Category: English

The day before the national conservatory auditions, the spoiled heiress who constantly acted like a fragile toddler secretly detuned every grand piano in the practice wing by a full half-step. “Lola just thinks a piano tuned down a half-step sounds so much gentler. This way, everyone’s music will sound as beautiful as a sweet lullaby.” In my past life, my ears caught the sickening pitch the second I sat down to practice. I immediately reported the sabotage to the faculty, and professional tuners worked through the night to fix every instrument. Stripped of her precious “gentle aesthetic,” Lola threw a hysterical fit, swallowed an entire bottle of prescription sleeping pills, and died before the ambulance even reached the hospital. To avenge her, my entire class conspired against me at our graduation gala. They spiked my drink with a lethal dose of industrial alcohol. When I woke up, my childhood best friend had bound my ten fingers with heavy steel piano wire, tightening the razor-sharp metal loop by agonizing loop. “You love playing the piano so much? Then use your mangled fingers to play a requiem for Lola in hell!” 1 “But Lola just thinks a piano tuned a half-step down sounds so much gentler.” Lola rubbed her reddened eyes, letting a single, perfect tear slide down her cheek. She clutched a heavy steel tuning wrench to her chest. Her voice was thick with exaggerated, nasal innocence. “Lola just wanted everyone’s audition pieces to sound like sweet lullabies. Why are you yelling at Lola?” That sickeningly sweet, infantile tone instantly triggered the protective instincts of every guy in the room. My childhood best friend, Oliver, stepped forward and shielded Lola with his body. He glared at me and let out a furious snarl. “Violet, do you know anything besides grinding away at those keys?” “Lola is doing this for our own good. She’s trying to help us relax before the biggest audition of our lives.” “Do you have zero empathy? Are you only happy when everyone else is having a mental breakdown from the stress?” The rest of our classmates swarmed around them, their voices rising in a chorus of toxic accusations. “Seriously. She’s just a mindless practice machine. Zero artistic soul.” “So what if the pitch is a little flat? I’m naturally gifted. I could play on a broken keyboard and still ace the audition. She’s just a try-hard who is insanely jealous of Lola.” “What a total buzzkill. She’s clinically insane for ruining the vibe.” Listening to those familiar, ear-piercing insults, a violent wave of vertigo washed over my brain. I was reborn. I was back to the exact day before the National Conservatory Auditions. The moment Lola secretly detuned every grand piano in the practice wing, and the exact second I tried to stop her. Lola was a filthy-rich heiress who transferred to our academy six months ago. When she first arrived, her habit of referring to herself in the third person made people roll their eyes. But within a month, her massive trust fund and constant damsel-in-distress act had turned her into the undisputed princess of the senior class. Even Oliver, the boy I grew up with, the boy who once promised to protect me forever, had devolved into her most loyal, rabid attack dog. In my past life, I tried to warn them. I told them the conservatory judges had absolute perfect pitch. I warned them that a detuned piano would destroy the emotional resonance of their pieces and result in automatic disqualification. For my honesty, I was viciously bullied by the entire class. They called me a jealous, talentless hack. Terrified for everyone’s future, I secretly alerted the faculty. The professors brought in professional tuners overnight to fix the damage. When Lola realized her “gentle aesthetic” was gone, she threw a massive hysterical fit. That night, she swallowed a handful of prescription pills and slipped into a permanent, fatal coma. Weeks later, at our graduation gala, my classmates spiked my drink with a lethal dose of cleaning chemicals. I woke up tied to a chair in the music hall. Oliver wrapped heavy, steel piano wire around my hands. He pulled the wire taut, slowly crushing the bones in my fingers until my hands were completely mangled. He looked down at my bleeding, ruined hands and sneered. “You love playing the piano so much? Then use your crippled fingers to play a requiem for Lola in hell.” The phantom agony of my bones splintering still burned deep in my soul. In this life, I absolutely refused to be their savior. I took a deep breath, forcing down the bile rising in my throat. I looked at Lola and lowered my head submissively. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I overreacted.” “Lola is totally right. A gentle, soft aesthetic is way more important than rigid, boring pitch rules. I promise I won’t interfere with your art again.” A wave of mocking laughter echoed through the practice room. “Look at her folding. So much for acting like a music prodigy.” “Exactly. Trying to show off her ear training? Next to Lola’s aesthetic vision, your textbook theory is pure garbage.” Lola wiped her eyes, pasting on a saintly, forgiving smile. “Don’t be mean to Violet, guys.” “Lola knows that everyone’s ears are different. Some people just have a really low capacity for true beauty.” “Please don’t ostracize Violet just because her taste is so… basic.” It sounded like she was defending me, but she was expertly branding me as a tasteless, uncultured loser. I didn’t argue. I just silently walked back to my piano bench. In my previous life, my scores were just a few points shy of a full ride to Juilliard. My technique was peerless among my age group. But to these trust-fund kids, I was just a pathetic “piano slave” who had to work for what they thought they were born with. Right now, the only thing on my mind was tomorrow’s audition. I was going to take back my rightful spot as the top recruit in the state, and permanently leave these lunatics in my rearview mirror. As soon as I sat down, a thick, heavy hand clamped down on my wrist like a vice. “Violet, your pathetic acting doesn’t fool me.” Oliver leaned in close, his breath hot against my face. “You’re totally plotting something. You’re just waiting for us to leave so you can run and snitch to the department head, aren’t you?” 2 The atmosphere in the room instantly turned toxic. Dozens of hostile eyes locked onto me like laser sights. Oliver tightened his grip, his voice booming off the soundproof walls. “You are so incredibly fake. You’re probably cursing Lola in your head right now.” “You think if you report her for vandalism, you’ll eliminate your biggest competition, right?” “You want the board to disqualify Lola just so you can finally achieve your pathetic little music dream.” His baseless, psychotic accusations instantly ignited the class. The practice room exploded into a frenzy. “Oh my god, her heart is literally black.” “Lola literally just defended you, and you want to ruin her entire life?” “Classic snake behavior. Lola’s kindness is totally wasted on trash like her.” “We can’t let her leave. We need to teach her a lesson today so she doesn’t try to sabotage us tomorrow.” Someone shouted the order, and a group of guys aggressively stormed over to my piano. They moved with brutal efficiency. One of them snatched my thick binder of sheet music right off the music stand. It was the repertoire I had spent three grueling years perfecting. The margins were filled with thousands of handwritten notes from masterclasses and late-night practice sessions. “What are you even practicing for? Trash like you doesn’t deserve to touch a piano.” A sharp, violent tearing sound ripped through the air. They tore my sheet music in half with their bare hands. The shredded pages fluttered through the air like dead winter leaves. The entire class erupted into roaring cheers. Not a single person thought this was wrong. A few girls even walked over and intentionally dug their expensive heels into my ruined notes. “Trash paper for a trash person. Perfect match.” The rage boiling in my chest threatened to override my sanity, but I bit down on my lower lip so hard I tasted copper. Fighting back now would only give them an excuse to physically lock me in a closet and make me miss the exam entirely. I violently yanked my wrist out of Oliver’s grip and bent down to gather the torn, dirty pages. Oliver lifted his heavy sneaker and stomped down hard on the back of my hand. “I told you. As long as I’m breathing, you aren’t going anywhere near the faculty office.” “I will never let you hurt Lola.” Just as the mob was gearing up to humiliate me further, the heavy wooden door of the practice room swung open. Professor Harrison, the head of the piano department, walked in carrying a clipboard with the final audition roster. He froze in the doorway, completely stunned by the chaotic scene. “What the hell is going on in here?” He slammed his clipboard onto the lid of the nearest grand piano. The loud, hollow bang echoed like a gunshot. “Tomorrow is the state conservatory audition. The best musicians in the country are making their final preparations, and you lot are in here forming a lynch mob?” Professor Harrison’s sharp eyes scanned the room. His gaze locked onto Oliver’s shoe pressing down on my hand. His face turned dangerously dark. “Get back to your seats. Now.” Oliver reluctantly lifted his foot, shooting me a lethal glare and dragging his thumb across his throat before backing away. Lola immediately trotted over to Professor Harrison. She gently tugged on the sleeve of his tweed jacket, her eyes pooling with fresh, glistening tears. “Professor… please don’t be mad. It’s all Lola’s fault.” “Everyone has been working so hard and getting so stressed. Lola just wanted everyone to hear a softer, gentler tone to help ease their anxiety.” “Lola just loves everyone so much. I wanted to give them a beautiful memory before we all graduate.” Her pathetic, whimpering routine instantly melted the hearts of the guys standing nearby. A few of the top-ranked students in the class loudly voiced their support. “Professor, we are engaging in experimental artistic exploration. Is it a crime to pursue a different tonal aesthetic?” “We are the elite musicians of this academy. Being a little flat isn’t going to stop us from getting perfect scores. We aren’t robots.” 3 Professor Harrison looked at the bizarre, unified front his students were presenting. He clearly assumed this was just a case of collective pre-exam burnout. His deeply furrowed brow relaxed slightly, and his tone softened. “Alright. I know you all share a tight bond. But sit down and listen to me.” Professor Harrison cleared his throat, his expression turning dead serious. “The audition panel has been updated. The head judge tomorrow is Maestro Rossi. The man has absolute, flawless perfect pitch.” “As your mentor, I am giving you one final warning.” “For tomorrow’s repertoire, pitch accuracy is your absolute lifeline.” “You must pay extreme attention to the piano’s tuning. If you suspect the pitch is off by even a fraction, you must immediately halt and request the official tuner.” “Even a quarter-step flat sounds like a chainsaw ripping through drywall to judges of that caliber.” “Do not delude yourselves into thinking your technique can mask a flat instrument. If the pitch is wrong, your entire emotional delivery collapses into a complete mess.” “One point will be the difference between Juilliard and working at a local diner. Do not fail on the absolute basics.” To emphasize his point, he casually walked over to the primary Steinway grand piano at the front of the room and struck a standard middle A. The note rang out. It was a flat, dull A-flat. Professor Harrison’s face drained of all color, turning from pale to a furious shade of purple. “The pitch is completely wrong. Who touched this instrument?” His voice skyrocketed, shaking with uncontainable rage. “This is the primary warm-up room for tomorrow’s auditions. Do you have any idea what precise tuning means to a concert pianist?” “Without a standard pitch, how are you supposed to warm up your ears? How are you supposed to find your center?” Lola stepped out of the crowd, wearing that same clueless, innocent smile. “Professor, Lola paid a guy to tune it down.” “Lola thinks it sounds so much softer this way. It makes everyone feel so emotionally stable.” She looked at him with wide, expectant eyes, genuinely waiting for a gold star and a pat on the head. Professor Harrison froze like he had been struck by lightning. He stared at Lola in pure disbelief, his finger trembling as he pointed at the Steinway. “You… you detuned a concert grand by a full half-step?” “Lola, tomorrow is the most rigorous conservatory audition in the state.” “What do you think this place is? Your personal playground?” Lola’s smile vanished. Her lower lip quivered, and the tears immediately spilled over. “Lola just wanted to make the world a gentler place. In your eyes, are a bunch of rigid, dead rules more important than our happiness?” “This is absolute insanity. You are playing Russian roulette with your futures.” Professor Harrison violently slammed his hand onto the piano lid. “Call the academy tuner right now and fix this. If you don’t, I will personally report you to the board and have your audition eligibility revoked on the spot.” A few of the students who had been cheering earlier suddenly looked incredibly nervous. When their actual college admissions were on the line, the bravado started to crack. “Yeah, Lola, maybe we should fix it. If the judges are really that strict about pitch, this is super risky.” But Lola just cried harder. She collapsed onto the hardwood floor in a heap of designer fabric, sobbing hysterically. “Lola just wants to share true beauty with the world. Is it a crime to pursue art?” Oliver couldn’t take it anymore. He shoved Professor Harrison aside and wrapped his arms around Lola, pulling her into his chest. “Back off, old man. Did Violet bribe you to come in here and terrorize us?” Professor Harrison was so furious he couldn’t even form words. Oliver brutally cut him off, his face twisting with arrogance. “Cut the crap. You just want to keep your precious admission stats high so you can get your corporate bonus.” “Lola is trying to save our artistic souls, and you just want us to be mindless exam robots.” “We are prodigies. Even if the pitch is a half-step flat, we will dominate those judges with our raw emotional power.” 4 Fired up by Oliver’s unhinged speech, the class’s blind arrogance came roaring back. “He’s right. Those judges are ancient anyway. Their hearing is probably shot. What we are doing is called avant-garde styling.” “Violet definitely snitched to the professor because she knows we’re going to outplay her. What a manipulative psycho.” Professor Harrison was shaking with a rage so intense his face was flushed crimson. With the exam less than twelve hours away, he knew escalating this to security would result in a massive scandal that he couldn’t control. “Fine. Have it your way.” Professor Harrison snatched his clipboard and stormed toward the door, leaving them with one final, icy warning. “Since you all think pitch is a joke, go ahead and see what happens tomorrow. Do not come crawling back to my office crying when reality hits you.” The second the door clicked shut, Oliver’s true colors flared. He lunged across the room, grabbing my jaw with a brutal, crushing grip. “Did you enjoy the show, Violet?” His fingers dug painfully into my cheeks. Tears involuntarily pricked the corners of my eyes from the sheer force. “Tell me, did you slip the old man a text while we weren’t looking?” He tilted his head, his eyes burning with absolute, nauseating disgust. “I am warning you. Drop the pathetic little schemes.” “Even if you complain to the president of the academy, it won’t do a thing. Didn’t you just see us run that old coward out of the room?” “Don’t think that just because you practice twenty hours a day, you can play savior and boss Lola around.” Lola stood up, dusting off her skirt. She wrapped her arms around Oliver’s bicep and spoke in her saccharine voice. “Oliver, don’t be so mean to Violet.” “But you know… Lola feels like if we really want to promote this gentle aesthetic, just tuning this one room definitely isn’t enough.” She turned her head, a flash of psychotic obsession gleaming in her eyes. “Why don’t we detune every single piano in the audition building? That way, every candidate in the state can experience Lola’s beautiful aesthetic.” Her absurd, insane proposal plunged the noisy room into dead silence. The students who had been cheering just moments ago suddenly looked conflicted and deeply terrified. “Lola, messing with our own practice room is one thing, but if we mess with the official exam pianos… that’s a massive federal-level academic crime.” “If they catch us on the security cameras, or if we get caught in the act, our lives are literally over. We’ll be blacklisted forever.” A quiet girl in the back whispered, her voice trembling violently. This was the state audition. It was the moment that decided their entire careers. The atmosphere in the room turned suffocatingly tense as everyone mentally weighed the risks. At that critical moment, Oliver shoved my face away and stepped up like a conquering hero. “What are you all so afraid of? An exam this big has maintenance staff checking the rooms constantly.” “If we tune them down tonight, and they don’t notice tomorrow morning, it proves the judges don’t actually care about pitch. If they do notice, they’ll just fix it before the exam starts.” He beat his chest, his voice echoing off the walls. “We are doing this to help Lola achieve her ultimate artistic vision. We are going to give those rigid, boring judges the surprise of a lifetime. This is performance art.” Hearing his twisted logic, the crowd found their psychological safety net. Their hesitation vanished, replaced by a sick, fanatical fever. “He’s right. The judges aren’t deaf. They’ll definitely double-check the rooms.” “Let’s go. Let’s go bless the whole state with Lola’s aesthetic. Let’s show everyone what true art is.” “For Lola’s dream. Let’s go.” The entire class looked completely brainwashed. Cheering and screaming, they swarmed around Lola and Oliver, sprinting out of the room like a pack of rabid animals heading for the audition halls.

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “517579”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

1 As I signed the kidney transplant cancellation form, Luke’s face registered pure shock. “Are you out of your mind? You love Krista to death, and you are the only match. Now you are backing out?” I did not even look up. My voice was eerily calm. “Because of a glass of water.” Krista had severe germaphobia. In our house, she absolutely refused to share anything with me. Even a glass I had just touched with my lips was untouchable to her. Until the day I saw a video on the social media account of a college intern working under her. In the video, the kid held up his half-empty energy drink and brought it to her lips. Krista naturally leaned in and took a sip from his hand. She frowned slightly, but a smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. “Way too sweet. Watch out for your teeth.” Her voice in the recording was unbelievably soft. That night, I sat alone in the pitch-black living room, watching that ten-second clip hundreds of times. The glare of the screen made my eyes burn. When Krista woke up the next morning, I poured a glass of water, took a sip right in front of her, and handed it over. “Take a sip.” She stared at me like I was a complete lunatic. “Rick, are you sick in the head? I never touch anything someone else has drank out of.” Someone else. Married for seven years, and in her eyes, I was just someone else. I forcibly pulled my thoughts out of the memories, gripped the pen, and signed my name at the bottom of the waiver. I turned to look out the window. It was the peak of summer. The asphalt radiated waves of heat under the blazing sun, and the cicadas in the trees were deafening. Krista, and that glass of water. Suddenly, I felt entirely exhausted. I did not want to hold on anymore. Right as I stepped through the automatic glass doors of the hospital, my phone buzzed in my pocket. A text from Krista. [Grab some pastries from the deli in the South District. Jace is coming over for dinner.] [He loves barbecue ribs, get the center cut. Oh, and make sure there is no celery or eggplant, he refuses to touch them.] I had been getting my blood drawn repeatedly over the past few days for the transplant prep. I was so dizzy I had to lean against the cold brick wall of the hospital to catch my breath. Luke grabbed my shoulder to steady me, and his eyes accidentally caught the screen of my phone. He instantly blew up. “Is this woman out of her damn mind? She memorized some outsider’s dietary restrictions like she is quoting the Bible, but what about you?” “Last week she had a sudden whim to cook you dinner and stuffed the whole thing with mushrooms! Does she not know you are deathly allergic to that crap? You went into anaphylactic shock right on the floor. If I had not stopped by to see you, you would be in the morgue right now!” My chest tightened as if an invisible hand was crushing my heart. A bitter sting pricked the back of my eyes. When we first got together, Krista still had this clumsy sweetness about her. She would write down my birthday, my favorite things, and the foods that could kill me in her phone notes. Whenever I felt down, she would magically appear with my favorite dessert. Every anniversary, her surprises were perfect. But now, those anniversaries were blank pages. She no longer had the patience for surprises, and she had completely forgotten the allergen that nearly took my life. I finally had to admit that the burning vows from nine years ago had completely rotted away. Every memory had turned into a bloody thorn, ripping my heart to shreds. After a long pause, I shoved the phone back into my pocket and looked at my best friend. “Luke, hook me up with a good lawyer. I want a divorce.” I dragged my leaden legs back to the house. The moment I pushed open our familiar oak door, a freezing, chemical blast of disinfectant spray hit me right in the face. Jace was pinching his nose with one hand and holding a spray bottle in the other, raising an arrogant brow at me. “The professor said outside filth is not allowed in the house. You do not mind, do you, old man?” Fighting the sting in my eyes, I slowly opened them and pinned him with a glare. He was wearing the matching linen shirt Krista and I owned. I had just custom-ordered it from a boutique last week. The tiny pine tree on the cuff was something I stayed up late embroidering myself. Now, it hung loosely on his young frame, reeking of a sickening sense of triumph. I suddenly let out a dry laugh. “I honestly had no idea Professor Krista had such poorly raised punks working under her.” Jace’s face instantly went pale. He immediately put on a victimized expression and looked down the hallway. Krista walked out in her slippers, her face as cold as ice. She stepped right in front of Jace, shielding him, and lowered her voice to scold me. “Rick, watch your mouth. Jace was just playing a harmless joke. Do you have to be so bitter?” A joke? I gritted my teeth. I wanted to scream at her. Was sharing a drink a joke? Was him strutting around in my custom clothes a joke? How many more of these shady little “jokes” were hiding between them? But looking at her defensive posture, treating him like someone she needed to protect from me, all the words died in my throat. I did not want to ask a single thing anymore. Without a word, I turned around, slammed the front door shut, changed my shoes, and walked to the dining table. I pulled out a chair and sat down. “Krista, I have something to tell you.” Dating for two years, married for seven. Even if this ship was sinking, I wanted to give us a decent ending. I touched the outline of the transplant cancellation form through my jacket pocket, trying to find the right words. “I went to the hospital today…” “Whatever it is, can it not wait until after dinner?” She cut me off with extreme impatience, her eyebrows tying into a knot. “Rick, I am busy. I do not have time to waste on you.” I froze in my chair, staring at the woman in front of me in pure disbelief. It felt like a handful of dry straw was shoved down my throat, scraping away my voice. Waste time. I said those exact words to her many years ago. Back then, Krista chased me relentlessly. The library, frat parties, the football bleachers, she was everywhere. Out of sheer exhaustion, I rejected the coffee she offered me for the hundredth time. “I really am not looking for a relationship right now. Stop wasting your time on me.” “How is this a waste of time?” Eighteen-year-old Krista smiled, her eyes curving like crescents, filled to the brim with my reflection. “Just breathing the same city air as you, walking down the same streets, feels like a blessing. Even if you are rejecting me right now, just hearing your voice makes me feel like the luckiest person in the world.” My heart pounded like a drum back then, my face burning hot. But now, looking at the freezing face in front of me, I felt a chilling cold seep into my bones. Since when did she consider sparing me a single sentence a waste of her life? “Professor, since your husband did not even buy groceries, let us forget about the ribs.” Jace stepped up with a cheeky grin, placing his hand naturally on the small of Krista’s back to guide her toward the kitchen. “I was craving those mushroom cheese ravioli you made last time anyway!” The frost on Krista’s face melted instantly, a gentle smile appearing on her lips. She tied on her apron and turned to affectionately ruffle the boy’s hair. “Lucky you. I purposely made extra and froze them last time, just for you.” “You are the best, Professor!” They walked past me laughing and chatting, treating me like thin air. I kept my head down, a bitter sneer forming on my lips. So, that dinner that almost sent me to the ER last week was not some romantic whim. What I ate was just the rejected test batch meant for someone else. I took a deep breath, forcing the violent storm of emotions down. Just to keep the last shred of my dignity, I refused to scream and tear her apart in front of this outsider. I refused to look pathetic. Outside the kitchen doors, they ate their steaming ravioli and talked about absolute nonsense. They went from data models to the recent storms, to the ski season in the Alps and autumn in Aspen. The famously strict and cold Professor Krista was a chatterbox in front of Jace, responding to his every word. Inside the living room, I sat in dead silence, feeling my once burning heart freeze solid piece by piece. It was not until the streetlights flickered on outside that Krista pushed open the bedroom door. She casually tossed a brown paper takeout bag onto my nightstand. “You are anemic lately. You need to eat something.” The bag contained clam chowder from my favorite spot. Years ago, before they even offered delivery, Krista would brave the freezing morning wind to stand in line just to get it for me. “What is your problem today? Why were you so aggressive with Jace?” “Aggressive?” I forced a smile and looked straight into her eyes. “He is into you. Do not tell me you are blind enough to miss that.” “You brought him into our private home, let him wear my clothes, and let him spray alcohol in my face. You know damn well mushrooms could kill me, yet you stocked our freezer full of them just for him!” “Shut your mouth!” Krista’s face darkened instantly. Her brows furrowed deeply, and she looked down at me with sheer contempt. “Jace is the most talented student in my entire program! What is wrong with him coming over for a casual meal? Can you stop judging people with your pathetic, narrow mind?” “He has ambition. He has real goals. He is not from the same world as a guy like you who just stays home and has zero career drive.” Her words were like a bucket of ice water poured straight over my head. I stared at her, my muscles trembling uncontrollably. “Krista, you literally got on your knees and begged me to quit my job!” Back then, she cried about how much it hurt to see me work late, complaining we never had time together. She swore she would build her career while I managed the home. Like an idiot, I believed her. Because I loved her, because I trusted her completely, I killed my own career and swallowed my pride to support her ambitions. Now, that was the very weapon she used against me? Krista looked at my red rimmed eyes, fell silent for a moment, and let out an annoyed sigh. “Fine. I was too harsh.” “Your health is bad anyway, stop getting so worked up.” She turned toward the door. “It is pouring outside. I need to drive Jace home. Whatever nonsense you want to talk about, save it for when I get back.” I did not try to stop her. I knew I could not. Right then, my phone lit up. A text from Luke. [The divorce papers are drawn up by the best lawyers in town. Brother, I booked us two first-class tickets to Europe. Come out and get some fresh air.] Without a second of hesitation, my fingers typed a single letter: [K.] I sat on the living room sofa the entire night, waiting for her to come back so we could talk about the divorce. But I called dozens of times, and every single one went straight to voicemail. It was not until seven the next morning that the front door was pushed open. Seeing me on the couch, a flash of undeniable guilt crossed Krista’s eyes. “Rick, did you not sleep at all?” “The rain was brutal last night, and Jace sprained his ankle on the steps. I was too worried, so I took him to the ER and stayed with him for the night.” “Krista…” After staying up all night, my voice sounded like sandpaper. “Taking ten seconds to send a text, is that too hard? Picking up one phone call, is that too hard?” “Listening to me finish a sentence, is it really that damn hard?” “Sorry.” She stood in the entryway, unusually silent for a few seconds. “My phone died last night. Plus, I assumed you were already asleep.” “You probably have not eaten breakfast yet. I will make you something.” She practically fled into the kitchen. After some clattering, she surprisingly whipped up a lavish spread of hot food. Krista was terrible at basic life skills, but she was naturally gifted in the kitchen. I had chronic stomach issues, and a few years ago, she actually read through dozens of nutritional cookbooks just to make me healing meals every day. But right as the last pot of hot soup was done, she unhesitatingly packed all the hot food into a thermal lunchbox. Then she turned around and slid a plate of thick blueberry toast across the counter to me. “Rick, just make do with this for now.” “I have to rush back to the hospital to bring Jace some hot food. Do me a favor and clean up the pots and pans.” The rich purple color on that toast stung my eyes like a needle. She forgot entirely. I absolutely despised blueberries. Looking at her rushing toward the door, a cold, mocking laugh escaped my lips. “You really go above and beyond for this precious student of yours.” “Rick, what exactly are you implying now?” She rarely lost her temper at me like this, narrowing her eyes in warning. “I treat all my students equally. If anyone in my lab got sick today, I would go take care of them!” “Really?” I looked up slowly, meeting her gaze without backing down. “Would you drink after your other students without flinching? Where did your crippling germaphobia go, Krista?” “I have no idea what nonsense you are talking about.” A brief look of being caught flashed across her face. She grabbed the lunchbox and tried to walk past me. I grabbed her wrist tight and shoved yesterday’s medical report right into her palm. “You do not have to understand. But you know how to read.” I scraped the blueberry toast straight into the trash can in front of her. By the time I turned around, the front door was already shut. That paper, the one concerning her very life, was crumpled into a ball and lying at the bottom of the wastebasket by the door. I stood frozen for a long time. It felt like an organ had been violently carved out of my chest, leaving a gaping, freezing hole. But strangely, I could not squeeze out a single tear. Eventually, I walked back to the guest room and quietly started packing my suitcase. Not long after, a courier dropped off the divorce papers Luke had prepared. I skimmed through the asset division. It was perfectly fair. No issues. Now, all I had to do was wait for her to come home, sign on the dotted line, and this absurd marriage would finally be over. At nine o’clock that night, the doorbell rang like a death knell. I ripped the door open. Jace stood there, panting heavily, practically carrying a blackout-drunk Krista in his arms. “At the lab project celebration tonight, the Professor took a bunch of heavy shots to protect me. I did not realize she was such a lightweight, yet she still tried so hard to look out for me.” I pressed my lips into a hard line and instinctively reached out to take my wife. Jace dodged my hands entirely. Walking in like he owned the place, he carried Krista into the master bedroom and laid her down. Then he walked back out, leaning against the doorframe, a venomous, mocking smirk on his face. “Old man, do not blame me for not letting you touch her. I know for a fact she thinks you are dirty.” “She is drunk now, sure, but even when she is sober, she probably gags at the thought of you touching her. Why else would you be married for seven years without a single kid?” He suddenly leaned in, lowering his voice like a snake. “After all, the Professor told me herself. Every time you get close, all she can think about is that night you were pinned down in the dirt by those street girls, having your clothes ripped off.” “She said you make her physically sick.” A deafening ring exploded in my ears. The string that had been pulled taut for nine years finally snapped. Years ago, Krista’s deadbeat dad owed a massive debt to some ruthless loan sharks. To help her pay it off, I sang at an underground bar downtown every single night. One early morning after my shift, I was targeted by a local girl gang. They dragged me into an alley, beat me half to death with baseball bats, and used box cutters to shred my clothes, humiliating me in every way possible. Krista rushed in like a madwoman with an iron pipe, smashing the leader’s head open. Afterward, she held me tightly in her arms, crying so hard she could barely breathe. Her hands were shaking so violently she could not even cup my face. “Rick, this is my fault. I swear to God, I will never let anyone hurt you again!” That was the darkest nightmare of my life at nineteen. That was the scar I had fiercely protected for eight years. And now, Krista had turned my deepest trauma into gossip, a joke to share with her little boy toy! I snapped my head up, my eyes bloodshot. “What the hell did you just say?” “I said, the Professor thinks you are a dirty…” He did not get to finish that word. My fist smashed violently into his jaw, crushing the syllables against his teeth. I threw my entire body weight into that punch. Jace screamed, flying backward like a broken doll. His forehead slammed hard against the edge of the glass coffee table, and blood immediately poured down his brow. He wiped the blood from his mouth, his face turning purple with rage and humiliation. “Screw you! Are you out of your damn mind?!” He lunged at me like a rabid dog. I raised my leg and kicked him square in the stomach, sending him to the floor. I grabbed him by the collar and dragged him out the front door like a dead dog. “Get out! Get the hell out of my house right now!” The door slammed shut with a thunderous crash, completely sealing that disgusting piece of trash outside. Drained of every ounce of strength, I slid down the cold door panel to the floor, cold sweat soaking my back. In the dead silence of the house, Krista’s slurred, drunken mumbles drifted from the bedroom. “Rick…” If it were the past, I would have swallowed my exhaustion, brought her a warm towel, wiped her face, and changed her into pajamas. But tonight, I just stood by the bed, staring down at her for a long, long time. Finally, I slid the wedding band off my ring finger. I took hers off the vanity. I threw them both into the pitch-black trash can. Nine years. We were once the college sweethearts everyone envied. Now, we had reached a dead end where just looking at each other caused nausea. I slept in the guest room. The next morning, I was violently yanked out of bed by Krista. She stared down at me, her eyes filled with suffocating disappointment. “Rick, did you put your hands on Jace last night?” The sharp pain in my wrist snapped me fully awake. I forcefully shook her hand off. “What, seeing your precious student bruised up breaks your heart?” “His parents called the cops! The university dean is involved now! You are going to get dressed right this second, go to the campus, and bow your head to apologize!” Krista’s eyes were red with frantic anger. She hurled a jacket right at my face. Rubbing my red wrist, I let out a harsh laugh. “Oh, he has parents? The way he clings to you for everything, I thought he was an orphan.” “Rick!” She pointed a finger right at my nose, her eyes wide with fury at having her boundaries crossed. “How can you say something so venomous? When did you become such an unreasonable monster?” “I do not care what your excuse is, you are coming to apologize!” She dragged me out to her car like a prisoner and sped all the way to the university’s administration building. In the dean’s office, Jace sat on the couch with his head down, playing the perfect victim. A middle-aged man and woman sat on either side of him, screaming furiously at the department head. “My son is here at an Ivy League institution to do research! Now he is sitting here with a mild concussion! You people better give us an explanation right now!” “Professor!” Seeing Krista walk in, Jace acted like his savior had arrived. He jumped up, pointing at his bruised jaw to tattle. “I was just trying to be a good person and bring you home safely last night, but your husband falsely accused me of coming onto you. He attacked me like a psychopath. My head is killing me…” The moment his mother saw me, she shot up from the couch, her shrill voice piercing my eardrums. “So you are the uneducated piece of trash who put hands on my son! You are going to pay us fifty grand in damages today, or I swear I will see you behind bars!” I cast a dead, cold look at these clowns. I pulled out my phone and opened a screenshot. It was a photo Jace had posted on his stories at 2 AM and deleted seconds later. Unfortunately for him, I caught it. The background was the ER from the night before. Krista was asleep by his hospital bed, and he was leaning in, kissing her cheek. I zoomed in on the photo and shoved the screen right into his parents’ faces. “Sure, I will pay you. But first, I want to ask how you raised your kid.” “What kind of cheap trash secretly hooks up with his married professor while getting his master’s degree?” Jace and his father quickly exchanged a panicked glance. The next second, the middle-aged man charged at me like a raging bull, landing a heavy punch right on my jaw. “You worthless loser who got humiliated by a bunch of street girls dare to talk about my son? Too bad they did not just beat you to death in that alleyway!” The room spun violently. I staggered and collapsed, the back of my head cracking hard against the marble floor. The pain was so sharp I could not even scream. It took a long moment for my vision to focus again. I saw several twisted, ugly faces looking down at me. Krista stood nearby. A flash of worry did cross her eyes, but her body remained firmly planted in front of Jace and his father, protecting them. I forced myself up, clenching my fists, ready to rush the man and pay that punch back in full. But a pair of arms locked around my waist from behind. Krista held me back with all her strength. “Rick, calm the hell down! No matter what, you threw the first punch last night!” “Krista, let go of me!” My eyes were bloodshot. The years of suppressed betrayal and rage erupted from my chest like a volcano. Why? Why did everyone think they had the right to weaponize my deepest scars? Why! “Are you blind, Krista? Did you not see him hit me just now?” “Why did you tell them about that night? He used it to mock me to my face, are you deaf?!” My desperate, broken roar echoed down the hallway. College students walking between classes stopped and started peeking through the doors. Clearly feeling embarrassed, Krista pushed me out into the stairwell. “Go home and cool off. I have to take Jace to get a brain scan.” She turned around, shielding Jace as they tried to push through the gathering crowd. Just as we brushed past each other, the older man suddenly turned around, raised his hand, and shoved me hard by the shoulder. I lost my balance and tumbled down the steep staircase. My back slammed against the concrete steps, the impact feeling like it shattered my spine. But Krista merely looked over her shoulder, frowned in annoyance, and quickly looked away. I knew that look all too well. I was an embarrassment to her. A couple of male students finally stepped in and helped me up. I muttered a quiet thanks, gritted my teeth through the pain, and limped straight into Krista’s spacious private office. My phone buzzed. A flight notification popped up: [Boarding in 6 hours.] I reached into my inner jacket pocket, pulled out the signed divorce agreement, and laid it perfectly flat right in the center of her desk. I held up my phone, snapped a picture, and hit send. [I signed it. Krista, let us get a divorce.]

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “517596”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

1 I wrote an algorithm designed to calculate exactly who cares about you the most. Originally, I just wanted to test it out. I wanted to see what score my relationship with my boyfriend would get. The system handed me the results. I ranked seventh in his heart. I actually laughed. Seventh? Even his pet cat ranked fourth! I didn’t cry. I didn’t throw a tantrum. I just turned around, blocked his number, and deleted him from my life. A few days later, he was crying, begging me to come back. I just smiled. “Sorry, do I know you?” Valentine’s Day. Eleven forty-seven at night. I stared at the beta testing report that had just finished compiling on my monitor. My fingertips felt like they had been soaked in ice water. The Relational Investment Metric was my baby. I had pulled all-nighters for three months straight to build it, and it had finally gone live on our internal servers just past midnight. The Product Director was breathing down my neck for beta data, so I casually imported my own account. Eric and I had been together for two years. Since we both worked at the same tech firm, our employee accounts were linked in the company’s ecosystem. We had mutual data permissions. Thirty seconds. It only took the system thirty seconds to grind my two-year relationship into fine dust. Top 10 Emotional Investment Targets: Rank 1: Veronica. Score: 92.7. Notes: High-frequency interaction. Weekly Wednesday night drinks. High workplace dependency. Primary source of emotional validation. Rank 2: Bobby. Score: 88.4. Notes: Gaming partner. Daily voice chat average 2.5 hours. Weekend offline meetups. Rank 3: Audrey. Score: 85.1. Notes: First love. Mutual social media following. Quarterly check-ins. High frequency of specific profile searches. Rank 4: Muffin. Score: 79.3. Notes: Pet cat. Daily search frequency for premium cat food/toys averages 7 times. Accounts for 100% of pet-related financial expenditures. Rank 5… Rank 6… Rank 7: Avery. Score: 41.2. Notes: Live-in girlfriend. Rent split 50/50. Routine, superficial daily greetings. Occasional shared meals. Emotional investment critically low. Interaction quality poor. Recommendation: Evaluate long-term viability of relationship. I read the screen three times. My vision wasn’t blurred. There was no glitch. His cat. The fluffy Ragdoll cat he brought home a year ago ranked higher than me. Seventy-nine point three. Almost forty points higher than the woman he lived with. The algorithm even provided helpful context notes. Over the past three months, Eric had searched the internet for “gourmet cat food” exactly 137 times. His searches for “girlfriend gifts”, “date ideas”, or “romantic restaurants” totaled exactly three. Two of those were just him looking up venues for his department’s corporate mixer. I took a deep, shuddering breath and saved the screenshot into a hidden folder on my phone simply titled “Evidence”. I had created that folder six months ago. It held screenshots of his late-night texts with his boss, Veronica. It held the notifications of him constantly liking his ex-girlfriend Audrey’s posts. It held his GPS location data from every single Wednesday night. I never opened that folder to look at the contents a second time. But I never deleted it, either. It wasn’t because I couldn’t let go. I just wanted to see exactly where my breaking point was. Looking at the data now, I realized I had severely underestimated my own tolerance for pain, and wildly overestimated his conscience. At 1:03 AM, my phone buzzed on the desk. A text from Eric. Happy Valentine’s Day, babe. Totally swamped at the office today. Let’s celebrate properly tomorrow. I stared at the word “babe”. It felt like a physical slap to the face. How does it feel when someone who values you less than a housecat calls you babe? It feels like you’re reading a script for a play you desperately want to quit. I typed back two letters. Ok. No emojis. No exclamation points. No “Happy Valentine’s Day to you too.” I closed the messaging app and opened the career portal for Pulse Tech, our company’s biggest corporate rival. I carefully read through the job description for their Senior Algorithm Engineer position. Then, I attached my resume and hit submit. I wasn’t being cold-blooded. The algorithm I wrote with my own two hands had just given me the undeniable truth. This man wasn’t worth another second of my time. Somewhere outside my window, fireworks went off in the distance. They boomed loudly for about thirty seconds, pretending to be spectacular, before fading into absolute silence. Just like my relationship. It looked vibrant from the outside, but the gunpowder had burned out a long time ago. I clicked off the desk lamp and lay in the dark, staring at the ceiling. Tomorrow, I had one last performance to give. 2 At seven o’clock the next evening, Eric booked a table at a local spicy seafood place. It was a rare moment where he actually remembered I loved spicy food. For a split second, I genuinely wondered if my algorithm had a bug. But then he reached into his leather briefcase, pulled out a cheap, generic box of drugstore chocolates, and smiled. “Work has been absolutely insane. I didn’t have time to go to a real boutique.” Right then, I knew the system was flawless. The only thing with a fatal bug was the man sitting across from me. “It’s fine. It’s the thought that counts,” I smiled brightly, accepting the box and dropping it into my purse. Deep inside my purse, my phone was running a silent background script, syncing three years of his raw, unfiltered personal data. I had written the script at three in the morning. In the two years we lived together, Eric never bothered to put a password on his home laptop. His cloud backups were always set to auto-sync on our shared network. I used to think it was because he trusted me implicitly. Now I understood the truth. It wasn’t trust. It was apathy. He cared so little about me that he couldn’t even be bothered to cover his tracks. The data logs refreshed on my screen, dropping in one by one. Every single line felt like a dull knife dragging across my skin. Search History: “What kind of wine does Veronica like?” Timestamp: Last Wednesday. “Audrey recent news Instagram.” Timestamp: Two months ago. “Muffin refusing to eat dry food solutions.” Timestamp: Yesterday. “Affordable girlfriend gifts that look expensive.” Timestamp: Last Valentine’s Day. Transaction History: February 14th, Valentine’s Day. $25 generic flower delivery. Delivery note: Just leave it on the porch, don’t knock. Our Anniversary. $0. January 12th, Muffin the cat’s birthday. $200 custom luxury cat tree plus a $50 imported salmon gift box. I stared at that financial breakdown and almost burst out laughing in the middle of the restaurant. He remembered a cat’s exact birthday and went all out. My birthday? He only ever remembered when Facebook sent him a push notification on the morning of. Location Tracking: Every Wednesday night. 7:30 PM to 10:00 PM. The upscale cocktail lounge beneath our office building. With Veronica. Every Saturday afternoon. 2:00 PM to 6:00 PM. Bobby’s apartment. Playing video games. His overlapping location history with me? Commuting from the apartment to the office. Commuting from the office to the apartment. Occasional weekend takeout orders for cheap noodles and burgers. I locked my phone screen and looked up at him. He was enthusiastically scooping fish onto my plate, complaining about how the big boss had chewed him out during the afternoon product meeting. Under the warm restaurant lighting, his face looked so earnest, so exhausted. A year ago, my heart would have broken for him. But right now, all I could see was that glowing line of text from my system. Interaction quality poor. Recommendation: Evaluate long-term viability. I picked up my fork and slowly took a bite. I wasn’t going to bring up the past. I wasn’t going to start a screaming match in public. I wasn’t going to demand answers. Those were all useless emotional reactions. Fighting wouldn’t solve anything, it would only alert him that I knew. What I needed was a completely compiled data report, and an airtight exit strategy. 3 On the cab ride home, I organized all the raw data into visual comparison charts. I uploaded the file to my private encrypted server, locking it behind three layers of security. Then, I opened the draft of my resignation letter. Eric walked out of the master bathroom, drying his hair with a towel. He saw me sitting at my laptop and casually asked, “Still working?” “Yeah. Just running some diagnostics,” I replied, not even turning my head. He grunted an acknowledgment, threw himself onto the bed, and started scrolling through TikTok. Diagnostics. That was exactly what it was. Diagnosing the most efficient, surgical way to completely excise this man from my life. On the third morning, I woke up a full hour earlier than usual. Eric was still dead asleep, snoring softly into his pillow. I quietly washed my face, changed into my sleekest blazer, and pulled two freshly printed manila envelopes from my bag. I placed the first envelope squarely on his desk. Right on top of it, I dropped my set of keys to our shared apartment. I stuck a yellow Post-it note to the envelope. It only had one sentence. Your seventh place doesn’t deserve an apartment key. I wrote the algorithm, and I didn’t tweak a single parameter. Goodbye. The second envelope had a neat printed label on the front: HR Department – Employee Interpersonal Assessment. I was going to hand-deliver it the second I got to work. I swiped my badge at the office doors at exactly 8:00 AM. Rachel, the HR Director, was just unlocking her office. “Avery? You’re in early,” she noted, looking slightly surprised. I walked straight up to her and handed her the envelope. “Rachel, I need you to review this immediately. Also, here is my formal letter of resignation.” The friendly smile dropped from her face. “Wait, what’s going on?” “Nothing bad. Just looking for a change of scenery,” I smiled politely. “The report inside explains everything in detail. Take your time reading it. I’ll be back this afternoon to finalize my offboarding.” She tore the envelope open and pulled out the charts. Her eyes immediately locked onto a specific paragraph: Veronica and Eric demonstrate high-frequency, undocumented personal fraternization, creating severe conflicts of interest regarding workplace fairness and promotion evaluations. Rachel’s brow furrowed deeply. I didn’t stick around to explain. I simply turned on my heel and walked toward the elevators. At 10:00 AM, the product department had their mandatory weekly sync. I didn’t attend. Technically, I didn’t work there anymore. But I knew Eric was reading his envelope right at that exact moment. I had printed two copies of his specific data breakdown. One for the apartment, and one that I timed perfectly. I had Sam, a junior dev from my team, slip it onto Eric’s desk while he was on a coffee break. My phone buzzed. A text from Sam. Avery, Eric just opened that folder you left. All the blood drained out of his face. He looked like he saw a ghost. He literally sprinted out of the meeting room before the VP even finished talking. I didn’t reply. Twenty minutes later, my phone violently vibrated seventeen times in a row. Seventeen missed calls from Eric. They all went straight to a dead tone. I had already blocked his number, his socials, and his work email. Then came a text from Ben, a senior developer who sat next to Eric. Avery, Eric is freaking out asking where your keys are. He rushed back to the apartment and realized you locked him out.

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “517580”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

1 My brother was a minor villain in a syrupy romance novel, destined to be ditched by the heroine and fed to the fish by the hero. To save him, I was bound to a system at birth. Whenever he dated the lead, I peed on him; whenever he wrote love letters, I tore them apart with my chubby hands, leaving him too drained to meddle in their affairs. Years later, on receiving my college letter, Mark summoned me. “You’re grown. I’ll fulfill my duty and do what I must.” The system pinged: He planned to bomb the leads’ 10th anniversary. The next day, I brought a bleached-blond punk to Mark, leaning on his tattooed shoulder with boba in one hand and an ultrasound in the other. “Look! He’s no loser—he’ll help run our business once he upgrades his bike. Hand over the shares!” Mark’s face twisted. He dropped the explosives, grabbed my ear, and peeled me off the punk. “My business can wait! Today, I’m dealing with you!” … “Oww, oww, oww!” I grimaced in pain. I frantically pried at his fingers to rescue my poor ear. “Mark! You literally just said I am all grown up! You cannot keep bullying me like I am a little kid!” “Besides…” I gazed up lovingly at the blond punk, Jax, and then lowered my head in exaggerated shyness. “The love of my life is standing right here. Do I not deserve some dignity?” Mark’s face was beet red. He looked like he was going to breathe fire. “You are a child! What do you know about love?!” He snatched a broom from the housekeeper, looking fully prepared to smack my behind. The system’s voice suddenly echoed in my head, sounding genuinely amazed. Host! Host! His Threat Level really dropped from 100 to 90! I felt incredibly smug. Of course it did. Our mother passed away giving birth to me. Mark had played the role of both father and mother to raise me. Now that his precious little princess was about to be kidnapped by a tattooed punk, if he could actually ignore it, I would bow down to him. I dodged around the coffee table to escape him while putting on a tearful, victimized face. “You were willing to abandon me and the entire company just for Cindy! I feel the exact same way about my baby! I would betray the whole world for him! Who are you to say I do not understand love?!” Mark froze. Right at that moment, his phone rang. Cindy’s voice drifted through the speaker. “I thought you were going to try and ruin my wedding anniversary with my husband. It seems you actually have some self awareness.” “Mark, I know you have done a lot for me.” “But you also have your sister—that little burden. If I had chosen you back then, your sister would constantly be fighting me for your attention.” “However, I can give you one more chance to serve me. My husband and I want some alone time today, so you can babysit our kids.” Mark’s face darkened instantly. He gripped his phone so tightly the veins on the back of his hand bulged, but he did not say a word. Cindy always played the role of a delicate, innocent flower in front of the male lead. She only dared to speak to Mark with such arrogant entitlement because she knew his love for her had zero boundaries. The system blared an alarm. Warning! The villain’s Threat Level is rising rapidly! Please take immediate action, Host! If he actually harms the male and female leads, this pocket universe will collapse, and you will be completely erased! I shot Jax a pointed look. He immediately understood the assignment. He nodded solemnly, marched over, and knocked the broom out of Mark’s hand. He stepped protectively in front of me, glaring at Mark with fiery intensity. “My girl is the queen of the gothic underworld.” “When people bully her, I block it. When she has no money for food, I carry the burden. What right does an old man like you have to disrespect her?!” He turned to look at me, his eyes burning with dramatic passion. “My dark queen, do you understand?” I looked deeply moved. Tears welled up in my eyes as I threw myself into Jax’s arms. “My brother does not love me anymore! Well, I do not want him either!” “You said you wanted to do donuts on his grave with your motorcycle? I will not stop you anymore.” Mark squeezed his eyes shut. I could practically see his heartbeat pounding against his chest. “Mark, you were the one who begged to enter my house before. I am giving you a chance now, do not waste it.” “Can you be here in ten minutes?” Cindy demanded arrogantly from the phone. Mark ground his teeth together and hung up the phone. “I am about to have a stroke because of Penelope, and you want me to babysit for you?!” “I am busy!” He threw his phone onto the sofa and chugged three glasses of ice water before his breathing finally leveled out. “Are you really pregnant?” “Get rid of the baby, break up with this punk, and you can still be my sister.” This time, I didn’t refuse immediately. If I acted too stubborn, what if he just gave up on me and went right back to chasing the female lead? After all, he was the devoted second male lead that left countless readers heartbroken. His feelings for the female lead were no joke. I asked, “Mark, why are you against me and my baby?” Mark looked at me like I was a complete idiot. “Because he cannot give you a good life.” “If I knew you were going to end up with a deadbeat punk, I never would have spoiled you. I should have just thrown you in the slums.” I immediately applied his own logic back to him. “But Cindy never gave you a good life either.” “Just to make her smile, you spent thirty million dollars at an auction to buy the Heart of the Ocean. You broke the company’s entire cash flow. But she just turned around, wore the necklace you bought, and married Liam!” I pointed out the window at Buster, the golden retriever. “That dog has bitten me so many times. You refuse to get rid of it just because Cindy gave it to you.” “Your reasons for opposing us make absolutely no sense! You are just jealous because we are true lovers who actually get to be together!” Jax looked at me with stars in his eyes. “You are so smart. I officially crown you the Goddess of Wisdom.” He dropped to one knee and started belting out a cheesy love song. His singing mixed with the dog barking outside. Mark pinched the bridge of his nose. He looked completely defeated. “Butler, take Buster back to Cindy. I do not want him anymore.” “And now I am ordering you—kick this little blond punk out of my house.” The system chimed happily. The second male lead’s Threat Level has dropped again! Keep up the good work, Host! We had made serious progress today. I knew the concept of using a carrot and a stick. “You go home first, baby. I will come find you tomorrow.” After sending Jax off, I planned to get some well deserved rest. But suddenly, the security guard rushed into the living room, looking hesitant. “Sir… Miss Cindy is here. She says she needs to see you.” Mark shot up from the sofa, his eyes wide with disbelief. “What did you say?” Noticing I was still in the room, he realized he was losing his composure. He cleared his throat and sat back down. I took the initiative. “Let Cindy in.” Mark’s mind was already flying toward her anyway. It was better to keep her right under my nose so I could see exactly what kind of drama she was trying to stir up. Cindy ran into the living room, sobbing. She threw herself straight into Mark’s arms. Mark’s entire body went rigid. “Mark, Liam is bullying me! We were supposed to have a romantic date tonight, but he took a business call and just left me at the restaurant.” “I am so heartbroken. You are the only person I could turn to… boohoo…” Mark’s eyes immediately softened with an uncontrollable, painful sympathy. “Do not cry. I will protect you.” His clenched fists slowly relaxed. He raised a hand and gently stroked Cindy’s hair, his eyes darkening. “I will make anyone who hurts you pay the price.” The system started screaming in my head. Warning! The second male lead is formulating a plan to assassinate the male lead! Host, do something! Aaaaaah! I smiled brightly and poured Cindy a cup of tea. “Cindy, you should just stay at our house tonight! My brother is the best at taking care of people.” Cindy did this all the time. Whenever she had a minor argument with the male lead, she would run to Mark and cry about it. Mark would get furious on her behalf and start sabotaging the male lead’s business deals. Then, she would suddenly get upset again, turning around and blaming my brother for ruining her happiness. Mark looked at her with pure anticipation. Just as I expected, Cindy raised her hand and violently swatted the teacup off the table. “Does it look like it is your turn to speak?!” “My husband is the heir to the biggest conglomerate in the city! I have seen plenty of little girls like you. You are just hoping my husband and I get a divorce so you can take my place, aren’t you?!” She stared at my face, a flash of pure, ugly jealousy crossing her eyes. Then, she raised her hand high, aiming a slap right at my face. “A feral child with no mother to raise her really has no manners! I am going to teach you a lesson on your brother’s behalf!” I could not dodge in time, so I instinctively squeezed my eyes shut. But the sharp sting I expected never came. I opened my eyes. Mark had stepped in front of me, taking the slap for me. A bright red handprint blossomed across his cheek. He frowned slightly. “Cindy, I know you are in a bad mood right now.” “But my sister is still a child. Could you show her some respect?” Even though I had lived in this world for eighteen years, I was still utterly astounded by how pathetic his love-brain was. I quietly pulled out my phone and summoned the punk. Despite Mark’s humble, compromising tone, Cindy still exploded. “You are defending another woman against me?!” “I am not staying here! Enjoy the feeling of losing me!” She turned to run out. A flash of panic immediately appeared in Mark’s eyes. [Host! Mark’s Threat Level has shot up to 99! He is planning to lock the female lead in the basement for forced love!] I calmly pulled my phone up to my ear and turned on my most annoying, whiny baby voice. “Baby~ where are you?” “My brother is going out tonight. Take me to get a tattoo! I want to get your name tattooed on my tummy!” “You are my whole world, and our baby’s world too!” Mark’s feet, which had been moving to chase Cindy, slammed to a dead halt. “That old man finally backed off.” “I am almost there, baby! I am going to spoil you so much!” The obnoxious revving of a motorcycle engine echoed outside the courtyard. Jax drove his bike straight into the yard, intentionally running right over a patch of Mark’s carefully cultivated orchids. They were Cindy’s favorite flowers. He reached his hand out to me, flashing a crooked, edgy smirk. “Baby, you do not have to put up a strong front around that old man anymore.” “Because your strength is here.” Mark spun around, striding toward me with the veins bulging in his forehead. “Tell him to get out.” I sidestepped him, hopped onto the back of Jax’s bike, and wrapped my arms tightly around his waist. “If you cannot bear to let Cindy leave, then I cannot bear to kick my baby out either!” “You go chase Cindy. I am going to sleep at the castle my baby rents! He lives there with a dozen of his brothers. I will feel so safe living with all of them!” The second the words left my mouth, the system started clapping for me. [Host, I am scanning the second male lead’s brainwaves, and it is completely blank!] [There is absolutely zero trend toward villainy right now!] Cindy walked away slowly, turning her head back every three steps, fully expecting Mark to drop to his knees and beg her forgiveness like he always did. But she quickly realized that Mark was staring fixedly at me and the punk, his face turning an alarming shade of purple. He did not spare her a single glance. She shouted again, much louder this time. “Mark! I am really leaving! I am never going to speak to you again!” Mark waved his hand dismissively in her direction without looking. “Hurry up and leave, stop interrupting me while I talk to my sister.” Seeing that Mark truly had no intention of coddling her, Cindy absolutely lost her mind. She stormed back over to me, glaring at me like a wife catching a mistress. “Trying to seduce my husband was not enough for you?!” “Now you are watching Mark and this guy fight over you, are you proud of yourself?!” Her logic gave me whiplash. “Lady, Mark is my biological brother.” “What did you just call me?! Are you calling me old?!” “My husband told me I was the little baby in his arms just yesterday!” She grabbed the collar of my shirt, raising her hands to scratch my face with her long acrylic nails. But Jax shoved her hard, sending her tumbling to the ground. “Cindy…” Mark’s pupils contracted. “Security! Throw this punk out!” “Who dares touch me?!” Jax let out a dramatic roar. He looked at Mark with an expression of deep, tragic disappointment. “You are a man. You can be injured, but you can never be weak.” “Since you cannot protect my baby, leave her to me. I will guard my girl.” He revved the engine, ready to peel out. “But remember this—keep your baby in line! If she breaks my baby’s wings, I will destroy your entire heaven!” I cheered, throwing my arms up in the air, looking at him with absolute worship. “Baby, you are so cool! You are way cooler than my brother!” I glanced down at my arm, which was red from where Cindy had grabbed me, and pouted dramatically. “I am a delicate little flower, and I am being crushed by others, and my brother does not even care!” “I am going to rely on you for the rest of my life!” Mark leaned back against the wall, closing his eyes as he aggressively massaged his temples. “Escort Miss Cindy out.” Cindy suddenly let out a cold, sharp laugh. “You show so much favoritism to your sister, but did you know she cannot wait for you to die?” “When you refused to babysit for me, I guessed you were brainwashed by her. So I had someone investigate. And look what I found—the chat logs between her and her boyfriend.” She threw a stack of printed papers onto the ground. Mark picked them up. As he read them, his face grew even darker. He handed them to me, his voice freezing cold. “Did you say these things?” In the chat logs, I had texted Jax: [As soon as the explosives on my brother detonate, you immediately contact the family lawyer to inherit the company. We are going to turn the corporation into a motorcycle manufacturing plant.] I was speechless. I did write that. But Jax and I were literally just acting. I was sending him the script we were supposed to rehearse. Cindy crossed her arms over her chest. “Nothing to say? I guess that means you admit it.” “Mark, I am giving you two choices. Either you come back to my side and continue being my dog.” “Or you keep taking care of this ungrateful backstabber of a sister, and I will never see you again for the rest of my life.” My heart squeezed tight. No one knew just how deeply Mark loved the female lead better than I did. If he chose the first option, interfered in their relationship, and collapsed the world… I would be erased. Mark’s hands clenched into tight fists, then slowly relaxed. He opened his mouth.

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “517597”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

1 In my last life, the custom cake I ordered for my Valentine’s Day engagement gala caused a mass poisoning. Fifty-five people went into organ failure. Eight died. The crosshairs instantly locked onto me. Every toxicology report proved the cake was laced with a lethal toxin, and I had no way to defend myself. I became the internet’s favorite monster, a real-life black widow hunted by the public. I was convicted and thrown into a concrete cell. My parents drained their accounts and worked themselves to the bone trying to fund my appeals, only to drop dead from sheer exhaustion. When the news reached me behind bars, my world shattered completely. I rammed my head into the cinderblock wall, ending it all in a pool of blood. Then I opened my eyes. I was standing in the lobby, right before the engagement gala began. “Miss Sophie, the cake has just been delivered to the ballroom. Would you like to inspect it?” I gasped, my lungs burning as if I had forgotten how to breathe. The hotel manager, Mr. Brooks, stood in front of me. His posture was impeccable, his customer-service smile practiced to absolute perfection. That face. Those exact words. This exact moment. The memory was carved so deeply into my bones that I would recognize it in the dark. I had been reborn. “Where is the cake?” My voice came out as a gravelly croak, scraped from the very bottom of my throat. “In the dessert pavilion inside the main ballroom,” Mr. Brooks replied, his polite smile never faltering. “Your fiancé, Tristan, just took a look. He said it was absolutely stunning.” I glanced down at my phone screen. It was 10:47 AM. The gala officially commenced at 12:18 PM. I had exactly one and a half hours. There was no time to question the physics of time travel. Only one desperate, screaming thought hammered against the inside of my skull. I had to stop the massacre. Canceling the event was impossible. Over sixty guests from both sides of the family were already en route in their limousines and town cars. The floral arrangements were set. The gold-foiled invitations had been mailed out weeks ago. If I pulled the plug right now, no one would believe my warnings of a mass poisoning. They would chalk it up to a bridal panic attack. My parents and Tristan would physically march me through the double doors to save face. I had no choice. I had to walk straight into the minefire. I took a deep, shuddering breath. The cake was poisoned, but I wasn’t the one who spiked it. Who did? The bakery? The catering staff? Or was it someone standing right next to me? “Sophie!” Lily stood at the arched entrance of the ballroom. Her makeup was flawless, and she was practically bouncing toward me in her designer heels. She was my younger cousin. After her parents passed away, my mother took her in and raised her like a second daughter. “Soph? You look awful.” She leaned in, her meticulously plucked eyebrows knitting together. I stared at her, my jaw locked. In my previous life, Lily’s name wasn’t on the casualty list. She claimed she had stepped out to take a phone call and missed the dessert course entirely. Before I could interrogate her, a sugary, melodic voice echoed from the hallway. “There’s my gorgeous girl!” Eleanor glided toward us, holding a velvet burgundy gift box in her manicured hands. My future mother-in-law. The woman who had always treated me like royalty. In my past life, she ended up in the ICU from the poisoned cake. This time, I swore to myself I would protect her. “Eleanor,” I said, forcing my facial muscles to relax into a warm expression. “Oh, my sweet child.” Eleanor took my hand, her eyes shimmering with unshed, happy tears. “You are marrying my son today. I have prayed for this afternoon for years.” She pressed the heavy velvet box into my palms, gesturing for me to open it. I pulled the silk ribbon and popped the lid. Nestled in the white satin was a breathtaking antique emerald bracelet. The stones were massive, catching the crystal chandelier light and throwing off a brilliant, liquid green fire. “Take it,” Eleanor insisted, physically slipping the heavy platinum band over my wrist. “This means you are officially the daughter I always wanted.” Lily sighed dramatically from the sidelines, flashing a bright smile. “Eleanor spoils you so much, Soph.” Eleanor looped her arm through mine, her tone dripping with absolute adoration. “Your sister deserves nothing but the best.” A brief flare of warmth touched my chest, but it was immediately swallowed by a paralyzing chill. I had to find the source of the poison before the bodies started dropping. 2 I practically sprinted to the dessert pavilion. The cake sat on a crystal pedestal. Six tiers of vanilla sponge, fresh imported berries, and intricate sugarwork. It looked identical to the nightmare in my memory. “Where is the security camera for this section?” I snapped, turning to Mr. Brooks. “Right above us, on the ceiling. Maintenance did a full sweep just last night,” he answered with absolute confidence. “Take me to the security room. Now.” Moments later, I was standing in the dimly lit control center, surrounded by glowing monitors. The technician clicked the mouse, switching to the ballroom feed. The screen was pitch black. Static. Mr. Brooks went rigid. A thin layer of sweat immediately glossed his forehead. “Wait… I personally signed off on the maintenance log yesterday. It was working perfectly!” The technician frantically hammered at his keyboard for ten agonizing minutes, his face flushed. Finally, he looked up, wiping his brow. “The camera was manually disconnected from the power grid. Sometime around two in the morning.” Two in the morning. Someone intentionally blinded the room. The blood in my veins turned to ice water. In my past life, when the police said the camera was broken, I thought it was just horrific luck. Corroded wires. A blown fuse. Now the truth was staring me in the face. It was premeditated murder. But I didn’t have time to play detective with a broken wire. I had less than ninety minutes. The cake was the immediate threat. “Where is the delivery driver? Who plated this?” I fired the questions off like bullets, my words clipping together. Mr. Brooks was panting now, desperate to save his job. “The driver’s van has a continuous dashcam. The box never left his hands from the bakery to our loading dock.” “Kitchen logs show it went straight into the designated walk-in cooler. Nobody touched it.” “The catering staff plated it under the gaze of camera four. The footage is crystal clear.” Every single link in the chain was secure. The cake had been handled in a virtual vacuum. Yet, in my past life, it was still lethal. That left two options. First, the bakery spiked it. But the owner was a sweet old man with zero motive. The police grilled him for a month last time and totally cleared his name. He didn’t have the motive, and he didn’t have the window. That left the second, terrifying option. The cake arrived perfectly safe. The poison was introduced right here in the dessert pavilion. The killer created the blind spot at 2:00 AM specifically for this. They had all the time in the world to slip into the shadows, contaminate the food, and blend back into the crowd. I didn’t have time to hunt a ghost. But I did have time to change the variables. “Destroy the cake,” I ordered Mr. Brooks. “Send someone to a premium bakery downtown and buy a new one right off the display shelf. I don’t care what it looks like. Swipe my black card. I want it back here in twenty minutes.” Mr. Brooks physically recoiled, his mouth falling open. “Miss Sophie, we can’t possibly…” “Do it.” I grabbed his arm, leaning in. “And get a tripod. Mount a smartphone directly facing the new cake. Hit record. I want every single second filmed in 4K until the moment we cut it.” It was my duct-tape fix for the severed security camera. Mr. Brooks scrambled away, his leather oxfords squeaking against the polished marble. I checked my phone. 11:13 AM. The replacement would arrive by 11:33 at the latest. Twenty minutes. If I could just survive the next twenty minutes, the tainted cake would be incinerated, and the new one would be under constant digital surveillance. The chessboard was reset. I was going to beat them. 3 At 11:35 AM, the replacement cake arrived. The delivery boy placed the thick cardboard box on the marble counter. Right in front of my eyes, he broke the tamper-evident seal on the lid. The seal tore perfectly. “Zero-contact delivery, ma’am,” the kid said, handing me the clipboard. I nodded, signing the invoice with a shaking hand. I instructed the catering staff to slide the new cake onto the pedestal. Across the aisle, a smartphone sat perfectly balanced on a ring-light tripod, its red recording dot pulsing steadily. From this second forward, that pastry was the most heavily monitored object in the building. I turned around to head back to the welcome arch, ready to greet the guests. My phone buzzed in my clutch. It was a text from an unknown number. Did you really think swapping a cake would save you? My fingers clamped around the phone so hard my knuckles turned white. I snapped my head up, my eyes sweeping the grand corridor. Waiters were pushing brass bar carts. Housekeeping carried stacks of folded linens. Everything looked painfully normal. No one was staring at me. No one was hunched over a glowing screen. Who are you? I typed back. Silence. I waited ten agonizing seconds before typing again. The cake is gone. You missed your window. The reply came instantly. What made you so sure the poison was in the cake? I stared at the glowing pixels, a cold sweat breaking out across the back of my neck. He was right. I had blindly assumed the cake was the weapon because the toxicology reports in my past life pointed there. But I had aggressively altered the timeline. If the killer’s true target was the cake, they would be scrambling right now. Instead, they were mocking me. Unless. Unless the poison was never in the cake to begin with. The real weapon was hiding in plain sight. In a place no one would ever think to swab. I had locked down the dessert. But I left the champagne flutes exposed. The silverware. The woven napkins. Every single item resting on those pristine white tablecloths. I spun on my heel and sprinted back into the ballroom. The beverage station sat to the left of the dessert pavilion. Four massive crystal pitchers of fresh-squeezed juice and iced tea were lined up perfectly. A waiter was already tipping a pitcher, preparing to pre-fill the glassware for the tables. “Stop right there,” I commanded, forcing my voice to stay level. “Don’t pour another drop.” The waiter froze, blinking in confusion. “Miss Sophie, the guests are sitting down soon. We need the tables set.” “Change of plans. We’re doing bottled beverages only.” I looked at Mr. Brooks, who had just rushed back into the room. “Take those pitchers back to the kitchen and dump them. Bring out sealed, glass-bottle juices. Anything you have in stock, as long as the factory seal is intact.” Mr. Brooks looked like he wanted to cry, but his hospitality training took over. He snapped his fingers, and his staff whisked the pitchers away. Three minutes later, crates of premium bottled juices were rolled out. The staff began placing the unopened bottles at every seat. I stood by the beverage station, my eyes darting across the room. Seeing those metal caps perfectly intact settled my racing heart just a fraction. “What about the silverware?” I asked the head waiter. “The steak knives, the forks, the porcelain?” “Sterilized in the high-temp industrial dishwasher this morning. Brought straight out here for plating,” he answered quickly. I nodded slowly. “Keep a sample of every single thing that touches a guest’s mouth today. Plate, cup, napkin. Bag it.” The head waiter looked at me like I was insane, but he nodded. It was 12:05 PM. The heavy mahogany doors opened, and the guests began filtering in. Eleanor approached me, her silk couture dress rustling softly. She reached out and grasped my hands. “Sophie, darling, you look positively pale.” “I’m fine, Eleanor,” I lied, forcing a radiant smile. “Just pre-wedding jitters. Didn’t sleep much.” She patted the back of my hand affectionately. “Don’t you worry about a thing. Today is just a beautiful formality. We are officially family now.” Looking into her warm, maternal eyes, a sharp pang of guilt hit me. She turned away to embrace an arriving aunt. I anchored myself near the beverage station, my gaze sweeping over the seventy seated guests. The bottled juices were popped open. The factory seals clicked. The new cake sat perfectly still in the lens of the smartphone. At 12:18 PM, the live jazz band played a crescendo, and the MC took the stage. The gala had officially begun. I didn’t touch a drop of water or a crumb of bread. My eyes never stopped scanning. Guests poured their drinks. One glass. Two glasses. Three. People clinked their flutes together. Laughter echoed off the vaulted ceiling. My fiancé, Tristan, motioned for me to join him at the front to cut the cake. Nobody had collapsed. The suffocating grip on my chest finally began to loosen. 4 The MC was practically shouting into the microphone with manufactured enthusiasm. “Ladies and gentlemen, let us raise a glass to our stunning couple on this beautiful—” His voice was entirely drowned out by a blood-curdling scream. “Oh my god! Somebody help! He’s not breathing!” I spun around so fast my heel caught on the carpet. Just a few feet away from the dessert table, a little boy was convulsing violently on the marble floor. His lips were a sickening shade of blue. It was Sarah’s son. Sarah was one of the hotel waitresses, and the management had allowed her to bring her kid to sit in the back room during her shift. I sprinted toward them. The boy’s eyes were rolled back into his skull. Thick white foam bubbled past his lips. “Call an ambulance! Call 911 right now!” I screamed. Mr. Brooks looked like he was going to pass out. He fumbled his cell phone with trembling hands. Tristan rushed over, his face draining of color. “Christ. That looks like toxic shock.” “What did he put in his mouth?” I demanded, dropping to my knees. Sarah was sobbing hysterically, clutching the boy’s twitching hand. “The cake! He sneaked a lick of icing off your cake!” The entire ballroom went dead silent. Dozens of eyes snapped toward me like heat-seeking missiles. “Are you serious? The cake is poisoned?” “But she personally ordered that custom cake…” A freezing wave of dread crashed over me. It was happening exactly like my past life. But that was impossible. I swapped the cake! No one moved. They just stared at me. I could see the suspicion brewing in their eyes. The fear. The disgust. It was a perfect mirror of the nightmare that killed me. “Everyone, calm down!” Eleanor suddenly stepped into the center of the crowd, her voice echoing with commanding authority. “We don’t have the facts yet. Stop the wild accusations!” Before anyone could stop her, she marched straight to the pedestal, grabbed a silver dessert fork, scooped a massive chunk of frosting, and shoved it into her mouth. “Eleanor, stop!” I lunged forward, slapping the fork out of her hand. It clattered loudly against the floor. “I’m testing it for them,” Eleanor said, looking me dead in the eye. “You are my daughter. I trust you with my life.” Her voice was steady as a rock. Her gaze didn’t waver for a second. Hot tears pricked the corners of my eyes. She turned to face the terrified crowd. “Listen to me. Today is my son’s engagement. I stake my personal reputation on Sophie’s character. She is no murderer.” She didn’t yell, but the sheer weight of her conviction silenced the room. Sarah was cradling her son’s head, weeping bitterly. “If my baby dies…” “I take full responsibility,” Eleanor said softly, walking over to the grieving mother. “I will cover every single cent of his medical bills. I will get him the best specialists in the country.” “But you will not frame my daughter-in-law.” Her words were absolute steel. The panic in the room dialed back to a tense murmur. The paramedics burst through the doors, followed closely by a squad of uniformed police officers. A tall detective in a trench coat approached me, flipping open his notepad. “Miss Sophie? I’m Detective Reid. I need you to step aside for a few questions.” After doing a sweep of the room and getting a brief rundown, Reid locked his sharp eyes on me. “Why did you swap the original cake before the party started?” Every guest in earshot held their breath, waiting for my answer. “Because I knew someone was planning to taint the food.” I couldn’t tell him the truth. If I brought up reincarnation, I’d be handcuffed and locked in a psych ward before sundown. I needed a bulletproof excuse to buy myself time. “Someone tipped me off,” I said firmly. “Who?” “An anonymous number.” I pulled my phone from my clutch, opened the threatening text message, and handed the device to the detective. Reid read the screen. His jaw tightened. “So you replaced the food and secured the evidence.” Reid narrowed his eyes. “Then how do you explain a child currently fighting for his life in the back of an ambulance?” That question felt like a knife twisting in my gut. I had done everything right. Every single thing. “Because he wasn’t the only one who ate it.” I pointed directly at Eleanor. “My mother-in-law swallowed a huge bite right in front of everyone. She’s completely fine!” It had been nearly thirty minutes since the paramedics arrived. Eleanor was standing upright, breathing normally, without a single symptom. “Eleanor, how are you feeling?” I asked, grabbing her arm. She offered a reassuring smile. “I feel perfectly normal, sweetheart.” Reid closed his notepad with a snap. “Miss Sophie, we will look into the text message. But given the circumstances, I’m going to have to ask you to come down to the precinct.” I nodded, then turned to face the hushed ballroom. “I have two things to say before I leave.” “First, every single piece of evidence from the original setup has already been sent to an independent, third-party toxicology lab. Until those results come back, nobody touches a thing.” It was a complete bluff. There was no third-party lab. But the police didn’t know that. If they thought the chain of custody was out of their jurisdiction, it prevented any dirty cops or bribed officials from tampering with the local evidence. Right now, I didn’t trust a single soul in this room. “Second.” I took a deep, lung-expanding breath. “I know exactly who the killer is.” The ballroom erupted into gasps.

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “517581”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

1 During the seventh year of our long-distance relationship, Gaff began complaining incessantly about a new intern named Gwen. “I’ve never seen an intern so incredibly useless. Someone actually had to teach her how to use the printer.” “I explained the formatting to her ten times, and she still got it wrong. Does she have water in her brain?” “Do you want to hear the latest stupid thing she did? She managed to spill hot coffee right over our photo.” Whenever Gaff spoke, the conversation inevitably drifted back to Gwen. I once half-jokingly teased him about it. “You know, in romantic comedies, the arrogant boss always ends up falling for the clumsy intern. If that happens, what am I supposed to do?” Gaff had scoffed, his tone dripping with disdain. “Are you serious? Even if the sun rose in the west and the oceans ran dry, I wouldn’t waste a single glance on her.” Then came our seven-year anniversary. I drove for ten grueling hours, covering over seven hundred miles to surprise him for his birthday. But when I pushed the door to his apartment open, Gaff and Gwen were leaning in close, their lips mere inches from touching. I stood frozen in the doorway, my fingernails digging deep into my palms. At that exact moment, I decided I was done fighting for this relationship. … Seeing me, Gaff froze, quickly taking a step back to distance himself from her. The apartment fell into a heavy, suffocating silence. “What are you doing here?” he asked. I stared at him, momentarily speechless. In the past, even when we were separated by a six-hour train ride and hundreds of miles, Gaff would make the trip just to hold me for a few minutes. When his friends mocked him for being hopelessly whipped, he would snap right back at them: You don’t know anything. I don’t want to waste a single second I could be spending with Maeve. But this time, when I was the one who had crossed the distance to see him, he didn’t pull me into his arms. He didn’t murmur how much he missed me in that low, raspy voice of his. Instead, his handsome brow furrowed with irritation, his voice laced with an accusatory edge. I stood still, glancing down at the cake box in my hands. “I came to celebrate your birthday.” Gaff stepped forward, taking the box from me. As he reached out, I noticed a colorful, hand-woven thread bracelet on his wrist. I recognized it instantly. I had seen it the last time he visited me, and the memory was etched into my mind. Gaff despised wearing anything on his wrists, claiming it was too much of a hassle. Even the expensive Rolex I had saved up to buy him for his birthday had only been worn once, on the day I gave it to him. When I had asked about the cheap bracelet back then, he had dismissed my jealousy. It’s just a small token of appreciation from a colleague. I was rushing to catch the train and forgot to take it off. Now, looking closer, I realized the truth. He hadn’t forgotten to take it off. He simply couldn’t bear to part with it. Gaff walked past me to set the cake on the counter, not sparing me another glance. He didn’t hold my hand, nor did he ask about my long drive. He didn’t even notice that my legs felt as heavy as lead, making it difficult to take a single step. Gemma, however, was watching me. The initial look of disappointment and annoyance on her face vanished, replaced by a sweet, welcoming smile as she walked toward me. “You must be Maeve. I’ve seen your picture on Tris—” She caught herself quickly, offering a polite correction. “On Gaff’s desk.” My fingers tightened into fists. My gaze fell to her wrist. She was wearing an identical hand-woven bracelet, the colors perfectly matching Gaff’s. Noticing my stare, Gwen proudly lifted her wrist. “Pretty, isn’t it? I wove it myself. I made one for Gaff too, and he loved it so much he won’t even take it off to shower.” So much for forgetting to take it off. She reached out to take my arm, pulling me into the living room. “Maeve, if you like it, I can weave one for you too.” “No need,” I began, but Gaff interrupted me before the words could leave my mouth. “Forget it,” Gaff said, his voice carrying a gentle, scolding tone that felt far too intimate. “You cut your fingers twice just making those two. Do you want to lose your hands entirely?” Gwen pouted, looking up at him. “I was just inexperienced.” “Just admit you’re clumsy, don’t use inexperience as an excuse.” He was teasing her, but his eyes were filled with an unmistakable warmth. He then turned to me. “If you want one, Maeve, I’ll buy you a proper one, okay?” I looked at him, about to decline, when his eyes suddenly narrowed. “What happened to your arm?” I looked down. Blood was slowly seeping through my sleeve at the elbow. The highway had been dark, and my vision had been blurred by exhaustion. I had scraped against a concrete barrier on the way. I must have injured my elbow then. Gaff’s brow furrowed with concern. “Where else are you hurt?” I shook my head. “I’ll get the first-aid kit.” “I’ll get it!” Gwen volunteered, quickly running toward the storage closet. A moment later, she returned with the kit. “Let me help Maeve clean it.” “I’ll do it,” Gaff said, taking the kit from her. He offered a tight, forced smile. “She’s incredibly sensitive to pain. I don’t think she could handle your rough hands.” Gwen handed over the kit reluctantly, letting out a soft huff. “I only applied a little pressure when I cleaned your scratch the other day. Are you going to bring that up forever?” As Gaff gently dabbed the antiseptic on my cut, I looked at Gwen. “Do you come here often?” Gwen stared at me, as if trying to calculate the meaning behind my question. “You seem very familiar with the apartment,” I continued, my voice quiet. “You knew exactly where the first-aid kit was kept.” She picked up a strawberry from the bowl on the table, taking a bite with casual indifference. “I lived here for two months, so I know where most things are.” I averted my eyes, my nails digging deeper into my palms until the pain became sharp. I looked back at Gaff, my expression frozen. Having finished bandaging my arm, Gaff looked up, meeting my eyes with a look of utter confusion. “What’s wrong?” A second later, the realization seemed to hit him. He glanced at Gwen, then looked back at me, offering a hurried explanation. “She’s incredibly clumsy, Maeve. She managed to fracture her leg just trying to buy some craft supplies. She didn’t have anyone else in the city, so I had to take her in and look after her for a couple of months.” Gwen rolled her eyes at him. “Are you telling my embarrassing stories again? I only got distracted because I was trying to find the exact colors you liked.” “When did this happen?” I asked. “About three months ago,” Gwen replied. Three months ago. That was the exact time Gaff and I had planned our dream trip to Iceland to see the Northern Lights. I had saved up, secured my leave, and bought the tickets. But the day before we were set to leave, he had called to cancel, claiming an urgent business trip had come up. From that day on, he had stopped calling me as often. Whenever I tried to video call him, he would quickly hang up, citing poor reception, meetings, or client dinners. Now, the pieces fell into place. He hadn’t been working. He had canceled our trip to nurse Gwen back to health in his apartment. The answer was staring me in the face. Feeling a sudden wave of physical exhaustion, I excused myself to the bathroom. There, resting on the edge of the sink, was a tube of lipstick in the exact shade Gwen was wearing. I stared at it, a bitter, mocking smile creeping onto my face in the mirror. She had never fully moved out. I had driven ten hours, covering seven hundred miles, but the cake wasn’t the only gift I had brought. I had also brought a surprise he had been begging for. Every time we had to part after our brief visits, Gaff would look at me with tears in his eyes. Maeve, every time you leave, it feels like my heart is being ripped out of my chest. When can we finally live in the same city? Now, the opportunity had arrived. My company was opening two new regional branches, one in the South, near him, and one in the North, thousands of miles away. The North offered a much larger market and better career prospects, but I had chosen the South without hesitation, solely to end our long-distance struggle. I looked at the lipstick on the counter, silently asking myself: Will he even care? When I returned to the living room, Gaff and Gwen were sitting close together, laughing as they ate a different slice of cake. The cake I had brought sat untouched in the corner, forgotten and ignored. I walked over, picked up my cake, and carried it to the refrigerator. It was an ice cream cake; it would melt if left out. But the moment I pulled the refrigerator door open, I froze. The shelves were packed to the brim with fresh strawberries. The sight dragged me instantly into the darkest memories of my childhood. At the group home where I grew up, the cook had used a strawberry to lure me into a dark, locked pantry. The door had slammed shut, plunging me into pitch-black terror as he advanced on me. Since that day, strawberries had been my trigger, causing severe panic attacks and flashbacks. For years, Gaff had made sure there was never a single strawberry in our presence. He had even blocked strawberry-related content on his social media feeds to keep me from seeing them. Yet now, the refrigerator was overflowing with them. My body began to shake uncontrollably, my voice trembling as I spoke. “Gaff.” He looked up from his plate. “Yeah?” “Let’s break up.” Gaff froze. In an instant, he rushed over, slamming the refrigerator door shut to block the fruit from my sight. “It’s okay, you’re safe,” he murmured, his hands wrapping tightly around my arms as he tried to soothe me. “I’m here, I’m here.” I slowly regained my composure, staring at his face. “Did you forget?” “Of course I didn’t,” he said, his brow furrowing with mild annoyance. “But Gwen loves them, and her own refrigerator was full, so she kept some of them here. You shouldn’t have showed up without warning, Maeve. If you had told me you were coming, this wouldn’t have happened.” I stared at him, realizing how unfamiliar he had become. “I’m going to drive Gwen home. You should take some time to calm down,” he said. With those words, he took Gwen’s hand and led her out of the apartment. My phone buzzed in my hand. It was a message from my regional director. I need your final decision on the transfer by tonight. My fingers shook as I typed out my reply. The Northern branch. The director replied almost instantly. Understood. I’ll book your flight for tomorrow. After what felt like hours, the front door opened, bringing in the faint scent of Gwen’s sweet perfume. Gaff walked into the living room, reaching out to wrap his arms around me, leaning in to kiss my lips. I stepped back, escaping his touch. “We broke up, Gaff. Don’t touch me.” Gaff’s expression cooled, his eyes turning dark. “Maeve, you made your point earlier. But you’re not a child anymore. Throwing tantrums like this is getting old.” My voice remained entirely calm. “I’m not throwing a tantrum. I am leaving you.” The silence in the room became heavy. Gaff stared at me, a look of genuine disbelief crossing his face. “You’re really going to end a seven-year relationship over a few strawberries?” A quiet ache settled in my chest. I remembered when we were children at the group home. A boy had played a prank on me, hiding a strawberry in my lunchbox. I had stood there, shaking and crying, as the other kids laughed at me. The next day, that boy had opened his desk to find a live snake inside, turning pale with terror. It had been Gaff’s doing. When the director of the home had demanded an apology, Gaff had stood tall, refusing to back down. He put a strawberry in Maeve’s lunchbox. He deserved it. It was just a harmless joke, the director had argued. It might be a joke to you, Gaff had shot back, glaring at everyone in the room. But to me, anything that hurts Maeve is the most important thing in the world. If any of you try it again, see what happens. “Gaff, wait. A cockroach?” Gaff’s voice broke through my memory as he answered his phone. His tone turned frantic. “Gwen is absolutely terrified of bugs. I need to go help her. I’ll be right back.” “Gaff,” I called out. “Since when is a cockroach a life-or-death emergency?” The only answer I received was the heavy slam of the front door. I stood alone in the quiet apartment, the August air suddenly feeling incredibly cold. My phone buzzed with the flight confirmation from my director. Departure: Tomorrow at 3:20 PM. Destination: The Northern Branch. The next morning, Gaff insisted on taking me for a drive, claiming we were going to hike. After forty minutes, the car pulled up outside a modern apartment complex. I looked at him in confusion. “I promised Gwen we would go hiking today,” he explained, not looking at me. “She didn’t want you to feel left out, so she suggested we bring you along.” He added a touch of scolding to his voice. “See how considerate she is? You really shouldn’t have reacted the way you did yesterday.” I turned my head away, staring out the window as a sharp pain flared in my chest. Gwen walked up to the car, wearing a white t-shirt with a massive strawberry printed on the front. I closed my eyes, trying to control my breathing. “Gwen gets carsick easily, so she should sit in the front,” Gaff said. I looked at him, stunned. He had once promised me that the front passenger seat was my exclusive spot, and that he would never let another woman sit there. “It’s fine, Gaff. I can sit in the back,” Gwen said, though she remained standing by the passenger door, not making any move to open the back. Gaff’s expression darkened, his voice dropping. “Maeve, don’t make things difficult for Gwen today.” Without a word, I opened the door and climbed into the back seat. It didn’t matter. After today, I would never have to sit in his car again. At the summit of the mountain, Gwen pointed at the bungee jumping platform. “Gaff, I want to try that! Will you jump with me?” Gaff froze, a look of terror crossing his face. He was deathly afraid of heights. Years ago, when I had stood near a ledge, he had begged me on his knees, sobbing, too terrified to take a single step closer. But now, Gaff looked at the drop, took a deep breath, and nodded. “Okay, I’ll jump with you.” I watched in silence. Gaff put on the harness, wrapped his arms tightly around Gwen, and together, they plunged into the open air. The mountain wind howled around me, feeling incredibly cold. When they returned, they were flush with excitement, laughing and sharing their experience. “Gaff, you’re the best! I would have never had the courage to jump without you!” “I promised I would always be there to help you face your fears, didn’t I?” Gaff then turned to me, his tone carrying a heavy significance. “Maeve, you should try to face your fears too. Just like I did.” He didn’t say the word strawberries because of Gwen, but I knew exactly what he meant. Gwen reached out, taking my arm. “Maeve has already been so brave today!” She pointed to her shirt. “I wore this strawberry shirt on purpose, and she didn’t panic at all. See, my exposure therapy is working!” She turned to Gaff, smiling. “Gaff, tell me I did a good job.” Gwen then pulled a small plastic container of strawberries from her bag, holding one out to my lips. “Maeve, it wasn’t your fault. Just take one bite, and you’ll see there’s nothing to be afraid of. You can finally put the past behind you.” I stared at her, my eyes wide. “How do you know about that?” “I…” Gwen stammered, looking at Gaff. The wind swept over the peak, carrying a sudden, heavy silence. I looked at Gaff. “You told her?” Gaff looked away, struggling to find his words. “I… I just wanted to help you. You can’t let this keep holding you back…” The world seemed to crumble around me. After that night in the pantry, I had spent ten years waking up screaming from nightmares. The day I turned eighteen, Gaff had taken me away from the children’s home, promising to keep my secret safe forever, to let us build a life where no one knew our pain. Yet now, he had handed my deepest, most painful vulnerability to another woman, treating it as a casual topic of conversation. My phone rang. It was my director. “Maeve, I noticed you haven’t checked in for your flight. Are you having second thoughts?” I bit down hard on my hand, fighting back the sob that threatened to escape. “Maeve? Are you there?” After a long pause, I forced my voice to remain steady. “I’m here. The signal was weak. I’m on my way to the airport now.” “Excellent. I’ll see you in the North.” After hanging up, I took a taxi back to Gaff’s apartment to gather my belongings. My suitcase was quickly packed; I had brought very little with me. Before leaving, I took one last look at the apartment. In the entryway shoe rack, there were three pairs of women’s shoes. Two of them were not mine. In the corner, covered in dust and cobwebs, lay the Rolex I had gifted him for his birthday. I picked it up and tossed it into the trash can. Gwen’s pillows sat on the sofa, her makeup sat on the sink, and her towel hung next to Gaff’s in the bathroom. Gaff and I had been together for seven years, but his home held no trace of me. It belonged entirely to Gwen. My phone buzzed. It was a message from Gaff. Gwen is really upset because of your reaction. I’ll explain everything once I calm her down. I didn’t reply. I shut the door behind me and walked away, never looking back.

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “517598”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

1 In my last life, the ventilator flatlined without a single warning sign. It was a weekend shift, just another routine surgery until the alarms shrieked. The patient’s oxygen levels plummeted. He died right there on the table. The entire hospital administration pointed their fingers squarely at me, claiming gross negligence. The dead man’s family dragged me by my collar through the pristine white halls, screaming that I was a murderer. I was paralyzed by shock. I knew, with absolute certainty, that I hadn’t even touched the machine. The biomedical engineering department ran tests for three days straight. They checked every wire, every valve, every circuit. Their conclusion was unanimous. The equipment was functioning perfectly. I was convicted and sent to prison. To pay off the astronomical civil settlement, my parents worked three grueling blue-collar jobs, day and night. They died on a construction site, their bodies simply giving out from exhaustion. When I opened my eyes again, the harsh glare of the overhead fluorescent lights made my eyes water. I was standing right outside that exact same operating room. I glanced down at the sterile gloves gripped in my trembling hands. The bloody memories of my previous life crashed into my skull. The coppery smell of the patient’s blood spraying across my face. The widow’s fingernails digging into my skin. The judge’s wooden gavel slamming down like a death sentence. The news of my parents collapsing on the cold concrete, which left me a broken shell fading away behind iron bars. Why did the ventilator just stop working? Why did it suddenly work perfectly when the engineers tested it? For the first time in my twelve-year career, a cold spike of dread pierced my chest. Cold sweat beaded on my forehead. The green light above the O.R. doors was glowing. I had exactly two hours to stop a murder. I spun on my heel and sprinted toward the nurse’s station. “Nancy, get me a replacement ventilator for O.R. 3!” The charge nurse didn’t even look up from her inventory clipboard. “Absolutely not. Pre-op is done. The equipment is sterilized. The anesthesiologist is waiting for you to scrub in.” I leaned over the counter and dropped my voice to a harsh whisper. “I have reason to believe that specific machine is compromised.” She finally lifted her head, eyeing me like I was a toddler throwing a tantrum. “Dr. Bennett, biomed did their monthly maintenance sweeps yesterday. Everything is certified. The patient is already under. You want to swap heavy machinery right now?” “I said, replace it!” My voice was shaking, my jaw clamped tight. Nancy slammed her clipboard onto the desk. “Look, Sarah. If you want to pull a stunt like this, get the Chief of Surgery to sign off. My trays are prepped. You want to delay the cut, that’s on your license.” Before I could argue, a heavy set of footsteps echoed behind me. “What’s the holdup? Why aren’t you scrubbed in?” It was Victor, our Senior Attending and the man in charge of scheduling. He marched over with an impatient scowl. “Dr. Garfield, I want a different ventilator in that room,” I said. His eyebrows pulled together into a hard knot. “Why?” “My gut tells me this one is going to fail.” He let out a dry, incredulous laugh, looking me up and down. “Your gut? You’re a senior surgeon, Sarah. You’re operating on instinct now? The family is out in the waiting room praying to whatever god will listen, anesthesia has been running for twenty minutes, and you’re talking to me about a hunch?” I held my ground, saying nothing. He took a step closer, crowding my space. “Do you not trust the biomed guys, or do you not trust me for putting you on this rotation?” The hallway was dead silent, save for the rhythmic beeping of the heart monitor leaking through the O.R. doors. “I am prioritizing patient safety,” I insisted. “Safety?” Victor scoffed. “Do you even know your patient’s chart? Sixty years old, gallstones with chronic inflammation, neglected for three years. His cardiopulmonary function is garbage. Every ten minutes you stand out here arguing, his anesthesia risk doubles. Don’t lecture me about safety.” The tension in the corridor was suffocating. Nancy was staring. Victor was waiting. The anesthesiologist inside was waiting. The family was waiting. They all thought I had lost my mind. I took a deep, shuddering breath. “Fine. I’ll go in.” I locked eyes with Victor. “But I’m not taking the lead. You are.” 2 I pushed through the heavy doors into the operating room. The patient, Arthur, was already draped and prepped on the table. The anesthesia was flowing through his veins. I couldn’t just walk away and abandon a man who was already under. But before we made the first cut, I gave Victor an ultimatum. He would be the lead surgeon. I would act as his first assistant. The surgery began. I positioned myself right next to the ventilator, my eyes glued to the dials as Victor gently incised the abdominal tissue. Everything was running smoothly. The rhythmic beep of the monitor felt like a ticking time bomb in my ears. Minutes crawled by like hours. The ventilator didn’t glitch. The numbers held steady. I let out a slow, silent breath of relief. We reached the critical phase where I needed to cauterize the blood vessels. Just as I moved in to safely complete the task, the electrocautery pen in my hand jerked violently. The standard blue spark at the tip exploded into a blinding, searing white flash, accompanied by a high-pitched, mechanical screech. “Shut it off!” I screamed, instinctively ripping the cord from the socket. But the damage was done. The Bovie had burned straight through the surrounding tissue. A geyser of dark red blood erupted, painting the sterile field. “Suction! Get me a hemostat!” I tossed the ruined pen aside, pressing my left hand hard against the arterial bleed while my right hand blindly reached for instruments. “Call vascular surgery for an emergency consult! Now!” I roared at the circulating nurse. It was a bloodbath. Arthur was ultimately stabilized just enough to be rushed to the ICU, his life hanging by a fragile thread. I stood in the corner of the empty operating room. My surgical gown was soaked in blood. Victor peeled off his latex gloves and stared at me. “Sarah. Did you feel something off right before that happened?” “Yes. The electrical current spiked out of nowhere. I pulled the plug the second I felt it.” He was quiet for a long moment. “Are you absolutely certain your hand didn’t slip?” I opened my mouth, but no words came out. How could I prove it? The hospital’s internal review board arrived twenty minutes later. Gary, the head of biomedical engineering, brought two technicians. They dragged the cautery machine, the foot pedal, and every single cable out to the nurse’s station. They tested it right in front of a dozen witnesses. Power on. Output perfectly stable. They pressed the foot pedal. Setting one, setting two, setting three. The voltage curves on the monitor were flawless, straight out of a textbook. Gary dropped the diagnostic printout onto the counter. “Dr. Bennett, the hardware is immaculate. Look at the data yourself.” “I want to see the overhead security footage,” I demanded. Gary nodded and had security pull the feed to a tablet. On the screen, there I was. Holding the pen. My foot hovering over the pedal on the floor. Everything looked normal. Until the twelve-minute mark. The exact second I stepped on the pedal, the spark flared massively, and my arm recoiled in shock. “Do you see that? The pen malfunctioned on its own!” I pointed at the frozen frame. Gary adjusted his glasses. “Sarah, the video only shows the output surging after you engaged the pedal. As for how much pressure you applied or if you hit the wrong setting with your heel, the camera can’t see through the table to your foot.” He tapped the printout. “And as you just saw, the machine functions perfectly post-op.” I stared at him, my blood running cold. “Are you implying I intentionally maimed my patient?” “No one is saying that,” Gary sighed. “But the facts are right here. The machine is fine. The patient is bleeding out in the ICU. You were holding the instrument. You are responsible.” The machine was fine. The circuits were fine. But the patient’s arteries had been fried. There was only one logical conclusion the board would reach: Operator error. Gross negligence. I was caught in the exact same trap. In my past life, it was the ventilator. In this life, it was the surgical pen. Different weapon, same impossible situation. I dug my fingernails into my palms. Whoever orchestrated this couldn’t have predicted that I would force Victor to take the lead surgeon spot. That meant only one thing. The saboteur had adapted to the situation while inside the room. My head snapped up. I mentally cycled through every single person who had been in that O.R. with me. 3 The suspension notice was pinned to the center of the staff bulletin board. I stood in front of it, listening to the toxic whispers floating down the corridor behind me. “I heard she threw a massive fit before the surgery, demanding new equipment. Totally unhinged.” “She definitely botched the cauterization and is trying to blame the gear. Twelve years on the job, what a joke.” “When people panic, they make mistakes. Almost killed a guy.” I turned around. The voices belonged to two junior residents I had personally mentored through their suturing rotations last year. They made eye contact with me, immediately shut their mouths, and scurried away. From the other end of the hall, a shrill, hysterical cry shattered the quiet. “That’s her! That’s the butcher!” Martha, Arthur’s wife, came charging toward me, flanked by a half-dozen angry relatives. She lunged, grabbing my scrub top, her fingernails biting painfully into my bicep. “Give me my husband back! He’s lying in that ICU with tubes down his throat, and they’re saying he might never wake up! This is your fault!” Her momentum nearly knocked me off my feet. “Ma’am, please, you need to calm down.” “Calm down? You basically murdered my husband on that table, and you have the nerve to tell me to calm down?” Her son, Derek, shoved his way to the front. He slapped the medical files right out of my hands. They scattered across the linoleum floor. “Listen to me, you hack. If my dad dies, I swear to God I will ruin your life!” Spit flew from his lips and hit my cheek. Before I could react, he grabbed a heavy steel trash can lid from the hallway bin and swung it directly at my head. I ducked hard. The heavy metal slammed into the drywall behind me with a deafening crash, leaving a massive dent. “Back the hell off!” A booming roar echoed down the hall. It was my dad. He was wearing his faded, dust-covered flannel. My mom was right behind him, her eyes red and swollen, her hair a frantic mess. They had clearly driven through the night the second they got the news. My dad threw himself between me and Derek, his chest puffed out. “You want to talk, we talk! You lay a hand on my daughter again, and I’ll drop you!” “Oh, assault? What about your daughter butchering my dad?” Derek sneered. “My daughter saves lives! The investigation isn’t even over. You have no right to touch her!” They stood chest to chest. My dad was a few inches shorter, but his posture was made of iron. My mom rushed over and wrapped her arms tightly around me, her whole body trembling. “Sweetheart, are you okay? Did they hurt you?” She cupped my face, hot tears spilling from her eyes and landing on my knuckles. “I’m fine, Mom.” She squeezed me tighter, burying her face in my shoulder. “I believe you, honey. If you say it wasn’t your fault, then it wasn’t. I don’t care what anyone else says.” The dam finally broke. Hot tears streamed down my face. My dad turned around, gave me a long, quiet look, and gently squeezed my shoulder. My mom pulled me into a nearby empty consult room and locked the door. She dug through the drawers, looking for alcohol wipes, cursing under her breath. “That crazy woman, look what she did to your arm. Bruising you like this. I ought to go back out there.” She talked tough, but her hands were incredibly gentle as she dabbed the iodine on the deep crescent-moon cuts from Martha’s fingernails. My phone buzzed. A notification from the surgical department group chat. [Can’t believe Sarah got suspended. She trained me. You really never know with people.] [So much for her making Chief next year. That’s totally dead.] [Honestly, I just feel bad for the patient.] My mom snatched the phone from the counter and hit the power button, turning the screen black. “Don’t read that garbage. They don’t know anything.” She pulled my head against her chest, resting her chin on my hair. “Listen to me, Sarah. If this place doesn’t want you, we’ll leave. Come back home. Your dad and I will take care of you.” I buried my face in her sweater and finally sobbed. The memories of my parents’ brutal, exhausting deaths in the previous timeline flashed violently in my mind. The image of them collapsing in the dirt, working themselves to the bone to pay for a crime I didn’t commit. I knew one thing for certain. I couldn’t back down this time.

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “517582”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

1 I can smell when a heart turns. Pure love is sweet; when it rots, it reeks of vinegar. This gift made me a fidelity appraiser, hired daily by women to sniff out cheating. Then came an odd request from a student wanting me to test her wealthy sponsor. Fidgeting with her bag, she confessed he flew home at midnight to console her, stayed up talking, and even kissed her while she slept. “Please follow us today,” she asked, smiling shyly. I agreed, missing the malice in her eyes. An hour later, trailing them, I breathed in the thick sweetness of real romance. As I reached for my phone, he turned, and I froze. It was my husband, Hampton. Only a few hours earlier, he had held me in our kitchen, kissing me deeply and promising he would be away on a three-day business trip. My mind went entirely blank. Without even saying goodbye to the client, I hailed a cab and rushed back home. Not long after I arrived, the front door clicked open. Hampton walked in, immediately pulling me into his arms. The air around him was tainted with a faint, sour tang, heavily masked by a strange, floral perfume. I stiffened, my nose wrinkling. “Did you change your cologne?” His arms tightened around me, his body freezing for a fraction of a second. “Oh, the company just hired a new assistant. We had to work closely on a project earlier. I must have picked up her scent. I’ll be more careful.” “A new assistant?” I asked, trying to keep my voice even. A look of genuine pride and fondness washed over his face. “Yes, Erica. She’s the student I’ve been sponsoring. She’s incredibly driven. Every time I see her working, it reminds me of how hard you used to push yourself when we were younger.” He kissed my forehead, a gesture that felt more like a distraction than affection. “What’s with the interrogation? Surely you aren’t jealous of a young student?” I didn’t answer. I merely held my breath, desperate to escape the suffocating mix of cheap perfume and rising sourness. “Is that so? For a moment, I thought you used the business trip as an excuse to see someone else,” I said, trying to sound playful, though my chest felt as if it were being squeezed by iron bands. The sour scent in the air spiked instantly, sharp and bitter. Hampton averted his eyes. “You and your jokes. You must be hungry. I’ll go make us some dinner.” In that single moment, my heart plummeted into a freezing abyss. We had been together since we were eighteen, sweethearts who had survived everything side by side. Hampton’s heart had always belonged entirely to me. When I was twenty, my abusive father had raised a wooden club to strike me. Hampton had thrown himself over my body, taking the heavy blow instead. As blood dripped down his forehead, he had looked back at my sobbing form and smiled. Don’t cry, Celeste. As long as I’m here, no one will ever hurt you again. When I was twenty-eight, my landlord had secretly filmed me in my own apartment and leaked the videos online. Standing on the edge of a rooftop, feeling utterly worthless, I had wanted to jump. Hampton had flown eight hundred miles, rushing up to the roof to pull me into his arms, sobbing. Celeste, look at me. This is not your fault. Through all those years, the scent of his love had remained perfectly, unbreakably sweet. Until today. I clutched my shirt, trying to cling to any shred of hope. What if my ability was malfunctioning? What if I was just letting my anxiety get the better of me? I held onto that hope until bedtime. I watched Hampton as he stepped out of the bathroom, drying his hair. “Hampton, do you believe a person can love two people at the same time?” His movements halted for a single beat. That split second felt like a needle driving straight into my eye. He resumed drying his hair, his voice entirely casual. “Are you still overthinking things because of Erica? Stop worrying. I only love you.” He leaned down to press a soft kiss against my cheek, but I could smell it, the sudden, overwhelming wave of sourness that flooded the air the moment the lie left his lips. The next morning, Hampton prepared breakfast just as he always did. The milk was warmed to the exact temperature I liked, a habit he had kept for five years of marriage. But today, he took a photo of the breakfast plate, smiling as he typed a message on his phone. The sour scent grew even thicker. I chewed on my toast, but it tasted like ash. Suddenly, a loud, frantic ringtone shattered the silence. Hampton’s face turned pale. A weak, sobbing female voice came through the speaker. “Hampton, my head hurts so much. I feel so sick.” He stood up immediately, grabbing his coat and rushing toward the door, completely forgetting his car keys on the table. “I’m on my way.” He paused at the door, covering the microphone, his tone leaving no room for argument. “Celeste, something urgent came up at the office. Take a taxi today.” I sat in silence as the front door slammed shut. After a long while, I stood up, took his spare keys, and went down to his car. Inside, a delicate new ornament hung from the rearview mirror. The car freshener had been replaced with a heavy, cloying scent of freesia. I had always despised strong floral scents, which was why he had always chosen subtle woodsy colognes in the past. I reached into the side pocket of the driver’s door and pulled out a lipstick. It was a bright, youthful pink. It was a shade I would never wear, meant for someone much younger. My fingers clenched around the tube, my nails digging into my palms. On my drive to work, I passed a high-end restaurant I had wanted to visit for months. Every time I had brought it up to Hampton, he had brushed me off. The reservations are too difficult to get, Celeste. Besides, I’m too busy with work. You should go with your friends. Instinctively, I pulled the car over and walked inside. There, by the window, Hampton was sitting across from Erica, gently stroking her cheek. In that instant, a breathtakingly sweet fragrance filled my senses. It was the scent of Hampton’s pure, untainted love, but it wasn’t directed at me. It was entirely for her. My vision blurred, but no tears fell. “Hampton!” I lost all my dignity, screaming his name as I marched toward their table. The quiet chatter of the restaurant died instantly. “Celeste?!” Hampton gasped, staring at me in absolute shock. “What are you doing here?” He stood up, instinctively shielding Erica, whose face had gone pale with fright. Standing before me, the sweet scent on Hampton vanished, replaced by an overwhelming, toxic sourness that choked my lungs. His love for her had completely eclipsed his love for me, proven by the way he stood protectively in front of her. “My husband is about to kiss another woman, and I’m not allowed to be here?” I laughed, the sound hollow and sharp. Erica burst into tears, shrinking back behind him. Hampton wiped her tears away, looking at me with a heavy sigh. “I am her benefactor, Celeste. Erica is young, she’s just confused about her feelings of dependency.” He paused, his voice hardening slightly. “I sponsored her because she reminded me of how difficult your own childhood was. There is no need for you to act like this.” Erica peeked from behind his shoulder, her voice trembling. “I’m so sorry, Celeste. I never wanted to come between you two. It’s just that no one has ever treated me as well as Hampton has.” A fuse blew in my mind. I lunged forward, grabbing Erica’s arm, trying to drag her out from behind him. “You knew exactly what you were doing!” “Hampton, help me!” Erica cried out, deliberately collapsing toward him. “Celeste! Stop this!” Hampton’s face turned furious. His hand clamped around my wrist like an iron vise, squeezing so hard I was forced to let go. The whispers around the restaurant grew louder. “She can’t even keep her husband, so she takes it out on a young student. How pathetic.” “He said he’s just her sponsor. She’s completely overreacting.” “Look at her acting like a madwoman. No wonder her husband is looking elsewhere.” Several people pulled out their phones, recording the scene. “Stop making a scene. Haven’t you embarrassed us enough?” Hampton hissed through clenched teeth. I looked at Erica, who was hiding a smug smile behind her hands. Unable to contain the rage, I swung my hand and slapped her across the face. She cried out, stumbling backward into Hampton’s chest. Seeing this, Hampton shoved me away with immense force. I lost my balance, crashing hard onto the tiled floor. My arm swept a glass cup off the edge of a nearby table. It shattered, the sharp shards slicing deep into my forearm. Blood began to pool, mixing with the spilled water on the floor. Hampton stared at his hands in disbelief, his voice shaking. “Celeste, I didn’t mean to—” I couldn’t hear him anymore. A sharp, stabbing pain flared in my lower abdomen, accompanied by the suffocating, bitter stench of Hampton’s betrayal. My vision went dark, and I blacked out. When I finally regained consciousness, the sharp smell of hospital disinfectant filled my nose. Hampton was nowhere to be seen. I sat up with great effort and reached for my phone. My inbox was empty, save for two messages Hampton had sent three hours ago. The doctor said you’re fine. You crossed a line today, Celeste. I’ve left for my business trip. Let’s take some time apart to cool down. My fingers trembled as I typed a reply, still clinging to a pathetic shred of hope. Is Erica with you? I tapped send. A bright red exclamation mark flashed on the screen. He had blocked me. I stared at the screen, unable to deny the truth any longer. He didn’t love me anymore. For two days, Hampton made no attempt to contact me. When the nurse came to discharge me, she looked at me with deep sympathy. “Mrs. Ward, your chart shows you are eight weeks pregnant. Is your husband not coming to pick you up?” I was pregnant? My hand slowly moved to my stomach. This child was entirely unplanned, and my mind spun in confusion. As I hesitated, several patients walking by stared at me, whispering and pointing. A sense of dread washed over me. I opened my phone with shaking hands. My name was trending at the very top of the local news search. Erica had posted a video online. In it, she wept bitterly, claiming she was a hard-working student who had earned her scholarship, only to be falsely accused of being a mistress by her sponsor’s jealous wife. She claimed I had physically assaulted her and threatened to have her expelled. In the comments, someone had leaked my past trauma, posting about how my landlord had filmed me, claiming I was a loose woman who had seduced the landlord myself. The comments were a toxic tide of hatred. She’s dirty herself, so she thinks everyone else is dirty too. What kind of woman behaves like this? No wonder her husband wants out. I’m at the hospital right now. The nurses say she’s pregnant. Her husband should probably get a paternity test. No! That’s not true! It’s all lies! I screamed in my mind, but looking up, I only saw the judgmental, disgusted stares of the people around me. I stumbled out of the hospital, desperately calling Hampton. If he would just answer, he would fix this. He knew the truth about the landlord. He would protect me. The phone rang until it went to voicemail, over and over again. My hand dropped, the phone slipping from my fingers and clattering onto the pavement. Tears finally spilled over. I remembered how Hampton had been spending more and more time on his phone over the past year, always claiming it was work. Now I realized his attention had been entirely on Erica. He wouldn’t even take my calls anymore. I let out a bitter laugh. Celeste, you are such a fool. I will not wait for you anymore, Hampton. I gathered what little strength I had left, hailed a cab, and went home. When I woke up again, I was lying in our bedroom, changed into clean pajamas. The door clicked open, and Hampton walked in carrying a bowl of warm porridge. Seeing me awake, he set the bowl down and tucked the blanket around me, his eyes showing a flicker of concern. “I saw the news online. I’ve already had the search results taken down.” “I was only gone for a couple of days. How did you manage to ruin yourself like this?” I didn’t answer. The air in the room was a sickening mix of sweet and sour, making my heart ache with a dull, constant pain. Hampton blew on the porridge, his tone turning cold and accusatory. “But perhaps this is a good thing. This lesson should teach you not to make scenes anymore. Erica and I have a strictly professional relationship. It’s not as dirty as you think.” Strictly professional? I looked up, staring directly into his eyes. Those eyes, which used to look at me with absolute devotion, now held nothing but cold indifference. “Hampton,” my voice was barely a whisper. “I have a secret. I can smell betrayal.” “Years ago, you smelled incredibly sweet to me. There wasn’t a single drop of sourness in you. It was like that from the moment we fell in love.” Hampton’s face froze. “Celeste, you’re exhausted. You’re starting to hallucinate.” I ignored him, continuing quietly. “But everything changed the moment Erica appeared.” “Now, you smell sweet only when you think of her. When you look at me, you smell incredibly sour and bitter.” After a long silence, Hampton stood up, his expression hardening. “You need professional help. Get some rest.” I sat up, trying to grab his hand, but he stepped back, letting me fall forward. At that moment, the front door clicked open. Erica walked into the living room, holding a paper bag. I froze, watching her walk in as if she owned the place. “I’m just here to drop some things off,” Erica said, her voice dripping with mock shyness. “Hampton forgot these at my apartment.” Instinctively, I snatched the bag from her hand and tipped it over. Hampton’s spare underwear and a half-empty box of condoms spilled onto the floor. My hands shook violently. “Is this your strictly professional relationship?!” A flash of panic crossed Hampton’s face, and Erica immediately began to sob. “Celeste, please don’t misunderstand! I must have grabbed the wrong bag by mistake!” Hampton’s attention shifted entirely to Erica, pulling her gently into his arms to comfort her. The air in the room became thick with the sweet scent of their mutual affection, so strong it made me gag. Hampton turned to look at me, his scent toward me turning entirely rancid. “Erica is still fragile from the online backlash. I’m going to take her home. We’ll talk when I get back.” I clenched my fists so hard my nails drew blood. “Hampton,” I called out, my voice cracking. “It’s not over.” “Do you have any idea what they are saying about me online?” My voice trembled. “They are calling me a monster. Even if you took down the search results, the rumors are still spreading. They are dragging my past through the mud again.” His shoulders stiffened slightly. “If…” I thought of the child in my womb, my throat tightening. “If Erica records a video clarifying the truth right now, I will forgive you. This is your last chance.” I reached for my phone. “Enough!” Hampton snapped, slapping the phone out of my hand. “Celeste, you are out of control! A few comments online won’t kill you! First you invent this ridiculous story about smelling love, and now you want to drag an innocent girl into your drama?!” “Lest you forget, I still have the files from your landlord’s camera. Do I need to release them myself to make you behave?” The threat hung in the air, cold and merciless. My strength deserted me, and I collapsed onto the floor, staring at the man before me in absolute disbelief. This was the same man who had deleted those files with shaking hands years ago, whispering that he would protect me. Now, he was using my greatest trauma to threaten me into silence. The coppery taste of blood filled my mouth. Hampton avoided my gaze, turning his back on me. “Calm down and think about what you want. I’ll be back when you’ve cleared your head.” Without looking back, he took Erica’s hand and left. I lay on the cold floor, a sharp, unbearable pain tearing through my lower abdomen. Warm blood began to soak through my clothes. I reached out weakly, trying to grab my phone to call for an ambulance, when a notification popped up on the screen. It was a message from Erica, containing a link. Do you like my gift, sister? I opened the link. My old, private videos had been uploaded online, accompanied by a caption claiming this was the proof of my loose character. The world blurred around me. I felt the last of my strength fade. I pulled the pre-signed divorce papers from my drawer, smeared my bloody thumbprint across the signature line, and left them on the table. I don’t owe you anything anymore, Hampton. Four days later, unable to reach me, Hampton finally rushed back to the apartment. When he opened the door, there was no one home. There was only the dark, dried blood on the floor, and the blood-stained divorce papers resting on the coffee table. His face turned instantly pale.

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “517599”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

1 On my wedding day, my groom walked out on me. He had to accompany his ex-girlfriend to fulfill the final clause of their so-called Breakup Agreement. A spontaneous, drop-everything getaway. I gripped his cuff, my knuckles turning white. “Can’t you just wait until the ceremony is over? It’s only half an hour away.” He pried my fingers off his sleeve one by one. His tone was condescending, like he was coaxing an unreasonable child. “Aubrey, this is the last time I have to fulfill a clause. I can’t break my promise.” “Once this trip is over, I will never owe her anything again.” “Wait for me to get back. I promise I will make it up to you with an even grander wedding.” With that, he pulled open his car door and sped away from the luxury hotel venue without a single backward glance. Watching the taillights disappear at the end of the road, a bitter smile tugged at my lips. Over the past five years, Carter had bailed on me no less than a hundred times. And every single time, it was to honor that ridiculous Breakup Agreement. But luckily, I had left myself an out this time. The new groom had already entered the venue. … “Why are your hands so cold?” A deep, gentle voice murmured beside my ear, carrying a faint but unmistakable trace of comfort. I snapped back to reality, pulling my gaze away from the tightly shut doors of the banquet hall. Harrison Cole stood beside me. He was dressed in an immaculately tailored, high-end black tuxedo, looking down at me with dark, steady eyes. His warm palm covered my icy fingers, giving them a reassuring squeeze. I shook my head, forcing down the last bit of residual bitterness I held for Carter. “I am fine, Harrison.” “We can start.” Following the officiant’s enthusiastic opening announcement, the heavy double doors of the grand hall slowly pushed open. The spotlight hit my white gown. With my hand resting in the crook of Harrison’s arm, I walked step by step toward the stage overflowing with fresh white roses. A ripple of shock swept through the seated guests. Especially at the head table, where Carter’s parents sat. The color drained from their faces entirely, and they practically shot up from their chairs. Carter’s mother widened her eyes, her lips trembling violently, but the sheer number of high-profile guests in the room forced her to swallow her outrage. Of course they knew the groom had been swapped. But there was absolutely nothing they could do. They could only sit there and watch me finish this play. The ceremony was heavily simplified from my original plan. There were no tearful strolls down memory lane, no dramatic vows of eternal love. There was only the officiant’s crisp, efficient script. Then came the ring exchange. Harrison pulled a simple, elegant platinum band from a velvet box. It was not the massive, multimillion-dollar diamond Carter had custom-ordered for me. He gently took my left hand and slid the ring onto my ring finger. The cool metal resting against my skin made me feel unexpectedly grounded. “Happy wedding day, Aubrey,” he murmured in a voice meant only for the two of us. I looked up, meeting his deep, tranquil gaze, and replied softly. “Happy wedding day to you too, Harrison.” I completely canceled the traditional champagne toast rounds. Using a quick excuse, I retreated to the bridal suite alone. The moment I pushed the door open, the phone in my purse started buzzing frantically. The name “Carter” flashed on the screen. The phone rang four or five times. Just as it was about to go to voicemail, I lazily tapped the answer button. The chaotic announcements of an airport terminal immediately flooded through the speaker. “Aubrey, why did it take you so long to pick up?” Carter’s voice carried its usual smooth cadence, utterly devoid of any guilt for abandoning his own bride on their wedding day. It sounded as casual as if he had just stepped out for groceries. I sat down at the vanity, quietly staring at my reflection in the mirror, taking in the intricate details of my gown. “I was on stage,” I replied flatly. “On stage?” He paused for a second before letting out a soft chuckle. His tone was dripping with helpless indulgence. “I know you are mad. Did you have the officiant run through the motions so you could put on a one-woman show to protest?” “Aubrey, you are usually much more mature than this.” “Stella had a sudden panic attack in the VIP lounge. She insisted that she needed those gluten-free macarons from that artisan bakery downtown to calm down. I had to drive halfway across the city to get them.” “You know she has moderate clinical depression. She can’t handle emotional distress.” “Besides, this is the very last clause of our Breakup Agreement. A farewell trip.” “I promised her. As soon as I walk her through this trip to Iceland, we will go our separate ways forever, and I will be entirely yours.” “Can’t you just be the bigger person and wait for me a little longer?” The words flowed out of his mouth effortlessly, full of self-righteous justification. Over the past five years, I had heard variations of this speech countless times. I had asked him more than once why he had to religiously follow that absurd agreement. He would always look at me with pitiful eyes and say that Stella was just too fragile. If he didn’t help her, she wouldn’t survive. As if Stella was a delicate porcelain doll. And I, Aubrey, was made of reinforced steel, completely indestructible. “Carter.” A weak, breathy female voice suddenly echoed through his end of the line. “The macarons are a bit dry. I want some room-temperature lemon water…” It was Stella. “Okay, sit right here and don’t move. I will go buy some,” Carter replied immediately, his voice melting into pure tenderness. When he spoke into the phone again, his tone shifted right back to a cold, businesslike brush-off. “Aubrey, Stella is calling for me. Just explain the wedding situation to my parents, tell them a corporate emergency came up.” “When I get back, I will rent out the entire Amalfi Coast and throw you the most spectacular wedding.” “Be a good girl. Don’t cause trouble.” I stared at my pale, stiff reflection in the mirror. A mocking smirk curled the corners of my lips. “Carter, you don’t need to throw another wedding.” A muffled thud came from his side, like someone had bumped into him. “What does that mean? Aubrey, are you throwing another tantrum?” “I already told you, this is the last time!” His voice flared with impatience. I didn’t raise my voice. I just interrupted him with absolute, chilling calmness. “I mean, have a wonderful trip.” With that, I hung up. I pressed my finger against the screen and permanently moved his number to my blocked list. Taking off the diamond tiara, I slowly began dismantling my elaborate bridal hairstyle. The door behind me pushed open softly. Harrison walked in holding a warm glass of honey water and set it gently on the vanity. “Still waiting for him?” I picked up the glass and took a sip. The warmth slid down my throat, driving away the chill in my chest. “No more waiting,” I said, turning to look at him. “Harrison, are you free tomorrow to finalize our marriage license paperwork?” 2 Leaving the hotel, I did not head back to the luxury estate Carter and I were supposed to move into as newlyweds. Instead, I took a cab back to the downtown apartment we had rented together for the past four years. Even though we bought the estate outright two years ago, this small apartment was the place that actually held all our memories. And now, I was going to personally wipe those memories clean. Pushing the door open, a pair of matching couple’s slippers still sat neatly in the entryway. Carter had specifically ordered them online last month, customized with our initials. I stepped right over them and walked barefoot into the living room. The finalized guest list we had poured over last night was still scattered across the coffee table. His suit jacket from yesterday’s fitting was draped casually over the arm of the sofa. Everything looked like a perfect illusion of happiness, right up until that jarring phone call shattered it all this morning. I dragged my suitcase out and began packing my life away, piece by piece. Clothes, skincare, reference books. I actually didn’t have that much stuff. It barely filled half the suitcase. Ironically, every corner of this apartment was littered with traces of Stella. I pulled open a drawer to grab my passport, but a blue velvet box accidentally tumbled out. It hit the hardwood floor with a sharp crack, the lid popping open. Inside lay a diamond-encrusted necklace. The pendant was shaped like a star. My hands froze. Carter had bought this for our three-year anniversary. At the time, he had looked at me with eyes full of guilt. “Aubrey, I bought this necklace for you. But Stella saw it, and she said it perfectly matched her name. She cried and begged to borrow it for a few days. You are always so understanding, you won’t mind, right?” Eventually, the necklace was returned, only to be casually tossed into the back of this drawer and never mentioned again. My face remained entirely blank as I kicked the necklace straight into the trash can. I went back to digging for my passport. I finally found it on the bottom shelf of the bookcase. Pulled out right alongside it was a neatly folded piece of A4 paper. The bolded black title read: Breakup Agreement. I stared coldly at the utterly ridiculous clauses printed on the page. “Clause 1: Post-breakup, the male party must accompany the female party to the movies once a month until she heals from the heartbreak.” “Clause 7: Whenever the female party falls ill, the male party must be on call 24/7 and cannot decline under any circumstances.” “Clause 19: The male party must accompany the female party on a farewell trip from her bucket list.” At the bottom of the page, Carter’s signature was bold and sharp. Next to it, he had drawn a tiny smiley face. How touching. The absolute best ex-boyfriend in the world. I crumpled the paper into a tight ball and tossed it perfectly into the trash can, right on top of that star necklace. Just as I zipped up my suitcase, the smart speaker in the living room pulsed with a green light. “Received new photos from the shared cloud.” It was a family sync setting Carter had set up to prevent his phone storage from filling up. Any photo he favorited on his phone would automatically cast to the home devices. Because my phone was tied to the same system, the digital display lit up instantly. It was a live photo album from Iceland. In the pictures, the Northern Lights were breathtakingly vibrant. Carter was wearing a heavy parka, holding Stella tightly in his arms to shield her from the snow. Stella’s cheeks were flushed pink from the cold, but she was smiling radiantly. I tapped the live photo. Stella’s playful voice rang out through the speaker. “Carter, the aurora is so beautiful! If only it could stay like this forever.” Carter’s deep, gentle voice immediately followed. “As long as you are happy, I will bring you here to see it every single year.” I stared at the screen in silence. Five seconds later, the display went dark. Just yesterday, he had sworn to me that this would be the final time he fulfilled a clause. Today, under the Northern Lights, he was promising her forever. I opened the system settings and ruthlessly kicked my account out of the family sharing group. The moment I finished, my phone rang. It was an unknown local number. I tapped the answer button. “Aubrey, it’s Stella.” Stella’s voice was weak and fragile, laced with a careful, probing hesitance. “Carter just went to heat up some milk for me. I sneaked out and used the hotel lobby phone to call you.” I didn’t say a word. I just listened to her perform. “I am so, so sorry, Aubrey. I honestly had no idea today was your wedding day.” “My depression flared up yesterday. I felt like I couldn’t breathe, like I was going to die, so I panicked and called Carter.” “He was just so worried about me. He didn’t even change his clothes before rushing to the airport.” “Please don’t be mad at him. If you have to blame someone, blame my useless, sick body.” She punctuated her speech with two weak, pathetic coughs. I held the phone to my ear. My tone was as casual as if we were discussing the weather. “Stella, if you actually felt sorry, you wouldn’t be calling me right now just to gloat.” The breathing on the other end hitched. She clearly hadn’t expected the usually tolerant and quiet Aubrey to be so bluntly vicious. “Aubrey, you misunderstood me…” Her voice immediately took on a tearful waver. “Stella? Who are you talking to?” Carter’s voice suddenly cut through the background, layered with obvious panic. A second later, the phone was snatched away. “Aubrey!” Carter’s voice instantly dropped to freezing temperatures, dripping with arrogant accusation. “Stella was nice enough to call and apologize, and you verbally abuse her? She is crying so hard she can barely breathe!” I looked down at the suitcase by my feet. “I didn’t say anything to abuse her.” “You didn’t say anything, and she is crying?” he sneered. “Aubrey, I thought you were a generous person. I never realized you were so petty you couldn’t even tolerate a sick woman!” “Stella is just too kind. She felt guilty for taking me away. Did you really have to be so vindictive?” He fired off accusations one after another, as if I had committed an unforgivable crime. I couldn’t even be bothered to defend myself. I moved to hang up. But suddenly, he softened his tone, as if he were granting me some grand, merciful favor. “Forget it, I am not going to fight with you. I need you to go to Stella’s apartment right now.” I frowned. “Why?” “No one has fed Stella’s Ragdoll cat in two days. Go over there and fill the food bowl. The passcode is my birthday.” He paused, then added as if it were the most natural request in the world. “Oh, and scoop the litter box while you are there. Stella is a neat freak, so make sure it is spotless.” “Did you hear me, Aubrey?” 3 The air in the apartment seemed to completely freeze. He wanted me to go to his ex-girlfriend’s apartment and scoop her cat’s crap. On my wedding night. A memory from a brutal winter two years ago suddenly surfaced in my mind. I had caught a severe flu. My fever spiked to 103 degrees, and I didn’t even have the strength to get out of bed. I called Carter, begging him to come home and take me to the emergency room. He had sounded incredibly annoyed on the phone. “Aubrey, Stella’s cat suddenly stopped eating. I have to take it to the vet for a full blood panel. You just have a fever. Take some Tylenol and sleep it off. Stop acting so spoiled.” That day, shivering and delirious, I had to call an ambulance for myself. And now, he actually had the audacity to bring up that damn cat. “Aubrey? Are you listening?” When I didn’t respond, that familiar impatience crept back into his voice. I took a deep breath, my tone dead flat. “Carter, do you honestly believe I was born to be the unpaid maid for you and your ex?” He froze on the other end of the line. He clearly hadn’t expected me to rebel. He went silent for two seconds before his voice spiked in volume. “What nonsense are you spewing now? I just asked you to feed a cat. Why do you have to blow everything out of proportion?” “You never used to be like this! Why are you so bitter and mean now?” “Stella is sick, and that cat is her emotional support! If something happens to it and her condition worsens, are you going to take responsibility?!” His emotional blackmail was as practiced and fluent as ever. It was so fluent it was laughable. “If the cat is so important to you, why don’t you fly back and feed it yourself?” I didn’t wait to hear another word. I hit the red button. With a quick swipe, I added the unknown local number to my blocked list. Grabbing the handle of my suitcase, I took one last look at the place I had called home for four years. I walked out, pulled the door shut, and locked it. Without a single shred of regret. Early the next morning. I got up before the sun and headed to a high-end bridal boutique downtown. I had originally booked an appointment today to pick up the custom reception gown Carter had personally designed for me. Even though I didn’t need it for a wedding anymore, I had already paid for it in full. I planned to bring it home and cut it up into cleaning rags. The moment I stepped inside, a familiar burst of laughter echoed from the lounge. “This is gorgeous! If she wears this for a photoshoot under the snowy mountains, it’s going to look absolutely killer.” It was Carter’s younger sister, Karina. She was lounging on the velvet sofa in the VIP section, holding an espresso and showing off a photo on her phone to her friend. “Obviously. My brother picked it out. He treats Stella like a literal princess.” When Karina saw me walk in, the smug smile froze on her face. But it only took a second for her to replace it with a theatrical, mocking grin. “Oh, look who it is. If it isn’t my almost-sister-in-law, Aubrey.” She put a heavy emphasis on the word “almost”. I ignored her completely and walked straight to the front desk. “Hi, I am here to pick up the custom gown for Aubrey.” The sales associate looked incredibly awkward, stammering as she flipped through the appointment ledger. Karina strutted over in her designer heels, her tone dripping with provocation. “Don’t bother looking, Aubrey. My brother had the dress overnighted to Iceland yesterday.” My hands stopped. I turned to look at her. “He took it?” “Yep.” Karina waved her phone smugly, shoving the screen right in my face. In the photo, Stella was wearing the stunning red reception dress that was meant for me. She stood against the backdrop of an Icelandic glacier, the red silk catching the wind perfectly. Carter was standing just out of frame, but his hand was visible, gently tucking a strand of windblown hair behind Stella’s ear. “Stella said she wanted to do a ‘goodbye to youth’ photoshoot,” Karina said with a sickly sweet giggle. “My brother thought that red dress would pop perfectly against the snow, so he just had it shipped over.” “You aren’t mad, are you, Aubrey?” “Stella is so sick. Just treat it like doing charity work. What is the big deal if she borrows it?” The heavily made-up friend next to her immediately chimed in. “Exactly. A woman who can’t even keep her man from running away at the altar shouldn’t be making a fuss over a piece of fabric.” “They are true soulmates. You were just the benchwarmer. Stop acting like the main character.” Their harsh, mocking voices were painfully loud in the quiet boutique. The sales associate kept her head down, too afraid to make eye contact. I looked at the familiar red dress on the phone screen, and suddenly, my chest felt completely hollow. Two months ago, Carter had stayed up for three nights straight with a sketchbook, refining that design for me. He had held my hands and said, “Aubrey, I designed this specifically for you. It’s the only one of its kind in the entire world.” Turns out, his “one of a kind” was easily transferable. I pulled my gaze away and looked at Karina. My voice was perfectly steady, without a single ripple of emotion. “Since your brother loves doing charity with other people’s property…” “Do me a favor and tell him that the remaining balance on that dress is forty thousand dollars. I expect it wired to my account by three o’clock this afternoon.” “As for the fifteen thousand dollar deposit, consider it my donation to Miss Stella’s medical bills. No need to thank me.” Karina stared at me, completely dumbfounded. She had clearly never seen me use money as a weapon before. “You… Aubrey, are you obsessed with money or something?! Does my brother not spend enough on you?!” I didn’t bother entertaining her tantrum. I turned on my heel and walked out the door. The moment I stepped onto the sidewalk, my phone buzzed with notifications from the Preston family group chat. Carter had just sent a massive digital cash gift to the chat. Followed immediately by a scenic photo. The caption read: “Wish fulfilled. Someone said the snow here looks like cotton candy.” The older relatives in the chat were completely silent, clearly too awkward to respond. Only Karina jumped in immediately to play cheerleader. “Carter! Stella looks stunning in that red dress! Some people could never pull off that kind of elegance.” I stared at the screen, my face void of expression as I tapped the top right corner. “Leave Group Chat.” Five seconds later, a barrage of private messages from Carter flooded my screen like rapid fire. “Why did you leave the family chat? Are you trying to embarrass us?” “Aubrey, what exactly is your problem these past few days?” “I just noticed you froze my secondary credit card, and you canceled our honeymoon suite in Bora Bora.” “Are you seriously using these petty tricks to force me to come home?” I looked at the endless wall of accusations on the screen, and a profound wave of exhaustion washed over me. A few taps of my finger. Delete Contact. The world was finally quiet. I looked up. The winter sun was a bit blinding. My phone buzzed one more time. It was a text from Harrison. “The house is clean, and your things have been moved in.” “What time are you coming home? I made soup.” 4 Three days later. Carter ended his trip to Iceland early. Maybe it was because I froze his card, or maybe it was because I had completely blocked him on every single platform. He finally sensed that something was genuinely wrong, and he dragged Stella on the first flight back to the city. At 2:00 PM, I was in the office finalizing my handover documents. The heavy glass doors of the open-plan office were suddenly shoved open. Carter marched in wearing a bespoke suit, striding with intense purpose. He was holding a massive bouquet of sunflowers. Those were Stella’s favorite flowers. He had probably just grabbed them out of the passenger seat on a whim. “Where is Aubrey?” he demanded sharply at the front desk. The moment he appeared, every single eye in the office darted toward my desk. Whispers broke out everywhere. After all, the CEO leaving his bride at the altar was already the biggest gossip in our social circle. I didn’t try to hide. I calmly closed the folder in my hands and looked up at him. He marched straight over and slammed the massive bouquet down on my desk. Yellow pollen scattered everywhere, dusting the surface of my official resignation form. “Aubrey, what exactly are you trying to prove?” He looked down at me, his tone heavy with exhaustion and a frustrated, parental kind of reprimand. As if I were the one throwing an irrational tantrum. “I went back to the apartment, and the passcode was changed. I went to the estate, and you didn’t leave a single piece of clothing behind.” “Blocking me, leaving the family group chat, canceling the cards.” He took a deep breath, visibly trying to force a softer, coaxing tone, just like he always used to. “I even cut the trip short and came back early. What more do you want?” “My farewell trip with Stella is over. I officially tore up the Breakup Agreement.” “From now on, I will only be good to you.” He reached across the desk, trying to grab my shoulders. “Stop making a scene. We will go reshoot our wedding photos this weekend. Pick a good date next month, and we will do the wedding all over again.” “Are you finally satisfied now?” Listening to his grand, merciful concessions, I couldn’t even summon the energy to be angry. This was Carter. He always believed he was entirely in the right. He believed that because he had fulfilled his ex-girlfriend’s “wishes” and was now lowering himself to comfort me, I should be crying tears of absolute gratitude. I stepped back, avoiding his hands completely. “Carter, you don’t need to do the wedding over again.” I pushed the sunflowers aside and picked up my resignation form. “I have already officially resigned from Apex Innovations. I am leaving the city tomorrow.” His hands froze in mid-air. The expression on his face shattered. “Resigned? Leaving?” He stared at me in disbelief, as if I had just told the most absurd joke in the world. “Are you out of your mind? Apex is something we built together! Where the hell are you going to go?” “You are throwing away your entire career just to spite me?” He lunged forward, trying to snatch the resignation form out of my hands. But the moment his hand clamped down on my wrist, his gaze locked onto my left hand. Right there, shining clearly under the office lights, was the platinum wedding band Harrison had given me. Carter’s pupils shrank violently. His face instantly darkened into a storm of fury. “What is that?” He stared dead at the ring, a microscopic sliver of panic bleeding into his voice. “Did you seriously buy some cheap piece of trash to wear just to piss me off?” “Aubrey, this little stunt is beyond childish!” I aggressively ripped my wrist out of his grip. “It’s not a cheap piece of trash. It’s my wedding ring.” I looked him dead in the eye, pronouncing every word with crystal clarity. “Carter, we are entirely, permanently over.” Instead of blowing up, he laughed. A strained, almost manic sound. “A wedding ring? With who? That random stand-in actor who didn’t even show his face at the wedding?” “Do you honestly think hiring some extra to put on a play is going to force me to apologize?” He was getting more agitated by the second. He whipped his head around, scanning my desk as if looking for evidence to expose my “bluff.” Then, his eyes landed on a half-open personal tax update form. It was standard paperwork required for HR upon resigning. There was a section titled: Marital Status & Spouse Details. Carter’s eyes locked onto that piece of paper. The color drained from his face inch by inch until he was paler than the paper itself. He snatched the form off the desk, his hands trembling so violently he couldn’t control them. The paper crumpled in his white-knuckled grip. “A copy of your… marriage certificate?”

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “517583”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

1 Five minutes before the freight train crushed me against the tracks, I somehow managed to dial my boyfriend’s number. Ten years in the future. “Tristan, help me… the train is coming…” A baby’s sharp cry echoed through the receiver, layered beneath Tristan’s tightly repressed fury. “Ariel, are you done? Milly just pushed out a baby, and you decide right now is the perfect time to put on this psycho act?” “Are you seriously trying to compete with a two-hour-old infant for my attention?” “I blew my early admissions interview for Yale ten years ago to save your life. Are you trying to ruin the life I have now, too?” Blinding white light pierced the darkness at the end of the tracks, stinging my eyes. Over the phone, Tristan was still mocking me. “Milly’s weak. I need to get her transferred to a private recovery suite.” “Ariel, I dragged your pathetic life back from the Grim Reaper himself ten years ago. I didn’t save you so you could use your life to blackmail and manipulate me today. Cut the crap. You make me sick.” The line went dead. Five minutes were up. I stared at the roaring, massive steel machine hurtling toward me, and a bitter, self-deprecating laugh escaped my lips. So, the boy who once traded his bright future for my life now saw me as a stumbling block to his happily ever after. If that was the case, I would just give it back. … I died on those tracks at the age of seventeen. Five minutes before my death, I had dialed the Tristan from ten years in the future. The thick hemp rope dug viciously into my wrists. My back was pressed against the freezing steel rails, sharp gravel slicing into my flesh. The wind howled across the barren field, carrying the sickening stench of wet rust and rotting mud. The automated voice from the distant station platform echoed through the night. “Approaching train. Five minutes.” Five minutes. I had exactly five minutes before I was pulverized into a stain on the tracks. Fighting through the agony, I scraped my fingers against the dirt until my nails tore and bled, finally nudging my old phone out of my jacket pocket. I knew Tristan’s number so well I typed it blindly on the cracked screen. The call connected. But the voice that greeted me wasn’t Tristan’s bright, familiar tone. It was the loud, piercing wail of a newborn baby. My mind went completely blank. Why was there a baby with Tristan? But the primal instinct to survive overrode my confusion. I opened my mouth, but the metallic taste of blood flooded my throat, choking my words into broken syllables. “Tristan, help…” “The train… it’s coming…” The line went dead silent for two seconds. Then came Tristan’s voice, laced with an icy, biting irritation. “Ariel, are you done?” I froze. It was his voice, but it wasn’t my Tristan. My Tristan would never speak to me with such venom. The tracks beneath me began to vibrate. A faint, rhythmic trembling that traveled through the steel directly into my spine. Time was running out. Yet Tristan was on the other end, interrogating me word by word. “Milly just gave birth. Her body hasn’t even recovered. Do you really have to pull this crazy stunt right now?” “What, are you jealous of a two-hour-old baby? Is that it?” Milly? A baby? The harsh wind stung my eyes, and tears spilled down my cheeks without warning. “No…” “Tristan, I’m tied to the tracks.” “The train is coming. It’s really coming!” “Please, call the cops, call anyone…” My desperate pleading was interrupted by a weak, feminine voice in the background. It was Milly. “Tristan, who is it? The baby is crying again…” Tristan’s tone instantly softened into a gentle cadence I had never heard before. “It’s nothing. Just an unimportant call. Don’t worry about it, just rest.” Then, his voice shifted back to absolute ice as he spoke into the receiver. “Ariel, ten years ago, I skipped my finals to save you. I lost my full-ride to Yale.” “Do you think ruining my life once wasn’t enough? Are you trying to destroy the life I have now?” Ten years ago? What did he mean, ten years ago? I was seventeen. So was he. That scholarship interview was supposed to be tomorrow. And Milly? Wasn’t she just the annoying sophomore who followed Tristan around, the girl he barely spared a glance? Why… The mechanical voice from the station drifted over again. “Approaching train. Three minutes.” A quiet voice in my head whispered the truth. Tristan didn’t want me anymore. I shook my head violently, trying to throw the terrifying thought away. No. Tristan wasn’t like that. My seventeen-year-old Tristan was the boy who carried me on his back through a torrential downpour when I had a fever, running two miles to the nearest clinic. The boy who shoved his last lunch card into my hand while he chewed on dry bread. The boy who, when I was cornered by local thugs in the alley, charged in with his backpack swinging, his eyes red and his voice completely hoarse from screaming. He had said, “Ariel isn’t trash.” He had said, “She has me.” But the Tristan on the phone was colder than the steel pressed against my spine. “Ariel, I am so completely sick of you.” “Milly is exhausted. I need to get her to a private suite.” “I snatched your life back from hell ten years ago.” “I didn’t do it so you could use it to threaten me today.” “Stop the act.” “You disgust me.” My blood turned to ice. The roar of the train was deafening now. So far away, yet terrifyingly close. A blinding sphere of white light erupted from the darkness, hurtling straight at me, so bright it burned my retinas. “Tristan…” I wanted to call his name one last time, but the phone only spit out a dial tone. Beep. Beep. Beep. He hung up. “Approaching train. One minute.” I lay alone on the freezing tracks. The violent shaking of the earth vibrated through my bones, the mechanical roar drowning out everything else. I suddenly remembered sophomore year. Tristan standing beneath the old brick school building, smiling up at my window. The afternoon sun rested on his shoulders. He looked so young, so full of unstoppable promise. “Ariel, once I get that Yale acceptance, we’re moving out East together.” “They have the best schools, the brightest city lights.” “I’m going to give you a real home.” Four seconds. Three seconds. Two seconds. The monstrous roar of the train swallowed the world. In the final second, I stopped struggling and closed my eyes in absolute despair. I’m sorry, Tristan. I guess I won’t get to see that home. … I didn’t feel any pain. When I opened my eyes again, I was floating in the sterile, blindingly white hallway of a hospital. A newborn’s cry echoed from a partially open door, piercing the quiet night like fine needles pricking the heart. I looked down at my hands. They were translucent. I was dead. I had died at seventeen, crushed on those tracks. Yet my soul had somehow drifted ten years into the future. Through the crack in the door, I saw Tristan’s tall frame blocking the entrance. He was gripping his phone so hard his knuckles were white, his face dark with suppressed anger. On the hospital bed, a pale Milly held a swaddled, wrinkled newborn. “Tristan, was it Ariel?” Tristan didn’t answer, but his rigid jawline was answer enough. Milly’s eyes immediately welled with tears. “Is she still mad at me? Mad that I… had your baby?” “I know she’s your wife.” Tristan rubbed his temples aggressively, his voice thick with exhaustion. “Stop overthinking.” “She’s just having another one of her psychotic episodes.” Floating by the doorway, I listened to them and slowly realized the truth. The man I had spoken to minutes ago wasn’t my seventeen-year-old boy. It was his twenty-seven-year-old self. My final, desperate plea for life was nothing more than another “psychotic episode” to him. My nose stung violently, but I couldn’t shed a single tear. Dead girls don’t cry. Milly looked down at the baby in her arms, fat tears dropping onto the blanket. “But I heard her mention a train…” “Tristan, what if she was telling the truth?” Tristan looked up. The dark circles under his eyes were heavy, making him look like a man who hadn’t slept peacefully in years. He stayed silent for a long time. Long enough that I actually thought he might run out the door to find me. But then he let out a cold, hollow laugh, dripping with exhaustion and mockery. “Ever since that kidnapping ten years ago, she’s used death to manipulate me.” “Slitting her wrists, swallowing pills, standing on the ledge of the roof.” “I am so sick of Ariel’s cheap tricks.” “She always comes home completely fine in the end, doesn’t she?” I froze in the air. Kidnapping? Slitting my wrists? Pills? I didn’t remember doing any of that. Did I somehow survive in this timeline, only to live another ten years as a deranged lunatic? A pathetic parasite who used self-harm to beg for a man’s attention? Milly bit her lip, asking softly, “Then… shouldn’t you at least call her back to check?” Tristan looked down at his phone screen. The screen was dark. The call had ended. He stared at my name for a long, long time, his grip so tight his fingers turned pale. Finally, he shoved the phone deep into his pocket with a ruthless finality. “No.” “It’s time she grew up.” Hearing those words, it felt like an invisible hand had carved a massive, gaping hole in my chest, letting the freezing wind howl through. The digital clock on the wall outside the room clicked forward. 2:05 AM. The exact minute I died. The exact minute I was permanently erased from his life. Tristan didn’t go to sleep right away. After the nurses moved Milly and the baby to a quieter private suite, he sat alone on a bench at the far end of the hallway. The hospital was dead quiet in the middle of the night. The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead. He hunched forward, burying his hands in his hair. His shoulders sagged heavily, radiating the aura of a man crushed under an invisible weight. The screen of the phone in his pocket lit up once. Then twice. No new calls. He finally pulled it out, opening his contacts and scrolling down to my name. Ariel. Underneath the name, there was a tiny sub-note. Little Liar. I drifted closer, watching his rough thumb gently trace over those two words again and again. I had no idea what had happened between us over these past ten years. But this older Tristan, who claimed to hate me to my core, still hadn’t deleted my number. He still kept a nickname that sounded more helplessly frustrated than truly hateful. 2:17 AM. Twelve minutes since my death. As if he couldn’t take the suffocating silence anymore, Tristan finally hit dial. “The number you are trying to reach is currently unavailable.” The automated female voice was utterly devoid of warmth. His brow furrowed deeply. He dialed again. Same result. A third time. A fourth. A fifth. He finally let out a low, frustrated growl, slamming the phone face-down onto the empty seat beside him. “Wow, Ariel. You’re really good at this.” “You even timed your silent treatment perfectly.” I crouched in front of him, looking up into his bloodshot eyes. “I’m not giving you the silent treatment.” “Tristan, I’m dead.” Of course, he couldn’t hear me. He just leaned his head against the cold hospital wall and closed his eyes. I wanted to reach out, to smooth the deep crease between his brows just like I used to. But my fingertips passed right through his skin. Nothing but thin air. Ten years ago, he stayed up all night with me in a hospital just like this. I had a violently high fever and was delirious. Tristan sat by my bed, wiping the sweat from my forehead with a warm towel over and over again. The doctor told him to get some sleep on the cot next door. He stubbornly shook his head. “If she wakes up and doesn’t see me, she’ll be scared.” Back then, his eyes held absolutely nothing but me. And now? Now, I was a cheap trick he was sick of seeing. An old, ugly scar he refused to look at. 3:00 AM. The hallway was so quiet I could hear my own heartbeat, if I still had one. A nurse rolled a cart into Milly’s room to change her dressings. Tristan practically shot up from the bench, following the nurse inside so fast he created a gust of wind. I floated by the door, watching him. The nurse was about to pick up the baby to weigh her, but Tristan stepped in front of her. With agonizing caution, he scooped the tiny, wrinkled bundle out of the bassinet. He looked ridiculously awkward. His arms were stiff, his back rigid. He held the infant like an active bomb rather than a fragile human being. But beneath that clumsiness was an overwhelming, tender care. Milly watched him from the bed, her eyes swimming with a gentle adoration I had never seen in her before. “Tristan.” Her voice was barely a whisper. “Give her a nickname.” Tristan looked down at the tiny, featureless face bundled in the blankets. He stayed silent for a long time. Long enough that I thought he would refuse. “Hope,” he finally said. “So she stays safe. Always.” My soul shuddered violently. It felt like someone had nailed me to the floor. A memory from a distant summer afternoon flashed through my mind, back by the bleachers of the old high school track. I was swinging my legs off the metal railing, looking down at Tristan as he filled out a calculus worksheet. “Tristan, if we ever have a baby, what would you name her?” His pen didn’t stop moving. “Hope.” “Why?” He finally looked up at me. The afternoon sun caught in his eyes, making them shine impossibly bright. “Because you’re always getting into trouble.” “I want you to be safe. I want to have hope.” He never forgot the name. He just gave it to someone else. When the sky began to lighten, Tristan finally went home. I followed him like a shadow, listening to the lock click open. A stagnant smell of stale air, prescription meds, and old takeout hit my face. The living room looked like it had been ransacked. The coffee table was cluttered with colorful pill bottles. Antidepressants, sleeping pills, and heavy sedatives I couldn’t even pronounce. Shattered glass glittered dangerously on the rug. Out on the balcony, the wind chime I had personally hung up was missing its longest string. The breeze slipping through the cracked window made it clank together in a discordant, broken melody. Our framed photo still hung on the wall. In the picture, I was wearing a pristine white sundress, smiling so hard my eyes were crescent moons. Tristan stood behind me, his hands resting awkwardly on my shoulders. He was trying to smile, but he looked completely out of his element. I forced him to take that picture on my seventeenth birthday. He said taking photos was stupid. But he still played along with my stupidity. The moment Tristan walked in, he dumped his jacket on the sofa, loosened his tie, and called out to the empty apartment. “Ariel.” Silence. He stopped taking off his shoes, his expression darkening inch by inch. “Stop hiding.” “I am not in the mood for your games today.” The apartment remained dead silent. Only the broken wind chime clanked stubbornly in the background. He frowned, striding aggressively into the master bedroom. The bed was perfectly made. The sheets were tucked in tightly without a single wrinkle. It looked like no one had slept in it at all. The closet door was slightly ajar. My half of the wardrobe was completely empty. The desk was wiped clean, save for a single, baby-pink notebook. My diary. Tristan stood frozen, staring at that diary for a long, long time. His back was as rigid as stone. Eventually, he reached out and flipped the cover open. Page one. The handwriting was mine, neat but slightly rushed. March 6th. Tristan didn’t come home for dinner again. I made his favorite beef stew. I waited from 6 PM to 11 PM. The food is ice cold. Milly posted a picture online. The caption said, “Late nights at the office are the hardest!” In the corner of the photo, there was a man’s hand. He was wearing the watch I bought Tristan for his birthday. He told me they were just coworkers. I believe him. But I still cried so hard I couldn’t sleep. Page two. April 12th. The psychiatrist says my PTSD is getting worse. I hallucinate. I constantly hear the deafening roar of a freight train right next to my ear. I have nightmares about the freezing steel tracks and the kidnapper’s sick laughter. I wake up screaming in the middle of the night, drenched in cold sweat. Tristan held me today and told me he was tired. Of course he’s tired. If he hadn’t given up everything to save me, he would be at Yale right now. He would be at the very top, living the dream everyone expected of him. Page three. May 20th. Milly is pregnant. She came to the apartment crying, begging me to let them be together. She said her baby couldn’t grow up without a father. I screamed at her to get out. I called her a homewrecker. But later, when I took the trash down, I saw Tristan gently guiding her into his car, hovering over her like she was made of glass. He looked up and saw me. His eyes were full of nothing but disappointment. Did I do something wrong again? Page four. June 1st. I asked for a divorce. Tristan’s eyes went red. He asked if I was trying to drive him into an early grave. He said, “Ariel, you owe me a life.” I finally understand. To him, I’m not his wife. I’m his unpaid debt. Tristan’s hand shook violently as he turned to the next page. Page five. July 8th. I dreamed about ten years ago again. If only I hadn’t made that phone call. If I had just died on those tracks, Tristan wouldn’t have missed his interview looking for me. He would have gone to Yale. He would be standing in the brightest, highest place in the world. He would have met someone who made him smile, someone who wasn’t a broken burden. If time could rewind. I would give my life back to him. The diary ended there. The last few lines were severely blurred by large, dried water stains. Like someone had been sobbing so uncontrollably they could barely grip the pen. Standing over the desk, the color drained completely from Tristan’s face. His Adam’s apple bobbed sharply. He opened his mouth, but no sound came out. After what felt like an eternity, he let out a low, venomous curse. It was quiet and cruel, squeezed through gritted teeth. “Ariel.” “Are you really trying to use this garbage to make me feel sorry for you?” “When are you finally going to let me go?” I floated behind him, watching his broad shoulders tremble. In a voice only I could hear, I whispered. “I already let you go.” “Tristan, I’m already dead.” The clock on the wall struck exactly 7:00 AM. It had been four hours and fifty-five minutes since my actual death. A bizarre, terrifying realization dawned on me. The world of ten years ago was actively devouring all traces of my existence in this timeline. As if on cue, the edges of the diary under Tristan’s hands began to blur, turning transparent. The first line of text vanished. Then the second. Tristan’s pupils shrank to pinpricks. As if the paper had caught fire, he clawed at the pages, trying desperately to physically grab the fading ink. But the words dissolved like sand slipping through his fingers, leaving behind nothing but blank, empty paper. Panic finally hit him. A raw, visceral terror I had never seen on his face before. “Ariel!” Tristan spun around like a trapped, feral animal, tearing through the small apartment. “Come out!” “I know you’re here!” “Ariel, stop! This isn’t funny anymore!” He violently yanked open every closet door, kicked open the bathroom, and even tore through the storage bins on the balcony. Nothing. Every single object in the apartment that belonged to me was vanishing right before his eyes. My pink toothbrush by the bathroom sink faded into thin air. My fluffy bunny slippers by the front door vanished. The pink umbrella he always stole from me on rainy days was gone. Tristan stumbled backward, hitting the wall. He looked up at our framed photo. The girl in the white sundress had disappeared. Only he remained, standing awkwardly in front of a blank background, looking totally alone. “Impossible…” He muttered, his face ashen. His hands shook uncontrollably as he unlocked his phone and opened the gallery. The photo of us watching the sunrise at the beach was gone. The picture of me laughing in front of the ugly birthday cake he baked me was gone. The candid shot he secretly took when I fell asleep on his shoulder was gone. He scrolled frantically. Out of thousands of pictures, every single image containing my face had either turned blank or altered to show him entirely alone. Finally, at the very bottom, there was only a single, ten-year-old news screenshot. The headline was glaring and absolute. “Local 17-Year-Old High School Girl Killed in Kidnapping Incident.” Tristan’s phone nearly slipped from his trembling hands. He tapped the image, his eyes locking onto the date of publication. Ten years ago. July 8th. The article detailed the tragedy clearly. The victim, Ariel, age 17. Police reports confirmed her final, desperate call for help was dialed to her classmate, Tristan. The call status: Unconnected. By the time authorities arrived, they found nothing but bloody scraps of clothing and a shattered cell phone by the tracks. Tristan stared at the word “Unconnected,” his breathing turning into jagged, violent gasps. “No.” “I answered it.” “I know I answered it…” His mind was spiraling into chaos as the memory of last night’s call hit him with the force of a physical blow. My voice, trembling against the howling wind. “Tristan, help me…” “The train is coming…” What did he say to me? He told me I disgusted him. He told me to stop acting. He asked if I was trying to ruin the life he had now because ruining his past wasn’t enough. The horrifying truth finally snapped into place. My final wish, after ten years of agony, was to die on those tracks so I wouldn’t ruin his future. And now. My wish came true.

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “517584”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel