Category: English

I was wiping down the espresso machine behind the counter when a man walked up, a faint flush creeping up his neck, and asked for my number. I just stood there, the damp rag frozen in my hand, staring at him. Because the man standing in front of me was Wayne Croft. Technically speaking, we were bound by a massive, multi-million-dollar corporate marriage. Only, he hadn’t bothered to show up on our wedding day. After that, we’d indefinitely postponed signing the actual legal marriage certificate, leaving us as nothing more than strangers sharing a footnote in a press release. Just yesterday, he had called me out of the blue to tell me he had found the absolute love of his life and needed to end our arrangement. I had agreed instantly. Why would I care about severing a tie that existed only on paper? But now, less than twenty-four hours later, he was standing in my cafe, acting like a lovestruck teenager. What kind of twisted script was he playing at? 1 In the two years since our wedding, I hadn’t seen Wayne Croft once. Honestly, you couldn’t even call it a marriage. We had the lavish ceremony, the flowers, the society photographers, but we never signed the legal paperwork. He was a very busy man. He simply didn’t have the time. For the past two years, he had been stationed overseas, ruthlessly expanding Croft Enterprises’ global market share. But rumor had it he was flying back stateside this week. I’d been on edge ever since I heard. My life was finally peaceful, comfortable, and entirely my own. The absolute last thing I wanted was for him to drag me down to City Hall to make this farce legal. “Noelle, I heard Wayne is coming back. You need to pin him down and get that certificate signed, otherwise…” My mother called to nag me about it almost every single week. Before, I could use his geographical distance as a shield. This time, I could only offer a weak, noncommittal hum of agreement. The second I hung up on her, a string of unknown digits lit up my screen. I answered, bracing myself. “Hello? Who is this?” The voice on the other end hesitated, sounding slightly formal. “Is this Ms. Noelle Stratton?” It was a devastatingly good voice. Deep, resonant, the kind of voice that commanded boardrooms. “Speaking. What can I do for you?” “This is Wayne Croft.” My in-name-only husband? I pulled the phone away from my ear and stared at the screen. It really was him. Two years without a single phone call, I had honestly forgotten what it felt like to interact with him. Wait. Why was he calling me now? Was he actually going to demand I go to City Hall with him? My mind raced, trying to formulate an airtight excuse to get out of it. Then, his cool, detached voice filtered through the speaker. “Ms. Stratton, I am currently back in the States. If you have the time…” My heart lodged in my throat. “…I would like you to meet with my assistant to discuss the terms of our separation. Name your price. I will do everything in my power to accommodate it.” “I don’t have the time to—” The words died on my tongue. I blinked. Wait. Did he just say separation? Oh, thank God. “Ms. Stratton, my assistant can unconditionally work around your schedule,” he pressed, clearly mistaking my shock for resistance. “I have time! I absolutely have time!” I practically chirped. “I just double-checked my calendar. How about tomorrow afternoon?” Wayne didn’t question my sudden enthusiasm, mostly because he seemed in an even bigger rush than I was. “If possible, I’d prefer this afternoon. Just give me an address, and I’ll send my team to you.” He really wanted out. But when I took a second to think about it, it didn’t make any sense. Wayne Croft was notorious for being married to his work. He didn’t have time for feelings, let alone a messy personal life. He had agreed to our marriage purely for the corporate synergy between our families’ companies. Back then, I had purposely submitted the most unflattering photo of myself to the matchmakers, and he had still agreed. The merger was currently running flawlessly. Why sever the tie now? My curiosity won out. “Mr. Croft, forgive me for asking, but why the sudden rush to separate?” Silence stretched over the line for a fraction of a second. When he finally spoke, that icy boardroom detachment had completely melted. “Because I’ve met her.” He let out a breath. “It was love at first sight.” A bizarre shiver ran down my spine. I honestly couldn’t imagine what poor, unfortunate girl had become the fixation of this ruthless workaholic. “Got it, got it. Just asking. No ulterior motives here,” I assured him quickly. “But Mr. Croft, what about the partnership between our families?” His tone snapped right back to strictly business. “You don’t need to worry about that. The corporate partnership will remain entirely unaffected.” Perfect. That meant my parents couldn’t use the company as an excuse to lecture me anymore. “Fantastic. Have your assistant contact me, Mr. Croft.” 2 “Ms. Stratton, here are the contracts. Please take your time to review them.” Wayne’s assistant was the picture of elite professionalism. I had my own lawyer look everything over, and once I got the green light, I signed on the dotted line. A profound, weightless relief washed over me. By the time I got back to my apartment, I was hugging the folder to my chest, unable to stop smiling. Say what you want about Wayne Croft, but the man was extraordinarily generous. Not only did he sign over the deed to the downtown skyline penthouse I was currently living in, but he threw in a beachfront estate as well. Fifty million in liquid cash. And two percent of Croft Enterprises’ voting shares, which meant my annual dividends were going to be astronomical. I was in the middle of a private celebratory dance when my mother called again. “Noelle, I was talking to Mrs. Chen, and she said her husband saw Wayne at a tech summit yesterday. He’s back in the country early. Has he come home yet?” I froze, guilt pooling in my stomach. I absolutely could not tell her that I had just signed away my marriage to him without even looking him in the eye. “Uh, no. Not yet.” “Well, call him! Ask him how his flight was. Or better yet, go to his office. You two haven’t seen each other in years, you can’t afford to let—” Always the same song. Pin him down. Hold onto him. As if my very existence would cease to have meaning if I wasn’t attached to Wayne Croft. It was exhausting. “Right, right, I know. I’ve got to go, Mom. We’ll talk later.” I hung up, the joy instantly draining out of me. Growing up, I was always the smart one. My grades were flawless. But my parents poured every ounce of their ambition, their resources, and their pride into my older brother. They forced me into an art degree, refusing to let me study finance. Even when I built something successful on my own, they chalked it up to luck. Meanwhile, my brother could successfully tie his shoes and they’d throw a parade to celebrate his genius. I never understood it. Where was I lacking? In the end, they decided my only real value was acting as a pretty bargaining chip for a corporate merger. I had fought back, but it was like screaming into a void. That was the era of my life where I learned a hard truth: some people are simply incapable of changing. They didn’t abuse me; they provided for me. They just fundamentally, inherently believed a daughter was worth less than a son. And that realization was a splinter permanently lodged in my heart. I didn’t hate them enough to cut them off entirely, but I wasn’t going to let them control me anymore, either. I had treated the marriage to Wayne as a final repayment for raising me. Once I walked down that aisle, my debt was cleared. I wouldn’t be their pawn ever again. When I first married him, I had naive plans of setting ground rules, maybe making the best of a bad situation. But he was perpetually unreachable. Which turned out to be a blessing. It saved me the emotional labor. And now, he had given me a clean break and enough money to secure my freedom forever. Wayne Croft, you truly are a saint. 3 After graduating, I used my own savings to open a cafe. I was good at baking, and I loved experimenting. The artisan coffees and pastries I developed were constantly selling out. By year two, my shop had become one of the city’s trendiest spots. At nine-thirty in the morning, I rode my bicycle up to the back entrance. It was early, so the rush hadn’t started yet. A few regulars waved as I walked in. I ducked straight into the kitchen to test a new cake recipe. Gia, one of my shift leads, slid up next to me, her voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. “Boss, did you see that Bentley parked out front?” I pulled on my disposable gloves, glancing toward the dining room. “What Bentley?” “It’s been idling there since I unlocked the doors. The guy in the driver’s seat has come in to buy coffee twice already.” That was odd. Usually, people got their caffeine and left. “I thought it was just the driver,” Gia continued, practically vibrating with excitement. “But when you pulled up on your bike, the tinted window in the back rolled down.” She forgot to whisper, her voice squeaking upward. “Oh my god. Total smoke show.” “A smoke show?” “Like, high-level corporate god. The guy buying the coffee is definitely his chauffeur.” Gia gripped my arm. “The face, the nose, the eyes, a jawline that could legitimately cut glass… Ahhh, I’m dying!” I snapped a hairnet over my head, unimpressed. “Wow. Thrilling.” Gia clicked her tongue. “You’re immune because guys hit on you all day long, but I’m not. I officially declare Bentley Guy the hottest man of the month.” Gia lived for two things: pastries and men. We got a lot of influencers and models in the shop, and she meticulously ranked them. For her to declare a winner before noon was rare. “Oh my god, he’s coming in.” I peaked out from the kitchen, mildly curious. Toby, the barista on register, saw Gia staring and stepped aside with an amused smirk. “Good morning, sir! What can we get started for you?” Gia asked, beaming like a lottery winner. The man in the tailored suit didn’t look at the menu. He looked directly at the kitchen door. “I’m looking for her.” Gia blinked, confused. “I’m sorry, who?” “The woman you were just talking to in the back.” Realization dawned on Gia’s face. “One moment, please.” She ducked into the back, grabbing my arm and yanking me out from where I had crouched behind the prep table. “Why are you hiding? Confess right now. Is he one of your stalkers?” I felt like I had been struck by lightning. It was Wayne Croft. Standing in the middle of my cafe. Had he waited outside all morning just to ambush me? A wave of panic hit me. Did he regret the settlement? Was he here to demand the fifty million back? No way, the ink was dry! “Seriously, if you knew a guy who looked like this, why didn’t you tell me…” Gia was still rambling. “I don’t know him. We’re not close,” I hissed, pushing her aside. I stepped out to the counter, keeping my guard up. “Can I help you?” The shop was getting crowded. Surely, a CEO of his caliber wouldn’t make a scene demanding his money back in front of a dozen college students, right? Wayne stared at me for two solid seconds. Then, he pulled out his phone, the tips of his ears turning a bright, violent shade of pink. “I… I would like to ask for your number.” I just stared at him. Is he insane? Beside me, Gia was practically vibrating, shooting me wide-eyed looks that clearly said, Give it to him, you idiot! It took my brain three full seconds to process what was happening. He didn’t know who I was. He had no idea I was the wife he had abandoned for two years and divorced yesterday. He had just seen me riding my bike and… experienced love at first sight. The exact love at first sight he had used as an excuse to divorce me. And now, he was trying to pick me up. You literally couldn’t script this. “Is this… making you uncomfortable? Perhaps I’m being too forward,” Wayne stammered, his cheeks darkening. “It’s very forward. Which is why I’m not giving you my number,” I said flatly. He looked genuinely pained. “I apologize.” But he didn’t move toward the door. “Then… I’ll just order,” he said quietly. “An Americano. For here.” Gia snapped out of her trance and rang him up. I frowned, retreating to the kitchen. Was he planning to just camp out in my lobby? 4 He absolutely camped out. He ordered his coffee, had his chauffeur bring in a stack of leather-bound dossiers, and turned a corner table into his personal C-suite. I couldn’t exactly kick a paying customer out, so I spent the entire shift hiding in the back room. By mid-afternoon, the cafe was packed, and seating was scarce. I flagged Gia down and told her to go casually suggest to Wayne that he might be more comfortable elsewhere. She returned five minutes later, shaking her head. “Bentley Guy just bought three more coffees, a dozen pastries, and said he wants to rent out the private room upstairs for the next two weeks. Says he’s setting up a remote office.” I glared at her. “Please tell me you quoted him an extortionate rate.” Gia sighed. “I threw out a ridiculous number. A thousand dollars a day. Do you know what he countered with?” I had a very bad feeling about this. “Six thousand, six hundred and sixty-six dollars a day. Pastries and coffee billed separately.” Wayne Croft. Still tossing money around like it was confetti. As much as I wanted to accept that kind of absurd cash, I couldn’t run a business like that. I untied my apron and sighed. “I’ll deal with him.” He must have anticipated I’d come out eventually. As I approached the table, he took a delicate bite of a lemon tart. “This is exceptional. The coffee is perfect, too.” “I am not interested in you. Stop wasting your time on me.” I didn’t bother with pleasantries. Wayne didn’t flinch. “I gathered that. But I have to at least try.” The sheer audacity of the man. I was momentarily speechless. He took advantage of my silence. “I didn’t ask to rent the room just to harass you. I genuinely need the space. The coffee, the food, the atmosphere—it’s exactly what I need right now. I want to work from here.” He paused. “If you feel my offer wasn’t high enough, I can double it.” Good lord. Does he think money grows on trees? It was obvious he wasn’t going to give up easily. I briefly debated just dropping the bomb on him. Hey, I’m the ex-wife you dumped yesterday. But I quickly scrapped the idea. Knowing him, the guilt would just make him pursue me harder as some twisted form of compensation. My eyes narrowed as a better idea formed. “You don’t need to pay thousands. Standard rates apply,” I said coldly. “Two hundred dollars a day for the private room. Food and drink are extra. Deal?” Wayne let out a breath he’d been holding. “Deal.” 5 That night, my mother called again. “Did Wayne go home? Did you go to his office?” Wayne, Wayne, Wayne. It was always about him. Sometimes I wondered if she had given birth to him instead of me. Could she really not ask about my day for five seconds before bringing him up? I gave her a few clipped, dismissive answers and hung up. Given how frantic she was acting, I definitely couldn’t tell her about the divorce yet. The fallout would be nuclear. I’d have to drip-feed them the truth eventually. I crawled under my duvet, exhausted. Every time I closed my eyes, all I saw was Wayne’s earnest face staring at me over an Americano. He was infuriating. But it was fine. By tomorrow, I’d make sure he gave up for good.

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The moment Miranda Simon smashed my birthday cake, I realized our five-year marriage was nothing more than a well-rehearsed punchline. The cake—a custom order my family had sent over—lay in a heap on the hardwood floor. Vanilla sponge and fresh strawberries were smeared across the grain like a crime scene. Miranda didn’t look at the mess. She didn’t look at me with anything but a cold, sharpened edge of resentment. “Did you seriously forget what day it is?” she asked, her voice dropping to a dangerous low. “It’s the anniversary of Beck’s mother’s passing. And you’re standing here worried about a damn cake?” The words felt like a serrated blade to the chest. Every birthday for the last five years flashed before my eyes—each one spent in a state of forced mourning, a heavy silence dictated by her. My birthday happened to fall on the anniversary of the day Beck’s mother died. Beck was her “soulmate” of a best friend, the boy-next-door she had grown up with. Because of that coincidence, my birthday was a forbidden subject. No celebrations, no decorations, not even a stray smile. When friends asked why we never threw a party, I’d offer a tight, practiced shrug and say, “Maybe next year.” But “next year” was a ghost that never arrived. Driven by a sudden, hollow impulse, I followed her to the memorial garden. I watched from a distance as she stood by the headstone, listening to the whispers of the gathered mourners. They called her “the daughter the deceased never had,” and “the rock Beck leans on.” She was the “perfect woman” in everyone’s eyes. Standing there, watching her play the role of Beck’s grieving partner, I felt a bone-deep exhaustion settle over me. I walked up to her, the grass crunching beneath my shoes. Without a word, I slid the wedding band off my finger. “Miranda,” I said, my voice steady for the first time in years. “I want a divorce.” … Miranda froze for a second, her eyes flickering with a momentary shock before settling back into a familiar, jagged impatience. “You’re really doing this? Because of a stupid cake, you’re making a scene at a cemetery? This isn’t the place for your tantrums, Jude.” “I’m serious,” I said, each word deliberate. “I’m leaving you.” Realizing I wasn’t backing down, the mask of the grieving socialite began to crack. The small crowd of mourners went silent, their eyes darting between us. In a swift, protective motion, Miranda stepped in front of Beck, shielding him. She swung her hand, knocking the ring out of my palm. It vanished into the tall grass. She gave me a look of pure, filtered condescension. “Is this what this is? A pathetic display of territory? You’re jealous because I’m here for Beck’s mother? I told you, Jude—show some respect for the dead.” Respect for the dead. That was her mantra. Every year on my birthday, there were no sunflowers—my favorite. Only endless wreaths of white chrysanthemums. No dinner reservations, only memorial offerings. No “Happy Birthday,” no warmth. Whenever my own mother called to wish me a happy birthday, I had to retreat to the bathroom and whisper my thanks in the dark, as if celebrating my own life was a sin I had to hide. It never occurred to her that I owed no debt of mourning to her best friend’s family. I opened my mouth to speak, but the words felt stuck in my throat, choked by years of silence. Seeing my hesitation, Miranda’s tone softened, though it was the kind of softness used for a disobedient child. She held out a small bouquet of daisies. “Just admit you’re wrong and we can go home. I’ll make it up to you later this week. Since you’re here, the least you can do is pay your respects. She was always kind to you.” A bitter laugh bubbled up in my chest. Everyone in our circle knew the truth: Beck’s mother had loathed me. She saw me as an intruder in the “perfect” life her son and Miranda were supposed to share. Miranda knew better than anyone that the woman had once purposefully fed me something she knew I was allergic to, sending me to the ER just so she could have a “family night” alone with her son and Miranda. I dropped the daisies onto the dirt. A collective gasp went up from the crowd. Miranda’s eyes went dark, her patience finally snapping. “Jude Holloway, that is enough!” She lashed out with her foot, kicking a small, decorative brass brazier nearby. The hot coals spilled out, several of them landing directly on my calf. The heat seared through my trousers, and I felt the skin blister instantly. I doubled over, a cold sweat breaking out on my forehead as the sharp, throbbing pain radiated up my leg. Miranda’s breath hitched for a fraction of a second, but the disgust in her eyes didn’t waver. “Beck is starting at the firm tomorrow. He’s overwhelmed. You’re going to train him. And if you can’t handle that, you can pack your desk and get out of my company.” Her gaze fell on the employee ID badge clipped to my belt—a job I had worked eighty-hour weeks to excel at. It was a threat, plain and simple. I pressed my lips together and forced a nod. “Fine.” A flash of confusion crossed her face, but before she could speak, Beck pulled at her sleeve, whispering about the service. She turned her back on me, her hand resting protectively on his shoulder. I walked out of the cemetery, my leg screaming in pain, and dialed a number I hadn’t called in years. “I need a divorce lawyer. Have the papers ready by tomorrow.” Miranda didn’t come home that night. She was never one for social media, claiming it was beneath her, yet she posted three separate, long-winded tributes to Beck’s mother. Beck’s comment was pinned at the top: Miranda, having you here to talk through the night… I know Mom is looking down from Heaven and smiling at us. I sat alone in our dark kitchen and lit a single candle on a grocery-store cupcake. I made a wish. For the first time in five years, it wasn’t for her to love me back. It was for the strength to never look back. The next morning, the sound of crashing and laughter from downstairs jolted me awake. When I walked into the kitchen, the house looked like a disaster zone. The dining table was covered in blue frosting. Half-eaten cake was everywhere, and balloons were taped haphazardly to the walls. Across a banner draped over the fireplace were the words: Happy Birthday, Beck. My stomach turned. Of course. It wasn’t just his mother’s death anniversary; it was his birthday, too. For five years, Miranda could always find the time to celebrate him. She could drop everything for his birthday, his “promotion” parties, even the anniversary of the first time they’d met. Miranda walked out of the study, seeing my expression. She didn’t look guilty. “Beck was a mess after you pulled that stunt at the cemetery,” she said, pouring herself a coffee. “I let him bring a few people over to cheer him up.” When I didn’t respond, she sighed, her tone shifting to an annoyed defense. “If it bothers you that much, I guess next year we can—” “It doesn’t bother me,” I interrupted. She blinked, startled by the lack of fire in my voice. “Don’t lie. You’ve always hated having Beck in the house.” It was true. Beck used to find every excuse to stay over, sometimes even crashing in our guest room for weeks on end. I had spent years screaming, pleading, and fighting to keep our home private. But that was when I still cared about what happened within these walls. Now, she could invite the whole city for all I cared. My phone chimed incessantly. The company group chat was exploding. Beck is a genius! That marketing strategy he presented this morning was incredible! Not surprised, he’s been Miranda’s right hand forever. Excellence is contagious! Beck, you’re buying the first round of drinks tonight! I opened the file attached to the messages. My blood ran cold. Every word, every data point, every creative hook—it was the project I had spent the last three months building. Miranda followed my gaze to the screen. She spoke with a breezy nonchalance that made me feel sick. “Beck was under a lot of pressure starting today. I gave him your project to present so he could get a win under his belt. You’re talented, Jude. You can just come up with another one.” I looked at her, truly looked at her. I remembered the nights I’d spent in the office until 2:00 AM, the red-rimmed eyes, the missed dinners. She had seen all of it. And she had handed it to him like it was nothing but a scrap of paper. “There’s one more thing,” Miranda said, her voice dropping into that low, executive tone. “Beck likes your family’s plot at the hillside cemetery. His spiritual advisor said the feng shui is perfect for his mother’s re-interment. Consider it your apology for yesterday.” I stared at her, certain I had misheard. “Are you insane? That’s where my father is buried. The plot next to him is for my mother.” My father’s dying wish had been to be buried next to my mother. He’d spent years scouting locations before they found that specific hillside. Miranda’s face hardened. “It’s a piece of land, Jude. You humiliated Beck yesterday. This is how you make it right.” “Absolutely not,” I said, my voice trembling with rage. Miranda didn’t argue. She simply reached into her bag and tossed a stack of medical bills onto the coffee table. “Your mother’s private care is being funded by my accounts. Is a piece of dirt more important than the woman currently breathing because of my money?” The world seemed to tilt. The roar in my ears was deafening. I thought of my mother, frail and fading in that hospital bed, and the weight of the debt crushed the air from my lungs. I swallowed the bile rising in my throat. “Fine. Take it. I’ll move my father’s remains tomorrow.” Miranda’s expression softened into a terrifyingly smug satisfaction. She finally noticed the suitcase tucked into the corner of the hallway. “Where are you going?” “A business trip,” I lied, my voice hollow. “Internal audit.” I turned and walked upstairs. I didn’t need to look back to know she was already texting Beck the good news. The next day, under a gray, overcast sky, Miranda and Beck arrived at the cemetery for the “transfer.” A small crowd of their social circle had gathered, whispering as I arrived. “There he is. The man who can’t even celebrate a birthday or let his father rest in peace.” “Beck and Miranda are so much more suited for each other. They’re a power couple.” “It’s only a matter of time before Jude is out of the picture entirely.” I clenched my fists, watching as the excavators began to move the earth over my father’s grave. Beck stood there like a victor, a sympathetic but oily smile on his face. “Jude, man,” Beck whispered, leaning in and gripping my arm tight enough to bruise. “I just mentioned the view once. I had no idea Miranda would go this far. You’re not mad, are you?” I jerked my arm away, my eyes locked on the casket being hoisted from the ground. The shame was a physical weight, a suffocating heat in my chest. As the workers moved to transfer the remains, Beck stepped forward. “Let me help with the urn…” He reached out, his hands slick and uncoordinated. The urn slipped. He let out a sharp, theatrical gasp. “Oh my god! Jude, I’m so sorry! I was just trying to help—” The urn hit the stone path and shattered. My father’s ashes scattered into the mud, caught in the damp wind. I began to shake. My vision went red. Before I knew what I was doing, my fist was flying toward Beck’s face. But Miranda was faster. She stepped between us and slapped me so hard my head snapped to the side. “Are you insane?!” she screamed. “You’re going to assault someone in a cemetery?” The metallic taste of blood filled my mouth. I was past the point of reason. Suddenly, Beck dropped to his knees in front of Miranda, his face a mask of trembling fear. “Miranda, please, I didn’t mean it… but I have to tell you. The reason I wanted to move my mom here wasn’t just the view. Jude’s been hiring people to vandalize her old grave. They’ve been throwing trash, painting slurs… I couldn’t take it anymore.” Miranda turned to me, her eyes filled with a profound, icy disappointment. “Jude. I didn’t think even you could sink this low.” I leaned against the stone wall of a nearby crypt just to stay upright. “You want to talk about low?” I rasped. “Then let’s talk about the divorce.” I pulled the papers from my jacket and threw them at her feet. She looked at the bold heading on the first page and recoiled. “You’re really doing this?” she hissed. “Fine. Get out. Within three days, you’ll be crawling back, begging for a check to pay your mother’s hospital bills. We’ll see how long your pride lasts then.” She signed the papers with a flourish, grabbed Beck’s hand, and stormed off. I collapsed to my knees, my fingers trembling as I tried to scoop what was left of my father’s ashes from the dirt. I felt like a ghost inhabiting a dead man’s body. As the crowd dispersed, my phone rang. It was the hospital. “Mr. Holloway? Your mother has taken a turn for the worse. She needs emergency surgery immediately, but your primary insurance and the linked credit cards have been frozen.” I felt the blood drain from my face. Miranda always kept the accounts topped up. She wouldn’t… I called the company’s CFO. He sounded hesitant, pitying. “Jude, I’m sorry. Miranda gave Beck power of attorney over your personal accounts this morning. She said you needed to ‘learn some perspective’ before your access is restored.” The phone slipped through my fingers. I didn’t think. I drove straight to the office, my body vibrating with a primal, desperate terror. I burst into the lobby and ran to Beck’s new corner office. “Give me my cards,” I choked out, my voice failing me. “I need the money. It’s for my mother.” Miranda stepped out of the adjacent conference room and shoved me back with a force that sent me stumbling into the glass partition. “You’re hovering over him like a predator, Jude! You’re scaring him!” “My mother is dying!” I screamed, my voice raw. “She needs the surgery now!” “Enough!” Miranda yelled. “You think I’m stupid? You’re using your dying mother to scam me for money so you can hire more people to harass Beck. She’s in the best hospital in the state; she’s fine. I’m not rewarding your lies anymore.” I looked into her eyes. The woman who had once promised to build a world with me was gone. In her place was a stranger, cold and blinded by a lie she chose to believe. Miranda signaled for security. “Get him out of here.” I spent the next hour frantically calling everyone I knew. The cruelty of Miranda Simon ran deeper than I imagined. “Jude, I’d love to help, but I’m a little tight this month…” “Sorry, man, Miranda already called. She said if any of us lend you money, we’re blacklisted from the Simon contracts.” “I can’t, Jude. She’s my boss.” I sat in my car, gripping the steering wheel until my knuckles turned white. When I finally made it back to the hospital, I looked at my mother’s pale, translucent skin and pulled the heavy gold signet ring from my finger—my father’s heirloom, the only thing Miranda had ever given me that I valued. “Please,” I begged the administrator. “This is solid gold. It’s worth at least fifty thousand. Just start the prep for surgery.” The man took the ring, looked at it for three seconds, and handed it back with a look of profound pity. “Mr. Holloway… this is gold-plated iron. It’s a costume piece. It’s worth maybe fifty dollars.” The sound the ring made as it hit the floor was hollow. Miranda had given it to me on my birthday last year. I had cherished it, believing it was a sign that I finally meant something to her. I sat by my mother’s bed and watched the monitor flatline. The silence that followed was the loudest thing I’d ever heard. Five minutes after her heart stopped, my phone buzzed. A notification: Fifty thousand dollars deposited into your account. A text from Miranda followed: I might have been too harsh. I just didn’t want you hurting Beck. Use this for whatever ’emergency’ you’ve cooked up. I’ve set up a birthday dinner at the house tonight. Consider it an olive branch. I didn’t reply. I picked up a candle from the bedside table, struck a match, and watched the flame dance. Miranda, your hollow love isn’t worth saving anymore. At the house, Miranda paced the dining room, glancing at her phone. The table was set for two. “Where is he?” she snapped at her assistant. “Find him.” The assistant’s phone chirped. His face went ghostly white. “Miranda… look at the news. There’s a video. Your husband’s mother’s hospital wing… it’s on fire.”

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The blue light of my phone cut through the darkness of the office. It was a text from Rachel. Just a reminder to pay the electric bill and the water. I swiped the notification and opened my banking app, scrolling through the autopay history. For six years, this had been our rhythm. Rent, utilities, HOA fees, the parking pass for her SUV—it all came out of my account. Rachel venmoed me fifteen hundred dollars every month. “For the groceries,” she’d say, always with a kiss on the cheek. She told me work was draining, that she was grinding so she could save every penny for us. She promised that one day, she’d be the one to take care of me, to buy us the house with the wraparound porch, to give me the stability I’d never had. My mind drifted back to a post I’d seen on my feed earlier that afternoon. Some guy was bragging about his “Queen.” He posted screenshots of her monthly transfers—forty thousand dollars a month, labeled Wedding Fund. He wrote about how she never hesitated to spend on him, how she was always there when he called, how she provided a “safety net” that made him feel invincible. The comments were a sea of heart-eyes and “goals.” I had stared at that post until my eyes burned. Because the girl in the profile picture, the one he called his “Queen,” was Rachel. It was a secondary account I wasn’t supposed to know about. And her post-tax salary? It was exactly forty-five thousand a month. With fingers that wouldn’t stop shaking, I sent the guy a DM. Do you know your girlfriend has another boyfriend? … I waited for hours. Silence. Then, thirty minutes later, the guy posted an update. They were at Disneyland. Under the neon glow of the fireworks, I saw the silhouette of a woman’s face—that sharp, elegant profile I knew better than my own. Even in the blurry light, the way she looked at him was unmistakable. It was a look of pure, unadulterated adoration. The air left my lungs in a sharp wheeze. He was sharing tips on the best rides, his captions dripping with the smug happiness of a man who knows he is deeply, securely loved. “So sweet,” the comments read. “A match made in heaven.” I shut off the screen. The office was silent, save for the hum of the HVAC. The spreadsheet on my monitor blurred into a mess of meaningless numbers. When I finally got home, Rachel was waiting. She took my bag like she always did and pointed toward the kitchen, where a bowl of carbonara sat steaming on the table. “You look exhausted, Daniel,” she said softly. “Eat. You need the energy.” It was her ritual. Whenever I pulled a late shift, she made sure there was a hot meal waiting. It was the kind of domestic grace that had kept me hooked for a decade. I sat down and stirred the pasta, the steam rising to meet my face, but I couldn’t bring myself to take a bite. Rachel didn’t notice. She was busy zipping up a suitcase. “Company’s sending me to Sedona for three days,” she said, her back to me. “Take care of yourself while I’m gone, okay?” I froze. I looked at her, my throat feeling like it was lined with glass. “Sedona?” In the post I’d seen earlier, the guy mentioned he’d been feeling down, so his “girl” had booked a three-day retreat in Arizona to help him clear his head. Rachel’s shoulders stiffened for a fraction of a second. She turned around, a bright, practiced smile plastered on her face. “Yeah. Just a boring retreat. I’ll be back before you know it.” I nodded slowly. I set the fork down. “Rachel, let’s get married. For real. This year.” A flash of something—was it pity?—crossed her eyes. She sat beside me and pinched my cheek, the way she might a child’s. “Patience, babe. Just a little longer. I’m looking at listings. We need the perfect spot first.” Just a little longer. It was always the same refrain. I thought about the guy’s posts. Rachel hadn’t just given him “security”; she’d bought him a sixty-thousand-dollar condo downtown as “pre-marital property” in his name only. A few months later, a brand new Audi appeared in his driveway. [Shoutout to my girl’s year-end bonus. Debt-free and driving in style,] the caption had read. Every memory of our life together started to reformat itself, like a corrupted hard drive. When I’d mentioned wanting a dog, Rachel had laughed and said we were too busy, that it wouldn’t be fair to the animal. Then I saw the picture of the Ragdoll kitten she’d bought for Joey. When I wanted to try that new Michelin-star place, she’d claimed she was buried in paperwork. The next day, she’d rented a suite of camera gear to help Joey shoot his “lifestyle” content. She didn’t lack time. She didn’t lack money. She just didn’t want to spend either of them on me. I pushed the bowl away and walked into the bedroom without a word. The next morning, Rachel kissed my forehead while I pretended to sleep. “Love you, Danny. See you soon.” The door clicked shut, the wheels of her suitcase rattling down the hallway. I opened my eyes and stared at the ceiling. My phone buzzed. The reply I’d waited for all night finally arrived. [I know she has a boyfriend,] Joey wrote. [You’re the high school sweetheart, right? The one she’s been with for ten years.] I sat up, my heart hammering against my ribs. Before I could type a response, he sent a photo. It was the two of them, fingers interlaced, cheeks pressed together, grinning like they’d just won the lottery. [Rachel says she’s been bored with you for years,] the text continued. [The only reason she hasn’t dumped you is she’s afraid you’ll spiral again. Something about your history with depression? She didn’t want your blood on her hands.] [Look, I didn’t know about you at first. But when she told me, I realized I could wait. I’m not looking for trouble. This arrangement works for all three of us, doesn’t it?] I gripped the phone so hard the edges dug into my palm. Every word felt like a physical blow, a heavy stone dropped into the pit of my stomach until I was nothing but bruised, hollowed-out meat. I went through the motions of the day. Shower, coffee, commute. At noon, a delivery driver arrived at my desk with a bag from my favorite deli. Rachel. She knew I’d forget to eat when I was stressed, so she ordered for me every single day. The note was the same as always: No onions, extra pickles. Eat up, I’m watching you! Love, R. She sent a “landed safely” text right after. I stared at the sandwich until the bread got soggy. I had no appetite. I walked down to the park and sat on a bench. A group of college students walked by, laughing, oblivious. I thought about the girl who had saved me. Rachel had been my hero when we were seventeen. When the bullies at school had put glue on my chair, she was the one who stood up for the entire period so I could have hers. When they’d spray-painted slurs on my locker, she’d given me her oversized hoodie to hide my shaking frame. When someone poured a tray of cafeteria food over my head, she’d been the one to swing first, landing herself in detention while I sat in the nurse’s office. I’d cried and asked her why she cared. She had cupped my face with hands that smelled like cheap perfume and pencil lead. “Daniel,” she had said, her eyes like a calm lake. “You aren’t what they say you are. Your mother’s mistakes aren’t yours to carry.” She’d looked at the faint, silver lines on my wrists—scars I’d made in the dark—and whispered, “Promise me you’ll never hurt yourself again. I’m here now.” Those words had been my anchor. My mother had been the “other woman” in a high-profile scandal that had left us pariahs in our small town. I was used to the whispers, the disgust. I was ready to let go of everything. But Rachel had been the light that caught me in freefall. I walked back to the office, ten years of memories churning in my gut. And then, the anchor snapped. [Rachel says she’s been bored with you for years.] The screech of tires hit my ears before the impact hit my body. I was on the ground before I realized I’d walked into the street. My head was ringing. Everything was white. My first instinct—my only instinct—was to call her. It went to voicemail. The driver was out of the car, frantic, checking my pulse, but I was in a cold, dark dream. The mechanical voice telling me the “user was busy” was the final shove into the abyss. I started texting Joey. I was manic, the words spilling out in a flood of grief. [What is she doing? Why isn’t she answering?] [How could you take her from me?] [Give her back. Just give her back!] [You’re a homewrecker. Do you have any shame at all?] I sobbed into the screen, my hot tears blurring the glass as I curled into a ball on the asphalt. Hours later, the phone rang. Rachel’s voice was sharp, vibrating with a cold, jagged anger I’d never heard before. “Daniel, enough! Why are you harassing Joey? Stop acting like a lunatic!” Rachel took the first flight back. But she didn’t come alone. Joey stood in my living room, looking exactly like his photos—young, soft-featured, and terrified. Rachel held his hand, standing in front of him in a defensive stance, guarding him from me. “Now that you know, there’s no point in lying,” she said. Her voice was flat. No guilt. No apology. She looked at him as if he were her true North. “I love Joey, Daniel. It’s that simple.” It was a haunting echo of high school. When people used to mock her for hanging around the “freak,” she’d admit she loved me just as boldly. Yeah, I like Daniel. If you have a problem with him, you have a problem with me. “But you said…” my voice was a raspy ghost of itself. “You said I was the only one. You said ‘forever’ every morning.” Those vows had been the bricks of my house. I thought I was living in a fortress; I didn’t realize it was a cardboard box in the rain. Joey let out a small, nervous laugh. “Dude, how can you be this naive?” Rachel’s lips curled into a faint, weary smile. “Daniel, I did love you. At the time. But what I feel for Joey… it’s real. I’m going to spend the rest of my life with him.” The tears came again, hot and stinging against the scrapes on my arms from the accident. I grabbed a glass from the coffee table and hurled it at them. “You’re disgusting! Get out! Both of you!” Joey shrieked and dove behind her. Rachel didn’t flinch. She just stared at me with a look of pure, unadulterated venom. “Yeah, we’re the ‘bad guys,’” she spat. “But are we really any worse than your mother? The woman who couldn’t stay out of married men’s beds? You’re her son, Daniel. Don’t act like you’re some saint. I love Joey because we have a connection. Your mother did it for a paycheck. So don’t you dare look down on us.” The room seemed to tilt. The roar in my ears was deafening. “Joey’s parents are decent people,” she continued, her words cutting like a serrated blade. “Not like yours. You’re broken, Daniel. You’re a mess, and you’ve always been a mess. You’re unstable. You’re a freak!” She led him out, slamming the door so hard the frames on the wall rattled. I sank to the floor. The sun went down, and the shadows stretched across the room like reaching fingers. I tried to stand up to find the light switch, but I tripped over the coffee table, landing hard on the shards of the broken glass. The pain in my palms was sharp and hot. I watched the blood bloom across my skin, but I didn’t move. The old Rachel… she used to say my mother’s sins weren’t mine. She used to say she’d be my shield. The girl who had once stood between me and the world was now the one holding the sword. I pulled my knees to my chest, trying to hide my wounds from the empty room. A few days later, Rachel came back. Alone. I woke up to the smell of lemon pledge and chicken soup. The apartment was spotless. A vase of fresh lilies sat on the dining table. Rachel was standing there, ladling soup into a bowl. She sat on the edge of the bed and blew on a spoonful, offering it to me. “Look at you,” she whispered, her voice thick with performative pity. “You can’t even function without me.” I turned my head away. She sighed and stroked my hair. “Daniel, stop. Your boss called me. He said you haven’t been in for three days. When I walked in, the place smelled like a brewery and old takeout. I talked to Joey. He’s going to stay at a hotel for a while. You just need to rest.” Her voice was so soft, but when she said Joey’s name, there was a spark of something—a lingering sweetness—she couldn’t hide. It was the same tone she’d used when she talked about me in college. I remembered how she’d take the train for six hours just to see me for twenty minutes between my exams because she didn’t want me to feel lonely. Everyone knew Rachel belonged to Daniel. I just didn’t realize how short “forever” was. “Daniel, I’m sorry about how it happened. Just… don’t be mean to Joey anymore. He’s been through enough.” She was begging me. Begging me not to hurt the boy she loved. I let out a hollow, bitter laugh. My phone buzzed on the nightstand. She checked it instantly. She gave me a quick, distracted pat on the shoulder and hurried out the door. I dragged myself out of bed and went to the window. Down in the parking lot, Joey—dressed in a designer jacket I’d probably paid for—jumped into her arms. They clung to each other like they were the only two people left on earth. I opened my phone and looked at the messages Joey had been sending me all week. She fell for me the second she saw me. She’d die for me. I’m a nice guy, Daniel. I’ll wait for you to get your head straight so you can break up with her peacefully. I don’t mind sharing her for a bit. I’m generous like that. He’d sent me screenshots of the bank transfers. Photos of them on vacation. A list of the gifts she’d bought him. Rachel loved with her whole heart; she just had a different heart now. A notification popped up. Today is your 10th Anniversary. Rachel wasn’t coming home for it. Joey had already told me that today was also their six-month anniversary. The irony was so thick I could taste it. I went into the bathroom and looked at the stranger in the mirror. I showered. I shaved. I put on a clean suit. I replied to my boss and my colleagues. Then, I started packing. By the time night fell, the apartment was a tomb. Joey sent one last video. It was a minute long. A hotel room. The sound of heavy breathing, of skin on skin, of Rachel whispering things to him she used to whisper to me. [You’re too fragile, man,] the text read. [I’m the one she wants. Stop being the pathetic ex. Take a hint.] I felt a wave of nausea so violent I nearly gagged. I blocked him. Rachel had been the sun in my world. I didn’t realize that when the sun goes out, it only takes a second for everything to freeze. I zipped my last suitcase and walked out the door without looking back. Two days later, Rachel returned to a silent home. She walked through the rooms, a strange, creeping dread settling in her bones. On the mirror in the entryway, there was a single Post-it note. [Ten years. I’m gifting them back to you.]

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In the most exclusive high-stakes lounge in Manhattan, I became Sean’s collateral. He pushed me across the velvet-covered table like a stack of plastic chips, all for a chance to spend a single night with Isabella—the club’s most elusive and legendary “Diamond Girl.” I bit my lip so hard I tasted copper, my face drained of color. Sean merely patted my hand, his voice dripping with a terrifying, arrogant confidence. He told me that everyone in the city knew I was his property—that even if he lost, no one would dare lay a finger on me. He was wrong. He lost the best-of-three series in a humiliating landslide. But the real twist wasn’t the loss. It was Isabella. Moved by Sean’s reckless, million-dollar grand gesture, she accepted his pursuit right then and there. Within the hour, they were on a private jet bound for a secluded island in the Pacific, disappearing into a month-long honeymoon phase. And I? I was left behind, being dragged toward a back room by a group of leering, middle-aged men with greasy smiles. In the 11th hour, Verna—the woman who ran the club with an iron fist—stepped in. She gave me two choices. I could wait for Sean to eventually come back and pay the fifty million to redeem me, though she couldn’t guarantee what would happen to me in the meantime. Or, I could step into the vacuum Isabella left behind, become Verna’s protege, and finally earn a name for myself in this city. I looked up, my eyes burning with a resolve I hadn’t felt in years. I chose the second path. 1. Verna’s gaze sharpened with something like respect. “Sean staked you for fifty million,” she said, her voice cool. “In his mind, you’re quite the prize.” I looked down, silence stretching between us. I wasn’t the prize. He just thought Isabella was worth that price tag. Back in the room Verna assigned me, I buried myself under the duvet. The sheer, visceral humiliation of the night made me shake uncontrollably. Every socialite in the city knew I was Sean’s “plus-one,” his favorite toy. People whispered behind my back about how I was a gold-digger, a girl with no soul and an appetite for designer labels. What they didn’t know was the reality of my life: the parents in a private care facility whose medical bills burned through cash like a forest fire, and a younger brother at Oxford whose future depended entirely on me. Sean had been good to me, in his own twisted way. He was never stingy. I had been naive enough to believe there was a flicker of genuine affection behind the jewelry. I never imagined he would put me on the table just to win another woman. The next morning, Verna sent over a velvet box containing a spectacular jewelry set. “A gift from Mr. Cross,” she said. “Sent via courier. I suppose he’s trying to play ‘apology’ from his private island. He might be a bastard, but he certainly spends like a king. This set went for ten million at auction. Half the trophy wives in the Hamptons would kill for this treatment.” I looked at the sparkling diamonds, my voice unnervingly steady. “Verna, since it’s mine, help me sell it.” I looked her in the eye. “I need the capital.” Verna nodded, a slow, appreciative smile spreading across her face. “Good girl. Smart women suffer less. Remember this: never feel guilty about the money you can take, and never, ever hallucinate about the ‘heart’ you can’t.” Take the money. Don’t dream of the heart. I repeated those words in my mind three times, chewing on them until they tasted like iron. I smiled until my eyes stung, a dull ache radiating through my chest. If I had understood this simple truth five years ago, maybe it wouldn’t hurt so much now. 2. I met Sean five years ago. Back then, I was a cocktail waitress, desperate and drowning in debt. One night, a drunk client threw a wad of cash at my face and tried to pull my clothes off right there in the booth. Sean, trailing a cloud of expensive cigar smoke, shattered a bottle over the man’s head without blinking. He looked at me—shaking, covered in spilled gin—and his lips curled into a faint, dangerous smirk. “A hundred thousand a month. Do you want to be mine?” Over the next five years, the women in his orbit changed like the seasons. There were girls more beautiful than me, girls who knew how to play the game better, but they all eventually faded into the background. I was the only one who stayed. For five years, I was the constant. Eventually, even his inner circle of trust-fund brats started joking about it over poker. “Sean, it’s been five years, man. Don’t tell me you’re actually catching feelings for your little songbird?” Sean would just laugh, a careless, hollow sound. “She’s too fragile,” he’d say. “If she left me, the world would eat her alive.” He treated me like a pet, yes, but the favoritism was blatant. Three years ago, at a dinner party, a nouveau-riche developer made a crude joke about me. “Hey Sean, when you’re done with her, pass her over. I don’t mind second-hand goods if they look like that.” Before the laughter could even land, a heavy glass ashtray collided with the man’s forehead. Sean grabbed him by the hair and ground his face into the shattered glass. As the room went silent with shock, Sean dropped to one knee in front of me. He took a warm towel and gently wiped a stray drop of blood off my leg. Before we left, he scanned the room, his eyes dark and predatory. “Let’s be clear,” he said. “She is mine. For life. Anyone who thinks otherwise will lose more than just a tooth.” 3. I didn’t see him again for a month. When I finally did, it was in the club’s most opulent VIP suite. Isabella sat there, draped in haute couture, leaning into Sean with a soft, practiced grace. I walked in wearing a sleek, professional black suit, my movements disciplined as I poured their drinks. “Your vintage, Mr. Cross.” Sean’s expression darkened the moment he saw me. Halfway through the game, he irritably shoved his chips aside. “I’m done,” he snapped. He ignored the confused looks of his friends and dragged me out onto the balcony overlooking the city skyline. “Jade,” he said, his voice tight. “How have you been this month?” I pulled my hand back, stepping out of his personal space. “Thanks to you, I’ve been doing quite well here.” I saw his shoulders relax slightly. He actually looked relieved. “I knew it. Verna wouldn’t dare mistreat you, not with my reputation on the line.” I thought of what Verna told me: As soon as Sean pays the fifty million, you’re free to go. My fingers tightened at my sides. “Sean… Verna mentioned that once you settle the debt, I could…” My voice trailed off. Sean avoided my gaze, looking out at the neon lights of the city. “Jade, don’t be in such a rush,” he murmured. “Isabella hasn’t been feeling well lately. I’ve had my hands full taking care of her. Once she’s settled and feeling better, I’ll come get you.” I looked at the floor, cursing my own stupidity. I was still looking for hope from the man who had traded me like a used car. The silence was broken by a scream from the suite. Isabella. Sean’s face transformed instantly. We ran back inside to find a drunken guest pawing at Isabella, his voice thick with malice. “Stop acting so pure! Just because you’re with Cross now doesn’t mean you can forget your old regulars! You think I won’t tell him about—” He didn’t finish. Sean grabbed a magnum of champagne and swung. As the man collapsed, bleeding, Sean pulled Isabella into his arms, stroking her hair. “It’s okay, baby. Don’t be scared. I’m here. No one touches you.” It was a carbon copy of the protection he had given me three years ago. The exact same script. Verna stood at the door, her eyes finding mine through the crowd. I gave her a small, sharp nod and stepped forward. “Security, remove this gentleman and call a medic. Housekeeping to Section A for glass cleanup immediately. Move Mr. Cross and his guest to the Sapphire Lounge.” I turned to the room, my voice projecting a calm I didn’t know I possessed. “Drinks are on the house for the rest of the night. Please accept our apologies for the interruption.” The room settled. The mess was vanished. Sean held Isabella, but his eyes were fixed on my face. I could see the shock in them. He didn’t recognize this version of me—the girl who used to faint at the sight of blood was now commanding a room. Ultimately, he said nothing. He simply picked Isabella up in his arms and walked out. 4. Verna walked over and squeezed my shoulder. “Cool under pressure. Well done, Jade. You didn’t embarrass me.” That night, when I checked my bank balance, my eyes watered. Thirty thousand dollars. Compared to the million-dollar checks Sean used to toss my way, it wasn’t much. But this money was mine. It was earned through sweat and long hours, not traded for my dignity. I bought a pair of exquisite jade earrings and knocked on Verna’s door. She was leaning back on her leather sofa, turning the earrings over in her hands. “Satisfied already? This is just the beginning,” she said. “Wait until you climb to the top of this industry. You’ll realize that the joy of making your own money is ten thousand times better than being a man’s accessory.” On my way out, I passed a private booth. I heard a voice ask Sean, “Hey man, you could easily take Jade home right now. Why leave her here? Aren’t you afraid she’ll leave you for real?” Sean’s laughter was arrogant and effortless. “Leave me? With what? I support her entire family. No one else is going to be that kind of a sucker. Once Isabella is in a better mood, I’ll go pick her up. She’ll be waiting.” The laughter in the room was deafening, but Verna’s words played on a loop in my head. Live for a man? I don’t think I need to anymore. The following months were a blur of work. I didn’t seek out news of Sean and Isabella, but it found me anyway. Sean Cross rents a super-yacht for Isabella’s birthday. Sean Cross shuts down the harbor for a private fireworks display. Engagement rumors swirl. At first, the gossip stung. I’d spend a quiet hour at night feeling the ghost of that old heartbreak. But eventually, my heart grew a thick, protective callous. I became numb to it. Six months later, I was Verna’s right hand. My monthly take-home, including commissions, hit eighty thousand. For those six months, Sean sent someone to the club every single day just to watch me. I stopped trying to figure out why. My parents’ health was stabilizing. my brother was months away from graduation. My life finally had a horizon. Isabella, ironically, was the one who kept trying to see me. I was too busy to grant her the time. Until the twentieth time she showed up. 5. When I finally let her into my office, she put on a delicate, concerned front. “Jade, I heard you were with Sean for five years.” She paused, smoothing her designer dress. “I wanted to ask… what are his preferences? His habits? And perhaps you could list your own habits as well, so I can make sure to avoid them. I’d hate to remind him of his past.” I pulled out a sheet of paper, picked up a pen, and started writing without a hint of emotion. Verna taught me well: losing your cool over irrelevant people is the ultimate amateur move. “Here you go, Isabella. Everything you need.” Isabella picked up the paper with a smug expression, scanning the pages. Suddenly, her face contorted. She grabbed a crystal glass from my desk and hurled it at me. A sharp, searing pain exploded against my forehead. I felt the warm, thick trail of blood run down my temple, blurring my vision. Isabella was screaming now, her finger inches from my nose. “No wonder he won’t let me dye my hair! No wonder he forces me to wear those pale, boring dresses! It’s all because of you! You’re still trying to hook him, aren’t you? You’re a pathetic, desperate bitch who can’t live without a man!”

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When my husband slid the divorce papers across the marble table, the afternoon sun was streaming through the window, blindingly bright. It was the kind of light that exposed every speck of dust in our perfect living room. He told me he had spent our entire marriage “just getting by.” He said he only had three months left to live, and he wanted to spend that time with his true love. I stared at the “voluntary forfeiture of all assets” clause, my fingernails digging into the edge of the paper until they left red crescents in the skin. Three seconds later, I picked up the pen. I suddenly remembered that only thirty minutes ago, my doctor had called to tell me that his terminal cancer diagnosis was a colossal mistake. A lab mix-up. He wasn’t dying. In this grand, deathbed confession of his, it turned out I was the only one who was terminal—terminal to a marriage that had been dead long before the “diagnosis.” 1 “Let’s get a divorce. Please, let me have this one last wish,” Christopher said as he handed me the documents. His eyes were calm, his voice heavy with a manufactured gravity. I froze, the words sinking in slowly. “Your ‘true love’? What the hell is that supposed to mean, Chris?” Christopher was wearing a crisp white linen shirt and beige chinos. He didn’t look a day over thirty, let alone like a man at death’s door. He still looked every bit the refined, handsome literature professor I’d married. He looked down, tracing the grain of the table. “Yes. My life is on a countdown now. There’s no point in hiding the truth from you anymore.” “Three years into our marriage, I met a girl. She was one of my grad students.” “We spent hours discussing Keats and Plath. We spoke the same language—intellectually, spiritually. It was a world away from the grocery lists and utility bills I discussed with you. With her, there was resonance. A soul-deep connection.” “I fell for her.” “But I was married. Out of a sense of duty to you, and because she felt so much guilt toward you, we ended it.” Chris’s voice was peaceful, almost wistful. When he spoke about this girl, a faint, subconscious smile touched the corners of his mouth. “We’ve stayed friends over the years. We never crossed the line again. When we met, it was just poetry, philosophy, the meaning of life.” He looked up then, locking his eyes onto mine. “Do you have any idea? Only when I’m with her do I feel like I’m actually alive. Like a complete human being. I’m not just a cog in the machine of domesticity, worrying about mortgage payments or trying to conceive a child.” “She is my Muse. My soulmate. We were an accident of fate, a tragedy defined by the rules of a world that doesn’t understand us.” I listened to his poetic monologue in silence. My lip curled into a sharp, bitter arc. “Wow. You really can put a tuxedo on a pig, Chris, but it still smells like a farm.” Christopher flinched, his ears turning a bright, indignant red as if I’d slapped him. “Vulgarian! You don’t have a graceful bone in your body. This is exactly what I can’t stand—your utter lack of depth, your lack of education. Marrying you was like throwing pearls before a swine.” “…” I was speechless for a second, but then the anger started to cool into a hard, crystalline clarity. “So what? Am I supposed to apologize for being the one who actually kept your life running?” I leaned in, my voice dropping an octave. “Professor, does wrapping your affair in ‘literary resonance’ make it a masterpiece instead of a cliché?” Chris looked momentarily embarrassed, but his resolve didn’t waver. “I’m getting this divorce. I won’t spend my final days living a lie.” He pushed the papers closer. I flipped through them, my eyes skimming past “Irreconcilable Differences” and stopping at the property division: Christopher Miller waives all rights to shared assets. Chris tilted his chin up with a martyr’s grace. “These material things mean nothing to a man who’s leaving this world. It’s my way of compensating you. Call it a parting gift.” I let out a dry laugh, thinking of the “Clear Bill of Health” notice folded in my pocket. A second later, I uncapped my pen and signed my name in a jagged, decisive scrawl. Fine. Let him go chase his “spiritual twin flame.” I’d take the “vulgar” house, the “shallow” savings accounts, and the “pedestrian” investment funds. I think I could handle the burden of being rich and alone. 2 Christopher clearly hadn’t expected me to agree so quickly. He stared at the signed papers, looking stunned, almost disappointed that I hadn’t begged him to stay. I didn’t give him time to process. I walked into the bedroom and went into overdrive, throwing his designer shirts and cashmere sweaters into two massive suitcases. He stood in the doorway, bewildered. “Diana, are you really in such a rush to kick me out?” I shot him a look over my shoulder. “Why wait? Every minute you’re here is a minute you’re not with your ‘Muse.’ And we wouldn’t want to waste your precious, limited time, would we?” I zipped the suitcases shut with a loud thrip. “Your clothes are here. I’ll have a professional moving crew send your books to whatever address you give me tomorrow. I’ll send them COD—cash on delivery. Don’t forget to pay them.” A look of realization dawned on Christopher’s face, followed by a sneer of pity. “I see. Now that you know I’m terminal, you can’t wait to unload the ‘burden,’ can you?” He looked at me with a holier-than-thou disdain. “This is why these years have been such a struggle. Our marriage was a mistake from the start. You are so transactional, so obsessed with the bottom line. You only ever wanted to talk about money and chores. You were a waste of my time.” He sighed, his eyes glazing over with that dreamy look again. “But life shouldn’t be a chore. Becca says life should be a snowfall we stop to admire. It should be moonlight and poetry…” My stomach turned. I couldn’t help but cut him off. “Are you finished? My ‘common’ ears can’t take any more of this Hallmark-channel-crap. Take your bags and get the hell out of my house.” Christopher’s gold-rimmed glasses caught the light, cold and sterile. He looked at me as if I were a smudge on a painting, a piece of filth infecting his spiritual sanctuary. He opened his mouth to retort, but his phone buzzed. His expression softened instantly. He answered, and I caught the faint, melodic lilt of a woman’s voice. His “Becca.” She said something on the other end—probably something coy or “soulful”—and a look of pure, doting indulgence washed over his face. He spoke to her with a tenderness I had never heard in ten years of marriage. I used to think all marriages were like ours—quiet, stable, a bit dull. I thought that was just what adulthood felt like. Now I realized my marriage wasn’t just dull; it was a hollow shell. Christopher left. I stood in the middle of the empty living room. The sun was still shining, the flowers on the balcony were swaying in the breeze, and birds were chirping outside. The world didn’t stop because a marriage ended. I thought I would cry. I thought I would break down or smash a vase. But I didn’t. The epiphany hit me with a lightness that felt like flying. In the span of a few hours, I had gone from joy (he’s not dying!) to shock (he’s leaving me) to rage (he’s a cheater) to a strange, soaring sense of relief. Why would I want a man like that? He was gone, I had the house, and he was effectively dead to me anyway. It was like winning the lottery and having the trash take itself out at the same time. Oh, wait. I felt the paper in my pocket—the misdiagnosis report. My husband wasn’t going to die. He was just going to roll out of my life in a very literal, very healthy way. 3 Once the dust settled, my biggest fear was that Christopher would suddenly regret it. Because life without him? It was magnificent. I grew up in a very traditional, very “safe” family. My parents raised me to be a Good Woman. They taught me that there was a timeline for everything: graduate, get a stable job, get married. So, when a family friend introduced me to Christopher Miller, I followed the script. My parents adored him. He was a professor at the local university, handsome, well-mannered, with a respectable income. I didn’t even think to ask if I loved him. It felt like we were both just at the stage of life where “marriage” was the next logical step, so we stepped into it together. I thought this was what everyone meant by “love.” A partnership of convenience and shared meals. And then came the “terminal” diagnosis. For a moment, my world collapsed. I thought the pain I felt was grief for my husband. But after the divorce, I realized it was just the terror of the unknown—the fear of my “script” being torn up. Finding out it was a misdiagnosis had been a moment of pure euphoria. But now, my life was completely off-script. And instead of panic, I felt a sense of liberation I hadn’t known since I was a child. I audited our assets. He had been generous in his “dying” guilt. I had enough to live comfortably for a long, long time. During the mandatory cooling-off period before the divorce was finalized, I learned how to breathe again. I took a sabbatical. I traveled to places I’d always wanted to see—the rugged coast of Maine, the vast plains of Montana, the neon chaos of Tokyo. Without the “wife” label weighing me down, I felt weightless. It was during these travels that I stumbled upon a video on social media. It was Christopher. And his “Becca.” The woman in the video looked to be in her late twenties. She was beautiful in a soft, curated way—long auburn waves framing a face with delicate dimples. Her name was Rebecca Jones. Her profile was a masterpiece of “Main Character” energy. Every post was a poetic reflection or a soft-focus literary critique. She didn’t post often, but when she did, it was usually a video of her discussing Plath, and now, a man had started appearing in the frame with her. In the videos, Chris looked the same—soft knit sweaters, gold-rimmed glasses, the image of the “tortured intellectual.” In one video, they were talking about love. Christopher looked into the camera with a profound sigh. “Love is an irrational force,” he said. “It doesn’t care about timing or social contracts. When it happens, you’re helpless. Even in the face of duty, the heart demands its truth.” He looked at Rebecca with a gaze so thick with longing it was nauseating. Rebecca looked down, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, her cheeks flushing perfectly. I scrolled through the comments. “Relationship goals!” “Literary soulmates!” “This is the most romantic thing I’ve ever seen.” I looked at them, and for the first time, I felt zero pain. Watching him be “profoundly in love” with someone else was the final confirmation I needed: I had never loved him either. I smiled, closed the app, and went to get a glass of wine. When the cooling-off period ended, we met at the courthouse to sign the final papers. Rebecca was there, standing by his side, watching me with a wary, defensive look—as if she expected me to claw her eyes out. But I was calm. I was radiant. Chris gave me that same pitying look. “Our marriage was a mistake, Diana. Now that things are back on the right track, I hope you find your own version of happiness.” I smiled, waving my copy of the decree. “Thanks, Chris. I’m sure I will. But I’ll try to find it without cheating on anyone first.” I walked away without looking back. As soon as I got home and confirmed the wire transfers for the house and accounts were complete, I put the misdiagnosis report in an envelope and mailed it to his new address. 4 I thought we’d go our separate ways and never speak again. I underestimated how low Christopher and Rebecca were willing to sink for “content.” A former colleague texted me a link. It was a livestream on Rebecca’s account. On the screen, Chris and Rebecca were wearing matching cream-colored sweaters, looking like a spread from a “Kinfolk” magazine. They looked perfect. The words coming out of their mouths, however, were anything but. Chris was holding court for the camera. “Yes, I’m divorced now,” he said, his voice dripping with faux-humility. “When I was younger, I thought ‘compatibility’ was enough. I rushed into marriage. But my domestic life was… stagnant. It was a cycle of the mundane. Every morning was about bills, insurance, the mundane stresses of work.” “I wanted to talk about Camus, Shakespeare, Tagore. But my ex-wife… she just listened with a blank stare. She couldn’t meet me where I was.” “We turned our life into a dull, gray pebble. It wasn’t until I met Becca that my life found its color again.” He looked at her, and she gave a practiced, shy smile. The chat was flying by. People were hailing them as icons of “authentic living.” “With Becca, we talk about the philosophy of existence. We are intellectually synchronized. With her, I’m not just surviving. I’m living.” “After the divorce, I finally felt like I could breathe. I didn’t have to face the suffocating boredom of domestic chores, or a narrow-minded, materialistic wife, or the endless, clinical pressure of trying to conceive…” I stopped cold. We had tried to conceive for years. It hadn’t worked. We’d gone to the clinic once, and the tests had shown that Chris had an extremely low sperm count. It was almost impossible for him to father a child naturally. At our parents’ suggestion, we had discussed IVF. He was the one with the fertility issues. I was the one who was going to have to take the hormone shots, deal with the mood swings, the physical pain, the fear, and the permanent changes to my body. And this man—this man who would have just sat in a waiting room—had the audacity to sit there and act like he was the victim of “pressure”? In all those years of marriage, I had managed our home, our social lives, and cared for both sets of parents. To him, all that labor was just “narrow-minded materialism.” A white-hot rage flared in my chest. My fingers moved before I could think. I typed into the chat: “Does a man who cheated on his wife really have the balls to play the victim? Does knowing a bit of poetry make being a ‘douchebag’ an art form?” Among the sea of “So beautiful!” and “Soulmates!” my comment stood out like a bloodstain on a white rug. The chat paused for a heartbeat, then exploded. Behind my screen, I smirked. I typed again: “Hey Chris, did you get that mail I sent? You know, the one about your medical follow-up?”

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I had just stepped off a grueling cross-country red-eye when the new intern slammed into me, sending my extra-large latte surging down the front of my white silk blouse. She didn’t apologize. Instead, she let out an audible huff of disgust, muttering about her “trash luck” while looking at the brown stain on my chest as if I’d done it to spite her. “You should probably get that cleaned up,” she said, checking her reflection in the glass partition. “I’ve got a high-level meeting to get to. Important people only.” Then, she vanished toward the conference rooms. I swallowed the sharp retort bubbling in my throat. She was new; maybe she was just overwhelmed. I spent ten minutes in the restroom scrubbing at the silk, then smoothed my hair and walked into the boardroom. I didn’t expect to find her sitting in my chair. When I entered, she looked up and waved me away with a flick of her wrist, her expression darkening with impatience. “Are you still harping on about that coffee?” she snapped, loud enough for the early arrivals to hear. “I told you, I have a meeting. Don’t be a pest. You’re dismissed.” I didn’t say a word. I simply walked to the back of the room and took a seat in one of the guest chairs. As the meeting commenced, she began a performative display of productivity, clicking a multi-colored pack of highlighters and scribbling aggressive neon marks on a notepad. At one point, she turned around and hissed at me, “Why aren’t you taking notes? Every word out of management’s mouth is gold. You should be learning something.” Then, she turned her gaze toward the CEO, her voice shifting into a saccharine, tattling lilt. “Samuel, I really think we need to look at our staffing. Keeping unmotivated, middle-aged women on the payroll—people who just sit in the back and stare—is a drain on the company’s potential.” I leaned back, my voice cool and thin. “My hands are cold.” The room went silent. Samuel, our CEO, locked eyes with me. He didn’t hesitate. He reached for the buttons of his crisp white shirt, undoing them until he revealed the taut, sculpted lines of his torso. He pulled his chair closer to me and spoke with a low, practiced intimacy. “Come here, Jacqueline. Get in here.” 1 Returning from a month-long business trip, I felt like a ghost haunting my own office, clutching my iced caffeine—my only tether to the living. I didn’t even get the straw to my lips before a girl came bouncing out of the breakroom and leveled me. The coffee, heavy with ice, drenched my blouse. The shock of the cold made my breath hitch, snapping me into a state of jagged, unwanted alertness. God, I hated being back. I was ready to unleash a month’s worth of repressed corporate rage, but then I saw her. A fresh face. She had her hair up in one of those “effortless” messy buns that actually takes forty minutes to pin, wearing a pair of fuzzy overalls over a T-shirt with a massive cartoon panda on the front. I felt a phantom twitch in my forehead. This was our high-stakes corporate environment? Then I saw the “INTERN” lanyard dangling against the panda’s face. I took a breath. “Ugh! Ma’am, you really need to watch where you’re going!” she chirped, looking at her pristine overalls. “You almost got it on the baby.” The baby? She meant herself. “You should really clean this up,” she continued, giving me a patronizing look. “I have a major meeting to attend. It’s strictly for the leadership tier.” She actually balled her fists and gave herself a little pep-talk shimmy. “Go, go, go! You’re the best, Lexi! You got this!” I stared at her, my mind clicking through the day’s schedule. The leadership meeting. The one I was supposed to lead to train the new recruits. The one I’d been flown back from the airport specifically to chair. “The meeting isn’t going anywhere,” I said, my voice steady. “Clean this up first. The custodial staff has a set schedule; this is your mess. You should take responsibility for it.” Lexi’s eyes went wide, reflecting a brand of pure, unadulterated shock. “Are you talking to me? Isn’t this, like, your job? Aren’t you the cleaning lady?” She looked me up and down—my stained blouse, my tired eyes, my sensible flats. “I’m the new star intern from the Ivy League,” she said, tossing her hair. “The CEO personally met me at the front door. I’m here to disrupt the industry and create value, not scrub floors. Okay?” She kept calling me “ma’am” and “lady” with a pointed edge that suggested she thought I was ancient, despite the fact that I wasn’t even thirty yet. I didn’t respond. I watched her huff, grab her plush bunny-shaped purse, and strut toward the conference room. Valerie, my long-standing rival in the sales department, drifted over, a predatory smirk on her face. “Well, look who’s back. Our little Sales Queen. Hard at work already, I see. Or are you just Lexi’s personal barista now?” I looked at the brown stain on my chest. “What’s the deal, Valerie?” “Oh, you didn’t hear? Lexi is the new ‘it’ girl. Samuel personally scouted her. She’s young, she’s ‘disruptive,’ and she’s got a pedigree that makes yours look like a community college brochure. It won’t be long before…” Before she replaces me, I finished the thought internally. Before the high-earning veteran is put out to pasture to make room for the cheap, shiny new model. “Right,” I said, turning toward the meeting room. “Let’s see how much of the Kool-Aid Samuel has actually swallowed.” 2 The boardroom was packed. I scanned the table; every department head was present. This wasn’t just a meeting; it was a summit. The usual carafes of artisanal coffee and mineral water were missing. In their place sat a row of oversized plastic cups filled with boba tea—extra sugar, by the look of the pearls. A few of the older directors were already grimacing. “Who ordered this? Some of us have to watch our glucose levels,” one muttered. Lexi was busy taking “desk-fie” photos of the setup. At the complaint, her face flickered with a moment of panic before she saw Samuel enter. She immediately pivoted into a shy, “vulnerable” pose. “I replaced the boring stuff!” she announced, her voice turning into a high-pitched trill. “Mr. CEO, what do you think? We Gen Z-ers are here to fix the vibes. Hmph.” She actually pouted. “Coffee is so bitter and corporate. Why do we have to drink what you guys like? Why can’t we have what I like for once?” The room went dead. The sheer, logical vacuum of her question seemed to paralyze the directors. No one knew how to argue with that level of entitlement without sounding like a bully. Everyone’s eyes drifted to Samuel at the head of the table. Samuel remained unreadable. He was leaning over his tablet, his sharp jawline set, seemingly oblivious to the drama. I cleared my throat, making my presence known. Lexi’s head snapped toward me, her annoyance returning in a flash. She stood up and pointed a finger. “Ma’am? Why are you still here? The meeting is starting. You need to leave. You’re being very distracting.” She turned to Samuel, her voice trembling. “And she got ice on my finger earlier. It still hurts. It’s like… trauma, you know? I don’t think I can forgive her. I hate her!” Then she leaned in toward him. “Maybe if the CEO blew on it, the pain would go away…?” Samuel finally looked up. His eyes didn’t land on Lexi. They landed on me, and for a second, I saw that familiar spark—the mix of predatory admiration and possessiveness he reserved for his “Cash Cow.” “Jacqueline! You’re back! Thank God,” he said. “Sit. Sit.” He started to pull out the chair next to him, a habitual gesture, before realizing Lexi was already firmly planted in it. I stood there, arms crossed, watching him. I wanted to see how he played this. Samuel looked at Lexi, then at the chair. He hesitated. The power dynamic shifted in the silence. Then, with a practiced smoothness, he pulled his hand back and looked at the CFO sitting on his other side. The CFO, a man who survived by reading the wind, immediately stood up to offer me his seat. But the row behind him was full. To move one person meant moving everyone. The fifty-year-old man sighed, a look of weary resignation on his face, and began to head for the back row. I put a hand on his shoulder. “It’s fine. I was late anyway. I’ll take the back.” I walked to the rear of the room and sat down. As soon as I did, I felt a heat on my face. Lexi was staring at me from her seat next to the throne, a victor’s smirk plastered on her lips. She leaned in toward Samuel, her panda-shirt-covered chest brushing against his arm. He didn’t move away. The meeting was a slog. The CFO went through the new expense protocols, his voice a monotonous drone. Lexi was “taking notes” with a fervor I hadn’t seen since middle school. She had at least twenty different pens spread out like a ritual sacrifice. Her notebook looked like a scrapbook—stickers, neon highlights, doodles. She was trying to transcribe every single word. Eventually, the pace of the CFO’s speech became too fast for her scrapbooking. She huffed, slapping her forehead in frustration. Despite myself, I felt a pang of professional duty. She was technically assigned to my department. I raised my hand. “Could we slow down a bit on the itemization section? Our newcomer is having trouble keeping up.” Lexi didn’t thank me. She whipped around, her face twisted in a mask of righteous indignation. She slammed her hand on the table and stood up. “Ma’am! Do you even know how to take minutes? Every word the leadership says is vital!” She turned to Samuel, her eyes brimming with fake tears. “Samuel, is this really the kind of attitude we want? I’m only thinking of the company’s future. Keeping an old, incompetent woman like this on the payroll is just a loss for everyone. It’s sad, really.” The room went cold. I looked at her across the long expanse of the mahogany table. It had been a long time since anyone had dared to come for me in public. Since I’d become the top earner three years running, Samuel usually thawed his icy exterior whenever I walked into a room. I calmly tucked my hands into my lap. “My hands are cold.” Samuel looked up at the AC vent. It was blasting at sixty degrees. Then he looked at me, and a look of sudden, intense realization crossed his face. Without a word, he began to unbutton his white dress shirt with one hand, dragging his executive chair across the floor toward the back of the room where I sat. “Quick, Jacqueline. Get in here,” he said, his voice dropping into that dangerously soft register. He opened the shirt, inviting me into the heat of his skin. “I can’t have you catching a chill. Who the hell set the AC this low?” From the other end of the table, Lexi slowly, miserably, raised her hand. 3 A single, perfectly formed tear rolled down Lexi’s cheek. “I did it…” she whispered, her voice a fragile, high-pitched reed. “My doctor said I’m like a little furnace. I can’t handle high temperatures. I was literally wilting. Why are you being so mean to me?” She began to sob, the kind of theatrical heaving you usually only see in soap operas. “Ma’am, tell him! Tell him you’re only cold because you’re… you know… older. It’s not my fault you have bad circulation! You’re a big, mean bully! Waaaaah!” She actually started wailing. But none of the executives moved. They were used to Samuel’s “unorthodox” methods when it came to me. In this office, it was an open secret: Samuel would do anything to keep his star player happy. People whispered that he wouldn’t even date anyone else because he was so obsessed with my “loyalty.” I felt the heat of his skin as I awkwardly withdrew my hands, giving him a sharp elbow to the ribs for good measure. Samuel let out a muffled grunt of pain, which made the CFO jump. He rubbed his side, looked a bit sheepish, and slowly began to button his shirt back up. Years ago, when I was a junior associate, he’d caught me watching thirst-trap videos on my break. I’d been commenting with a coworker about which guy had the better “aesthetic.” Samuel had walked in right as I was zooming in on a set of abs. Ever since then, whenever I tried to quit—and I tried often—he’d bring me into his office and pull this move. A reminder of what I “liked.” I never knew how much of it was genuine attraction and how much was a cold-blooded tactical maneuver to keep me under his thumb. I didn’t care much either way, as long as the bonuses hit my account on time. I wasn’t the wide-eyed girl I used to be, and he wasn’t the idealistic dreamer he’d been when he started the firm. We were both just “professionals” now. The silence in the room was brittle, broken only by Lexi’s rhythmic hiccups. She was staring at Samuel, waiting for him to rush over and comfort her, but he was pointedly looking at his tablet, avoiding her gaze. Lexi glared at me, a flash of pure hatred behind her tears, and bolted out of the room. I knew her type. I wasn’t worried. I waved a hand dismissively. “I’m out too.” Taking on a “mentee” was always a lose-lose situation in sales. If you teach them too well, they steal your clients. If you don’t, they’re a dead weight. Lexi had made it clear she was a competitor from minute one. Fine. I went to Samuel’s office later that afternoon and told him I was cashing in my accrued leave. A month of paid vacation, starting now. Samuel looked like he wanted to argue, but he knew better. “Nora—I mean, Jacqueline. Lexi… she’s the daughter of my old mentor. I owe the guy. Just… bear with her.” “I don’t owe him anything, Samuel.” “I know. She won’t get in your way. Once her internship is up, I’ll find a way to move her along. Just take your time off. Recharge.” I nodded, already thinking about the beach. 4 I was two weeks into my vacation, watching a group of gorgeous surfers in Maui, when my phone buzzed. It was Valerie. “Jacqueline, you need to get back here. Now. Lexi is about to blow the Abernathy account.” My heart skipped. “Which one? The thirty-million-dollar contract?” “The very one. She’s with Mr. Abernathy right now. It’s a disaster.” I didn’t even pack. I grabbed my passport and headed straight for the airport. I walked into the office ten hours later, still smelling like sea salt and jet fuel, breathless. Lexi was sitting at her desk, clutching her plush bunny and weeping silently. “I don’t understand… the bear was so cute. How could anyone not like the bear?” She looked up at me, her face a mask of tragedy. “He was supposed to say it was cute and sign the deal! Why didn’t he sign the deal for the baby?” Valerie filled me in. I took a very long, very deep breath before I turned to Lexi. “Lexi. First of all, going behind my back to contact my client is a violation of every ethical code in this building. That’s poaching. I built that relationship. I did the legwork. That is my account.” “Secondly,” I said, my voice rising. “What on earth possessed you to draw cartoon bears on a legal contract that had been vetted by two different law firms?” “It’s a professional document, Lexi! Not a coloring book! You made us look like amateurs. This is a workplace, not your nursery!” Lexi’s face turned a mottled purple. “No! Whoever signs the deal gets the commission! You’re just an old hag using your seniority to bully the baby!” “The bear was cute! You ‘old-heads’ just don’t have a soul! You have no inner child! I did nothing wrong!” She turned and sprinted toward Samuel’s office. Samuel happened to be walking out at that moment, and she hit him like a human cannonball. She wrapped her arms around his waist, burying her face in his chest. “They’re being mean to me… everyone is being so mean! Samuel, you have to help the baby…” I saw a flash of genuine annoyance in Samuel’s eyes, but he still patted her shoulder. I stepped forward. “Lexi, no one is going to save you. And no one should. I’m going to call Mr. Abernathy and beg for a dinner meeting. You are going to come with me, and you are going to apologize for your ‘creativity’ before you tank this entire company’s reputation.” Lexi sobbed harder. “He tried to take advantage of the baby! I don’t like him!” She looked at Samuel, her eyes wide. “He’s your client, Jacqueline—you must know what he’s like. Unless… you like being taken advantage of? Is that how you get all your ‘big deals’?” The office went dead silent. Every head turned to me. Including Samuel’s.

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I slammed my phone face-down on the desk. My right hand darted to the drawer, fingers trembling until they brushed against the hardbound cover of my journal. I exhaled—it was still there. On my desk, the screen wouldn’t stop lighting up. Notification after notification pierced the silence of the office. “You have been removed from the ‘VIP Skin Solutions’ group by Hailey Shaw.” And another. The same cold, mechanical sentence flashed repeatedly until the forty-seventh alert finally signaled the end. Those forty-seven client groups represented 150,000 leads. They were the culmination of eight years of my life—my sweat, my late nights, my literal blood. And the girl who had just purged me had been on the payroll for exactly three months. I didn’t say a word. I didn’t scream. I just sat there, frozen. 1. I didn’t storm into anyone’s office. Not yet. First, I took a screenshot of every single one of those forty-seven notifications, from the first to the last, and saved them into a hidden folder on my cloud drive. Then, I stood up and walked over to Hailey’s desk. “Hailey.” She was mid-snack, a seasonal latte from the cafe downstairs on her desk, a hand-drawn smiley face mocking me from the plastic cup. “Jolie?” She looked up, her expression as smooth and unbothered as glass. “My admin permissions are gone. All of them.” “Oh,” she said, taking a bite of a trendy artisanal pastry. “Rachel’s orders. She said we needed to ‘centralize client management’ under a single master account.” “Centralize.” “Right.” She said it with a flat, airy tone, as if she were commenting on the afternoon drizzle. “And who holds the keys now?” “I do.” She offered a small, sharp smile, tucked her pastry back into its wax paper bag, and brushed the crumbs from her manicured fingers. “Rachel said I should handle the interfacing from now on. She said you’ve been working so hard lately, Jo. You deserve a break. A chance to… pivot.” Hailey had been here three months. Three months ago, she couldn’t tell the difference between hyaluronic acid and salicylic acid. She’d literally called it “hydraulic acid” in her first week. I didn’t engage. I turned on my heel and walked straight into Rachel Bennett’s office. Rachel was on the phone. She saw me, held up a finger, and whispered into the receiver, “I’ll call you back.” She hung up and leaned back in her leather chair. “Jolie. Come in. Sit.” “What’s going on with my groups, Rachel?” Rachel took a slow, deliberate sip from her branded mug. She wasn’t in a hurry. “We’re doing a routine audit of our digital assets, Jo. You know how it is—the client groups have always been a bit… ‘wild west.’ We need them under Hailey’s account so the backend can be monitored properly for compliance.” “Rachel, I built those forty-seven groups from scratch. I started when we had five people in a single chat. I know every person in there.” “I know, and that’s exactly why we need a standardized system.” She smiled—that practiced, corporate-soft smile that suggested everything she was doing was for my own good. “You’ve done the heavy lifting for years. Now that you have someone to share the load, you should be relieved.” “Share the load.” “Exactly.” She glanced at her Apple Watch. “Actually, why don’t you spend the rest of the week auditing your old client files? Make the hand-off documents as detailed as possible so Hailey can get up to speed.” I stood in front of her desk, a ghost in my own career. She had already looked back down at her monitor. Our conversation was over. As I turned to leave, I heard her phone ring again. Her voice dropped an octave, intimate and deferential—four words that chilled me to the bone. “Don’t worry, Mr. Shaw.” Mr. Shaw. Our Regional Director was Patrick Shaw. Our new intern was Hailey Shaw. I went back to my desk and opened the CRM. My access levels had been stripped. Yesterday, I had “Editor” status. Today, it was “Read-Only.” Last modified by: Hailey Shaw. Time: Yesterday, 2:17 PM. Yesterday at 2:17 PM, I was on the phone with a long-term client, helping her process a return for a damaged shipment. I closed the window and opened my desk drawer. Eight journals were stacked in the back. The cover of the first one was frayed at the edges. On the flyleaf, in my own handwriting from years ago: March 2017—Client Archives. I didn’t need to open it. I knew what was on every page. 2. When I started at this firm in 2017, I was making peanuts. No base salary, no benefits, no 401(k), and absolutely zero leads. “Find them yourself,” my boss at the time had said, tossing a burner phone onto my desk with a fresh SIM card. I sat in a cramped, six-person open-plan office and started from zero. I’d add fifty people a day until the platform flagged me, then I’d switch accounts and keep going. It took six months to build the first 500-person group. I called it the “Glow & Grace Community.” For the first few weeks, nobody talked. I spent every waking hour posting skincare tips, answering questions, and sliding into DMs. “You mentioned your skin is sensitive—this serum has a high alcohol content, let me find you a better alternative.” “Hey, I remember you mentioned your daughter has eczema. I did some digging, and this cream is fragrance-free. It might help.” Nobody taught me to do that. Nobody paid me to do that. On clients’ birthdays, I’d go to the local stationery shop, buy cards with my own money, hand-write a note, and spend seven bucks on registered mail to make sure they got it. I spent over two thousand dollars on postage that first year alone. I once asked Rachel’s predecessor for a client retention budget. “The company doesn’t have a budget for that.” “Then I’ll pay for it myself.” “Fine by me.” With that one “fine,” I spent eight years subsidizing the company’s growth out of my own pocket. By year two, I had 30,000 clients. By year three, 70,000. By year five, 120,000. This year, it was 150,000. Our monthly sales grew from $80,000 in the beginning to $3.4 million last year, hitting $3.8 million this year. I was responsible for 68% of the entire department’s revenue. And my salary? In eight years, it had barely doubled. When I asked for a raise last year, HR told me: “The salary cap for a ‘Senior Operations Specialist’ is $85k. You’re already at the ceiling.” “Then can we discuss a promotion? A title change?” “There are no vacancies for leadership roles at this time.” I tried again in January. HR forwarded my email to Rachel. Rachel sat me down, her voice dripping with artificial empathy. “Jo, I get it. I do. But you know I can’t change the corporate compensation structure on my own.” “Rachel, I’m managing 150,000 people by myself. I’m bringing in nearly four million a month.” “That’s a team effort, Jo.” The “team” she was referring to was me and a rotating door of interns. Meanwhile, Rachel was pulling in over $200k. She’d been parachuted in last September as the “Director of Private Growth.” On her first day, she asked for my client segmentation models. “Just so I can get the lay of the land,” she’d said. The next day, that model appeared in her presentation to the board. The title slide read: Rachel Bennett’s Growth Strategy 2.0. I stayed quiet. Then there was the Playbook. Eighty-two pages, 32,000 words. It took me three months to write. It covered everything from opening hooks to objection handling to re-purchase funnels. Every line was polished by the thousands of hours I’d spent talking to real women. Rachel asked for a copy “for the archives.” A week later, at the regional summit, the printed manuals were handed out. The cover read: Author: Rachel Bennett. I sat in the audience. My colleague, Beth, nudged me. “Are you going to say anything?” “What is there to say?” I looked down at my ID badge. Title: Specialist. Start Date: 2017. A tiny line of text at the bottom: Valid through Dec 2024. My phone buzzed. A message from a long-time client. “Jo? Are you still around? Someone in the group just said you’ve been transferred?” 3. “Jolie has been transferred.” I didn’t say it. Hailey did. I scrolled through the chat history and found the message from 11:00 AM. A client named Margot—a regular since the beginning—had tagged me: “@Jo, are there any deals this week? I need more of that baby cream for Daisy.” Hailey replied instantly: “Hi Margot! I’m Hailey, your new account manager. Jolie has transitioned to a new role, so I’ll be taking care of you from now on! Feel free to reach out with any questions! [Heart Emoji]” Margot didn’t reply. Another client jumped in: “Where did Jo go?” Hailey used the same scripted line. “Jolie has transitioned! I’m taking over!~” I hadn’t been notified of a transfer. There was no email, no HR meeting, no “we’re moving you to a different department.” But Hailey had already informed 150,000 people. I opened Rachel’s Instagram and scrolled back through the last three months. December 8th: A photo of a team lunch. Hailey is standing right next to Rachel. Caption: “So excited to have my new superstar on board. Let’s crush it.” December 15th: Rachel had asked me to compile a “Core Client Data Sheet.” She’d said: “Headquarters is doing an audit, I need you to organize the VIP data.” I spent two days building a master sheet of our top 2,600 VIPs—names, birthdays, purchase histories, skin types, allergies. December 20th: Rachel told me to “take a few days off.” “You haven’t had a vacation in months, Jo. It’s mandatory. Use it or lose it.” While I was away, the system logs showed Hailey had logged in using my credentials and exported the entire database. January 3rd: Rachel had Hailey introduce herself in the groups as the “Corporate Concierge.” January 10th: Hailey started using my scripts to push sales, signing them “Best, Hailey.” Through January and February, Hailey replied to over 1,200 messages. She used every word of the Playbook I had written. I didn’t see the pattern then. I was too busy helping Rachel write the “Quarterly Performance Review.” She’d said: “You know the clients best, Jo. Help me draft the report. I’ll put my name on it for the board presentation, but I won’t forget who did the work.” I wrote it. Thirty thousand words in a week. On the day she submitted it, she bought me a twelve-dollar salad for lunch. “You’re a lifesaver, Jo.” Twelve dollars. That was the price of a week of my life and eight years of my data. I sat at my desk, connecting the dots of the last three months. December: She gets the data. Late December: She gets me out of the office so Hailey can clone the files. January: Hailey infiltrates the groups. February: She drains the last of my strategic knowledge for her report. March: She kicks me out of the groups. Every move was calculated. Every “kind” gesture was a ruler measuring how much juice was left in the lemon before they tossed the rind. My phone buzzed again. A private DM from Margot. “Jo, who is this Hailey girl? I asked her about the cream and she said ‘Give me a sec to check,’ and it’s been an hour. Do you still have that ingredient list you marked up for me last time? The one for Daisy’s flare-ups?” I set the phone down. I was locked out of the groups. But I still had Margot’s number. In eight years, I hadn’t just built a database. I’d built a life. 4. At lunch, Beth pulled me aside in the convenience store downstairs. She scanned the aisles to make sure we were alone before sliding a business card across the counter. “Look at this.” The card read: Hailey Shaw, Director of Client Relations, Bloom Aesthetics. No “Intern.” No “Junior.” “Where did you get this?” “She had them printed in the admin office last week,” Beth whispered. I flipped the card over. In the tiny print at the bottom, under the emergency contact section on the internal directory form Beth had snapped a photo of: Patrick Shaw. The Regional Director. “She’s his niece,” Beth said, her voice barely audible. “Are you sure?” “I saw the HR file. Patrick Shaw is listed as her internal sponsor. Relationship: Uncle.” The air conditioning in the store suddenly felt like ice against my neck. “Does Patrick know what Rachel is doing?” “Are you kidding?” Beth looked at me like I was naive. “Rachel and Patrick have dinner once a week. It’s not a secret. He’s the one who blocked your raise, Jo.” I didn’t say anything. “Jolie,” Beth said, using my full name—something she rarely did. “Rachel has been here eighteen months. The first year, she learned everything from you. The second year, she’s been spent making sure you’re replaceable. You think she did this alone?” I handed the card back. “Be careful, Beth. Don’t let them see you talking to me.” “That’s why I brought you here.” She grabbed a bottle of water and headed to the register. Before she left, she added one more thing. “There’s a meeting at three. Are you going?” “What meeting?” “Rachel’s ‘Standardization Seminar.’ It’s on the calendar.” “I wasn’t invited.” Beth froze. “Hailey’s on the list. Rachel is on the list. The new junior, Kevin, is on the list. But not you.” A meeting about client management. And the woman who had managed them for eight years wasn’t in the room. I went back to my desk. I opened my drawer and took out the eight journals. I stacked them one by one on the desk. 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024. I opened the first one to the first page. Entry 001: Margot Henderson. 35. Owner of a local daycare. Dry/Sensitive skin. No alcohol-based products. Daughter: Daisy (4), prone to mild eczema. Eight years. Daisy would be twelve now. I closed the book. Laughter drifted from Rachel’s office—Hailey’s voice. Beth walked by and dropped a sticky note on my keyboard. Five words: Hailey Shaw, Patrick Shaw. And a tiny scribbled note below it from the meeting agenda: Item 3: Permanent transfer of admin rights to Hailey Shaw. Reassignment of legacy staff. Reassignment. Four syllables to erase eight years. 5. The next morning, Rachel called me into her office. “Jo, we need to talk about your next steps.” She pulled a form from her drawer. “The company is restructuring. We’re moving toward a ‘de-personalized’ model for our private channels. Hailey is going to handle the groups from now on. As for you—” She paused. “The logistics warehouse is short-staffed. We need you to head over there for a few months and help with the inventory audit.” “The warehouse.” “Yes.” “I’m a Client Relations Lead, Rachel.” “Jo, this is a corporate directive. It’s not just my call.” She sighed, that fake, heavy sigh. “Patrick has a new vision for the department, and—” “Rachel.” “Yes?” “When you say ‘de-personalized,’ you just mean getting rid of me.” She didn’t answer. I stood up. “I’ve been here eight years. I grew this company from nothing. I represent nearly seventy percent of your revenue.” “Which is exactly why it needs to be standardized. We can’t have that much value tied to a single person.” “Then why wasn’t it ‘standardized’ five years ago? Or three?” Rachel bit her lip. “Jolie, don’t get emotional.” Emotional. I watched her tear down eight years of my life in three months, and she tells me not to get emotional. “I’m not going to the warehouse.” “Well…” Rachel clicked a few things on her computer. “The system has already updated your role.” “When?” “Yesterday afternoon.” Yesterday. She was “consulting” me today, but she’d executed the kill yesterday. I walked out of her office. I didn’t go to the warehouse. I went to my desk. I logged into the internal portal. Position: Inventory Associate. Effective: Yesterday, 3:08 PM. Approved by: Patrick Shaw. I closed the tab. I took one last look at the CRM. My name had been scrubbed. Every client I’d ever helped was now assigned to “Hailey S.” It was as if I’d never existed. I pulled a canvas tote bag from under my desk and packed my eight journals. They were mine. I hadn’t used company pens, company paper, or company time. I wrote in them at night, on my small kitchen table in my rented apartment. I grabbed my bag and stood up. “Beth.” “Yeah?” “Can you hand this to HR for me?” I slid a white envelope across the desk. “Jo—are you sure?” “I don’t do warehouses.” She looked like she wanted to cry, but she just nodded. I unclipped my ID badge, set it on the cold desk, and walked out. I passed Rachel’s office on my way to the elevators. The door was open. She was laughing with Hailey, holding a report in her hand. My report. I didn’t stop. As the elevator doors slid shut, my phone chimed. Margot: “Jo, are you really leaving? People in the group are asking. Is everything okay?”

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It had been entirely too long since the three of us managed to get together for dinner. I slid into the booth next to my best friend, just like I always did. We were sharing a plate of appetizers when his fork suddenly slipped from his grasp, clattering loudly against the hardwood floor. “Jesus, Holden! You know I’m left-handed. Why do you always have to sit on my left side?” he snapped, his voice suddenly sharp and loud. My hand, reaching down to grab the fallen fork, froze mid-air. He was right. He was left-handed. But we had a pact. A stupid, private little pact that dictated whenever we ate together, he would use his right hand. He had once told me that if there ever came a day where he sat next to me and ate with his left hand, it wouldn’t really be him. 01 It started years ago. There was this viral thread online analyzing body language, claiming that truly close friends always sit side-by-side at restaurants rather than across from each other. Theo had read it, latched onto it with his usual boyish enthusiasm, and declared that from then on, we were a side-by-side duo. I had laughed at him, calling him an idiot. “You’re a southpaw, man. If we sit shoulder-to-shoulder, our elbows are gonna be at war the whole meal.” He had paused, chewing his lip before his eyes lit up. “Easy fix. Whenever I eat with you, I’ll only use my right hand.” I gave him three days before he’d crack. He proved me wrong. For two entire years, every single time we shared a meal, he stubbornly fumbled with his right hand. Occasionally, muscle memory would kick in and his left hand would reach out, but he’d instantly yank it back, rubbing the back of his neck with a sheepish, kid-caught-with-his-hand-in-the-cookie-jar grin. That was when he said it: “If you ever catch me eating with my left hand, Holden, you’ll know I’ve been replaced by an alien clone.” He had laughed, but the look in his eyes had been so fiercely earnest that the memory had burned itself into my brain. Yet right now, the man sitting beside me was comfortably holding a fresh fork in his left hand, flawlessly spearing a piece of food from the center plate. I stared at that hand for three agonizing seconds before bending down to retrieve the dropped fork. My own fingers were trembling so violently I could barely grip the metal. Could the man sitting next to me… not be Theo? Or was this just some elaborate, morbid joke he was playing on me? I swallowed the lump in my throat, forcing my head up and pasting on a breezy smile. “My bad, man. I’ll move across the table. Don’t pop a blood vessel.” I grabbed my drink and slid into the opposite booth. By the time I settled, Theo’s face had returned to normal. He was casually cutting into his steak, launching into a familiar rant about the absolute incompetence of his company’s marketing team. The cadence of his voice, the exaggerated roll of his eyes, the rhythmic tapping of his foot under the table—it was a flawless carbon copy of the man I’d known my whole life. You’re overworked, I told myself. You’re exhausted and you’re seeing ghosts where there are none. But the icy dread pooling in my stomach refused to thaw. A moment later, his girlfriend, Carol, returned from the restroom, sliding effortlessly into the space I had just vacated beside him. For the next half hour, they fell into the easy, domestic chatter of a long-term couple. Carol rolled her eyes, complaining about her mother hounding them about an engagement ring. Theo chuckled, kissed her temple, and promised they’d tie the knot by Christmas. It was a picture-perfect, entirely normal Tuesday night. Until the waiter brought out the fusion tacos, and Theo mindlessly took a massive bite—swallowing a heavy garnish of fresh cilantro. My heart stalled in my chest. “Dude, what are you doing?” I choked out. Carol froze, her fork pausing halfway to her mouth as she looked at him in genuine confusion. “Yeah, babe, what are you doing? You hate cilantro.” Theo blinked, a fleeting shadow of annoyance crossing his face before he masked it with a sigh. “It’s your mom’s fault. She sneaks it into everything she cooks for us lately. Guess I just got used to it.” Carol giggled, her cheeks flushing as she leaned in, pressing her face against his shoulder, entirely captivated by his excuse. I, however, broke out in a cold sweat. Carol had always thought Theo’s aversion to cilantro was just the picky eating habits of a spoiled rich kid. But I was the only one who knew the truth: Theo had a severe, life-threatening allergy to it. Sophomore year of college. The dining hall staff had accidentally mixed cilantro into the salsa. He had taken exactly two bites before his throat started closing up. I was the one who threw him into the passenger seat of my beat-up Honda and blew through three red lights to get him to the ER. Since that night, he wouldn’t let a speck of green near his plate without interrogating the waiter. You can mimic a person’s laugh. You can memorize their rants. You can even forget the little promises you made. But you cannot rewrite your body’s biological response. I sat there for the remainder of the meal, watching him. Waiting for the hives. Waiting for the wheezing. Nothing. He was perfectly fine. His skin remained clear, his breathing even. He even scooped a little extra pico de gallo onto Carol’s plate. The cold dread in my stomach crystallized into absolute, terrifying certainty. The man sitting across from me—laughing with Carol, eating cilantro—was, without a shadow of a doubt, not Theo. Which left one deafening question echoing in my mind: Where was my best friend? 02 I spent the night staring at the ceiling of my bedroom, my mind a tangled, suffocating knot. I needed a timeline. When did the shift happen? A week ago, he was completely fine. He was packing for a massive music festival in London. The morning of his flight, he had sent me a voice note: “Holden, I’m heading to the airport! Text me if you want me to grab you a bottle of something obnoxiously expensive from Duty-Free.” After he supposedly landed, the updates had been relentless. Videos of the festival crowds, pictures of fish and chips, sweeping shots of the London skyline from his boutique hotel window. I rolled out of bed, grabbing my phone. I opened our text thread and scrolled back to the day of the festival. There was a video from the VIP pit. The camera was shaking wildly, the bass blowing out the audio over the screaming crowd. Then, the camera flipped, and there he was, shouting over the noise: “Holden, this is insane! We have to come together next year!” I watched it. Then I watched it again. And again. It was his face. It was his voice. There were no digital glitches, no obvious deepfakes. But the more I watched it, the sicker I felt. It didn’t feel like two friends sharing a moment. It felt performative. Like someone desperately trying to establish an alibi, screaming, Look! I am here! I am perfectly fine! If the man eating tacos tonight was an imposter… was the man in the video an imposter, too? And what about Carol? She shared a bed with him. Did she genuinely not know that the man holding her at night wasn’t the man she’d dated for three years? By dawn, I hadn’t slept a wink. I drove straight to the local police precinct. “I need to report a missing person,” I told the officer at the front desk. “My best friend.” The officer, a weary-looking guy in his thirties, sighed and motioned for me to take a seat. “Take a breath, son. Walk me through it.” I dumped everything on him. I explained the shift after the London trip. The mismatched memories. The left hand. The impossible lack of an allergic reaction to the cilantro. The cop listened, his expression shifting from patient to intensely skeptical. He clicked around on his computer for a minute before looking back at me. “Mr. Holden. I just ran a check on your buddy, Theo Steven. He’s currently at his registered address.” He tapped his screen. “His cell is active. His bank cards are being used locally. Hell, he posted a photo on Instagram at a coffee shop yesterday morning. Am I right?” I nodded tightly. “Then there is absolutely nothing we can do. You can’t report a man missing when he’s currently sitting in a Starbucks on 5th Avenue.” “But it’s not him!” I slammed my hands on the desk, my voice cracking. “The guy walking around in his skin is a fake!” The officer looked at me like I belonged in a psychiatric hold. “Holden. You’re telling me this man is an imposter, but his ID matches, his fingerprints would match, and his own girlfriend hasn’t reported anything strange.” He leaned forward. “Do you have a single shred of hard evidence?” I opened my mouth, but the words died in my throat. What did I have? A gut feeling. A secret pact about forks. A forgotten allergy. None of that held up in a court of law. The officer stood up, his tone hardening. “If you continue to cause a scene, I’m going to have to ask you to leave for obstructing police business. Go home and sleep it off.” I was escorted out of the precinct. Standing on the pavement, the morning sun stung my exhausted eyes. Three years ago, Theo’s parents were killed in a horrific car crash. Since then, I was the closest thing to family he had left. If he was still alive out there, he was waiting for me to figure it out. He was waiting for me to save him. And if he was… if he was already gone… then I owed it to him to bring him home. My phone buzzed in my pocket. It was an Instagram DM from ‘Theo’. A picture of a dismal-looking salad at his office desk with the caption: Corporate catering is trying to poison me today. Just like always. Complaining about work. I stared at the screen, my blood turning to ice water. The imposter had Theo’s phone. That meant Theo had no way to reach me through the usual channels. But if he knew he was in danger, if he had a split second to leave me a breadcrumb… A memory violently shoved its way to the forefront of my mind. I spun around and sprinted toward my car, driving back to my apartment like a madman. Buried in a shoebox in the back of my closet was my old college iPhone. The screen was cracked and the battery was shot, but on that phone was a rudimentary, encrypted messaging app Theo had coded himself during a sophomore computer science class. We had used it to talk trash about our professors during lectures. Once we upgraded our phones after graduation, we had completely forgotten about it. I practically tore the closet apart finding the box. I jammed the charging cable into the old port, praying the motherboard wasn’t fried. The Apple logo flickered to life. I swiped past the lock screen and tapped the grayed-out icon. The screen loaded. There was one unread message. Timestamp: Seven days ago. 2:37 PM. Three words: Hide and seek. 03 I stared at those three words until my vision blurred. Seven days ago. 2:37 PM. At that exact time, according to his itinerary, Theo should have been somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean on a flight to London. His phone would have been in airplane mode. He couldn’t have sent a message. Unless… he never got on the plane. I grabbed my current phone and immediately dialed the customer service line for the airline. “Hi, I’m trying to check the flight manifest for a flight to London Heathrow a week ago. Did a passenger named Theodore Steven actually board?” After ten agonizing minutes on hold, the agent returned. “Sir, I can confirm that Mr. Steven checked his bags and passed through security, but he did not scan his boarding pass at the gate. He was listed as a no-show.” A shudder racked my entire body. He never went to London. Which meant the video from the VIP pit was a pre-recorded fake, or shot somewhere else entirely. It meant the real Theo had been intercepted before the plane ever took off. And Hide and seek was his final distress signal. I paced the length of my living room, repeating the phrase over and over, trying to crack the code. Hide and seek. It was the game we played every summer when we were kids. In his sprawling backyard, he used to wedge himself behind the massive oak tree near the garden shed. I always found him first. But that was too obvious. If he just meant his childhood home, he wouldn’t be cryptic. I closed my eyes, mapping out every place we had ever spent significant time together. The old strip mall downtown? Demolished. The diner near our high school? Closed down during the pandemic. The internet cafe by the college campus? It was a boutique gym now. I threw myself onto the couch, pulling up Google Maps, dragging the view aimlessly around the state, zooming in and out of the topographical lines. And then my eyes snagged on a tiny dot near the state border. Hidden Springs. H. S. Hide and Seek. A jolt of pure adrenaline shot through my veins. Every instinct in my body screamed that this was it. I zoomed in. Hidden Springs was a decaying, forgotten logging town nestled deep in a valley in the Appalachian foothills. It barely had a paved road leading into it, surrounded on all sides by dense, unforgiving forest. It was the perfect place to make someone disappear. And the most terrifying part? I knew exactly where it was. Two years ago, Theo, Carol, and I had taken a road trip up to a mountain cabin. We had gotten hopelessly lost, our GPS leading us down a series of increasingly wretched dirt roads until we wound up dead-ending in Hidden Springs. I vividly remembered Theo riding shotgun, looking out at the dilapidated, rusted-out trailers and thick woods. “Dude,” he had joked, “this place is straight out of a slasher movie.” If Theo was out there right now, being held against his will… Carol had to be involved. Because on that road trip two years ago, Carol had been the one driving. She had been the one who inputted the coordinates into the GPS. The “accidental” detour. The wrong turn. She was the only one besides us who knew this ghost town existed. 04 I slumped back against the sofa, the air completely knocked out of my lungs. Carol and Theo had been together for three years. She was the textbook perfect girlfriend. She would stay up until 2 AM if he was working late just to heat up his dinner. If it rained, she was standing outside his office building with an umbrella. When he caught the flu, she basically moved into his apartment to nurse him back to health. They had just paid the deposit on their wedding venue. The engagement photos were scheduled for next month. Why? Why would she do this? And the fake Theo—who the hell was he, and how did he fit into her life? I didn’t have time to fall apart. Finding Theo was the only thing that mattered. I sent a quick text to the imposter: Hey man, work is sending me out of state for a last-minute conference. Catch up when I’m back. He replied almost instantly, complete with emojis: No worries! Safe travels, brother! The cheerful, familiar tone made me physically nauseous. I threw a flashlight, a heavy jacket, and three portable power banks into a duffel bag, jumped in my car, and hit the highway. Hidden Springs was even more desolate than I remembered. After four hours of driving, the paved state route deteriorated into gravel, and then into a deeply rutted dirt road. By the time I crossed the rusted town-limit sign, the sun was beginning its descent, casting long, skeletal shadows through the pine trees. I parked near what looked like an abandoned gas station and stepped out into the biting cold. A few elderly locals were sitting on a sagging porch nearby. They watched me approach with open, hostile suspicion. I tried asking them if they’d seen a strange couple passing through about a week ago, but they just stared at me with blank, uncooperative eyes. The mountain drawl was thick, and their answers were vague, evasive grunts. I was about to give up when a weathered man in a faded flannel shirt detached himself from the shadows of the gas station awning and sauntered over. “You looking for a guy? Had a pretty little brunette with him?” he asked, his voice rough like sandpaper. My head snapped up. “Yes! You saw them?” I frantically pulled out my phone, pulling up a photo of Theo and Carol. The man squinted at the glowing screen. He didn’t say a word, but he lifted his hand, rubbing his thumb and index finger together in the universal gesture. I understood immediately. I pulled out my wallet, emptying every dollar bill I had—maybe three hundred bucks—and shoved the wad into his calloused palm. He weighed the cash, unimpressed. His eyes drifted down to my wrist. I was wearing a heavy gold chain watch. It was a graduation gift from my mother, and I had never taken it off. Without hesitating, I unclasped it and dropped the heavy gold into his hand. The man finally smiled, exposing stained teeth. He pointed a grimy finger toward the dense tree line to the east. “They went up the ridge,” he rasped. “About a week back, right after the heavy rains. Some fancy sedan tried to make it up the logging road and bottomed out in the mud. I helped the girl push it clear. She tipped me a hundred bucks.” “What about the guy?” I pressed, my heart hammering against my ribs. The man paused, scratching his jaw. “He was slumped over in the passenger seat. Didn’t get a good look at his face, but the hair color matches your picture.” The world tilted slightly on its axis. Slumped over. “Which way did they go?” I demanded. “Up Blackwood Ridge.” He gestured toward a towering, ominous mountain peak swallowing the last rays of the sun. “Ain’t nothing up there but old timber land and drop-offs. Locals don’t even go up there.” “Have you seen them come back down?” He shook his head slowly. “Nope. And there ain’t a lick of cell service past the tree line. Only reason to go up there is if you don’t wanna be found.” I stood there, staring up at the blackening silhouette of the mountain. My pulse drummed a frantic, terrifying rhythm in my ears. 05 By the time I reached the base of the ridge, it was pitch black. Attempting to navigate an uncharted, hazardous logging trail at night was a death wish. I locked myself in my car, reclined the seat, and waited for dawn. I didn’t sleep a single minute. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Theo’s face. I saw him at seven years old, grinning with a missing front tooth. I saw him in high school, fiercely defensive when someone made a joke at my expense. I saw him in college, pacing the track with me at 3 AM after a brutal breakup, crying and swearing he was never going to trust a woman again. And then Carol came along, and he believed in love again. “She’s different, Holden. She really sees me,” he had said. I buried my face in my hands, hot tears seeping through my fingers in the dark. Carol, what the fuck did you do to him? The second the sky turned a bruised, hazy purple, I was moving. I didn’t go up the mountain alone. I drove back to the nearest highway and found a State Trooper outpost. “I need help,” I lied, bursting through the double doors. “My buddy and I were hiking Blackwood Ridge yesterday. We got separated. He never came down the mountain.” It was the only way to get them to mobilize quickly. The mention of a lost hiker in that treacherous terrain got immediate results. Within forty-five minutes, a search-and-rescue team of six deputies and two K-9 units arrived at the trailhead. The leader, a grizzled, no-nonsense detective named Evans, gave the dogs a piece of clothing I had grabbed from Theo’s apartment on my way out. The dogs caught a scent almost instantly, barking fiercely before plunging into the thick underbrush. The deeper we pushed into the woods, the heavier the dread in my chest became. The canopy was thick, the air damp and smelling of rot. Suddenly, both K-9s stopped, their barks turning into frenzied, aggressive snarls as they strained against their leashes, lunging toward a clearing ahead. I was stumbling over roots, trying to keep up. As I broke through the final line of bushes and stepped into the clearing, I heard one of the deputies shout over the radio: “We’ve got a 10-54. Human remains.”

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I was the woman Beckett Thorne had jilted seven times. In our social circle, I wasn’t a person; I was a punchline. Then came Cade Sterling. He showed up with his entire empire in tow, offering me a ring and a promise of sanctuary. He told me he was “born under a dark star”—a man shadowed by a string of personal tragedies and bad luck. At the time, I didn’t care about the superstitions. I thought I’d finally found a soul as bruised as my own. I thought it was love. The first year of our marriage, a freak car accident left me shattered. The second year, I lost the baby. My entire world collapsed into a heap of sterile hospital sheets and grief. Even then, I clung to the wreckage. I chose to believe these were just the cruel whims of fate, the “dark star” he’d warned me about. Until tonight. April Fool’s Day. The party was in full swing when the mask finally slipped. A group of men had Cade cornered near the bar, raucously demanding to know why a man of his stature had insisted on marrying a “seven-time loser” like me. Cade laughed. It was a light, effortless sound, but his eyes drifted toward Bella, who was standing just a few feet away. “Bella was so obsessed with Beckett,” he said, his voice casual, as if discussing the weather. “I had to clear the board for her. Removing the competition was just… strategic.” Bella’s eyes welled with tears as she threw herself into his arms. “So the ‘bad luck’ was all an act? You did all that for me?” The room went bone-chillingly silent. I felt the blood drain from my limbs, leaving me cold as ice. Cade stepped toward me, reaching out to ruffle my hair with that familiar, patronizing tenderness. “Happy April Fool’s, babe. Don’t take it so hard.” I recoiled, breaking his touch. My voice came out flat, a dead sea of calm. “I want a divorce. And this time, Cade, I’m not playing.” … Cade’s expression darkened instantly. “Norah, don’t be dramatic. Don’t throw a tantrum.” Sensing the shift in the room, Bella wiped her eyes and reached for my hand. “Norah, please don’t be mad. Cade was just joking. Don’t let a little prank ruin what you two have because of me.” Before tonight, I would have believed her. Cade’s “devotion” had been armor I wore against the world. He was the man who had flown eight hours across the country just to make sure I took my medicine when I was flu-ridden. He was the man who stayed awake through time zones just to hear me say “goodnight” because I’d once mentioned feeling insecure. I looked at him now. That handsome face felt like a stranger’s mask. “Divorce,” I repeated. “I’ll have the papers drawn up. I don’t want a dime of your money.” Norah only married Cade for the money. I’d heard it a thousand times. In the breakroom at his office, at every gala, even from his own mother’s lips. Cade had never silenced the rumors. Every time I heard them, my guilt had only deepened, driving me to love him harder, to prove I wasn’t the gold-digger they thought I was. Cade stared at me, his eyes narrowing into slits. “Fine. If we’re doing a ‘truth session,’ let’s go all the way.” “The car accident? I arranged it. The injuries wouldn’t have been permanent if I hadn’t intentionally delayed signing the surgery consent forms. I needed you off the board so Bella wouldn’t have to compete with you in the gala circuit.” My breath hitched. He wasn’t done. “The miscarriage? The prenatal reports were faked. The baby was perfectly healthy. But you having a child would have complicated Bella’s standing in the family inheritance. The day of your surgery, I wasn’t ‘away on business.’ I was out helping Bella find her lost puppy.” Bella squeezed my hand, her voice a saccharine whine. “Norah, he’s just talking out of anger. You know you’re his number one.” The onlookers whispered, their eyes full of envy—not for me, but for Bella. They marveled at the lengths a man would go to for his “true” obsession. They all knew. They all saw it. And I was the only one standing in the wreckage of my own life. It felt like a physical blade through the chest. Because of that “accident,” I’d lost my career as a professional ballerina. Cade had “generously” hired the best medical teams for my rehab, making himself a saint in the eyes of the public. When I lost the baby and the doctors said I could likely never conceive again, Cade had poured millions into a bio-tech lab for artificial womb research, claiming he just wanted us to have a family. People called him the husband of the century. It was all a lie. A curated, expensive performance. I had pitied him for his “dark star.” I had sacrificed my body and my dreams for a ghost. I dug my nails into my palms, fighting the urge to scream. “Norah,” Bella chirped, eyeing my neck. “That necklace is so unique. Can I have it?” I instinctively reached for the emerald pendant. Cade had given it to me, claiming he’d climbed a mountain to a secluded monastery to have it blessed for my protection. I’d never taken it off. “Norah, for God’s sake,” Cade snapped. “You’re the older sister. Can’t you just let her have one thing?” Before I could move, he lunged forward and ripped the chain from my neck. The gold bit into my skin, leaving a raw, stinging welt that began to bead with blood. It was always like this. My parents, my lovers—everyone demanded I “yield” to Bella. When I refused to let her win a dance competition as a teen, my father had intentionally fed me an allergen that put me in the ICU for three days. When I didn’t give her my bridal bouquet, Cade had “gifted” her my custom-made wedding dress for her own collection. He had promised me “singular devotion.” But in the space between Bella and me, I was always the shadow. Clatter. The necklace hit the floor, the emerald shattering against the marble. “Oops,” Bella giggled. “My hand slipped. I’ll buy you a better one, Norah.” “It’s just a necklace,” Cade said, dismissing my pain before I could even speak. “It’s over. Let it go.” I knelt on the floor, my fingers trembling as I tried to pick up the shards. Maybe a jeweler could save a piece of it. Maybe I could save a piece of us. “Pathetic,” Cade muttered. He stepped forward, his heavy dress shoe grinding the remaining fragments into dust. “You’re ruining the mood.” He turned and walked away. The crowd followed him, their heels crunching over the emerald remains of my heart. I tried to stop them, but they moved like a tide, oblivious to the woman on her knees. The stone was gone. Irreparable. I was hauled into the car a few minutes later. Bella took the passenger seat as if it were her throne. “Norah, don’t be like that,” she said, pulling up a photo on her phone. “Cade actually bought me a whole set of that emerald style—earrings, bracelet, the works. He went to that monastery and spent three days praying for me. The one he gave you? The monk just gave that to him for free because he was such a good customer. It was a trinket. Don’t be so sensitive.” “Bella has a heart condition,” Cade added, his eyes softening as he looked at her. “As her future brother-in-law, I have to look out for her. Are you really going to be jealous of a sick girl?” The “blessed” heirloom I’d cherished was a gift-with-purchase. A scrap thrown to a dog. As we hit the highway, Bella began to gag. “Norah, the smell of grease on you is making me nauseous. The car is too small for this.” Cade’s stomach was sensitive, so I’d spent three years personally cooking every meal to ensure it was clean. I had worried about the smell of the kitchen clinging to me, but Cade used to pull me close and whisper, “Babe, it smells like love. I never want you to change.” “Get out,” Cade said. I blinked. “What?” “Bella’s sick. You’re making it worse. Get out and find your own way home.” The rain was beginning to pour, a heavy Atlantic curtain. He looked at me with none of the warmth he’d faked for three years. He looked at me with boredom. I was pushed out onto the shoulder of the highway. My old leg injury from the accident began to throb in the cold. I watched his taillights vanish into the grey. I walked until the world blurred. When I woke up, I was in a hospital bed. I’d been out for twelve hours. My phone was silent—not a single text from my husband. I opened Instagram. Bella had posted a photo: two hands intertwined, fingers locked. The caption: The truth finally came out tonight. No more secrets. No more missing each other. Cade’s “confession” wasn’t for me. It was his mating call to her. He’d used my destruction as a bouquet for her. I couldn’t reach him to pay the hospital bill. I had to discharge myself, limping back to the house we shared. The door was opened not by our housekeeper, but by Bella. “Oh, hi Norah,” she said, leaning against the frame in one of Cade’s shirts. “You’re just in time. Cade’s throwing me a ‘Freedom Party’ tonight. You’re welcome to watch.” She looked like the mistress of the house. I felt like a trespasser in my own life. “Cade,” Bella called out, smirking at me. “You were right. She couldn’t even last twenty-four hours before crawling back. I lose the bet.” She planted a kiss on his cheek. “It’s just a game, Norah. Don’t be a killjoy.” The guests in the foyer laughed. “She really can’t live without his checkbook, can she? Bella was being generous giving her three days.” Cade looked at me, his lip curling in disgust at my rain-soaked clothes and tangled hair. “Your stuff is in the basement storage room. Bella gets nightmares, so I’m staying in the master suite with her tonight. Go clean yourself up. You look revolting.” I sat on the edge of the small cot in the basement, the sounds of the party thumping through the ceiling. I rested my hand on my stomach. The hospital had given me the news. I was two months pregnant. A miracle. A second chance. I stared at the divorce papers I’d drafted. Once he signed them, we were done. I would raise this child alone. I would be the mother I never had. I found a metal bin and a lighter. One by one, I started dropping things in. The dried flowers from our anniversary. The polaroids. The letters. If I was leaving, I was leaving no trace. “Norah! What the hell are you doing?” Cade burst in, his face contorting as he saw the flames. In the center of the fire was a leather-bound journal. It was our “Three-Year Diary,” filled with his handwritten notes of every “happy” moment we’d shared. “Have you lost your mind? You’re burning that to get my attention? You’re pathetic.” The fire climbed higher. Cade’s voice dropped to a low, dangerous command. “Take it out. Now. Or don’t ever ask for my forgiveness.” He stood there with that arrogant tilt to his head, waiting for me to scream, to cry, to reach into the fire for the scraps of his affection. I didn’t move. Something shifted in his eyes—a flicker of genuine panic. He reached toward the flames himself, but it was too late. The journal crumbled into black ash. “Cade! You’re hurt!” Bella cried, rushing in to grab his hand. “Let me get the first aid kit.” “Norah, this is on you,” Cade hissed, nursing his singed fingers. “Since you’re so intent on being destructive, I’ve decided. Bella loves your new choreography—the one for the national competition. Since your leg is useless anyway, I’m giving the rights to her. She’ll perform it under her name. Consider it your contribution to the family.” He watched me, waiting for the break. He knew dance was my soul. He knew I’d spent three months in this basement, agonizing over every beat of that piece. “Cade,” Bella whispered, looking at the door. “Beckett is here.” Beckett Thorne, the man who had left me seven times, walked into the basement followed by a line of suited security. “Cade,” Beckett said, his voice like flint. “If you’re taking Bella, then we’re trading.” “Trading?” Cade laughed, though he moved to shield Bella. “We’re not in high school, Beckett.” “You want my wife? Fine. But you won’t leave me with nothing. The Thorne and Sterling families are equals. I’m taking Norah.” Trading wives. Like cattle. Like property. I looked at Cade. My stomach cramped—a sharp, stabbing warning. I didn’t know what Beckett would do to me, but I knew his hatred for Cade was a bottomless pit. “Cade,” I whispered, the first sign of fear breaking my mask. “Please. Just this once.” My parents wouldn’t help me. I was the “disposable” daughter. If Beckett took me, I was a dead woman walking. “Cade, I’m scared,” Bella whimpered, clutching his arm. Cade looked at Bella’s fake tears, then at me. He stepped forward and shoved me toward Beckett. “Three days,” Cade muttered to me, his voice low. “Just stay with him for three days until Bella’s divorce papers are finalized. Then I’ll come get you.” I didn’t answer. My heart had finally stopped beating. “Regrets?” Beckett asked as he led me to his car. “If you’d chosen me back then, I might not have married you, but I would have kept you fed.” I didn’t respond. I felt sick. “You know why I broke those engagements, Norah? It was Cade’s idea. He told me it was the only way to prove to Bella that I didn’t want you. He played us both.” Of course he did. For the next forty-eight hours, Beckett used me as a weapon. He staged photos—us in bed, us at dinner, my head on his shoulder. He sent them all to Bella. It worked. Cade came for me, breaking down Beckett’s door in a jealous rage. But as he threw me into the back of his car, he didn’t look like a savior. He looked like a demon. “You couldn’t wait, could you?” he spat. “How long has this been going on? Is that why you’re pregnant? Whose bastard is it, Norah?” The car smelled of Bella’s perfume. A pair of her lace underwear was tossed carelessly on the seat. The nausea hit me in waves. “Don’t look at me like that,” Cade sneered. “Bella and I… we couldn’t help ourselves earlier. Deep feelings, you know? You should understand, considering you’re carrying a Thorne brat.” He didn’t wait for my explanation. He didn’t care that the baby was conceived on our anniversary, the night he’d been so “drunk with love.” He pulled up to a private clinic. Security dragged me toward the operating room. “Cade, stop! It’s yours! Please, check the dates!” I screamed, but he was beyond reason. “You’ll say anything to keep that leverage over me,” he growled, his pulse jumping in his neck. “No anesthesia. I want her to remember the cost of betraying me. Do it now.” The pain was a jagged, tearing void. I felt my child—the only thing I had left to love—being ripped away from me. I felt the light go out. “Doctor! We’re losing her! She’s stopped fighting! Her heart—”

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In my past life, I was the punchline of a joke I didn’t even know was being told. I spent years sandwiched between Berton and Sean, playing the loyal supporting character in a romance that didn’t belong to me. Berton used to tell me he loved me. But the moment I turned down my Ivy League graduate offer to stay by his side, he hopped on a plane to Switzerland with Lila. His goodbye note was a masterpiece of emotional cowardice: “She needs me more than you do.” I cried for three months straight. During those dark days, Sean was the one who showed up at my door with takeout every night. He told me he’d been waiting for me for eight years. I thought I had finally placed the right bet when I married him. He was the perfect husband—home by six, never a stray glance at another woman. Then came the winter of the accident. I spent seven days in a coma in the ICU. He never showed up. Not once. I woke up just long enough to hear the nurses whispering by my bed: “Her husband is here every day, but he never steps foot in this room. He’s next door, taking care of that Lila girl.” It was only then that the pieces clicked into place. The money Berton used to take Lila abroad for her “treatments”? It came from Sean. I wasn’t a wife or a girlfriend; I was just an NPC in their twisted game of devotion to the same woman. When I opened my eyes this time, the first thing I did was burn every photo of Berton. I shredded three years’ worth of Sean’s handwritten letters. I put my house on the market and booked two tickets to London for me and my Nana. I’m done being the footnote. 1 “The woman in Bed 12… it’s heartbreaking. Her husband is here every day, but he won’t even look at her.” “I know. He goes straight to the room next door to see that patient, Lila.” The nurses’ voices drifted through the heavy fog of the ICU. My body was a map of fractures and bruises, and I had been suspended in this half-waking nightmare for a week. My eyes wouldn’t open, but my mind was terrifyingly sharp. I heard the nurses call Sean’s phone over and over. He never came to my side. He was busy protecting someone “more important.” I used to think he was my savior. Turns out, he was just a different kind of cage. I fought to breathe, to scream, to wake up, but my vision faded into the long, flat drone of a heart monitor. When I opened my eyes again, the sun was blinding. I was sitting at my old mahogany desk. The calendar read March—three months before I was supposed to sacrifice my future for Berton. The phone rang. It was the Director of International Programs. “Isabel? I’m calling one last time about the London exchange. Have you made a decision?” My voice didn’t tremble. “Yes. I’m in. Thank you for the opportunity, Professor. I’ll have the paperwork finalized today.” “I’m so glad to hear that,” he said, sounding relieved. “It would have been a tragedy to waste a talent like yours on a whim.” He was right. Throwing my life away for a man wasn’t romantic; it was pathetic. I hung up and immediately dialed a real estate agent. “I want to list my property. Cash buyers only. I need it closed fast.” Ten minutes later, Berton called. His voice was like a cold splash of water—dismissive and entitled. “Izzy, Lila’s senior thesis is falling apart. You’re the best writer I know. Go over to her place and fix it for her.” Always Lila. She was the ghost that haunted every room we ever entered. In my last life, I stayed up for three days straight rewriting her entire project. She won the departmental award. I wasn’t even mentioned in the fine print. Berton’s excuse back then? “Lila’s health is fragile, Izzy. She needs the win for her resume more than you do.” And I had believed him. “Sure,” I said, my voice eerily calm. “Send me the files.” “Good girl,” he murmured. The word made my skin crawl. He thought one crumb of affection was enough to keep me on a leash. Later that afternoon, Sean knocked on my door, carrying a bag from the Thai place I used to love. He set the containers out with a practiced, gentle grace. “Eat while it’s hot. I know you’ve been stressed out dealing with Berton and Lila. Don’t burn yourself out.” This was his move. He’d wait for Berton to bruise me, then show up to apply the bandages. “Lila’s project is a big deal,” Sean added, carefully casual. “Berton’s just stressed. The poor girl has been weak since she was a kid; she can’t handle the pressure alone.” They had a thousand reasons for her, and none for me. Lila was fragile, so the world had to stop spinning for her. I took a bite of the pad thai and forced a smile. “I get it, Sean. I won’t make things difficult for Berton.” He looked relieved. He thought I was still the same Isabel—the one who would erode herself until there was nothing left, just to keep them happy. The next day, I didn’t go to Lila’s. I went to the library and began my visa application. While I was scanning documents, I spotted them in the reference section. Lila was leaning into Berton’s chest, her face flushed and glowing—hardly the picture of a dying girl. “Berton, I don’t know what I’d do without you,” she chirped. He looked at her with a tenderness I had spent years begging for. “Silly girl,” he whispered. He turned to go grab a coffee and caught my eye. His expression stiffened into a frown. My presence was an inconvenience to his perfect afternoon. I didn’t storm over. I didn’t demand an explanation. I just looked at him, tilted my head, and gave him a polite, hollow smile. Then I turned back to my laptop. I could feel his eyes burning into the back of my neck. I didn’t care. In three months, I’d be an ocean away. 2 I didn’t touch a single word of Lila’s thesis. Two days later, Berton cornered me in the library. He slammed a book down on my table, the sound echoing through the quiet hall. People turned to stare. “Isabel, what the hell? I told you to help Lila. Why are you sitting here reading travel guides?” I looked up at him, then at Lila, who was standing behind him with the most perfectly rehearsed look of innocence. “I’m busy,” I said. “Busy with what? What could possibly be more important than Lila’s graduation?” Berton demanded, pulling her forward like a shield. “She hasn’t slept in days because she’s so worried. And you’re just sitting here, being selfish.” Lila touched his arm, her voice a fragile reed. “Berton, stop. It’s okay. I’m sure Isabel has her own things to do. I’ll just… I’ll figure it out. Even if I fail.” That did it. Berton’s face twisted with rage. “See? She’s more thoughtful than you’ll ever be! Isabel, I’m saying this once: I want that draft finished by the end of the week, or we’re done.” I watched their little performance and nodded slowly. “Understood.” He thought he’d won. He led her away, casting one last disgusted look over his shoulder. I went back to my work. I was fine with being the villain in their story, as long as I was the hero in mine. Eventually, the calls started getting more aggressive. “Isabel, where is it? The deadline is in three days!” Berton shouted into the phone. I turned on the faucet in the kitchen, letting the sound of rushing water fill the silence. “I’m so sorry, Berton. Nana hasn’t been feeling well. I’ve been at the hospital with her all day.” “Lila’s thesis determines her entire future,” he snapped. “Put your family stuff on hold for a second and get this done. If she doesn’t graduate, I’m never forgiving you.” My grandmother, the woman who raised me, didn’t matter to him. Only Lila’s GPA did. “But Berton—” I faked a tremble in my voice. “No buts. Get it done.” He hung up. I turned off the water and looked at my reflection. I couldn’t believe I had almost died for a man who treated me like a ghostwriter for his mistress. The real estate agent called an hour later. The house was sold. All cash. Closing was set for Friday. I needed to move some of Nana’s antique furniture out before the new owners moved in. It was heavy lifting, and I knew I couldn’t do it alone. Naturally, I called the “reliable” Sean. “Sean, are you free? I need to move some of my parents’ old things out of the house. I could really use a hand.” There was a long pause. Then, Sean’s voice came through, strained. “Izzy, I’m so sorry. I’m tied up right now.” In the background, I heard a very distinct, feminine cough. “Lila has a fever,” Sean explained. “I’m at her place making sure she’s okay. Maybe call a moving company? I’ll Venmo you the cost later.” Always her. “Don’t worry about it, Sean,” I said, smiling to myself. “Take care of her.” I hung up and hired professional movers within five minutes. Why beg for help when you can pay for excellence? A few days later, I decided to test the waters one last time. I called Sean, my voice weak and thinned out. “Sean… my stomach is killing me. I’m at the Downtown General ER.” “Don’t move,” he said instantly. “I’m on my way!” I sat on a plastic chair in the ER waiting room, watching the clock. Thirty minutes later, Sean burst through the sliding doors. He was sprinting, his face a mask of panic. But he didn’t even look at the seating area. He ran right past me. He bolted toward the orthopedic wing. I stood up and followed him at a distance. There, in a curtained-off area, sat Lila in a wheelchair. Her ankle was wrapped in a light bandage. She was sobbing. Sean dropped to his knees in front of her, stroking her hair. “Shh, it’s okay. The doctor said it’s just a tiny sprain. You’re going to be fine.” “But it hurts so much,” she whimpered, leaning into him. The way he looked at her—it was more real, more raw, than any look he’d ever given me. My “stomach ache” was a non-event compared to Lila’s bruised ego. I walked up behind them. The air in the room shifted. Sean turned around and froze. “Isabel… what are you doing here?” His eyes darted around, looking for an escape. Lila’s tears vanished instantly, replaced by a glint of pure triumph. “My stomach,” I said, gesturing to myself. “I’m just waiting for my prescription.” “Are you… are you okay?” Sean asked, standing up awkwardly. “I’ll live. Just a chronic issue. Don’t let me interrupt.” I turned and walked away before he could offer a lie. I didn’t need to hear it. I just needed to see it one last time to make sure my heart was truly dead to them. It was. 3 The day I got the wire transfer for the house, the sun was shining. I moved the funds into a private account and finalized my withdrawal from the semester. That Saturday, a mutual friend organized a night at a high-end lounge. I knew Berton and Sean would be there. To keep up appearances and avoid any “missing person” reports before I could flee, I went. We were in a private booth, drinks flowing. Lila, ever the center of attention, grabbed a set of dice. “Let’s play a game! Winner gets to pick two people to do whatever they want!” Predictably, Lila won the first round. She scanned the group with a cat-like grin. “I command Number 2 and Number 5 to recreate the ‘I’m flying’ scene from Titanic. Right here on the table!” I looked at my card. Number 2. Berton scowled and flipped his card. Number 5. The room erupted. “Isabel, this is your lucky night!” someone yelled. “Come on, Berton, give your girl a squeeze!” I was pushed toward the edge of the coffee table. Berton looked like he was being led to a firing squad. Sean was laughing along, though his eyes were cold. “Hurry up, Berton. Don’t keep the lady waiting. Izzy, open your arms.” I stood there, stiff as a board, arms outstretched, eyes closed. I waited for the awkward touch. Instead, I felt a violent shove from behind. Lila had lunged forward, laughing, “Wait, let me help!” The shove sent me off balance. My heels slipped on a spilled drink, and I went down hard. My head cracked against the sharp corner of the marble table. The world went black for a second. As I fell, bottles of champagne and glasses toppled over, drenching me in sticky, freezing liquid and crushed fruit. Silence fell over the booth. Then, I heard it. Berton’s voice, sharp with annoyance. “God, Isabel. You’re so clumsy. Way to ruin the mood.” Sean didn’t move to help. He just frowned. “It was just a game, Izzy. You didn’t have to make a scene.” Not one hand reached out to pull me up. All eyes were on Lila, who was now clutching her hand, her eyes welling with tears. “Oh no, I think I scratched my finger when I tried to catch her! Berton, it hurts!” Berton immediately pulled her to him, his voice melting into honey. “It’s okay, it’s not your fault. She just can’t stand on her own two feet.” I lay there on the cold, wet floor, my head throbbing, my clothes ruined. I didn’t cry. I just quietly got up, wiped the champagne from my eyes, and walked out. I didn’t say goodbye. I didn’t look back. I had three days until my flight. The third day was my birthday. Maybe the guilt had finally kicked in, or maybe they just wanted to make sure I wasn’t going to hold a grudge. Sean texted: “Happy Birthday, Izzy. 7 PM at The Peak. I booked the corner booth. Let’s celebrate.” A few minutes later, Berton messaged: “Happy Birthday. Lila didn’t mean to push you the other night, don’t be dramatic. We’ll all be there tonight to make it up to you.” I stared at the screen. One last goodbye. “Fine,” I replied to both. That evening, I took a car to the restaurant. It was a beautiful spot overlooking the city lights. This was a repeat of my past life. Back then, I had worn a dress Berton bought me. I had waited at this very table, only for both of them to vanish before the appetizers arrived because Lila had called saying she felt “faint.” I had waited until the restaurant closed. No calls. No texts. Just the sympathetic looks of the waiters and the crushing weight of my own stupidity. Later, I saw a post on Instagram. Lila, in a tiara, holding a cake. Berton and Sean were on either side of her, looking at her like she was the moon. The caption read: “Emergency cake party with my two favorite knights! Who says you need a birthday to be a princess?” My birthday didn’t matter. Her “impromptu” celebration did. 4 “Isabel? You’re staring into space.” Sean’s voice snapped me back to the present. He and Berton were sitting across from me. The food had been served, but the air was thick with unspoken tension. Sean raised his glass. “Izzy, I’m sorry about the lounge. This is to you. Happy Birthday.” Berton didn’t apologize, but he didn’t snap either. He just looked at me with a confusing, heavy gaze. Then, the inevitable happened. Sean’s phone buzzed. He looked at the screen, and his face went pale. He answered immediately. “What? Fainted? Which hospital?” He hung up and looked at me, the familiar script of “I’m sorry” already forming on his lips. “Izzy, I’m so sorry. Lila… she had a blood sugar crash. She’s in the ER. I have to go.” Before I could even blink, Berton was already standing up, jacket in hand. He looked at Sean. “I’m coming too. You might need help handling the paperwork.” Like clockwork. For the second time in two lifetimes, they were abandoning me on my birthday for the same woman. “Isabel, stay here and eat,” Sean promised, already halfway to the door. “We’ll be back as soon as she’s stable. I swear!” They bolted. The heavy doors of the private dining room swung shut, leaving me in total silence. I looked at the table full of expensive food. I didn’t wait a single second. I grabbed my coat and signaled the waiter. “Check, please.” I stepped out into the night air. It was cold, but for the first time in my life, I felt like I could actually breathe. I took out my phone and did what I should have done years ago. Berton: Blocked. Sean: Blocked. Lila: Blocked. I took a taxi straight home. The house was empty now. Just a few suitcases belonging to me and Nana. No furniture, no memories, no ghosts. I stripped off the expensive dress I was wearing—the one they liked—and threw it directly into the trash can. Along with it went every last shred of my feelings for Berton. I went into Nana’s room. She was asleep, her breathing steady. I tucked the blanket around her and kissed her forehead. “Nana, this time, I’m taking you somewhere where nobody can hurt us.” I didn’t sleep that night. I checked our passports and tickets a dozen times. As the sun began to peek over the horizon, I woke her up gently. “Nana, we’re going on a trip. A long one. You ready?” She smiled, her eyes a bit foggy but full of love. “Wherever you go, Izzy. That’s where I belong.” At the airport, the morning light felt like a benediction. I held Nana’s hand as we walked toward the gate. Goodbye, Berton. Goodbye, Sean. And Lila? Good luck. You’re going to need it when your two “knights” realize their favorite prize is finally out of reach.

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