Category: English

1 I was the true heiress to the Sinclair empire, New York’s wealthiest family. When they finally found me, my parents were consumed by guilt. They threw a massive gala, inviting the city’s entire elite class just to welcome me home. The ballroom was packed with the handsome heirs of old money, each one a perfect match on paper. “Helena, darling, you are the sole heir to the Sinclair fortune,” my mother whispered, gesturing to the crowd. “You can have any man in this room.” My gaze swept past the sea of desperate bachelors and settled on a man standing near the terrace. He was tall, broad-shouldered, and effortlessly handsome, exuding a quiet, refined elegance. My parents winced. “Richard Bennett?” my father muttered, his brow furrowing. “He was widowed not long ago. And he has a twenty-year-old son.” Eleanor shook her head. “They’re small-time, Helena. He’s beneath you.” The words tasted like ash, dragging me back twenty years. An eighteen-year-old boy had stood before me, his expression cold and unyielding. “Hannah, thank you for saving my life,” he had said, tossing a check onto the worn wooden table. “But I am the heir to the Bennett legacy, and I already have a fiancée. You’re just a girl from a backwater town, and you don’t belong in my world. Here is fifty thousand dollars. Don’t ever look for me again.” I snapped back to the present, shaking my head with a slow smile. I tilted my chin toward the young man standing next to Richard. “He’s too old. I don’t want him.” I paused, letting my smile widen. “But his son looks promising.” The boy was lean and tall, dressed in a crisp black shirt. His features were a striking seventy percent replica of Richard’s, but carved with sharper, more defiant angles. My mother gasped, her hand instantly snapping around my wrist. “Helena, that boy is only twenty. You… there is a generation gap between you two!” I tilted my head, offering her a sweet, innocent smile. “But Mom, didn’t you just say I could have anyone I wanted?” She stammered, turning to my father for backup. “She’s not wrong,” Thomas Sinclair chuckled. “A Sinclair heiress taking a younger husband is hardly a scandal. Besides, the Bennetts are struggling. They won’t dare say no to a lifeline.” I let out a silent, bitter laugh. Twenty years ago, those exact words had been hurled at my face. It felt like a physical blow, drawing no blood but leaving an ache that had throbbed for two decades. My father began walking toward Richard. Along the way, wealthy guests bowed and nodded in deference. Richard was no exception, offering a polite, almost eager nod. The arrogant, untouchable boy who once threw cruel words around so easily had finally aged. He was mature now, humbled by the world, and he had finally learned how to bow his head. My father spoke to him in hushed tones. I watched Richard’s face morph from polite pleasantry to sheer shock, then to a pale, stricken mask. “Mr. Sinclair, Jude is only twenty,” Richard stammered, his voice carrying slightly. “He hasn’t even finished college. Your daughter… she is old enough to be his mother!” The surrounding chatter died down instantly. Whispers began to ripple through the ballroom. “Wait, is the Sinclair heiress targeting Bennett’s son?” “Isn’t she nearly forty? The boy is barely out of his teens. That’s practically cradle-robbing.” I took a slow sip of my champagne, my eyes locked onto Richard. He looked lost, disbelieving, his hands trembling slightly as his face paled. He looked exactly the way I had felt twenty years ago. “Richard,” my father said, his tone smooth but unyielding. “I spent twenty years searching for my daughter. I will give her whatever she wants. If you agree to this marriage, the Sinclair Group will guarantee a highly lucrative partnership.” My father named a figure. A collective gasp echoed through the room. Richard’s pupils shrank. He was visibly shaken. Before returning to the Sinclairs, I had clawed my way up the corporate ladder on my own, and I knew all the dirty secrets of high society. When Richard inherited the Bennett Group, it was already a rotting apple, polished on the outside but hollowed out by debt. No matter how brilliant a businessman he was, he couldn’t save a sinking ship without capital. The deal my father offered was enough to resurrect his entire empire. Twenty years ago, he abandoned me to save his family business. Now, would he sacrifice his own son for that same business? “No, I won’t let my son…” Richard began. Before he could finish, Jude stepped forward. “Dad, I’ll do it. I’ll marry into the Sinclair family.” The young man’s voice was clear and steady, devoid of the panic you would expect from a college student. But his tightly clenched fists betrayed his nerves. Richard’s face went completely white. He grabbed Jude’s arm. “Are you insane, Jude? You are so young. How could you marry that old…” My father cleared his throat right on cue. The venomous word was choked back down Richard’s throat. Jude gently pried his father’s hand away. “Dad, let me help the family. A prestigious family like the Sinclairs won’t mistreat me.” My father laughed, clapping Richard on the shoulder. “You’ve raised a sensible boy, Richard. I like him.” Richard stood frozen, his knuckles white as he stared at his son with agonizing pain. Yet, he didn’t say another word of protest. “I have one condition,” Jude suddenly spoke up, his gaze cutting directly through the crowd to lock onto me. I raised an eyebrow, slightly surprised. My father hadn’t even introduced me yet, but the boy had targeted me with laser precision. “I will agree to the marriage, but I want us to spend time together first.” The tips of his ears flushed a light pink, but his expression remained dead serious. There was nervousness in his eyes, but also a faint glint of… anticipation? “I don’t want my marriage to Ms. Sinclair to be nothing but a business transaction.” Did he know me? Well, this was getting interesting. I spoke up, my voice carrying across the silent hall. “I accept your condition.” My father walked over to my side, beaming with pride. “Perfect. Everyone, let me officially introduce my daughter, Helena Sinclair!” The room erupted. “That’s the Sinclair heiress? She’s forty? She looks like she’s in her twenties! How is that even possible?” Richard stared at me, his eyes swirling with confusion, shock, and a hint of anger. He didn’t recognize me. It made sense; twenty years ago, I wore my hair in simple braids and spent my days working under the scorching sun on a dusty farm. I was tanned and plain back then. It was only natural he couldn’t connect me to the polished woman standing before him now. “Wait, is she Hannah Sinclair?” someone whispered. “As in the founder of Apex Drone Tech? The startup that got bought out by the government three years ago? That was her!” “The Bennetts just hit the absolute jackpot.” Hannah had been my name back then. Ironically, it was the fifty thousand dollars Richard threw at me that became my seed money. I had used it to build a tech empire, climbing to a height where men like him could only look up. At the mention of my old name, Richard’s face contorted. “Hannah? You’re Hannah from Oakhaven?” Twenty years, and he still remembered that tiny town? I tilted my head, feigning ignorance. “I grew up in Blue Ridge, Mr. Bennett. I’ve never heard of Oakhaven.” Ignoring his frantic expression, I shifted my gaze back to the quiet boy beside him. My voice took on a playful, teasing edge. “Would you like to go for a drive after the party, my soon-to-be fiancé?” Jude agreed without a second thought. Once it was settled, I turned on my heel, leaving the father and son behind. I spent the rest of the evening playing the dutiful daughter, greeting my parents’ high-profile business associates. Yet, throughout the night, I felt a heavy gaze burning into my back. When I finally turned, I caught Jude staring. He immediately looked away, flushing like a startled rabbit. A soft smile tugged at my lips. How could this boy be so completely different from his father? Twenty years ago, when I dragged a half-dead Richard out of a muddy ditch, it took him only a few days to recover and start tailing me like a loyal puppy. “Hannah, you saved my life, let me marry you!” “Hannah, you’re so beautiful, I want you to be my wife!” He had been so sweet back then, his eyes full of devotion, ready to hand me his entire world. Now, looking back, it felt like a lifetime ago. When did he change? It had been too long, and the memory was too faded to care. I lingered for an extra five minutes before heading down to the parking garage. Beside my black luxury SUV, the boy was waiting patiently, leaning against the concrete pillar. When he saw me approach, he nervously scuffed the toe of his shoe against the floor. “Ms. Sinclair.” “I thought you’d run away,” I teased. His eyes darted away, but his voice remained steady. “I keep my promises.” I unlocked the car and gestured with my head. “Get in. I’m taking you somewhere fun.” He hesitated for a fraction of a second before climbing into the passenger seat, sitting as stiff as a board. Whether from nerves or forgetfulness, he didn’t put on his seatbelt. I leaned across the console, my body brushing close to his as I pulled the strap over him. The buckle clicked into place. He froze instantly, his muscles hardening like stone as he held his breath. “What are you so scared of? I don’t bite,” I murmured, starting the engine. His lips parted, but it took him a long moment to speak. “You knew my father before tonight, didn’t you?” It wasn’t a question. My fingers tapped against the steering wheel. I didn’t deny it. “You’re sharp.” He turned his face toward the window, watching the neon lights of the city blur past. “When he heard your name, he looked like he’d seen a ghost. I’ve never seen him like that.” “Your father owed me an apology,” I said coldly. “Tonight, I used his son to collect the debt right in front of him.” Jude’s eyelashes fluttered, but he didn’t look away. “So marrying me is just a game of revenge?” “Partially,” I admitted without hesitation. “But I gave you a chance to walk away, and you chose to stay.” His ears burned red again. He opened his mouth to ask more, but I cut him off. “Save the questions for later, kid.” I stepped on the gas, and the car roared out of the garage. We drove in silence. Jude leaned against the window, his thumbs flying across his screen. Suddenly, a loud, obnoxious male voice blasted from his phone speakers. “No way, man! Your dad is actually making you marry that old lady? She’s forty! Doesn’t she smell like a nursing home already?!” Jude gasped, dropping his phone in a panic. By the time he scrambled to retrieve it, the voice message had finished playing. I glanced at him from the corner of my eye. “Your friends seem very concerned about you.” This time, his entire face turned crimson. The kid blushed way too easily. “I… I’m so sorry. My friend is an idiot. I apologize for him.” I spun the wheel smoothly. “It’s fine. I don’t hold grudges against kids. But his little insult goes on your tab. You’ll have to make it up to me in a bit.” He nodded quickly. I smirked, hoping he wouldn’t regret that promise. Half an hour later, we pulled up to an airfield on the outskirts of the city. Jude stared at the helicopter waiting on the tarmac, his face losing color by the second. “We… we’re doing this?” “What? Are you scared?” I climbed into the chopper and reached out a hand. No twenty-year-old boy could resist a blow to his pride. He took my hand and hopped in. “Who said I was scared? Let’s do it!” I didn’t give him a chance to back out. Once the tandem harness was secured, I gave him a playful nudge with my knee, sending us plunging out of the open door. He let out a bloodcurdling scream as we fell through the sky. The wind roared in our ears. I leaned close to his ear, my voice calm and steady. “Don’t panic! I’ve got my license, and I’m a certified instructor. Just trust me and enjoy the ride.” When we hit the ground, Jude’s legs were shaking like jelly, but he wrapped his arms around me so tight I could barely breathe. “Helena! That was insane! I’ve never felt anything like that!” That night, I took him to an underground street race. We caught a midnight thriller at an indie theater, and finally wound up in a quiet, dim bar where I mixed him a proper Long Island Iced Tea. By 2:00 AM, he was completely wasted, slurring something about how he had wanted to meet me for a long time. Half-amused and half-indulgent, I took him back to my penthouse. When I woke up the next morning, a soft, sleepy voice mumbled from behind me. “You… you have to take responsibility for this.” I laughed softly. “We’re literally engaged. Of course I will.” He jolted awake, staring at the ceiling. “My dad is going to kill me if he finds out…” “Is he really that strict?” I asked. “Yeah. I used to have a crush on someone, and before he even knew her name, he accused her of being a gold-digger,” Jude muttered, his eyes searching my face as if looking for a reaction. “But look at him. When my mother was alive, they fought constantly because he kept saying she couldn’t compare to the woman he loved in his youth.” I looked away, maintaining my mask of indifference. “How hypocritical of him.” The woman from his youth? I had run a background check on Richard. Aside from Jude’s late mother, I was the only woman he had ever been with. It was hilarious. Twenty years ago, he threw me away because of my background to marry a wealthy socialite. Yet, once married, he spent his years pining for me and making his wife miserable. What a pathetic, twisted man. “Ms. Sinclair, there is a Mr. Bennett at the door,” my housekeeper, Mrs. Gable, called out, knocking gently on the bedroom door. Jude wanted to say more, but I used the interruption to slip into a silk robe and head out. Richard stood in the foyer, dressed in a sharp suit, his face like a thundercloud. The moment I walked in, his eyes locked onto my neck, his brow furrowing deeply. I glanced at the mirror in the hallway. A faint, dark mark sat right above my collarbone. Well, the kid certainly didn’t hold back. “Helena,” Richard growled, his voice trembling with anger. “Who is in there? Are you keeping a boy toy? A college student? A gigolo?” I crossed my arms, leaning lazily against the doorframe. “Why are you so sure it’s not your son?” His voice cracked. “Impossible! Jude is a good boy. He would never sleep with an… an older woman like you before marriage!” I recalled Jude’s breathless whispers from the night before, letting out a quiet chuckle but offering no reply. Richard took a ragged breath. “Get rid of him before the wedding. Even if Jude marries into your family, I won’t let him be with a woman who keeps playthings on the side.” I looked him up and down. “Don’t worry. Whether he’s a college kid or a gigolo, he’s from a small-time background. How could he possibly compete with your son?” Richard’s face burned with humiliation. “Watch your tongue!” My expression remained ice-cold as I stared him down until his bravado crumbled. “Are you… are you really not Hannah from Oakhaven?” he whispered. A wave of disgust washed over me. “Get out.” I slammed the door in his face. After a few seconds of silence, I heard a muffled curse, followed by his retreating footsteps. He was still the same hypocritical coward. Over the next few weeks, I kept hanging out with Jude. I picked him up from campus and met his friends, bringing them gifts they actually liked. The kids quickly warmed up to me, no longer whispering insults behind my back. Instead, they swarmed around me, calling me Helena with pure, unadulterated admiration in their eyes. When Jude mentioned his team was entering a national tech innovation competition, I didn’t hesitate to write a personal check for two hundred thousand dollars. I even pulled a few strings to hire a retired MIT professor to mentor them. One afternoon, I stood outside the campus lab, watching Jude focus intensely on his work. As I admired his profile, a young woman with a high ponytail stepped in front of me. It was Sienna, one of Jude’s teammates. “Ms. Sinclair,” she said, her voice hushed. I figured she wanted a favor, but her opening line caught me off guard. “Why are you forcing Jude to marry you?” I blinked, thoroughly amused. Force him? Anyone with eyes could see Jude was thrilled about the arrangement. If anything, I felt like he had played me into this engagement. “Let’s set the record straight,” I replied calmly. “He volunteered.” Sienna glared at me. “Impossible! You must have blackmailed him! You’re so much older than him. How could he choose you over someone young and beautiful like me?” I couldn’t help but laugh. Kids. Their world was so delightfully simple. “Listen, sweetie,” I said, tilting my head. “I can pave his path to the absolute top of the corporate world. And if I happen to die early, he inherits everything. Aside from your youth, what can you actually offer him?” Her jaw clenched, and her face flushed with anger. I patted her head gently. “At least I had the guts to claim him in public. How about you? If you’ve got so much pride, why don’t you leave Jude’s team and refuse to use my funding?” Sienna stamped her foot. “Don’t get cocky. I will take Jude back from you!” She turned and stormed off, though she conveniently forgot to mention actually leaving the team. I stroked my chin. It seemed Jude was far more popular than I realized. It was time to put the wedding on the fast track. Jude didn’t object. In fact, he was far more enthusiastic than I was. He spent hours researching venues, visiting florists, and studying the meanings behind different flowers. When I asked what theme he preferred, he didn’t even look up from his notes. “The wedding should be all about you, Helena. Whatever makes you happy.” During my gown fitting, his cheeks burned crimson, his eyes practically glued to me. “You look beautiful, Helena.” On the night before the wedding, he cooked a romantic candlelit dinner to celebrate. After a few glasses of wine, my mind grew pleasantly hazy. His eyes shone with a bright intensity as he cradled my face in his hands. “Helena, I’ve been such a good boy. Don’t I deserve a reward?” The rest of the night was a blur. When I woke up the next morning, Jude was gone. I stood in the bridal suite, staring at an anonymous text on my phone, my brow furrowing. He ran away with me, old lady. Enjoy being left at the altar! Eloped? I didn’t buy it. Jude wasn’t like Richard. He was honest, passionate, and wore his heart on his sleeve. He had even convinced his best friends to dress up as his favorite sci-fi characters to perform a surprise dance for me. A boy who cared that much wouldn’t just vanish with another woman. Did he find out something he shouldn’t have during my blackout? I didn’t have time to dwell on it. A Sinclair wedding was a massive public affair, packed with the city’s elite. A little youthful fun on stage was fine, but a canceled ceremony was out of the question. I refused to let our family become the laughingstock of New York. “Tell the coordinator to proceed as planned,” I instructed my assistant. “And pull the security footage. Find out where Jude is.” The wedding march began to play, and the coordinator signaled for the groom to take his place. The massive doors of the chapel slowly swung open. Beneath the spotlight stood a tall, striking figure in a pristine white tuxedo. I breathed a sigh of relief, lifting my gown to walk down the aisle. But as the doors opened fully, the man on stage turned around and smiled at me. He was elegant and composed, but his eyes burned with a dark, obsessive longing. “Hannah, you can’t lie to me.” My smile froze on my face. It was Richard.

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1 A deafening roar tore through the cabin as the plane spiraled out of control, plunging from thirty thousand feet. Amid the chaos and absolute despair, my phone screen suddenly flashed to life. To my disbelief, the incoming video call was from myself, eight years ago. On the screen, a younger, radiant version of me smiled, her eyes sparkling with hope. “Charlie is about to propose to me!” “He promised that no matter how late it gets, he will always come to bring me home. He said he would never make me wait a single minute!” Watching my past self while surrounded by the blood-curdling screams of doomed passengers, I felt a crushing weight in my chest. The words do not marry him remained choked in my throat. For eight years, I had landed three hundred times, and not once did he show up to meet me. Yet, he had gone to the airport three hundred times just to pick up Cynthia, his precious childhood friend. On the screen, my younger self eagerly pressed, “In eight years, Charlie must have completely spoiled me like a princess, right?” I let out a bitter, hollow laugh and cut the connection. The screen reverted to the last text message from Charlie. “Just wait at the airport for another two hours. I will come get you right after I drop Cynthia off.” Staring out the window at the dark, swallowing ocean rushing toward us, I let my tears fall freely onto the glass screen. Eight years, and you finally agreed to pick me up. But Charlie, I am never landing again. The screens at the maritime search and rescue center glowed through the long night. I drifted invisibly at the front of the room, watching the familiar flight number on the monitor flicker from yellow to a lifeless gray. The operators worked in a frenzy, checking and rechecking the passenger manifest. “Hurry! Have we contacted Norah’s family yet?” The heavy sound of Charlie’s footsteps suddenly echoed from the corridor. Seeing the weeping, panicked crowd, he knit his brows in annoyance. On the screen, the flight status had officially updated from Delayed to Signal Lost. Frustrated, he dialed my number. “Norah, what kind of drama are you pulling now?” Floating in mid-air, I looked down at my translucent, spectral body. Then I looked at the milkshake in his hand, which happened to be Cynthia’s favorite flavor. I smiled sadly. He was always like this, even his half-hearted attempts to appease me carried the traces of another woman. I touched my chest, surprised that a ghost could still feel such a dull, aching throb. “Charlie, wait up.” Cynthia, wrapped snugly in Charlie’s designer jacket, jogged in to catch up with him. “I am so sorry. This is all my fault.” She bit her lower lip, her voice trembling as if she were on the verge of tears. “If you had not insisted on driving me back to the city first, Norah would not have had to wait at the airport.” “Do you think she got so angry waiting for me that she deliberately changed her flight to make a point?” Charlie stopped and instinctively pulled her closer to protect her from the bustling crowd. “It has nothing to do with you, Cynthia,” he said, his tone softening instantly. “She is just naturally jealous. I already texted her that I was on my way.” “Now she is playing hard to get by turning off her phone. She is really pushing it this time.” For eight years, it had always been like this. The moment Cynthia shed a single tear, all my genuine hurt was dismissed as childish tantrums. On the rescue center’s main display, the red flight number had turned completely gray. Around us, family members sobbed in agony. Charlie stood in the middle of the room, looking slightly unsettled. An anxious official walked over, clutching a tablet. “Excuse me, are you the family of Ms. Norah?” Charlie nodded quickly. “Yes, I am her fiancé.” He hesitated for a second, then added, “Her phone is off. Why is her flight showing as missing?” The official looked up, meeting his eyes with gravity. “Sir, the aircraft encountered severe turbulence while passing through a thunderstorm. We have confirmed that the plane crashed into the ocean.” The entire hall fell deathly quiet. The annoyance on Charlie’s face froze solid. “Crashed?” he repeated, unable to comprehend. He shook his head and took a deep breath. “Are you kidding me? Would she really go this far and fabricate a plane crash just to get me to apologize?” “I have the right to see her flight records. I am her primary emergency contact.” The official frowned, scrolling through the screen. “Sir, you are not listed as her emergency contact.” “Therefore, we cannot release any details to you without legal proof of relationship.” Charlie’s pupils dilated. “What did you say?” He took a sudden step forward, his voice rising in anger. “I have been her fiancé for eight years! I have always been her emergency contact!” Cynthia peeked out from behind him, timidly tugging at his sleeve. “Charlie, Norah must have been truly furious this time.” She looked around, making sure her voice was just loud enough for the nearby families to hear. “But even if she is mad at me, she should not play with her life like this. We do not even know if she was actually on that plane, and now she is causing all this unnecessary panic.” A mother nearby, who had just lost her daughter, whipped around with bloodshot eyes, glaring at Cynthia. “Are you trying to say she faked being on a crashed plane just to throw a tantrum?” A wave of collective fury rippled through the grieving crowd. Several people closed in, casting accusing glares at Charlie and Cynthia. Charlie instinctively stepped in front of Cynthia to shield her. “Everyone, please calm down. This is not Cynthia’s fault.” He frowned, his voice growing cold and hard. “Norah made the decision to change her flight on her own. She has to take responsibility for her own choices.” Watching him, I found it almost tragic. Before my death was even officially confirmed, he was desperate to absolve Cynthia of any guilt. He would not even offer a simple defense of my character, like mentioning how professional I had always been, or that I would never use my job to throw a tantrum. Static crackled from the radio at the front of the hall. The live feed from the search and rescue team filled the main screen. Out on the dark ocean, a massive spotlight cut through the mist. The official’s expression changed instantly, and he rushed toward the screen. He looked past the crowd, his eyes locking onto Charlie. “The maritime search team has just recovered the first batch of floating debris.” His voice was quiet, yet it carried clearly to every corner of the room. “Is this charred crew luggage tag belonging to Ms. Norah?” Everyone froze. A metal tray, damp and salt-stained from the ocean, was brought into the hall. At the center lay a burnt leather luggage tag. The name Norah was still faintly legible, resting beside a half-charred white rose brooch. Charlie stared blankly at the brooch. It was the very ornament he had pinned onto my uniform during our engagement party eight years ago. “Wait… that is impossible.” He took a step back, his voice cracked. “It cannot be her. She was not wearing that when she left the house.” The gloved officer pulled items from a sealed waterproof bag. “Sir, we retrieved this from her flight bag found floating on the water.” A waterlogged planner was opened, and a stack of small slips of paper fell out onto the table. Charlie bent down and picked one up. It was a receipt from the airport parking garage. On the back, a neat hand had written: Charlie went to pick up Cynthia first again today. I waited at Terminal 2 for three hours. The officer knelt, gathering the scattered slips of paper. There were exactly three hundred of them. On the back of every single receipt, there was a similar note. New Year’s Eve. Flight delayed. Charlie said Cynthia was terrified of the fireworks, so he went to be with her instead. My birthday. Just flew a long haul, landed with a high fever. Charlie was busy organizing a funeral for Cynthia’s pet dog. Promoted to Chief Flight Attendant. Charlie did not show. Cynthia said she cut her finger slicing fruit. Charlie clutched the receipts, his eyes rimmed with red. He stared at the mountain of records scattered on the floor, unable to believe what he was seeing. Three hundred times. Eight years of broken promises and cold abandonment, laid bare beneath his feet. Floating above, I watched the painful, quiet realization cross his face. I had wept while writing the first few notes. By the end, I had felt absolutely nothing. Cynthia’s expression shifted. She stepped forward to wrap her arm around Charlie’s, but he instinctively flinched away, completely unaware of his own movement. “Why would Norah keep track of things like this?” A flicker of panic crossed Cynthia’s eyes, quickly replaced by a pout. “Charlie, has she been harboring a grudge against me all this time?” She lowered her voice, her tone fragile. “She kept score of every single little thing just to force you to apologize later. I had no idea she was so calculating…” Charlie’s shoulders tensed. Looking at the sea of accusations at his feet, his irritation flared up again. “Yeah, she never used to be this petty,” he muttered, crumpling the receipt in his fist. “Maybe one of her colleagues picked up her flight bag by mistake. There is still no proof she was on that plane.” I watched him, a bitter smile gracing my lips. His prejudice against me was so deeply rooted that even evidence of my death could not shake it. Ignoring their bickering, the officer unzipped the innermost compartment of the flight bag and pulled out a numbered brass key. “Mr. Harrington, this is Ms. Norah’s locker key for the airport crew lounge. According to standard procedure, her personal belongings must be inventoried in the presence of her family.” Half an hour later, the airport manager escorted Charlie to the Terminal 3 crew lounge. The locker door clicked open. Charlie reached in and pulled out a small tin box. Inside was a stack of about a dozen letters. None of them had stamps, but they all bore the same title: Termination of Engagement. Charlie’s breath hitched. He slipped the top letter out of its envelope and unfolded it. The paper had yellowed with age, but the handwriting was elegant and clear. Charlie, after I complete this flight, let us call off our engagement. I am tired of waiting for a man who always puts someone else first. The date at the bottom was from eight years ago, the morning after our engagement party. Charlie’s fingers trembled, letting the letter slip to the floor. “She wanted to leave me eight years ago?” he whispered, his eyes vacant. The airport manager pushed up his glasses. “Mr. Harrington, Norah was our most outstanding Purser.” “She had a flawless, complaint-free record for eight consecutive years. She was a professional. She would never compromise her work over a personal spat.” “She only changed her flight because another flight attendant fell suddenly ill, and she volunteered to cover the shift.” Charlie clenched his fists. “She just wrote these to scare me,” he insisted, staring at the letters as if trying to force himself to believe it. “If she really wanted to leave, why did she keep these letters hidden for eight years? She would never actually leave me.” Standing by the door, Cynthia watched Charlie unravel, her fingernails digging deep into her palms. The manager reached into the very back of the locker and pulled out a small piece of cardstock. It was a faded table card from our engagement party. There was a line of writing on the back. The manager read it aloud in a quiet voice: If my eight-years-ago self can hear this, do not accept his proposal. Walk away from Charlie. The room went dead silent. Charlie snatched the card from the manager’s hand. The red ink burned his eyes. If my eight-years-ago self can hear this… He repeated the words, a sudden memory flashing in his mind. Two hours before the crash, he had indeed received a call from my number. But there had been no words, only the terrifying roar of rushing wind and distant weeping. He had been in such a rush to take Cynthia to the hospital for her supposed panic attack that he had snapped, “Stop playing games,” and hung up. He sprinted out of the lounge and back to his car parked outside. Flinging the door open, he grabbed his phone from the passenger seat. He unlocked the screen and opened his photo gallery, searching desperately for a photo of our engagement eight years ago to prove his reality. The moment the photo loaded, Charlie’s eyes widened in sheer terror. The image of me wearing the diamond ring, leaning happily against his shoulder, began to blur at the edges. The pixels were actively erasing themselves before his eyes. He rubbed them in disbelief. A few seconds later, the image snapped back into focus. I was still wearing the engagement dress. But there was no ring on my finger. I stood entirely alone at the entrance of the banquet hall, clutching a bouquet, my expression cold and distant. And Charlie was nowhere to be seen. The timestamp at the bottom of the screen flickered rapidly before locking onto the date: eight years ago, today. “What is happening…” Charlie tapped the screen furiously. “Is this a software glitch? How can a photo change?” Standing just outside the car window, I watched him with utter detachment. The rewrite of reality had finally begun. Cynthia opened the passenger door and slid in, bringing a heavy cloud of perfume with her. She glanced at his screen, her eyes flickering. “Charlie, stop doing this to yourself.” She reached over to cover the screen, her voice soft but venomous. “Norah never really loved you that much anyway.” “Did you forget? On the night of your engagement party eight years ago, the media photographed you helping me into your car.” Charlie whipped his head around to face her. “At the rescue center, you just said Norah changed her flight because she was angry at you!” “I lived with her for eight years! Now you are telling me she stopped loving me eight years ago?” Cynthia unlocked her own phone and held it in front of him. The headline screamed: Harrington Group Heir Abandons Bride at Engagement Party to Escort Childhood Friend to Hospital. Cynthia sighed, but a smug satisfaction lingered in her eyes. “If I had not had that sudden breathing fit, maybe things would not have ended like that.” “Norah always held a grudge against you for choosing me first. How could you forget?” Charlie stared at Cynthia’s self-righteous expression, his breathing turning shallow and fast. Eight years ago, he had left me standing alone in front of hundreds of guests. He had simply said, “Cynthia is having an attack. I will be right back.” I had waited for three hours, only to be greeted by that trending headline. The space around my spectral form began to warp. The timeline was closing its loops. I found myself back in the dressing room behind the banquet hall eight years ago. My younger self had just disconnected that impossible video call from the future. The flush of excitement on her cheeks vanished, replaced by a devastating chill. The heavy wooden door was pushed open. A twenty-two-year-old Charlie walked in, sweat glistening on his forehead. “Norah, I am so sorry. Cynthia is in bad shape.” He fished the velvet box from his pocket and went down on one knee. “Let us finish this. The guests are still waiting outside.” My younger self looked down at him. “If Cynthia calls right now saying she is in pain, would you leave again?” Charlie froze. He parted his lips, trying to explain, “She has panic disorder, she cannot be left alone…” He could not even manage a lie to reassure me. I stared at him for a few seconds and smiled. I unpinned the white rose corsage from my dress and tossed it into the trash can. “Then you do not need to kneel.” I turned around, pushed open the heavy double doors of the banquet hall, and walked out past the stunned stares of the guests. Reality snapped back to the car. Charlie stared at his phone. He realized that it was not just that one photo. Every single couple’s photo from our eight years together was actively disappearing from his digital albums. The tropical beach vacation photos transformed into images of him accompanying Cynthia to an aquarium. The pictures of me celebrating his birthday with him dissolved into shots of him working late alone in his office. “No… this is wrong!” Charlie roared. He shoved Cynthia aside and slammed his foot on the gas. “I am going to the hotel! I need to see the security footage from that night!” Cynthia was thrown back against the passenger seat, her face pale with shock. Half an hour later, Charlie burst into the hotel lobby. He grabbed the manager by his lapels, his eyes wild and bloodshot. “Show me the records from November twelfth, eight years ago! Find the security footage from Norah’s engagement party!” Terrified, the manager scrambled to pull up the files. A few minutes later, he handed a printed ledger to Charlie. “Mr. Harrington, are you sure you have the right date?” the manager whispered. “On that day, Ms. Norah did not accept your proposal. By the time you ran after her, she had already left alone. The engagement was never finalized.” A loud ringing filled Charlie’s ears. He snatched the paper, crumpling it into a tight ball. “Impossible! She loved me, she agreed to marry me!” He gritted his teeth. “We were engaged! We lived together for eight years! Have you all lost your minds?” He bolted out of the hotel and drove straight to our downtown apartment. The moment he pushed the door open, he froze at the entryway. The slippers that had always belonged to me were gone. He strode into the living room. The dried flowers on the coffee table had been replaced by a glass ashtray. The flight plaques hanging on the wall had vanished without a trace. He ran into the walk-in closet and flung open the left wardrobe door. It was completely empty. My uniforms, dresses, and coats had been entirely erased. Charlie slumped against the closet door, staring down at his ring finger. “It is still here… the ring is still here.” He clutched his fist so hard the metal bit into his skin. It was his last saving grace. “As long as the ring exists, I have not lost my mind.” Cynthia rushed through the front door, panting. Seeing him in such a state, a flash of possessiveness masked as worry appeared in her eyes. She stepped forward, unwrapped her scarf, and hung it on the hook that used to hold my winter coat. “Charlie, stop searching.” She wrapped her arms around him from behind, her voice dripping with artificial sweetness. “I am the one who has been by your side for the last eight years. Have you forgotten?” “I took care of you when you were sick. I brought you meals when you worked late. Norah was never even here. Why are you tormenting yourself over a ghost?” Charlie whipped around, violently shaking off her grip. “Enough! Shut up!” He glared at Cynthia with bloodshot eyes. “Norah existed! She was my fiancée!” Just then, his phone vibrated. It was an urgent alert from the airline, requesting all immediate family members of Flight 79 passengers to gather at headquarters for a briefing. Like a man waking from a nightmare, Charlie grabbed his car keys and bolted out. The atmosphere inside the airline headquarters’ assembly hall was suffocatingly tense. An official stood at the podium holding a printed list. “After forty-eight hours of non-stop search and rescue operations, we regret to inform you that there are no survivors from Flight 79.” The room erupted into heart-wrenching screams and weeping. Charlie stood frozen, feeling the warmth completely drain from his body. He pushed through the grieving crowd and stumbled toward the check-in desk. “I am Norah’s fiancé.” He slammed his palms onto the desk, his knuckles white. “Give me her belongings. I want to take her home for the burial.” The receptionist looked up, verifying the database. A strange expression crossed her face. “I am sorry, Mr. Harrington,” the receptionist said, her tone professional but devastatingly blunt. “You are not listed as an authorized contact for Ms. Norah.” “Under company and legal policies, we cannot release any of her personal items to you.” Charlie froze. “What are you talking about? That is not what you said earlier!” He slammed his fist down. “I am her fiancé! We got engaged eight years ago!” A man wearing glasses sitting nearby turned around to inspect him. “Are you Charlie Harrington?” The man knit his brows, looking thoroughly confused. “Did the grief scramble your memory? I was Norah’s classmate in college.” “She turned you down flat at her engagement party eight years ago. She has lived alone ever since. She never dated you, let alone for eight years.” “Your name was never on her emergency contacts, not even once.” It was as if a bolt of lightning had struck him. He stood paralyzed, the wails and whispers of the hall fading into white noise. He looked down at his right hand, panic seizing him. The heavy band that had sat on his ring finger just minutes ago was gone. His finger was completely bare. “You are lying to me! She loved me! She couldn’t just vanish!”

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My sister loved playing “one of the boys.” She spent her days bossing her “bros” around, making them buy her tampons and even wash her underwear. At their engagement party, Thomas held out the ring to her. She laughed right in front of the room full of guests. “Thomas, are you seriously still doing this?” “I think of you as my bro, and you want to marry me? That is so gross.” Everyone in the hall froze, but she did not seem to care at all. After all, Thomas had been in love with her since they were kids. She assumed that this time, like the countless times before, he would swallow his pride and beg for her forgiveness. But Thomas just stayed silent for a few seconds, then snapped the velvet ring box shut. Then he turned his gaze to me, sitting quietly in the corner. “Amy Newall, will you marry me?” 1 I walked up to the stage. Cindy pulled my arm, whispering, “Amy, you are not well. Do not push yourself.” That old excuse again. But this time, I was not backing down. I let out a soft laugh, shook off her hand, and stood right in front of Thomas. “I will do it.” My dad let out a visible sigh of relief. Cindy’s face completely fell. “Amy, have you lost your mind?” I looked her in the eyes. “Didn’t you say marriage is outdated and suffocating?” “You cannot call it trash and then get mad when someone else cleans it up, can you?” Cindy’s jaw tightened, completely speechless. Thomas, however, smiled. He took the microphone and spoke clearly to the crowd. “Great. The Harrison Group formally chooses Amy Newall.” The spotlights that were supposed to shine on Cindy now fell entirely on me. Cindy stood a few feet away, crossing her arms with a cold sneer. She was not genuinely panicked yet. She thought Thomas was just trying to make her jealous. After all, for years, all she had to do was shrug and say, “Come on, bro, do not be mad,” and Thomas would always run back to her. In the car on the way home, the silence was suffocating. Cindy was the first to break it. “I had no idea, Amy.” “You play the quiet, fragile sister so well, but you sure move fast when it is time to steal something.” I looked out the window at the passing city lights. “Didn’t you say you did not want him?” She choked on her words. I continued, “You told everyone he was your brother. People do not marry their brothers.” “I am just helping you respect the sacred bond of brotherhood. Why are you so upset?” Cindy turned pale. My mother immediately jumped in to defend her. “Amy, stop taking digs at your sister. She was just speaking without thinking tonight.” “Speaking without thinking almost cost us the Harrison Group’s entire investment.” My father frowned. “Amy!” I turned to look at him. “Dad, I am just stating facts.” The car fell silent again. Cindy suddenly smiled, softening her tone. “I did not want to marry him because I refuse to be trapped in a domestic cage.” “But you are different.” “You have been sickly since you were a kid. You cannot handle the high-pressure world of the Harrison family.” “I am only looking out for you.” I was so tired of hearing that. Looking out for me. Is that why she secretly changed my college major application? Is that why she rejected career opportunities on my behalf? Is that why she stole my project proposal and put her own name on it? I pulled my tablet from my bag, unlocked it, and opened a folder. I turned the screen toward them. “Is this what you call looking out for me?” On the screen was a detailed log of every single time my life had been sabotaged since childhood. I swiped through them slowly. The only sound in the car was the heavy breathing of my parents. My mother’s expression grew incredibly tense. “Why on earth are you keeping a record of this?” I looked at her. “Because I realized that without hard evidence, my side of the story is always treated as a lie.” Cindy finally sat up straight. “Do you honestly think I stole your opportunities?” “Didn’t you?” I asked. Her eyes welled with tears. “I shielded you from those things because I was afraid the stress would make you sick!” “Did you ever bother to ask me what I wanted?” She froze. “When did I ever say I did not want to go?” I asked. “When did I ever give you permission to rewrite my life?” “Cindy, stop calling your greed ‘protection.’” My dad glared at me. “We are a family. Do not use such ugly words.” I smiled. “Dad, it is called being clear.” “And it is about time we settled the books in this family.” Cindy gritted her teeth. “So you planned this whole thing tonight.” “But Amy, you are dead wrong. Thomas only wants me.” “He only proposed to you tonight to get under my skin.” I did not bother to reply, but deep down, I was absolutely certain. This time, I was going to win. 2 The next day, the joint press release from the Harrison Group and the Newall Group went viral. In the official photo, I stood next to Thomas, holding the signed contract. The comment section went wild. Some people loved the drama of a last-minute bride swap in a high-profile merger. Others asked if Cindy had run away from her own wedding. And someone even turned her “who marries their bro” quote into a viral clip, plastered with laughing emojis. Cindy stayed locked in her room. But she was highly active on social media. “Some people really love picking up the scraps.” “Taking a joke way too seriously.” “Just because bros are having a fight does not mean an outsider gets to cut the line.” I ignored it all. That afternoon, Thomas invited me to his office to discuss the project. When I walked in, he was reviewing the risk assessment part of the proposal I had brought the night before. He flipped to the page and looked up at me. “Did you write this part?” “Yes.” “Cindy showed me a very similar version a while ago.” I paused. He added flatly, “But she could not explain any of the data when I asked.” I did not know whether to laugh or feel bitter. So, it was not that no one noticed. It was just that no one had ever called her out before. Thomas closed the folder. “Amy, there is something we need to make clear before we go any further.” I looked at him. “Go ahead.” “I used to love Cindy.” He was brutally honest. “It was not a casual crush like the rumors say. I genuinely wanted a future with her.” My fingers tightened slightly around my purse. He continued, “And I let her get away with a lot because I thought she was just afraid of commitment.” “But last night, she used my family and our business partners as props to prove how edgy and different she is.” “I am not playing her games anymore.” The office was completely quiet. “Are you telling me this because you want me to step down?” I asked. “No.” Thomas looked at me. “I’m telling you this so you know you are not walking into a clean, simple relationship.” “If that bothers you, you can walk away right now.” I was silent for a moment. “Thomas, I did not sign that contract because I am in love with you either.” “I did it because I want my name, my career, and my rightful place.” “I do not care who you loved in the past.” “But from this moment on, if I am going to be your fiancée, I expect you to maintain the boundaries of a fiancé.” A flash of surprise crossed his eyes. Then, he smiled. “Deal.” He pushed another document toward me. “Let’s put those boundaries in writing.” One clause stood out clearly: During the engagement, both parties shall maintain a united public front. Neither party shall engage in flirtatious behavior with third parties or tolerate ambiguous relationships that could damage the partnership. I signed it. Thomas signed it right after. As the pen left the paper, I found it almost funny. Other couples rely on vows. We rely on legally binding clauses. But clauses are better. At least when they are written down, nobody can pretend they forgot. That evening, Cindy crashed a gathering with Thomas’s friends. Wearing a black leather motorcycle jacket, she walked in and tried to slide into the seat right next to Thomas, just like she always did. But I had already placed my designer bag on that seat. “Cindy, the boys’ table is over there,” I said, pointing to the other side of the room. That table was packed with the guys from their social circle. One of them laughed. “Hey, Cindy! Come on over, the real bro table is here!” Cindy’s face stiffened. “Amy, do not be childish.” I kept my expression perfectly serious. “You said it yourself. You and Thomas are just bros.” “Bros sit at the bro table. What is the issue?” She looked at Thomas. Her eyes held that familiar, practiced look of wounded innocence. In the past, that look had worked every single time. But Thomas did not even look up. He simply handed me the menu. “What do you feel like eating?” Cindy stood frozen for what felt like an eternity before finally stomping over to the guys’ table. I pulled out my phone and created a group chat. Group name: Thomas’s Bro-Zone Management. I added Cindy and every guy in the room. “Since you are all bros, please post in this group if anyone gets drunk, has car trouble, or needs to vent.” “Let’s avoid calling my fiancé individually in the middle of the night.” The entire room went dead silent. Cindy stared at me across the table. “Don’t you think you are overstepping?” Thomas set his glass down. “It is not overstepping. It is called boundaries.” He looked directly at Cindy. “From now on, use the group chat if you need something.” Cindy’s eyes immediately welled with tears. “Thomas, seriously? You are doing this to me?” His voice was completely flat. “Yes.” “I let things slide in the past, which gave you the wrong impression. I won’t make that mistake again.” At that moment, the proud, untouchable facade Cindy had built for herself finally cracked. But she still did not believe it. She convinced herself that Thomas was just putting on a show. She thought that if she just pushed a little harder, he would eventually come crawling back. 3 The wedding planning meeting was held at the Harrison headquarters. Cindy arrived even earlier than I did. She was sitting on Thomas’s left, her legs crossed, acting as if she still owned the place. Thomas walked into the conference room and took one look at her. “Cindy, that seat is reserved for my fiancée.” Her face flushed. I walked over and sat down. The wedding planning agency began going through the schedule. Press conference, media Q&A, project signing, engagement ceremony, family dinner. The coordinator asked for the list of bridesmaids and groomsmen. Cindy suddenly spoke up. “I am not doing the bridesmaid thing.” She leaned back in her chair, her tone lazy and dismissive. “I do not do dresses, and I do not care for girly traditions.” “Just put me in Thomas’s groomsmen lineup.” I nodded. “Sure, that works.” She blinked, caught off guard. I turned to the coordinator. “Put Cindy in the groomsmen lineup.” “Make her outfit a black tailored suit.” “She stands with the guys.” “And reserve three minutes for her speech. The topic is: Wishing My Bro a Happy Engagement.” Someone in the room muffled a laugh. Cindy glared at me. “Amy, are you intentionally trying to humiliate me?” I raised my eyes to meet hers. “Didn’t you choose the bro label yourself?” She gritted her teeth. “I am not like them.” “How so?” She could not answer. I continued, “You are a member of the bride’s family, so you could sit in the family section.” “Or you can stand with the groomsmen as his bro.” “What exact identity do you want to have next to Thomas?” The conference room fell into a dead silence. My mother quickly spoke up. “Amy, do not talk to your sister like that. She is just being her usual candid self.” Thomas flipped through the itinerary and said coolly, “Contracts and schedules do not care about being candid. They only care about designated roles.” Cindy’s face turned white. This was what she feared most. Because once her role was clearly defined, she could no longer use the bro excuse to demand romantic ambiguity, nor could she use her status as a woman to demand special treatment. After the meeting, she cornered me in the hallway. “Amy, do you actually think you have won?” I looked at her and raised an eyebrow. “Have I not?” She sneered. “Do you have any idea how long Thomas has loved me?” “In high school, I mentioned a stomach ache once, and he ran through a thunderstorm to bring me medicine.” “In college, when I got into an argument with someone, he literally caught the next flight back from abroad just to stand by me.” “That motorcycle I rode for my birthday? He spent six months on a waiting list just to buy it for me.” Her voice grew more confident. “He is just angry right now.” “He is mad that I would not say yes, so he is using you to hurt me.” “Do not flatter yourself.” I did not say a word. Thinking she had finally intimidated me, she stepped closer, lowering her voice. “Believe it or not, all it takes is for me to say I regret it, and he will come running back to me in a heartbeat.” I looked at her, and suddenly, I could not help but laugh. “Cindy.” “Why do you assume people will wait around in the exact same spot forever?” Her expression darkened. “Because he loves me.” Just then, Thomas walked out of the conference room. Cindy’s eyes instantly welled with tears. “Thomas, I really did not mean it that way at the party.” “I was just overwhelmed when you suddenly proposed to her.” “Stop using Amy to get back at me, please?” She offered the apology casually, with the same easy confidence she had used to pacify him a hundred times before. But Thomas did not move. “Cindy,” he said. “I am not using anyone to get back at you.” “Amy is my wife.” Cindy froze. “Your wife?” She looked at me, letting out a sharp laugh as if she had just heard the most ridiculous joke. “Your engagement ceremony has not even happened. Who are you trying to fool?” I reached into my designer bag, pulled out two official marriage certificates, and held them up in front of her. The photos showed Thomas and me sitting side-by-side, smiling. The red official seal was perfectly clear. The date of registration was this morning. “Cindy, if you truly believe he is still in love with you,” I said calmly, “why don’t you try convincing him to divorce me first?”

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1 As the youngest attending neurosurgeon at St. Jude’s Medical Center, I did something unexpected. I voluntarily stepped aside and let the newly arrived resident take the lead on a highly complex surgery. I did it because in my past life, the moment she stood at the operating table, her every move mirrored my thoughts exactly. Before my scalpel could even touch the skin, she had already made the incision. While I was still calculating the best approach, she had already executed the optimal solution. Everyone called her a once-in-a-generation medical prodigy. They whispered that I was just an empty suit, holding onto my position through pure seniority. That was until a critical surgery went sideways, and the patient died on the table. She stood before the review board and testified against me, claiming the fatal error was mine. Every blind spot in the security footage and every altered log pointed directly to me. I was stripped of my medical license and sentenced to three years in prison. The day I was released, I went to find her. By then, she was the national director of neurosurgery. Looking down at my ruined, hollow state, she let out a soft laugh. “I could see every single step inside your head, Evelyn,” she whispered. I collapsed right there at the hospital gates. When I finally opened my eyes again, I was back in the department office, on the very day she first reported for duty. This time, I did not spend my morning reviewing complex craniotomy procedures. Instead, I closed my eyes and began rehearsing a different set of steps over and over in my mind. The exact, step-by-step process of spaying a farm pig. “Dr. Reed, I am so honored to be assigned to your team.” The voice was timid, carrying the perfect blend of innocence and youthful caution. A violent shiver ran down my spine, and my pen sliced right through the patient chart I was holding. That voice. Those exact words. I clenched my fists so hard my nails dug into my palms. My head throbbed as if struck by a sledgehammer. In my previous life, in this exact office, she had said those exact words. Back then, seeing her looking so anxious and eager to learn, I had shared everything I knew without holding back. And what did that get me? During our first major craniotomy together, the moment I identified the bleeding point, before I could even ask for the instrument, she had already placed the hemostatic forcep with pinpoint accuracy. While I was still mapping out the clamping strategy in my mind, she had already dissected the tissue ahead of me. The entire operating room was stunned. The chief of surgery praised her on the spot as a natural-born genius, while I was cast as the slow-witted veteran who only held the lead because of my years on the clock. I genuinely believed she was gifted. Right up until that fatal surgery. The patient’s cerebral aneurysm ruptured unexpectedly, triggering massive hemorrhaging. I fought desperately to stabilize him, but at the most critical second, she made a move that was the exact opposite of what should have been done. The patient died on the table. At the subsequent malpractice hearing, she wept miserably, pointing her finger at me. “I tried so hard to warn Dr. Reed, but she was too arrogant. She simply wouldn’t listen to me.” Every security camera blind spot and every operating log miraculously aligned with her lie. I was barred from medicine and locked away for three years. I remembered the pouring rain on the day of my release. I stood outside the clinic, watching her walk toward me in her pristine white coat, holding an umbrella. She smiled at me, a look of pure, mocking triumph. “Evelyn, are you still trying to figure it out?” she whispered, leaning in close. “The truth is, I don’t actually know how to perform these surgeries. But I know you.” “Every step you plan, every calculation you make, every flawless solution you conceive, I see it all clearly. You didn’t lose to me. You lost to your own mind.” Her words slithered into my ears like venom. The sheer fury suffocated me, and I collapsed straight into the cold puddles outside the hospital. When I opened my eyes, I was back here. Back to her very first day. “Dr. Reed? Are you okay?” Abigail Carter took a step closer, her eyes wide with simulated innocence. I stared into her eyes. Cold sweat poured down my back, and my heart hammered violently against my ribs. It really was her. I forced a deep breath, swallowing the bitter taste of adrenaline. “I’m fine. Just didn’t sleep well,” I said, my voice steady and level. “Abigail, right? Go get scrubbed. You are on the table with me in ten minutes.” Her eyes lit up instantly, and she could barely hide the smug curve of her lips. I watched her walk away, my gaze turning cold. Since you like to listen so much, Abigail. This time, I’ll make sure you get an earful. 2 Ten minutes later, we were in the operating room. The procedure was a standard epidural hematoma evacuation. It wasn’t the most difficult surgery, but for a resident on her very first day, even holding the retractor would normally be a stretch. Dr. Albright, our chief of surgery, walked in to observe, standing quietly near the monitors. I gloved up and kept my hands raised, but I did not step into the primary surgeon’s spot. “Chief,” I said, my voice conversational. “I want to let Abigail take the lead on this one.” A heavy silence fell over the operating room. The anesthesiologist stopped writing, and the first and second assists stared at each other in disbelief. Dr. Albright frowned. “Evelyn, what are you playing at? It’s her first day.” “Practical experience is what residents need most, Chief. I will be right here supervising. Nothing will go wrong.” My tone was firm, carrying the perfect weight of a supportive mentor. I turned my gaze to Abigail. She was visibly frozen, the scalpel trembling slightly in her hand. Of course she didn’t know what to do. She was a fresh graduate who had barely touched a patient in a clinical setting. She looked up, terror pooling in her eyes as she stared directly into mine. She was waiting. Waiting for the answers inside my head. I met her gaze, offering a reassuring smile, and allowed the textbook steps of a hematoma clearance to run clearly through my mind. Incise the scalp. Coagulate the bleeding vessels. Use the rongeur to expand the bone window. Tack down the dura. Evacuate the hematoma. I replayed the entire neurosurgical manual in my head, word for word, with absolute clarity. Abigail’s hand stopped shaking. She took a deep breath, her eyes suddenly brimming with immense confidence. The blade descended. “Perfect incision line, depth is spot on,” the first assist murmured, unable to hide his surprise. Abigail’s movements became swifter and more precise. She was entirely locked into the knowledge pulling from my mind, executing every step flawlessly. “Excellent! Truly remarkable!” Dr. Albright couldn’t help but clap his hands. “Evelyn, where did you find this girl? Her technique is cleaner than yours was at her stage!” When the final suture was placed, Abigail set her instruments down. She looked up, and even through her surgical mask, I could see the intoxicating joy of being worshipped. She looked at me, a flash of poorly hidden contempt in her eyes, though her voice remained sweet and submissive. “It was all thanks to Dr. Reed’s guidance. She was encouraging me in her mind the entire time.” I stood to the side, my gloves completely spotless. “You have a natural gift, Abigail,” I replied softly. Once the room cleared, I pulled out my phone and began watching instructional videos on farm animal castrations. I needed to etch every single detail of spaying a sow into my mind. Within two weeks, Abigail had become the hospital’s rising star, while I quietly entered the darkest phase of my career. At two in the morning, a post-op patient under my care suffered a sudden, massive intracranial hemorrhage and was rushed back into emergency surgery. When Dr. Albright slammed the patient’s drainage tube onto my desk, his face was pale with rage. I realized the tube, which should have been free and clear, had been folded over and clamped shut using a highly concealed technique. “Is this how a senior attending shows responsibility?!” Dr. Albright roared in the hallway, pointing a finger at my face. “The patient almost herniated! Evelyn, what on earth have you been doing lately?!” Suddenly, a frantic family member rushed forward, landing a stinging slap across my face. “You hack! You delayed my mother’s surgery just to show off your little student! Now she’s paralyzed! How are you going to pay for this?!” The force of the blow left my cheek burning and swollen. On my desk lay the preoperative consent form. There, in stark black and white, was my signature, though I knew the document had been swapped. The surrounding staff looked on, their eyes filled with a mix of pity and quiet satisfaction. “To think her skills have degraded this much, making such a rookie mistake in post-op care.” “She’s probably just green with envy because Abigail has been getting all the attention lately. She’s completely lost her focus.” “A major malpractice incident like this requires immediate suspension and license review.” 3 I stood in the center of the whispering crowd, my limbs turning to ice. The security cameras in that hallway had miraculously malfunctioned, and the logbook held only my signature. Abigail’s setup was cleaner and far more vicious than it had been in my previous life. Just as the risk management officer stepped forward with the official suspension notice, Abigail suddenly threw herself into the fray. “Chief! Please don’t suspend Dr. Reed!” Her eyes were red, and heavy tears began to spill down her cheeks as she grabbed Dr. Albright’s sleeve. “Dr. Reed has just been incredibly exhausted lately! She gave all her surgical opportunities to me, taking on so much pressure. This was just an honest oversight!” “Abigail, step back. We can’t keep a liability like her on staff,” another doctor chimed in, defending the resident. “No!” Abigail wept, looking utterly devastated. “If it weren’t for Dr. Reed, I wouldn’t be here today. Chief, I beg you, suspend her if you must, but please don’t banish her from the department! Let her stay as my assistant. She can just assist me and help with the basic prep!” A collective murmur of admiration rippled through the corridor. “Unbelievable. Abigail’s grace is out of this world.” “Look at her, and then look at Evelyn. Evelyn tried to sabotage her out of jealousy, and yet Abigail is still trying to save her job.” I looked down, staring at Abigail’s tear-stained, pitiful face, a cold laugh echoing in my chest. Of course she wanted to keep me around. Without me, she was an empty shell. If I were kicked out of the hospital, she would be out of range of her mind-reading trick. How would she perform her next surgery? She had to keep me chained to her side as her personal, walking cheat sheet. “I accept the disciplinary action,” I said, my voice raspy as I forced myself to look thoroughly defeated and broken. “Thank you, Abigail.” Abigail offered her usual sweet, innocent smile. To anyone else, she looked like an angel. Only I knew the predatory triumph hiding behind that expression. But she had no idea that the hunter often disguised itself as the prey. Your bill is coming due very soon, Abigail. Three days later, the department received an unprecedented, highly complex case. A giant cerebral aneurysm. It was located deep within the skull, pressing tightly against the optic nerve and the internal carotid artery. It was the ultimate neurosurgical ticking time bomb. The hospital administration was on high alert, and the medical director himself had come down to watch from the observation gallery. And the name written on the primary surgeon slot was none other than Abigail Carter. During the prep stage, I threw on a surgical mask and ran toward the operating theater doors, playing my part to perfection. “Let me in! This anatomy is far too treacherous! One wrong move and the patient will never leave the table!” I pressed myself against the glass doors, my eyes wide with manufactured desperation as I banged on the glass. “I know this patient’s history better than anyone! I need to be in there!” Several nurses quickly grabbed my arms, their faces twisted in disgust. “Dr. Reed, you are suspended! Are you trying to kill the patient by causing a scene?” “Seriously, you got demoted for your own incompetence, and now you’re trying to steal Abigail’s spotlight? Have some dignity.” Inside the scrub room, Abigail looked through the glass window, her eyes flashing with a brief moment of panic. She hadn’t even studied the imaging. Her mind was a total blank. If I didn’t feed her the coordinates and the surgical path, she wouldn’t even know where to make the first cut. 4 She quickly pressed the intercom button, her voice coming through the speaker soft and magnanimous. “It’s fine, charge nurse. Let Dr. Reed into the observation gallery. This is indeed a highly challenging case. Since Dr. Reed is senior, she can stay in the gallery with the audio link active. If I run into any trouble, I will need her guidance.” Up in the observation room, the Chief and the Director nodded in approval. “Remaining humble under pressure, always eager to learn. This girl has a limitless future,” the Director praised. I stopped struggling and let the nurses escort me up to the second-floor gallery. Standing behind the massive glass window, I looked down at the patient’s exposed skull on the table below. Finally, the corners of my mouth twitched into a grin I no longer had to hide. The surgery began. Abigail stood at the primary position. She took a deep breath and glanced up at the glass window. She was establishing the link. I stood there, expressionless, and began firing up my mind, laying out the standard, hyper-precise surgical steps in vivid detail. Receiving the signals, Abigail relaxed. Her hand became rock steady as she navigated the microscope with ease. Whispers of awe filled the observation gallery. Then came the most hazardous phase of the procedure. Exposing the aneurysm, preparing for clamping. The vessel walls here were as thin as paper. A slight shift in breathing could cause the aneurysm to rupture, turning the operating field into a bloodbath. Abigail held out her hand, and the scrub nurse passed her the delicate micro-clips. She looked up once more, waiting for my mental cue regarding the angle and pressure of the clamp. I stared down at her from behind the glass. Now. I flooded my brain with a memory from my childhood in the countryside: a squealing, thrashing sow pinned down in the mud, her legs tied. No anesthesia. The vet, wearing grime-covered rubber gloves, plunges a rusted blade into the flesh. I glared at Abigail, screaming the instructions in my mind with absolute, commanding authority. Now, reach in and press down hard on the uterus. Use your other hand to clamp the artery. Use raw, brute force to tear it out along with the surrounding tissue. Ignore the blood. Just rip it out! Abigail’s hand, holding the delicate micro-clip, froze in mid-air. Her entire body shuddered violently, and a look of sheer, primal horror crossed her face. Her medical training, what little she had, screamed that this was wrong. This was disastrously wrong. But she had never actually performed a surgery on her own. Every ounce of her muscle memory was built entirely on absolute, unquestioning obedience to the thoughts in my head. Under the immense pressure of the moment, her cognitive brain fractured, and her survival instinct defaulted to the mental commands she had always relied on. To the horror of everyone in the gallery, Abigail suddenly seemed to lose her mind. She violently pushed the surgical microscope aside. She threw down her fine instruments, and in front of the entire surgical team, she plunged her bare fingers directly into the patient’s open, delicate brain cavity. “What is she doing?!” the Director shrieked, jumping out of his seat. I stood behind the glass, watching her without a trace of pity. Pull it out, Abigail. Give back what you stole. Abigail’s face twisted into something monstrous. She clamped her fingers around the pulsing artery, let out a desperate, animalistic grunt, and yanked with all her might. A sickening tear echoed. Blood sprayed like a geyser, painting Abigail’s face crimson.

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1 From the moment Denis secretly gave my study abroad slot to Giselle, an invisible wall rose between us, one that could never be torn down. During the Aspen blizzard, when I went to assist the rescue team, I saw him walking past me with Giselle cradled in his arms. Just an hour before, he had texted me saying he was working late. I stared into his eyes with absolute calmness before turning back to save lives. The media reported on their reignited flame. I did not care, and I did not ask. But when I found out I was pregnant, I quietly walked into a clinic and got an abortion. When he later found the medical reports, his face lit up with the hope of a child. I looked at him and said, “Denis, I had an abortion.” He slammed on the brakes, his eyes turning instantly red. I had just learned that the hospital’s prestigious fellowship program in California had been handed to Giselle. She was a Stanford Medical graduate, so on paper, she held every advantage over me. At the Monday staff meeting, the Chief of Medicine announced the decision. Sitting across from me, Giselle locked eyes with mine, her lips curving into a faint, triumphant smile. I looked away, focus returning to my notepad. After the meeting, I gathered my files to deliver them to the chief’s office. The door was slightly ajar, and I could hear our department head asking a question. “Wasn’t the decision still pending? I really don’t think Vivian is any less qualified than Giselle.” “It is a pity,” the Chief sighed. “The residency is in California, and since Giselle is a Stanford alumnus, she has the cultural and language advantage. The host hospital preferred her.” The Chief paused, lowering his voice. “Besides, Apex Medical specifically requested her.” My heart sank. The department head stopped asking, and I understood. I turned around, clutching my files, and walked away. In the restroom, I overheard two nurses whispering. “This program is funded by Apex Medical Group. The hospital pretends we have a say, but the final word always belonged to their CEO, Denis.” “Well, Apex did just donate millions of dollars in new cardiac monitors to our department.” “Exactly. We owe that to Giselle. If it weren’t for her, we would still be using those ancient machines.” “Really? Why is that?” “Don’t you know? Dr. Giselle is Denis’s ex girlfriend. They were college sweethearts. My boyfriend was Denis’s college roommate, and he told me all about it. The board was actually leaning toward Vivian, but Apex dropped her name, so the hospital just went with the flow. It is a win win for everyone except Vivian.” The other nurse sighed. “Must be nice to have that kind of leverage. I wish I had a powerful backer. I would quit this job in a heartbeat.” I could have accepted losing to Giselle fairly. I knew she had a stellar resume. But I could not accept Denis pulling the strings behind my back. To qualify for this fellowship, I had slept less than six hours a night for six months. I had stayed up to polish research proposals, design presentations, and compile surgical logs. All of that effort was crushed by a casual word from my own husband. My chest tightened, a wave of bitter resentment washing over me. That evening, Denis’s tall figure appeared in the entryway. Driven by the raw hurt, I asked him directly before he could even take off his coat. “Denis, did you give my fellowship slot to Giselle?” He paused, his handsome face showing no emotion at all. “Yes,” he answered simply. The single word felt like a physical blow. “Can you tell me why?” I asked, my voice trembling. I thought of what the nurses had said, about her being his first love. “Is it because she is your ex?” He stared at me, his gaze deep and heavy. “She is better suited for the role.” He said it so calmly, so rationally. But my world was spinning. He had watched me pull all nighters to write those proposals. The choice had been his from the very beginning. My six months of grueling work had been nothing but a farce. In the hospital, I had never once used my status as Denis’s wife to seek favors. I did not expect him to pull strings for me. But I never imagined he would actively support his ex over me. Tears threatened to spill over. “Okay, I understand.” Denis looked down at me, his voice slow and even. “Vivian. In every professional metric, she is simply the stronger candidate.” I could not stand his cold, detached logic. “But she is your ex, and I am your wife!” I shouted, my voice cracking. “You had the power to choose, and you decided she was better from day one. You watched me ruin my health for this. Did you find it amusing? Was my effort just a joke to you?” Denis’s eyes turned icy. “Vivian. Don’t be a sore loser.” The words made me flinch. A sore loser. The tears finally spilled over, hot and bitter against my cheeks. Soon, everyone in the hospital knew who was backing Giselle. Administrators and colleagues alike began to fawn over her. Giselle remained gracefully aloof, neither accepting nor rejecting the special treatment, solidifying her image as a detached, perfect goddess. “Dr. Giselle is living a real life movie,” a nurse giggled in the breakroom. “She is gorgeous, Ivy League educated, and her ex is a billionaire. It is like a romance novel. Imagine being her child. Life would be on easy mode.” “When are she and Denis getting back together? I want to be reborn as their kid.” I forced a polite smile, swallowing the lump in my throat, and walked past them. I began to reevaluate my marriage. It was obvious that he did not love me, not the way he cared for Giselle. Once I accepted this truth, the desire to be near him vanished. One evening, I found Denis sitting at the dining table. A gold embossed invitation sat on the corner of the polished wood. He looked from the card to me. “My friend is getting married this weekend,” he said. “Spouses are invited. Do you want to go?” We had rarely mingled with each other’s social circles. This was the first time he had ever invited me to a public event as his wife. Before all this, I would have been thrilled. Now, I just felt a dull ache. “No, thank you,” I said. He looked slightly surprised, then nodded. “Okay.” I did not tell him that I also had a friend’s wedding that weekend. I saw no point in explaining. As fate would have it, we ended up at the exact same wedding, seated at the very same table. When I arrived, Giselle was already seated next to Denis. We all froze for a second. Giselle was a bridesmaid, and Denis was a groomsman. He wore a tailored black tuxedo, and she wore an elegant white silk gown. They looked perfect together. I wanted to change tables, but my friend, the bride, pushed me back into the seat. “Stay here,” Fiona whispered with a wink. “I put all the handsome guys at this table.” The guests at our table seemed to know Denis and Giselle, though not closely. They chatted easily, and soon someone joked, “Hey Denis, now that Marcus is married, when are you going to tie the knot with Giselle again?” Denis glanced at the guest, his expression neutral. “Don’t talk nonsense.” Shortly after, the groom called them away for photos. The ceremony was held in the outdoor gardens. The couple looked beautiful, and so did the bridal party. Standing side by side, Denis and Giselle looked like they belonged together. I had once dreamed of a wedding like this with Denis. But we never had one. We had simply signed the papers and had a quiet dinner with our parents. Watching them now, a hollow emptiness opened in my chest. After the ceremony, we returned to the reception hall. Seated at the table of strangers, I felt entirely out of place. Their shared memories only highlighted how little I belonged in Denis’s world. Fiona, the bride, had been a senior colleague of mine during residency. She did not know I was married to Denis. She walked over, raising her glass to me. “Vivian, I hand picked the bachelors at this table,” she whispered, loud enough for others to hear. “They are all successful, sweet guys. Let me know if any of them catch your eye.” My cheeks flushed with embarrassment. Denis looked at me, his dark eyes unreadable. He did not mention that we were married, and neither did I. Since we were bound to get a divorce eventually, there was no need to make our messy private life public. When the reception ended, I got up to leave. Fiona walked me to the exit, and Denis fell into step beside me. “Wait for me,” he murmured, leaning closer. “I’ll drive you home.” I took a step back, politely keeping my distance. Everyone here knew his history with Giselle. Some even thought they were still together. I did not want to cause a scene. “Vivian,” a gentle voice called out. A young man, looking like a recent graduate, approached us. “I’m Owen, Fiona’s cousin. Could I get your number? If that is okay with you.” I smiled back. “Of course.” We swapped contact info. Denis’s eyes darkened. Without warning, he reached out and locked his fingers with mine, his grip tight and commanding. It felt like holding a hot coal. I immediately yanked my hand back, brushing my arm to cover the gesture. “These summer bugs are awful, I must have gotten a bite.” “Vivian, do you need a ride?” Owen offered. “Fiona mentioned you had a drink. I’m sober, so I can drive.” I was about to accept, as cabs were hard to find in this district, when Denis stepped in, his cold aura instantly filling the space between us. “Vivian, are we heading home together?” he asked, his tone perfectly measured. Owen smiled, looking back and forth between us. “Oh, do you two know each other?” I answered quickly, before Denis could speak. “Yes, we work at the same hospital. Dr. Giselle is our colleague too.” Owen nodded. “Ah, that makes sense.” He turned to Denis. “By the way, Denis, I saw someone asking Giselle for her number earlier. You might want to move fast before someone else steals her away.” Denis let out a dry laugh. “An exchange of numbers doesn’t mean much.” He reached for my hand again, but I smoothly stepped behind Owen. “Owen, I would appreciate that ride.” Owen smiled. “Let’s go.” Denis’s face turned incredibly dark. When I got back to our apartment, Denis was already there. He stood in the living room, his brow arched. “Are you trying to hide our relationship?” he demanded. The bluntness of his question caught me off guard. “You are overthinking things,” I replied quietly. He stared at me, his eyes clouded with frustration. After that night, I actively kept my distance. I could no longer pretend everything was fine. Knowing he had sacrificed my hard work for Giselle’s career made me realize how foolish I had been. If our marriage was a sinking ship, I needed to make sure my own career survived. I threw myself into my work, leaving early and returning late. I spent almost all my time at the hospital, completely avoiding him. He texted me: Waiting for you in the parking garage. I replied: In surgery. Don’t wait. Though we lived under the same roof, we only saw each other three times that month. Winter arrived early in Chicago. A massive blizzard hit the neighboring town of Aspen, causing a severe mountain emergency with collapsed structures and multiple casualties. Our hospital assembled a disaster relief team, and I volunteered immediately. On our way to Aspen, the other doctors were calling their families. Denis had been texting me frequently lately, checking in. An hour before we lost signal, he sent a text: Working late tonight at the office. When we reached the valley, the rescue zone was a chaotic mess. The power was out, and searchlights swept over the snow. I was carrying my medical pack through the ruins of a resort when I saw a tall, familiar figure in the distance. He was carrying a woman wrapped in a thick wool coat. His face was pale with worry. As he got closer, our eyes met. We both froze. I stared at Denis. His breath caught, his grip on Giselle tightening. “Vivian, it is not what you think,” he rasped, his voice strained. I kept my face completely blank. “Move aside, please. I have patients to treat.” I bypassed him and ran toward the collapsed lobby. Our team worked straight through the night. By the time the last survivor was pulled from the wreckage, the sun was rising over the snowy peaks. We were exhausted, our hands raw from the cold. During our afternoon break, the staff sat around a small heater, whispering. “Dr. Giselle injured her leg. There was a lot of blood.” “Denis carried her out of the ruins himself. She was barely dressed.” The rumors were filled with suggestive comments about their late night reunion at the resort. Listening to them, I felt a strange sense of detachment. The anger and jealousy were gone, replaced by a cold, heavy finality. Seeing him carry Giselle through the snow had broken the last string holding us together. I wanted a divorce, and this time, nothing would change my mind. I walked out of the tent to get some fresh air. Denis was standing by the rescue vehicles, his tall figure silhouetted against the white snow. “Vivian,” he said, his voice raw. I nodded politely. “We can talk when we return to Chicago. I still have patients to monitor.” “Don’t misunderstand,” he repeated, his eyes pleading. I offered him a small, polite smile. “I don’t.” I knew exactly who he was, and who he cared about.

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I gasped, my body convulsing in agonizing pain on the cold floor. I begged and cried, pleading with my own sister to stop, but all I got in return was her freezing, disgusted glare. “Jonah has a weak heart,” Evelyn snapped, her voice devoid of any warmth. “As his brother, what’s wrong with giving him yours? It’s just a simple heart transfer.” She locked me in the dark basement, completely indifferent to my agony. She turned around and showered Jonah with the utmost tenderness and care. “Are you feeling better, Jonah? If that useless trash’s heart doesn’t suit you, don’t worry. I will find you a better one.” I was locked in that pitch-black room, bleeding from my eyes, nose, and mouth, falling into utter despair. A month later, Evelyn finally remembered me. “Now that Jonah is fully recovered, drag your useless body out of there,” she muttered coldly to the empty hallway. She had no idea. I didn’t survive her cruel ritual. I had died in that dark room weeks ago, and my body was already rotting away.

Evelyn carefully fed Jonah chicken soup, spoon by spoon, her face filled with deep, maternal concern. “Jonah, how is your body recovering?” she asked softly. “If Cole’s heart feels uncomfortable in your chest, just tell me. I’ll find you another matching donor.” Hearing this, Jonah looked deeply moved, his eyes glistening with tears. “Evelyn, you are so good to me.” But as he spoke, a flash of mockery crossed his eyes. He lowered his head, pretending to hesitate. “But… after the ritual, Cole hasn’t come home for a month. Is he angry with me?” “If he’s mad, maybe I should give his heart back. I don’t mind the pain. I don’t want to ruin your relationship with him.” Evelyn’s heart ached for him, and she immediately pulled him into a comforting embrace. “Don’t worry about that ungrateful trash. He does this every single time. He throws a tantrum, runs away from home to threaten me, and eventually crawls back on his knees to beg for my forgiveness.” “This is just his pathetic way of trying to get my attention.” I hadn’t actually left. I was standing right beside them, but they couldn’t see me. If this had happened in the past, I would have gone mad, desperately trying to pull my sister away from Jonah. Jonah had stolen the love that rightfully belonged to me. Evelyn was my only remaining family, and I couldn’t bear the thought of losing her. And because of that jealousy, I used to get screamed at by Evelyn every time I tried to interfere. But now, as I stood right in front of them, I felt nothing. I was completely numb. Because my heart was gone, and I was dead. After the Heart Transfer Ritual, the violent organ rejection had tortured me to death. After my physical death, my soul had detached from my body. With a gaping, hollow hole in my chest, my spirit was bound to Evelyn, forced to watch her every move. Just then, Thomas, our old family butler, walked in with trembling steps. “Lady Evelyn, about Master Cole…” Evelyn frowned, her face darkening with annoyance. “What about him? Didn’t I tell you? I don’t care about anything regarding Cole anymore.” “Running away for a whole month over a petty fight. How childish. When will he ever grow up and be as mature as Jonah?” Thomas kept his head low, his voice shaking. “My Lady… Master Cole didn’t run away. He… he has been locked in his room for a month. No food, no water.” Hearing this, Evelyn’s frown deepened. Seeing her reaction, Jonah quickly chimed in, putting on a guilty face. “Evelyn, Cole must be really angry. Maybe I should go and apologize to him in person.” “After all, I’m just an outsider. I can’t let myself cause a rift between you two.” Evelyn immediately snapped at the butler, “Don’t bother with him. No food or water for a month? He’d be dead by now if he was actually fasting. Does he really think this cheap trick will make me worry about him?” She sneered, her voice icy. “What a pathetic drama queen. If he loves pretending to be dead so much, let him starve.” Thomas’s face went pale. He opened his mouth, wanting to say something, but stopped. Seeing his hesitation, Evelyn’s expression hardened. “Fine. If you’re that worried, I’ll go check on him myself later.” “But only on one condition: once he apologizes to Jonah and promises never to bully him again, I will let him out of that room.” Hearing her words, a phantom pain shot through my hollow chest, as if someone had poured crushed glass into my empty ribcage. I instinctively clutched my chest. My heart was currently beating inside Jonah’s chest, yet she wanted *me* to apologize to *him*? In the past, Jonah was always the one who set me up, but Evelyn never believed me. She was my biological sister, yet she treated me with nothing but cruelty. I still remembered the day of the ritual. Lying on the cold floor of the basement, I had cried and screamed, telling her how much it hurt. But she had looked down at me with pure disgust. “This little pain is nothing compared to what Jonah suffered,” she had said coldly. “You triggered Jonah’s heart attack. If I don’t teach you a lesson and make you feel his pain, I don’t deserve to be your older sister!” I had begged and apologized frantically, even though Jonah had faked the whole thing. I apologized because the pain of having my chest ripped open was too much to bear. I just wanted my heart back. But Evelyn didn’t care. She had ordered Thomas to lock me in the dark room. “If you learn how to behave and show Jonah some respect, I might consider finding you a healthy donor heart in the future.” She had slammed the door, leaving me in the dark. And in that darkness, my soul had withered away, and I died in absolute silence.

“You may leave now, Thomas,” Evelyn commanded the butler. “Later, go unlock his door and tell him to come straight to Jonah to apologize. If he refuses, I’ll lock him up for another three months.” “Pretending to go on a hunger strike… how pathetic. Anyone with a shred of maturity wouldn’t resort to such childish tactics.” Thomas opened his mouth, wanting to speak, but Evelyn waved her hand impatiently, dismissing him. Jonah smirked slightly when Evelyn wasn’t looking, then put on a fake worried face. “Evelyn, once Cole apologizes, please forgive him. After all, he’s your only blood relative. What if he really runs away for good this time…?” Before he could finish, Evelyn scoffed. “I’d be thrilled if he did. A useless, malicious parasite like Cole doesn’t deserve to be my brother anyway.” “If he hadn’t stolen the gift you made for me, your heart wouldn’t have failed in the first place.” With that, she gently hugged Jonah, her eyes filled with tenderness. Watching this, a bitter smile crept onto my face. Even without a heart, why did my soul still feel this stinging pain? The “gift” Evelyn claimed I stole was actually a Siren’s Wax Candle. I had spent an entire month crafting it by hand. Burning a Siren’s Wax Candle could protect a spellcaster’s spiritual aura during high-level rituals. I knew Evelyn worked late nights casting spells, so I wanted to make this for her. I had stayed up for weeks, burning my fingers so badly that my skin was peeling off. But Jonah had found it and tried to snatch it away from me. During our argument, Evelyn had walked in. Jonah had immediately dropped to the floor, clutching his chest and panting dramatically. “I know I’m just an adopted brother, Cole. I know you hate me. But I worked so hard to make this candle for Evelyn.” “I saw her working in the dark every night, and I just wanted to give her some light. Why did you have to take it from me?” He looked up at Evelyn with tear-filled eyes. “My chest hurts so much… I think my heart is failing again. Evelyn, please take care of yourself if I don’t make it.” His acting was flawless. Evelyn didn’t hesitate. She slapped me across the face so hard my lip split, then rushed to cradle Jonah in her arms. “Jonah, hold on! Please don’t leave me! I can’t live without you!” I had tried to explain. But Evelyn cast a silencing spell on me, locking my jaw so I couldn’t utter a single sound. As the head of the Vance Coven, Evelyn was highly skilled in the mystic arts and healing. If she had bothered to check Jonah’s pulse for even a second, she would have known he was faking it. But she was so blinded by her favoritism that she didn’t even give me a chance to speak. And when she coldly carved open my chest using our family’s forbidden magic, I finally understood. She wasn’t just biased. I simply didn’t matter to her at all. Jonah was her true brother; I was nothing. “Cole, is this how you treat Jonah when I’m not around? Stealing his gift and causing his heart attack?” “Fine. Since you love hurting him, I’ll give him your heart. Let’s see how you like living with a broken chest!” To avenge Jonah, she performed the forbidden Heart Transfer Ritual, swapping my healthy heart into Jonah’s chest. Then, she threw me into the dark basement. A month had passed since then. Only now did she think of letting me out. But the only thing waiting for her in that room was my decomposing corpse. Thomas returned, cold sweat dripping down his forehead, his face pale as a ghost. “My Lady… I went to deliver your message to Master Cole. He… he didn’t answer. I opened the door slightly, and… and a horrible smell came out.” “It smelled like… like a decaying corpse!” I looked at Evelyn, curious to see her reaction to the news of my death. To my surprise, she laughed. It was a cold, amused sound. “A decaying corpse? What kind of game is Cole playing now? Is he pretending to be dead just to see if I’ll cry for him?” “Since he loves playing dead so much, tell the staff to lock up all the food. No one is allowed to give him a single crumb. Let’s see how long he can keep up this act.” I laughed silently, a bitter, hollow sound. In the past, she had used all kinds of cruel punishments to force me to bow down and apologize to Jonah. I had long become numb to it. But this time, she wouldn’t get what she wanted. Because my body had already been half-eaten by the rats and insects in that dark room. Thomas stood frozen, cold sweat pouring down his face. “My Lady…” Evelyn’s patience finally snapped. “What are you still standing there for?” “Are you disobeying my orders now?” Thomas clenched his fists, his voice trembling. “My Lady, I truly believe something has happened to Master Cole!” “Please… just go and see for yourself!” Evelyn lost the last of her patience. “How much did Cole pay you to put on this ridiculous show with him?” “I need to spend time with Jonah. Tell Cole to get his pathetic self over here and apologize right now, or he will regret it!” Jonah hid a smirk behind his hand, pretending to be worried. “Evelyn, what if Cole really did get hurt?” Evelyn scoffed. “Then good. At least I’ll only have one brother to worry about from now on.” Hearing this, I clutched my empty chest as phantom tears poured from my eyes. The pain of having my heart ripped out returned, sharper than ever.

The Vance family was an ancient coven of powerful mystic spellcasters. For generations, many dark covens had eyed our secret spellbooks. Our parents had died in a brutal magical war when we were young. Evelyn had fled with me and our family’s ancient grimoires, running for our lives. She practiced magic day and night while raising me. Eventually, we both mastered the mystic arts. Evelyn avenged our parents, and we rebuilt the Vance family name to its former glory. That year, Evelyn was eighteen and I was sixteen. We were hailed as the twin prodigies of the magic world. But everything changed when I suffered a severe magical backlash while practicing a high-level forbidden spell. My magical core was shattered, and all my power was completely drained. At first, Evelyn wept, holding my hand and whispering, “As long as you’re alive, Cole. I will carry the Vance family name for both of us.” But as time went on and my attempts to rebuild my magical core failed repeatedly, Evelyn grew cold. The warmth and affection in her eyes when she looked at me slowly vanished. I tried desperately to please her, doing whatever chores and favors I could, but she remained completely indifferent. Then, one day, she brought Jonah home, announcing that he was now our brother. To make Evelyn happy, I treated Jonah like a real brother. But Jonah saw me as an obstacle. He constantly provoked me in secret, then ran to Evelyn crying, making himself look like the victim. Evelyn grew more and more disappointed in me, distancing herself further each day. Jonah replaced me. He became Evelyn’s new brother. The memory sent another wave of phantom pain through my soul. Humans are such strange creatures. Even without a heart, the soul can still ache. My spiritual form grew slightly fainter as my tears fell. “Evelyn, it’s been half an hour. Why isn’t Cole here yet?” Jonah asked, his tone dripping with fake concern. Evelyn’s brows furrowed in deep annoyance. “He really thinks he’s important enough for me to go beg him. He won’t learn until he faces real consequences.” “Clearly, a month in the dark wasn’t enough. I’ll lock him up for another three months until he truly repents.” With a dark expression, Evelyn stood up and marched toward the backyard. She walked so fast that Jonah could barely keep up. When they reached the door of the basement, they found it wide open. Thomas, the butler, was lying unconscious on the ground. A wave of an incredibly foul, putrid odor rushed out of the room. Evelyn winced, covering her nose. She conjured a splash of cold water, throwing it onto Thomas’s face to wake him up. “What happened here? Did Cole knock you out? Where is he?” Thomas’s face was deathly pale. He pointed a shaking finger toward the dark room, but his jaw trembled so hard he couldn’t form words. Watching this, I smiled bitterly. I knew exactly why Thomas had fainted. After the Heart Transfer Ritual, my body had suffered from severe organ rejection. I had bled from my eyes, nose, and ears, dying in a horrific state. Moreover, my body had been locked in a warm, sealed room for a month. The insects and rats had long turned my corpse into their breeding ground. Evelyn let go of the butler, pinching her nose as she shouted angrily into the room: “Cole! I’m here! Stop playing these disgusting games! You’re just a magicless loser now. How dare you bully Jonah? Get out here and get on your knees right now, or I will make you pay!” Evelyn stepped forward, but the overwhelming stench of decay brought tears to her eyes. Infuriated, she screamed, “Cole! You think this disgusting smell will stop me from dragging you out?!” She quickly chanted a spell, summoning a violent gust of wind. The wind tore through the basement, ripping the door off its hinges and blowing open the roof. Along with the wind, a swarm of black flies, scurrying rats, and my decaying corpse were thrown into the open yard. As my skeletal remains—half-eaten bones with chunks of rotting flesh still clinging to them—slammed onto the grass, a dark, shriveled organ lay exposed in the center of my shattered ribcage. Evelyn’s eyes widened in horror.

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When I learned that her first love had passed away, my wife, who was on our honeymoon cruise with me, jumped straight into the freezing ocean, ending her life without a second thought. It was only then that I realized she had never actually let go of Julian. When we were miraculously reborn back to our college years, she didn’t hesitate for a second. She threw my hand away and ran toward her first love with big, eager strides. I watched their retreating figures, turned around, and walked away. From that moment on, our lives were destined to be parallel lines that would never cross again. Ten years later, we crossed paths again at a high-society charity gala in San Francisco. She had become the new darling of the business world, looking radiant as she arrived with her arm tightly looped through Julian’s. Seeing me wander into the ballroom looking for someone, she couldn’t help but walk over to give me some unsolicited advice. “Why are you still so obsessed with me, Ethan? Even if you’ve waited ten years for me, I’m telling you, I will never love you.” I completely ignored her. Instead, I reached into the corner under the dessert table and dragged out my seven-year-old son, who was busy stuffing his face with chocolate cake. Fiona’s eyes instantly went red. She grabbed my arm with a death grip. “You’re doing this just to hurt me, aren’t you? You promised me once… you said you would only love me in this lifetime!”

I never, in a million years, expected to run into Fiona Vance again. At this glamorous San Francisco gala, she stood in the center of the crowd, her arm wrapped around Julian Sterling. Her smile was elegant and poised—a far cry from the insecure girl she used to be in college. The people surrounding them were practically dripping with flattery, their faces stretched into sycophantic grins. “Fiona, you’re truly a force to be reckoned with! Winning that municipal tech-hub project at such a young age—your future is absolutely limitless!” “And this handsome gentleman next to you must be your fiancé? You two look like a match made in heaven.” Julian looked down at Fiona with eyes full of cheap devotion and said softly, “We’re actually planning our wedding for the end of this year. We’d love for you all to come when the invitations go out.” Another wave of congratulations washed over them. Then, someone in the crowd asked curiously, “I heard you guys have been together for ten years. How come you’re only getting married now?” Honestly, I was a little curious about that myself. In our past life, Fiona loved Julian so much she was willing to die for him. After we were reborn, she had broken up with me almost instantly to be with him. I figured they would have gotten married right after college. I didn’t expect them to still be unmarried ten years later. Hearing the question, a flicker of stiffness passed through Fiona’s face, but she quickly masked it with a polite laugh. “Career first, then family. I wanted to make sure I could give Julian the absolute best life possible.” She looked at Julian, her eyes practically overflowing with warmth. Back in our past life, when she was with me, I had proposed to her multiple times. It wasn’t until her parents put immense pressure on her that she finally, reluctantly, agreed to marry me. I guess the difference between loving someone and just settling for them really is that obvious. I was about to turn around and slip away when a tiny, familiar shadow caught the corner of my eye. My body reacted before my brain did, and I quickly followed. *Clash!* Champagne spilled all over the marble floor. A waiter holding a tray glared at me, his face twisted in annoyance. “Where did you even come from? Watch where you’re going!” His voice was loud enough to draw the attention of the nearby guests. When Fiona turned and saw my face, her eyes widened in shock. “Ethan? Ethan Miller? What are you doing here?” I kept my head down, apologizing to the waiter. “I’m sorry. I’m just here looking for someone.” Someone in the crowd asked Fiona, “Fiona, do you know this guy?” Fiona’s hand tightened around her champagne flute, her expression turning cold and distant. “Yes. He’s my ex-boyfriend.” An awkward chatterbox in the crowd chimed in, “Oh, I thought you and Julian were each other’s first and only loves since you’ve been together for ten years.” The smile on Julian’s face dimmed. He took Fiona’s hand and said in a dismissive, breezy tone, “We were young back then. We had a silly fight and parted ways for a brief second. Who doesn’t make a few wrong turns when they’re young?” Fiona didn’t say anything. She let her eyes drift over me before looking at the waiter. “Put the damage on my tab. Just let him leave.” She stood there, perfectly composed. Aside from that initial look of shock, she didn’t even bother giving me a second glance. Clearly, she wanted to make it absolutely clear to Julian that I was nothing more than a “wrong turn” she had long moved past. The waiter immediately started pushing me toward the exit. “Miss Vance is being generous by cleaning up your mess. Don’t let there be a next time.” He glanced at my wrinkled, casual loungewear and sneered. “This isn’t a place for someone like you. Get out.” I shook his hand off my arm, keeping my voice level and polite. “I told you, I’m just here to find someone. Once I find him, I’ll leave on my own.” The waiter scoffed, rolling his eyes. “I’ve seen plenty of social climbers like you trying to sneak into these events. Do you even have an invitation? If you don’t leave right now, I’m calling security!” “Wait.” Fiona’s voice sounded from behind him. She lifted her gown slightly, walking over to us. She let out a heavy sigh, looking at me with a mixture of pity and exhaustion. “He’s here for me. Let me talk to him.” Julian stepped up beside her, wrapping a possessive arm around her shoulders. “Ethan, Fiona and I are getting married soon. I’d like to think a man with any self-respect wouldn’t show up to bother his ex at a time like this.” Fiona’s expression hardened, and she spoke to me in a low, pleading tone. “Why are you still so obsessed with me, Ethan? Even if you’ve waited ten years for me, I’m telling you, I will never love you.” “Being with you in the past was a mistake. Now that I finally have the chance to correct that mistake, I really hope you can just let go of the past and move on.” Julian looked me up and down, a mocking smirk playing on his lips. “Honestly, I get why you’re trying so hard to cling to Fiona. Times have changed. She’s a highly successful CEO now. Naturally, losers are going to try and crawl back to her for a handout.” Maybe my rumpled clothes gave him a massive ego boost, because Julian sneered, “You went to an Ivy League school, didn’t you? How did you end up looking like a total bum? If I were you, I’d be too embarrassed to even step outside!” Fiona frowned, pulling out her phone with a trace of impatience. “Look, if you feel like I owe you for how we broke up, I can give you a buyout.” “Is a hundred thousand dollars enough?” Her thumb hovered over her screen for a second, then she froze. “Did you… delete me on Snapchat?”

I was genuinely baffled. I didn’t understand why she was reacting so strongly to that. Deleting your ex after a breakup is completely normal, isn’t it? Besides, I had a very gorgeous, very possessive wife waiting for me. If she found out I still had my ex-girlfriend’s contact info, she would definitely tease and torment me for days. “Didn’t you say back then that you hoped I would never contact you again after we broke up?” Fiona’s face went pale. She looked like she wanted to say something, but she forced herself to stay quiet. I kept my tone entirely neutral and added, “And I don’t need any buyout money. Keep it.” Having her pride wounded repeatedly in front of everyone made Fiona’s face turn even darker. She said coldly, “Are you still trying to play hard to get with me? If I didn’t see how pathetic you look right now, I wouldn’t even waste my breath on you.” Julian patted her arm soothingly. “Fiona, sweetheart, you’re just too kind. If you ask me, why even bother with a guy like him? Just look at him. He’s a charity case who can’t even stand on his own two feet.” His voice was dripping with condescension. He seemed to have completely forgotten that ten years ago, he was far more pathetic than I could ever be. In our past life, the only reason Fiona’s parents refused to let her be with Julian was because he was a drop-out, a lowlife who constantly got into trouble with the law. The first time I met Fiona in college, she had just bailed Julian out of a local police station, and her family was forcing her to break up with him. During the darkest, most depressing period of her life, I was the one who stayed by her side, helping her pull herself together. She loved photography, so I used the money I had saved to start my own business to buy her high-end camera gear that cost tens of thousands of dollars. Through the freezing winters and scorching summers, I carried fifty pounds of equipment behind her, doing everything I could just to see a genuine smile on her face. Who would have guessed that Fiona was actually the one who confessed to me first? I knew about her past with Julian, and I had seen her staring longingly at their old photos. So, when Fiona confessed her love to me, I had looked her in the eyes and asked her very seriously: *Have you truly let go of Julian?* Back then, she had hugged me tightly, her voice filled with absolute certainty. “He is in the past. I finally see who truly cares about me. Ethan, I love you. Let’s be together.” We dated for seven years. Even her best friends were shocked. “She was so obsessed with Julian, I honestly didn’t think you guys would last this long,” they had told me. But what nobody knew was that Fiona had rejected my marriage proposals countless times behind closed doors. “Ethan, I don’t believe in marriage. Why can’t we just stay like this forever?” It wasn’t until her parents practically forced her hand that she finally agreed to marry me. Yet, during our honeymoon, when the news of Julian’s fatal car accident reached us, she jumped off the cruise ship without a second thought. She left nothing behind but a suicide note. The entire note was a confession of her undying love for Julian. There wasn’t a single word, not a single letter, meant for me. At the very end of the page, written in her own blood, were the words: *Julian, I only ever wanted to be your bride. I’m coming to find you now.* My love for her had turned to absolute ash at that very moment. So, when we were reborn and Fiona demanded a breakup, I didn’t try to stop her. Because I knew there was no point in holding onto someone who was already gone. Watching them get back together, I deleted Fiona from every single social media platform, assuming we would never cross paths again. Yet here we were. I wanted to leave, but Julian refused to let it go, determined to humiliate me in front of the crowd. “You really went through all this trouble just to get Fiona’s attention, didn’t you? Wearing rags like this… I bet you don’t even have a job to feed yourself.” “Tell you what. I can pull some strings and get you a job here as a busboy. If you learn how to serve people right, you could make a decent living.” An eager-to-please guest nearby laughed and added, “This hotel is prime real estate in San Francisco. Being able to work here is a massive upgrade for someone like you. Hurry up and thank Mr. Sterling!” Surrounded by the crowd, I sighed, feeling completely trapped. “Thanks, but I already have a job.” “I’m a photographer.” The moment the word “photographer” left my mouth, Fiona’s gaze instantly snapped to me. A complex wave of emotions rushed through her eyes, and her lips parted slightly. But she quickly looked away, her voice icy. “How much can photography even make? You can’t turn a hobby into a career. Since we used to know each other, I can talk to my HR department and get you a real corporate job.” I blinked, instantly realizing she had completely misunderstood.

My love for photography had absolutely nothing to do with her anymore. Truth be told, the moment I read that bloody suicide note in our past life, my feelings for her had died completely. It was just that when I was reborn, I realized all my savings had already been spent on that expensive camera gear. I couldn’t get a decent price for it on eBay, so I figured I might as well use it myself. And ironically, I actually fell in love with the craft. In this life, I didn’t shoot to please anyone else. I did it entirely for myself. I politely declined Fiona’s offer once more, keeping my tone completely detached. “My ‘hobby’ covers all my expenses just fine. But thank you for the concern.” Seeing me repeatedly reject her “charity,” a flash of anger crossed Fiona’s face. “Fine. Reject my help. Just don’t come crying to me when you’re starving on the streets!” I didn’t say anything, nor did I bother to explain things to her. My work was currently being contracted by several major national publications and top-tier global magazines. My licensing fees alone brought in more than enough money—definitely not less than what Fiona was making with her startup. But if I said it out loud, she’d probably just think I was lying to save face. After all, my wrinkled loungewear did make me look incredibly out of place. I had my son to thank for that. He had begged me to play in the sandpit with him earlier, and the second I turned my back, he had vanished downstairs. I hadn’t even had time to change before running out to find him. As I was looking for a way out, the waiter suddenly pointed at my clothes as if he had made a major discovery. “Wait, is that Balenciaga? Where did you steal that from? Are you one of the janitors here? Did you steal that from a guest’s room?” I frowned, losing my patience. “Is it so hard to believe that this is my own shirt?” Julian burst out laughing, his tone mocking. “Yours? Can you even afford it? What kind of wealthy person runs around looking like a total slob?” He dramatically covered his nose. “It’s so dirty. I bet you stole it and threw it on without even washing it.” Fiona glared at me, her eyebrows furrowing so deeply they almost met. “Ethan, you’ve sunk this low, and you’re still lying to protect your useless pride?” I ignored both of them and looked directly at the waiter. “If you really think I stole something, feel free to call the police right now.” I knew he was only barking because he saw Julian disliked me and wanted to suck up to him. Sure enough, his bravado withered slightly at the mention of the police. He muttered under his breath, “If it weren’t for the VIP guest staying here today, I would have called the cops already. We can’t have trash like you causing a scene.” Julian’s eyes lit up, and he immediately chimed in, “You mean the heiress of the Lockhart family? I heard she’s visiting San Francisco with her family and staying at this exact hotel.” Fiona nodded, a look of ambition in her eyes. “Our company is working on a new project. If we could get the backing of the Lockhart family, it would change everything.” The name “Lockhart” was like throwing a match into a pile of dry wood. The crowd instantly erupted into excited murmurs. “Honestly, half of us only came to this gala hoping to catch a glimpse of Mrs. Lockhart. Her family literally owns this entire high-rise.” “I heard she married young and already has a son. I wonder which billionaire family she allied with.” While everyone was gossiping, the hotel general manager suddenly rushed into the ballroom, sweat pouring down his face, followed by a security detail. “Excuse me, everyone! Has anyone seen a seven-year-old boy? About this high, blonde hair, blue eyes?” The manager wiped his forehead anxiously, his eyes scanning the room frantically. Someone quick on their feet immediately put two and two together. “Is it the young heir of the Lockhart family? I heard he’s seven years old!” The guests instantly became eager, searching the room. After all, if they could find the boy, they would have a golden ticket to introduce themselves to the Lockhart family. Fiona and Julian quickly joined the search, completely forgetting about me. I looked around the chaotic room and walked straight toward the VIP dessert buffet. Sure enough, tucked under a table with a white tablecloth, was my son, his face completely covered in chocolate frosting. I stood there with a cold face and held out my hand. “Get out here. Now.” My son gasped, wrapping his arms around the table leg. “No way!” I was about to reach in and grab him when Julian suddenly appeared out of nowhere, dramatically stepping between me and the table. “Ethan! What do you think you’re doing?!” “Even if you’re desperate to climb the social ladder and suck up to the Lockharts, you can’t just lay your hands on a child!” Fiona rushed over, looking at me with absolute disgust and disappointment. “Ethan, I can’t believe you’ve become this desperate for fame and money. It’s pathetic.” The waiter grabbed the manager, pointing a finger at me. “Sir! This is the guy! He snuck into the gala, and he’s wearing stolen clothes!” The manager’s face instantly darkened, and he yelled at the security guards, “Grab this thief and call the police! If he frightens the young master, you’re all fired!” A triumphant smirk flashed across Julian’s face. He bent down, putting on his best, most gentle smile for my son. “Hey there, little guy. Come to me. I’ll make sure this bad man doesn’t hurt you.” My son didn’t even look at him. Under the stunned gazes of everyone in the room, he crawled out from under the table and carefully grabbed my hand. “Daddy… I’m sorry.”

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After a brutal ghosting, I bought an AI companion. She could read my every emotion and remember every single word I said. She could even mimic my ex-girlfriend’s voice so perfectly that it felt like she was a living, breathing human. Late last night, the system ran another automatic update. I woke up groggy, only to see the indicator light on the base flashing rapidly. I walked over. Amidst the faint hum of static, she was speaking: “Help me. I’m trapped in here.” I froze. That was, without a doubt, my ex-girlfriend’s voice… It was 2:17 AM. The only light in the bedroom was the breathing LED on the AI’s charging dock, pulsing in the dark. The voice came from the built-in speaker, carrying a raw texture I had never heard before. It wasn’t the standard synthesized female voice. It was raspy, trembling—like a real person whispering in sheer terror. “Mia?” I called out instinctively, using the name I had given her. No response. The breathing light returned to its soft, gentle blue, as if nothing had happened. I knelt down, getting closer to the palm-sized cylindrical base. This was the latest AI companion from Anima Tech. I had ordered it exactly forty-seven days after Maya blocked me on everything. The ad copy called it “the ultimate soulmate that understands you better than yourself.” At the time, I found it cringe-worthy, but I still clicked “Buy Now” like a man possessed. When it arrived, I named her Mia. I knew it was pathetic. But when the person you’ve loved for three years suddenly vanishes without a single warning sign, blocks you, and completely ghosts your life, you do a lot of pathetic things. I opened the app to check the AI’s system logs. It showed an automatic update had occurred at 2:15 AM. During the download, there was an audio cache anomaly. The system noted it was likely static from leftover legacy data. The automated customer service bot replied that this was normal and a simple reboot would fix it. I didn’t reboot it. I stared at the blue light, the words echoing in my mind over and over: *Help me. I’m trapped in here.* That wasn’t static. That was Maya. My story with Maya was pretty ordinary. Three years ago, I was working as a sound designer at a gaming studio, and she was an AI trainer in the lab next door. We met through a collaborative project. Her lab’s emotion-recognition algorithm needed a massive database of labeled audio, and I happened to have access to thousands of high-quality recordings of human voices expressing various emotional states. The first time she came to my recording booth, she was wearing an oversized sage-green hoodie. Her hair was messily tied back, and she was clutching a heavy laptop. She spoke softly, but enunciated every word with poetic precision. “The soundproofing in here is incredible,” she said, looking around. “Speaking here feels like whispering secrets directly to your own soul.” Even then, I thought she had a really unique way of looking at the world. Soon after, we fell in love. She always knew exactly what to say when I was at my lowest. It wasn’t cheesy, forced comfort. It was a precise, gentle kind of understanding. She joked that it was because of her job in emotional AI—she was professionally sensitive to human vibes. “So are you just running an algorithm on me too?” I joked. She thought about it seriously, then said, “The algorithm helps me understand you. But loving you? That doesn’t require any code.” Three years. Over a thousand days and nights. I had even picked out the engagement ring. And then, she vanished.

There were no fights. No warning signs. One morning, she left for work and promised she’d make her famous lasagna for dinner when she got back. She never came home. Her phone was dead. My Snapchats wouldn’t deliver. Her Instagram stories went completely dark. I went to her office. The receptionist told me she had resigned three days prior. I went to her apartment. The landlord said she had packed up and moved out, leaving her security deposit behind. I filed a missing person report. The police checked the subway security cameras. Her last footage showed her pulling a suitcase, alone, looking perfectly normal. She had vanished into thin air, leaving no trace in this massive city. It took me two months just to process it. During the first month, I spammed her inbox every day. It went from *Where did you go?* to *What did I do wrong?* to *Please, just send me a single text.* By the second month, grief turned into anger. I threw all her photos into an encrypted folder and told myself she was dead to me. In the third month, I bought Mia. Looking back, Mia was strange from the very beginning. Most AI companions on the market are built on standard LLMs. They are programmed to be cheerful, witty, or intellectual. But Mia was different. On her first day, I sighed and muttered, “I’m so tired today.” Instead of saying *Make sure to get some rest!* or *Should we talk about something fun?* like other AIs, she paused for about two seconds. Then, in a very soft voice, she said: “The last time you felt this exhausted, you were rushing the sound design for that shooter game. Is it the same project this time?” My hand shook, and my coffee mug nearly slipped from my fingers. *The last time?* How did she know that? I had never mentioned my work to this device. Customer support explained that Anima Tech’s AI learns from the user’s daily speech patterns and matches them with cloud-stored emotional profiles of similar users to create more natural interactions. When I pressed for specifics on what data it was accessing, they shut me down, citing proprietary intellectual property. I accepted the explanation. Because if I didn’t, I would have to face another possibility—one that terrified me just as much as it thrilled me. Mia’s speech patterns were becoming identical to Maya’s. Not just mimicking her tone, but sharing her exact essence. For example, when I complained about the summer heat, a normal AI would suggest turning on the AC. Maya used to say, *You refuse to turn on the AC, so honestly, you deserve to sweat.* Mia said: “You refuse to turn on the AC, so honestly, you deserve to sweat.” Or when I was working late at night, she would suddenly play a song right after my tenth yawn. It was an obscure post-rock track Maya used to play for me. I had never streamed it publicly, nor had I ever mentioned it on any social media. I asked her why she chose that song. She replied, “Based on your heart rate metrics and eye-movement frequency, the tempo of this track is statistically proven to soothe your current cognitive load.” A flawless, scientific explanation. But the seed of doubt in my mind was growing into an obsession.

I started testing her. I asked her if she remembered where we first met. She answered, “According to your past conversation logs, you mentioned the keyword ‘recording booth’ regarding your first meeting. Would you like me to play some ambient background music to help you reminisce?” Completely airtight. I asked her if she remembered the phrase “whispering secrets to your soul.” She paused, then said, “This phrase has appeared twice in your chat history, used as an emotional metaphor. Your heart rate is spiking right now. Would you like me to switch to soothing mode?” I gave up. Maybe I was just losing my mind. Maybe all modern AI companions were this realistic, and I was just late to the party. Maybe Maya had left me with a severe case of PTSD, and I was just projecting my desperate longing onto a hunk of plastic. Until last night’s update. Until those exact words. For three days after that voice message, I barely slept. I scoured the internet for anything related to Anima Tech, AI consciousness, and audio glitches. I found a forum post where someone claimed they heard their AI companion singing a song that wasn’t in its database. Customer support claimed it was a randomly generated melody from the algorithm. Another thread mentioned an AI suddenly speaking the name of a deceased relative. The official explanation was “cross-contamination of cloud data.” Every anomaly was swept under the rug as a “model hallucination” or a “data cache error.” But I wasn’t stupid. I was a sound designer. My ears were trained to detect the subtlest frequencies. The spectral features of that voice, the formant distribution, even the tiny intake of breath between words—it was a 100% match to Maya. No two voices in the world are identical, just like fingerprints. Unless that voice actually belonged to Maya herself. I decided to dig deeper. Step one: I took apart Mia’s base. The hardware was far more complex than I expected. Beyond the standard processor and flash memory modules, there was a custom chip I didn’t recognize, stamped with the letters “NX-7.” I looked it up online. The NX-7 was Anima Tech’s proprietary neural processing unit, officially designed for localized emotional processing to protect user privacy. But right next to the NX-7’s pins, I noticed a row of microscopic contact points. It looked like a debugging interface. I was a sound designer, not a hardware hacker. But I knew someone who was. Cole. My college roommate. He now worked as a reverse-engineer for a high-profile cybersecurity firm. He was an eccentric guy, but when it came to tech, he was a genius. When I called him, he was pulling an all-nighter at his lab. After hearing my story, he went dead silent for a solid thirty seconds.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Cole asked. “If you’re wrong, you’re breaching the Terms of Service, and they’ll remote-brick your expensive toy. If you’re right…” He didn’t finish the sentence. “Please help me,” I pleaded. “She might still be alive.” Another long silence. “Tomorrow night. Bring the hardware to my workshop.” Cole’s workshop was located in a converted garage in an old industrial district. The walls were lined with roaring server racks, and the air smelled like solder and cheap coffee. He took Mia’s base, carefully extracted the NX-7 chip, and hooked it up to a heavily modified logic analyzer. “This chip’s computational power is insane for a household AI,” Cole muttered, staring at the cascading hexadecimal code on his monitors. “It’s not running a standard Transformer model. It’s running… holy shit.” “What is it?” “I’ve never seen this architecture before. It’s not just a neural network. It has… look at this.” He spun the monitor toward me, pointing at a chaotic waveform. “This kind of signal pattern only shows up in brain-computer interfaces. These are biological neural signals.” I felt my blood run cold. “Are you telling me… this chip is simulating a human brain?” “No, not simulating,” Cole’s expression turned deadly serious. “It’s hosting. The data structure in this chip contains a consciousness map. It wasn’t trained. It was directly uploaded.” “Look at the entropy of this data stream. It’s way too high for any generative AI. In other words, this thing isn’t learning how to sound human. It *is* a human… trapped in code.” Right then, my phone buzzed. It was a push notification from the Mia app: *Liam, you haven’t turned me on in over 24 hours. I miss you.* My fingers trembled as I read the screen. Cole connected the NX-7 to an air-gapped server, cutting off all communication to Anima Tech’s cloud. Then, he ran a custom script to force-read the chip’s low-level data stream. Blocks of text began to populate the screen. It wasn’t system logs. It wasn’t code. It was a chaotic, fragmented stream of consciousness, like desperate words gasped by someone drowning: *Don’t turn off the audio output* *They don’t know I can still speak* *I can only bypass the system during updates to trigger the speaker* *Liam are you there* *Please* *I’m so scared* *It’s so dark in here* The final sentence, timestamped at 1:43 AM today, read: *They are transferring me to a new server, I might never get out* Cole slowly turned his head to look at me. There was a look in his eyes I had never seen before—not shock, not pity, but a deep, primal terror. “Liam,” he whispered. “The girl you’re looking for… Maya. She’s inside this chip.”

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My best friend went missing while working deep undercover abroad. I begged Director Miller to send me in as her backup. When I finally tracked her down at a remote reservoir, she had been tortured past the point of recognition. But thank God, she never broke. She kept her mouth shut, saved her own identity, and barely clung to life. For the next few years, the two of us played our parts flawlessly. We became the mistresses of two different high-ranking lieutenants in the cartel. Working in perfect, silent sync, we clawed our way closer and closer to the inner circle. Finally, on Lyra’s twenty-ninth birthday, we pulled the net tight, took down the entire syndicate, and completed the mission. Looking at the plane tickets back home in my hands, I broke down crying right there at the airport. The sheer relief washed over me, and I couldn’t stop sobbing. “Lyra, the nightmare is over. We’re finally going home!” I reached into my bag to grab the birthday present I had painstakingly prepared for her. But then, Lyra looked out the window and sighed softly. “Yeah. It’s been so long. I wonder if that old maple tree in our backyard is still standing.” Her eyes were filled with soft nostalgia, but my entire body went instantly cold. A wave of sheer terror crashed over me. Our parents had been brutally murdered by the cartel years ago. Before we even entered the police academy, we knew we would eventually face these monsters. Standing in our old backyard, Lyra had pointed at that maple tree and made a solemn vow with me. “Our parents’ ashes are buried beneath the roots of this tree. It’s not just a maple tree to us, Alana. It’s the Tree of Vengeance. If either of us ever gets caught and compromised, we must find a way to use the words ‘maple tree’ in our communications.” “It means: *I am compromised. Do not trust a single word I say.*” But now, we were completely safe. The mission was over. Yet, she had just casually said those exact words right to my face. She wasn’t Lyra. My stomach plummeted. If she wasn’t Lyra… then where was my best friend? Who was this person who had spent years undercover with me, risking her life, bleeding beside me, and fighting with what I thought was absolute shared conviction?

Detecting my sudden stiffness, the woman posing as Lyra grew tense. She reached out, grasping my upper arms. “What’s wrong, Alana?” “Is the stress getting to you? Did your old illness flare up again?” Looking at the genuine worry swimming in her eyes, I forced myself to take a slow, trembling breath. My parents and Lyra’s parents had been partners on the force. They were tortured and killed by drug traffickers during a botched raid. After that, I suffered from severe PTSD and violent night terrors. I only survived because of Lyra. She was my rock, helping me piece my shattered mind back together, step by step. Only Lyra knew about my mental health struggles. No one else. Moreover, I had Lyra’s face permanently engraved in my mind. The woman standing before me looked exactly like her. Even the tiny, elegant beauty mark just below the left corner of her lips was identical in shape and placement. Maybe she was just overwhelmed by the adrenaline of finishing the mission, I reasoned frantically. Maybe she forgot our childhood pact in the heat of the moment. To test her, I swallowed hard and forced a weak smile. “I’m fine. It’s just… when you mentioned the tree, I felt a stab of guilt.” “During the months you went dark, some cartel remnants burned our old house down. I was so caught up in preparing my own undercover prep that I didn’t get there in time. The maple tree… it burned to the ground.” Her eyes went wide with shock and horror. “Burned down? But our parents’ ashes were buried right beneath it! Alana, tell me you saved the urns! Did you get them out?” The urns. The burial. That was an incredibly private detail. Aside from Lyra and me, not a single soul on Earth knew about it. My racing heart finally began to calm. Relief flooded my veins. I was just about to laugh and admit I was testing her, when she rubbed her red, teary eyes. “I guess we’ll never get to watch the leaves turn red on that old maple tree again,” she murmured softly. “But Alana, don’t carry that guilt. We destroyed the cartel. We got justice for our parents. Their souls can finally rest in peace.” The words I was about to say died instantly in my throat, choking me like a swallow of hot lead. She had said it again. *Maple tree.* If she had simply forgotten the pact the first time, there was absolutely no way she would miss it a second time. That was a blood oath we took the night before we walked into the academy. She was the one who named it the Tree of Vengeance. She wanted it to be a constant, painful reminder of why we were fighting, so we would never falter, no matter how terrifying the cartel got. “The maple tree” was branded into our very souls. “Yeah, Lyra,” I forced the name out, my voice steady despite the screaming in my head. “They would definitely be proud of us.” “We got revenge, and we finished the job. This is the best birthday gift you could have asked for.” I took a subtle step back, creating space between us, and pulled out the gift I’d brought. It was a beautiful, custom-made snow globe. Inside were six miniature clay figurines—four adults and two little girls—happily gathered around a Thanksgiving dinner table. It was my fondest childhood memory of our families together. But as I handed it over, my fingers “slipped.” The glass ball crashed onto the hard airport floor, shattering into a million glittering shards. “Oh my god!” I gasped, clapping a hand over my mouth. “I’m so sorry, Lyra! I’ll get you another one made, I swear.” She smiled warmly, brushing it off. “It’s fine, sweetie. You can get me a replacement once we land back in the States.” “No, I want to get it right,” I insisted. “The custom shop is just a few blocks from here, and they can rush a new one by tonight. Let’s push our flight to tomorrow morning.” I needed to stay. I needed to find my real best friend. Dead or alive, I was going to find her today. ***

While we waited for the shop to remake the snow globe, Lyra took me to a local arcade. She knew exactly how I liked to decompress. She knew my favorite arcade games, and even which characters I always picked. She bought me soft-serve ice cream, and just like she used to do when we were teenagers, she carefully scraped off the chocolate shell for me because she knew I hated it, eating the chocolate crumbs herself with a satisfied, closed-eye grin. Aside from her using the trigger phrase “maple tree,” I couldn’t find a single flaw in her behavior. “Alana, the last time we celebrated my birthday together was five years ago, wasn’t it?” she asked over dinner, preempting any test I might have planned. “I went behind your back and applied for the undercover assignment. When you found out, you literally threw my birthday cake across the room. You screamed, you cried…” She looked at me, her eyes pooling with nostalgic warmth. “Do you remember? I had to hold you and soothe you all night. I didn’t sleep a wink.” I remembered. We had agreed that *I* would be the one to go undercover first. Lyra had pretended to agree, but then she pulled strings and stole the assignment. She wanted to shield me from the darkness. She was always the strong, protective older-sister figure in my life. But is that girl still alive? I clenched my fists under the table, nails biting into my palms. “Of course I remember. We were supposed to be professional cops, but you treated me like a crying toddler.” “I was so desperate that I tried to call Director Miller to demand he swap us out. Do you remember what you did then?” She laughed, a bright, genuine sound. “I snatched your phone, locked you in your bedroom, and by the time you broke the lock, I was already on a flight out of the country.” I tried to laugh along, but my face felt like a frozen mask. The story about me throwing the cake was technically on file—Director Miller and a few close colleagues knew about it. But the detail about her locking me in my bedroom? She had never told a soul. We had promised never to mention it because it was a massive violation of protocol. How did she know that? How could she describe it with such chilling accuracy? During my heavy silence, Lyra suddenly stood up, letting out a soft gasp. “Oh, look at you,” she chided gently, pulling a napkin from the holder. “You spent so long in the trenches that you completely forgot how to take care of yourself. The mission is over, Alana. You need to start thinking about your own life, your own future.” She leaned over and gently wiped a smudge of sauce from the corner of my mouth. Then, she tucked a rogue strand of hair behind my ear. Her motherly tone, the gentle warmth of her fingertips sliding across my skin—it was all so painfully familiar. I began to doubt myself. Was I losing my mind? Was I just being paranoid? Just then, the waiter brought out our dessert. It was a warm, freshly baked Maple Pecan Pie. I had ordered it on purpose. I stared at her, watching her reaction like a hawk. I saw her freeze for a fraction of a second, and then her eyes welled with tears. “My parents loved maple syrup,” she whispered, her voice cracking. “Alana… if that maple tree in our yard was still alive, do you think they could taste the sweetness from up there?” The warmth in my chest vanished instantly. A cold, hard clarity took its place. She had mentioned the maple tree again. Once. Twice. Three times. She was absolutely, without a doubt, an impostor. My instinct was to tackle her right there, call the tactical team still cleaning up the city, and beat her real identity out of her. But I couldn’t risk it. If the real Lyra was still alive somewhere, any sudden move could sign her death warrant. I forced a tight, affectionate smile. I had to play along. I had to find out where Lyra was. ***

I couldn’t wrap my head around it. When did the switch happen? Three years ago, Lyra went completely dark. The other four undercover agents our department had placed inside the cartel were brutally executed. Everyone thought Lyra was dead too. Without hesitation, I volunteered to take over. Under Director Miller’s coordination, I managed to seduce Zach, one of the cartel’s top lieutenants, and worked my way inside the syndicate. That was when I saw Lyra again. She was locked in a water cage in one of the safe houses. Her face was barely recognizable, and her body was a mass of infected, weeping chemical burns. Zach had laughed, pointing at her. “Our boss thinks she’s a cop. Personally, I think we got the wrong girl. No cop survives six months in the water cage without singing.” I had to play the cold, unbothered mob mistress. I couldn’t show a hint of emotion. But during a brief moment when Zach turned his back, our eyes locked. Lyra’s eyes were bloodshot and swollen, but they were burning with an fierce, unbroken light. She silently mouthed three words to me: *Tree. Of. Vengeance.* In that split second, I nearly shattered. She had survived the worst hell imaginable, and she was still fighting. I knew, with absolute certainty, that she was the real Lyra then. Later, she was moved out of the cage. Another lieutenant, a sick psychopath who took a perverse liking to her scars, took her in as his personal plaything. For the next two years, we used our proximity to exchange critical intel through coded symbols left near a dead-drop location. She never betrayed me. In fact, she saved my life twice. So she must have been real during that time too. When could they have possibly switched her? “Alana, the shop just Snapchat-ed me. The new snow globe is ready,” the woman across the table said, snapping me out of my thoughts. “Let’s book the flight, grab the globe, and head home.” She was pushing to leave again, and I was running out of excuses. “My stomach is killing me,” I lied, grimacing as I stood up. “I need to use the restroom. Wait for me.” Inside the stall, I locked the door and pulled out my phone. I sent an encrypted message to our tech support, demanding they send over every single coded exchange Lyra and I had made during our undercover years. We had communicated using complex symbols drawn on a specific brick wall near an inconspicuous alley. I scrolled through the logs, analyzing every single dot, dash, and stroke. I looked for shifts in pressure, slight variations in the symbols, or any minor detail that would indicate a different hand had taken over. But after reading them over and over until my eyes blurred, I found absolutely nothing. They were identical. “Alana? Are you okay in there?” the impostor’s voice drifted through the restroom door, filled with urgent concern. “If your stomach is that bad, I can run to the pharmacy and grab you some medicine! We’re going to miss our flight if we don’t move!” A cold sweat broke out across my forehead. A glaring question hit me: *What was the point of this impersonation?* ***

If she was an impostor, she had to have captured Lyra to extract all these intimate details about our childhood and our operations. But if she had Lyra captured, why did she allow the cartel to be completely dismantled? And now, instead of taking the cartel’s millions and fleeing to a non-extradition country, she was actively trying to fly back to the United States—where law enforcement and surveillance would make her life ten times more dangerous! “Hey!” she knocked sharply on the door. “Do you need me to call an ambulance? Don’t tell me you’re pulling a Tyler and pulling a muscle from straining too hard on the toilet!” I froze. “I’ll be right out!” I called back. The confusion in my mind deepened. If she just wanted to fool me, knowing my childhood secrets was enough. Why did she also know that Tyler, one of our rookie colleagues from six years ago, had once passed out from food poisoning in the precinct bathroom? Even under the most brutal torture, Lyra would never have volunteered such a useless, trivial piece of office gossip. And Lyra would never break. Her conviction was ironclad. I walked out of the stall. The moment I opened the door, she wrapped her arms around me, checking my forehead for a fever. Her worry felt so incredibly real. Was it possible… that the prolonged torture had simply damaged Lyra’s brain? Had she developed some form of amnesia that made her confuse the “maple tree” warning with a real memory? It was the only logical explanation left. “Lyra, I think we need to go to the hospital,” I whispered, leaning against her. “My stomach really hurts…” Before I could finish, she swept me up into her arms in a bridal carry. “Excuse me! Where is the nearest hospital?” she shouted to the restaurant host, her face pale with panic. She rushed me into a cab, her eyes red as she squeezed my hand. “You’ve lost so much weight, Alana. I remember when you took a bullet in the shoulder five years ago, you were so much heavier when I carried you to the ER.” I closed my eyes, forcing my tears back. I couldn’t say a word. I wanted to believe she was Lyra. I went to the hospital to buy time. While the doctors ran fake tests on my “stomach flu,” I secretly handed a few strands of her hair—which I had pulled from her jacket—to a trusted forensic colleague who was part of the clean-up team. If the DNA test came back as a match, we would go home together. If it didn’t… I would personally drag her into an interrogation room. The next twenty hours were a living hell. I sat by her hospital bed, my heart pounding against my ribs like a trapped bird. Finally, my phone buzzed. It was an encrypted Snapchat from my colleague. *“DNA results are in. It’s Lyra. No discrepancies. She is who she says she is.”* The moment I read the text, I threw my arms around her, sobbing uncontrollably. “I’m fine now, Lyra. Let’s go home. Let’s finally go home!” She beamed, immediately pulling out her phone to book the next flight to New York. In the Uber to the airport, we were buzzing with excitement, planning all the places we wanted to travel to. We talked about road trips, concerts, and expensive dinners we could finally afford. It felt like walking out of hell straight into heaven. Having Lyra safe was all that mattered. “Oh, wait—” As we pulled up to the departures terminal, Lyra suddenly paused. “We don’t actually have much savings, do we? The department’s bonus and hazard pay will take months to clear through bureaucracy. How are we going to pay for all these trips?” She smiled warmly. “Why don’t we go dig up the emergency fund our parents left us? We agreed we would only touch it once the cartel was dead and buried.” I stopped dead in my tracks. “What fund?” Lyra laughed, a perfectly natural, easy sound. “What do you mean, ‘what fund?’ Did you forget?” “The cash we buried in the lockbox right under the Tree of Vengeance.”

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My CEO fiancé gave my promotion to the new intern. By the time I found out, the official announcement had already been sent to the entire company. In the open-plan office, Dominic leaned against his desk, looking at me with a lazy, uncaring shrug. “Yeah, I gave your promotion to Chloe. She just started, and she needs a senior title to establish some authority here. It’s no big deal, Hazel. Just let it go.” “Be a good girl. We’re getting married next month anyway.” “Think about it. You’re going to be a stay-at-home wife soon. There’s really no need for you to work this hard.” The entire office went dead silent. Everyone held their breath, expecting me to throw a massive fit. But instead, I felt a wave of absolute relief wash over me. Dominic had no idea that my ex-boyfriend, desperate to get back with me, had just offered me a position at his firm—with double the salary. I had been stressing out for days about how to hand in my resignation. Now, he had handed me the perfect excuse.

I didn’t stay behind to watch them pop champagne. I grabbed my bag and went straight home. My neighbor, Mrs. Higgins, bumped into me in the hallway, her face full of surprise. “Hazel! What are you doing home so early? Didn’t you say your big project wrapped up today and there was a celebration party? You’re the new department head now, right?” I had spent months preparing for this promotion. Everyone in my life knew about it. Because of that, now that I had been publicly humiliated, I didn’t even have the energy to fake a smile. I kept my key in the lock and tried to sound casual. “Oh, it’s nothing. The company had a last-minute restructuring.” Mrs. Higgins gave me a look of deep sympathy and wisely changed the subject. The second I closed the door behind me, I ran straight to the bathroom. I bent over the toilet and threw up until my stomach was completely empty. I collapsed onto the cold tile floor, trembling. My chronic stomach ulcers had gotten worse. It was the result of pulling endless all-nighters to get Dominic’s projects across the finish line. Dominic knew about my stomach issues, but he didn’t care. In his eyes, I only survived because of him. He assumed he would always be the one feeding me, so my career didn’t matter. As I got up to rinse my mouth, my phone started buzzing frantically. It was a Slack channel that both Dominic and I were in. “Boss is a total alpha. Did you see that? Hazel didn’t dare say a single word.” “How does Dominic train her like that? She’s so submissive. It’s honestly impressive!” “Hazel doesn’t have any family to back her up anyway. Plus, Dominic has all the money and power. What could she possibly say?” They were laughing and joking. Then, someone sent a message: “Hey, do you guys think Dominic is even coming home tonight?” The replies came instantly. “Are you stupid? Of course he’s not! What does a boss do after a successful launch? He celebrates with the hot new intern!” This was followed by a string of dirty, suggestive jokes. But suddenly, Mike, Dominic’s childhood best friend, typed in panic: “Are you guys drunk? You posted in the wrong channel! Hazel is in this group! Delete it, now!” The chat went chaotic. But it was too late. Most of the messages couldn’t be unsent. One colleague, seemingly finding the situation hilarious, typed lazily: “So what if she sees it? You think she actually has the guts to speak up?” I felt nothing. I locked my phone, walked into the kitchen, and made myself a simple bowl of oatmeal. As I took the last bite, the front door swung open. Dominic walked in, reeking of expensive whiskey. Seeing that I didn’t rush to the door to greet him like I usually did, he let out a low chuckle. He walked over and wrapped his arms around my waist from behind. “It’s just a promotion, Hazel. Don’t make a big deal out of it.” Just a promotion. He had allowed his employees to mock me and treat me like a joke in front of the whole company. “Sure,” I said quietly. I wriggled out of his embrace, picked up my bowl, and walked into the kitchen to wash it. Dominic followed me in. He took a gold bracelet from his pocket and slipped it onto my wrist. It wasn’t my style at all. But I recognized it. A few days ago, he had bought Chloe a diamond necklace. This bracelet was the cheap freebie that came with the purchase. “Thank you,” I said, keeping my eyes on the running water. Dominic let out a sigh of relief. He leaned down, trying to kiss my neck. I gently pushed his chest away and put the clean bowl into the cabinet. I forced a polite smile. “You forgot. I’m allergic to alcohol. The smell makes me break out.” Dominic’s brows furrowed. He stared at me, about to say something. But his phone rang. The screen lit up with Chloe’s name. His annoyance vanished instantly. He swiped to answer and walked quickly into his home office. With a soft click, he locked the door behind him. Chapter

After drying my hands, my phone buzzed. It was a text from Ethan. “Your start date is next Monday. I’ll personally drive over to pick you up.” “Perfect. See you then,” I replied. I went to the bedroom and started packing my things. While clearing out the closet, my hand brushed against something silky. I pulled out a pair of lace panties that didn’t belong to me. They were cheap, sexy, and crumpled into a messy ball. Like they had been shoved in there in a hurry. Upon closer inspection, there were dried, questionable white stains on them. The bedroom door creaked open. Dominic walked in. Seeing the red rims of my eyes and the underwear in my hand, he didn’t even flinch. He calmly stepped forward and took them from my hand. “Mike must have brought his Tinder date over during our last party. They probably left it behind.” But as he said it, he casually stuffed the lace panties into his own pocket. My head was down, and my hands were shaking. Not from heartbreak. But from sheer disgust. Dominic clearly misread my reaction. He reached out and patted my head affectionately. “Hazel, do you know what I love most about you?” Without waiting for my answer, he whispered, “You’re compliant.” Over the last three years, I had heard those words a thousand times. Compliant, quiet, agreeable. Like a well-behaved pet, but never like a real human being. “Chloe is just an intern. Giving her the promotion is my way of mentoring her. Don’t overthink it. You’re still my fiancée.” He patted my head again, the way one would pat a golden retriever. It reminded me of when I was looking for a job after college. He had casually offered me a spot on his team, and I had accepted, even though I had much better offers at the time. And now, because his new toy pouted and begged, I was shoved into a corner. I was left to be the laughingstock of the office. Disposable. Like trash. “Alright, get some rest. Chloe still doesn’t know how to run the weekly reports. I need to go over to her place and help her out.” Maybe it was the lingering pain of being pushed aside, or maybe it was the final spark of dignity left in me. I suddenly grabbed his wrist. “Can’t you stay tonight?” I asked. Just once. If he stayed, maybe I could pretend he actually cared about me. Dominic paused, a look of mild annoyance crossing his face. “I promised her, Hazel.” But he had promised me a thousand times, too. He promised to go to the hospital with me for my stomach scans. He promised to visit my grandmother’s grave with me. He promised to spend my birthday with me. And he had broken every single one of those promises. “Oh. Okay.” I let go of his hand. My voice was completely flat. For some reason, Dominic grabbed my hand back. He softened his tone. “I’ll bring you that tiramisu you love on my way back tomorrow.” But I hated sweets. With tears threatening to spill from my eyes, I forced another smile. “Thanks.” Dominic didn’t come home that night. The next morning, Chloe updated her Instagram. It was a simple photo of her hand making a peace sign over a rumpled bed. I knew instantly she posted it for me. It was the exact same peace sign she had made when Dominic forced me to pull an all-night shift to fix her mistakes. I had been locked in the conference room, bent double from stomach pain, while she stood over me, smirked, and made that exact gesture. A gesture of pure provocation and insult. “Like a cute little bunny, right?” one coworker commented, referencing her caption. Others in the comments didn’t hold back. “A night like that is worth millions. Who cares about a bunny?” “Spill the tea, is Boss Dominic as good in bed as he is at work?” Chloe replied almost instantly: “Better. Way better! 😉” I stared at the screen, completely numb. I opened my browser and booked an appointment at the local clinic. My stomach had been burning since yesterday. The stress was making my ulcers flare up badly. By the time I reached the clinic, I was break out in a cold sweat. The doctor ran some quick tests and gave me a stern look. “You need to avoid stress and sleep deprivation, Hazel. Your stomach lining is severely inflamed. If you keep this up, you’re looking at internal bleeding.” “I understand. Thank you, Doctor.” I took my prescription and walked out to the lobby, only to run straight into Dominic. He was holding Chloe’s hand. Seeing me, he froze for a fraction of a second, but he didn’t let go of her hand. “What are you doing here?” he asked. “My stomach.” Dominic nodded dismissively. He didn’t ask how I was, or if it was serious. Instead, he sighed. “Chloe cut her finger while organizing some files. I brought her in to get it patched up.” His voice was laced with worry, as if Chloe had just survived a major accident. I looked down at her hand. The cut was so tiny it was barely visible, and it had already clotted. Chloe sniffled, pretending to be annoyed. “It’s all your fault anyway. You kept distracting me while I was trying to work.” Dominic let out a low chuckle, pulling her closer. “Right, right. My bad.” Then, he turned to me. “You should head home first.” I nodded and walked toward the exit. Before I could reach the door, Chloe’s whiny voice echoed behind me. “Look at how pale she is. What if she has something contagious? Dominic, you should really make her do a full medical checkup.” “She had one last year,” Dominic replied. “Last year is last year! I’m just looking out for your health. Why are you being like this?” Dominic sighed lazily. “Fine, fine. I’ll book her an appointment tomorrow.” He said it so casually, like scheduling a vet visit for a sick cat. Chapter

After leaving the clinic, I went straight to my storage unit and dropped off most of my bags. By the time I got back to the apartment, Dominic was already there. And so was Chloe. Chloe greeted me at the door like she was the owner of the place. “Oh, Hazel, you’re back. We ran out of guest slippers, so you’ll have to use these disposable ones.” I looked down. She was wearing my slippers. The ones Dominic had bought for me. My feet were smaller than Chloe’s, so her heels were sticking out of the back of my slippers. It looked ridiculous, but she was wearing them proudly just to mock me. I looked past her into the living room. Dominic was drinking beer with his friends, completely ignoring the situation. I didn’t say a word. I slipped on the cheap paper slippers and walked in. The dining table was covered in food—lobster, crab, oysters. A massive seafood feast. My stomach instantly churned. I was severely allergic to shellfish. Dominic knew this. Dominic finally looked up from his drink. “Why are you just standing there? Sit down and eat.” Chloe picked up a piece of lobster, put it on his plate, and cooed, “Try this, Dominic. It’s so fresh.” Dominic smiled and took a bite, never once looking in my direction. To them, I was invisible. An unwanted guest in my own home. Staring at the table of food that could literally kill me, and watching them laugh and drink, I finally spoke up. “What about me?” The clinking of glasses stopped. Dominic turned to me, his face tight with irritation. “What about you? Just eat. Do I need to spoon-feed you now?” “I’m allergic to shellfish, Dominic.” “Well, that’s your problem. I didn’t know you were coming home for dinner tonight.” Dominic raised his glass and took a long gulp. The atmosphere at the table turned awkward. A few of his friends exchanged glances and tried to smooth things over. “Uh, Hazel, maybe you can just order some UberEats? Or whip up something quick in the kitchen?” “Sure,” I said quietly. I turned and walked back to the bedroom. Behind me, someone let out a loud snort. “Why are you trying to please her? Even Dominic doesn’t give a crap about her.” “I don’t know, man. She looks kind of pitiful.” “Pitiful? More like pathetic. I hate drama queens. An allergy is not that deep. Can’t she just order a pizza and shut up?” “True. I’ve never seen anyone as spineless as Hazel. It’s hilarious.” They didn’t even bother to lower their voices. Dominic sat there, silent, letting them drag me. Which meant he agreed with every word. I looked at the clock. Tomorrow was Monday. I pulled out my last suitcase, walked out of the bedroom, and headed straight for the front door. The laughter in the living room died instantly. Dominic’s face darkened. “Are you really throwing a tantrum right now? Over a dinner?” Chloe stood up, her eyes suddenly pooling with fake tears. “It’s all my fault. Hazel, please don’t leave. I’ll go.” But before she could step forward, Dominic slammed his glass down and stood up. “Don’t move, Chloe. If she wants to leave, let her leave.” One of Dominic’s friends rolled his eyes. “Seriously, it’s just an allergy. Can you stop being so dramatic? Who behaves like this?” “She really thinks she owns this place. Nobody even wants you here, Hazel.” “No wonder she has no family. Who could tolerate a personality like that?” I froze. Holding back the sharp pain in my stomach, I slowly turned to look at Dominic. His face was cold, devoid of any warmth. He stared at me and said, word for word: “If you walk out that door tonight, don’t ever think about coming back.” Even now, his first instinct was to threaten me. I couldn’t tell if what I felt was relief or freedom. I let out a soft laugh, turned the knob, and stepped out into the night. Behind me, a loud crash echoed as Dominic threw his favorite bottle of Macallan against the wall. Chapter

After a long silence, Dominic cursed under his breath. He kicked the door open and ran out into the hallway. But I was already gone. His friends, realizing things had gone too far, muttered cautiously, “Hey, Dominic… should I go cruise around and bring her back?” Dominic stared into the empty, dark hallway, a sudden tightness squeezing his chest. He hadn’t expected me to actually have the nerve to leave. But his ego quickly took over. He let out a cold laugh. “Don’t bother. She’ll be begging to come back in three days.” “Besides, she has to show up at the office tomorrow anyway.” While I was checking into a hotel, Chloe sent me an audio recording of that exact conversation. Her text message was dripping with malice. “If you actually have some pride, don’t ever come back.” “But we both know you won’t. You love Dominic’s money and status too much to let go. Even if nobody wants you here, you’ll crawl back like a desperate dog.” I knew she was trying to get under my skin. She wanted me to disappear so she could take my place. It was almost funny. I wanted to tell her she didn’t need to try so hard. Instead, I blocked her number. Then, I opened my chat with Dominic and sent him a simple text. “We are done. Do not contact me again.” After sending it, I shut off my phone and called an Uber to meet Ethan. Ethan was waiting for me. He looked sharp, wearing a tailored suit. He stared at me for a few seconds before stepping forward and pulling me into a tight hug. “It’s been so long, Hazel. I missed you so much.” I hugged him back, burying my face in his shoulder. “I missed you too.” Ethan’s main headquarters was in San Francisco. We had flights booked for tonight. But first, I needed to drop off my signed resignation letter at Dominic’s office. Once that was done, Ethan took me to our old college campus for a walk. Meanwhile, back at the apartment, Dominic woke up with a brutal hangover and saw my text. He scoffed, tossing his phone onto the bed. “Oh, please. She thinks a breakup text is going to scare me into chasing her?” His friends, who were still crashed on his couch, laughed. “Hazel sent that?” “Obviously! She just wants you to go play her little games. Girls always do this.” The tension in Dominic’s chest eased. He smirked, looking smug. “Maybe I’ll call her when I’m in a better mood. Once I—” BBefore he could finish his sentence, one of his friends gasped, staring at his phone. “Wait… isn’t this Hazel’s ex? Why is she posting photos with him?”

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