A with the executives.” “I know.” I bypassed the desk and walked straight toward the glass walls of Conference Room A. Through the glass, I saw Kieran standing at the head of the table, talking passionately, confidently walking our biggest clients through my proprietary system. Corinne sat at the head of the table, looking up at him with unbridled admiration. I pushed the door open and stepped inside. The room instantly fell silent. Corinne’s brow pulled into a sharp frown. “Declan, what are you doing in here?” “Can’t you see we are in the middle of a major client pitch?” I walked calmly to the conference table and tossed the leather portfolio directly in front of her. “Just handling some personal administrative work.” Kieran gripped the edges of the podium, feigning a look of polite concern. “Declan, are you upset with me?” “If you think my presentation is lacking, you’re more than welcome to come up and add your thoughts.” He played the humble, eager-to-learn junior perfectly. I looked at him. “Your presentation is fantastic.” “It’s just a shame you completely botched the third-tier logic parameters.” “If they run that architecture the way you’ve mapped it out, their entire cloud server will suffer a catastrophic meltdown within seventy-two hours.” The moment the words left my mouth, the client representatives blanched. “Mr. Declan, that is a very serious allegation to make,” one of the clients said, his voice hard. Corinne leaped out of her chair, her face flushed with absolute rage. “Declan, have you lost your goddamn mind?!” “Are you so desperate to undermine Kieran that you would destroy this company’s reputation to do it?” She marched over to me, dropping her voice to a vicious whisper. “Get the hell out of this room. Right now.” I looked at her furious, distorted face. “I’m here to formally tender my resignation.” I tapped a finger against the leather portfolio on the table. “Inside is my notice, along with the legal revocation of the IP license.” Corinne froze. “Resignation?” She let out a scoffing, incredulous laugh. “Declan, what kind of manipulative game are you playing?” “Do you honestly think threatening to quit is going to force me to give the project back to you?” She snatched up the portfolio, refusing to even open it. “You want to leave? Fine.” “Resignation accepted.” “I’d love to see where you think you’re going to go without Corinne Tech backing you up.” “Corinne, please, don’t be mad at Declan!” Kieran scrambled away from the podium and grabbed Corinne’s arm. “Declan just cares about this project too much. I’ll give the credit back to him, I promise!” “Keep it.” I looked evenly at the two of them. “Consider it a parting gift.” “But just a fair warning: I am the sole holder of the encryption keys for the root codebase.” “Without my authorization, that beautiful system you’re selling is nothing but a multi-million-dollar brick.” Corinne’s expression finally shattered. “What are you talking about?” “You coded a backdoor into our servers?!” “It’s my legally registered patent, created before this company even existed. Why wouldn’t I secure it?” I turned my attention to the pale client representatives. “Gentlemen, unless your firm is comfortable assuming the liability of a catastrophic system failure, I highly recommend you pause this contract.” With that, I turned around, pushed open the glass doors, and strode out. Corinne’s frantic scream echoed down the hallway. “Declan! Get back here!” I didn’t stop. When I reached the elevator bank, I pulled my phone from my pocket. At that exact second. The Lie Quota hovering above Corinne’s head in my mind’s eye violently ticked over to [1000/1000]. “Ding.” A cold, mechanical voice echoed in my head. [Lie Quota maximized. Emotional tether severed.] I smiled. From this day forward, I would never believe another word she said.

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My daughter and I bought a few extra bags of potato chips, so Willie locked us in the basement. For four agonizing hours, my daughter ran a fever of a hundred and four, while I begged on my knees behind the heavy iron door. He said, “You waste money, you get punished.” I had always believed he was just incredibly frugal. Both of our families came from nothing, and the weight of our mortgage and car payments felt like a suffocating physical pressure. Willie wouldn’t even buy himself a new shirt. My heart ached for him, so I pinched pennies right alongside him. But the day his first love showed up with her son, I realized what a fool I’d been. The boy was wearing a pair of limited-edition sneakers—six thousand dollars. Willie didn’t even blink when he swiped his card. When I asked him why, he just frowned. “He’s my actual son. You and the girl are just dramatic.” Nydia, his first love, stood by the door with a sweet, knowing smile, looking at me as if I were some squatter living in a house that belonged to her. It hit me then: in our five years of marriage, Willie had never introduced me to a single friend. I wasn’t his wife. I was just his compromise. I didn’t cry. Instead, I dialed a number. “Mom, that arrangement you mentioned years ago… is it still on the table?” There was a heavy silence on the other end. “He lost his wife recently, and he has a daughter,” my mother said quietly. “But he’s a good man, Georgia. He’s been waiting for you to say yes.” I squeezed my burning daughter tighter against my chest and closed my eyes. “I’ll do it.” … The line went dead quiet. My mother was probably terrified by my sudden shift. She cleared her throat, her voice dropping to a sharp, anxious whisper. “Did Willie hit you?” I didn’t answer. Mona shivered in my arms again, looking like a little sparrow drenched in a cold rain. Her forehead was burning hot, her eyelids tightly shut, her lips cracked and peeling. I wiped the sweat from her face with my sleeve, but she didn’t even make a sound. “What’s wrong with the child?” my mother’s voice cracked. “A fever. I’m taking her to the hospital in a bit.” “What do you mean ‘in a bit’?! Take her now!” I hung up. Willie was sitting in the living room watching TV, the canned laughter from some sitcom washing over the room in waves. I wrapped Mona in a blanket, lifted her up, and walked past him. He didn’t even look up. As I reached for the front doorknob, his voice drifted over: “Where are you going to blow money now?” “The hospital,” I said. “For what? A fever isn’t going to kill her.” He munched on his chips, the plastic bag rustling loudly. “That kid of yours is so high-maintenance. Just like her mother.” I didn’t look back. I just opened the door and walked out. On the way to the hospital, Mona started seizing. The Uber driver took one look in the rearview mirror, slammed on the gas, and blew through two red lights. In the ER, the nurses ran out with a gurney, wheeling her inside. The doctor checked her pupils, asking how long she’d been burning up. “Since two p.m.” “What time?” “Two.” The doctor glanced at the clock on the wall, his face darkening. It was almost six. He didn’t ask another question; they just rushed her through the double doors. I sat on one of the plastic chairs in the waiting room, still clutching the blanket I’d wrapped her in. Nearby, an elderly woman was hooked up to an IV. The older man sitting next to her handed me a small packet of graham crackers from his pocket. “Here,” he muttered. I held the crackers, not opening them. The texture of the plastic wrapper pressed hard into my palm. My phone rang. It was my mother. “I spoke to him,” she said. “He says he can meet whenever you’re ready.” “Okay.” “Are you absolutely sure about this, Georgia?” In the background, I could hear a man’s voice talking to my mother about dinner plans. My mother answered him quickly, then asked me, “Tell me the truth. Why now? What happened?” I thought about it for a second. “Nothing. I’m just done.” She was quiet for a long moment. “His name is Jack. He’s forty-two, runs a construction supply business. His wife passed away from pancreatic cancer last year, and he has an eight-year-old girl. I’ve met him. He’s decent, just a man of few words.” “Fine.” “Don’t just say ‘fine.’ You actually have to meet him.” “I will,” I said, and hung up. The fluorescent lights in the hallway buzzed, casting my long, dusty shadow against the linoleum floor. I looked down at my shoes. The soles were worn practically flat. And then I thought of the six-thousand-dollar sneakers on Nydia’s son. It wasn’t that I knew high-end streetwear. It was just that when Willie knelt down to tie the boy’s laces, the sales associate had said, “Great taste, sir. This is our last limited-edition pair. Six thousand dollars.” Willie had stood up and pulled out his card without a second thought. In five years of marriage, he had never bought me a pair of shoes that cost more than thirty dollars. One winter, when my feet were covered in painful chilblains, I wanted to buy a decent pair of insulated winter boots. He literally dragged me out of the store in front of the clerk, muttering, “You’ve got athlete’s foot anyway, don’t ruin their stock.” I didn’t have athlete’s foot. He just didn’t want to spend the money. The ER door swung open. A nurse came out to tell me Mona’s fever had spiked to a hundred and four point three. They had given her an IV antipyretic and were keeping her under observation. I nodded, but I couldn’t bring myself to stand up. At the far end of the hallway, orderlies wheeled a gurney past, its wheels squeaking rhythmically. The figure on it was completely still, a white sheet pulled all the way up to their chin. I stared at the sheet for a long time, suddenly thinking how nice it would be if I were the one lying under it. My phone buzzed. A text from Willie: “Get back here.” I didn’t reply. Another text came: “Who’s making dinner?” Still, I didn’t reply. The third came immediately: “Don’t play these fucking games with me.” I flipped the phone face-down on my knees. The elderly man walked back over and handed me a cup of water from the cooler. “You look pale, sweetheart. Do you need a doctor to look at you?” “I’m fine. Thank you, sir,” I whispered. He sighed and shuffled back to his wife, his slippers scraping softly against the floor. Around eight o’clock, Mona woke up, murmuring “Mommy” under her breath. I leaned over, and her small hand gripped my finger. Her fingernails were tiny, a pale pink. “Mommy, it hurts,” she whispered. “Where does it hurt, baby?” “My hand.” The nurse told her it was just from the IV and to keep it still. I leaned down and kissed her forehead. It was still warm, but no longer terrifyingly hot. Mona closed her eyes, murmuring something else. I bent closer to hear. “Mommy… can we please not go back there?” I didn’t say a word. I just squeezed her little hand a fraction tighter. When they finally discharged her, I called an Uber and typed in an address. It wasn’t our apartment. When my mother opened the door, she froze. She looked at me, then at the sleeping child in my arms, and her eyes welled up instantly. My dad was in the kitchen, the sizzle of garlic and onions in the pan echoing down the hallway. Without turning around, he called out, “You did the right thing coming back. There’s always a place for you at our table.” I carried Mona into my mother’s bedroom and tucked her under the covers. My mother followed me in, standing by the edge of the bed for a long time before whispering, “Did that bastard Willie really never spend a single dime on her?” “He did,” I said quietly. “For her last birthday, he bought a five-dollar sheet cake from the grocery store clearance rack. And then he spent the whole night complaining about how bakers rip people off.” My mother bit her lip, silent. In the kitchen, my dad turned off the stove. He threw his apron onto the counter with a soft thud. “Tomorrow, I’m going to go have a word with him.” “Don’t,” I said. “I’ll handle it myself.” I sat on the old sofa in the living room and dialed a number. When the line connected, I said, “Hi, Aunt Bea. It’s Georgia.” “Georgia, sweetheart! I’ve been waiting for this call for a long time,” she replied. Aunt Bea was a distant cousin of my mother’s who had set me up with Willie in the first place. “Aunt Bea, I need a favor. I want a divorce, but I don’t have any concrete proof.” She chuckled, a dry, knowing sound. “What do you mean, no proof? That first love of his is back in town with a kid, isn’t she? A kid that old means they never really stopped. You have that card in your hand, Georgia. What is there to fear?” After I hung up, my mother walked over and pressed something into my palm. I looked down. It was a debit card. “Your father saved it,” she whispered. “He wanted it to go toward Mona’s college fund. There’s about twelve thousand dollars on it. Take it for now.” I didn’t argue. I gripped the card so hard it dug painfully into my skin. My screen lit up. It wasn’t another barrage of texts from Willie, but an unknown number. “See you tomorrow.” I initially thought it was spam, but then I scrolled up on my chat with my mother and saw her previous text: “I gave Jack your number.” So, it was him. I didn’t reply. From the kitchen, I heard my mother’s hushed, trembling voice: “…that bastard Willie is truly subhuman… letting the child burn up like that…” My dad mumbled something in response, too low to make out, and my mother fell silent. Mona coughed in the bedroom. I slipped inside; she was already asleep again. She had kicked her blanket to the side, her tiny fists clenched tight. I pulled the covers back over her and sat on the edge of the mattress for a long time. My phone vibrated. A voicemail from Willie. I didn’t play it. A text followed immediately: “Fine, Georgia. Don’t come back. I’m tossing your junk into the dumpster tomorrow.” I stared at the screen, set it face-down, and switched off the bedside lamp. In the darkness, Mona’s breathing was slow, warm, and steady. I stared up at the ceiling, my eyes wide open. The streetlight outside bled through the blinds, casting pale lines across the room. I closed my eyes. When I opened them again, the tears were gone. There was only a cold, quiet clarity. The next morning, my mother made blueberry pancakes and scrambled eggs. Mona woke up with her fever mostly gone. Her little face was still pale, but she was sitting up on her own, ready to eat. My mother fed her forkful by forkful. Mona opened her mouth obediently, remembering to whisper, “Thank you, Grandma,” after each bite. My mother’s eyes filled with tears again, and she quickly turned her face away to brush them off. My dad left immediately after breakfast. As he reached for his coat, he said, “I have an appointment with your Uncle Bob this afternoon. I’m heading over there.” I knew exactly what he was doing. Uncle Bob was a divorce attorney. I didn’t stop him, but I did say, “Dad, don’t get into a physical fight with him.” “Yeah,” he muttered, closing the door behind him. Just before ten, my phone rang. It was Willie. I answered but stayed silent. He launched into a furious tirade. When he finally ran out of breath, I asked quietly, “Is your first love busy today? Is that why you finally found the time to call me?” There was a sudden, stunned silence on the other end. Willie was completely caught off guard. He hadn’t expected me to be so blunt. After a few seconds, his voice spiked. “Are you tracking me?” “I don’t need to track you,” I said. “Your son is practically grown. I was just the only blind person in the room.” He didn’t reply to that. “Do you want a divorce or not?” I asked. “You’re the one asking for it. Fine. But you better think this through. Who’s going to want a divorced woman with baggage?” “Tomorrow morning, ten o’clock, county clerk’s office. Don’t be late.” I hung up. My hands didn’t shake. My heart didn’t even skip a beat. My mother, who had overheard everything from the kitchen, walked out carrying a mug of warm chicken broth. She stood by the doorway, looking at me for a long moment, opening her mouth to speak before thinking better of it. She set the mug on the table and quietly walked back inside. The next day, I got up early, pulled on a clean cream sweater, and tied my hair back into a neat ponytail. My mother insisted on coming with me, but I refused. “What if he gets violent?” she worried. “Not at City Hall. He wouldn’t dare.” When I arrived, Willie was already waiting outside. He was wearing a jacket I had bought him, his hair styled with pomade, his leather shoes polished to a high shine. He looked me up and down, his mouth twisting into a sneer. “You wore “that”?” Without a word, I walked past him and went inside. The clerk at the window asked how we planned to divide our assets. Willie pulled out his phone to do the math: the house would be split fifty-fifty, he would keep the car, and we would split the savings evenly. “How much is in the savings?” I asked. “Twelve thousand,” he said. “That’s wrong. It was eighteen thousand at the end of last year.” Willie’s expression hardened. “You’re misremembering.” “The bank statements don’t misremember.” The clerk looked at him and asked him to pull up the digital statements. He stalled, tapping on his phone for several minutes before finally admitting he had withdrawn six thousand last year to help his parents renovate their house. I didn’t call him out. We both knew exactly where that money had actually gone. I got full custody of Mona. Child support was set at three hundred dollars a month—the absolute legal minimum. Even then, Willie tried to bargain. “Can we do two-fifty? Money is really tight right now.” The clerk gave him a look of pure disdain. “This is the statutory minimum, sir. We cannot go lower.” With a scoff, he signed the papers. The entire process took less than twenty minutes. The marriage certificate was dissolved, replaced by a certified divorce decree. Willie stood up first. Near the exit, he paused and looked back at me. “If you can’t survive out there, don’t come crawling back to me.” “Don’t worry,” I said. When I stepped out of City Hall, the sun was blindingly bright. Standing on the concrete steps, I opened the divorce decree. On my filed ID photo, my expression was perfectly blank. It was a stark contrast to the photo we’d taken for our marriage license five years ago, where my smile had reached my ears and the naive hope in my eyes had been painfully obvious. My phone rang. It was Aunt Bea. “Is it official?” “Yes.” “I’m free.” “Good riddance,” she said sharply. “Listen, I found the address of Willie’s little first love. I also managed to get bank records showing he transferred a significant amount of cash to her. On top of that, the house he owns back in his hometown was bought before your marriage, but you two used joint funds to pay down the mortgage. You are legally entitled to a portion of that equity.” “I don’t want his money,” I said. “Are you losing your mind?” Aunt Bea snapped. “Even if you don’t want it, what about your daughter? What is three hundred dollars a month going to do? It barely covers groceries for a week.” I stood in the sunshine, the breeze cool against my skin. My eyes felt dry and heavy. “I know,” I said. “I’ll think about it.” I hung up and dialed the other number. It rang twice before a deep, slightly gravelly voice answered. “Georgia.” “Jack. Are you free today?” “Yes. Where are you? I’ll come pick you up.” I gave him the address of the courthouse. “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes,” he said. As I tucked the phone away, it occurred to me that despite my mother describing him as a man of few words, he certainly didn’t waste any time. A clean, black SUV pulled up to the curb. The window rolled down, revealing a square jaw and dark, quiet eyes that held a steady intensity. He wore a neat, dark blue utility jacket, the collar pressed perfectly flat. He got out to open the door for me, his gaze polite but brief, not offering a superficial smile. Once I was buckled in, he finally spoke. “Have you had breakfast?” “Yes. You?” “Yes.” And then, silence. He didn’t turn on the radio; the car was wonderfully quiet. I looked out the window, watching the city pass by. People were bustling along the sidewalks, a coffee cart steamed in the morning chill, and an old woman held a little boy’s hand as they crossed the street, the kid clutching a warm, soft pretzel. We pulled up to a quiet neighborhood diner. He slid the menu over to me first and ordered a pot of black tea. When the waitress came to take our order, I told him to choose. He didn’t hesitate, ordering three plates to share—mac and cheese, roasted chicken, and a side of seasoned green beans. When she walked away, he looked at me. “I didn’t know what you liked. We’ll start with this, and we can always get something else.” I poured him some tea. When he reached out to take the cup, I noticed his fingers were long, his knuckles prominent and strong. “How old is your daughter?” he asked. “Four and a half.” “Mine is eight. Wild as a stray cat. Her teacher calls me every other week.” The corner of his mouth twitched slightly as he spoke. It wasn’t quite a smile, but the hard lines of his face softened. When the food arrived, he gently set a portion of green beans onto the small side plate next to mine. I blinked, slightly surprised. He didn’t offer an explanation, simply bowing his head to eat. When we were nearly finished, he reached into his pocket, pulled out a thick manila envelope, and slid it across the table. I didn’t touch it. “What’s this?” “Your mother mentioned you don’t have a place of your own right now. I have a townhouse that’s currently empty. Here are the keys.” I sat still. The envelope lay right next to my hand, stamped with the logo of a local real estate agency. “I didn’t say I was going to move in with you.” “I’m not asking you to,” he said, his voice level. “I just want you to take a look at it. If you like it, we can get married. If you don’t want to get married, that’s fine too—you can just stay there.” He stood up to pay the bill. After a couple of steps, he paused and looked back over his shoulder. “Don’t overthink it. I don’t have an agenda. I just think… a woman raising a kid alone has it hard enough.” I stared at the envelope, then picked it up, feeling its weight in my hands. It was heavy. There was definitely more than just a set of keys inside. The waitress cleared our plates, the quiet clatter of silverware grounding me. Through the window, I could hear children laughing as they ran down the sidewalk. I slipped the envelope into my purse, stood up, and followed him out. His pace was steady, neither too fast nor too slow, keeping a perfect rhythm so I never had to rush to keep up. On my third day living in Jack’s townhouse, Willie showed up. I didn’t let him past the threshold. He stood on the porch holding a mesh bag of oranges, wearing the same utility jacket I had bought him, the collar frayed and faded. He used to hate wearing it, always complaining that the color made him look poor. “I came to see Mona,” he said, lifting the oranges slightly. “She’s not here.” “I know she’s at your mom’s. I came to see you.” I leaned against the doorframe, blocking the entry. The porch light flickered once, buzzing softly in the evening air. Willie’s face looked slightly swollen, and there was an angry red scratch running down his jawline. “What happened to your face?” He touched his jaw, offering a weak, pathetic smile. “Nothing. Just tripped.” I didn’t call him out. The scratch was clearly from a woman’s manicured nail—long, sharp, and deliberate. “You dropped off the fruit. You can leave now.” He pressed his hand against the door. He wasn’t pushing hard, but I didn’t slam it. He peered past my shoulder into the living room. It was practically empty, save for a worn-in leather sofa that Jack had moved in for me. Willie stared at the sofa for a few seconds, his eyes narrowing. “Did your new guy rent this place for you?” “That’s none of your business.” “Georgia, we’ve been divorced for three days. Are you already living with someone else?” His voice rose, and across the hall, the neighbor’s door cracked open. An elderly woman peeked out before quickly shutting it. I looked at Willie. Really looked at him. He had lost weight, his cheeks sunken, his lips dry and chapped. I remembered how I used to constantly nag him to drink water whenever his lips looked like that, and how he would snap back, “I know, I know, shut up.” Now his lips were bleeding, and there was no one left to nag him. “Where is Nydia?” I asked quietly. He shut his mouth. Slowly, his hand slid off the door and into his pocket, his shoulders slumping. “Did she leave?” I pressed. “She went back,” he mumbled, staring down at his scuffed leather shoes. The toes were worn grey, no longer polished. “Back to her husband?” Willie snapped his head up, his eyes bloodshot—not from sorrow, but from raw, wounded pride. “Did you have someone dig up dirt on me?” “I didn’t need to dig,” I said. “A man like you… who else but me would ever tolerate you?” The words surprised even me. For five years, I had walked on eggshells around him, doing whatever he wanted, too terrified to ever talk back. Willie stared at me, his eyes rimmed with red. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed hard. “Georgia… let’s get back together.” A neighbor walked by down the hall, carrying a grocery bag that rustled softly. The hallway light went out, plunging Willie’s face into shadow, before snapping back on. “I won’t be like that anymore, Georgia,” he pleaded. “I was only trying to save money for our future. And as for Mason… I didn’t have a choice. She insisted on having him, what was I supposed to do? I—” “When did you start seeing her again?” “What?” “I asked, when did you and Nydia start up again?” His lips trembled, but no sound came out. “You never actually stopped, did you?” I said. Willie’s mouth twitched, his expressions shifting rapidly before settling into a pathetic, hollow smile. It was a smile that looked worse than crying. “Fine. Since you already know, why even ask?” he muttered. “The only reason I married you back then was because her family wouldn’t approve of us. She married someone else, and I was devastated. I just found someone to fill the space. I admit… I did you wrong.” I listened to his words, feeling strangely hollow. “Are you done?” “Georgia…” “If you’re done, please leave.” I pulled the door to close it, but he shoved his hand against the wood, using significantly more force this time. The heavy wood caught my forearm. A sharp pain shot up my arm, and I let out a soft gasp. Willie immediately let go, taking a half-step back. “You’re not serious about this guy, are you?” he asked. I didn’t answer. “Is he rich?” Still, silence. “Georgia, we just got divorced and you already have a backup plan. You had this set up all along, didn’t you?” I looked at his face. The face I had stared at for five years. His eyebrows, his eyes, his nose, his mouth—I knew every detail well enough to draw them from memory with my eyes closed. But looking at him now, he was nothing more than a stranger. “Get out,” I said. I shut the door, and the lock clicked into place. I leaned my back against the wood. I could hear Willie lingering in the hallway for a moment before his heavy footsteps headed toward the stairwell. He didn’t take the elevator. He walked down. The sound grew fainter and fainter until it vanished entirely. My phone lit up on the counter. A text from Jack: “What do you want for dinner? I can bring it over.” I didn’t reply. I walked into the kitchen and poured a glass of water. It was cold, freezing my throat all the way down to my stomach. The kitchen window was cracked open, and the evening breeze blew the curtains, their edges sweeping over the clean, empty countertop. It looked completely untouched, as if no one lived here. The doorbell rang again. Thinking Willie had returned, I froze near the door. It rang a second time, followed by a polite, rhythmic knock. Tap, tap, tap. A pause. Tap, tap, tap. “Georgia?” It was Jack’s voice. I opened the door. He stood on the porch holding a grocery bag in one hand and a gallon of milk in the other. He looked at me, his gaze dropping instantly to my arm. “What happened to your arm?” I looked down. Where the door had pinched me, the skin was already swelling and turning a dark shade of blue. “It’s nothing. Just clumsy.” He didn’t pry. He walked in and set the groceries on the kitchen counter—some fresh potatoes, celery, and a pack of pork chops. “Was Willie here?” he asked. I stayed quiet. He began unpacking the groceries, placing the pork chops in the fridge, washing the celery, and standing the stalks upright in a glass of water to keep them crisp. When he finished, he turned around to look at me. “If he comes back, call me.” “It’s fine. I can handle him.” Jack watched me for a moment, then let it drop. He put the milk in the fridge. The shelves were barren, the carton sitting lonely on the top rack. “Is potato soup okay for dinner?” he asked. “Yes.” He tied an apron around his waist and turned on the faucet, the water rushing into the sink. I stood at the kitchen doorway, watching his broad shoulders and straight back. He washed the vegetables slowly, meticulously cleaning each leaf. “Jack,” I called out. He turned off the tap and looked back at me. “Why are you looking to be with a divorced woman who has a kid?” He thought about it for a couple of seconds before replying, “Because I’m a single father raising a kid, too.” With that, he turned the tap back on and went back to washing the greens.

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At Adam’s touring exhibition, someone made a passing joke that I was the only woman who had ever managed to stay by his side for so long. He was a man of silence, fiercely protective of his boundaries. I, on the other hand, was gentle, compliant, and knew my place. For seven years, I genuinely believed we were soulmates, perfectly in sync. Until Piper, his vibrant, free-spirited childhood friend, returned from London. She knocked over his palettes and barged into his studio whenever she pleased. Every single thing she did directly violated Adam’s strict, unspoken rules. Yet, instead of getting angry, he only let out a soft chuckle. “Piper’s always been a hurricane,” he’d say. “I guess I’m the only one who knows how to handle her.” But I remembered the time I had accidentally misplaced a single one of his sable brushes. He had iced me out, punishing me with a silent treatment that lasted a whole month. And then, there was the night Piper “accidentally” tossed the portrait Adam had painted for my birthday straight into the fireplace. His immediate, instinctual reaction was to pull her back, soothing her panic. He didn’t even notice my hand, blistered and scorched from trying to pull the burning canvas out of the embers. One of our mutual friends couldn’t watch any longer and pulled him aside. “Aren’t you worried Cora’s going to be devastated by this?” Adam had waved it off with an effortless, arrogant certainty. “Cora’s sensible. She doesn’t sweat the small stuff.” My chest tightened. I unlocked my phone and opened a travel app, staring at the flight booking screen. For seven years, I had been the sensible one. But this time, I wanted to be selfish. … The burns on my hand were still throbbing with a dull, white-hot heat. On the other end of the line, Adam’s voice was clipped, his patience already wearing thin. “Whatever it is, Cora, it’ll have to wait. I need to be here for Piper right now.” He sighed. “She’s incredibly shaken up. She’s still crying.” Diana, sitting next to me in the ER, snatched my phone, her voice dripping with disbelief. “Adam, Cora literally burned her hand trying to save your painting. She is in the hospital right now, and you can’t even bother to show up?” Adam remained completely unfazed. “With the way she was yelling at Piper earlier, I highly doubt it’s that serious.” The nurse pressed an iodine-soaked cotton swab against my raw skin. The sharp, searing sting made my vision blur, but the physical pain paled in comparison to the cold weight settling in my chest. I couldn’t even bring myself to gasp. My mind was entirely consumed by Adam’s detached, icy words. Piper had watched the flames catch the edges of the canvas with a strange, satisfied glint in her eyes. When I demanded to know why she did it, Adam had immediately stepped between us, shielding her like a protective barrier. He had frowned at me, his voice sharp with irritation: “Enough, Cora! It’s just a painting. Do you really have to scream at her like that?” The words had died in my throat. Piper didn’t understand what that painting meant to me. But Adam? He was the one who painted it. How could he not understand? Adam was a celebrated landscape artist. His brushstrokes were legendary for their control, capturing light and shadow with a breathtaking, lifelike vitality. For years, critics and collectors had wondered what his immense talent could produce if he ever turned his attention to portraiture. I was no exception. In our seven years together, I had asked him countless times to paint me. Just a simple portrait. Every single time, he had declined. “I don’t have the time, Cora.” “Portraits aren’t my strength.” I believed him. I stopped asking, locking that quiet desire away. Until a few months ago, when I was tidying his studio. There was a locked room at the end of the hall that he usually kept closed. That afternoon, the door was slightly ajar, and a stray draft from an open window caught the heavy white sheets draped over a row of easels. The fabric slipped, murmuring as it pooled on the floor, exposing what lay beneath. The broom slipped from my hand, clattering against the floorboards and sending up a small cloud of dust. Every single canvas in that hidden sanctuary featured the same subject. A girl with a bright, radiant laugh. I recognized her immediately from the old photos in Adam’s scrapbooks. It was Piper. It was never a matter of time, or skill. He simply didn’t want to paint me. His muse had always belonged to someone else. When we first started dating, I had casually scrolled through his phone one evening. His camera roll was packed with nearly a thousand photos of Piper—easily two-thirds of his storage. There were barely a dozen of me. The rest were just reference photos of landscapes. Adam had wrapped his arms around me then, pressing a kiss to my temple. “Piper and I grew up together, Cora. We have over a decade of history, of course there are more photos. Besides, she’s like a sister to me. She’s in London now anyway; we barely even talk.” But when Piper returned last month, the illusion shattered. I finally saw what it looked like when Adam was truly captivated by someone. Adam was a creature of absolute discipline. He lived by rigid schedules and ironclad boundaries, never allowing anything to disrupt his carefully curated routine. Except for Piper. I had to ask permission weeks in advance just to step into his studio. Piper barged in whenever she pleased, leaving the door wide open. Adam was highly allergic to cat dander, so despite how much I adored cats, I never kept one. Yet, when Piper posted a casual photo of a kitten on Instagram with the caption, “So cute, I need one,” Adam went out of his way to source a rare, pedigree Persian kitten for her. Now, Piper and her kitten played freely in the very studio where I used to stand at the threshold, carefully checking his mood before taking a single step inside. The line went dead, the dial tone buzzing in my ear. Diana set the phone down, her eyes swimming with sympathy. “Cora, don’t let it get to you. Adam’s just… he’s overwhelmed right now. He still cares about you, I know he does.” I quietly tapped my screen, closing the flight booking app. “It’s fine. It doesn’t matter what he thinks anymore.” I looked at her, offering a weak smile. “I’m so sorry for dragging you out this late.” Diana squeezed my shoulder. “Don’t be silly. I’ve watched you two from the very beginning. I just don’t want to see you guys fall apart over something like this.” She didn’t understand. It wasn’t just “this”. An avalanche is never caused by a single snowflake; it’s the slow, silent accumulation of weight until the entire mountain gives way. I stayed at the clinic until midnight. Adam never called. Not a single text, not a single check-in. Diana insisted on calling an Uber to make sure I got home safely. By the time the car pulled up to our suburban home, the world was blanketed in a heavy, late-night silence. I dragged my exhausted body through the front door, heading toward the stairs. As I passed the kitchen, a faint rustle caught my attention. Adam was standing by the counter, holding a steaming mug of milk. He froze when he saw me walk in. His eyes drifted down to the thick white gauze wrapping my hand, and his expression faltered. “Your hand… you’re actually hurt?” “Minor second-degree burns,” I said quietly, keeping my voice flat. “But earlier… I didn’t see any burns on you,” he stammered. He hadn’t seen it because his eyes had never once settled on me. They were too busy scanning Piper for scratches. I didn’t have the energy to argue. “Why are you still up?” I asked, looking at the warm mug in his hands. The rising steam from the milk briefly warmed the cold air between us, and for a fleeting, foolish second, I thought it was for me. Then Adam spoke. “Piper said she couldn’t sleep. I wanted to bring her some warm milk.” He offered a small, apologetic shrug. “You know how she is. She’s got that childish temperament—if I don’t soothe her now, she’ll be up all night tossing and turning.” She had tantrums that required coddling. I had maturity, which meant my pain could be ignored. It was always the squeaky wheel that got the grease. But I was too exhausted, both in body and soul, to care about who Adam chose to comfort anymore. That night, I slept in the guest room. Adam never came to knock on the door. The next morning, the dining room was lively. I changed my clothes and stepped out, my eyes instantly catching the two figures seated at the kitchen island. Adam was leaning over, his thumb gently brushing away a smudge of cream from the corner of Piper’s mouth. It was an incredibly intimate, natural gesture. Piper rested her elbows on the table, her eyes crinkling with delight. She looked up at him like a cherished child. “Adam, this mango panna cotta is literally heaven. You’re amazing.” A soft, indulgent smile played on Adam’s lips—a look of tender devotion I had never received. “Eat up then, if you like it so much.” Piper caught sight of me and her face lit up. “Cora! You’re awake! Come have breakfast with us. Adam made his signature mango panna cotta, it’s incredible. You have to try some!” Adam froze, his eyes snapping to mine. “No, she can’t. Cora’s allergic to mangoes.” He cleared his throat, his tone suddenly tense. “I can whip up something else for you. What do you want?” “Don’t bother,” I said quietly. “I have to head back to the clinic to get my dressing changed.” Adam’s gaze fell to the thick white bandage on my hand. His voice softened slightly. “Let me drive you.” Before I could answer, Piper set her spoon down with a clatter. “I’ll come too.” Her eyes welled with sudden tears as she looked at me, her voice thick with remorse. “Cora, I feel so terrible about yesterday. It’s my fault you got hurt. Let me come with you to the hospital. It’s the least I can do to make it up to you.” Before I could even open my mouth, Adam reached out and gently patted her head. “Hey, stop crying. It was an accident. Cora is sensible; she’s not the type to hold a grudge over something like this.” Piper sniffled, a quick smile returning to her lips. “Okay, good.” And just like that, my compliance was weaponized against me once more, dismissing my pain entirely. I offered a dry, humorless smile and said nothing. At the clinic, Adam sat beside me in the waiting room. “If it hurts when they change the dressing, just squeeze my hand,” he murmured, his voice gentle. “It’ll be over before you know it.” I simply nodded. But while we were waiting for my name to be called, Piper suddenly doubled over, clutching her stomach in pain. Adam turned to me, his face a mask of torn, agonizing conflict. Before he could even formulate the excuse, I spoke up first. “Go with her.” A flicker of surprise—and perhaps relief—flashed through his eyes. After a moment of hesitation, he scooped Piper into his arms. “I’m just going to get her checked in at triage,” he called over his shoulder. “I’ll be right back.” But by the time I was called in, had the old bandages peeled off, the ointment reapplied, and the fresh dressing secured, an entire hour had passed. Adam was nowhere to be seen. After the doctor finished giving me my post-care instructions, I walked out of the exam room. I walked down the sterile corridor, following the signs to the gastroenterology wing. Through the glass window of a private room, I saw them. Adam was gently tucking a blanket around Piper’s shoulders. Then, he sat down, picked up an apple, and began to carefully peel it in one long, unbroken spiral. They looked like a picture-perfect couple. Standing out in the hallway, I felt like an intruder, a shadow trespassing on someone else’s love story. I didn’t knock. I just turned around and left the hospital alone. When I got home, I opened my nightstand drawer and pulled out the charred remains of the sketch. Most of the paper had turned to ash, but I had managed to salvage one torn corner. It was a sketch of my eye. It looked rushed, completely devoid of color, just a few quick charcoal lines. Yet, when he first gave it to me, those simple lines had moved me to tears. It was the first time in seven years Adam had ever painted me of his own accord. Looking at it now, under the harsh light of reality, it was nothing but a cruel joke. I have a small beauty mark just beneath my right eye. But the sketch was entirely clean—no mark, no blemish. I wasn’t being overly sensitive. The truth was, Piper had a beauty mark in that exact spot, and in every single one of the dozens of portraits Adam had painted of her, that tiny mark was captured with meticulous, loving detail. He never missed it. But on mine, it was blank. He hadn’t forgotten to draw it on me. He had simply never looked at my face long enough to actually see me. I took a deep breath, forcing down the hot sting in my eyes. I unlocked my phone and pulled up the booking app again. My gaze lingered on the destination: “Charleston”. Years ago, someone had told me that if the world ever became too heavy to bear, I could always come home to him. My thumb hovered over the “Confirm Purchase” button for a long moment before I finally pressed down. The flight was next Wednesday. It gave me exactly one week to pack my life away. Adam’s text came in the middle of the night. “Did you make it home?” “Piper’s condition is worse than we thought. I have to stay at the hospital with her tonight.” “She’s terrified of being alone in hospitals. Go ahead and get some sleep if you’re tired.” She couldn’t survive without Adam. But I was strong, sensible Cora—I could manage just fine on my own. I switched my phone off and didn’t bother to reply. The next morning, I went into the office and handed in my resignation. The HR manager looked up at me, completely caught off guard. “Cora, does Adam know about this?” I shook my head quietly. “He’s very busy right now. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t mention this to him for a few days.” Though confused, she nodded and accepted the papers. Seven years. I had spent seven years of my life locked in a career I despised, all to accommodate Adam. When I first arrived in Boston, I was entirely alone. I had no safety net, and my days were a desperate, exhausting struggle to survive. Adam had been my savior. He dragged me out of that cold, lonely existence and welcomed me into his world, a world filled with soft light, oil paints, and beautiful canvases. For the first time, in a massive, indifferent city, I felt like I belonged somewhere. I still remembered the awe I felt watching him paint. Summoning every ounce of courage I had, I told him I wanted to learn. I wanted to understand his world, but more than that, I wanted to pursue my own dormant passion. He had shut me down almost instantly. “I don’t have the time or the patience to teach a beginner, Cora,” he had said coldly. “And honestly, you don’t have the raw talent for this. It’s not your path.” Instead, he arranged a “sensible” path for me. He placed me in his firm’s finance department, working as an accountant. Day after day, year after year, I buried myself in sterile spreadsheets, managing his bank accounts, tax filings, and corporate expenses. I surrendered my own dreams to keep his life running smoothly, quietly standing in his shadow. For seven years, I foolishly believed that devotion could melt even the coldest heart. I thought that if I was patient enough, I would eventually earn my own place of privilege in his life. But I finally understood: love is not a transaction. You cannot earn it through sheer endurance. Piper didn’t have to sacrifice anything; she merely had to exist for Adam to love her unconditionally. When Adam finally came home from the hospital, he slipped into the bedroom with quiet steps. I wasn’t actually asleep, but I kept my eyes closed, unwilling to face him. He leaned over, his fingertips gently brushing my shoulder. “Cora,” he whispered. “Wake up. I brought you something to eat.” He held a plain white plate with a single piece of toasted bread on it. “Just to hold you over,” he said, handing it to me before turning back to the kitchen. For the next half hour, the sound of pots and pans clinking drifted from downstairs. I wandered down and sat quietly at the dining table, listening to the commotion. When he finally emerged, he was carrying tray after tray. The table was suddenly overflowing with food: a delicate, slow-simmered bone broth porridge, a fragrant pot of roasted chicken soup, and four beautifully prepared side dishes, vibrant with color. He wiped his hands on a kitchen towel, offering a faint, preoccupied smile. “I made these for Piper. I’m going to drop them off at the hospital in a bit. Her stomach is still so delicate, and she can’t handle the heavy, greasy takeout from nearby restaurants.” I took a bite of the dry, barely-toasted bread in my hand. It felt like cardboard, scraping against my throat, impossible to swallow and too humiliating to spit out. A piece of dry toast for me. A gourmet, life-restoring feast for her. I kept my eyes lowered, refusing to say a word. The silence stretching between us was heavy and suffocating. It didn’t take long for Adam to notice my coldness. He walked over, standing directly in front of me, sighing with a familiar, weary patience. When he reached out to cup my cheek, I subtly tilted my head away, avoiding his touch. His brow furrowed slightly, though his voice remained soft. “Still upset?” He sighed. “Cora, don’t be childish. Yesterday was an emergency. Piper was in agony, sweating from the pain. I didn’t have a choice; I had to prioritize her. I know it wasn’t fair to you, but I came back to make it up to you, didn’t I?” He spoke with such casual, effortless justification. Yet, not once did he ask how much my hand hurt when the nurse scrubbed the raw flesh. Not once did he ask how it felt to sit in that sterile hallway for an hour, waiting for a man who was never coming back. He had always been this way. Everyone and everything else took precedence, because he knew I was sensible. He knew I would understand. And because I always understood, my suffering was treated as nonexistent. Adam packed the containers into an insulated bag. Before heading out the door, he turned to look at me, his eyes lingering. “Your birthday is next Wednesday, right? I’ll make time over the next few days to paint you a proper portrait. A new one.” It was the very first time he had ever bent his pride to offer me a compromise. But it came long after I had already decided to walk away. Over the next couple of days, Adam spent almost all his time at the hospital with Piper. I used those quiet hours to pack the remaining fragments of my life. When he did come home late at night, he would collapse into bed beside me, immediately falling asleep. He never noticed that my toothbrush was gone from the bathroom vanity. He never noticed that the closet was half-empty, stripped of my winter coats and favorite sweaters. He didn’t even notice that one of our matching promise rings was missing from the jewelry box. Then again, Adam had stopped wearing his years ago, so it made sense he wouldn’t look. Before I knew it, Wednesday arrived. A notification popped up on my phone, reminding me that my flight to Charleston was scheduled to depart at exactly two o’clock that afternoon. Adam had left early in the morning, which saved me the pain of a face-to-face confrontation. I zipped up my last suitcase, took a deep breath, and rolled it toward the front door. Just as my hand touched the brass doorknob, my phone rang. It was Adam. “Happy birthday, Cora,” his voice came through the receiver, background noise of wind and rustling trees filtering in. “Piper suddenly decided she wants to learn how to paint landscapes, so I’m out with her doing some plein air work. I probably won’t be back until late tonight. But don’t worry—I ordered a cake to be delivered to the house, and I finished your portrait. Just stay home and wait for me, okay?” “Okay,” I said quietly. I hung up, pulled open the door, and walked out into the crisp afternoon air, the wheels of my suitcase clicking against the driveway. At the departure gate, I turned back to look at the skyline of the city one last time. This place had held seven years of my life, my hopes, and my quiet heartbreaks. I knew I would never return. I unlocked my phone, opened our chat, and typed out a final message: “I’m leaving. You don’t need to give me the painting. I don’t want it anymore.” He had always been so certain of my love, so confident that quiet, sensible Cora would never have the courage to leave. But for once in my life, I chose to be reckless. I switched my phone to airplane mode, stepped onto the jet bridge, and didn’t look back.

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My father made five million dollars a month working overseas. My monthly allowance was thirty dollars. My mother claimed she fought tooth and nail to get me more, to the point where they almost divorced over it. My sister, eyes red with tears, would secretly slip me cash under the table—only to be caught and beaten fifty times with the heavy family cane. So, every time hunger clawed at my stomach and my gut twisted in painful spasms, I hated my father. I hated his cold, arbitrary cruelty. I hated that he had brought me into this world only to starve me of both food and love. Then, I received a video call from myself ten years in the future. The moment the screen connected, my heart leaped. “How am I doing in ten years?” I blurted out, unable to contain the hope in my voice. “Did I finally cut that old bastard out of my life?” But the future me on the screen had bloodshot eyes, hollow and burning with a mixture of raw grief and absolute fury. “You idiot,” he rasped, his voice cracking. “That ‘old bastard’ is the only one who ever loved you. When your mother and sister poisoned you and left you in complete kidney failure, he didn’t hesitate for a single second. He gave you his own kidney!” “And to keep them from destroying you further, he signed away his entire net worth just to buy out your relationship with them. After the surgery, he couldn’t even afford a ten-dollar pack of anti-inflammatories. He died of a massive infection, screaming in pain in a cold hospital bed.” I stared at the screen, my breath catching in my throat, paralyzed by disbelief. The future me let out a laugh that sounded more like a sob. “Your $150,000 monthly allowance? They pocketed every single cent except for the thirty dollars they threw at you. The rest went to her secret love child.” “If you don’t believe me, go to the estates at Westwood Heights. See for yourself.” … I went. The midsummer sun beat down mercilessly, baking the asphalt as the security guard stopped me at the iron gates of Westwood Heights. His eyes narrowed with sharp, elitist suspicion. “This is a private community. Who are you looking for?” Clinging to a tiny, desperate shred of hope, I whispered, “I’m looking for Victoria Prescott. I’m her son.” The guard burst out laughing. “Are you out of your mind, kid? Ms. Prescott only has a daughter and a son named Hunter. In fact, she just took him out yesterday to buy him a brand-new phone.” “Where did you crawl out of? Trying to scam your way in?” He tossed a glossy community newsletter onto the marble counter. My blood ran cold. The world tilted on its axis as I looked at the photograph on the page. My mother and sister stood smiling, their arms wrapped affectionately around a teenage boy. I knew him. Hunter Prescott. The golden boy in my class. Two weeks ago, he’d bragged to everyone at school about his parents buying him a custom-built villa in the hills. When asked about the price, Hunter had merely smirked. “Not much. Just around five million.” My thirty-dollar allowance had started the year I entered high school. Three years. Five million a year. My hands shook so violently I could barely grip the paper. When I got home, my mother and Caroline were sitting in the living room. Neither of them noticed the deathly pale color of my face. My mother walked over and handed me a twenty and a ten-dollar bill. “Jesse, here’s your allowance. Your father just wired it. Make sure you stretch it.” I stared at the crumpled cash in my palm, then slowly looked up at her. Her face wore that same familiar expression of maternal pity and tenderness. My eyes burned. A bitter, jagged laugh escaped my throat. “Thirty dollars a month. Do you really want to see me starve that badly?” Her brow furrowed, a flash of annoyance crossing her face. “You know what your father’s temper is like. If I dare ask him for more, he’ll send over another stack of divorce papers.” “Is that so?” I raised my voice, my chest heaving. “Maybe I’ll ask him myself the next time he calls.” Caroline immediately rushed to my side. She smoothed my hair down, gently pressing a hundred-dollar bill into my hand. “I’ll take the blame,” she whispered, giving me a conspiratorial wink. “Just don’t turn on the AC in your bedroom this month. We can pretend we didn’t notice if you sneak it on.” Ever since my father moved to Australia, the house had “rules.” I only had the right to use the electricity and my phone, for which I supposedly owed the household rent. Since I had no money, my usage was restricted to the first and last days of the month. I spent countless sweltering summer nights doing homework in the dark by the weak flashlight of a dying phone, crying as I poured cold water over my head just to lower my body temperature. In the past, Caroline’s hundred dollars would have filled me with intense gratitude. But now, all I could think of was Hunter bragging about his villa’s advanced climate-control system. “It keeps the air at the perfect temperature all year round,” he’d said. His arrogant laugh echoed in my head, sharp and agonizing. I pushed the hundred-dollar bill back into Caroline’s hand, leaving only the thirty dollars. “No thanks,” I said, pronouncing each word with heavy deliberation. “I only want what actually belongs to me.” I walked into my bedroom, grabbed my ID, and headed to the nearest Chase bank branch. “I need a complete statement of all accounts under my name for the past three years.” The printout was hundreds of pages long. I stood in the quiet lobby, going through the ledger page by page. Since my freshman year, at precisely midnight on the first of every month, my father had wired $150,000. Sometimes there were extra deposits, always with notes attached: Happy birthday to my boy. Good luck on exams, buy yourself some extra tutors. Merry Christmas to my favorite son. But within five minutes of arriving, the money was always transferred out in massive, lump-sum withdrawals. Leaving exactly thirty dollars. My throat tightened. I couldn’t breathe. My parents practiced a modern, separate-living arrangement. Caroline took my mother’s surname, Prescott, while I took my father’s, Ellington. Despite this, my mother had always acted like she favored me, constantly telling Caroline she had to sacrifice for her brother. I remembered when I was six and fell critically ill. My mother spent a week on her knees at St. Jude’s Chapel, praying for my recovery. Caroline had sobbed, begging the doctors to take her own organs if it would save my life. That was why I had believed their lies so blindly. Tears fell onto the paper, blurring the printed numbers. I bit my lip to keep from crying out loud, my hands trembling as I carefully packed the statements away. The next day at school, a crowd of students surrounded Hunter’s desk. He was showing off a brand-new, limited-edition phone. “My mom bought it for me the second I asked,” Hunter boasted, his face beaming. “She got a $150,000 commission check yesterday and surprised me with it.” I sat at my desk, quietly chewing on a dry, day-old bagel. On thirty dollars a month, a single dry bagel was the only meal I could guarantee myself each day. Hunter suddenly thrust the phone in front of my face, his eyes glinting with smug satisfaction. “Nice, isn’t it, Jesse?” I looked at the malicious triumph in his eyes and smiled faintly. “Sure. It’s always easy to enjoy things you didn’t have to work for.” A classmate sneered. “Ignore him, Hunter. He’s just broke and bitter because his own parents won’t spend a dime on him.” Hunter laughed magnanimously. “It’s fine. I heard Jesse’s monthly allowance is only thirty bucks. I’d be bitter too.” The classroom erupted into cruel laughter. “Thirty bucks? My dog’s food costs more than that.” “Was he adopted from a shelter?” I didn’t let their jeers get under my skin. I swallowed the last dry crumb of my bagel, stood up, and looked directly into Hunter’s eyes. “You know, yesterday was the first of the month. The day my dad always transfers my allowance.” Hunter blinked, momentarily thrown off. I let out a slow, deliberate smile. “My dad transfers my money, and your mother suddenly gets a massive ‘commission check’ on the exact same day. Funny coincidence, isn’t it?” The color drained from Hunter’s face. Before I could sit down, my homeroom teacher appeared at the door, looking deeply uncomfortable and refusing to meet my eyes. “Jesse… the results for the academic scholarship are in.” My heart sank. I followed him to the principal’s office, where I was informed that my $3,000 scholarship had been reassigned to Hunter—supposedly at my “father’s request.” I didn’t try to argue with the principal’s clumsy lies. I just stared at the certificate on the desk. Three thousand dollars was pocket change to Hunter, but to me, it meant a month of hot meals and a hotel room with working air conditioning. Without saying a word, I reached over and picked up my teacher’s phone from the desk. The principal gasped. “Jesse, what are you doing?” I dialed three digits, my voice perfectly calm. “Calling the police. Even if they’re my family, they don’t have the right to steal my academic merit.” The principal’s face went white. He scrambled for his own phone, frantically dialing. The police arrived within fifteen minutes, closely followed by my mother and sister, who rushed into the office, sweating and breathless. My mother tried to grab my arm. “Jesse, stop this dramatic nonsense. Let’s go home and talk.” I stepped back, out of her reach, and looked at the lead officer. “Officer, I have been severely neglected at home for three years on a thirty-dollar-a-month allowance, and now my guardians have illegally forged my signature to transfer my academic scholarship to another student.” The officer’s face darkened as he turned to my mother and sister. “Are you his legal guardians? Is what he’s saying true?” Caroline tried to smooth things over, but I spoke over her. “Officer, they claim my father authorized all of this.” The officer immediately ordered his partner, “Contact the father and verify this statement.” The blood drained from my mother’s face. She cast a desperate, pleading look at the principal. The principal immediately stepped forward with a nervous laugh. “Officers, this was entirely a clerical error! We are reinstating Jesse’s scholarship immediately. It’s all a big misunderstanding!” Caroline grabbed my hand, her voice softening into a gentle, pleading coo. “Jesse, Dad’s discipline was definitely too harsh, but we’re a family. We shouldn’t air our dirty laundry in public.” My mother nodded frantically, her hands shaking as she pulled out her phone and venmoed me $5,000. “Yes, look, I’m transferring you some emergency funds right now. Your allowance is back to normal, I promise.” Seeing the immediate financial transfer, the officers’ expressions softened, though they still gave my mother and sister a stern lecture about neglect before departing. The ride home was dead silent. My mother’s grip on the steering wheel was white-knuckled. The second she pulled into the driveway, she slammed on the brakes, turned around, and glared at me with cold, dark eyes. “You know.” It wasn’t a question. Caroline reached into her designer purse and threw a stack of paper into the backseat. It was my Chase bank statements. “Did you really think your little investigation was a secret, Jesse?” Caroline sneered, her sweet sisterly act completely gone. I bit my tongue, my pale face betraying my fear. My mother let out a cold laugh. “Your father did send more. But we kept it so you wouldn’t squander it. Besides, he’s halfway across the world and doesn’t care about you. Caroline and I are the only ones who actually tolerate you.” Caroline leaned back, looking completely unbothered. “If you think we’re so terrible, go live with your precious dad.” The sheer, burning injustice of it made my eyes sting. According to the future me, they would eventually succeed in completely cutting off my contact with my father, leaving me to die. I swallowed my anger, forcing my voice to tremble with submission. “I’m sorry, Mom. I was wrong.” Seeing me back down, their expressions relaxed. As soon as we walked into the house, I locked myself in my bedroom. I crawled under the bed and reached into the deepest corner, pulling out a broken wooden bracelet my father had given me before he left. The future me had told me: There is an emergency GPS transponder inside. Break it, and it will alert his private security detail. I had smashed it the day of the video call. Now, the tiny green indicator light was flashing. The signal had been received. The next morning, I walked downstairs to find two unfamiliar figures sitting on our velvet sofa. Hunter was sitting next to a middle-aged man who shared his sharp, arrogant features. The man was casually smoking one of my father’s imported Cubans, looking entirely at home. “Pack his things,” the man barked at our maid, not even looking at me. He turned his arrogant gaze toward me and smiled. “My boy likes the natural light. He’s taking your bedroom. You can either move into the school dorms or sleep in the basement. I don’t care which.” My fingers dug into the wooden banister, my chest tight with rage. “This house belongs to my father.” The man didn’t flinch. “Your mother gave me full authority over this estate. If you have an issue, take it up with her.” My mother and sister walked down the stairs, immediately wrapping their arms around the man and calling him “Uncle Greg.” My mother smiled at me, a hollow, plastic expression. “Your uncle is just trying to help you become independent, Jesse. Besides, today is your eighteenth birthday. I brought you a gift.” At her nod, Caroline stepped forward and handed me a thick legal packet. I flipped through the pages, and my vision went blurry. It was an itemized bill for fifteen million dollars. “What is this?” I asked, my voice cracking. “The cost of raising you,” Caroline said, her voice devoid of any warmth. “You carry the Ellington name, not Prescott. It’s only fair that you reimburse us for our expenses.” Hunter leaned over, his eyes wide with greed, before throwing himself into my mother’s arms. “Mom! Is this the fifteen-million-dollar trust fund you promised me for my birthday?” “Yes, sweetheart,” she cooed, stroking his hair. “Exactly that.” She looked back at me, her eyes cold as ice. “I’ll let you pay in installments. I’ll even give you a generous interest rate.” Hunter smirked at me, his eyes gleaming. “You were right, Jesse. It really does feel better when it’s bought with someone else’s money.” The sheer, sickening absurdity of the moment washed over me. I gripped the papers and tore them into shreds, letting the pieces flutter to the floor. “I’m not signing.” The living room went dead silent. Greg’s eyes narrowed, and he gave Hunter’s wrist a sharp nudge. Hunter immediately took the cue, screaming at the top of his lungs, “My phone! My limited-edition phone is gone! Mom, Jesse stole it! He’s jealous of me!” Without a word, my mother dialed a number on her phone. Within ten minutes, three heavily built men in uniform from a notorious “troubled teen” reform school were standing in our foyer. The leader eyed me like a piece of livestock, smiling at my mother. “Don’t worry, ma’am. We specialize in breaking the stubborn ones.” My mother nodded, her eyes completely devoid of maternal warmth. “Keep him as long as you need. Just ensure he stays breathing.” The men lunged forward, grabbing my arms and dragging me toward the door. As they pulled me past my mother and sister, I spat out, “You will regret this. I promise you.” Just as they dragged me to the threshold, the heavy oak front doors were violently kicked open, slamming against the walls. A cold, commanding voice cut through the air. “Victoria, who gave you the authority to send my son to a reform school?!”

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I was on a video call with my online boyfriend when my roommates crowded around, clamoring for a look. Staring at his handsome face on the screen, I felt a blush creep up my neck as I shyly handed over my phone. But the moment my roommate and my boyfriend locked eyes, the playful atmosphere vanished. Their faces dropped in unison. “You?” Lexie yelled, her voice dripping with sudden, venomous rage. “You think you’re actually good enough to be with Willie? Does Cora know you used to worship my body? That you’d do anything, even lick my toes, just to stay in my bed?” Willie leaned back, a lazy, shameless smirk spreading across his face. “What’s the matter, babe? You acting like you didn’t love every second of it?” They went back and forth, trading sharp, familiar jabs, entirely oblivious to the fact that my own face had gone completely pale. 1 Nobody noticed the quiet breaking inside me. Hearing Willie’s crass, dismissive words, Lexie’s face flushed a deeper, angrier red. She bit her lip, her voice trembling with embarrassment and fury. “Keep talking like that, Willie, and see if I don’t ruin you.” Willie didn’t even blink. He leaned against the back of his chair, arching an eyebrow. “Oh, come on, sweetheart. Are we really playing the cold-hearted ex card now? You used to love what this mouth could do.” The words felt like a physical weight on my chest. My fingernails dug hard into my palms. We had been dating online for six months. I knew Willie was rough around the edges—he had that wealthy, reckless bad-boy charm—but this was different. This crossed a line. Perhaps sensing my silence, Willie finally shifted his gaze back to me. But before he could speak, Lexie snatched my phone and slammed it onto the hardwood floor. “Crack.” “God, he makes me so sick! Still the exact same arrogant prick!” She was practically hyperventilating, her chest heaving as she turned her frustration onto me. “Cora, seriously, how is your taste this bad?” She stepped closer, her voice laced with a strange, frantic need to assert herself. “Do you have any idea what he was like when we were together? He was completely obsessed with me. Foot massages, rubbing my shoulders… honestly, I had to dump him because he was just too high-maintenance in bed. Insatiable, really.” I didn’t miss the flash of smug superiority in her eyes. It was a look I had seen too many times over the four months since college started. Lexie looked at me that way when she realized my monthly earnings from my part-time jobs didn’t even cover half of her weekly allowance. She looked at me that way when she saw my off-brand, ten-dollar shirts hanging in the closet. And she was looking at me that way now, realizing the boy I loved was just her discarded hand-me-down. I kept my head down, swallowing the bitter taste in my throat, and knelt to pick up my phone. The screen was spider-webbed with fresh, jagged cracks. Lexie glanced down and shrugged, entirely unbothered. “It’s just a cheap piece of junk anyway. You’re welcome for the excuse to upgrade.” But to me, that “cheap piece of junk” represented a month’s worth of groceries. I took a slow, deep breath, forcing the chaos in my mind to quiet down. “Give me fifty dollars. For the screen repair.” Lexie sneered, muttering something offensive under her breath, but I ignored her. I held the power button down until the screen flickered back to life. A notification popped up immediately. It was from Willie. “Hey babe. Let’s meet up this weekend. In person.” 2 During our six months of online dating, Willie and I had shared endless late-night texts, filled with the kind of heavy, suggestive banter that made my heart race. But he had never once suggested meeting in person. I didn’t want to examine the timing of this sudden urge to see me. But lying in bed that night, his photos kept flashing behind my closed eyelids—the sharp angle of his jaw, his lean, athletic build. He carried himself like a man who got exactly what he wanted. He looked, just as Lexie had said, like someone with an insatiable appetite. My mind betrayingly pictured him with her. A dull ache bloomed behind my eyes. Lexie was beautiful, vibrant, and effortlessly spoiled. Since the first day of freshman year, boys had trailed after her like gravity. I, on the other hand, was quiet, plain, and entirely forgettable. I closed my eyes tighter, forcing the thoughts away. It didn’t matter. The past was the past. Still, when the weekend arrived, I couldn’t help but hope. I put on my best outfit—a simple, delicate white sundress that made me feel small and pretty. Lexie let out a sharp, mocking laugh when she saw me. “Seriously, Cora? You’re playing dress-up for him? Don’t be so desperate. It’s pathetic. When he wanted me, he spent a year begging for a single date.” Her words stung, leaving a lingering sense of humiliation that followed me all the way to our meeting spot. But when I finally saw Willie, the way his eyes widened with genuine appreciation made the tightness in my chest loosen, if only a little. “You’re even prettier than you are on screen,” he murmured, a cigarette dangling loosely from his lips as he offered a rakish smile. But Lexie, who had insisted on tagging along under the guise of “protecting” me, chose that exact moment to stumble. With a dramatic gasp, she twisted her ankle on the curb. The smile wiped clean from Willie’s face. He swore under his breath, stepping past me without a second thought to scoop Lexie up into his arms. “Jesus, Lexie! Are you still this clumsy? You can’t even walk on flat ground? Did you put all your skill points into your face?” Lexie wrapped her arms around his neck, pouting with effortless familiarity. “It’s your fault, asshole. Hurry up and take me to the clinic!” Willie carried her over to his motorcycle, throwing a rushed, muffled apology over his shoulder as he started the engine. The roar of the bike drowned out his words. I stood on the sidewalk, watching them speed away. Just before they rounded the corner, Lexie looked back at me. The triumph in her eyes was impossible to hide. I looked down at my carefully chosen dress, suddenly feeling very cold, and very foolish. 3 The next day, Willie texted me, promising to make it up to me. He booked a table at one of the most expensive restaurants in the city. But when I arrived, I wasn’t surprised to find Lexie already sitting there. Before I could even take my seat, Lexie’s eyes locked onto Willie’s wrist. She reached out, unbuckling his watch with a look of pure disgust. “Willie, seriously? Since when do you wear this cheap garbage?” Without waiting for an answer, she tossed it casually into the nearby trash can. My entire body went rigid. That watch was my birthday gift to him. I had survived on instant ramen for three solid months just to afford it. Lexie knew that. And Willie knew it too. Willie froze for a fraction of a second. But then he simply flicked Lexie’s forehead, his tone mild and teasing. “Hey, princess, don’t do that. My girlfriend bought me that.” Lexie just stuck her tongue out, completely unfazed. For the rest of the meal, the two of them dominated the table. They bickered, laughed, and fell into the easy, exclusive rhythm of people who shared a history. I sat there in silence, my eyes fixed on the trash can where my three months of sacrifice lay buried under food scraps. My throat felt so tight I could barely breathe. Finally, I stood up, fighting with every ounce of my strength to keep my voice steady. “You guys enjoy. I have to get to work.” “Work?” Willie frowned, looking up. But before he could say more, Lexie’s high-pitched laugh cut in. “Oh, let her go, Willie. Cora’s a straight-A student, working her way through college. She’s not like us. She actually washes my clothes and shoes for fifty bucks a week. It’s a great little side hustle for her.” “She’s that broke?” Willie murmured. His voice held a trace of pity that felt like a slap to my face. I turned and walked away, my pace quickening until I was almost running. Going to work wasn’t an excuse. My mother’s upcoming surgery required fifty thousand dollars. Ever since I started college, my life had been a relentless cycle of scraping together every penny I could find. I took every odd job, every cleaning shift, living on less than ten dollars a week. The watch had been the only luxury I had ever allowed myself. Lexie was right. We were not the same. I didn’t even have the luxury of stopping to cry. 4 When I finally dragged my exhausted body back to the dorm after a double shift, the room was cluttered with glossy shopping bags. Lexie was parading around, showing off designer jewelry Willie had bought her. “Cora, guess how much this is?” she beamed, holding up a sparkling diamond bracelet. “Forty thousand dollars. Willie said my skin is too pale to go without diamonds. God, the asshole is still so rich.” I stood in the doorway, staring at her, unable to move. Forty thousand dollars. That was almost enough to save my mother’s life. I looked down at my own hands, rough and calloused from hours of scrubbing dishes. The bitterness in my chest finally boiled over. Later that night, I called Willie. My pride was screaming, but I couldn’t stop the question from escaping my lips. “Why are you buying things like that for Lexie?” Willie let out a low, amused exhale through his teeth. “What, babe? Jealous?” “Yes,” I said quietly, refusing to hide it. The amusement left his voice, replaced by a sigh. “Look, she’s incredibly vain, Cora. When we broke up, she lost everything, and I saw her wrist was completely bare. We have history. I can’t just stand by and watch her struggle. Besides, it’s just a bracelet. Are you really going to be this petty?” “Petty.” I looked down at my worn-out sneakers, the canvas faded to a dull gray. Willie could notice a bare wrist on his ex-girlfriend, but he had never once noticed that his actual girlfriend didn’t even own a decent pair of shoes. In that quiet moment, the truth settled over me with absolute clarity. 5 In the beginning, before we met, I hadn’t let myself fall too deep. Willie was charming and wildly handsome, but he was just a boy on a screen. I wasn’t the type to lose my head over a fantasy. Until the night I couldn’t pay my mother’s hospital deposit. I had been sitting on the cold floor of the hospital corridor, weeping in absolute despair, when his FaceTime call came through. Seeing my tears, Willie had panicked. He paced his room, frantically transferring money to my account, ordering delivery flowers to my dorm—doing anything and everything to make me smile. Watching his genuine worry that night, I believed, for the first time, that there was someone in this world who actually cared about me. I had forced a smile, telling him I was only crying because my dinner tasted bad. He had let out a breath, looking relieved but exhausted. “Babe, next time you want to give me a heart attack, just tell me, okay?” I used his transfer to clear the hospital deposit. But unlike Lexie, I had never been pampered. I couldn’t accept such a large sum of money without feeling the crushing weight of obligation. I was too sensitive, too terrified of him looking down on me. So, I worked day and night to pay him back every single cent. Now, at least, there was comfort in that. Because I owed him nothing, I could walk away without carrying his weight. 6 For the next two days, my schedule was packed with back-to-back shifts. I had no time to process my grief, let alone figure out how to officially end things with Willie. But I hadn’t expected my confrontation with him to get back to Lexie. The moment I stepped into the dorm room, Lexie blocked my path. Without warning, she hurled the heavy designer boxes Willie had bought her straight at my head. A sharp corner clipped my temple. The sting of broken skin was immediate, followed by the warm trickle of blood. “Who the hell do you think you are, trying to embarrass me to Willie?!” Lexie screamed, her face contorted with rage. “If I wanted to get back with him, do you honestly think you’d even have a chance?!” Our other two roommates stood solidly behind her, casting icy, judgmental glares at me. “You’re just jealous because her boyfriend actually buys her nice things and treats you like charity,” one of them sneered. “Exactly. She’s just mad she couldn’t leech off his money.” I bit my lip, my voice shaking but cold as I looked at Lexie. “I have never asked him for a dime, and I am not jealous. Lexie, you know exactly what you’re doing.” I couldn’t stay there another second. I turned on my heel and walked out. Some of us don’t even have the luxury of a breakdown. I couldn’t afford a hotel, so I spent the night curled up on a makeshift bed of tablecloths in the back room of the restaurant where I worked. But when I returned to the dorm the next morning, my heart stopped. Lexie had poured a bucket of dirty water over my bed. And hidden beneath my pillow was the one thousand dollars in cash I had painstakingly saved for my mother’s next round of medication. The bills were soaked, torn, and completely ruined. The room blurred. Without hesitation, I turned and walked toward the campus police station. But as I reached the university gates, Willie’s motorcycle roared to a halt, blocking my path. He leaned against the handlebars, his brow furrowed in annoyance. “It’s just a grand, Cora. Don’t blow this out of proportion.” Behind him, Lexie stood with her arms crossed, offering me a smug, triumphant smirk. 7 The last thread of my restraint snapped. “Blow this out of proportion?!” My voice broke, tears finally spilling over. “Do you have any idea how many sleepless nights I worked to save that thousand dollars? Do you have any idea that my mother is waiting on that money to stay alive?!” Willie merely extinguished his cigarette, his expression flat and defensive. “So what? You’re going to ruin Lexie’s life over some wet cash?” My breath hitched. The last lingering warmth I held for him died in that exact moment. “Willie, we’re done.” I took a deep, steadying breath, forcing my voice to lose its tremor. “You are not my boyfriend anymore. And you have absolutely no right to tell me what to do.” Willie stiffened, a flicker of irritation crossing his handsome face. “Are you serious right now? If you need the money, I’ll write you a check. You’re really going to throw a tantrum and dump me over a grand?” I didn’t answer. I wiped the tears from my face, held my head high, and walked past them. Once I got on the bus, the tears came in earnest. I cried until my chest ached, letting the grief wash out of me. By the time the bus reached my stop, I felt surprisingly light. I opened my phone. There were several texts from Willie. “Where the hell did you go?” “Don’t be childish. You know you don’t actually want to break up with me.” Without an ounce of regret, I blocked his number and deleted him from every app. “I do,” I thought. And just like that, the six months of my life I had given him were gone.

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My girlfriend, who used to pinch every single penny as if her life depended on it, threw a black card with four million dollars on it directly at my face on the eve of our college graduation. Ida snuggled into Chase’s arms, her tone venomous and mocking. “Let me tell you the truth, Alex. I was never poor. Playing broke, pretending to be sick—it was all just a game to see how low you’d crawl for me.” “But I’m bored now. And I have Chase.” She tossed the card, a sharp smirk cutting across her face. “Four million dollars. To buy out the last four years of your life. That should be more than enough, right?” A wave of cruel laughter erupted around us. “God, this is hilarious. Ida played the pauper for four years, and he didn’t suspect a thing?” “How could he? When Ida said she couldn’t afford dinner, he literally ate dry toast for a week just to buy her medicine. When she said she was sick, he went and sold his plasma.” “The absolute funniest part? He was working four different part-time jobs last week to buy her a birthday present. Almost fainted in a convenience store from sheer exhaustion.” “A nobody like him actually thought his cheap, pathetic love could buy his way into a billionaire’s family?” Everyone in the room knew I’d been Ida’s plaything for four years. They were waiting for my breakdown. They wanted to see me weep, to watch me beg her on my knees like a dog. Instead, I simply leaned down, picked up the card, and looked up at her with a quiet smile. “Four million dollars for four years. That’s a million a year. Quite the bargain.” After all, during those four years, my love for Ida Douglas hadn’t even been worth two cents. … 1 “If that’s all, I’ll be taking my leave.” I pocketed the card and turned to walk away. But before I could take a single step, Catherine, one of Ida’s inner circle, blocked my path. “Oh, come on, Alex. Don’t act so high and mighty. You snatched that card pretty fast. I know your type—pretending to be tough during the breakup, only to go home and cry your eyes out.” Catherine sneered, her eyes dripping with condescension. “If you’re really that desperate, just bow your head and apologize to Ida right now. Maybe if she’s in a good mood, she’ll keep you around as a sidepiece.” “Though don’t expect a title,” another friend chimed in, throwing a suggestive look at Chase. “Chase is the official boyfriend now. You? You’re just the discarded stray.” Chase wrapped his arm tighter around Ida’s waist, offering a faux-sympathetic sigh. “Hey, guys, go easy on Alex. He’s sensitive. He can’t handle this kind of heat.” The room roared with laughter. I looked at them, my voice completely devoid of emotion. “Are you done?” “If you’re done, get out of my way.” The air in the room instantly chilled. Ida finally looked at me, her eyes filled with cold, superior judgment. “Alex, who are you putting on this show for?” “Do you think by taking the money and pretending you don’t care, I’ll respect you?” “I know exactly who you are.” “You’re hopelessly in love with me. Without me, you won’t survive three days.” I looked up, meeting her gaze calmly. “Really?” “Then you clearly don’t realize how cheap your own affection actually is.” Ida’s face hardened instantly. The room fell into a dead silence before erupting into chaos. “Is he insane? Did he actually just speak to Ida like that?” “He just got dumped and he’s still acting tough?” “Fine,” Catherine scoffed, clapping her hands to stoke the flames. “Let’s place a bet. How long until Alex comes crawling back to Ida, begging for a second chance?” “I bet three days.” “Two days.” “I say tonight. A parasite like him won’t survive the night.” “He’ll probably be crying over his phone on the way home, drafting a ten-page essay about how much he misses her.” “Or begging Chase on his knees to let him have her back, haha!” Laughter filled the room. Catherine turned to Ida. “Ida, what’s your bet?” Ida stared at me with absolute certainty, her eyes filled with the mockery of a master looking at a dog trying to escape its leash. Finally, she let out a harsh laugh. “By tomorrow night, at the latest.” “He will be back, begging me.” It was as if my four years of quiet devotion, compromise, and sacrifice were nothing more than her favorite trophies. Catherine smirked, tilting her chin at me. “Hear that? Ida has spoken.” “So, Alex, why don’t you tell us? When are you planning to bow your head?” Every eye in the room was on me. Mocking, patronizing, waiting for a pathetic display of desperation. I remained quiet for two seconds, feeling the crisp edge of my approved study-abroad application in my pocket. Suddenly, I smiled. “How about I make a bet of my own?” “On what?” Catherine asked, caught off guard. I looked up, my eyes sweeping across every face in the room, finally locking onto Ida. “I bet that for the rest of my life, I will never look back at her again.” 2 Four years ago, when I got accepted into Hudson University, I couldn’t even afford the tuition. When I was at my absolute lowest, Mrs. Douglas approached me. She had only one condition—get close to Ida, keep an eye on her, and make sure she finished her four years of college without causing any scandals. Now, the four years were up. The five million dollars Mrs. Douglas promised had been wired to my account right on schedule. Combine that with the four million Ida had just thrown at me, and I had more than enough to leave the country and build the life I actually wanted. When my words fell, the room went dead silent for a moment. Then, Catherine let out a loud laugh. “Listen to him! ‘For the rest of his life.’ Alex, you really talk a big game.” Ida stared at me, her eyes dark and menacing. She let out a cold laugh. “Fine.” “Alex, remember what you just said.” She took a step closer, lowering her voice to a whisper only I could hear. “I hope you don’t come back crawling on your knees.” I looked at her and smiled. “Don’t worry. Even if you were the one begging on your knees, I wouldn’t spare you a second glance.” Ida’s face flushed with fury, her anger barely contained. “Get out.” Without another word, I turned and walked away. But I knew this wasn’t over. A pampered princess like Ida couldn’t stand being humiliated in public by someone she believed was beneath her. The retaliation began the very next morning. The owner of the convenience store where I had just resigned called me. He accused me of theft out of nowhere, using it as an excuse to withhold my last two weeks of pay. Rumors began spreading across campus. People said I had been freeloading off Ida while hunting for other rich targets, calling me a “high-end gold digger” with a price tag. Someone even dug up old photos of me—donating plasma at the clinic, working graveyard shifts at the convenience store, handing out flyers in front of clubs—and compiled them into a malicious collage on the university forum. The headline was vicious: [The Rich-Girl Hunter’s Playbook: How a Broke Scholar Faked Innocence and Played the Victim for Four Years] The post went viral overnight. The comments section was flooded with mockery and disgust. “No wonder Ida dumped him once she got bored. She saw right through him.” “Why is he still acting proud? He’s trash to the bone.” “I heard he’s trying to study abroad? Laughable. Who’s he trying to con next?” My phone buzzed. I looked down. It was a message from Ida. “Did you see the post?” I didn’t reply. A second later, another notification popped up. “Chase’s ideas really do work wonders.” “How does it feel? Being called a parasite and a gold digger by the entire school. Not so great, is it?” My eyes lingered on the words “Chase’s ideas really do work wonders,” a dull ache blooming in my chest. Not from heartbreak, but from the sheer exhaustion of having my dignity trampled. Before I could close the app, more texts poured in. “If you apologize to me right now—on your knees in front of my friends—and agree to be my little secret on the side…” “I might consider having the post taken down.” I stared at the screen and let out a soft, humorless laugh. Then, I took a screenshot. Ida wanted me to regret. She wanted me cornered, desperate, until I had no choice but to beg her. Unfortunately for her, she had miscalculated. I closed the forum app and dialed a number I hadn’t called in years. “Mrs. Douglas,” I said when the call connected. “Our deal was for me to play the dutiful boyfriend for four years. It didn’t include cleaning up your daughter’s petty messes.” “Now she’s coming after my reputation.” “How do you plan to handle this?” 3 Mrs. Douglas’s voice came through the line, cool and detached. “I don’t.” I froze. “Alex, your money has been transferred. Our contract is officially over.” “The forum, the rumors… they are nothing but temporary noise.” “For the past four years, you stayed by Ida’s side. To put it nicely, it was a transaction. To put it harshly, I paid for a well-behaved watchdog.” I remained silent. She didn’t care about my silence, adding in her characteristically flat tone, “A stray is still a stray, even if you pave its path with gold. Alex, you should know that better than anyone.” With that, she hung up. The sharp, empty dial tone rang in my ear. I stood there for a long time before slowly lowering the phone. For the next two days, I barely left my apartment. I organized my documents, checked the status of my passport and visa, and quietly transferred my funds to my new offshore account in Scandinavia. I also finalized the last draft of my personal statement with my senior, Tyler. On the third night, I headed to a quiet bar near campus to meet him. Tyler texted me that he was stuck in traffic and told me to grab a table first. But the moment I walked through the door, I ran straight into Ida and her entourage. Catherine was the first to spot me. She immediately raised her voice, laughing. “Well, look who it is! Isn’t this Alex? Didn’t you say you’d never look back for the rest of your life? Regretting it already?” The eyes of everyone in the private booth turned to me. Ida sat in the center of the plush leather sofa, draped over Chase. When her eyes met mine, a flicker of smug satisfaction crossed her face. “Come here,” she said, gesturing with her chin. She pushed a row of shot glasses across the table toward me. “Drink these.” “Do it, and I’ll take you back. I’ll even have the forum posts deleted.” My voice was flat. “I’m not here for you.” A chorus of sneers erupted from the booth. “Not here for Ida? What, did you just happen to wander in?” “Who are you trying to fool, Alex?” Chase tightened his grip on Ida’s waist and smiled condescendingly. “Hey, man, if you want to apologize, just say the word. Ida’s tough on the outside, but if you show some humility, she won’t keep holding a grudge.” Catherine smirked from the side. “Ida’s throwing you a lifeline and you’re still playing hard to get? Who do you think you are?” Others joined in: “Your reputation is already trashed on the forum. Stop pretending you have dignity left.” Chase sighed, a look of faux pity on his face. “Alex, Ida’s being incredibly generous here. With your name dragged through the mud like this, who else would ever want you?” I didn’t want to waste another breath. I turned to leave. But a second later, a hand clamped tightly around my wrist. Ida stood up, stepping directly into my personal space. Her eyes were dark, burning with a volatile mixture of anger and possession. “Alex, have you forgotten where you came from?” she whispered, her voice dropping to a menacing, freezing register. “Selling plasma, working graveyard shifts, hand-delivering flyers in the freezing cold… you were so broke you couldn’t even pay your tuition.” She stared into my eyes. “A guy like you would sell his own life for a buck. And now you’re pretending you’re too good for a few drinks?” The booth erupted into cruel laughter. “A table of drinks is probably worth half his life, anyway!” “Maybe just one glass!” I looked at her, finding the entire spectacle incredibly pathetic. “Are you finished?” I asked quietly. “If you are, let me go.” Those words shattered her remaining restraint. The last drop of Ida’s composure snapped. She grabbed a glass of whiskey from the table and threw it directly into my face. 4 The icy liquid splashed over my hair and ran down my neck, soaking my collar in an instant. Before I could wipe it away, a second and third glass followed. The sting of alcohol burned my eyes, making them water. Chase feigned alarm, whispering, “Ida, stop, he can’t handle this…” Yet, despite his words, he handed her another glass, the triumph in his eyes entirely undisguised. “Alex, why be so stubborn? Just apologize, and it all ends.” Catherine was thoroughly enjoying herself. “What’s the fun in just splashing him? Since he won’t drink, let’s just hold him down and pour it down his throat!” Before I could react, someone grabbed my wrists from behind. Another pair of hands shoved my shoulders down, forcing me to my knees. My knees hit the hard floor with a dull thud, and a sharp pain shot up my leg. “Let me go—” I was cut off as someone yanked my hair back, forcing my head up. Ida gripped my jaw, her fingers digging in so hard I felt my bones would crack. “You won’t drink?” she hissed, her voice trembling with cold rage. “Alex, let’s see how tough you really are.” I clenched my teeth, refusing to make a sound. As I struggled, my messenger bag slipped from my shoulder, spilling its contents across the floor. An official document slid right next to Ida’s boots, its corner quickly soaking up the spilled alcohol. The bold letters at the top were unmistakable: “International Research Program Application” Ida’s eyes flickered. She looked down, her brows knitting together in sudden confusion. But before she could process what she was seeing, Chase quickly bent down, picking up the paper and sliding it under an empty glass. “Still carrying your homework to a bar? How studious,” Chase joked smoothly, effortlessly diverting everyone’s attention. Catherine laughed. “Typical. Always trying to look like the perfect student.” A strange, fleeting sense of unease washed over Ida. But it was quickly swallowed by her anger. Catherine handed her a freshly opened bottle of hard liquor, her eyes wide with excitement. “Ida, don’t tell me you’re getting soft on him?” Ida’s grip tightened around my throat, cutting off my breath for a terrifying second. “Soft? For a street dog like him? Please.” With a cruel glint in her eyes, she forced my jaw open and began pouring the strong liquor down my throat. The burning liquid choked my lungs, searing its way down to my stomach. Tears streamed down my face. She didn’t stop. Her hand on my throat tightened further, her voice shaking with a manic intensity. “Keep pouring.” “I want to see how long he can keep up this act.” As the alcohol kept flooding in, my vision began to fade to black. My strength dissolved, and I stopped fighting. Through the haze, I could hear their laughter, their jeers, and Chase’s soft, mocking voice: “Don’t be so stubborn, Alex.” To them, I was nothing more than an object to be played with, a stray to be kicked into the dirt. Suddenly, the heavy door of the booth was shoved open. “Get off him!” Tyler rushed in, his face pale with fury. He threw himself over me, shielding me from the group. “Are you all insane? This is assault!” Ida’s hand froze. Taking advantage of the momentary shock, Tyler hauled me up from the floor. I could barely stand. My wet hair clung to my face, and I trembled as I tried to draw a breath. “I’ve recorded everything that just happened,” Tyler barked, glaring at the room. “If anyone touches him again, I’m calling the police.” The room went dead silent. Ida stood frozen, her expression dark and unreadable, but she didn’t try to stop us. Tyler supported my weight, guiding me toward the exit. As we passed her, I didn’t look at her once. — The next afternoon, after the alcohol had worn off, the image of my pale, lifeless face kept flashing through Ida’s mind. Agitated, she rubbed her temples and finally dialed my number. When the call connected, she kept her voice cold and commanding, as if she were offering a grand favor. “I won’t hold last night against you. Come back, and I’ll have the forum posts taken down.” There was a brief silence on the other end. The voice that answered wasn’t mine. It was the dorm supervisor. “Alex? He moved out yesterday. He cleared out his entire room.” Ida froze, her voice instantly dropping. “What did you say?” “Didn’t he tell you?” the woman asked, confused. “He boarded an early morning flight today. He left the country.”

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With less than forty-eight hours left before we were supposed to register our marriage, Natalie and I still hadn’t settled on our honeymoon. I brought it up casually over dinner after work. “How about Florida?” Her fork didn’t stop moving. “Been there. I don’t do repeat trips.” “What about Lake Tahoe?” “I haven’t been,” she said, her voice completely detached. “But Brody asked me to go with him next year.” My grip tightened on my fork. I knew exactly what she meant. Because she was going with Brody, she wouldn’t go with me. Natalie was the kind of person who loathed repetition; she never visited the same place twice. And over the last few years, she and Brody had already traveled to almost every corner of the country. The sub-zero sunrises in Alaska, the dizzying climb up Angels Landing in Zion, the quiet peaks of Banff—she had experienced every single one of them at Brody’s side. My phone buzzed on the table. It was a text from my dad. “Ty, have you and Natalie picked a honeymoon spot yet? Want me to book a cabin for you guys?” “Dad, don’t worry about it,” I typed back. “I’m actually not planning on getting married anymore.” I booked a one-way ticket to Lake Tahoe. Since there was no room for me in her travel plans, I would go to the place I wanted to see, by myself. … I set my phone down and forced a bite of food into my mouth, letting the silence stretch between us. Natalie put her fork down and stared at me for a long time. “Why’d you quiet down all of a sudden?” she asked, her voice light. “It’s not like I said I wouldn’t go with you.” “Then tell me. Where are we going?” I challenged, unable to keep the exhaustion out of my voice. She frowned. “Let me think about it.” “Let me think about it.” She had said those words so many times before. During our first year of dating, my childhood friend gifted us a weekend getaway package to New York. I asked Natalie to go with me. She said she’d think about it, then turned around and gave the plane tickets to Brody. During our third year, I told her it was time to meet my parents. She said she’d think about it, and then she stood them up on the night of the dinner. My dad was furious, telling me to break it off. I made excuses for her, claiming she had a last-minute business crisis. Only to see her later that night in a travel vlog Brody posted. I didn’t know how much longer she needed to think. But I was done waiting. I offered a flat, dismissive “Sure” and kept my head down, eating in silence. Then, her phone chimed. It was the custom ringtone she kept only for him. Natalie unlocked her screen, a soft smile immediately tugging at the corners of her lips. “Natalie, my followers in the comments are saying your video editing is absolutely incredible,” Brody’s voice drifted from a voice note. “Work?” I asked, though I already knew the answer. “It’s Brody. He wants me to help him edit his new travel vlog.” She stood up, heading toward the home office. Watching her retreat, I suddenly remembered that trip from our first year that never happened. The plane tickets to Colorado. My friend had told me about a scenic trail at Loveland Pass where couples hung love locks, and that I should take Natalie. I never got to go. Brody did. He shot his very first travel video there, which launched his career as a viral influencer. “Natalie,” I called out, stopping her in her tracks. “Have you figured out where you want to go?” She paused. “Not yet,” she muttered carelessly, pushing open the office door. “How much longer are you going to think? I only have a week of vacation approved.” My pushing seemed to irritate her. Her tone sharpened. “Fine, Oregon. Neither of us has been there.” “I can’t do Oregon. The altitude and steep hikes are too much for me.” When Natalie and Brody had gone hiking in the Hoh Rain Forest, they got separated from their group. I had organized a search party, looking for them for seven straight days and nights. I pushed myself to the point of acute myocarditis and collapsed. When I woke up in the hospital, the doctors told me high-altitude, strenuous environments were permanently off-limits. She forgot. “Then Nashville. Don’t you love spicy food?” “My stomach can’t handle it anymore.” I had stopped eating spicy food two years ago. To save up enough money for a down payment on our house, I had transitioned into sales—a grueling corporate job I despised. The endless networking dinners and heavy drinking sessions had completely wrecked my stomach. Spicy food hadn’t been on our dining table in ages. She hadn’t noticed. “Then where “can” you go?” she snapped, her voice rising in frustration. “You decide. Just book the tickets and let me know.” She slammed the office door shut. The living room fell dead silent. I pulled out my phone and texted my boss, changing my time-off request from “wedding leave” to “paid vacation.” My flight confirmation and a text from my dad arrived at the exact same time. “Ty, are you really calling off the wedding?” “Yeah, Dad. I’m not doing it.” The three dots indicating he was typing appeared and disappeared for a long time. I sat at the table, staring into space, trying to figure out what I would say if he pushed for answers. What could I say? Should I tell him about the honeymoons that never happened? Or about Natalie, who spent every evening locked in her office, editing another man’s videos? The dinner on the table had gone cold, barely touched. I picked up the plates and scraped the food into the trash. Finally, my dad’s reply came. Just a single sentence. “Ty, whatever you decide to do, I’m behind you.” I turned off my screen, folded my arms on the table, and buried my face in them, letting the tears fall. The next morning, I woke up alone. I reached out to the other side of the bed. It was freezing. Natalie hadn’t slept in the master bedroom last night. When I opened the bedroom door, there was a paper bag on the kitchen counter. The breakfast wraps inside were ice-cold. Whoever bought them had been gone for hours. I put one in the microwave to heat it up. I took a bite—chorizo and jalapeños. Painfully spicy. It burned my throat, making my eyes water. Brody’s little preferences—she remembered every single one of them. No onions, no garlic. Whenever they went out, she always made sure to remind the servers. Yet, despite me telling her just yesterday that my stomach was ruined, she had already forgotten. “Busy day at work, might be home late,” read a sticky note next to the bag. It was written on a stylized notepad she’d bought during one of her trips with Brody. I crumpled the note and threw it in the trash. I unlocked my phone and opened Instagram. Right at the top of my feed was Brody’s newly uploaded travel video, the one Natalie had stayed up all night editing. He had also posted a teaser on his story—a photo of an airport terminal. Looking at the reflection of the glass in the background, I let out a bitter, self-deprecating laugh. Natalie hadn’t gone to work early. She had gone to the airport to see Brody off. The comments section of his post was flooded with fans. One comment read: “Are we sure the photographer and the editor aren’t dating? The chemistry is insane.” Brody hadn’t denied it. He had simply replied with a single emoji—the monkey covering its eyes. I grabbed my wallet and walked out, finding a quiet local diner down the street. “Just a plain bagel with light cream cheese, please,” I told the woman behind the counter. She gave me an apologetic smile. “I’m so sorry, sweetie. We just sold out of plain. It’ll be about ten minutes for the next batch.” Sitting there, it suddenly clicked. It wasn’t that Natalie had forgotten my stomach was ruined. She just didn’t care enough to wait. When I got back to the apartment, a massive cardboard box was sitting by the door. It was our finalized wedding album, shot a month ago. I cut the tape and flipped through the pages one by one. In every shot, her face was devoid of warmth, wearing her signature detached look. Since our college days, Natalie had been the untouchable ice queen of our department. I spent four years chasing her before she finally agreed to be with me. Once we were together, she rarely smiled. I had convinced myself that was just who she was—reserved, aloof. Until I saw her editing Brody’s videos. In one clip, Brody stood in front of a rock shaped like a giant peach, pretending to take a massive bite out of it. She had been so captured by his silly, playful energy that she was laughing behind the camera—a bright, genuine sound. I tossed the album back into the box and carried it out, leaving the cardboard for the building’s handyman. Back inside, I pulled out my phone and typed a message to Natalie. “We don’t need to go to the clerk’s office tomorrow. Let’s call it off. We’re done.” The status changed to “Read,” and my phone immediately began to ring. “What kind of tantrum are you throwing now?” was the first thing she demanded when I picked up. “You’re calling off our marriage over a honeymoon destination?” She sounded furious. “Yes,” I said, my voice entirely flat. “Over a honeymoon destination.” “You’re being impulsive,” she said, her tone suddenly shifting into a cold, analytical register. I almost laughed. A heart doesn’t break all at once; it happens in quiet, agonizing increments. There was nothing impulsive about my decision. “Look, just find a place I haven’t been to yet,” she negotiated, still clinging to her ridiculous rule. “We’ll go there.” Even now, she didn’t get it. “No need,” I said, and hung up. She immediately flooded my messages with a dozen itinerary options. I didn’t open them. I only saw the preview of her final text: “This is the itinerary Brody put together for one of his trips. Take a look and draft something similar for us.” It read like a manager assigning a project to an assistant. Even when she was trying to make amends, she spoke down to me. I pulled my suitcase out of the closet and began to pack. I remembered how meticulously I had decorated this place when we first moved in. Our lives were supposed to be woven together in every corner. But as I packed, I realized most of those shared pieces were already gone. Our matching keychains had been lost during one of her spontaneous trips with Brody. My favorite mug had been shattered on a night she stayed up late editing Brody’s footage. When I finished clearing out my things, everything I owned fit into just two suitcases. “Are you done being mad?” Natalie texted that afternoon. “Let’s get dinner. I made a reservation.” It was rare for Natalie to suggest eating out with me. She was always willing to hit the trendiest spots across the country with Brody. But whenever I suggested a nice dinner for our anniversary, she would shut me down without a second thought. “Brody and I already ate there. It’s overrated,” she’d say. Or, “Brody actually wants to try that place next week.” My fingers hovered over the keyboard for a long time. I deleted the angry refusal I wanted to send. I typed a simple “Okay” and hit send. She seemed to breathe a sigh of relief. “Great. I’ll pick you up at seven.” To her, this dinner was a reconciliation. To me, it was a funeral. At seven, she drove me to an upscale restaurant downtown. “Brody and I came here a while ago. He loved it,” she said, leaning in to share the menu with me. I quietly shifted my weight, leaning away from her. The air in the private booth went cold. The waiter, sensing the tension, quickly slipped another menu into my hands. As we ordered, she spoke up. “No onions or garlic, please.” My hand clutched around my menu, then slowly let go. I didn’t bother correcting her. I didn’t tell her she had confused her dining partner’s preferences once again. “This is a dish Brody and I had when we were in Charleston,” she said, sliding a plate of seafood toward me. “Very authentic Southern style.” Charleston. I remembered that city, and I remembered the day she went there. Brody had sprained his ankle while exploring the historic district. Instead of calling an ambulance or his crew, he called Natalie. That was the exact afternoon I was wheeled into the operating room for an emergency appendectomy. She had walked me to the doors of the OR, but the moment the doors closed, she bought a ticket and hopped on the next flight to South Carolina. When the nurses wheeled me out of surgery, I was left lying in a cold hallway for hours because there was no family member to sign my release. I had spent months believing she was called away by an urgent corporate emergency. It wasn’t until I saw Brody’s vlog months later that I realized the truth. She had been in Charleston. I chewed a piece of the fish. It tasted like cardboard. A deep, hollow ache settled in my chest. “Natalie, tonight—” I started to speak, wanting to end this cleanly, but her phone lit up. A breaking news notification flashed across her screen: “Severe rainstorms trigger massive landslide in the Cascade Mountains; multiple hikers stranded.” I remembered Brody’s Instagram story about “conquering the Timberline Trail.” The Timberline Trail was right in the heart of the Cascades. Natalie bolted upright, her chair scraping violently against the hardwood floor. “I need to drop you home.” She grabbed her purse and dragged me out of the restaurant before I could say a word, shoving me into the passenger seat of her car. “Brody is out there. He’s in the Cascades right now,” she muttered, her hands shaking on the steering wheel as she tore down the road, pushing the speed limit. I sat beside her, my voice entirely calm. “They have professional search and rescue teams, Natalie. You aren’t trained for this. Going out there won’t change anything.” She slammed on the brakes, pulling over to the curb. “Get out,” she commanded, her voice icy. “I have wilderness survival training. I’ll be fine. I’ll go get him, and I’ll be back in time for us to get our license tomorrow.” I stepped out of the car. Before my feet even settled on the pavement, she hit the gas. The edge of the car door caught my sleeve, pulling me off balance. I crashed hard onto the concrete. I stared at my scraped elbows and bleeding knees, slowly pushing myself up. “There is no tomorrow, Natalie,” I thought, watching her taillights vanish into the night. The iodine stung fiercely as the nurse cleaned my scrapes at the urgent care clinic. The male nurse frowned, looking at my bruised limbs. “Rough fall, man. Looks pretty bad. Where’s your girlfriend? Why didn’t she bring you in?” I let out a tired, empty laugh. “She had someone more important to look after.” The nurse paused, then sighed. “No matter how important someone is, they shouldn’t come before the person standing right next to you. Don’t let yourself get treated like second best, kid.” By now, she was probably already on a flight to Oregon. When I got back to the empty apartment, I crawled into bed and slept heavily. I didn’t let myself worry about whether she would survive the mountains, or what she and Brody were doing. When I woke up, it was already eight in the morning. I made breakfast, sat down, and opened my phone. My inbox was full of texts from Natalie. “2:00 AM: Just landed near the Cascades. The storm washed out the roads, cell reception is terrible.” “4:00 AM: Found Brody. He’s okay, just shaken up with a few minor scrapes.” “7:00 AM: I’m sorry I had to rush off last night. Please don’t be mad.” “7:30 AM: Don’t forget our appointment at the city clerk’s office today. I’m wrapping things up here and catching the next flight. I’ll make it in time.” Four messages. Every single one of them centered around Brody. She hadn’t even chemical-tested her conscience to ask if I made it home safely after she kicked me out of the car. She hadn’t noticed me fall. My flight to Lake Tahoe was at two in the afternoon. I called an Uber and headed to the airport. The driver had the local news playing on the radio, reporting that all stranded hikers in the Cascades had been safely evacuated. After passing through security, I walked toward my gate. A crowd of arriving passengers rushed past me. And there she was. She was still wearing her clothes from last night, her jeans splattered with dried mud, a button missing from her jacket. She was dragging two large suitcases. Walking right beside her was Brody, looking perfectly put together, his hair styled, wearing fresh clothes. “We have just enough time to make it to the clerk’s office before they close,” Natalie was saying as they walked. It was a two-hour drive from the airport to downtown, and it was already past one. “Are you seriously going to register your marriage looking like that?” Brody teased softly. “Won’t Tyler be pissed?” “He won’t care,” Natalie replied confidently. “Marrying me has been his dream for years. He won’t care about the details.” “As for you, don’t go doing anything that dangerous again…” Their voices faded into the hum of the terminal. I didn’t try to hear the rest. The PA system announced the boarding call for my flight to Lake Tahoe. I pulled my carry-on toward the gate, ignoring the persistent buzzing of my phone.

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High society is built on a scaffolding of silent, suffocating rules. When we walked out of the boutique, Willie strode shoulder-to-shoulder with my best friend, Cathy, while I was expected to walk exactly half a step behind him. “Willie, you promised you’d charter a private jet to take me to see the Northern Lights. Don’t you dare back out!” Cathy turned back, flashing me a sweet, dimpled grin. “Don’t worry, Zoey. I know how much you love the auroras. I’ll take tons of photos and send them right to you.” My feet froze on the pavement. My throat felt as if it were stuffed with dry cotton. “You two are going to see the Northern Lights… but what about me?” No one answered. They were already in the car. Cathy sat in the passenger seat of his low-slung Ferrari, looking at me with faux-contrition. “Oh, Willie, your sports car only has two seats! There’s no room for Zoey. What should we do?” Willie leaned over to click Cathy’s seatbelt into place. “She’s the future Mrs. Hogan. My mother is sending a town car to pick her up for her deportment class.” But he had forgotten—or ignored—the fact that his mother despised my working-class roots. There was no town car coming. I stood in the freezing rain for hours, waiting. And as the water soaked through my thin coat, something shifted inside me. If he wanted to walk shoulder-to-shoulder with my best friend, then I would simply step out of the frame and let her have him. … When I finally got back to our penthouse that night, Willie was sitting in the living room, waiting. “You skipped your etiquette lessons at the estate today. Mother is furious.” I said nothing. I just flipped on the light. His eyes swept over my dripping wet clothes, his brow furrowing. “Look at you. You’re a mess. Is this how the future Mrs. Hogan behaves? You have no sense of decorum.” I had been standing in a downpour all day. My skin was burning with a high fever, yet his only concern was that I was embarrassing him. “Willie…” I started, my voice cracking. But before I could finish, his phone chimed. It was a high-pitched, childish ringtone—a nursery rhyme melody. It was Cathy’s custom ringtone. Three days ago, when she had whined and begged him to set it, Willie had scoffed and called it childish. Yet, he had never changed it back. Willie raised a finger to his lips, signaling me to shut up. “Willie,” Cathy whimpered on the other end, her voice thick with tears. “I cut my finger. It hurts so bad.” He immediately grabbed his leather jacket from the coat rack. “Hang tight. I’m on my way.” As he brushed past me, I reached out and grabbed his sleeve. My voice was a dry rasp. “I have a fever, Willie.” He paused, pulling out his phone to make a quick call. “Have Dr. Gallagher head over to the penthouse. The future Mrs. Hogan is sick.” I bit my lip, a faint warmth blooming in my chest. But a second later, Willie gently but firmly pried my fingers off his sleeve. “I’ve got the doctor and my assistant on the way to look after you. But Cathy needs me right now.” I stared at him, numb. “Willie, I am your fiancée.” “I know,” he said, his expression flat. “Which is exactly why I can’t stay.” “A Hogan man is meant to rule the boardroom, not play nurse to a sick wife. You know the family rules.” Always those rules. To marry Willie, I had to mold myself into a ghost. At dinner, I had to wait for him to take the first bite. The moment he set his fork down, I had to stop eating too. In the beginning, when I lay awake at night, starving, Willie would sneak into my room with takeout, wrapping his arms around me. ‘Just bear with it a little longer, for me,’ he’d whisper. I bore it. For three years. But those sweet midnight visits had long since stopped. When I lay awake starving now, Willie was thousands of miles away. His Instagram location tag was set to a luxury resort in Malaysia. So was Cathy’s—my best friend of ten years. Cathy had posted a photo of the two of them on her feed. The caption read: ‘Day one of testing out Willie’s husband potential on behalf of my girl Zoey.’ Beneath it, she added: ‘I mentioned wanting to see the ocean, and he whisked me away to paradise.’ My phone buzzed. It was a direct message from Cathy: ‘Zoey, it’s my first time seeing the ocean! It’s so beautiful. I know you always wanted an island wedding, but with the strict Hogan rules, you probably won’t ever get to come here. Don’t worry, though—I’m enjoying the view for both of us!’ In the photo she attached, Cathy wore a flowing white sundress. Willie stood beside her in a tailored white linen suit. It wasn’t a wedding, but it looked exactly like one. And while they were sipping cocktails on a beach, I had been standing in his mother’s salon, a heavy book balanced on my head, my palms raw and bruised from the wooden ruler his mother used to correct my posture. During a brief five-minute break, I had pulled out my phone, desperate to cry to my fiancé about how much I hurt. Instead, I saw their vacation photos. The words ‘it hurts’ died in my throat. Every time after that, he chose her. When Cathy wanted to travel the world, Willie booked the flights. When Willie wanted to drag race down dark coastal highways at midnight, Cathy was the one laughing in his passenger seat. They lived out a wild, reckless youth together, singing at the top of their lungs to heal their phantom regrets. Meanwhile, I was kneeling on the cold marble floor of the Hogan private chapel, reciting their ancestral codes of conduct over and over, terrified of making a single mistake. I wasn’t blind. I knew something was deeply wrong, but I had been too afraid to look closer. How do you throw away a twenty-year friendship and a seven-year relationship? But tonight, the thread finally snapped. I stared at Willie’s retreating back, my eyes burning. “If you walk out that door to go to Cathy, we’re over.” Willie stopped in his tracks, his shoulders stiffening. “What is wrong with you? Don’t start throwing tantrums.” “I’m doing this for you. Cathy is your best friend. If something happens to her, won’t you be the one crying?” But they had crossed the line of friendship a long time ago. Willie still didn’t understand. I wasn’t angry because he was helping Cathy; I was angry because, in every single moment that mattered, he never chose me. The passenger seat next to him always belonged to her. I looked at him, my voice barely a whisper. “So you can’t stay to take care of your sick fiancée, but you can run to take care of her?” “Why are you comparing yourself to her?” Willie said, his tone entirely reasonable, as if explaining something to a child. “You’re going to be Mrs. Hogan. She is just a friend. The family rules don’t apply to friends.” If being “just a friend” meant receiving your devotion and protection, then I would rather be your friend. But I wasn’t. I lowered my head, hiding the raw vulnerability in my eyes. “If that’s how you see it… then go.” “Being understanding is the grace expected of a Hogan wife,” Willie remarked, offering his usual critique. As he opened the door, he looked back one last time. “Dr. Gallagher is the family’s private physician. He’s the best there is. A minor fever is nothing to him. You’re in good hands.” I gave a faint nod, silent. He took my quietness as stubbornness and let out a cold laugh. “You still haven’t learned your place, have you? To think you’re actually giving me attitude. I’ll have Mother give you a proper lesson tomorrow.” There wouldn’t be a tomorrow. Willie, the moment your foot crossed that threshold, we were done. I opened my mouth to say it, but the elevator doors had already slid shut, whisking him away. I let the words dissolve. It didn’t matter anymore. I called Dr. Gallagher and told him not to bother coming. I found some generic ibuprofen in the medicine cabinet, swallowed them with cold water, and dragged myself into a hot shower. When I came out, my phone was buzzing on the counter. It was a text from Cathy: ‘Zoey, I am so incredibly jealous of your fiancé! By the time he got here, the scratch on my finger was already scabbing over, but he was still so worried that he practically dragged me to the ER anyway.’ A sharp, physical pain bloomed in my chest. My fever was a “minor illness,” but her tiny scratch deserved an emergency room run. Quiet tears slipped down my face. I wiped them away with the back of my hand. Cutting out infected flesh is always agonizing, but I didn’t have another seven years to waste on a man who didn’t love me. I pulled a suitcase out of the closet and began to pack. It took less than ten minutes. The penthouse held almost nothing of mine. Willie had always told me: ‘You are going to be Mrs. Hogan. The family’s legacy has no room for cheap, unrefined trinkets from your past.’ Yet, on his nightstand sat a cheap plastic bunny Cathy had bought him at a dollar store. Hanging from his Ferrari key fob was a tacky two-dollar keychain she had given him. Only my gifts—like the intricate, hand-woven cord bracelet I had spent days making—had been taken off his wrist and left to gather dust in a drawer. I grabbed the bracelet and threw it into the fireplace, watching the threads blacken and curl into ash. Beside the jewelry box was the cherrywood charm I had hand-carved. The year he went to London for his MBA, I couldn’t bear the thought of being apart from him. There was a trend on campus back then—gifting a ‘bleeding heart’ charm, a hollowed-out wooden cube with a single red seed sealed inside, symbolizing a love carved deep into the bone. I had spent nights sanding that tiny piece of wood, my fingertips raw and bleeding, just to hollow it out and slip a single scarlet seed inside. When Willie received it, he had nearly cried. ‘Zoey, if you don’t want me to go, I won’t.’ And he didn’t. He stayed, while I worked three different part-time jobs, running myself ragged trying to keep us afloat. Cathy had sipped her iced coffee, offering with a sweet smile, “I’ll look after him for you, Zoey. I won’t let any social climbers get close to him.” I had believed her. Back in the orphanage, when the older kids used to bully me, Cathy was the only one who stood up for me. She would take the punches, her face bruised and swollen, but she never let go of me. When we aged out, I worked double shifts to pay for our apartment and college tuition. Willie had scoffed back then. ‘Is Cathy helpless? She’s a grown woman—can’t she take care of herself?’ ‘Don’t talk about her like that!’ I had snapped back. ‘I promised I would take care of her forever. Even if she never gets a job, I’ll support her.’ Back then, I thought I was the luckiest girl in the world to have them both. But in the end, the two people I would have died for were the ones who stabbed me in the back. I threw the carved cherrywood charm into the trash can. I was throwing them away, too. When I changed, I didn’t touch any of the designer clothes Willie had bought me. Instead, I pulled out an old flannel shirt and a faded pair of jeans from the back of the closet—the exact clothes I had been wearing the day I moved in. I looked at the suitcase. It was completely empty. After a moment of silence, I shoved the suitcase back into the closet. I walked out of the penthouse carrying nothing but the battered backpack I had arrived with. My phone buzzed in my pocket. A text from Willie: ‘Family dinner tomorrow night. Don’t leave after your etiquette class. I’ll have the driver pick you up to get your hair and makeup done.’ I stared at the screen, hesitating, before typing back: ‘Can you transfer me five thousand dollars?’ The day I became his fiancée, Willie’s mother had declared that a Hogan woman does not work in public. I was forced to quit my job. Worried about Cathy’s living expenses, I had given her every penny of my savings. When Willie found out, he had handed me a black card linked to his account. ‘From now on, use your husband’s money for whatever you want.’ Back then, I had been deeply moved. I never realized that once we broke up, I wouldn’t even have enough money to rent a basic apartment. Within seconds, Willie replied: ‘1’. But no money was transferred. I stared at the screen, a hollow laugh escaping my lips. I realized that for months, no matter what I texted him, Willie always replied with a simple, automated ‘1’. It meant ‘read.’ He saw the notifications, but he never actually read the words. A dull ache throbbed in my chest. I typed again: ‘I’ll sign a promissory note. Please, just lend me five thousand dollars. I really need it.’ Willie’s reply was instant: ‘1’. I stared at that single digit. A self-deprecating laugh escaped me. Cathy used to gush about it. ‘He replies instantly, Zoey! A man in his position—whose time is literally worth millions—drops everything to answer you. That is true love!’ But he never gave me anything besides that automated response. He saved his actual time, his actual presence, for her. With trembling fingers, I sent one last text: ‘My mistake, Willie. I’ll never ask you for anything again.’ This time, the reply wasn’t a ‘1’. He texted: ‘I’m at the hospital waiting on Cathy’s x-ray results. Can you please stop suffocating me?’ Fine. I wouldn’t suffocate him anymore. Never again. With no money for a hotel, I walked down to the public park, curling up on a cold wooden bench with my backpack as a pillow. In the shivering dark, memories of the day I was abandoned at the orphanage drifted back. It had been an overcast day just like this one. I could still hear my father shouting at my mother: ‘If we don’t dump this useless girl, how are we supposed to afford a son?’ My mother had been sobbing, but she still let go of my hand and left me on the orphanage steps. Watching her walk away, I had sworn to myself that I would make them regret it. I studied until my eyes bled. I worked until my bones ached. I did everything to prove I wasn’t useless. But look at me tonight. A park security guard tapped my bench with his flashlight. “No sleeping on the benches, miss. Move along.” I scrambled up, heat burning my cheeks. I looked down at my faded jeans and worn sneakers. You failed, Zoey. You’re right back where you started. As I stumbled out of the park gates, I ran right into them. Cathy was clinging to Willie’s arm, whispering something that made him chuckle. The moment Willie saw me, the smile died on his face. “Zoey?” Cathy waved excitedly. “Willie told me you had a fever! I bought a fresh durian from the market—I know how much you love it. We were just heading to the penthouse to see you. What a coincidence!” My lips twisted into a bitter smile. “Are you sure I’m the one who loves durian?” Cathy was the picky eater. She loved exotic durian. Back in college, when we had no money, I would skip meals for a week just to buy her one because she said she was craving it. I did it every single time, even if it meant living on dry ramen for days. Cathy pouted, her eyes welling with instant tears. “Zoey, you’ve changed. You never used to speak to me like that. Back then, when you bought me durian, I knew you wanted some too, but you always insisted on giving me the whole thing. Now that I have my own money, of course I wanted to buy one for you.” Willie chimed in, his voice dripping with pride. “Cathy took over your old position at the firm, Zoey. She’s a completely independent, modern career woman now.” “She took over my old position?” I stared at him, hollowed out by the betrayal. “You forced me to resign so I could learn Hogan etiquette, but you hand-delivered my job to her?” “Is there a problem with that?” Willie stepped protectively in front of Cathy. “You’re going to be my wife. You don’t need a job. But Cathy does—she doesn’t have anyone else to protect her. I pulled some strings at your old agency, handed them a few major accounts, and got her the Creative Director position you had to turn down.” Cathy smiled sweetly, stepping around Willie to loop her arm through mine. “Honestly, Zoey, you are so lucky. You get to be a lady of leisure while someone else pays for your entire life.” Her voice held a thin, sharp edge of jealousy. “Unlike me. I actually have to work for what I want.” I looked at her, quiet for a long moment. “You’re wrong,” I whispered. “A man who truly loves you doesn’t clip your wings. He helps you fly.” Just like Willie had done for Cathy. She leaned in closer, her voice dropping to a cruel whisper against my ear. “And what do you call a woman who stays in a house where she isn’t loved? A mistress?” The slap echoed in the quiet street before I even realized my hand had moved. “Cathy! We can stop being friends, but how dare you—” How dare she desecrate twenty years of shared history! I was shaking so hard I could barely stand. Black spots danced across my vision. Cathy collapsed onto the pavement, her hand landing squarely on the spiky husk of the durian. She let out a sharp cry of pain, immediately looking up at Willie with tear-filled eyes. “Willie, please… it’s just a little blood. Don’t be mad at Zoey. She didn’t mean it.” Willie’s face darkened instantly. He knelt down and scooped her into his arms. “Okay, okay, I won’t. Let’s get you to the hospital.” As he turned to leave, he barked an order to the security detail trailing behind him. “Take Zoey back to the estate. Lock her in the reflection room until she learns some goddamn discipline.” The reflection room was a windowless, cramped panic room in the basement of the Hogan manor, barely large enough for a person to curl up in. Once the heavy steel door was locked, there was nothing but suffocating darkness. During my years of being molded by Willie’s mother, I had been locked in here for days at a time. But I wasn’t Willie’s fiancée anymore. What right did he have to imprison me? I hammered on the cold steel door until my knuckles bled, drifting in and out of a feverish consciousness. But Willie never came. I bit my cracked lip, tasting copper. “Willie… please. I have a fever. Let me out.” From the other side of the door, a guard sighed. “Save your breath, miss. Mr. Willie took Miss Cathy on a private flight to Norway. He’s trying to make up for her hand injury by showing her the Northern Lights.” I froze. With trembling fingers, I pulled my phone from my pocket. In the dim blue glow of the screen, Cathy’s Instagram post loaded: ‘A trip just for me. Private jet, endless skies. Heading to see the auroras with the man who ruins me.’ The comments underneath were filled with congratulations from our mutual friends. ‘Willie taking his girl out again!’ ‘One at home, one on the road—how do you pull this off, man?’ ‘What do you mean ‘on the road’? Willie and Cathy are the real deal. I heard they’re planning to get their marriage license soon while the other one is still stuck in deportment class.’ My heart felt like it was being shredded. I dialed one of those mutual friends. “What do you mean, getting a license?” The girl on the line gasped. “Zoey? You… you saw her post? Did she forget to block you? Look, we didn’t want to keep you in the dark, but you’ve been “learning the rules” for three years. Everyone figured if you found out Willie was going to marry Cathy instead, you’d make a scene.” A yawning chasm opened up in my chest. “How long?” I managed to choke out. “How long has it been going on?” There was a pause on the other end. “Three years? Maybe four? Honestly, we lost track.” While I was working myself to the bone, giving Cathy every cent I had so she wouldn’t suffer, she was sleeping with my fiancé behind my back. Hot tears spilled over, stinging the cuts on my raw hands. The seven years of devotion, the humiliating etiquette classes, the endless sacrifices… they were all a joke. Willie, you ruined me. My phone battery died, plunging the room into absolute pitch black. I pulled my knees to my chest, sobbing until my throat was raw, eventually slipping into unconsciousness. When I finally woke up, I had lost all sense of time. My stomach was cramping violently from hunger. Over the last three years, I had learned to ignore hunger. But this pain was different—sharp, white-hot. Cold sweat drenched my clothes, leaving me unable to make a sound. Suddenly, the heavy steel door screeched open. Bright light flooded my eyes. I squinted, shielding my face as Willie stormed in, grabbing my arm and wrenching me to my feet. “Zoey! When the hell did you become a thief? Is this the kind of trash my mother is trying to turn into a Hogan?” I gritted my teeth against the pain in my stomach, barely whispering, “What… what are you talking about?” He sneered, shoving his hand into my jeans pocket and pulling out a small plastic card. “This is Cathy’s debit card! She saved her very first paycheck to buy you a nice gift, and you stole it from her!” “I didn’t,” I sobbed, shaking my head weakly. “I don’t even know her PIN.” Willie let out a harsh laugh. “Her PIN is your birthday, Zoey. It wasn’t hard to figure out.” Cathy slinked into the room behind him, looking small and helpless. “Willie, please, I’m sure Zoey didn’t mean to. Don’t be too hard on her. She must have been desperate when she asked you for money. Since you were with me and didn’t see her texts, she probably just… panicked and made a mistake.” Hearing her words, Willie’s rage flared even hotter. “I gave you a black card! Was that not enough? You had to go and steal the money Cathy worked so hard to earn?” He let go of my arm with an expression of deep disgust. “When did you become so pathetic, Zoey?” I gritted my teeth, forcing the words out. “I didn’t steal it. She must have slipped it into my pocket when we were at the park.” “Enough!” Willie barked. “Kneel down and apologize to Cathy right now, or I will have the police arrest you. Once you have a criminal record, you can forget about ever marrying into this family.” I collapsed back onto the floor, coughing violently as my stomach cramped. “I didn’t do it. I will never apologize.” I looked up at him, my eyes burning with pure, unadulterated hatred. “I don’t want to marry you anymore, Willie. Your threats don’t work on me.” For a fraction of a second, he looked stung, taking a step back. Cathy burst into noisy tears. “Please, stop! You two are the most important people in my life. Don’t fight over me!” Willie’s expression hardened again. He turned to his guards. “Take her to the police station.” The guards grabbed my arms, dragging me down the cold stone corridor. As we reached the grand entrance of the Hogan estate, a sleek black Maybach pulled up to the curb. A man stepped out. It was him. With every ounce of strength left in my feverish body, I wrenched myself free from the guards’ grip. I fell to the ground, reaching out to grasp the hem of his dark trousers. “I’ll marry you,” I gasped, my voice raw. “Please, save me.” I couldn’t go to prison. I couldn’t let them ruin my life. Willie came rushing out of the double doors. “Have you finally decided to apologize to Cathy?” But the man didn’t look at Willie. Instead, he bent down, lifting me effortlessly into his arms. His gaze flicked up, locking onto Willie’s stunned face. “Have you forgotten how to greet your older brother, Willie? Or do you not know how to address your sister-in-law?”

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