Category: English

The three-minute window between life and brain death was bleeding out on the concrete, right outside the elementary school gates. My stepson, Toby, had collapsed. His small body convulsed, gasping for air that wouldn’t come, a sudden and violent asthma attack taking him under. I scrambled out of the car, my fingers white-knuckling the emergency inhaler and epi-pen. But before my feet could fully hit the pavement, a hand twisted into my hair, yanking me backward with enough force to snap my neck. It was Penny. My best friend. “Help! Somebody help!” she shrieked, her voice echoing over the chaotic swarm of parents and children. “She’s a kidnapper! She’s got drugs in her bag! Hold her down!” The crowd’s panic instantly weaponized. A mob of overzealous bystanders swarmed me. A heavy boot slammed into my back, driving me face-first into the damp asphalt. “Take the medicine!” I screamed, my vocal cords tearing. I blindly shoved the small plastic case forward through the forest of legs. “He’s suffocating! Let me go!” But Penny’s designer heel came down hard on my wrist, pinning my hand to the ground. Her eyes were red, welling with perfectly timed tears as she looked up at the horrified crowd. “It’s a crime,” she choked out, her voice breaking. “I can’t… I can’t just stand by and watch her ruin her life. She’s trying to kill him.” A school resource officer was already pushing through the crowd, unholstering his taser. Ten yards away, Toby’s face was turning a horrifying, bruised shade of purple. 1 Black spots danced in my vision from the sheer, suffocating rage. But the dizziness only lasted a second before a blinding pain in my knee snapped me back to reality. An older woman was kneeling entirely on my calf, pinning me. I thrashed violently, my manicured nails scraping against the wet pavement until they broke. “Let me go! He is going to die!” Penny ground her heel deeper into my wrist. Fat, tragic tears spilled over her lashes. “Gemma, stop pretending. That’s not medicine in your bag!” She reached into my spilled purse and pulled out a crumpled piece of paper, holding it high like a trophy. “Look!” she yelled to the crowd. “This is a dark-web receipt for cyanide! She told me herself—if she gets rid of her stepson, she gets the entire family trust!” The collective gasp from the parents felt like a physical blow. “What a monster! To do that to a little boy?” “Hold her down! Don’t let her move!” Through the dirt and hair obscuring my eyes, I stared at the paper in Penny’s trembling hand. “That’s not a receipt for poison! It’s a pharmacy invoice!” I spat, tasting copper. “Penny! He calls you Auntie! How can you be this evil?!” Penny sobbed louder, her shoulders shaking. “Gemma, how can you twist this on me? I’m trying to save him!” She spun toward the officer. “Cuff her! Keep her away from the boy!” The officer dropped his knee into my spine, wrapping a thick arm around my throat. My oxygen cut off, but my eyes remained locked on Toby, ten yards out of reach. He was still on the ground. The purple of his skin was fading into an ashen, lifeless gray. His tiny hands, which usually gripped my fingers so tightly, were weakly clawing at the empty air. “Toby…” My voice was a broken rasp. Tears mixed with the grit and rain on my face, sliding into my mouth. “Please,” I begged the boots surrounding me. “Let me give him the medicine. You can lock me up for the rest of my life after, just let me save him!” A man kicked me squarely in the jaw. “Still trying to poison him? Sick bitch.” I spat out a mouthful of blood, the ticking clock in my head screaming at me. There were only two minutes left in the survival window. I crawled forward, dragging the officer’s weight with me like a wounded animal. Penny crouched down, bringing her face inches from mine. Under the guise of checking on me, she whispered, her voice a deadly, calm hiss only I could hear. “Gemma, why do you think your fingerprints are all over that receipt?” A cold shockwave ripped through my chest. I stared at her, the betrayal paralyzing me. “You asked me to hand you that paper from your desk this morning.” A slow, vicious smile spread across Penny’s glossed lips. “Exactly. And I swapped his rescue meds for the real thing. Toby is dead, Gemma. No one can save him now.” Something inside me snapped. The civilized, rational woman I was vanished. I yanked my arm free with a burst of adrenaline and sank my teeth directly into Penny’s calf. She let out a blood-curdling scream, collapsing onto the pavement. “She’s killing me! She’s crazy!” The crowd surged again, fists and feet raining down on my back and ribs. I curled into a ball, shielding the medicine case against my chest, my eyes never leaving Toby. Hold on, baby. Wait for Mommy. Just then, the screech of tires cut through the chaos. A sleek black Maybach slammed to a halt right at the curb. The door flew open, and my husband, Timothy, sprinted out, his eyes wild and bloodshot. 2 “Timothy! Save Toby!” He was my last lifeline. I screamed his name with everything I had left. Timothy shoved through the crowd, his broad shoulders clearing a path instantly. I thought he would drop to his knees for his son, or at least snatch the medicine from my bleeding hands. He didn’t. He walked straight up to me, and his heavy leather shoe caught me brutally in the shoulder. The force sent me rolling through the mud and puddles. “Gemma! What the hell did you do to my son?!” I was stunned. I ignored the excruciating burn in my rotator cuff, scrambling to my knees to hold up the plastic case. “Timothy, give him the shot! His asthma—” Penny threw herself at Timothy, wrapping her arms around his legs, weeping hysterically. “Timothy, don’t listen to her! That’s not his medicine, it’s poison! She tried to kill him, and when I caught her, she tried to kill me!” Timothy looked down at the bloody bite mark on Penny’s leg. The muscles in his jaw locked. His face turned a shade of pale I had never seen before. He reached down, ripped the medicine case from my hand, and hurled it onto the pavement. He stomped on it. The vials shattered, the life-saving liquid mingling with the dirty rainwater. My heart flatlined. “Timothy! Are you insane?! That was his lifeline!” He grabbed me by the lapels of my coat, hauling me off the ground until my toes barely grazed the asphalt. “His lifeline? Penny showed me the proof!” He snatched the crumpled paper from Penny’s hand and smacked it against my cheek. “It’s right here! You bought a lethal dose of cyanide off the dark web yesterday!” “Timothy, I was blind,” he snarled, his spit hitting my face. “I can’t believe I let a venomous snake like you into my home.” I shook my head frantically, the tears blinding me. “No! It wasn’t me! It was Penny! She made me touch the paper this morning to frame me! Timothy, we’ve been married for three years. You know who I am. I’m the one who sits up with Toby every night he can’t breathe. Why would I hurt him?!” Timothy sneered, his eyes filled with a disgust so profound it made my stomach drop. “You take care of him? You only play the doting mother to impress my father.” “Now that the old man is on his deathbed, you got terrified Toby would get the lion’s share of the trust. You couldn’t wait to eliminate him.” I trembled, a sickening chill seeping into my bones. “You actually believe that? You would rather believe a friend than your own wife?” Penny whimpered beside us. “Timothy, it’s my fault. I should have seen through her sooner. If we lose Toby… I don’t want to live.” Timothy’s grip on me loosened, and he reached out to gently help Penny up. “This isn’t your fault, Penny. You saved him.” The piercing wail of an ambulance finally shattered the noise. Paramedics rushed out, loading Toby’s limp body onto a stretcher. “The child is in profound shock! Start pushing epi, now!” the paramedic barked, the panic in his voice slicing through my eardrums. I fought to stumble toward the ambulance. “Toby! Let me ride with him!” Timothy shoved me back so hard I hit the side of a parked car. “Don’t you ever come within a hundred feet of my son again.” The wail of police sirens joined the ambulance. Cruisers boxed us in. Officers stepped out, hands on their belts. “Who called it in?” Penny pointed a manicured, trembling finger directly at me. “Officers, it’s her. She poisoned the boy.” An officer stepped forward, yanking my arms behind my back. The cold steel of handcuffs bit into my bruised wrists. “Gemma, you are under arrest for attempted murder. You have the right to remain silent.” I watched the ambulance doors slam shut and speed away. The flashing red lights blurred into streaks. I closed my eyes, letting the darkness take me. 3 The fluorescent lights in the precinct interrogation room buzzed with a maddening, relentless hum. They felt like needles in my eyes. “We have the evidence, Gemma. Why make this harder on yourself?” The detective slammed the crumpled receipt onto the metal table. I stared at the piece of paper, my jaw wired shut with tension. “I am innocent. That receipt is a forgery. It says cyanide, but did you even bother looking into the IP address? Or the logistics?” “Penny didn’t buy cyanide. She bought a neurotoxin.” The detective frowned, pausing his pen. “And how would you know she bought a neurotoxin?” I took a slow, jagged breath, forcing my racing heart to steady. I needed to be the smartest person in the room right now. “Because Toby’s symptoms were wrong. If it was a standard severe asthma attack, he wouldn’t have exhibited immediate cyanosis and convulsions at that speed. Penny poisoned him before I ever picked him up from school.” The detective looked at me with flat, unimpressed eyes. “That’s quite the theory. But the lab results from the shattered vials we scraped off the pavement? They tested positive for a lethal chemical agent. And this receipt? It only has your fingerprints on it.” I had no defense. The trap felt suffocating, perfectly engineered. Penny had worn gloves when she swapped the vials, and she had tricked me into handling the printed receipt. All the physical evidence pointed to me. The heavy metal door clicked open, and Timothy walked in. He looked like he had aged five years. His designer suit was wrinkled, his jaw rough with stubble, and his eyes were red-rimmed. The detective gave him a nod and stepped out, leaving us alone. I stood up. The chain of my handcuffs scraped loudly against the table. “Timothy. Is Toby okay?” Timothy walked right up to me. Without a word, he raised his hand and slapped me across the face. My head snapped to the side. The metallic taste of blood flooded my mouth. “You have the audacity to ask about him?” Timothy’s voice was a ragged whisper. “The doctors said the cerebral hypoxia went on for too long. Combined with whatever you put in his system…” He choked on a sob. “He might never wake up.” The room spun. White noise roared in my ears. Never wake up? “No. That’s impossible. If they just give him the right counteragent, he’ll wake up.” I lunged forward, grabbing his forearm with both cuffed hands. “Timothy, please, just listen to me this once. Look into Penny’s finances! Look at her bank statements! Someone paid her to do this, or she has her own agenda!” Timothy ripped his arm away, his eyes glacial. “You are still trying to drag Penny down with you. She got five stitches in her leg because of you.” “She loves him so much she’s willing to donate her bone marrow to save him.” I froze. The breath hitched in my throat. “Bone marrow? Why does Toby need a transplant?” Timothy glared at me, pure hatred radiating from him. “They ran his bloodwork in the ER. Acute leukemia. And you—you sick, twisted woman—you decided to poison him when he was already dying.” I stood there, paralyzed. Acute leukemia. Suddenly, the puzzle pieces snapped together in a horrifying picture. That was why Penny chose today. She knew about his diagnosis. She knew the clock was ticking, and if Toby died now, Timothy would be emotionally destroyed, leaving her to step in as his savior and inherit everything. I looked at the man I had loved fiercely for three years. He felt like a total stranger. “Timothy… did you ever stop to think why Penny, a woman completely unrelated to us, just happens to be a perfect bone marrow match for your son?” “What exactly is your relationship with her?” Timothy’s eyes darted away for a fraction of a second—a subtle tell—before his face contorted in rage. “Shut your mouth! She was just a girl I knew in college!” He unzipped his leather briefcase, pulled out a thick stack of legal documents, and threw them onto the metal table. “Sign them.” I looked down. Petition for Dissolution of Marriage. And right there, in bold font, was the clause: Full Waiver of Alimony and Asset Distribution. A zero-payout, ironclad exit. 4 I stared at the divorce papers, and a laugh bubbled up from my throat. A dark, hollow sound that brought tears to my eyes. “Toby is on life support, fighting for his life, and you took the time to have your lawyers draft an expedited divorce?” “What’s the rush, Timothy? Need to clear the bed for Penny?” Timothy grabbed me by the throat, slamming my back against the metal table. “Being in the same room as you makes my skin crawl. Sign the papers, and I’ll tell the DA to go easy on you for the sake of our history. If you don’t, I will personally ensure you rot in federal prison for the rest of your life.” I wheezed, staring dead into his furious eyes. “I’m not signing a damn thing.” “I didn’t do this. I’d rather die than confess to something I didn’t do. You want to make room for Penny? You’re going to have to do it over my dead body.” Timothy shook with rage. He released me, backing away as if I were infectious. “Fine. Let’s see how long you can play tough in here.” He turned on his heel and stormed out. Not ten minutes later, the door opened again. This time, it was Penny. She was dressed in a pristine Chanel tweed suit, her heels clicking softly on the linoleum. She stood over me, looking down with a sickeningly sweet smile. I glanced up. The red light on the security camera in the corner was blinking steadily. Penny noticed my gaze. She dragged a chair to the far corner of the room—the blind spot—and sat down. She leaned in close, her voice dropping to a theatrical whisper. “Do the cuffs chafe, Gemma?” I stared at her, my expression dead. “You’re going to burn for this, Penny.” She covered her mouth, giggling softly. “Burn? Sweetie, the winner writes the history. Do you want to know the best part?” “The toxin in Toby’s blood? I had it imported from a private lab overseas.” My body trembled with a primal urge to kill her. “You are out of your mind. He is three years old.” Her eyes went dead, flat, and shark-like. “So what? He was in my way. Timothy has been tired of playing house with you for a long time. It’s always been me.” “Once the brat is gone, I’ll be the only woman in the estate.” I shot up from my chair, ready to throw myself at her and wrap my chained hands around her neck. But before I even took a step, Penny threw herself backward. She crashed to the floor, taking the metal chair down with her in a loud clatter. She let out a blood-curdling scream. “Help! Help! Gemma, please, don’t hit me!” The door flew open so hard it dented the drywall. Timothy rushed in, dropping to his knees and pulling Penny into his chest. “Gemma! You are dead!” He kicked out, his heavy shoe catching me squarely in the stomach. The wind was knocked out of me. I collapsed onto the freezing floor, curling into a fetal position as a cold sweat broke out over my forehead. Penny buried her face in Timothy’s jacket, crying perfectly calibrated tears. “Timothy… she said she won’t sign the papers. She said she’s going to kill me…” Timothy’s eyes were bloodshot as he pointed a shaking finger at me. “You want to play games, Gemma? I will destroy you.” 5 The agony in my abdomen made the room tilt. Curled on the icy floor, I watched through half-open eyes as Timothy tenderly helped Penny to her feet, brushing the dust off her skirt. “Timothy,” I gasped, grinding my teeth against the pain. “She’s playing you.” “She literally just confessed it to me!” Timothy looked down at me like I was a rabid dog that needed to be put down. “Your lies are getting pathetic, Gemma. The police already raided the IP address on the receipt. The dark web vendor scrubbed their servers, but the transaction logs are still there. It’s over.” I froze. The vendor scrubbed their servers? But the logs remained? I lifted my head and looked at Penny. She was hiding behind Timothy’s broad shoulder, but she tilted her head just enough for me to see. The corner of her mouth twitched into a smug, victorious smirk. She mouthed the words: You can’t beat me. I closed my eyes. The fight drained out of my muscles, leaving behind a cold, terrifying clarity. “Take her and get out, Timothy.” “I’m not signing the papers. Let the judge decide.” Timothy scoffed, adjusting his cuffs. “Fine. Get used to the food in here.” He guided Penny out of the room, the heavy door slamming shut behind them. For the next two days, I sat in a holding cell. The detectives pulled me in for questioning every few hours, cycling through the same psychological pressure tactics. I didn’t break. I refused to confess. On the third day, the tide finally turned.

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I was the eldest child in my family, but the third born. The first two were girls. Because they were the “wrong” gender, my parents got rid of them before they were even born. The shady clinic doctor swore up and down that I was a boy. Unfortunately for them, when I came crying into the world, I was still a girl. 1 I was a girl. My parents were bitterly disappointed. But they didn’t give up. Hiding like fugitives from the authorities, when I was five years old, my mother finally gave birth to my little brother. Because they had exceeded the legal child limit, my father lost his job. The authorities came and emptied our house of anything valuable to pay the fines. My mother lay on a makeshift bed of two wooden doors pushed together, looking at my baby brother in his swaddling clothes and laughing. “At least I don’t have to get pregnant ever again.” My grandmother held my brother, beaming from ear to ear. “Another son! Now when our little Precious grows up, he’ll have brothers to back him up.” “Precious” was the name they picked out while I was still in the womb. Now, they finally got to use it. Overjoyed at finally having a grandson, my grandmother carried him all around the village to show him off. After showing him off, she dumped him back with my mother. She had bullied my parents into having a son, but she refused to help raise him. With my father out of work, money was incredibly tight. During my mother’s postpartum recovery, my father snuck into my grandmother’s chicken coop to steal two eggs for her to eat. My grandmother chased him around the yard, screaming at him all day. “You think she’s some delicate princess?! When I had you, I was back in the fields working three days later! I lived on watery porridge every day, and I turned out just fine…” My father sheepishly put the eggs back. My mother cried as she nursed my brother. I walked over to wipe her tears, but she just stared at me blankly and muttered, “If only you had been a boy. I wouldn’t have had to suffer through this.” The next day, I went to the barber shop at the edge of the village and had my long hair shaved into a buzz cut. I ran home happily and told my mother, “Look, I’m a boy now.” My mother and grandmother took turns screaming at me. “Your hair was so long! I could have sold it for twenty bucks! Are you stupid?!” “Even if you shave your head bald, you’ll never be a boy.” After cursing me out, my grandmother stormed off to the barber shop to demand the hair I had cut off. After a loud argument with the barber, half the village knew what happened. The kids my age mocked me: “Not a boy, not a girl. Maya Miller is a little freak.” After the New Year, my brother turned six months old. My parents decided to move to California for work, leaving me behind with my grandmother. Right before they left, my mother held my hand, looking guilty. “I can’t let your dad go out there alone, I’d worry. And your brother is too young; I don’t trust your grandmother to take care of him.” “You be a good girl at home. When I come back, I’ll buy you candy.” 2 I cried and begged her to let me come, promising I would never eat candy again if she just didn’t leave me alone with my cruel, vicious grandmother. She grew impatient, frowning deeply as she shook off my hand. “Why are you being so disobedient!” “There’s no time, I have to go.” I ran after the old, beat-up Greyhound bus for as long as I could. In the thick cloud of dust kicked up by the tires, I lost sight of my parents. There were a lot of “left-behind” kids in our village whose parents worked out of state. But I was probably the most miserable one. I took over all the household chores. Cooking, washing clothes, feeding the pigs and chickens, cutting grass for fodder… I even had to wash my grandmother’s underwear. I walked on eggshells, terrified of provoking her. But if she lost at bingo with the neighbor ladies, she’d still take it out on me. She poured scalding hot water from the kettle over my head. She stripped me naked, shoved me out into the yard, and beat me viciously with a bamboo broom. On freezing winter days, she made me wash her feet with ice-cold water scooped straight from the outdoor rain barrel. … After she finished torturing me, she’d go back out to play bingo. I slept alone in that massive, drafty brick house. The night wind howled through the trees on the hill behind us, sounding like a low moan. I wrapped myself tightly in two heavy quilts. Curled up into a tiny ball. Fighting against the pain, the loneliness, and the fear. At first, my mother would call the neighbor’s landline every Saturday night around 7:00 PM. I would finish my dinner by 5:00 and go wait at Mrs. Davis’s house. I could never get out more than a few words before I started crying, asking when she was coming back. She always said, “Be sweet and work hard. Don’t make your grandmother angry.” Maybe she found me annoying. Gradually, the calls went from once a week to once every two weeks. When the weather turned cold, it became once a month. But she still promised that she’d come back for Christmas and buy me new clothes. She also promised to bring me the best candy from California. I counted the days and nights until Christmas Eve arrived. My mother finally called. My heart was bursting with hope. “Uncle Tommy and Uncle Dave already came back! When are you coming home, Mom?” “Maya, tickets were too expensive and sold out too fast. We couldn’t get any. We’ll come see you after the holidays.” The freezing winter wind outside seemed to travel through the phone line, drilling straight into my ear and freezing my heart. I couldn’t control myself anymore. I yelled, “You promised! You said you would…” My mother offered some half-hearted comfort. In the background, my brother started crying and fussing, slurring, “Milk, want milk…” I heard my mother’s voice instantly soften. “Be a good boy, sweetie, don’t cry. Mommy will buy it for you in a second.” I called out, “Mom…” She was already impatient. “If we can’t get tickets, we can’t go back! Your dad and I have no choice! Do you think we want to spend Christmas away from home? “Can’t you just grow up and be a little understanding! “Alright, your brother is hungry. I have to hang up.” Mom, I actually wanted to say: It’s okay if you don’t buy candy or clothes. You and Dad work so hard. But. You didn’t care at all. After Christmas, when tickets were easy to get, they still didn’t come back. Since the holidays were over, coming back probably seemed pointless to them. I wasn’t a priority they kept in their hearts. My grandmother lost money at bingo every day during the holidays and cursed me for being a jinx. She hit me hard over the head with an iron spatula. The lump on my head took over ten days to go down. The swallows returned in the spring and built a nest under my window. While cutting grass for the pigs, I found an abandoned black puppy. I fed him scraps and leftovers, and he slept faithfully by my bed every night. In the mornings, he would wag his tail and walk me to the school bus stop. After school, he’d be waiting for me exactly on time at the edge of the village. My life was full of sadness and misery, but there were also these small, fragmented moments of warmth and discovery. But. I no longer looked forward to sharing them with my mother. Two more years passed. They finally managed to get tickets home. Everyone in the village asked me. “Your mom, dad, and little brother are coming back! You must be so happy, right?” 3 No. Perhaps my hopes and joy had been ground down to dust a long time ago. A few days before Christmas, my parents arrived lugging huge bags and suitcases. She bought me a bag of candy. I had just opened it and taken one piece when my brother ran over and tried to snatch the bag. I gripped it tightly and refused to let go. My mother said, “You’re the older sister. Let your brother have it.” “He won’t even eat yours; he’s sick of candy anyway.” Sure enough, after he snatched it, he ate one piece and threw the rest on the floor. The reward I had waited years for was just garbage to my brother; something he wouldn’t even look twice at. I also saw a photo album in my mother’s suitcase. I thought it was a book she had bought for me. When I opened the cover, inside was a photo of my parents and my brother, smiling happily and leaning against each other. Oh. It was a family portrait. A family portrait without me. My mother bought me a red winter coat and couldn’t wait for me to try it on. It was huge. The hem went down to my ankles, and the sleeves hung past my hands like a costume. My mother looked a little embarrassed. “Mary’s daughter is eight too, and it fits her perfectly. Why haven’t you grown at all?” My grandmother happily tried on her own new clothes and shot me a dirty look. “It’s good to buy kids’ clothes big. They can wear them for a few more years.” On New Year’s Eve, wearing my new coat with the sleeves rolled all the way up my arms, I tripped over the raised threshold. I busted my lip open, bleeding everywhere. My grandmother immediately started screaming: “Are you blind?! Tripping and bleeding on New Year’s Eve is terrible luck! Are you hoping I die early?!” My brother jumped up and down, laughing hysterically. “You’re so stupid…” He stepped over the threshold, squatted in front of me, pointed at the blood on my face, and kept laughing. “Stupid, stupid…” My mother looked at him affectionately. “No one even taught you that. Where did you learn to curse at people?” My dog, Shadow, had been sleeping quietly in the corner. Suddenly, he charged out, baring his teeth and barking furiously at my brother. My brother was terrified. He jerked backward, hitting the back of his head hard on the wooden threshold. He started bawling, snot and tears running down his face. My parents panicked, rushing over to comfort him, calling him their precious baby. My brother pointed at Shadow, crying hysterically. “Kill it! Kill it!” Terrified, I quickly locked Shadow in the woodshed. He didn’t understand what he had done wrong and kept barking confusedly. A few days later, several uncles and cousins came over to drink with my dad. Shadow smelled strangers and started barking again. My brother got scared and hid in my mother’s arms, crying. My dad pointed at the woodshed and laughed. “That dog is too annoying. Let’s catch it and make dog stew today!” 4 The men laughed and started walking toward the woodshed. The blood rushed straight to my head. Where the cowardly me found the courage, I don’t know, but I flew out of the house and pressed my back tightly against the woodshed door. “Dad, please don’t kill Shadow.” “Please don’t kill him!” Shadow sensed my panic and barked louder: “Woof! Woof! Woof!” My dad got impatient. “Move out of the way. Stop being annoying.” “Dog stew is the best thing to eat in the winter. I’ll save you a leg later!” He reached out to shove me aside. Tears streamed down my face uncontrollably as I screamed at my dad: “For the last few years, you bought my brother milk, candy, and clothes, and took him to take family portraits. “But you left me alone at home. Shadow is the only one who kept me company.” I grabbed an axe resting nearby and shoved it into my dad’s hands. “You might as well kill me too! You and Mom don’t want me anyway!” The uncles looked awkward. “Forget it, forget it…” My dad’s face turned beet red. He raised his hand and slapped me hard across the face. “What kind of nonsense are you talking about? Who doesn’t want you?” “If it weren’t for you and your brother, do you think your mother and I would willingly go so far away to work?!” Hearing the commotion, my mother came over to break it up. My grandmother spat out sunflower seed shells. “This daughter of yours has a terrible temper. If I hadn’t beaten it out of her normally, she’d think she owns the place…” She rambled on and on. My dad looked at me with pure disgust. My mother also muttered, “It’s just a dog. It scares your brother every day. Why are you defending it so hard…” The winter wind cut to the bone. No one supported me. No one cared about me. I pressed my back tightly against the woodshed door. I felt a furry paw reaching through the crack in the wood, pawing at my palm. It was Shadow. Through the old wooden door, he let out a low whimper. I held his paw, feeling like I was holding the only warmth left in the world. Shadow survived for the time being. But in my parents’ eyes, I became the disobedient child. My mother scolded me. “Is a dog’s life really more important than your brother’s? How can you be so cold-blooded?” My dad was disgusted. “No one to discipline you every day, you’ve gone wild.” … But why did I have no one to discipline me? I thought Shadow was safe. But a month later, on the day of the Lantern Festival, I went to the village square to watch the parade. When I came back, I saw the local dog catcher dragging Shadow away on a three-wheeled cart. His legs and paws were bound, and he howled in despair. I chased the cart for as long as I could. But eventually, his cries were drowned out by the deafening sound of drums and firecrackers. I went home crying, screaming, and demanding answers. My dad said lightly, “It’s just a dog. Next time we’ll get you a more obedient one!” My grandmother rolled her eyes. “Should have killed it a long time ago. It was so annoying. Good thing we still got twenty bucks for it. At least we didn’t lose money.” It was in that exact moment. I finally woke up. They didn’t love me. No matter how docile and obedient I was, no matter how well I did. They would never love me the way they loved my brother. So… Why was I still hoping? Why was I still trying to please them? The next day, my parents took my brother back to California. They wanted him to attend an expensive private preschool there. Before they left, my mother gave me money for school fees and living expenses. She counted out fifty dollars, thought for a second, then pulled a ten-dollar bill back and handed me the rest. “Your dad and I work hard for this money. You need to be careful how you spend it…” As soon as they left, my grandmother showed her true colors. Over the slightest disagreement, she grabbed the fire tongs to hit me. 5 This time, I didn’t just stand there and take it. I fought back, wrestling her to the ground. I grabbed the fire tongs and, imitating what I’d seen on TV, pressed them hard against her neck. I glared at her fiercely: “I will never let you bully me again. “I’m going to keep growing, and you’re only going to get older. “If you hit me once, I’ll hit you three times. If you strip my clothes off, I’ll tear yours off too! “When you’re old and bedridden, I’ll feed you shit and piss!” … The old hag was terrified. She let out a wail and started crying. She went around the entire village broadcasting my evil deeds. The older women and grandmothers lectured me from their high horses: “She’s your grandmother. Being this disrespectful will bring down the wrath of God.” I remained expressionless. “Well, I haven’t been struck by lightning yet. Doesn’t that mean God thinks I’m right?” They were speechless. That summer, there was a huge celebration in the village. Mr. Smith’s daughter, Dawn, got into a very prestigious university. She had a younger brother, and her father favored him, refusing to pay for her education. She had fought tooth and nail just to be allowed to go to high school. The day her acceptance letter arrived, Mr. Smith paraded around the village showing it off. Us kids went to see the commotion too. I touched the gold-foiled envelope. The university buildings printed on it looked ancient and grand, making my heart yearn for it. I asked foolishly, “If you go to college, does that mean you’ll make lots and lots of money?” Dawn patted my head. “Not necessarily, but if you go to college, you won’t have to be like a lot of girls in the village, getting married and having kids super early.” She crouched down and looked gently into my eyes. “Maya, you’re only in fourth grade. If you start working hard now, it’s not too late.” She planted a seed of hope in my heart. I stopped zoning out in class and started listening attentively. After school, I stopped running around playing and started reading properly. The old hag laughed at me. “With your pig brain, you think reading is gonna make you bloom into a flower? Once you finish middle school, hurry up and go find a job in a factory. “Getting married early and collecting a dowry is the only proper path. A girl reading too many books is just a waste of money for her future in-laws!” … I snapped back at her. “The more books I read and words I know, the better I’ll be able to personally carve your name onto your tombstone when you die.” The old hag almost had a heart attack. Back then, for kids in the village, studying mostly relied on natural talent. Not many worked as hard on their own initiative as I did. Most just drifted along, graduating in a daze. When I took the middle school entrance exam, I ranked first in my class. By that time, the population was already migrating toward bigger cities. The middle school in our township had been merged with the one in the larger town. Because it was far, boarding was mandatory. While other kids cried about it, I couldn’t have been happier. The old hag cursed and swore, saying I shouldn’t go at all, that I should just go work and earn money now. 6 She got chewed out by the town mayor. “The state requires nine years of compulsory education. If you stop her from going to school, you could go to jail. Do you want to go to jail?” The old hag instantly caved. My parents didn’t care about my grades; they barely ever asked. But they specifically paid to get my brother into a good elementary school in California. They had to pull strings and pay bribes to get him in. “Precious is so smart, we have to nurture his potential!” I entered middle school with excellent grades, thinking I could really show what I was capable of. But the midterm exams in seventh grade dealt me a heavy blow. I only ranked fifteenth in my class, and over a hundredth in the grade. It was from that moment on. I realized that studying really did involve a degree of natural talent. My desk-mate slept through class every day and played basketball after school. But no matter what math problem he looked at, he only needed to see it once to grasp the underlying concept. I needed to recite an ancient poem fifty or a hundred times to memorize it, while he could basically repeat it after reading it three times. For a kid with no money, focusing on studying was exceptionally difficult. My mother gave me very little for living expenses. She was even more unwilling to spend money on study guides or prep books. I could only save money by cutting back on my meals. I bought fifty-cent packets of pickled vegetables and three one-dollar steamed buns from the cafeteria. A dollar fifty was enough to survive a whole day. Sometimes at night, I was so hungry I just guzzled tap water. Water was free. I bought a pair of fake designer shoes at the flea market for ten dollars and wore them every single day. When the soles cracked, I bought superglue to stick them back together. I glued them repeatedly until one day, during gym class, the entire sole completely fell off. My toes and the holes in my socks were exposed to the air. I finally had to throw those shoes away. I was already going through puberty. But my mother refused to buy me a bra. “Little girls wearing grown-up clothes, looking like sluts.” So I could only sew and re-sew cheap, two-for-five-dollar camisoles, making them tight enough to bind my chest so nothing would bounce when I moved. Compared to the embarrassment in my daily life, the struggle with my studies made me even more desperate. Maybe I just wasn’t born to be a scholar. I just couldn’t grasp concepts quickly like other people. I couldn’t memorize a text after reading it seven or eight times. Even though I never slacked off for a second, my grades were stagnant. I frequently dreamed I was in an exam hall. Unable to solve the problems. And then I would wake up, drenched in sweat. By the time I reached eighth grade, some classmates were already coming back to the village pregnant. The outside world was too big, and the temptations too many. They had never been deeply loved by their parents, so when they suddenly stepped out into society, they were easily seduced by a few sweet words from boys. They had kids and got married in a haze. Living out their lives in a daze. I was so terrified. So afraid that I would turn out like that too. I went to my homeroom teacher, Mr. Harrison. I shamefully admitted my struggles, unable to lift my head. But he didn’t scold me. He just asked, “Do you have any extra money for living expenses?” I waved my hands frantically. “I still have twenty dollars. It’s enough for next month.” Mr. Harrison’s hand paused, his gaze turning serious. “You only spent twenty dollars last month? Less than a dollar a day?” “So you’ve never eaten meat? Never been full? Never had a snack? Never bought any clothes or shoes?” “It… it doesn’t matter. I’ve lived like this for three years.” “Of course it matters!” Mr. Harrison’s voice rose. “You’re growing. Studying burns a massive amount of calories. If you don’t have enough nutrition, your brain can’t keep up. “Saving this tiny bit of money now is destroying your future. “Starting next month, you must have meat for at least one meal a day. You have to eat an egg and drink a glass of milk every day. “And you need to buy the clothes you need to buy.” He gently patted my back, lowering his voice: “Like bras. If you don’t take care of it now, you won’t be able to fix it later in life. “Don’t feel guilty about spending money now. Because this is an investment in your future. “You deserve it, and you should spend it.” After winter break, I went back to school. I went to buy milk. After comparing prices, I ended up buying powdered milk. It was cheaper than cartons. Every morning, I ate a meat bun and a hard-boiled egg. Sometimes I had soy milk. For lunch and dinner, I had one meat dish and one vegetable dish. Before bed, I drank a glass of milk. Every weekend, I went to the bakery to buy the leftover crusts—they were very cheap—so I could fill my stomach if I got hungry between meals. My body was no longer in a constant state of starvation like before. About half a month later, I felt my mental energy was much better. I was originally one of the shortest kids in the class. Barely five feet tall. But during that time, I felt like bamboo, shooting up section by section. My pants were visibly getting shorter. Perhaps because my nutrition was keeping up, my mind was also clearer than before. Wearing clothes that fit properly, I no longer had to hunch over and slouch like I used to. I gathered my courage and started asking teachers and classmates how to solve problems. I tried my hardest to find patterns between different types of questions. I stopped sacrificing sleep to study. I told myself not to be anxious. You can’t become a genius overnight. By the final exams of my sophomore year, I ranked six hundredth in the grade. There were over eight hundred students in our grade. Even though it was still a below-average score, at least it wasn’t at the very bottom. I was pretty happy. But when my brother found out, he scoffed. “Six hundredth? That’s garbage! “Is your brain full of shit?” My parents also frowned. “You’re really not cut out for studying. Maybe you should just quit.”

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When my biological parents finally tracked me down, I had already joined the neighborhood aunties’ line-dancing squad at the local community center. They stared at me—dressed in a bedazzled, loud floral knit set—with expressions of pure, unadulterated disgust. 01 “Are you… Maya? This outfit…” The well-dressed woman before me hesitated, her gaze raking over my “Blooming Florals” knit tracksuit. Ignoring the flicker of disdain in her eyes, I dropped the heavy bag of rice and the gallon of cooking oil I was lugging on my shoulder. I pulled a scratched thermos from my shopping bag. I took a slow sip of tea before looking at the group. “So, you’re the biological parents?” Mr. Sterling frowned but eventually nodded. “We are.” “And who’s she?” I looked at the fragile-looking girl standing behind them. Her eyes welled up instantly. The two men flanking her—one older, one younger—immediately stepped in front of her like human shields. “Don’t you dare bully Serena,” the younger one snapped, his impulsiveness getting the better of him. I looked at her face. We shared about sixty percent of the same features. Then I looked at the way the Sterling family reacted to his outburst. This family was going to be interesting. I leaned back against my dilapidated sofa and watched them like a spectator at a play. Perhaps realizing his tone was inappropriate, the older brother explained, “We know you’ve suffered these past years, but none of this was Serena’s fault. She’s innocent…” Before he could finish, the door to my cramped apartment was shoved open. A mob of neighborhood aunties, all wearing the same bedazzled floral tracksuits as me, swarmed my biological parents. They started shouting over one another, airing my grievances: “So you’re Maya’s real parents?” “What took you so long? Do you have any idea what this girl has been through?” “Let me tell you, that foster mother of hers was a monster! You see those heavy wooden laundry rollers? That woman would beat her with them for no reason!” “Exactly! Half the time she wasn’t even allowed to eat. In the dead of winter, that woman purposely shredded Maya’s school jacket and made her go to class in a torn T-shirt! During her SATs, she locked her in a room so she couldn’t take the test!” “We always knew no real mother could be that cruel. Turns out she wasn’t the real one!” “You better have that woman arrested. And that fake daughter of yours? You better check her, too. I bet she knew her mother swapped the babies on purpose…” “Wait, who’s crying?” Auntie Sarah, the leader of the squad, froze. The group of women looked around for the source of the sobbing, finally landing on the girl in white. “I’m… I’m so sorry,” the girl sobbed, her shoulders shaking. “I didn’t mean to steal your life. I…” “And who might this be?” Auntie Sarah narrowed her eyes, making a ‘shushing’ gesture to the group. I nodded. “That’s Martha’s biological daughter. Serena Sterling.” 02 “Maya, Martha is Martha. What she did has nothing to do with Serena.” My “big brother,” Marcus Sterling, spoke up. The rest of the family nodded in agreement. But these were the South Side Line-Dancing Aunties. They had seen every trick in the book. A few looks exchanged between them, and they had the whole situation pegged. Before the Sterlings could say another word, Auntie Bev—who hadn’t even pampered her own son this much—cut them off. “Oh, please. Give me a break.” “Whether she’s ‘innocent’ is one thing, but her crying like this? What is Maya supposed to do? Comfort the girl who’s been living her life?” Bev reached out and yanked up my sleeve, exposing the jagged scars on the back of my hand. “Look at this. Her ‘mother’ did this with a red-hot set of fireplace tongs.” “Then look at this girl. Dressed in designer labels, skin as soft as silk.” “And you want Maya to apologize to her? To comfort her? Does that sound right to you?” Bev turned her glare toward Serena. “Listen, kid. Maybe you can’t be blamed for what your mother did, but Maya lived through hell for eighteen years because of it! Have some decency. Stop the crocodile tears. You’re just stabbing Maya in the heart.” With that, Bev wiped a stray tear with her sleeve and pulled me into a hug. “My poor, silly girl. You always keep everything inside. No one loved you before, but now that your real parents are here, surely they won’t be biased against you, right? These are your parents. If you’ve been wronged, you speak up!” “Mr. and Mrs. Sterling, am I right?” The squad’s eyes were all locked on the Sterling parents. They smiled awkwardly. “Yes. Of course. Maya, tell us if anything is bothering you.” Serena, choked into silence by Bev’s bluntness, could only stare at the family with wide, red eyes, biting her lip. 03 Before I got into the Sterlings’ car, Bev shoved a shopping bag into my arms. She said it was the new “team uniform.” Inside was a high-end, trendy athletic set. I knew the aunties were worried I’d have nothing “classy” to wear at the Sterling estate, so they had pooled their money to buy it for me. I whispered a thank you and handed over the discounted eggs I’d fought for at the supermarket earlier. I locked up my new oil and rice. Marcus reminded me I didn’t need to lock them up—I wasn’t coming back. I tilted my head, glanced at the parents and the younger brother who were currently whispering comforts to Serena, and smiled at Marcus without saying a word. Marcus looked back, unable to help himself. “Maya, Serena didn’t do it on purpose. She feels truly guilty. She’s cried about this multiple times at home…” “Sure, sure. Whatever you say.” I brushed him off, clutched my new clothes and my backpack, and slid into the car. During the drive, I looked at my phone. The family looked at me. Auntie Sarah sent $500 to the group chat: [A little something from the squad. Don’t you dare refuse it!] Bev messaged me privately: [Maya, if it’s not comfortable over there, just come home.] The others echoed her. We lived in a rough neighborhood. Most of these women were retired on tiny pensions. Bev and Mrs. Higgins still worked stalls at the flea market to make ends meet. Every cent they had spent on me over the years was money they had saved by skipping meals. They were sending me this money now because they saw my “real” parents were biased. They were terrified I’d be mistreated in that mansion. “Maya, that outfit…” Eleanor Sterling, my mother, looked at my bedazzled tracksuit with a furrowed brow. She finally couldn’t help herself. “From now on, you are a Sterling. Your clothes and behavior must be appropriate.” “And at your age, you should be making friends your own age. Expand your horizons, socialize. Don’t spend all your time with… those community center ladies.” “Serena can help you with that. It’ll be a good way for you two to bond.” Eleanor spoke with such “sincerity” that Serena immediately played along. She reached for my hand, her intimacy making my skin crawl. “Mom’s right. I’ll teach you everything, Maya.” “Sister, when we get home, I’ll pick out some things from my closet for you. As for what you’re wearing… we’ll just have the maid throw it out.” “Exactly,” said Leo, the younger brother. “I don’t even know what that trashy set is. It’s hideous. If you keep dressing like that, don’t tell people you’re a Sterling. It’s embarrassing.” I paused my typing—I was in the middle of thanking my dear aunties—and looked at them with a bright smile. “Do you know why I always wear these ‘auntie’ clothes?” 04 “Because her mother—Martha—shredded every piece of clothing I owned to keep me from going to school. Not just that, but when the neighbors felt bad and gave me hand-me-downs, she burned them or cut them up.” “Eventually, those ‘trashy’ ladies you look down on found a way. They recruited me to help with their dance squad. They told Martha that the clothes I wore were team property—the squad’s assets. They told her if she destroyed them, she’d have to pay the community center back. That was the only way I was allowed to leave the house looking like a human being.” “By the way, Serena, do you know why your mother didn’t want me going to school?” I stared directly into Serena’s eyes. “It was because of that regional academic competition in eighth grade. She realized we were assigned to the same testing center. She realized that if I kept going, someone might eventually see us together and notice the resemblance.” “Oh, and one more thing. The aunties were too polite to say it earlier. Do you know what Martha did on the day of the SATs? She locked me in my room.” “She let a local creep into the house. She told me she’d sold me to him for three hundred dollars so he could ‘make me his wife’…” “Stop! Stop talking!” Eleanor went pale, clutching her chest as if she couldn’t breathe. The rest of the Sterling men looked sick, unable to meet my eyes. “Heh.” I let out a sharp laugh, ignoring their discomfort. “So, you should actually be thanking those aunties. If they hadn’t broken down the door, dragged me out, and personally driven me to the exam site, I’d either be dead or I’d be the mother of three kids in some shack in the woods by now.” The car went deathly silent. I curled my lips into a smirk, leaned back against the leather seat, and closed my eyes to rest. Maybe my little story was too much for them. As soon as we reached the Sterling estate, the parents made excuses about work and fled the scene. Serena and Leo also couldn’t handle my gaze and scurried upstairs. Only Marcus remained to lead me to my room—a converted guest bedroom on the first floor. I watched Serena and Leo run up to the second floor, then looked at Marcus and smiled. Marcus looked awkward. “This is just temporary. I’ll have the contractors renovate the spare room on the second floor. You can move up there once it’s done.” I just kept smiling. His face darkened. “Maya, we know you’ve been through a lot, but that’s in the past. Mom, Dad, and I are going to make it up to you. There’s no need to cling to the past and make everyone uncomfortable.” “Is it uncomfortable?” I asked, walking around the room. “Didn’t you see Mom and Dad’s faces?” His tone was accusatory. “And Serena. How do you think she feels, hearing those things while trying to live in this house…” I saw a heavy, long decorative brass statue on the nightstand. My eyes lit up. I grabbed it and swung it with everything I had, slamming it into Marcus’s shoulder. Marcus grunted in pain, clutching his arm and glaring at me. “Are you insane?!” I weighed the statue in my hand and grinned. “Does it hurt?” “What do you think?!” He looked at me like I was a maniac. “Maya, apologize to me right now!” “But that hit happened in the past,” I said, mimicking his tone perfectly. “And compared to what I’ve endured over the years, that little tap was nothing. Why are you clinging to what just happened? Why are you trying to make me feel uncomfortable, Brother?” Marcus choked on his words. I just waved him away and slammed the door. “Bye-bye, Brother.” 05 At dinner, perhaps out of a sense of guilt, my mother specifically asked what I liked and had the cook prepare a feast. When she saw me eating without a fuss, the tension on her face eased slightly. “Maya, you’re a Sterling now. Tomorrow, I’ll have my lawyer take you to change your legal name,” my father said. I looked around the table, my gaze lingering for a second on Serena’s puffy eyelids. “And what about her? Is she changing her name back to Miller?” The parents froze. Serena’s expression faltered. She bit her lip. “If Maya really dislikes me that much, I can move out.” She looked at my parents with eyes full of tears. “Maya, don’t be a bitch!” Leo shouted, jumping to his feet. “I just asked if she was changing her name to her biological mother’s name,” I said, glancing at Leo with indifference. Hearing that I didn’t explicitly demand she move out, the parents visibly relaxed. I couldn’t help but laugh at their reaction. “But since she brought it up.” “Let’s go with her plan. Have her move out. She’s right—I really don’t like her.” “Maya!” Leo glared at me. “How can you be so vicious? Serena even offered to give you her bedroom! She’s doing everything to accommodate you, and you just keep attacking her!” “It’s okay, Leo. I know she hates me. I should give everything back to her anyway,” Serena sobbed quietly. “Maya…” Eleanor looked at me, torn. I didn’t say a word. I simply pulled a photo from my pocket—one I’d prepared long ago—and tossed it onto the table. The family stared at the face in the photo, then instinctively looked at Serena. Serena looked exactly like her biological mother, Martha. “Now do you understand why I don’t like her?” I rolled up my sleeves, resting my chin on my hands, exposing the criss-crossing scars on my forearms for the whole table to see. My parents had seen the scars on my hands, but they hadn’t seen the rest. I turned my arm over, showing them the words Martha had carved into my skin with a knife: BITCH DOG. The Sterlings finally went silent. 06 I happily helped myself to two large pieces of steak. Serena, stuck in limbo, looked at the Sterlings for help. Marcus finally let out a sigh, attempting to “reason” with me. “Maya, we know it’s been hard. But Serena grew up with us. She’s family. We aren’t going to just throw her out. We hope you won’t take your anger toward… that woman out on her. You need to learn to get along.” I put my fork down. I didn’t address Marcus. I looked at Serena with a mocking smile. “What about you? Do you want to get along with me?” Serena blinked, immediately putting on her tragic, misunderstood mask. “Sister, even though I know you hate me, I’ve wanted to be your friend from the very beginning.” “So, you never actually intended to leave the Sterlings, did you?” I said. “In that case, why do you keep offering to move out? Just to make me look like the villain?” Panic flashed in Serena’s eyes. “I didn’t… that’s not…” I didn’t stay for the rest of her performance. I stood up and said, “I’m done,” and started walking toward the stairs. Leo realized what I was doing and blocked me. “Where do you think you’re going?” “Serena offered me her room, didn’t she? I’m accepting the offer.” I narrowed my eyes, giving them a pleasant, terrifying smile. “That wasn’t a lie, was it? You weren’t just saying that to mock me because I was put in the guest room, were you?” Serena stammered, “No… no, I really wanted to give it to you, it’s just…” “Good.” I looked at the housekeeper. “Mrs. Gable, please move Serena’s things to the guest room immediately. If I have to do it myself and things go missing, I won’t be held responsible.” Mrs. Gable looked at my parents, unsure. “What? Serena agreed to it. Does anyone have an objection? Or do you think I don’t deserve it?” I asked. “No, Maya. Don’t overthink it,” my father told Mrs. Gable. “Do as she says.” “Dad…” Serena looked at him, her world crumbling. My father guiltily looked away. He told Marcus to speed up the renovations on the other upstairs room. They hadn’t been in a rush to renovate a room for me before I got back. Now that Serena was displaced, they were frantic. How poetic. But even more poetic was the flash of pure venom in Serena’s eyes. She was finally losing her cool. Good. That looked much more like the girl who had “accidentally” dialed the wrong number and vented to a “stranger” (Martha), subtly hinting that Martha needed to keep me away from my real family. 07 I first found out about the swap on the day Martha’s nephew got into a decent college. Martha had gotten blackout drunk. She spent the whole night laughing and bragging. She talked about how her parents had always favored her brother. To pay for his house, they had sold her to an old cripple for thirty thousand dollars. After the cripple died, they stole her insurance payout to give to their grandson. “But look at me now. Their precious grandson worked himself to death and only got into a state school. My daughter? She’s a princess. She’ll always be a princess.” “As long as this jinx is out of the way! Yes, as long as you’re gone.” She had tried to find a stick to beat me with, but she was too drunk to stand. Usually, Martha was a quiet drunk. But that night, she kept rambling about how her “princess” was living the high life with my parents, and how her princess was cleverly guiding her to keep me far away from the Sterlings. The aunties from the community center heard everything. They took me to the police station immediately. Afraid of what Martha might do next, they pooled their money to buy me a burner phone. But by the time we got back from the station, Martha had vanished. … Serena’s things were moved out. I had to admit, she had a lot of stuff. Her clothes and jewelry alone filled two guest rooms. Compared to her, my single backpack and shopping bag looked pathetic. Eleanor Sterling stood in the middle of the empty, massive master suite, watching me hang my two outfits in a walk-in closet the size of a bedroom. The annoyance she’d felt over me “stealing” Serena’s room turned into sharp guilt. “Maya…” she began. I ignored her, putting on my cheap Bluetooth headphones and FaceTimeing the aunties to check in on their line-dancing progress. She stood there, hovering, before turning to leave. I turned my head. “Mom.” She looked at me, eyes instantly filling with tears. It was the first time I’d called her that. “Maya.” She rushed over and grabbed my hand. “Maya, I’m so sorry. I’ll make everything up to you. I promise you’ll never be hurt again.” For a second, my heart actually twinged. “If I told you Serena and Martha have been in contact this whole time, would you believe me?” I asked. The silence was deafening. The tears stayed in her eyes, but the emotion vanished. Just as I thought. From the first moment I saw how they looked at Serena, I knew. “Even if you don’t believe me, will you investigate it?” “Maya… that’s… that’s impossible,” she stammered. I smiled—the same flat, indifferent smile I always wore. “Fine. I get it.” I pushed her gently toward the door. “I need to rest, Mrs. Sterling.” I shut the door. And I shut the door to my heart, too. I pulled out my phone and messaged a contact: [Let’s do it.] If the Sterlings wouldn’t give me justice, I’d take it myself.

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Toby stared into his bourbon glass, his voice thick with a reverence I had rarely heard. “She’s worth it. Daphne is worth it.” His friend pressed him. “And what about Caitlin?” Silence hung in the air for a long, agonizing moment before Toby’s voice returned, noticeably colder. “Caitlin already has the world at her feet. But Daphne… Daphne only has me.” I was standing just outside the door when I heard it. There was a time, years ago, when I swore to myself that if the girl who had silently orchestrated my high school hell ever stepped foot into Hollywood, I would crush her. I would make sure she never booked a single commercial, let alone a film. But reality has a funny way of making a mockery of our vows. Somehow, she always managed to snatch roles right out from under me. They weren’t blockbuster leads, but they were the kind of prestige indie darlings that let her shine. The kind that built a reputation. It wasn’t until much later that I realized who was playing god behind the curtain. It was Toby. My husband was the one building Daphne’s pedestal, brick by agonizingly painful brick. … The after-party for the Academy Awards had barely wrapped up. Toby poured me a glass of Cabernet. “Congratulations, my love. Best Actress.” I slipped my silk shawl off my shoulders, tossing it carelessly over the back of an armchair. I raised my glass, letting the crystal clink sharply against his in the flickering candlelight. “And congratulations to you,” I said, my voice smooth as glass. “For using the scraps from my table to buy your untouchable muse a Best Newcomer award.” Toby froze. The proud smile on his face cracked, stiffening into something ugly. A heavy silence stretched between us until he finally let out a long, exhausted exhale. “So, you know.” “It’s not what you think,” he started, the practiced lie rolling off his tongue. “We were all high school classmates. She’s been having a rough time in the industry lately, and I just pulled a few strings. A minor favor. Don’t overthink it.” I stared at the face I had known for nearly twenty years. In the dim light, he looked like a stranger. “A minor favor that lands her a golden statuette? You must be quite the Hollywood heavyweight now, darling.” He rubbed his temples, a gesture of profound fatigue. His patience for my sarcasm was visibly wearing thin. “Caitlin, please. Can we not do this tonight? Can we not fight? I am so incredibly tired.” Of course he was tired. He had just rushed from the ceremony where he personally escorted Daphne—showering her with orchids and borrowed diamonds, playing the white knight to make her smile. After playing his part in her victory lap, he had raced back to my agency’s event, putting on a spectacular show as the devoted, doting husband for the paparazzi. And now, he was playing chef. Candlelight. Red wine. Filet mignon. The steak on my plate was practically bleeding. The candles cast dancing shadows across the sharp, handsome angles of his jaw. A year ago, I would have thrown my arms around his neck. I would have spun around the kitchen, giddy with the intoxicating high of winning the biggest award of my life. Tonight, all I felt was a rising tide of nausea. He was a fraud. I hadn’t actually planned on bringing this up tonight. It was my night, my victory, and I didn’t want the stench of his infidelity ruining it. But he had served himself up on a silver platter, and to bite my tongue now would just make me look like a fool. “Toby, let’s just end it. Let’s walk away before it gets uglier.” I reached into my clutch and pulled out the divorce papers I had meticulously prepared weeks ago. I slid them across the marble island. “Sign them.” Toby stared at the thick stack of legal documents. The exhaustion on his face finally fractured into genuine shock. “What is this? What kind of tantrum are you throwing now?” I actually laughed. A dry, hollow sound. The thought of leaving him had been a parasite in my brain for years, slowly eating away at my sanity until I finally took the leap. And he thought this was a tantrum. He forced his features into a mask of patronizing calm. “Caitlin, stop it. Like I said, I’m exhausted.” “And whose fault is that? Did I ask you to run yourself ragged?” He flinched. A flicker of unease crossed his eyes. He genuinely thought his little disappearing act to pick up Daphne had gone unnoticed by the press. He had no idea that high-res photos of them looking intimately intertwined in the back of his Maybach had been sitting in my inbox for hours. Price tag: a cool million. Clearly wanting to drop the subject, he picked up his fork and knife. “Just eat your dinner.” Always this. Always the avoidance. Always retreating into cold silence when I was standing on the precipice of a breakdown. I grabbed the edge of the table and shoved. Plates shattered. The Cabernet splashed violently across his crisp white shirt, blooming like a bloodstain. Toby sprang up, his face livid. He lost his iron grip on his temper and roared, “Are you out of your mind?!” “Yes! Yes, I am crazy!” I screamed, the years of suppressed rage finally clawing its way out of my throat. “I lost my mind a long time ago, comparing myself to her, playing this twisted game! So let’s get a divorce. Do us both a favor. I’ll give you to her, and you give me my life back.” I was hysterical. My chest heaved. This was supposed to be the best day of my life. After years of bleeding for this industry, I had finally won the only award that truly mattered. My team had ordered a cake taller than I was. I had been drinking champagne straight from the bottle with my best friends, surrounded by directors and producers who finally saw me as a titan. And it all came crashing down the second Toby walked through the door. Toby scowled, his lip curling in disgust. He grabbed his ruined jacket and headed for the stairs. “You’re hysterical. I’m not talking to you when you’re like this. We’ll deal with your little meltdown tomorrow.” I slumped back, staring at his retreating figure. I stepped over the ruined steak, my heels crunching on broken glass, and picked up the divorce papers. Why was leaving the man who destroyed you always the hardest part? I collapsed onto the living room sofa. This massive, multi-million dollar mansion was as silent as a tomb. The graveyard of our marriage. I pulled out my phone and wired the million dollars to the account the paparazzi had provided. I had a reputation to protect. I couldn’t bear the thought of the internet dissecting my humiliation, mocking the oblivious A-lister whose husband was funding his high school crush. But this was the last time. The absolute last time I was cleaning up his messes. Every cent I had spent keeping their dirty secret out of the tabloids, I was going to bleed out of them. I tossed my phone aside. Suddenly, the doorbell rang. Standing on my porch was Daphne. She wore no makeup, and God, she didn’t need it. The barefaced vulnerability only made her look more ethereally beautiful, her pale skin glowing in the moonlight, looking desperately fragile yet defiant. She was shivering in a thin, white silk slip dress. She tilted her chin up, looking down her nose at me like a proud swan. “Where is Toby?” I leaned against the doorframe and jerked my thumb toward the second floor. “Taking a shower.” “Can I help you?” Daphne’s face twisted in disgust. “Are you two animals? Is sex all you think about?” She scoffed. “Oh, right. You won an award today. What, is letting him use your body his way of rewarding you? You’re exactly the same as you were in high school, Caitlin. Pathetic. You can’t survive without a man validating you.” Looking at the raw, venomous jealousy burning in her eyes, I couldn’t help it. I smiled. “What’s the matter, Daphne? Jealous? Jealous that I have a thriving, record-breaking career and a husband waiting in my bed?” I tilted my head. “That doesn’t make sense. Does he only sleep with me and not you?” “Shut your mouth, you psycho! Don’t you dare ruin my reputation!” Daphne hissed, her face draining of color. “He and I are strictly professional. I didn’t want him back then, and I don’t want him now. Only a woman like you would treat a charity case from the gutter like he’s a prize.” I couldn’t argue with that. Back in high school, Daphne had made her disdain for Toby abundantly clear. “Get to the point. Why are you here?” Daphne practically threw a cell phone at my chest. I caught it clumsily. “He left his phone at my place. It’s been ringing off the hook, it’s driving me insane,” she snapped. “I couldn’t put it on silent, so I was forced to bring it here.” Of course she couldn’t put it on silent. It was a custom-made phone. Toby had a tech guy disable the silent switch entirely—just so he would never, ever miss a call from Daphne. I had asked him once why he needed a phone that couldn’t be muted. I was a notoriously light sleeper, and the late-night buzzing often triggered my insomnia. His excuse? He said he was terrified of me not being able to reach him in an emergency. It wasn’t until a year later that I learned the truth. Daphne had been tricked by a sleazy producer into going to a “private audition” that was actually a predatory hotel room setup. She had called Toby in a panic, but he hadn’t answered. Because that night was our wedding anniversary. For once, Toby had put his phone on ‘Do Not Disturb’ to focus on me. The next morning, Daphne had called him and screamed at him for abandoning her. The sheer terror of almost losing her had completely rewired him. He had the custom phone made the very next week. He even set her ringtone as a blaring emergency alert. I closed the door, gripping the phone and the divorce papers, and walked upstairs. Toby was just stepping out of the bathroom, dressed in fresh sweatpants. I walked right up to him and slammed the divorce papers against his chest. “Sign.” “Are you still doing this?” He was vigorously towel-drying his hair, clearly treating me like a toddler throwing a tantrum. I slammed the papers against the bathroom mirror. I hit it with so much force that a spiderweb of cracks splintered outward from beneath my palm. “I am not stopping until you sign.” Toby narrowed his eyes, truly looking at me for the first time all night. He was calculating, trying to read if I was bluffing. “Caitlin, is this really all over an award?” “Yes. It’s over an award.” He chuckled, a condescending sound of relief. “You’re jealous.” He said it with absolute certainty. I laughed back, matching his tone. “You really think you’re something special, don’t you? Jealous of you? You’re not worth the energy.” I stepped closer, dropping my voice to a lethal whisper. “You are going to sign this right now, and we are going to walk away clean. Because if you don’t, I cannot promise what I’ll do. But I will tell you this: I am the biggest actress in this town right now. Crushing a D-list nobody who survives on my leftovers would be as easy as stepping on an ant. Do we understand each other?” At the mention of Daphne, the arrogant smirk melted off his face. “Don’t you dare touch her. She has nothing to do with this.” “Then sign the damn papers.” “Caitlin.” He ground out my name, his eyes dark with warning. I casually raised my hand, dangling the custom phone in front of his face. “Oh, by the way. Daphne dropped by. She said you left this at her place.” I gave him a mock-sympathetic pout. “You really are a busy man, Toby.” Panic—raw and unadulterated—seized him. He bolted for the stairs. “Where is she?!” “Gone.” I said it lightly, but he reacted like a bomb had gone off. He frantically grabbed the phone, dialing her number over and over. Straight to voicemail. His breathing turned ragged. He grabbed my shoulders, shaking me violently. “How long ago did she leave? Was she alone? How the hell could you let her walk away in the middle of the night? It’s pitch black outside!” He shoved past me, frantically pulling a sweater over his head. I casually dragged a vanity chair over and sat right in the doorway, blocking his exit. “Caitlin, move!” “Sign.” He looked at me like I was a monster. “Are you insane? Do you have any idea what time it is? We live in the hills! The roads are completely unlit. What if something happens to her?!” “I don’t care. Let her get eaten by coyotes for all I care.” I examined my manicure. “Oh, and you’ll be thrilled to know she was wearing a very sheer, very white slip dress. Looked absolutely tragic and breathtaking. I can see why you’ve spent ten years obsessed with her. Did you buy it for her?” Toby’s fists clenched at his sides. The edges of his eyes rimmed with angry red. “You know what, Caitlin? This right here,” he spat, pointing a shaking finger at me. “This cold-blooded, heartless bitch routine. It’s what I hate most about you.” I smiled, though it felt like swallowing glass. If I were truly cold-blooded, I never would have saved him. Toby grew up next door to me. He was the golden boy—wealthy family, stunningly handsome, straight A’s. The textbook definition of perfection. Our families were casual acquaintances, mostly business rivals. We hated each other. From elementary school through junior high, we existed in a state of cold war, ignoring each other even when we were assigned seats at the same desk. Everything shattered the summer we were fourteen. His parents were driving him up the coast. A drunk driver crossed the median. His father died on impact. His mother, shielding Toby with her own body, bled out before the ambulance arrived. Toby walked away with broken ribs and a shattered collarbone, but he lived. After the funeral, the vultures descended. Aunts, uncles, cousins he had never met swarmed the estate, circling the massive inheritance. They dragged a traumatized, grieving fourteen-year-old into back rooms, screaming over trusts and assets. It was my father who finally had his security team throw them all out. I remember walking into his empty, echoing living room. I asked him, “Do you want to come home with me?” Toby just looked at me with hollow, dead eyes. And then, he nodded. My parents were deeply against it at first. Taking in a rival’s teenage son was complicated, legally and socially. But I went on a hunger strike. I refused to eat until I collapsed and was hospitalized with an IV in my arm. My parents finally caved. Toby moved into the guest wing. He became my shadow. I pitied him. I fiercely protected him from anyone who dared whisper about him at school. But boys grow up fast. Somewhere along the line, his shoulders broadened. He shot up past six feet. He didn’t need me to fight his battles anymore. Instead of me walking him to school, he started driving me in his restored vintage Mustang. A subtle, electric shift started happening between us. And then, one day, he packed his bags and moved back into his empty mansion. No warning. No explanation. Whenever he looked at me after that, there was a new guard in his eyes. A profound wariness. I wasn’t heartbroken then. I just assumed the universe was righting itself. We were back to being strangers. Back in the present, Toby’s face was flushed dark crimson with rage. He snatched a pen off my vanity, viciously scrawled his name on the divorce papers, and threw them directly at my face. I didn’t flinch. I just let out a long, shuddering breath, stood up, and moved out of the doorway. The next morning, the sun barely up, I had the locks changed. I hired a premium moving company to come in and strip the house of everything that had his touch. Every piece of furniture we picked out together, every rug, every painting. Thrown out. By noon, the massive house was a cavernous, echoing shell. The only thing left was the cat. We had adopted Bandit together. He was a temperamental, standoffish rescue who adored Toby but hissed and swatted at me if I even breathed too loudly near him. When Toby finally came back, Bandit sensed him before I did. The cat trotted to the front door, meowing frantically. Outside, the electronic keypad beeped loudly. Passcode denied. Fingerprint unrecognized. The beeping turned into aggressive, violent pounding on the heavy oak door. Bandit, terrified by the noise, scattered. When I finally swung the door open, Toby practically fell inside. He stumbled past me, ready to yell, and then froze. “Where is everything?” His voice dropped to a stunned whisper. “Where is our stuff?” His expression morphed from blank shock to boiling fury. I leaned against the wall, crossing my arms. “Dumped.” “Dumped? What the hell gives you the right to throw my things away?” “Because I paid for every single piece of it. That’s what gives me the right.” Toby choked on his words, running his hands frantically through his hair. “What is wrong with you?! What are you trying to prove?!” Before I could answer, a slender figure slipped through the open door, shivering in an oversized men’s blazer. Daphne. She immediately crouched down, her face lighting up. “Oh my god, kitty!” I fully expected Bandit to bolt—he hated strangers. But to my absolute shock, the cat practically purred, rubbing his head aggressively against Daphne’s calves before rolling onto his back, exposing his belly like a desperate sycophant. Daphne looked up at Toby, a rare, genuine smile softening her features. “You actually kept him? Why didn’t you tell me? I was worried sick about him back then.” The sheer aggression in Toby’s posture melted instantly. He looked down at Daphne, his eyes impossibly soft. He opened his mouth to reply, then caught me staring. He shut his mouth, suddenly looking incredibly trapped. “Go ahead,” I prodded, my voice dripping with venom. “Tell her. Tell her how you literally begged me on your knees to adopt this stray.” I turned my gaze to Daphne. “So, this is a little piece of your shared history, huh? God, I am so incredibly stupid. No wonder this feral little beast never let me touch him. He was already spoken for.” Toby’s face drained of color. A month before our wedding, Toby had taken me back to our old high school campus for a nostalgic walk. In a quiet corner by the old bleachers, a scrawny stray kitten had darted out of the bushes. Toby had scooped it up, his eyes entirely too frantic. He begged me to let us keep it. I was severely allergic to cats. I was terrified of them. I tried to say no, but looking at his desperate face, my heart broke. I gave in. I suffered for it. I broke out in agonizing hives. The rashes were so severe I spent weeks scratching until I bled, suffering through countless sleepless nights. He used to stand in the doorway of our bedroom, holding the kitten, looking at me with such profound, tortured guilt. Eventually, my body built up a tolerance, aided by heavy antihistamines and a small army of housekeepers who vacuumed twice a day so not a single hair was left on the rugs. I thought our marriage was solid. I thought we were building a life. And then, Daphne made her grand debut in Hollywood. She had this icy, untouchable aura that instantly set her apart from the cookie-cutter starlets. To seem more “relatable” to her new fans, she went on a late-night talk show and told a touching story about feeding a scrawny stray kitten behind the bleachers in high school. She described the cat perfectly. The torn left ear. The white patch over the eye. It was the exact feral beast that was currently shedding all over my Prada sofa. In that moment watching the broadcast, the world completely tilted on its axis. The memory of Toby finding the cat replayed in my mind like a horror movie. His desperation wasn’t about saving an animal. It was about rescuing the last living piece of Daphne he could find. I was the punchline to a sick joke. I had spent years of my life, compromising my own health, carefully preserving the shrine to his first love. Pathetic. Tragic. Disgusting. Toby lurched forward, instinctively reaching for my arm. “Caitlin, what are you talking about—”

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On the day the college acceptance letters arrived, my mom made three phone calls in a row. The first was to my grandmother: “Did the Carter family tombstone explode yet? …Ah, it didn’t? Then it must be emitting holy light! Go check it out right now!” The second was to my dad: “My daughter got into Columbia University! Near perfect SATs! Did your son even graduate? Oh, I almost forgot, your son couldn’t even get into a decent high school, he’s graduating from some trade school this year, right? Found a job yet? Ahahahaha.” The third was to the town mayor, asking him to hang 100 banners across Main Street and broadcast the news over the town’s radio system for three days and three nights. She also told him we were coming back to our hometown in a few days to throw a massive block party for everyone. Right now, I’m watching the town dogs feast on the leftovers from the party. I take a photo, post it on Facebook, and tag my half-brother. “Who says girls are worse than boys?” 1 My dad and mom came from the same small, rural town in the Midwest. They didn’t have much education. First, they worked on an assembly line in a factory for two years—he was screwing in bolts, she was welding parts. Later, they started working on construction sites, installing aluminum windows. They had to find their own clients. Whether it was the scorching heat of July or the freezing cold of January, my mom and dad were always out on construction sites. It was exhausting. But those were the years they loved each other the most. They had goals. They had a shared future. They agreed that once they opened their own shop, they would start a family. A few years later, they saved up some money, opened a shop in a booming commercial district, and finally owned something of their own. My mom didn’t care about skincare. She thought carrying an umbrella was a hassle, and she was too frugal to buy sunscreen. You know how it is. UV rays severely damage the skin. When other people look 19 at 24, my mom looked 30 at 24. When her skin looked 31 at the age of 24, she had me. The whole family was thrilled. My grandpa and grandma even came up with over 100 names for my parents to choose from. Unfortunately, they were all boys’ names. My dad’s favorite name was Hunter. Hunter Carter. He said he didn’t have an education, so he wanted a son who would be an educated man. Nine months later, my mom gave birth to me. My grandpa and grandma’s faces fell lower than a mule’s. They stayed at the hospital for less than half a day before leaving. Before they left, they even took the roast chicken they had brought as a gift. My dad sighed heavily and stood on the hospital balcony, chain-smoking. When my mom told me this part of the story, she choked up several times. She said she suggested giving me the name Hunter anyway, that a girl could use that name too. My dad refused. 2 When did my mom realize my dad had a problem? Maybe it was when he started coming home very late, or not coming home at all. Maybe it was when he brought his buddies over, and every single one of them brought a mistress, but none of them brought their wives. Maybe it was when the wives of other construction bosses hinted, “That group of guys, not a single one is decent.” In my memory, from a very young age, my mom was always depressed. She was a shrewd businesswoman, knowing exactly what to say to different people, always keeping clients happy. But when it came to her marriage, she was insecure yet fierce. The only times she and my dad could have a normal conversation were when they were doing the books and making money. At all other times, they couldn’t stand the sight of each other. My dad complained that my mom wasn’t feminine enough, her voice was too loud, she wasn’t gentle, she liked making her own decisions, and she had an “old” face. My mom called my dad a cheating bastard who messed around outside and would eventually get what was coming to him. The conflict finally erupted when I was 5. One night, I suddenly ran a high fever, burning up until I started convulsing. My dad wasn’t home, and he had taken the car. My mom called him, wanting him to come back and take me to the hospital, but he didn’t pick up. Back then, Uber didn’t exist. To get around at night, you had to rely on cabs. But the area we lived in was an undeveloped suburb; it was desolate at night, and you couldn’t flag down a cab to save your life. Eventually, my mom had to call her friend. The friend and her husband drove over and took me to the ER. My mom didn’t give up. She stayed by my hospital bed, calling my dad off and on all night. It was as if my dad was dead. Every call disappeared into the void. The next morning, my mom finally gave up. She put her phone down, grabbed her purse, and went to buy breakfast. Coincidentally, as soon as she left, her phone rang. The caller ID showed my dad. I answered the phone. Before I could even say “Dad,” a female voice on the other end unleashed a torrent of rage: “Over a hundred calls in one night!” “Mary, will you die without a man?! What the hell are you calling for?” “Your husband didn’t even answer your calls, don’t you get the message? Let go already, honey. Forcing it won’t make you happy!” I frowned, considering my words: “Ma’am, I’m sick.” The other side froze for a second, then continued the barrage: “Oh, it’s the money-losing mistake! Where’s your mom? Did she jump off a building because your dad didn’t answer her calls?” “Let me tell you something! Your dad stopped loving your mom a long time ago, and he doesn’t love you either!” “Right now, he only loves me and your little brother. All the money, the houses, the cars in your family—they all belong to me and your brother now.” I was young, I didn’t fully understand, and I spoke with the unfiltered innocence of a child. “So, Ma’am, are you a robber?” “Only robbers steal other people’s things, and robbers get beaten up by superheroes!” She sneered: “Where in the world are there superheroes?” I cried: “But there are police officers! You’re a bad lady, the police will lock you up!” … Later, my mom came back. Seeing me sulking, and noticing the call log showing my dad’s number had called back, she asked me several times what happened. I burst out crying. “There’s a bad lady who said Daddy doesn’t love us anymore!” “She said Daddy only loves her and my little brother, and she said everything in our family belongs to her!” I cried so hard I couldn’t catch my breath. My mom hugged me, patting my back, and stayed silent for a long time. “Mommy is going to divorce Daddy. Sweetie, will you stay with Mommy?” “Yes.” 3 During the few days I was in the hospital, my dad didn’t come to see me once. My mom called him often. Although she deliberately avoided me, when she couldn’t suppress her temper, phrases like “bastard,” “I’m taking two-thirds of the assets or I’ll drag this out until you die,” and “you’re worse than a dog, go to hell” still reached my ears. I secretly cried. How could a child my age understand a mother’s pain? I was terrified of not having a father anymore. This was the first time I experienced loss, but I didn’t tell my mom, and I certainly didn’t cry in front of her. I vaguely knew what divorce meant, knew that between my dad and mom, I could only choose one, and knew that my mom loved me more. I don’t know what my mom and dad discussed, but she was always fuming. Seven days later. My mom discharged me from the hospital. She marched out proudly, like a warrior… but we could never return to our old home. My grandma was standing on the balcony. Seeing us walking up to the building, she threw open the window. “Sarah, come here quick!” My mom froze and looked up. A few seconds later, a familiar woman appeared in our line of sight. It was my mom’s cousin! She smirked triumphantly at my mom, then joined my grandma to haul two unzipped duffel bags and throw them down. Toothbrushes, slippers, clothes, bras, sanitary pads… Clattering and fluttering down, scattering everywhere. I saw my mom’s jaw clench tight, her face flushed with embarrassment. A moment later— Her anger overpowered her embarrassment. She put her hands on her hips and screamed up at the balcony: “Sarah, are you even human? Are all the men in the world dead? You actually stole your own cousin’s husband!” “Robert and I haven’t even signed the divorce papers yet! And you just couldn’t wait! Shameless! Spit!” “When I go back, I’m telling your mother! I’m telling the whole town! You homewrecker!”… Sarah and my grandma tag-teamed their response: “Ugly bitch, look at your face! Robert says he wants to puke just looking at you!” “You useless cow who can’t even produce a son! Get the hell out! If it weren’t for Sarah, our Carter family bloodline would have ended with a jinx like you!” “Someone like you still has the nerve to talk about going back to the town?! Go back and ask around, if you can’t have a son, shouldn’t you be dumped?!”… Amidst the screaming match, a little boy about my age ran out of the living room. Holding a toy submachine gun, he stood on a small stool and fired a barrage of pellets right at us. Back then, the bullets in toy guns weren’t water beads; they were hard plastic BBs that hurt like hell when they hit you. My arms and neck were hit several times. My mom shielded me and we ducked under a low tree. “Where are they? Where did they go?” “Over there!” “I see them! Old hag! Money-losing mistake! I’m gonna shoot you dead!”… With the leaves buffering the impact, the bullets didn’t hurt as much. The leaves rustled and fell. My mom ground her teeth in rage. “You little bastard, if you’ve got the guts, get a real gun and shoot us!” The toy gun could only hold so many bullets. When the magazine was empty, it had to be reloaded. My mom took advantage of the reloading time upstairs, grabbed a rock from the ground, and charged upstairs like a hurricane. I copied her, picking up a rock and following right on her heels. 4 The front door was a heavy security door. Made of steel. That bastard of a dad had actually changed the locks. My mom couldn’t open the door with her key. She dropped the rock, hitched up her skirt, and delivered a vicious kick right at the lock. The steel door let out a deafening “CLANG.” Then came the second kick, the third… The clanging echoed endlessly, feeling like an earthquake. My grandma and Sarah were cursing from inside; my mom was kicking from outside. Neighbors upstairs and downstairs kept opening their doors, asking loudly, “What’s going on? What’s going on? Are you going to let people live in peace?” “Nobody’s living in peace today! The older cousin stole the younger cousin’s husband and brought him right into the house! They even changed the locks! Have they no shame?” “That is shameless,” someone upstairs agreed. Eventually, the local police arrived. My mom tearfully complained to the officers. After calming her down and ensuring she was stable, the police knocked on the door. My mom was fierce. The moment the door cracked open, she bolted inside, grabbed a stool, and smashed it right at Sarah. “BANG!” The plastic stool shattered, and a jagged gash appeared on Sarah’s arm. Blood dripped down onto the floor. Everyone froze. A second later, Sarah bent down, snatched up a heavy glass ashtray, and charged at my mom, screaming “Go to hell!” My mom swung the stool again. The police officers quickly split up—half restraining my mom, half holding back Sarah. I took advantage of the chaos, grabbed the rock I had picked up, and charged at the little boy. That little brat had just shot me, and it still hurt! I was covered in welts! Desperate to protect her grandson, my grandma shoved the boy aside, snatched his toy gun, grabbed me with one hand, and swung the heavy plastic gun down hard on my arm with the other. “Smack! Smack! Smack!” The violent impact on my arm knocked the magazine loose, sending BBs scattering all over the floor. My arm felt like it was broken. My grandma struck me three times in the exact same spot. It hurt so much I could only inhale, forgetting how to exhale. My face spasmed, and it took a long time before I could finally cry out. I don’t know where my mom found the strength, but she broke free from the cops, shoved my grandma aside, rushed over, grabbed me, and carefully checked my arm. “Sweetie, are you okay? Can you move it? How about this? How about this?” “It hurts…” I burst out crying, “Mommy, it hurts so much!” The police told my mom to stop moving my arm. Without professional training, she might make the injury worse. Getting to the hospital immediately was the priority. My mom’s eyes were like daggers, violently glaring at my grandma. “Martha! She’s your own granddaughter! If there’s any permanent damage, I’ll kill you!” My grandma had never seen my mom like this. She involuntarily shivered, then stiffened her neck: “She deserved it! She started it! She was trying to hit my precious baby!” “A grandson is a precious baby, and a daughter is just weeds?! Martha, you’re a woman yourself, why don’t you go jump off a bridge?! You better pray she’s okay, otherwise…” Before my mom could finish her threat, the police urged, “Enough talking. Get to the hospital first. We’ll give you a ride!” 5 In just one day, I had left the hospital only to return to it. My bone wasn’t completely broken, but it was fractured. The doctor put a cast on my arm and told me to rest. My dad still hadn’t shown up. My mom was furious, crying and cursing over the phone. I kept hearing the word “animal.” My mom couldn’t understand how a man could be so ruthless. His own biological daughter had suffered such a severe injury, and he completely ignored it, refusing to even come take a look. “Mommy, our clothes and shoes are still downstairs at the apartment. Should we go get them?” “Yes,” my mom said. “If we don’t, people will scavenge them or throw them away as trash.” As she spoke, her eyes reddened. A mix of stubbornness and grievance wove into suppressed anger. “We’re poor now. We don’t have extra money to buy everything new. You stay here in the hospital and be good. I’ll get our things and come right back.” I nodded, telling her not to worry. My mom was gone for a long time that day. Or maybe it just felt like a long time because I was alone in the hospital. I was terrified… Terrified she would go looking for my grandma for revenge, terrified she couldn’t fight them all off alone, terrified she’d be at a disadvantage, terrified she’d get hurt. I was also terrified she didn’t want me anymore… If I hadn’t tried to hit that little boy, my arm wouldn’t have been fractured, we wouldn’t have had to spend money. I was afraid she’d think I was a burden and just leave me in the hospital alone. The massive anxiety made my whole body tense up. Like a frightened quail, my eyes stayed glued to the hospital room door. If only I were a boy. Then my grandparents wouldn’t despise me, my dad wouldn’t find another woman to have kids with, my mom wouldn’t be abandoned… We’d be like the happy families on TV. Thankfully, my mom finally returned, carrying two large duffel bags. The bags were filthy, and the things inside were dirty too. My mom said we lost some things, but it didn’t matter. Being able to salvage most of it was lucky enough. I noticed my mom’s eyes were much redder than when she left. I guessed she had cried outside. “Mommy, I’ll be good.” I said it out of nowhere, but my mom understood. She walked over to the bed and hugged me. “Things will get better.” “We won’t live like stray dogs forever!” From that day on, my mom changed. She stopped calling my dad, stopped screaming hysterically. She took a pen and paper and calmly calculated all of our family’s assets. She started smoking. In the dark, I often saw her standing on the hospital balcony, her hair blowing in the night breeze, the ember of her cigarette glowing and fading between her fingers. Her loneliness was just like the cigarette in her hand. 6 In those days, in the eyes of rural country folk, divorce was a disgraceful thing. “Don’t wash your dirty linen in public.” If someone had to divorce, the best option was to do it quietly. The couple would quietly sign the papers, and no one besides their parents would know. My mom insisted on suing for a contested divorce. She demanded that the husband leave with nothing, and she gets full custody of the daughter. My dad completely lost his mind. Previously, he wouldn’t call for weeks; now, he called several times a day. He played the good cop, talking about the bond they shared over the years, telling my mom not to go too far, that everything was negotiable. He even said he wanted to come see us and asked where my mom was staying. My grandma played the bad cop. She called my mom a shameless bitch, saying she couldn’t give birth to a son, couldn’t keep her man, and was useless! She asked if my mom was trying to take my dad’s money to find another man. She said all the money in the family was earned by my dad, implying my mom would do anything for cash… My mom unleashed her fury: “Son, son, all you care about is a son! Are you running a royal dynasty?” “Your ancestors worked the dirt for generations, your family is dirt poor, and you still want multiple wives and a male heir! Let me tell you, the 1800s are over!” “The government has been saying for decades that boys and girls are equal. Are you deaf? Monogamy is written into the law! Are you trying to break the law?” “Every cent Robert Carter owns is marital property! Every cent he spent on Sarah is also marital property!” “Robert is the at-fault party in this marriage, and he deserves to be punished! The money, the house, they’re all mine! If you dare harass me again, don’t blame me for going after every single dime he spent on Sarah!” My mom used to act very submissive in the Carter family. Though she had stood up for herself once, it always seemed forced. This time was different. With the law backing her up, my mom spoke on the phone with incredible confidence. I was young and barely understood, but I thought my mom was shining brightly. My grandma was probably terrified by my mom. She stopped calling and instead reached out to my great-uncle and great-aunt. Sarah’s parents. They kept emphasizing that we were all relatives, telling my mom not to be so ruthless! They said my maternal grandparents still lived in the same town, and everyone saw everyone else eventually, their words carrying a veiled threat. My mom sat on a folding stool on the balcony, took a drag from her cigarette, and slowly exhaled the smoke: “Sure. Have Sarah write a 10,000-word apology detailing exactly how she seduced her cousin’s husband, how she got pregnant with a married man’s child, and how she used her status as a mistress to kick the legal wife out of her own home…” “When she’s done, show it to me. If I’m satisfied, have her go to the town’s radio station and read it ten times a day for a whole month. If she does that, I won’t go after the money Robert spent on her!” My great-uncle and his wife had no idea that “reclaiming marital assets” was a legal possibility. On the other end of the line, they screamed in panic: “What?!” “You want the money Robert already spent? You love money so much, why don’t you just go rob a bank?” “Sarah is the hero who gave the Carter family an heir! All the Carter family’s money belongs to her! We earn our living with honest work, why should we do whatever you say?” “You can’t even keep your own man, and you have the nerve to fight for the assets? How did our family produce such a disgrace like you?” My mom laughed coldly: “Exactly. How did our family produce disgraces like you? You act like thieves and homewreckers, and you’re proud of it!” “Let me tell you, I won’t give up a single cent that belongs to me! Your daughter and grandson can prepare to sleep under a bridge!” 7 To win this lawsuit, my mom hired a lawyer and prepared meticulously. This included recording their phone calls over the past few weeks, gathering evidence of my dad’s long-term infidelity, and documenting my grandma assaulting me and kicking us out of the house… On my dad’s side, whether it was overconfidence or just no lawyer wanting to take their case, they represented themselves the entire time. Their core argument was singular: Everyone in the country town does this. Assets should go to the son. Continuing the family line is more important than anything else. They caused a huge scene in the courtroom. One minute they were calling my mom a jinx, saying she didn’t dress up or look pretty, ruining my dad’s luck, so she deserved to be thrown out. The next minute, they called me a money-losing mistake, demanding to know why I should get any of the money my dad earned. My dad was legally the at-fault party to begin with, their arguments were completely absurd, and on top of that, the judge that day was female, and the court clerk was also female. The outcome of the lawsuit was obvious. Whether it was the business, the real estate, or the savings, it was all awarded to my mom. My grandma refused to accept it. She threw herself onto the floor, kicked her legs out, and rolled around like a dying bug. “This is an outrage! The judge was bribed! Where can an old woman like me find justice?” “My son worked hard his whole life, and now he doesn’t get a single penny. Aren’t you trying to kill us?” “Waaah, if you don’t change the verdict, I’ll never get up! I’m going to stay right here!”… The judge stopped, gave her a long look, and walked right out. A few moments later, the bailiffs “escorted” my grandma out. She howled the whole way, vowing to protest outside the courthouse every single day. My mom and her lawyer were talking nearby, looking at my grandma like she was an absolute idiot. “You jinx! Don’t think just because you won the lawsuit that the house is yours! If you want that house, you’ll have to step over my dead body!” My mom smiled and said she wouldn’t dare. My grandma felt triumphant again and threw another tantrum right outside the courthouse doors. After the bailiffs gave her another stern lecture on the law, she stopped causing a scene, dragged my dad over, puffed out her cheeks, and sat right in the middle of the main entrance in silent protest. “What do you plan to do?” the lawyer asked my mom. “Help her out, of course,” my mom said, still smiling, her eyes filled with an emotion I couldn’t read. “The old lady has it tough.”

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When the billionaire found me, my adoptive parents were in the middle of a drunken rage, lashing out at me with a belt. I didn’t run. I didn’t cry. I looked at the man in the expensive suit with eyes that were three parts innocent and seven parts hollow. I looked exactly like a broken porcelain doll. I knew the truth: I was a replacement. Or rather, I was the original they had lost. In my past life, I told them the truth immediately. I begged for their love. In return, I was framed, my reputation ruined, and I was eventually burned alive in a “tragic” gas explosion. This time, I decided to play the role of the girl who knew nothing. I would become the perfect, tragic daughter of the Sterling empire. “My foster parents only hit me because they loved my brother more,” I whispered. “If you love your ‘other’ daughter more than me, what will happen to me?” “I just can’t take any more hits.” Three sentences. That was all it took to push the billionaire’s guilt to the breaking point. I smiled inwardly. The stage was set. Now, the real show begins. 1 When my biological parents found me, I was in the middle of a “lesson.” My foster mother had pulled a metal poker from the fireplace. It was glowing orange-red. She was swinging it toward my back, screaming about some chores I hadn’t finished. In the air, I could almost smell the faint, sickening scent of charred skin. That was the exact moment the Sterlings burst through the door. “Stop! How dare you lay a hand on my daughter!” My foster mother was far gone in her rage. She didn’t stop. My biological mother, desperate to intervene, took a hit to her arm while trying to shield me. She let out a sharp cry, her eyes instantly welling with tears. I watched them, my expression completely blank. Does it hurt? I’m sure it did. But it didn’t hurt nearly as much as being burned alive in a basement while my family watched from the lawn. 2 My biological mother and I were both rushed to the hospital. By the time we arrived, my biological father—a man whose face was on the cover of every business magazine—and his two children had arrived. The hospital bed was surrounded by people. “Mom, how could that woman be so vicious? What did she use to hit you?” I didn’t need to open my eyes to know who was speaking. That was my “big brother,” Caleb. In my last life, he was one of the people who helped pour the gasoline. “Mom, does it hurt? If I had known, I would have gone with you. I would have protected you.” That was Brooke. She was sobbing, sounding as if she were the one who had lost a mother. Brooke was the Sterling’s “foundling” daughter. The girl they adopted to replace me. Actually, she was the biological daughter of my abusive foster parents. All the beatings I took for eighteen years? They were meant for her. I shifted slightly. A sharp, stinging pain radiated from my back, making me gasp. The sound was loud in the quiet VIP suite. The family finally remembered I was there. My biological mother looked over, her expression awkward. “Avery… are you okay?” I wasn’t okay. But I wouldn’t die. Not yet. I looked down, a self-deprecating smile touching my lips. “I’m used to it. But you… your skin is so delicate. That burn must be excruciating.” I made sure to emphasize the word “excruciating.” My biological father finally walked to my bedside to check my injuries. I didn’t hide. I let the gown slip just enough to show the horrific patchwork of scars on my back. 3 The moment they saw the damage, a collective gasp filled the room. Brooke turned away, hiding her face in Caleb’s chest as if she couldn’t bear the sight. “Oh my God,” Caleb whispered. “How can a human being have a back like that?” He acted like a protective older brother, covering Brooke’s eyes so she wouldn’t be “traumatized.” Is it really that scary? I couldn’t see it, but I knew. It was a map of every mistake my foster father made while drunk, and every bad mood my foster mother had. My mother ignored her own burn. she practically threw herself at my side. Warm tears fell onto the back of my neck, sliding into the raw wounds and making them sting. “Avery, come home with us. We’re never going back to those monsters. They aren’t human. How could they do this to you?” My father looked shaken. “Come home. We’ll get you the best doctors. We’ll make you whole again.” I let my eyes fill with a desperate, fragile hope. I stared at them for a long moment, then slowly shook my head. “My foster parents only hit me because they loved my brother more,” I whispered. “If you love Brooke more than me, what will happen to me?” “I just can’t take any more hits.” The room went silent. The guilt radiating from my parents was palpable. I lowered my gaze, hiding the cold glint in my eyes. In my last life, I was submissive. I was a “good girl.” And I died like a dog. This life? I’m going to make Brooke feel every single thing I went through. 4 Despite their pleas, I didn’t go home with them immediately. I knew that something given too easily is never cherished. I retreated to my tiny, cramped studio apartment. It was barely two hundred square feet, but it was mine. The only problem was reaching my back to apply the ointment. It didn’t matter. I was used to sleeping on my stomach. Just as I was drifting off, my phone rang. It was my biological father. I knew exactly why he was calling. I let the phone ring seven or eight times before answering with a voice thick with feigned sleep. “Avery, we’ve already retained a team of lawyers. We’re filing criminal charges against those people. We need you to come in tomorrow to give a statement.” I yawned silently. A lawsuit. Typical. But… I wouldn’t allow it. If they were behind bars, how would Brooke experience the “quality of life” I had endured? “Sue my parents? I… I don’t think I can.” “A child without a mother is like a blade of grass in the wind. They hit me, yes, but at least I had a home.” “I don’t want to lose my family.” “Avery…” There was a long, heavy silence on the other end. “If that’s all, I’m going to hang up. Please don’t bring this up again. I don’t want to be an orphan.” Click. If I guessed correctly, that billionaire couple wouldn’t be getting a wink of sleep tonight. But what did that have to do with me? In my last life, they weren’t the ones who lit the match, but they were the ones who handed Brooke the gasoline. 5 The next morning, at 7:00 AM sharp, my biological parents were at my door. Their eyes were bloodshot. They looked at me with pure desperation. “Avery, please. Come home.” “You silly girl, what were you saying last night? We are your family. We are your blood! You will never be an orphan as long as we breathe.” To show their sincerity, they brought two maids and three massive suitcases full of designer clothes. But my apartment was too small. With all of them inside, you couldn’t even turn around without bumping into someone. My eyes welled with tears. I looked at them like a kicked puppy. “Really?” “Will you… will you love Brooke more? She’s been with you for twenty years.” My parents shook their heads in unison, their faces firm. In my last life, I didn’t know how to fight. I let Brooke’s “sweetness” win them over. They lectured me. They scolded me. Eventually, they loathed me. This time, I’m making sure they stay on my side forever. 6 Coming home this time was much more lucrative than before. My father called a family meeting. In front of everyone, he produced two black credit cards and a deed to a property in the city. “Avery, you’ve suffered too much.” “There is ten million dollars in this account for your ‘pocket money.’” “This penthouse is in your name. You can move in whenever you want. We are never going back to that tiny apartment again.” I acted panicked. “This is too much… I… I’m not worth this.” The more I refused, the more distressed they became. They practically forced the cards into my hand. “Avery, take it. This is yours. Eventually, we will transfer your share of the company stock as well…” I bit my lip. “Then… thank you, Dad. Thank you, Mom.” Hearing those words, the two of them were moved to tears again. I joined them, letting my own tears fall. It was a picture of domestic bliss. But Brooke wasn’t happy. She sat on the edge of the velvet sofa, her knuckles white as she gripped her skirt. She was staring at me with a gaze that could kill. I flashed her a tiny, secret smile and slid over to sit next to her. I handed her one of the cards. “Brooke, let me share half with you. I’ve been through a lot of trauma, and sometimes my emotions might get a little… out of control. You won’t be mad at me, right?” The keyword: out of control. My parents didn’t catch the threat. They only saw a sister being “generous.” My father spoke up. “Avery is right. She’s been through hell because of those monsters.” “From now on, nobody is allowed to bully Avery!” Brooke forced a smile but didn’t speak. Caleb’s brow was furrowed, his gaze on me cold and suspicious. I didn’t care. I’m smart. I’ll wait. Once these “fake” siblings reach their breaking point, that’s when I’ll really start my rampage. 7 My mother wanted to show me around the estate, but Brooke cut in. “Mom, I know the house best. Let me show Avery around.” “You should go rest. You usually take your nap at this time. I already put your warm milk on your nightstand.” I smiled. Milk on the nightstand? I lived here for years in my last life. I knew for a fact my mother didn’t have a “milk before bed” habit. Brooke was marking her territory. She was showing me she knew our mother’s “habits” better than I did. My mother blinked, a bit surprised, but she looked touched. She patted Brooke’s hand. “Thank you, Brooke. I am quite exhausted today.” “You’re such a thoughtful girl. I’m so lucky to have you…” Before she could finish, I spoke up, my voice full of longing. “Mom… is the milk sweet?” “Back at my other house, only my brother was allowed to have milk.” I licked my lips. It worked. My mother’s hand dropped from Brooke’s. Her eyes turned red again. “Brooke, go… go warm a glass for Avery too. Bring it to her room.” I shook my head obediently. “No, Mom. I’ll go learn how to do it. I’ll warm a glass for Brooke. I’m the big sister. I should take care of her.” Three minutes later, under our mother’s watchful eye, Brooke was forced to choke down a glass of warm milk she clearly didn’t want. I looked down, hiding my smile. Drink it. The more you drink, the easier it is for my plan to work. I looked up, my expression innocent. “Mom, from now on, I’ll warm the milk for you and Brooke every day.” Brooke looked like she wanted to scream, but my mother just stroked my hair and smiled weakly. “Okay.” Brooke’s face turned ugly for a split second. She glared at me. Angry already? I almost laughed. In my last life, I never had this kind of intimacy with my parents. I was timid and small. I just wanted peace. In less than a week, I had fallen into every one of Brooke’s traps. My parents tried to defend me at first. But after Brooke framed me over and over, they looked at me with nothing but disappointment. Then came the fire. The mansion burned. It was only because of their “pity” that they sifted through the ashes and found a few pieces of my bones. We’re even now. I don’t love these parents, but I don’t quite hate them either. But Caleb? He was the one who made sure the doors were locked from the outside. 8 Without the siblings’ interference, my relationship with my parents was actually quite stable. My mother, trying to make up for eighteen years of lost time, insisted on tucking me in every night. This seemed to drive Brooke insane. That night, Brooke called my mother, sobbing. “Mom, I feel so sick. I think I have a fever.” “Mom, can you come stay with me? Like you used to when I was little…” My mother’s brow furrowed. She didn’t even put on her slippers before running to Brooke’s room. I followed at a leisurely pace. This was Brooke’s show, after all. She was performing for me. If I didn’t show up, who would appreciate her acting? By the time I got there, Caleb was already in Brooke’s room. The family doctor was packing his bag. “Mrs. Sterling, Brooke is just suffering from ’emotional stress.’ She’s probably been overworking herself lately. That’s why the fever hit her so suddenly.” I let out a soft chuckle. Overworking herself? More like she was fuming because I’ve been hogging our mother’s attention. Brooke’s face was flushed red, her eyes watery and pathetic. My parents were devastated. They hovered at her bedside. “Brooke, why are you so stressed? What’s bothering you?” “Are you in a lot of pain?” Brooke’s voice was weak, sounding as if she were about to draw her last breath. “Mom, I’m fine. Go take care of Avery.” Classic. She used this same trick in my last life. And just as expected, Caleb shot me a cold, venomous look. “Brooke was always perfectly healthy. She never got fevers. How ‘coincidental’ that the moment you show up, she falls ill.” I leaned against the doorframe, listening. This was nothing. In my last life, Caleb accused me of stealing Brooke’s necklace and nearly broke my hand “interrogating” me. My father barked, “Watch your tone with your sister!” A simple scolding. Meaningless. I took a step back. “It’s okay. Mom should stay with Brooke.” My mother looked torn, but she also looked relieved. I turned to go back to my room. “But Mom, you should probably keep your distance. The flu has been going around lately.” My parents looked confused. Caleb growled, “Why are you so dramatic?” I turned back and explained seriously, “The doctor said I’m malnourished and my immune system is weak. He told me to avoid ‘sources of infection’ whenever possible.” To prove my point, I shook my sleeve. The pajamas were the smallest size available, but they still hung off my skeletal frame. My parents’ eyes filled with pity. Caleb gritted his teeth. “You’re just trying to compete with her!” “I’m sick too. Is it wrong to want my own mother?” I said softly. “If I’m in the way, I’ll just go. Each daughter can just go back to her own mother.” 9 Brooke’s eyes flickered when she heard that. I knew that was her greatest fear. She had tasted the high life. Who would ever want to go back to being beaten in a trailer park? Caleb took two long strides toward me, using his height to loom over me. “You’re so vicious. You just want an excuse to kick Brooke out, don’t you?” I took a half-step back. Remembering my last life, my gaze toward Caleb turned icy. “Vicious? If life were fair, she would be the one with the scars on her back, not me.” Caleb’s jaw tightened. He pointed at me, looking at our parents. “Is this the daughter you fought so hard to find?” “She comes back and immediately starts trying to push Brooke out. She’s just like those monsters who raised her—pure trash!” I laughed out loud. I am vicious. When did I ever claim to be a saint? But Brooke and I are two of a kind. I just wondered which would win: the nature of my bloodline, or the nurture of her upbringing. In the end, my mother chose me. She followed me back to my room. She tucked me in, but her face was full of worry. “If you want to go to her, just go. I’m fine.” “No, honey. Mom is staying here with you…” I gave her a sweet, fake smile and closed my eyes. I needed my rest. Knowing Brooke, tomorrow was going to be an even bigger headache.

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On my twentieth birthday, my supposed best friend gave me a bottle of perfume. She was notoriously cheap, so seeing her hand over a designer bottle with a price tag that required a payment plan took me by surprise. I was just about to spritz it on my wrists when a stream of glowing, scrolling text suddenly materialized in the air before my eyes, like a glitch in the universe. The floating text said this was a magic perfume. It said my best friend wanted to use it to swap bodies with me, to steal my life, and to get her hands on my incredibly wealthy boyfriend. I read the words hovering in the air. Then, I turned the nozzle toward myself and sprayed it. Hard. Three times. Another line of text drifted past my vision, warning me that according to the “rules,” all it took was another spray of the perfume to swap us back. No big deal, the text noted. Is that right? I thought. I immediately pivoted on my heel, walked into the bathroom, unscrewed the cap, and dumped the rest of the expensive liquid straight down the toilet. I flushed twice for good measure. 1. Earlier that day, my best friend, Tara Foster, had been standing outside my off-campus apartment, clutching a gift bag. We had gotten into a screaming match a few days prior, and the ice hadn’t thawed. My dad had been rushed to the hospital for an emergency appendectomy, and my family had called me three or four times demanding I go see him. I didn’t go. Not once. When Tara found out, she cornered me in front of everyone at our university’s art studio. She pointed her finger right in my face and called me an ungrateful bitch. She said if she had parents like mine, she’d give them the world. She called me cold-blooded. Spoiled. It had been a month since we last spoke. I genuinely didn’t expect her to remember my birthday, let alone show up to keep me company. In an instant, the bad blood seemed to evaporate. I dragged her to the most expensive omakase spot downtown, ordering all the premium sashimi she always drooled over but could never justify buying. Across the table, she slid a gift box stamped with a high-end designer logo toward me. Her voice was uncharacteristically tight. “Happy birthday, Mia. This… this is for you.” I opened it. It was a perfume I had owned before. The scent was cloying, sickly sweet—definitely not my vibe—but the price tag was absurd. My heart softened. For a girl who counted every penny, she must have skipped lunches for months to afford this. Tara came from a single-parent household. Her dad died in a car crash when she was in high school, and her mom had taken every cent of the settlement money and given it to Tara’s older brother, David, to study at Cornell. Her mom worked as a cashier at a grocery store, a tough life that made her hardened and bitter. Tara complained constantly that her mother would fight a vendor over a bruised apple and that she only had eyes for her golden-boy son, leaving Tara to fend for herself. I saw how hard her life was. I really did. “This is too much. You should return it,” I said, pushing the box back. “Just get me a card or something. I love whatever you get me.” She slammed her hand over mine, her tone suddenly frantic. “No! I bought it specifically for you. Try it. Just put it on, I swear you’ll love it.” As I hesitated, a line of glowing text floated across my line of sight: [Oh my god, is this another bleeding-heart protagonist? Getting sold out and still thanking the person doing it…] Excuse me? While I sat frozen, Tara aggressively tore the cellophane off the box, yanked the bottle out, and shoved it into my palm. A bizarre, manic excitement danced in her eyes. “Can’t return it now! Try it on!” Was I imagining things? She was looking at me the way a starving dog looks at a bone. And why was she so violently insistent that I use this exact perfume? Thinking back to that floating text, my thumb hovered over the atomizer. It froze. More text materialized: [No, no, no, don’t do it! It’s a body-swap perfume! She wants to steal your trust fund life and sleep with your billionaire boyfriend…] I knew Tara had a thing for my boyfriend, Norton. Norton was the textbook definition of an East Coast elite catch. Handsome, ridiculously wealthy, and lavish with his gifts. My closets were practically bursting with designer bags he’d bought me. When he saw I was running out of space, he leased me a luxury penthouse downtown, casually mentioning it was “better for storage.” On the day I moved in, Tara stood in the center of the marble foyer, her voice dripping with acid. “God, Mia. You have the best life.” A few days later, Norton and I got into a massive fight. Without even asking what happened, Tara took his side. She called me dramatic. She loudly proclaimed that if she were his girlfriend, she would never treat him like that, and that I didn’t know how lucky I was. Well then… let her have my luck. I pressed the nozzle down. Once. Twice. Three times. The corners of Tara’s mouth twitched upward into a grotesque, triumphant smile. Her breathing hitched with excitement. [Ahhh! The evil best friend won! Oh my god, the MC is about to get dragged into the trenches…] Another line drifted past: [Chill out! Didn’t you read the lore? She just has to spray it again later and they swap back. It’s fine…] Ah. I see. Thanks for the tip. I made an excuse to use the restaurant bathroom, poured the entire bottle into the toilet, and flushed my old life away. 2. When I woke up, I was staring at a popcorn ceiling. I was lying in a cramped, twin-sized bed. The room was tiny and cluttered. Sketchbooks were piled haphazardly on a chipped desk; an easel and cheap acrylic paints littered the floor. I instinctively raised my hand to rub my eyes. What came into focus was a pair of slender but heavily calloused hands. The skin was a healthy, sun-baked olive, and there was a distinct, reddish birthmark on the index finger. Tara’s hands. My heart hammered against my ribs. I threw the covers off and lunged for the cheap mirror pinned to the back of the door. The girl staring back at me had a warm, olive complexion, though her hair was dry and brittle from an obvious lack of nutrition. She was painfully thin, but her eyes—they were striking. Brilliant and alive. I… I was Tara Foster. Staring at my new reflection, a genuine, bubbling laugh escaped my throat. I smiled, revealing a pair of slightly crooked, cute front teeth. The glowing text flashed in the mirror: [Poor MC. She can never go back. Trapped in a life of poverty forever…] [She’s literally an idiot. Even if she didn’t like the scent, why did she pour it down the toilet?!] [Exactly. She’s gonna be crying herself to sleep when reality hits.] A cheap, older-model smartphone chimed on the nightstand. I picked up Tara’s phone. There was a text message from “Mia Smith”—my old name, my old phone. Don’t even try it, the text read. No one is going to believe you about a soul swap. If you dare open your mouth and spout some crazy bullshit, I’ll use the Smith family’s connections to have you committed to a psych ward. I read it, tapped the screen, deleted the thread, and blocked the number. The text feed in the air went wild: [Holy shit! This girl is 100 pounds, and 90 pounds of it is pure spite!] [Am I the only one who thinks she’s being way too calm?] [She’s probably in shock! Dropping from heaven straight to hell would break anyone’s brain…] Hell? I just crawled my way out of it. The phone chimed again. A text from “Mom.” This would be Tara’s mother. No. As of today, my mother. The message was simple: Tara, there’s whole-wheat bread and low-fat milk in the fridge. Make sure you eat before class. I read online that whole wheat doesn’t make you gain weight, so please don’t secretly starve yourself again. The nagging was laced with a deep, tangible anxiety. It didn’t sound at all like the “toxic, son-obsessed monster” Tara had always complained about. I opened the bedroom door and took in the apartment. It was an older walk-up building. The paint on the walls was chipping in places, and the furniture looked like it was from a thrift store a decade ago, but the place was spotless. Not a speck of dust. Out on the tiny balcony, several potted pothos plants thrived. The morning sun spilled through the glass doors, painting the worn carpet in a wash of gold. It was incredibly warm. It felt like a home. I walked over to the humming refrigerator, opened it, and found exactly what the text promised. I ate my breakfast in absolute contentment, packed up Tara’s art supplies, and headed out. At this moment, I was profoundly grateful that when I paid my own tuition for the university’s private sketching seminar last week, I had casually paid Tara’s fee too. At least I had a solid semester of art classes secured. The floating text buzzed: [She’s heading to the studio! She’s definitely going to corner the fake friend and demand her body back…] [Too late for that. Who wouldn’t want to keep that supermodel body and rich life?] Um… thanks for the compliment, I guess. As I walked down the street toward campus, a cherry-red Ferrari tore down the asphalt. A second later, the tires screeched, and the car aggressively swerved to block my path. “What the hell are you doing here?!” a voice snapped. It was a voice I knew intimately, yet it sounded entirely foreign. I turned my head and was instantly blinded by the girl in the driver’s seat. It was a delicate, heart-shaped face. Features sculpted to absolute perfection. Sleek, meticulously styled raven-black hair. It was a stunning face. But paired with the heavy, garish makeup smeared across it, it looked incredibly cheap. It was my face. 3. This was the first time I had ever looked at myself from an outsider’s perspective. I had to admit, the face was breathtaking, even if the eyes staring back at me were currently burning with malice. I took a few seconds to silently appreciate my own bone structure, then pulled my gaze away, expression totally blank, and kept walking. Tara wasn’t going to let it go. She put the Ferrari in drive and crept along the curb, keeping pace with me. She rolled down the passenger window, her voice dripping with gloating venom. “Mia Smith, your life really was a joke of privilege. A Ferrari just for turning twenty? Well, guess what? It’s all mine now. Oh, and your parents? They called me like four times yesterday. So worried about me. Wired me a ton of cash, terrified I might suffer even the slightest inconvenience…” The feed: [Ugh! The MC messed up so bad. Without the perfume, she can never go back.] [Thank god Tara doesn’t know she flushed it. She’s clearly a little scared Mia knows a loophole to swap back. If she knew the truth, she’d destroy Mia…] I ignored her completely and kept walking until I reached the art building. Tara and I had met in a summer prep class for this very program five years ago, back in high school. I was naturally quiet. I liked peace. She was a live wire. After every class, she’d gravitate toward me, talking my ear off, dragging me to lunch, to the mall, to the movies. Sometimes female friendship is just that simple. You do the holy trinity of hanging out—eating, shopping, watching movies—and suddenly you’re “best friends.” But I always knew she was difficult. I would buy her beautiful dresses, and she would leave them crumpled in a corner, claiming I was flaunting my wealth to humiliate her. I’d treat her to Michelin-starred dinners, and she’d accuse me of trying to make her fat so I’d look better by comparison. I knew that until the dust fully settled, she wouldn’t leave me alone. Luckily, Norton arrived. And he brought a wildly ostentatious spectacle with him. His household staff rolled up in a catering van. They hauled out designer bistro tables, fine china, and massive floral arrangements, spending half an hour transforming the overgrown, neglected courtyard outside the art studio into a high-end Parisian café. Professional pastry chefs and baristas set up stations. The smell of fresh espresso and butter croissants filled the air. My classmates poured out of the studio, their eyes wide with envy, swarming “Mia” with breathless compliments. “Oh my god, Mia, your boyfriend is insane!” “He is literally perfect. Rich, obsessed with you… I’m so jealous!” “You guys are like royalty. You belong together.” Every fawning comment acted like oxygen to Tara’s ego. She laughed, tossing her hair, leaning into Norton’s side with practiced, coy shyness. “I really am the luckiest girl in the world.” I stood on the fringe of the crowd. I wasn’t about to miss out on free food. I grabbed a slice of tiramisu and an iced coconut milk latte. Halfway through my cake, I felt a heavy gaze pinning me down. I looked up. Norton was staring directly at me through the crowd. Was I overthinking it? Why did the look in his eyes feel so… strange? The text feed exploded: [Did the male lead figure it out?!] [Yes! Go MC, go! Tell him you’re the real Mia! Omg I’m dying of anxiety…] 4. Tara seemed to notice Norton’s distraction. The smug smile froze on her face. She immediately put on an act of sisterly affection and marched over to me. Dropping her voice to a vicious hiss, she warned, “Back the hell off, Tara. Stay away from Norton. He’s my boyfriend now…” I ignored her, finished my latte, and turned to head home. I hadn’t taken two steps before Norton’s arm shot out, blocking my path. His expression was glacial. The doting, perfect boyfriend from two minutes ago had vanished entirely. The feed: [Oh my god! The male lead is coming through! He totally knows! True love sees the soul, not the face…] [I’m crying. The MC flushed the perfume because she trusted he would recognize her spirit…] My stomach dropped. Wait. Did he actually figure it out? “Tara,” Norton said, his voice dripping with disgust. “I’ve told you a hundred times. I don’t want you. I only love Mia. Stop sending me those pathetic, desperate texts. Your little schemes are as repulsive as you are.” He kept talking, tearing her down with a barrage of insults. I stood there, completely stunned. I had no idea Tara had been secretly messaging Norton. It suddenly made sense why Norton would casually drop hints, telling me not to get too close to her, saying she had ulterior motives. Right on cue, “Mia” rushed over. Her eyes were red, her voice thick with fake tears. “Tara… I am so disappointed in you. I considered you my sister. I can’t believe you were trying to steal my boyfriend behind my back. How could you do this to me?” The courtyard erupted. The murmurs turned into a loud, vicious chorus. “Wow, I can’t believe Tara is like that! Mia paid her tuition, bought her clothes, fed her, and she tries to steal her man?” “Seriously! Talk about biting the hand that feeds you. She’s so basic-looking, too. The audacity!” “What a literal parasite.” The feed: [Wait, isn’t this supposed to be a satisfying revenge plot? The MC is getting slaughtered out here…] [Why won’t she just open her mouth?! Speak! Tell him you’re Mia! He’ll protect you!] I looked at the circus unfolding in front of me. A dry, humorless chuckle escaped my lips. I decided to just play along with her script. “My bad. Sent those to the wrong number. Sorry for the drama, won’t happen again.” I just wanted to get away from them. I needed to be as far from this toxic wasteland as possible. They weren’t worth a second of my time. I hitched my bag onto my shoulder and started walking away. As I turned, I saw “Mia” holding up a white dress. She looked thrilled, throwing her arms around Norton’s neck, kissing him deeply in front of everyone. A white dress. My breath caught in my throat. The blood in my veins turned to ice. A violent wave of nausea hit my stomach, rising up my throat. I couldn’t hold it back. I dropped to my knees by the brick wall and violently threw up everything I had just eaten. Trembling, I braced my hand against the rough brick and slowly pulled myself up. I just needed to go home. Behind me, Tara’s exaggerated, theatrical laugh echoed across the courtyard. “I love you so much! Norton, how does a man as perfect as you exist? I feel so lucky. This is literally heaven…” Yeah, right. You just checked into hell. 5. I pushed open the door to the apartment, and the rich, savory smell of home-cooked food washed over me. I followed the scent to the tiny kitchen. A young man with thick, black-rimmed glasses was standing at the stove, stirring a pan. David. I had seen photos of him before. Tara used to scroll through her camera roll and point him out, sneering about her “deadbeat, cold-blooded” older brother. The feed flickered: [Wait, isn’t he supposed to be studying in the US? Why is he back?] [Flights are so expensive. Typical deadbeat son, blowing his dead dad’s money and abandoning his mom and sister.] Tara had complained about him relentlessly. She said she and her mom lived in poverty, saving every dime to send him to the States. She claimed he was ungrateful, that he treated them like burdens, that he was always irritated on the phone and never once asked how they were doing. I had always pictured a lazy, entitled frat bro draining his family dry. But the David standing in front of me was entirely different. He wasn’t particularly handsome, but he had a grounded, quiet strength about him. He moved around the kitchen with the practiced ease of someone who had cooked for himself for years—not someone pampered and spoiled. He heard my footsteps and glanced over his shoulder. The stern lines of his face softened instantly. “You’re back. Go wash your hands. I made your favorite, tomato beef stew.” “Okay.” I was starving after throwing up. This was perfect. “Mom is still at the grocery store. I packed some up for her for later, so we can eat now,” David said, carrying the dishes to a small folding table. It was a simple, humble meal. Beef stew, sautéed greens, and a bowl of egg drop soup. As we ate, we made idle conversation. I couldn’t help but ask why he was back in the country. David set his chopsticks down, his tone perfectly even. “I’m finishing up my Master’s at Cornell. I flew back because a major biotech firm here flew me out for an interview for a director-level position. Base salary is a million a year, plus equity. I just got the offer this morning. Once I officially graduate, I’m moving back to start.” “Pfft—” I choked, spitting rice into my napkin, coughing violently. “You… you’re that smart? Cornell? A million a year?” “I’m a bio-engineer, Tara. Did you hit your head?” He gave me a look. “But… what about your tuition?” “I’m on a full-ride fellowship. They pay for my tuition and give me a living stipend. Mom was paranoid I’d run into an emergency abroad, so she forced me to take Dad’s settlement money. Honestly, it wasn’t even that much. Twenty grand. I haven’t touched a single cent of it. It’s sitting in a high-yield account. It’s for Mom’s retirement, and for you, if you ever get into trouble.” Wait. An Ivy League education cost easily eighty grand a year. Tara had sworn he took millions from a wrongful death suit and blew it on partying. Twenty grand. A full-ride scholarship. A million-dollar salary out of the gate. He wasn’t a deadbeat; he was a literal prodigy. This was a golden ticket, and I was going to hold onto it with both hands. I looked him dead in the eye, my voice entirely sincere. “David. You are my favorite brother in the world.” “I’m your only brother,” he said drily, scooping a massive spoonful of beef into my bowl. “How have you been? I know you’ve been doing the art thing, but is that what you really want? Do you have other plans?” I put my chopsticks down. A heavy silence fell over me. When I applied to college, I had secretly sent my portfolio to a prestigious art institute. But my parents—the Smiths—had used their connections to hack into the portal and change my major to English Literature. They told me: “A girl should just be a teacher. It’s respectable. It gives you time to manage a household. You need to focus on taking care of Norton so you can marry into his family…” “I want to be a makeup artist,” I said quietly. “I want to help people feel beautiful.” David didn’t say a word. He reached into his messenger bag, pulled out a thick envelope, and slid it across the table. “Do it. Go enroll in a cosmetology school. Getting a trade is a smart move. If you need more money, tell me. Whatever you want to do, I’ve got your back.” My nose stung. The room blurred as tears welled in my eyes. David panicked, awkwardly grabbing a napkin to wipe my face. “You’ve really grown up. A year ago, if Mom or I tried to give you advice, you would have thrown a chair and locked yourself in your room. We were terrified to talk to you. From now on, whatever happens, you tell me. I’m here.” “Thanks, David,” I sniffled, obediently gathering the empty bowls to help him wash up. Just as we finished, the doorbell rang. I opened it to find a striking guy standing in the hallway. He was wearing a crisp white button-down. His smile was polite, his demeanor effortless. “Hi. I’m Wesley, David’s friend from grad school. I’m here to give him a ride to the airport.” Hearing his voice, David dragged his suitcase to the door and nodded at Wesley. “Let’s go.” Before stepping out, David turned back to me. “Take care of yourself. Take care of Mom. Call me if anything happens. If you need cash, tell me. Don’t let anyone walk all over you.” I nodded fiercely, my eyes burning again. The feed: [Oh my god, a protective older brother! I want one!] [Don’t be shallow. A little chump change isn’t going to win the MC over. Her real brother, Blake, is actual old money. On her 18th birthday, he rented out a whole five-star resort for her…] My 18th birthday. A phantom weight slammed into my chest, suffocating me. That night… was the absolute worst nightmare of my entire life. The feed kept scrolling: [Exactly. The MC took a massive L here. I can’t even imagine how much fun the fake friend is having right now. Literally winning at life…] Is she? She’s not going to be smiling for long.

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “436735”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

On the day of our family gathering, the naive, innocent-looking female protagonist arrived at the Sterling estate, clutching a DNA paternity test. She declared she was the true heiress and demanded I be thrown out. But what she didn’t know was that a powerful, old-money family never casually abandons the heir they’ve spent years grooming for an outsider who just showed up out of nowhere. 1. When Serena showed up at the door with the DNA report, the Sterlings were having their monthly family gathering. Tearfully, she accused me of being a cuckoo in the nest, claiming she was the real daughter of the Sterling family and I was just an imposter who had stolen her place. Everyone was silent. The atmosphere was nothing like the warm, tearful reunion she had clearly imagined. “This is the proof. I really am the Sterling family’s daughter,” Serena said, a hint of panic creeping into her voice. She placed the DNA report on the coffee table, but no one reached for it. Grandpa, the highly respected patriarch of the family, didn’t say a word. Naturally, none of the other Sterlings spoke up either. Finally, just as she was about to crack under the oppressive silence, Grandpa deigned to glance at the document on the table and nodded slightly. Only then did the others begin to speak. “Serena, is it? It’s good you’re back.” Serena’s feigned expression of being moved froze on her face. This development was completely different from what she had anticipated. No one asked about the hardships she had suffered while living outside the family. There was no comfort, not even any extra pleasantries. And certainly no mention of disposing of me, the imposter heiress. 2. “Grandpa, she’s the one who stole my identity and caused me to live out there, suffering all those hardships!” Serena stood up abruptly, pointing at me with a hateful glare. That was the confidence being a biological Sterling gave her. Grandpa didn’t respond; he didn’t even bother to lift his eyes. The rest of the Sterling family certainly wasn’t going to chime in and agree. Serena hadn’t seemed to realize how isolated she was. Even her biological parents just looked at her with detached indifference, showing neither joy nor sorrow. “Take Miss Serena away,” my older brother suddenly spoke up beside me. He clearly had no interest in watching this boring farce play out. Soon, someone stepped forward to escort her out. “Why! She’s the one who should be leaving this place!” Hearing no response, Serena was incredulous. It was only then she realized that not a single person was speaking up for her. Her gaze swept around the room. Everyone was calm and composed, exuding an aristocratic grace completely different from hers, even me—the fake heiress. She wanted to say more, but a light, chilling glance from me silenced her. A girl raised in wealth and privilege is fundamentally different from her. Moreover, for this scene today, she had deliberately made herself look particularly disheveled. Her intention was to make her blood relatives pity her, but standing here now, she just looked incredibly out of place. I watched the rapidly changing expressions on her face, guessing her inner thoughts. Suddenly, I felt a nudge on my arm. It was Lucas, the one who had just ordered Serena to be taken away. 3. I turned to look at him. “She’s an idiot. Don’t let it bother you.” His expression was cold, as if he weren’t talking about his own biological sister. “Of course not.” I had enough confidence to say those words. The Sterling family wouldn’t abandon me—the heir they had spent years grooming—for a biological daughter who appeared halfway through. “Maya, come with me.” Grandpa stood up from the sofa, pushing away the person trying to help him, and turned to look at me. “Yes, Grandpa,” I nodded, stepping forward to assist him. That night, the lights in the study stayed on for a long time. Everyone knew that the family’s hierarchy wouldn’t be undergoing any major changes. Serena’s appearance didn’t cause much of a ripple. Although the Sterlings acknowledged her identity, it had no impact on me whatsoever. I remained the most highly regarded heir of the Sterling family, the golden child. However, she did have some tricks up her sleeve. The Sterlings are generally very emotionally detached, valuing profit and usefulness above all else. Emotions are just a leisure activity to them. Yet, since her return, she frequently managed to bring a smile to Mrs. Sterling’s face. Acting sweet and spoiled in front of family members—she was certainly much better at making people like her than I was. It seemed that after the initial conflict on her first day back, she behaved very properly. Because of her docility, the Sterling family treated her much more kindly. Until one early morning, a commotion in the stairwell woke everyone up. The girl in the white dress lay on the broken pieces of a vase at the bottom of the stairs, looking in pain, blood seeping from beneath her. I stood at the top of the stairs, looking down at her expressionlessly… 4. “Mom, it hurts so much.” She didn’t immediately try to frame me. Instead, she looked at the people rushing out at the noise, teary-eyed and pitiful. Only then did everyone snap back to reality and hurriedly call for a doctor. “A setup?” Lucas stood beside me, yawning, and asked with a raised eyebrow. The scene just now would seem suspicious to anyone. I pressed my lips together, watching Serena lying there covered in injuries, and shook my head. At least she hadn’t directly framed me or condemned me. She just “accidentally” fell down the stairs as I walked past. There are security cameras here; she wouldn’t be stupid enough to say I pushed her. “What’s going on? How is it this serious?” Mrs. Sterling, Eleanor, rushed to her side, frowning. She didn’t know where to start—there were broken vase pieces everywhere, some embedded in Serena’s skin, and blood was staining the carpet. Serena’s face was growing paler by the second. Eleanor didn’t know where she was hurt or how serious it was, so she didn’t dare move her before the doctor arrived. But Serena didn’t care. Now was the best time to elicit sympathy. She struggled to lift her hand to grasp Eleanor’s hem. Eleanor frowned slightly, almost imperceptibly. “Mom…” “Don’t speak. The doctor will be here in a minute,” Eleanor stopped her, forcing Serena to swallow her unspoken words. “Should we go take a look?” Lucas, who had been watching, suggested. I nodded. “Don’t come over!” “Don’t come over.” Two simultaneous voices rang out. One from Serena, the other from Eleanor. Serena’s tone was agitated, clearly showing her extreme wariness of me. My footsteps halted. Lucas, however, walked over fearlessly. “Tsk, I’m over here now. What’s the problem?” He bent down slightly, his mocking gaze meeting Serena’s eyes. Finally, just as Serena was about to break, the ambulance arrived. 5. “Be careful of the glass shards. Wait for the housekeeper to clean it up before you come down.” Before Eleanor left, she suddenly turned and added this. It felt like an explanation for why she had stopped me earlier. I was a little stunned, unsure of how to react. Despite being mother and daughter for so many years, there hadn’t really been much warmth between us. I was raised by Grandpa, personally trained as his heir. The Sterlings were always emotionally distant; we only gathered for routine family dinners or major decisions. I rarely spent time with them, and there was no deep emotional bond. Our interactions were mostly just polite formalities. “What’s wrong? Are you dumbfounded?” Lucas bumped my shoulder, leaning over. “You’re very loud,” I said, looking up at him, my tone extremely serious. The smile froze on Lucas’s face, and he coughed awkwardly. He composed himself, then suddenly patted my shoulder, acting very mature: “Maya, this family is going to have to rely on you from now on.” I shot him a slightly disgusted look but didn’t contradict him. 6. After Serena got hurt, Eleanor stayed at the hospital to take care of her. It was only then that the rest of the Sterling family began to feel the reality of the situation. The Sterling family had an extra biological daughter, and she clearly wasn’t here with good intentions. The accidental injury, although inconclusive, raised a question: regardless of whether I hurt Serena out of jealousy, or she framed me out of resentment, it was clear we couldn’t get along. How would the Sterling family balance the relationship between the adopted daughter and the biological daughter? Although my position seemed unchanged for now, when it came to bloodlines versus capability, who could truly guess the intentions of those in power? For a time, there was a lot of hidden tension. Some were waiting for an opportunity, anticipating a major conflict. 7. “What are you doing here?” Serena sat up in her hospital bed, scoffing dismissively as she saw me walk in alone. I pulled up a chair and sat down, completely unfazed by her cold reception. “You must be feeling pretty proud of yourself, stealing everything that was mine, and still having the nerve to show your face here,” she said, her eyes filled with malice. “I didn’t steal anything from anyone. At least what I have now, I’ve earned,” I said, meeting her gaze. She was incredibly dismissive. “Earned? The identity of a Sterling daughter? The position of the heir? Maya, have you no shame?! Those things belong to me! You have no Sterling blood in you, how can you claim you earned them?!” She grabbed an apple from the bedside table and threw it at me. I dodged it, stood up, and looked at her for a long time. “You will always owe me! I will never let you have it easy, Maya!” Her face was contorted with intense bitterness. 8. The atmosphere was tense. Suddenly, there was a noise at the door; someone had arrived. Serena’s demeanor changed instantly. Her aggrieved, cautious voice filled the room: “Sister, I just wanted an apple. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have asked you to help me.” Eleanor pushed the door open just then. She glanced at Serena, who was biting her lip with tears in her eyes, then at the apple on the floor, and finally turned her gaze to me. “Your grandfather is looking for you. You should go back,” Eleanor said calmly, acting as if she hadn’t heard Serena. “Okay,” I nodded, turning to leave. Serena tightened her grip on the blanket, struggling to maintain her composure. “What else would you like to eat?” Before I left, I heard Eleanor’s soft, gentle inquiry. 9. In the Sterling estate’s garden, Serena was happily swinging on the swing set. Ever since she was discharged from the hospital, she had undergone a massive shift, at least in front of others, hiding her hostility toward me. I watched her through the window, an aura of freedom about her, and felt a pang of inexplicable envy. “Maya, it’s your turn.” With the click of a piece on the board, Grandpa’s deep voice sounded from across the table. I looked at the chessboard before me; my hand holding the white piece hovered, unable to make a move. There was nowhere to place it. It was a dead end. “Grandpa, I’ve lost,” I said, my voice hoarse. Under his gaze, all my emotions were laid bare. “Maya, you are different from the others. You should have known that from the day I took you in.” My mind wasn’t in the game, and he lost interest in starting another round. “…” I remained silent, offering no response. “The heir I choose will only ever be you. You carry the honor of the entire Sterling family.” He delivered this statement casually, settling the uncertain future. “But I don’t have Sterling blood, as you well know.” I looked up, confusion and bewilderment in my expression. Although I always answered confidently when facing others’ doubts, that deep-seated insecurity had always been suppressed at the very bottom of my heart. “I used to think bloodlines were the most important thing too. But Maya, I found out I was wrong.” He was looking right at me, yet his gaze felt distant, as if he were recalling something through me. The conversation ended there. Grandpa had long since left, but I sat there for a long time. At the time, I didn’t understand why he said that. 10. Actually, I had known for a long time that I wasn’t a Sterling. Or rather, Grandpa knew before I did. He told me himself when I was still too young to understand. He even took me to meet my biological parents and the little girl who was swapped with me—Serena. Unlike a typical baby swap scenario, my biological parents were also from a wealthy, established family, and they doted on Serena. To me, the biological daughter who suddenly appeared out of nowhere, they seemed a bit awkward. Aside from the biological connection, we were practically strangers. Love is built through time spent together. They favored the girl they had watched grow up, the one they saw every day. I didn’t know what kind of deal Grandpa made with them. My identity and Serena’s weren’t swapped back. But this secret was only known to Grandpa and me. No one else in the Sterling family knew. Back then, Grandpa frequently took me to visit the other family in secret. When I was young, Serena and I knew each other. Whenever I was with her, Grandpa would always watch us with a complex, hard-to-read expression. Until one time, I overheard him murmuring “Unfit for great things” while looking at Serena in the distance. I think I knew why Grandpa chose me. It was because I was smarter and more valuable, capable of becoming the qualified assistant he was grooming. I stayed smart because my biological parents didn’t choose me, and I couldn’t afford to lose Grandpa too. Later, Grandpa fell seriously ill. We didn’t go to that other family’s house for a long time. The next time I heard about them was from the rest of the Sterling family. 11. “The other company collapsed. Fate is truly unpredictable.” At a family gathering, they were discussing the fate of that other family. The parents had died in a sudden accident, and the opportunistic predators swarmed in. The empire crumbled overnight. I stood up abruptly from my seat, startling them. However, meeting Grandpa’s authoritative gaze, I swallowed the words I was about to say. I went to their funeral. They were my biological parents, yet I attended as a guest to pay my respects. “Grandpa, I don’t have a mom and dad anymore,” I said, staring blankly at the black-and-white photos, using a title I hadn’t been permitted to use. “You still have Grandpa.” He patted my head, his expression more affectionate than usual. I looked at him numbly, feeling an emptiness inside. Serena disappeared after the funeral. Grandpa changed his mind and didn’t bring her back to the Sterling family. He never brought up this biological granddaughter who was wandering the world again. Until many years later, a strange girl showed up at our door with a DNA report. This time, she seemed to have a completely different personality. 12. “Sister, look at the swing I just built!” I had just walked downstairs when Serena ran over, her face brimming with joy. Before she could take my arm, Lucas suddenly appeared. He blocked her path and sneered, “Do you have a split personality?” The sarcasm was ruthless. “No, I don’t. I just want to play with my sister.” Serena paled slightly. She was a little afraid of Lucas. “Our family doesn’t buy that act, understand? “If you have a problem with Maya, be upfront about it. Put it out in the open, and I can respect that. Stop playing these little games in the dark, pretending to be loving sisters. You’re not that close.” Lucas didn’t necessarily hate Serena; it was just his personality. He had always despised people who were devious and manipulative. The Sterling family had already acknowledged Serena’s bloodline. If she had maintained her firm stance from when she first returned and openly opposed me, he wouldn’t have taken sides later on. But she was always so fickle—one minute full of suspicion and deep resentment, the next, incredibly docile and sisterly. “I didn’t…” Her eyes suddenly turned red, and tears fell like pearls off a broken string. “You!” Seeing her cry on command, Lucas was about to say more but I tugged his arm to stop him. “What’s going on with you two?” It was Eleanor’s voice. 13. It turned out a maid had noticed the tension. Fearing she wouldn’t be able to explain if the young master and misses got into a fight, she had called Eleanor over. “N-nothing,” Serena said, wiping the tears from her cheeks. Her eyes were slightly red, and she offered a faint smile. She looked so carefully fragile it made your heart ache. “Lucas, behave yourself,” Eleanor said, rubbing her temples. They were all her children, whether biological or adopted. She didn’t demand they get along perfectly. But she also didn’t want to see a minor spat every three days and a major blowout every five. “I am behaving. Mom, don’t be biased. If she doesn’t get in my face, I won’t go looking for trouble with her,” Lucas said dismissively. “Alright, that’s enough. If you don’t get along, try to avoid each other. Serena, pack your things this afternoon; we’re leaving.” Eleanor came up with the best solution. They didn’t always live at the main estate; it was only because of the recent succession of events that they had stayed longer than usual. “Mom, do you not want me anymore? I’ll be good. I’m sorry, Sister. I won’t bother you anymore.” Serena misinterpreted her meaning, thinking this was an eviction. A flash of irritation crossed her eyes, but her face looked incredibly pitiful, terrified of being abandoned by her family. 14. “That’s not what I meant. We don’t usually live at the main estate. If you want to stay here, Maya can come back with us.” Eleanor frowned, observing her reaction. In the end, Serena left with Eleanor. Grandpa clearly didn’t value this granddaughter, and her staying wouldn’t change much. On the other hand, the rest of the Sterling family’s stance wasn’t as firm. Shortly after Serena went back with Eleanor, the news that the Sterling heir was an imposter, a cuckoo in the nest, began to circulate among the elite circles. Those who believed it hid in the shadows, waiting to see me fail, while those who didn’t treated it as a joke. At Grandpa’s birthday banquet, guests gathered in droves. The usually haughty heiresses gathered together to gossip about the true and fake heiress drama. “What? Is it true? Maya is just a stray bird?” “She’s always so arrogant. Turns out she’s a fake. That’s hilarious.” “You couldn’t tell before. She hid it well. Her methods must be ruthless. My parents were always praising her, and now her true colors are about to be exposed.” “I heard the real heiress suffered a lot wandering out there, but the Sterlings are refusing to acknowledge her to protect Maya.” “No way! Who would choose an outsider over their own blood to hand the family business to? Is old man Sterling losing his mind?” “You have to admit, Maya is capable. Even if you’re not biologically related, your parents would probably be willing to leave the business to you.” … That last sentence cut through the malicious speculations. A capable adopted daughter is far more reliable than a useless trust-fund baby. Moreover, this adopted daughter had been raised by his side since childhood. Aside from blood, there was no difference between her and a biological child. 15. The crowd’s expressions stiffened upon hearing this. Indeed, even for an only child, if they had no capability, parents wouldn’t hand over their hard-earned empire for them to ruin. “Julian, you’re engaged to the Sterling family’s biological daughter. It doesn’t look good for you to be defending Maya like this,” someone sneered at him, clearly displeased. “Mind your own business.” Julian gently swirled the red wine in his glass, his demeanor lazy, barely sparing them a glance. I leaned against the railing, watching the scene unfold. Whether it was slander, mockery, or defense, none of it stirred any emotion in me. “So here you are,” a familiar voice chimed in. Serena was dressed like a princess today, beautiful and innocent. Her dress had been custom-made by Eleanor herself. So, standing before me, she once again possessed the superiority of being the favored one. “That’s the heir of the Vance family, right? Do you like him? But I heard… he’s supposed to be my fiancé.” She glanced in Julian’s direction. She spoke with feigned distress. “Serena, you don’t need to come here and provoke me. What’s yours is yours; I can’t take it. What’s mine is mine, and the same applies to you.” I was long accustomed to her sudden shifts in demeanor. “Tsk, I hope you still have this much confidence when everyone abandons you.” She scoffed and turned away. When I looked back, I caught Julian’s eye from afar. He gave a slight smirk and raised his glass to me. I calmly looked away.

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Here we are again. Tim is asking for a divorce. The excuse this time? His newest little pet is throwing a tantrum for a ring and a title. She’s young, he tells me, his tone practically bleeding with faux sympathy. Too fragile to be kept in the shadows. He strokes my arm, soothing me with promises that as soon as he gets bored of her, we’ll remarry. I just need to be a good girl and sign the papers. He says it with the casual ease of a man asking me to pick up dry cleaning, completely untroubled, as if dismantling our marriage is just a minor administrative hiccup. I put on my best performance, my voice trembling just the right amount as I ask if he truly means it this time. He barely glances at me. “I never lie, Cora.” He follows it up with a smug, self-assured smirk, reminding me that no one else has ever lasted more than six months by his side. Don’t worry your pretty little head about it. I carefully scan the divorce settlement, letting my eyes drop to the very bottom of the page, tracing the delightfully long string of zeros next to my name. The heavy, suffocating knot in my chest finally unravels. This is the one-hundredth time my husband has asked me for a divorce. For the previous ninety-nine times, he put on grand, theatrical shows to appease whatever little sugar baby he was keeping in a gilded cage. And every single time the ink dried on the final decree, the alimony hit my offshore accounts with the precision of a Swiss watch. What Tim doesn’t know is that my greatest, most paralyzing fear is that one day, he might stop being so impulsive. 1 Tim stepped out of the en-suite, aggressively towel-drying his damp hair. “Cora, don’t forget. We need to file the papers with the city clerk tomorrow morning.” I stood by the doorframe, the freshly signed separation agreement clutched to my chest. He opened his mouth to add something, but his phone buzzed. “…Relax, babe. I won’t even touch her. You know you’re the only one I want…” His voice dropped an octave, dripping with a sickening kind of intimacy. “Little brat. I’ll deal with you later…” I thoughtfully pulled the bathroom door shut to give him privacy and wandered out onto the balcony of the Hamptons estate. The night was thick and dark. Out here, the silence of the sprawling, isolated grounds felt almost melancholic. A few minutes later, Tim emerged, car keys jingling in his hand. He caught sight of my desolate silhouette against the moonlight, and his footsteps faltered. For a second, I thought he might actually possess the patience to comfort me. “Can’t bear to let me go?” he murmured, coming up behind me. “I know, I know. But this one… she’s a headache. Be good for me, Cora. This is the last time. I swear it. The absolute last time.” My eyes went wide in the dark. A cold sweat broke out along my spine. The last time? What does he mean, the last time? No, no, no. Please, keep your terrible habits. I quickly molded my face into an expression of pathetic dependency, turning to look up at him. “You’re so good to me, Tim.” My voice broke perfectly. “I never want you to be unhappy. I’d do anything for you.” He leaned down, his eyes searching mine. “I love you, Cora. We promised each other forever. These girls? They’re just playtime. You are the real Mrs. Vanderbilt. You always will be.” He straightened up, his gaze sweeping over the oceanfront property. “Standard protocol. This house is yours now.” My hands began to tremble. Truly tremble. He paused midway through buttoning his tailored coat, reaching out to pat my cheek. “Do whatever you want with it. Just don’t be sad.” His thumb brushed my cheekbone. “Be at City Hall on time tomorrow.” The front door clicked shut. He was gone. I collapsed onto the plush velvet sofa, all the feigned weakness draining from my bones as I looked around the magnificent estate with deep, unadulterated satisfaction. During our previous ninety-nine divorces, I had liquidated every single property he had ever signed over to me. The first time he found out I had sold our actual marital home, he was furious. He demanded to know why. I remember looking at him with trembling lips and eyes swimming in fabricated agony. “Tim, you don’t understand. Every time I looked at those walls, I just saw the moment you told me you were leaving me. I… I couldn’t breathe in there…” I had let the sentence hang, choking on an imaginary sob. He had pulled me into his arms, the guilt in his eyes entirely genuine. “I get it. Shh, don’t say another word, Cora. It was too painful.” From that day on, every time we inevitably reconciled and moved into a new place, he made sure the deed was solely in my name. When the divorce cycle repeated, the house was mine to do with as I pleased. For the first ninety-eight times, I played it safe. I never chose properties that were too obscenely expensive, terrified he might see through my facade and decide not to remarry me. But this Hamptons estate? He picked this one himself. It was easily worth nine figures. I didn’t even wait for the sun to rise. I called my luxury real estate brokers immediately. When they arrived, they took one look at me and smiled. We were old friends by now. Regulars. They weren’t just familiar with me; they knew Tim’s habits inside out. After all, I used them to sell the properties, and whenever Tim wanted to buy a new one to woo me back, he used them too, purely for convenience. They moved through the house with practiced efficiency, snapping photos, recording video walkthroughs, and taking inventory of the designer furniture. I sat curled up on the sofa, clutching my phone to my chest, my eyes rubbed raw and red. Tim called one of the brokers. “How is she? Is she crying?” He did this every time. Whenever he initiated a divorce, he obsessively checked in with the people around me, needing to know if I was falling apart. As if it proved the depth of his love. “Mrs. Vanderbilt is…” The broker caught herself, likely responding to whatever correction he barked on the other end. “Yes, Mr. Vanderbilt. Miss Su looks entirely devastated. Her eyes are so red.” I had been reading a particularly tragic romance novel on my phone for the last hour. The female lead’s misery was practically infectious. The broker hung up and looked at me with genuine pity. “He is such a toxic bastard.” I gave a pathetic little sniffle. “No, you don’t understand him. Deep down, he has a good heart.” The team of women looked at me like I was a hopeless, brainwashed relic. But business was business. As they packed up their lighting equipment, the lead broker winked. “Next time you need to buy, you know who to call. Loyalty discount. Twenty percent off the commission.” I didn’t say a word. They didn’t know. There wasn’t going to be a next time. 2 Tim and I had barely stepped out of the courthouse in downtown Manhattan when my phone began to ring. It was Margot, his adopted sister. She had harbored a borderline obsessive crush on him since childhood. The moment I answered, her voice was a sharp, interrogating whip. “Cora. Did you actually sign the papers? Tell me it’s real this time.” Margot had been waiting like a vulture in the wings for ninety-nine divorces, desperate to claim him. But Tim was the kind of man who would flirt with a passing shadow, yet he flat-out refused to look at his adopted sister that way. It drove her absolutely insane. I held the phone a few inches from my ear to save my eardrums. “We just filed the petition. The cooling-off period is a month. We get the final decree after that. Margot, have I ever lied to you?” If we were being entirely honest, Margot was essentially my third-biggest financial backer. Every time Tim and I reconciled, she would track me down, slam a terrifyingly large check on the table, and demand I leave him. And every time, I nodded, took the money, and agreed. “Who is that?” Tim demanded, his eyes narrowing. Usually, the second the paperwork was filed, Tim was already in his sports car, peeling away to his newest conquest. But today, he seemed oddly reluctant. We were supposed to file yesterday, but he dragged his feet for three days until I finally had to gently nag him into coming. “It’s Margot.” His face instantly relaxed. “She’s just a spoiled kid throwing a tantrum. Don’t let her get to you, babe.” Whenever Margot crossed a line, Tim always expected me to be the bigger person. I nodded, offering him a frail, tragic smile. “I know, Tim. I know she’s just acting out.” My compliance instantly irritated him. “You do know she’s in love with me, right? Does that seriously not make you jealous?” I let the tears well up in my eyes, letting them hover right on the brim without falling. My chin quivered. “How can you say that to me? It’s not that I’m not jealous. It’s that… I have no choice.” I looked utterly, profoundly broken. A flash of genuine pain crossed Tim’s features. He reached out, his thumb brushing my jaw. “Shh, babe, I’m sorry. I know. It’s the last time. Once I get this out of my system, I’m coming right back to you. No more drama, okay?” I nodded helplessly. What else could I do? He opened his mouth to say something more, but his phone rang. He answered it, his expression hardening into annoyance, before walking back over to me. “The little birds are getting restless. I’ve got to go. Call an Uber, alright?” That’s right. This time, he didn’t just have one sugar baby. He had a pair. Sisters. He didn’t even wait for my response before turning on his heel and striding toward his waiting driver. I let out a long, shuddering breath. Thank god. 3 The truth is, the very first time I found out Tim was cheating on me—the first time he demanded a divorce so he could marry his mistress—I fought it. I fought hard. Tim was the one who chased me. He didn’t care that I was an orphan with nothing to my name. He didn’t care that I didn’t come from a legacy family. He spent four years of college pursuing me relentlessly. After graduation, to prove he wanted to marry me, he knelt outside his mother’s study in their Upper East Side townhouse for three entire days. Eventually, his mother called me in for a meeting. She didn’t mince words. “The Vanderbilt men,” she said, her voice like chilled glass, “are incapable of fidelity. It is a genetic rot. He has his father’s exact temperament. I am not refusing this marriage to protect him. I am doing it to protect you.” Her gaze drifted to the antique, centuries-old molding of the study. Her tone grew heavy with the ghosts of the women who came before us. “Girl… I do not want to watch another flower wither away inside the walls of this house.” She was sincere. But I was young, and I was so incredibly stupid. I thought my love was the exception. How could Tim be like them? This was the boy who would wake up at dawn just to bring me hot coffee in bed. The man who abandoned multi-million-dollar board meetings just to sit with me because I had a mild fever. Young girls are so easily snared by those fleeting moments of intense, cinematic devotion. We mistake grand gestures for a safe harbor, and by the time we realize we’re drowning, we’re too far from the shore. I wasn’t lying to the realtors earlier. That first divorce destroyed me. Standing in the middle of the penthouse we had decorated together, my heart felt like it was being ripped through my ribcage. I knew, even then, that even if it was just a phase, even if we eventually found our way back to each other, the betrayal had carved a canyon in my chest. It was a wound that would never fully close. One touch, and I would bleed out all over again. You can’t just tie a severed string back together and pretend the knot isn’t there. But knowing the truth doesn’t make leaving any easier. I couldn’t let go. On the night he proposed to his first mistress, I snapped. I took a blade to my wrists in our marble bathroom. Watching the crimson pool on the pristine white tiles, a sudden, pathetic wave of desperation hit me. I just wanted a crumb of affection from the man who had discarded me. I reached for my phone with bloody fingers and dialed his number. It rang and rang and rang before he finally picked up. “Cora. Didn’t I tell you not to contact me until the papers are finalized?” His voice was thick with annoyance. “Stop causing scenes. Just be a good girl. I’ll come find you when the novelty wears off.” “Don’t make me angry, Cora, or I really will leave you for good.” “Tim… I…” My voice was a ragged, wet whisper. I wanted to beg him not to leave me behind. I wanted him to come home. He caught the terrifying weakness in my breath. He paused. Then, his voice dropped to a glacial sneer. “What now? Faking an illness to guilt-trip me? Stop being so damn pathetic, Cora.” The line went dead. I lay there, the cold seeping into my bones, and in that agonizing silence, something inside me crystallized. I didn’t want to die. I wasn’t the one who broke our vows. I wasn’t the one who threw away our life. Why the hell should I be the one bleeding out on a bathroom floor? I managed to dial 911. When I woke up in the stark, sterile hospital room, the space beside my bed was empty and cold. That was the moment my love for Tim Vanderbilt finally died. I decided, right then and there, that I would leave him and never, ever look back. But that was also the moment it happened. As I hovered in that liminal space between life and death, a voice—cold, mechanical, and entirely divorced from reality—echoed in my skull. It called itself the 100-Divorce Protocol. It laid out a cosmic, inescapable bargain: Survive, but only if I completed one hundred divorces from Tim. If I failed, if I walked away before the quota was met, the death I had just escaped would reclaim me. I tried to refuse. I had just accepted death, hadn’t I? Why should I be afraid? “Because the death I give you will not be a quiet fading,” the voice had whispered in my mind. “It will be violent. It will be agonizing. And there will be nothing left of your beauty.” It knew my vanity. I could accept dying. I couldn’t accept being butchered. So, I made the deal. 4 I stood on the steps of the courthouse, raising a hand to shield my eyes from the glaring afternoon sun. “Get in.” Margot’s perfectly contoured face appeared from the rolled-down window of a sleek black Maybach. She never trusted me. Every time I came to file the papers, she had to see it with her own eyes. I didn’t argue. I slid into the rich leather interior. “Where am I staying this time?” She rolled her eyes, her lips pressing into a thin line of disgust. She didn’t even want to waste her breath on me. I understood. The pure, unadulterated arrogance of a legacy heiress. This was the ninety-ninth time. Margot was always paranoid that I would refuse to leave the marital home, so the moment I stepped out of City Hall with her brother, she would have a team of movers pack up my life and dump it into whatever condo she had purchased for me as a parting gift. “If you really have nowhere to go, I guess you’d just keep clinging to my brother,” she scoffed. “Giving you a condo is just charity.” “Drop the starving-artist act. I know exactly what kind of parasite you are,” she sneered, looking out the window. “All that ‘I don’t care about the money’ nonsense. You’re just playing the long game. Reeling him in for the big payout. Too bad my idiot brother is entirely blind to it.” Honestly? Margot was incredibly perceptive. I wasn’t playing the starving artist. Every time Tim and I got back together, I quietly listed the condo she had “gifted” me, sold it to the highest bidder, and wired the cash straight to my offshore accounts. But today, Margot didn’t take me straight to the new apartment. She directed her driver to Fifth Avenue. “This one. That one. And this entire rack. Wrap it all up.” She stood half a head taller than me, her eyes raking over my outfit with unfiltered disdain. To play the perfect, devoted “trad-wife,” my wardrobe consisted entirely of soft pastels, modest hemlines, and sensible flats. Low-profile. Submissive. Economical. Under the envious, wide-eyed stares of the luxury boutique staff, I watched a mountain of garment bags pile up. Next, she dragged me to an ultra-exclusive med-spa and salon, ordering a top-to-bottom overhaul. When it was over, I found myself staring at a stranger in the full-length mirror. I was entirely captivated by my own reflection. A champagne silk slip dress draped perfectly over my curves, the asymmetrical neckline highlighting my collarbones. A heavy collar of pink and blue sapphires rested against my skin, paired with a matching, brilliantly cut sapphire bracelet on my wrist. I looked lethal. Radiant and breathtakingly expensive. I swallowed hard, pushing down the intoxicating surge of vanity, and gently touched the cold stones. I looked at Margot nervously. “You aren’t going to make me give these back after I wear them, are you?” Margot inhaled deeply, looking at me like I was a peasant who had just crawled out of a sewer. “Who the hell would want to wear jewelry you’ve sweated on? If I put it on you, it’s yours. Shut up and stop being so embarrassing.” …Her temper really was atrocious. But god, I loved her. 5 Margot dragged me to an invite-only jewelry auction. I quickly pieced together the situation: This was the premier social event of the season. Tim had originally promised to be Margot’s escort, but those two little birds of his had kept him tied up in bed, forcing him to cancel on his sister. Margot was furious. She wanted blood. She wanted to force his new toys into a room with his “devastated” ex-wife and watch the fireworks. We arrived fashionably late. The moment we stepped into the gilded ballroom, the air shifted. A hundred pairs of eyes locked onto me. Shock. Pity. Predatory intrigue. In the past, whenever news leaked that Tim had initiated a divorce, I vanished. I became a ghost, refusing to be seen in the same zip code as him. The socialites in the room couldn’t hide their ravenous excitement. The quiet, long-suffering Mrs. Vanderbilt is finally going to bare her teeth. Tim heard the murmurs. He was seated in the VIP front row. He turned his head, and his eyes landed on me. His broad shoulders went rigid. A dark, stormy shadow crossed his face, his brows knitting together in a heavy scowl. The sheer weight of his stare was suffocating. I played my part perfectly. I shrank under his gaze, lowering my eyes, looking utterly miserable and out of place as I meekly followed Margot to our seats. “Um, Margot… I don’t have the kind of money for—” She didn’t even look at me. Her eyes were laser-focused on Tim, who was currently whispering sweet nothings to his two little accessories in the front row. “Shut up.” I clamped my mouth shut. Hey, don’t blame me when the bill comes due. I knew exactly what I was doing. She was using me as a human shield to humiliate the new girls. Right on cue, the older of the two sisters gasped at a pair of flawless emerald drop earrings displayed on the stage. Tim raised his paddle. Margot glanced sideways at me. “You want them?” Before I could even open my mouth, she nodded to herself. “You want them.” She raised her paddle. The room erupted into hushed, electrified whispers. “Oh, this is going to be good.” “Tim has been so brazen lately. Didn’t they say his wife was a doormat who never fought back?” “What is going on? And why did he bring Margot?” “You idiot, Margot brought her to use her as a weapon against the mistresses.” “I mean, Tim really crossed the line this time. Buying them penthouses is one thing, but didn’t he basically propose in public? That’s a slap in the face to his actual wife.” “No woman could tolerate that.” “Please. What can she do? She’ll throw a little fit, and then she’ll go right back to wagging her tail for him. She’s pathetic.” “Quiet, the bidding is starting.”

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Standing on that familiar street corner for the third time, the fog finally lifted. The marriage contract—that piece of paper I’d treated like a holy relic—was worthless. Ewan was right about that. But what he never understood was that those four words of his, tossed out like spare change, had cost me two separate lifetimes of youth. The same “chance” encounters. The same blurred lines and late-night invitations. I was foolish enough to say yes twice. He used to praise me for being “sensible,” for my “grace,” and my “boundless patience.” Then he’d turn around and use those very virtues as a blade to gut every promise he ever made. “A title is just a piece of paper,” he told me—twice. And both times, I walked away with nothing, not even a fake identity to cling to. I realized too late that some forms of tenderness aren’t a sanctuary; they’re just the knife you sharpen for your own throat. 1 By the third time I “accidentally” ran into Ewan, I was nearly thirty. In the eyes of the world, that’s the age where you’re supposed to stop being reckless. You’re supposed to have figured out that fire burns. And yet, there I was, thirty years old, standing on the edge of the Pacific, watching the tide come in. It wasn’t raining. The sun was mild, filtered through a haze of gray clouds, but I still held my umbrella up like a shield. Ewan stood beside me, draped in a cashmere overcoat that cost more than most people’s cars. “So, you actually came,” he said. I didn’t answer. I just watched the water. The setting sun hit the waves, turning the ocean into a sheet of hammered gold, shimmering and restless. A breeze kicked up, and I caught his scent. Spring Embers. It was the fragrance I had custom-blended for him years ago. I hadn’t expected him to still be wearing it. I felt a ghost of a tremor in my hands as he continued, “Does this mean what I think it means?” Does it? I didn’t know. I just remembered two years ago, when I’d burned our world down in a fit of rage and left him for the second time. Ewan had just caught my wrist, his expression maddeningly calm, and tucked a stray hair behind my ear with a smile. “When the regret hits you, go back to where we first met,” he’d whispered. “I’ll be there to pick you up.” Back then, I thought that was love. I thought it was his way of saying he’d always wait for me. Now, I saw the truth. He didn’t care why I screamed, and he didn’t care why I left. He just wanted to witness my eventual surrender. He was addicted to the sight of me regretting my independence because he was certain I couldn’t survive without him. When I didn’t offer an answer, he didn’t push. He never did. He just said, “Walk with me.” He didn’t wait for a reply. He just started walking. I watched his silhouette for a moment, then looked at the sun dipping below the horizon. Then, I followed. I did regret leaving. But not for the reasons he thought. I regretted leaving because, when I walked away, I hadn’t taken a single cent of what he owed me. 2 I went back to him. Still no ring, no title, no “Mrs.” At first, the novelty of the reunion gave him a high. He took me everywhere. He introduced me to his inner circle as “the one he was going to spend his life with.” Everyone laughed. I laughed, too. Later that night, I stepped out to use the restroom, and as I walked back toward the private lounge, I heard the muffled voices of his friends through the heavy oak door. “So, is the king finally retiring his jersey? I don’t buy it,” someone joked. Ewan let out a sharp, dismissive laugh. “Give me a break. I’ve cycled through enough of them to know that Jo is just… easier. She’s intuitive. She’s smart. She knows what I need before I even have to say it.” There was a pause, the sound of a lighter clicking. “If I actually have to get married one day, she’s the logical choice. Even if her little tantrums are getting a bit exhausting.” See? There’s no such thing as a reformed playboy. There’s just a tired runner looking for a place to sit down. The room went quiet for a beat before another friend spoke up. “I’ll put money on it. Ewan won’t last a month this time.” Suddenly, the room turned into a sportsbook. One month. One week. Six months. Ewan told them all to go to hell, but he didn’t stop them. He even threw a stack of bills on the table himself. “One year,” he declared. I felt a laugh bubbling up in my chest. I couldn’t help it. The door opened, and a server nearly bumped into me. “Oh! Ma’am, are you going in?” The room went dead silent. I pushed the door open and scanned the faces of the men sitting there. They were looking at me with that pathetic kind of pity, waiting for the explosion, waiting for me to scream at Ewan and make a scene. Instead, I walked straight to the table. I took the black card Ewan had given me as a “welcome home” gift and tossed it onto the pile of cash. “I’ll bet two weeks,” I said. A playboy might never change his spots, but a dog will always return to his vomit. It’s the law of nature. The shock in the room was palpable. Ewan sat there, his face darkening into a mask of cold confusion. I leaned down and pressed a light kiss to the corner of his mouth. “Don’t look so serious, darling,” I whispered. “We’re all just having a bit of fun, aren’t we?” His brow furrowed. I knew exactly why he was unsettled. I was using his own lines on him. Whenever I used to get upset about the rotating cast of women in his life, he’d kiss me just like that and tell me not to be so sensitive—that it was all just a joke. Now, I had learned the script. It’s hard work making a living off a man like him, and it’s even harder to swallow the pride that comes with it. But as long as the lights are off and the checks clear, you can learn to tolerate almost anything. Ewan wasn’t happy, though. That night, he wrapped his arms around me from behind in the dark. “You don’t believe a word I say anymore, do you? Jo, this time… it’s real.” I didn’t tell him if I believed him or not. I just turned in his arms and kissed him again. “I know.” There are a lot of ways to “spend a life” with someone. Being a quiet ghost in his bed was just one of them. 3 I lost the bet. Ewan lasted two weeks. He actually lasted six months. For half a year, he was a saint. No late nights, no mysterious “business dinners,” no perfume on his collar that wasn’t mine. People started whispering that the lion had finally been tamed. They told me I was lucky, that I’d hit the jackpot by catching him at the right time. Lucky? I didn’t think so. Sure enough, in the seventh month, Ewan came back from a business trip with a girl in tow. A recent college grad. “This is Penny. She’s a new intern. Find a place for her,” he said, avoiding my eyes as he spoke. I looked at her. She was young, vibrant, and had that specific look in her eyes—the look of someone who thinks she’s the first person to ever discover fire. I saw my own ghost in her. “Which department, Ewan?” I asked. He finally looked at me. We stared at each other for a long, heavy moment. The silence grew so awkward that even Penny started to fidget. “Wherever you think is best,” Ewan snapped, then turned and walked away. Wherever I think? Right. I turned to Penny. She was beaming at me with that dangerous kind of innocence. “He told me he wanted me to work directly under him,” she said. I nodded. Her fate was already decided. Why he felt the need to go through the charade of asking me was almost funny. 4 I gave the King what he wanted. I placed the intern right in his shadow. That evening, when he got home, he pulled me into a hug. “Are you jealous?” I looked down at the pot of soup I was stirring, shaking my head slowly. “No.” And I meant it. I’d seen this movie before. I knew the ending. But Ewan didn’t like my composure. He wanted the fire. He wanted the fight. “Don’t be jealous,” he murmured, trying to soothe me. “There’s nothing going on. I just saw potential in her at the branch office and brought her back. You know I have a weakness for talent. Don’t make things difficult for her just to spite me, okay?” I listened to him, and the irony was almost too much to bear. This wasn’t a comfort; it was a warning. But I couldn’t blame him for being cautious. I had a history, after all. I’d once made life a living hell for an assistant I thought was crossing the line. I understood his fear. I turned around, draped my arms around his neck, and kissed the tip of his nose. “I won’t. I promise.” Ewan didn’t say anything. He just stared at me, a flicker of something—uncertainty, maybe—crossing his eyes. I ignored it and smoothed his lapels. “Dinner’s almost ready. Go wash up.” He didn’t move immediately. He stood in the kitchen doorway for a minute or two, watching me with a look of deep suspicion. It was as if he was searching for the “old” me, the one who would have shattered the soup tureen over his head. When he finally left, I caught my reflection in the dark kitchen window. I was smiling perfectly. Ewan didn’t realize that the bet—the one about when he’d get bored of me—had never actually ended. But this time, I wasn’t betting on him failing. I was betting on him staying. When you can’t get love, you might as well get equity. He kept telling me there was nothing with Penny, but soon he was leaving me behind to take her on trips and to gala dinners. He gave her the best team, personally coached her on her first deals. Anything she wanted, Ewan handed to her on a silver platter. Including a major contract I had spent two weeks of overtime securing. In his office, Ewan stood with his back to me. “The Henderson account is ready for signing, right?” “Yes,” I said. “Package the files. Give them to Penny to handle the closing.” “Penny is an assistant,” I said, glancing at her. She was standing by his desk, giving me that wide-eyed, “innocent” smile. “Since when do assistants close six-figure deals?” Ewan still wouldn’t look at me. “That’s not your concern. Just get the files to her. Now.” He paused, finally turning around. “Jo, you’re a senior lead. Mentoring new talent is part of your—” I cut him off with a soft nod. “Fine. The files are ready. She can come to my office and pick them up.” Now it was Ewan’s turn to be stunned. He looked at me, searching for the crack in the armor. “Is that it?” I smiled. “What else would there be?” He looked away, muttering, “Nothing.” As I left the office, Penny scurried after me. Once we were out of his earshot, she skipped up to walk beside me. “I’m so sorry, Jo. Truly. Ewan says I need the ‘experience,’ and he insisted I take this client. I really didn’t have a choice.” She was practically glowing. I kept my voice polite. “It’s fine.” She leaned in closer, her voice dropping to a sugary whisper. “You’re actually dying inside, aren’t you?” I stopped walking and looked at her. The innocence was gone. Her face was twisted into a smirk. “Why do you keep up the act, Jo? Everyone knows how you got to where you are. We’re the same, you and I. But you should probably face facts: you can’t compete with me. I’m young. You’re… well, you’re past your expiration date.” If thirty was expired, Ewan belonged in a museum. I laughed softly. “You’re right. I can’t compete with a girl who has to steal her wins because she doesn’t have the talent to earn them. Good luck, you useless little brat.” The color drained from her face. When she snatched the files from my hand, the smugness was gone. I wasn’t angry. Stealing a contract is easy. Managing a client like Henderson? That takes actual skill. Sure enough, forty-eight hours later, the explosion happened. Henderson pulled the account and issued a formal statement: they would never work with Ewan’s firm again. Penny was hysterical in Ewan’s office. “I… I didn’t know he was so sensitive about the materials! I was just trying to save the company money! I didn’t think he’d care about a minor substitution… Jo’s files didn’t say anything about it!” She had tried to swap out high-grade raw materials for cheap alternatives to pad the margins. In the world of luxury manufacturing, that’s the ultimate sin. And she had the nerve to call it “saving money.” I watched her cry and had to bite my tongue to keep from laughing. “The notes were in the file, Penny,” I said calmly. “Page ten, point six. ‘Never substitute grade.’ Should I have used a highlighter? Or maybe a larger font?” Penny wailed harder. Youth is a weapon, and tears are its ammunition. Ewan immediately stepped in front of her, shielding her from me. “That’s enough!” he barked. “Snide remarks aren’t helping anyone right now!” He looked at me with a coldness that would have frozen my blood a year ago. “I don’t care how you do it, Jo. Fix this. Get Henderson back.” In the old days, I would have thrown my badge at him. Now, I just nodded. “Understood.” 5 Ewan didn’t get home until 9:00 PM that night. He handed me a small velvet box. Inside was a pair of diamond studs. It was his version of an olive branch—and a warning. It was him telling me to take the bribe and shut up. I took them, glanced at them, and set the box on the entryway table. “You don’t like them?” he asked, his voice tight. I gave him a bored smile. “They’re fine.” Ewan frowned. “Then why aren’t you wearing them?” “Oh, I don’t really wear ‘bonus’ gifts.” “They aren’t a bonus—” I pulled out my phone and pulled up a text thread from Penny. I held it out so he could see. “Penny told me they were a ‘gift with purchase,’” I said. “She said I was so ‘affordable’ that I only deserved the freebies.” The screen showed a photo Penny had sent me of a high-end necklace Ewan had bought her. The caption read: Ewan bought me this, and he got something for you too, Jo! But it’s just the free gift they give to big spenders. He told me you’re so cheap, you wouldn’t know the difference anyway. Ewan’s face went pale, then a mottled red. He opened his mouth to defend himself, then closed it. He looked at me, his voice a low rasp. “And you’re not angry?” I looked up at him, tilting my head. “Why would I be? You’re both right. I am cheap. I mean, look at me. I came back to you for absolutely nothing. I’d say that’s a pretty low price tag.” “Stop smiling!” Ewan suddenly roared, his composure snapping. “How can you sit there and smile while people call you cheap?” My smile didn’t waver. “Why shouldn’t I? You’re the one who started saying it first.” Ewan had no comeback for that. He stared at me for a long beat, then turned around and slammed the door as he walked out. Really, I don’t know what he was so worked up about. I wasn’t even mad. 6 Ewan didn’t come home for days. His phone stayed silent. No texts, no “where are you” calls. In the past, if he vanished for twenty-four hours, I would have blown up his phone. This time, I didn’t send a single message. I went about my life as if he didn’t exist.

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