The crumpled scratch-off ticket lay in the trash can, the $100,000 prize printed on it burning my eyes. Just minutes ago, I thought it was a miracle. A wedding fund sent straight from heaven. I had rushed at my boyfriend, Timothy, waving the ticket like a lifeline. “Timothy! We can finally do it! We can get married!” My voice had trembled. The finish line of our five-year relationship was right in front of us. He wouldn’t have to stress about the ring, the down payment for a house, the crushing weight of starting our life together. But there wasn’t a single ounce of joy on his face. Instead, he let out a soft, mocking scoff. “Are you really that desperate to be a wife?” Before the ice of those words could even sink into my veins, a burst of harsh, echoing laughter erupted from the phone in his pocket. “Man, you lost the bet! She actually thinks she can use that chump change to marry you. Might as well just put a ring on it!” a guy’s voice snickered. “For real. A hundred grand? That wouldn’t even cover one of Una’s Birkins. This girl is so cheap.” Una. The trust-fund girl who used to corner me in the high school bathrooms. The one who made my teenage years a living hell. It turned out that in his eyes, I wasn’t even worth the leather on one of her handbags. Five years. Five years of love, of building a life, of sharing a bed. All of it was just a sick, twisted bet between him and his rich friends. 1. “Alright, knock it off, all of you.” Timothy’s voice was casual. “I’m not one to go back on my word. You all better get your wedding gifts ready.” Amidst the chorus of hoots and whistles from the speaker, a woman’s voice cut through—a voice that still haunted my worst nightmares. “Timothy, are you out of your damn mind?!” Una shrieked. “We agreed you were just going to mess with her! It was supposed to be a joke to help me blow off some steam. You’re actually going to marry her?” Timothy reached out, wiping a stray tear from my cheek with his thumb, answering the phone with a lazy drawl. “Yeah. If I don’t marry her, what, am I supposed to marry you?” “Una, sweetheart, did you really think I was your little lapdog? That I’d just roll over and do whatever you say?” The line went dead. The abrupt beep of the disconnected call echoed in the small kitchen. Timothy stared at his phone for a long moment before looking up at me with an easy smile. “What were you crying for just now? So happy you’re marrying a rich guy that it broke your brain?” Before I could force a syllable past the lump in my throat, he turned toward the stove. “You want fried rice? I’ll make it right now.” He tied his faded apron around his waist, cracking an egg, chopping scallions with practiced ease. He moved exactly as he had for the last five years. As if the soul-crushing humiliation that just unfolded in our kitchen had never happened. I took a shallow breath. My chest ached with a rhythmic, pulsing pain. I couldn’t stop the words from spilling out. “Aren’t you tired?” “What?” he asked over his shoulder. “Five years. Aren’t you tired of acting?” Timothy didn’t answer. The only sound left in the room was the heavy hum of the exhaust fan over the stove. It grated against my nerves, deafening and chaotic. I walked over, snapped the fan off, and grabbed his arm, forcing him to look at me. “Are you not going to explain?” “I just came clean, didn’t I? What else is there to explain?” He paused, his jaw tightening slightly. “Una and I grew up together. We’re childhood friends. Don’t read into it.” He neatly sidestepped the bet. He conveniently ignored Una’s comment about ‘blowing off steam.’ I tilted my head back, blinking hard against the raw burn in my eyes. Five years. Over eighteen hundred days and nights. I had hollowed out my chest and handed my heart to Timothy. I truly believed he was the man I would walk through the fire with. I didn’t care that we were broke. We could work for it. I didn’t care that we rented a tiny apartment or took the subway. We could save. And now he was telling me that every struggle, every tear, every quiet moment of comfort, was a meticulously crafted lie? A prank designed just to stroke Una’s ego? I couldn’t fathom it. I was a nobody. An ordinary girl trying to survive. What on earth did I possess that made me worth this kind of elaborate psychological torture? Why would a wealthy heir spend five years playing the role of a devoted, struggling boyfriend? When he used to hold me and apologize for not being able to give me a better life—did he have to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing? When he warmed my freezing feet against his chest in the winter, when he scrubbed out stains in my underwear in the sink—was he suppressing a gag? What an incredible actor. Truly, I had inconvenienced him. “So, what day are we getting married?” he asked, his tone as light as if he were asking if I wanted soy sauce on my rice. I clenched my jaw, my voice dripping with pure venom. “We’re not.” He scoffed, rolling his eyes. “Seriously? Because of a joke? Haven’t you been dying to marry me for years?” “Yeah, I lied. But look at the outcome. It’s a win for you, isn’t it? I can give you a million dollars for the wedding. A house. A luxury car. Just point at what you want. What the hell are you so hung up on?” “This isn’t about money—” Timothy froze, then suddenly hurled the ceramic bowl against the wall. It shattered on impact. Shards of porcelain grazed my bare arms, and raw egg splattered across the linoleum. “When we were broke, you wanted money. Now that we have money, you want to talk about something else!” he yelled. “Nicole, are you sick in the head?” A thin trail of blood snaked down my forearm. My hands were completely numb. He instinctively reached out to grab me. I shoved him away. “Yeah. I am sick in the head.” My voice was a ghost of a whisper. I reached down and shoved the sleeves of my sweater all the way up, exposing the jagged, overlapping pale scars that mapped my forearms. “I am clinically depressed. I am deeply mentally ill. Are you happy now? Is this what you wanted?” The tears spilled over, hot and uncontrollable. I bit down on my lower lip so hard I tasted copper, staring dead into his eyes. “Timothy, I’m asking you. Are you satisfied?!” “Why the hell would I marry you?! Why would I marry the man who turned my life into a sick game for my abuser?!” His lips parted, trembling slightly. Something flashed in his eyes. For a pathetic, split second, I actually thought it was remorse. Then his phone rang again. He answered it. “Timothy! Una is wasted! She’s screaming and breaking things. She says she needs to see you!” a panicked voice shouted through the receiver. “How is that my problem?” Timothy muttered, pulling the first-aid kit from the cabinet, stepping toward me with the iodine. “She said… she said if you don’t come right now, she’s going to find some random guy at the club and sleep with him.” The iodine bottle slipped from Timothy’s hand, spilling a dark brown puddle onto the floor. He clenched his fists, shooting me a conflicted, agonizing look, before his jaw set into a hard line. “Clean yourself up. I’ll be right back.” I didn’t say a word. I just stood by the window in dead silence. I watched him sprint down the sidewalk. When he reached the apartment exit, my beat-up electric scooter was blocking his path. He kicked it violently, sending it crashing to the pavement. He had bought me that scooter during our second year together. It didn’t keep the rain or the cold out, but it meant I didn’t have to squeeze into the crowded subway anymore. When he surprised me with it, I had cried with joy, riding him around our tiny apartment complex in circles. What I thought was love. What I thought was happiness. It was just like that scooter now. Lying in the gutter, its mirrors shattered into a thousand useless pieces. 2. Blood dripped steadily from my arm. I wrapped the gauze around the cuts with robotic, numb movements. The bright red mixing with my tears was a nauseating sight. I stared at the white bandages. My mind fractured, ping-ponging violently between the echoes of Una’s voice—“just mess with her”—and the memories of Timothy holding me. In those dark days, when I would wake up screaming from nightmares, my hands desperately searching for something sharp to make the emotional pain physical, Timothy had gripped my wrists. “Nicole! If you die, it’s over for you. But what about me?!” he had wept into my hair. “What are the people who love you supposed to do?!” He had held me so tightly. He sounded so profoundly terrified of losing me. His burning tears had soaked right through my shirt, warming me all the way down to my frozen bones. And so, I had cracked my chest open for him. Between ragged sobs, I told him everything. I told him about the explicit, fabricated rumors Una spread about me. How she framed me for stealing. How she and her friends cornered me in the locker room, dumping buckets of ice water over my head until I was shaking so violently I couldn’t breathe. The stress and physical trauma had triggered severe endometriosis. The pain was so agonizing I had to drop out of high school for a year. I spent six months in and out of the hospital. For years, just hearing the name “Una” was enough to send me into a panic attack. But I gritted my teeth and survived. And Timothy had been there, staying awake until dawn, stroking my hair, whispering, “Don’t be afraid. I’m right here.” Was he ever comforting me? Or was he just collecting data? Gathering stories to share with Una so they could laugh at her masterpiece? I felt physically sick. Across the room, the laptop screen glowed. The little Discord icon was flashing frantically. Timothy had left in such a rush, he forgot to log out. With shaking fingers, I clicked it open. It was a private server. Una was the admin. I scrolled to the very top. I read every single message. Every word. I read how Timothy’s relentless pursuit of me in college wasn’t love at first sight. It was a directive. Una: She got into the same university as you? What a joke. God, I hate her so much. Timothy, can you just pretend to date her? Ruin her and then toss her out. Timothy: You refuse to be my girlfriend, but you’re pushing me onto someone else? You’re brutal, Val. I read how every time I let my guard down, the server would explode with cheers. They took bets on when he would finally sleep with me. I watched the video of him gifting me the electric scooter. I read their comments. God, she’s so pathetic. Crying over a piece of trash like it’s a Mercedes. I saw them mocking the watch I bought him—the one I ate instant noodles for six months to afford. They called it cheap, embarrassing garbage. Line after line of venomous, merciless cruelty carved into my brain. Tears hit the keyboard, pooling between the keys. I scrubbed my face raw with my sleeve and kept reading. Later in the chat, Timothy spoke less. Until recently, when they began demanding the grand finale. The ultimate humiliation to break me permanently. I slumped back in the computer chair, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird. The air in the room felt thick, unbreathable. I could hear my own ragged breathing, mingling with the audio from the live video call playing in the group chat. “Kiss her! Kiss her!” “Timothy, man, Una is practically throwing herself at you! Don’t leave her hanging!” I stared blankly at the screen. Through the grainy footage of the club’s VIP room, I watched Timothy scoop up a heavily intoxicated Una into his arms. He kicked open the door to a private back room. The cheers and whistles from his friends were deafening, like they were sending a newlywed couple off to their honeymoon suite. Slowly, deliberately, I placed my hands on the keyboard. You disgusting animals. Why don’t you all just rot in hell? I hit send. A second later, the server disconnected. I had been kicked out. My stomach violently rebelled. I barely made it to the bathroom before I threw up everything in my system, dry-heaving over the toilet until my throat bled. The rain from my youth had never actually stopped. Timothy just held an umbrella over my head for a little while, tricking me into believing the sky had cleared. My phone buzzed on the bathroom tile. I swiped to answer. “You saw it?” Timothy’s voice was breathless. “Yes.” “Wait for me. I’m coming home. Let me explain, I—” “Don’t bother.” I sat exhausted on the cold tile, looking out into the living room we had decorated together. “You don’t need to explain, and you don’t need to come back.” “Timothy. I don’t want to play your game anymore. Just let me go.” “I know I can’t beat you people. But I can hide.” 3. My phone wouldn’t stop ringing. It was agonizing. I finally held the power button and shut it off entirely. I shoved the property deed back into the drawer where I had found it while packing my suitcase. I had always praised Timothy for finding such a cheap, perfect apartment so close to my office. I never would have guessed that he was the owner. The moon hung high and cold, casting a pale light over me as I walked out of the building. The sound of my suitcase wheels rolling against the concrete felt deafening in the dead of night. But it was drowned out by the screech of tires skidding to a halt right in front of me. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?” Timothy was out of the car in a flash, chest heaving, his fingers wrapping around my wrist like a vice. “You’re a grown woman pulling a runaway act? Are you five years old? Get in the car. We’re going home.” I turned my head, refusing to look at the fresh, bruising hickey blooming on his neck. I yanked my arm with all my strength, but he wouldn’t let go. “You and I don’t have a home.” He stared at me, his eyes dark. I tried to walk around him, and he hauled me back by the shoulders. “Be rational for one second, okay?” he snapped. “Whatever issues you have with Una are ancient history. How long are you going to hold onto high school drama?” “People need to move forward. You know exactly how good I’ve been to you these past five years. If you leave me, where are you ever going to find someone who treats you like I do?” Ancient history. Of course it was easy for him to say. He wasn’t the one waking up screaming. He took the trauma that shattered my mind and permanently altered my body, and brushed it off as “drama.” I stared at him, truly looking at his face. This was the face that used to make my heart skip a beat. How did he look so entirely alien to me now? I suppose the fault was mine. I never really knew him at all. My head throbbed. I didn’t have the energy to fight him. “The keys are under the mat. I didn’t take a single thing you bought me. Except this sweater. And it got torn.” My voice was dead. “Tell me how much it costs. I’ll pay you back.” “You can’t afford it.” Timothy laughed, a harsh, ugly sound. “Did you really think I bought your clothes off the clearance rack? That was custom-made in Italy. How are you going to pay for it? With your pathetic entry-level salary? With your worthless pride?” “If you’ve got so much backbone, then take it off right now—” He didn’t finish the sentence. Because I had already reached for the hem. One button. Two buttons. “Jesus Christ!” he roared, ripping his own jacket off and violently wrapping it around my shoulders. “Nicole, you have lost your fucking mind!” He shoved me into the passenger seat before I could react, locking the doors from the driver’s side. He drove recklessly, speeding all the way to his real home. A sprawling, gated estate in a neighborhood I had only ever seen in movies. “You’re sleeping here tonight,” he ordered, dragging me into a massive bedroom. I looked around. The walk-in closet was filled with clothes in my exact size. The en-suite bathroom was stocked with the specific, drugstore brands I used. Sitting in the center of the massive king-sized bed was the giant, outrageously expensive stuffed bear I had once looked at in a store window but refused to let him buy. What was this supposed to be? Poison coated in sugar? A temporary anesthetic before the next round of psychological torture? My stomach heaved again. I gagged, my hair sticking to my tear-streaked face. Timothy frowned, stepping toward me, his voice suddenly shifting, laced with a strange urgency. “Nicole… are you…” Are you what? I saw a flicker of absolute elation cross his face, but it was instantly shattered by the sharp, aggressive click of high heels marching down the hardwood hallway. Una threw the bedroom doors open. She glared at me with pure, unfiltered hatred before raising her hand to slap me across the face. A visceral tremor shot through me. My body betrayed me, flinching violently as I squeezed my eyes shut, waiting for the impact. But the sting never came. Timothy had caught her wrist in mid-air. “What the hell is this?!” Una screamed, her face contorted in rage. “I told you to break her, not marry her! Timothy, did you actually fall in love with this trash?!” “She’s been a manipulative little bitch since we were kids! Stop letting her play you!” Timothy didn’t answer whether he loved me or not. He just stared at Una, his voice dangerously low. “The second you pushed me into her bed, you lost the right to ask me a damn thing.” I sat on the plush carpet, watching them scream at each other. A toxic, deeply entangled lovers’ quarrel. My head was spinning, my skin burning up with a fever. The last thing I heard through the haze was Una sobbing, “This is my room! Why would you put her in my room? You’re just doing this to make me jealous, aren’t you?!” I couldn’t hear the rest. I just smiled a little to myself. I smiled because I really was pathetic. To think, even for a second, that Timothy had an ounce of genuine feeling for me. He was nothing but a master manipulator, playing us both. 4. When I opened my eyes, the harsh fluorescent lights of a hospital room greeted me. Timothy was sitting by the bed. Dark, heavy bags shadowed his eyes, but a frantic, uncontainable smile stretched across his face. “You’re pregnant.” He reached out, tentatively resting his hand over my stomach. He pulled up the calendar on his phone. “I looked at some dates. What do you think of a spring wedding? We can still do the botanical garden venue you always wanted. I’ll fly a designer out for your dress. You can start looking at silhouettes.” “And as soon as the reception is over, we’re on a plane for the honeymoon. Didn’t you say you wanted to see the Amalfi Coast? We can stay for a month—” He was rambling, completely manic, aggressively painting over the wreckage with promises of a future. I didn’t say a word. I just stared at my phone screen. There was an email from HR. I had been terminated, effective immediately. Orders from the top. I didn’t even have to ask. If it wasn’t Timothy’s doing, it was Una’s family pulling strings. Five years. I had bled for that company for five years. Gone in a single keystroke because I dared to exist in their orbit. A notification popped up. A trending video on TikTok. Una’s face filled the screen. I clicked it. She had a massive following—millions of subscribers who tuned in to watch her ‘day in the life of an heiress’ vlogs. Why did she get to live such a charmed, beautiful life? Did she deserve it? The video currently breaking the internet was her, makeup flawlessly messy, sobbing into the camera about her tragically stolen childhood romance. She talked about how she and Timothy were soulmates. How he rented out entire amusement parks for her birthdays. How he had bought her rooms full of diamonds. And then, she mentioned me. The manipulative, poverty-stricken homewrecker who clawed her way into their inner circle and seduced him away. Within minutes, the comments were a warzone. Thousands of people were threatening to dox me, calling for my head. My hands shook. I glanced at Timothy, who was now on the phone, loudly demanding a wedding planner’s availability. I opened my notes app. I typed everything out. I attached the screenshots from the Discord server. The high school medical records. And I hit post. I watched the likes climb. I watched her loyal fans call my scars fake, accusing me of lying about the bullying. But then, other people—people who remembered us from high school—started chiming in, validating my proof. The tide was turning. Then, the screen refreshed. Post deleted. Una’s team had scrubbed it. Timothy walked back into the room, ending his call, his brow furrowed in disapproval. “Nicole, you need to stop being so impulsive,” he sighed. “Una is an influencer. She has to exaggerate things for views, it’s her job. I wouldn’t let her actually hurt you.” He paused, sitting on the edge of the bed. “Listen. We’re all going to be in the same social circles moving forward. You can’t make things this ugly. Just… go apologize to her. We’ll clear the air, smooth over the high school stuff, and put it behind us.” The corners of my mouth twitched into a terrifyingly empty smile. The void in my chest was so vast, it couldn’t even echo with anger anymore. I felt absolutely nothing. I nodded submissively. I let him dress me. I let him lead me by the hand into the VIP room of the city’s most exclusive restaurant. Timothy pressed a glass of cranberry juice into my hand as we walked in. Across the table sat Una, dripping in designer jewelry, looking at me with victorious, sneering eyes. She tilted her head. “Well? Apologize. Just like in high school. Get on your knees…” The room was packed with their friends. The same faces from the group chat. All of them smirking, waiting for the show. Just like they did when we were teenagers. I walked toward her, slow and deliberate. “I’m sorry,” I said, my voice eerily calm. “I am so sorry, Una. Let me apologize to a worthless, psychotic bitch like you—” I slashed the glass forward, throwing the dark red juice violently into her face. She shrieked, stumbling back, the red liquid dripping down her Chanel blazer, ruining her flawless makeup. Before anyone could react, I grabbed a heavy wine bottle from the table and smashed it over her head, letting the wine pour over her hair. “I apologize for being prettier than you!” I screamed, the numbness shattering into absolute, feral rage. “I apologize for being smarter than you!” “I apologize that the boys you liked always looked at me! I apologize that you had to torture me just to feel like you were worth breathing the same air!” Hands grabbed at me. I didn’t know whose. I didn’t care. I smashed the neck of the bottle against the table and whipped around, pointing the jagged glass at the room. “Whoever touches me is getting cut! I’ll kill you! I’ll kill all of you!” Una was sobbing on the floor. I lunged, wrapping my hand into her extensions, hauling her up, and bringing my hand across her face in a vicious, echoing slap. “Apologize to you? I’d rather die, you piece of trash!”
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