Category: English

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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The resignation letter in my pocket felt heavy, its edges softened and frayed from where I’d been nervously gripping it all morning. “And now, for the grand finale—the award for ‘Least Valuable Player’!” The announcement was met with a heartbeat of stunned silence before the room erupted into a roar of laughter. I looked up. There, dead center on the massive LED screen, was my name—Casey Morgan—followed by a jarring, bright red number: 87. There are exactly eighty-seven employees at this firm. I had received a unanimous vote. “Casey, come on up! Don’t be shy!” Regina, our Department Director, called out with a playful, mocking glint in her eyes. She waved me toward the stage like a queen summoning a court jester. I took a sharp, steadying breath, stood up, and began the long, humiliating walk to the podium. When I reached her, she handed me a weighted plastic trophy. The words KING OF SLACKERS were etched into the base in a font that screamed cheap novelty. I forced a smile for the crowd. No one in that room knew that I was already halfway out the door. 1. The trophy was spray-painted gold, the kind of plastic that feels greasy to the touch. A thermal-printed label was crookedly stuck to the base: Annual Office Ghost — Casey Morgan. I held it in both hands as the flashes went off. It wasn’t the press; it was my coworkers, their iPhones out, capturing the moment for the company Slack channel. “Post it! Post it!” someone yelled. “Smile, Casey! Don’t look so miserable, it’s a joke!” I smiled. It was the kind of smile you wear at a funeral when you’re the only one who knows the deceased left you everything in the will. Regina thrust the microphone into my hand. “Well? Speech?” I took it. The feedback hummed for a second. “Thank you, everyone.” Four words. That was all they got. I handed the mic back and walked off the stage to an even louder wave of jeering. “God, is he actually mad?” “Relax, it’s just team building.” “That’s just Casey. Zero sense of humor.” I slumped back into my seat and set the plastic monstrosity on the table. Parker, the department’s golden boy, leaned over and clapped me on the shoulder. “Don’t take it personally, man. It’s just a game.” “Right,” I muttered. “Look at me,” he gestured to the three trophies at his place. Most Popular. Best Creative Lead. Top Sales Support. His trophies were brushed stainless steel with solid walnut bases. Mine was the only one made of plastic. The award had been a last-minute addition. Regina had suggested it during the retreat planning to “lighten the mood with some reverse-psychology humor.” The voting was anonymous, handled through a third-party app. Eighty-seven votes. Every single person—the receptionist, the janitorial lead, the interns, the CEO—had clicked my name. I didn’t need to ask why. I already knew the answer. In this company, I was a ghost. No one knew what I actually did. Regina didn’t know, Parker didn’t know, HR didn’t know. Even Payroll, when they cut my check every month, probably wondered why they were shelling out a mid-level salary for a man who seemed to spend his day staring at a black screen with green text. I’m a backend developer. On paper, it’s a standard role. But the reality is that I am the sole architect of the company’s core transaction engine. The system handles thirty million data points a day. It supports eighty percent of the company’s revenue streams. Without it, the front-end website is a blank white page. Without it, every “Buy Now” click results in a 404 error. Without it, the million dollars that flows into the company’s accounts every single day would simply vanish into the ether. But that system hasn’t crashed in three years. And because it hasn’t crashed, everyone forgot it existed. It’s like the plumbing in your house—you never think about the pipes until the day your floor is underwater. The retreat continued. Regina was on stage handing out three-thousand-dollar bonuses to the top performers. The room erupted in applause. Parker got two thousand for “Creative Excellence.” Someone in the back screamed, “Legend!” I sat in the corner, picking at a piece of fruit. My phone buzzed in my pocket. System Alert: Server memory usage exceeding threshold. Cache clearing required. I pulled out my laptop, established an SSH connection to the server, and typed a few lines of bash script. Three minutes later, the memory levels dipped back into the green. Crisis averted. I looked up. The party was still roaring. No one noticed what I’d just done. No one noticed that if I’d waited thirty minutes, every customer order processed tomorrow morning would have been corrupted. I shut the laptop. The intern next to me, a girl named Maya, glanced at me. “Seriously, Casey? You brought your laptop to a retreat?” “Force of habit,” I said. “Must be nice,” she laughed, turning back to the stage. “Having so little to do that you can just play on your computer all night.” By 10 PM, the retreat was winding down. On the shuttle bus back to the city, everyone was busy posting to Instagram. I scrolled through my feed. I saw Parker’s post: Current mood: Grateful! Best Creative Award in the bag! Love this team! Regina had liked it instantly. Comment: So well deserved! I saw Nicole’s post: Top Sales! Keep grinding! Regina liked that one, too. I didn’t post anything. I was busy reading the PDF of my resignation letter. I’d written it three days ago. Tonight, I was finally going to hit ‘Send.’ 2. I’d hesitated when I wrote the letter. Three years is a long time in tech. When I joined in 2021, the company was a scrappy startup. The dev team was five people. I was the third hire. Back then, we were short on everything—front-end, DevOps, QA. I did it all. I built the transaction engine from scratch. I designed the database schema. I wrote the monitoring scripts. I built the automated backup system. The night the first version went live, I stayed in the office until 4 AM. Regina wasn’t the Director then; she was a team lead. She’d patted me on the back and said, “Casey, keep this up and the company will take care of you. You’re the foundation.” I believed her. Year one: business boomed. Transaction volume went from ten thousand a day to a million. The system held. Why? Because I’d built in the scalability. I’d anticipated the load. I’d written the load balancers before we even needed them. At the monthly meeting, Regina said, “Tech is stable. Zero downtime this month.” The CEO nodded, then spent forty minutes talking about a new font choice for the landing page. No one asked why the tech was stable. Year two: we moved to a high-rise downtown. Regina was promoted. The tech team grew to fifteen. Five front-end devs, three back-end, two product managers. The new guys handled the flashy stuff—API integrations, data visualization, third-party hooks. The core architecture remained mine. No one else wanted to touch it because it was “boring.” My code wasn’t flashy. There were no trendy frameworks or buzzword-heavy architectures. It was just rock-solid. So solid that for three years, nothing went wrong. So solid that everyone forgot I was the one keeping it that way. During my annual review, Regina looked at me with a frown. “Casey, your KPIs… honestly, they’re not great.” “In what way?” I asked, genuinely confused. “Look at Nicole. She shipped thirty-eight new API endpoints this year. Parker redesigned twelve major landing pages. Even the new guy, Mark, did seven data reports. And you?” I thought for a second. “I optimized the database indexing three times. I migrated our servers to a more secure VPC. I patched a critical security vulnerability before it was exploited, and I refactored the asynchronous processing logic for the entire payment gateway.” Regina sighed, tapping her pen on the desk. “But how do we quantify that? How does that look on a slide for the board?” “The database optimization increased query speeds by forty percent. The migration ensured zero downtime. If I hadn’t patched that vulnerability, our customer data would have been on the dark web by Tuesday.” “But the board doesn’t see that, Casey. They see what’s broken. And nothing was broken.” She leaned back. “I’m going to be honest. You do things that are invisible. And when things are invisible, it looks like you aren’t doing anything. I need you to be more ‘visible’ next year. Write a blog post. Do a lunch-and-learn. Give us a ‘cool’ project. Let people see you working.” “I’m maintaining the heart of the company,” I said quietly. “I know, I know. But you have to make everyone else know.” My performance rating that year was ‘Needs Improvement.’ The lowest in the department. My bonus was a measly five hundred dollars. Parker took home fifteen thousand. Nicole took home twenty. I didn’t argue. Year three—this year—I asked for a raise. Just a ten percent cost-of-living adjustment. It was the first time I’d asked in three years. The reply from HR was a single sentence: Following a departmental review, your current compensation has been determined to be at market rate for your role and output. I went to Regina’s office. She made me wait outside for forty-five minutes. When I finally got in, she said something I will never forget. “Casey, let’s be real. Your role is highly replaceable. I could hire a fresh grad and have them up to speed in two weeks. There’s just no business case for a raise.” I nodded. I went back to my desk, opened a new Google Doc, and typed the header: RESIGNATION LETTER. 3. I didn’t hand it in immediately. I had to think about what would happen when I left. I looked at the Git logs. The core transaction system consisted of 140,000 lines of code. I had written 92,000 of them personally. Of the remaining 48,000, I had reviewed and refactored nearly 30,000. Essentially, 95% of the system had my fingerprints on it. The catch? The documentation. Or rather, the lack of it. It wasn’t that I was lazy. In year one, there was no time. In year two, Regina told me to “focus on shipping, we’ll document later.” By year three, I’d stopped asking. The logic of those 140,000 lines existed only in my head. The thirty-six database tables, the specific triggers that couldn’t be deleted, the weird legacy dependencies—none of it was written down. The server configurations, the failover protocols, the manual cache-clearing scripts—all of it lived in my brain. I wasn’t trying to sabotage them. There was just no one to hand it off to. Nicole did APIs; she’d never even looked at the database partitioning. Mark did reports; he thought the system ran on “auto-pilot.” The other back-end guy, Dave, had been there a year and still didn’t have the SSH keys for the production server. I’d tried to bring it up. “We really need to document the core architecture,” I’d say at weekly stand-ups. Regina would shrug. “Sure, put a plan together.” I’d put a plan together. I’d estimate two weeks of dedicated work. Regina would shake her head. “We’re too busy with the Q3 rollout. Maybe next quarter.” Next quarter. Next quarter. For three years. The night I finished the resignation letter, I did a final audit. What belonged to the company? The business logic. That stayed. What belonged to me? My personal utility scripts. My automation tools. My custom monitoring dashboard. I had written those using my personal GitHub account. I had used them to make my job easier, but they were my intellectual property, developed independently of their proprietary codebase. Clause 7, Section 3 of my employment contract: Any personal tools or code libraries created by the employee using personal resources, which are not directly part of the Company’s commercial product, remain the property of the employee. My monitoring scripts were on my personal GitHub. My automated deployment pipeline was a fork of my own open-source project. I wasn’t stealing. I was just taking my toolbox home with me. The company had been using my personal tools for three years without paying a cent for the license. I felt zero guilt. The night of the retreat, I went home and printed the letter. I signed it in blue ink. I tucked it into my laptop bag. The next morning, at 9:00 AM sharp, I walked into Regina’s office. “Regina, do you have a second?” “Make it quick, Casey. I have a meeting with the CTO in ten.” I laid the letter on her desk. She squinted at it, then her eyes widened. “You’re quitting?” “Yes.” “This is… sudden. Why now?” “It’s not sudden. I’ve been thinking about it for a long time.” Regina leaned back, a smug little smirk playing on her lips. “Is this about that ‘King of Slackers’ award last night? Casey, it was a joke. Don’t be so sensitive.” I smiled. “It’s not about the award, Regina.” “Then what? Money?” “It’s not about how much. It’s about the fact that I’m done.” “Look, don’t be impulsive. You’ve been here three years. You’re part of the furniture.” “Exactly. And like furniture, you only notice it when it’s gone.” Regina went silent for a few seconds. “Look… I can probably swing a small bump in your salary.” “Don’t bother.” I looked her straight in the eye.

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When consciousness finally clawed its way back to me, the sterile scent of antiseptic filled my lungs. I was lying in a hospital bed. Sitting in the chair beside me was a strange woman, impeccably dressed in a tailored designer suit. Polite and eager to piece things together, I cleared my throat and asked if she was the employer I was supposed to be interviewing with for the live-in housekeeper position. The color drained from her face instantly. Her voice trembled as she demanded to know what the hell I was talking about. A spike of panic hit me. I scrambled to explain that my memory was a blank slate—a void—and the only coherent thought floating in the wreckage of my mind was that I was supposed to be interviewing for a job as a live-in nanny. She lunged forward, her manicured hand reaching for mine. Reflexively, I recoiled, pulling my hand back into the safety of the scratchy hospital blanket, and quietly reminded her to maintain professional boundaries. When I finally returned to that sprawling, modern estate with her, I couldn’t shake the feeling that the people living there were looking at me with eyes full of a strange, heavy history. I fell into a routine. Every morning, I was out of bed by five to prep breakfast. I addressed the woman of the house with a respectful “Ms. Croft,” and referred to the handsome male guest who was always lingering around as “Mr. Blake.” Over time, the way Mr. Blake looked at me shifted. The smug, self-satisfied smirk he wore during my first few days slowly curdled into a nervous, uneasy apprehension. There was a little girl in the house, too. Once, she ran up, arms outstretched, wanting to hug me. The moment was agonizingly awkward; I gently pushed her away by the shoulders, explaining in a soft voice that my employment contract strictly prohibited casual physical contact with my charges. She burst into catastrophic tears. Ms. Croft constantly stared at me, her gaze piercing and heavy. I assumed I was underperforming, that the house wasn’t clean enough or the meals weren’t up to standard, so I doubled down. I scrubbed harder. I cooked better. Until late one night. I was carrying a tray of chamomile tea toward the study when I accidentally caught the tail end of Ms. Croft’s phone conversation through the crack in the oak door. “Doctor, when is he going to get his memory back? I don’t know how much longer I can take this…” Her voice broke, thick with quiet, desperate sobs. “He used to love me so much. He worshipped me. And now… he looks at me like I’m a complete stranger.” Standing alone in the dimly lit hallway, the tray shaking slightly in my hands, I went entirely still. 1 I was up by five, as usual. Before the car accident, my last cohesive memory was that I worked as a housekeeper for a wealthy family, spending my days cooking and caring for a mother and daughter. Since I was out of the hospital, I figured I just needed to put my head down and do the job I was paid to do. I crept down the sweeping, architectural staircase. The kitchen was still swallowed in pre-dawn shadows. I opened the massive double-door refrigerator, marveling at the endless shelves of high-end ingredients. I bypassed the caviar and truffles, opting instead for eggs, some oats, and fresh berries to make a standard, unassuming breakfast. I was just finishing the oatmeal when the soft padding of footsteps sounded behind me. I turned. Ms. Croft was standing in the doorway. Her eyes were bloodshot, rimmed with dark circles that spoke of a sleepless night. “You’re up early, Ms. Croft,” I said, offering a polite, deferential nod. She stared at me, a cold, bitter laugh escaping her lips. “You’re putting on quite the performance,” she said. I blinked, genuinely lost. “Excuse me?” She crossed the marble floor, invading my space. “Do you honestly think faking amnesia after a car crash is going to give you a clean slate? Is this your twisted way of starting over?” I had absolutely no idea what she was talking about. “Ms. Croft, I assure you, my memory is completely gone…” “Save it.” She cut me off, her voice dropping to a glacial chill. “A few weeks ago you were screaming for a divorce, and today you’re playing the subservient little nanny?” Her hostility physically pushed me back. I took a step away, pressing my spine against the cool granite counter. She pressed on. “You want pity, don’t you? You want me drowning in guilt. You want Sophie to look at you and cry because her heart breaks for you.” “I don’t—” “I know exactly what you’re doing.” Her eyes were shards of ice. “Gideon Wright, I’ll give you credit for being manipulative, but this? This is pathetic.” My mouth opened, but the words withered in my throat. I didn’t know what to say. The oatmeal was ready. I served three bowls and arranged them meticulously on the massive dining table. Ms. Croft sat at the head of the table, not even glancing at the food I’d prepared. “You used to make breakfasts that looked like they belonged in a Michelin-starred restaurant,” she muttered. “And now I get this?” I rubbed my palms anxiously against my apron. “I… I only know how to make the basics…” “Keep it up, then.” She picked up her spoon, took a single, reluctant bite, and dropped it back into the bowl with a clatter. “Even the taste is wrong.” I stood there, suffocating in my inability to explain myself. Salvation, or so I thought, came from upstairs. The sound of crying. The little girl was awake. I hurried up the stairs and pushed open the door to the custom-designed pastel bedroom. Sophie was sitting up in bed. The second her eyes locked onto mine, fresh tears spilled over her cheeks. “Daddy…” she wailed. I knelt by the edge of her bed, keeping a respectful distance. “Miss, what’s wrong?” She froze. The tears stopped for a fraction of a second before returning with double the force. “Why are you calling me ‘Miss’… I’m Sophie…” I was entirely out of my depth. All I could do was offer a stiff, awkward pat on her small shoulder. Ms. Croft appeared in the doorway, her presence casting a long, cold shadow over the room. “Drop the act,” she commanded. “Sophie, ignore him. He’s just putting on a play.” The little girl looked frantically between her mother and me, her sobs escalating into hiccups. I stood up, the air in the room suddenly too thin to breathe. “I… I’ll just head back downstairs, then.” “Stop right there,” Ms. Croft ordered. “Where exactly have you been sleeping?” “In the staff quarters.” A harsh, mocking sound scraped the back of her throat. “You really are committed to the bit.” I kept my eyes glued to the floorboards. “Do whatever you want,” she said. “But don’t think for a second this is going to make me go soft on you.” Breakfast was an exercise in pure tension. Sophie kept staring at me over her bowl, her tears dripping silently into her oatmeal. Ms. Croft refused to acknowledge my existence. Once they finished, I cleared my throat, carefully choosing my moment. “Ms. Croft, if you don’t mind me asking… what exactly is my salary?” She slowly raised her head. She looked at me as if I had sprouted a second head. “Your salary?” she repeated. A humorless, incredulous smile stretched across her face. “Gideon, you really know how to find new ways to astound me.” Her words were a puzzle I didn’t have the pieces to solve. “Whatever. Play whatever game you want.” She stood up abruptly, smoothing down her skirt. “But don’t expect me to be a willing participant.” She grabbed her designer bag and walked out the front door. Sophie scrambled out of her chair and ran upstairs, leaving me entirely alone in the cavernous dining room. I stared at the half-eaten bowls of oatmeal, a profound sense of bewilderment washing over me. Were these people completely insane? 2 Over the next few days, Ms. Croft’s attitude toward me shifted from aggressive to purely frigid. It didn’t bother me. I was just the hired help. My job was to keep my head down, do the work, and stay out of the crossfire. Once I saved up enough cash, I’d put in my notice and leave. By noon, I was in the kitchen prepping lunch. Sophie was sitting on the living room rug, building a tower out of wooden blocks. When she saw me, she aggressively turned her back. Tristan Blake was lounging on the plush sectional. He flashed me an easy, perfectly white smile. “Need a hand in there, Gideon?” I shook my head, maintaining professional courtesy. “No, thank you, Mr. Blake. I have it under control.” His smile faltered for a microsecond before he nodded, leaning back into the cushions. I brought the food to the dining room. A simple shrimp fried rice and a side of sautéed greens. Sophie climbed into her chair, eyed the plate, and wrinkled her nose. “Uncle Tristan’s cooking is way better,” she mumbled to her lap. I stood by the sideboard, clasping my hands behind my back, letting the comment slide off me. Ms. Croft walked in from work. She took one look at the table and her meticulously arched eyebrows drew together. “This is it?” I nodded once. “Yes, ma’am.” She let out a breath of air that was half-scoff, half-sigh, and sat down. Sophie took two small bites of the fried rice. Suddenly, she dropped her fork and clutched her stomach. “Sophie?” Tristan was out of his seat in a second. Her face was rapidly turning an angry, blotchy red. A constellation of hives was blooming across her neck. Ms. Croft’s chair scraped violently against the floor. She scooped her daughter up in one fluid motion, sprinting toward the door. “To the hospital! Now!” Panic hijacked my nervous system. I ran out the door right behind them. The ride was a blur. Ms. Croft drove like a demon, her knuckles white on the steering wheel, her jaw locked. I sat in the back with Sophie, watching the little girl wheeze and squirm, my chest tight with a helpless kind of terror. At the ER, the doctors administered an epinephrine shot. The diagnosis was swift and definitive: a severe shellfish allergy. Ms. Croft turned slowly to face me in the sterile hospital corridor. Her eyes were murderous. “You fed her shrimp?” I flinched. “I… I didn’t know the young miss was allergic…” “You didn’t know?” She let out a bark of a laugh that held zero humor. “You are her father. How could you not know?” The accusation hit me like a physical blow. “But… I really don’t remember…” “Drop it.” She slashed a hand through the air. “Gideon, do you think I’m an idiot? Do you think I don’t see right through this?” She stepped closer, her voice a venomous hiss. “This is your way of getting back at me, isn’t it? Putting our daughter in danger just to make me feel like a failure?” I shook my head frantically. “No, I swear…” “Enough.” She spun on her heel and pushed through the doors to the pediatric bay, leaving me stranded under the flickering fluorescent lights. Tristan walked over, his hands shoved deep into his designer denim pockets. He offered me a soft, pitying sigh. “Gideon, man, I know you’re hurting,” he said softly. “But pulling a stunt like this… is it really worth it?” I stared at him, the gears in my brain grinding on nothing. He tilted his head, giving me a look of practiced sympathy. “Using this amnesia act to try and win Patricia back is only going to push her further away. It’s toxic.” I blinked, the confusion turning into genuine frustration. “I’m not trying to win her back. I don’t even know her.” “You don’t have to play the part with me.” He offered a sad, knowing smile. “Look, Gideon, as a friend? I think you should just give up. Patricia is completely done with you. No matter how deep into this character you go, it’s not going to change anything.” With that, he slipped into the hospital room, the heavy door clicking shut behind him. I stood alone in the hallway, the ambient noise of the hospital fading into white noise. Nothing made sense. When we finally got back to the house, I retreated to my small room, locked the door, and pulled out my phone. I typed my own name into the search bar: Gideon Wright. The top hit was a society gossip piece from a digital tabloid. “Billionaire Wright Heir’s Cinderella Marriage Hitting the Rocks After Seven Years?” I clicked the link, my heart hammering a chaotic rhythm against my ribs. According to the article, Gideon Wright was the sole heir to the massive Wright Enterprises. Seven years ago, in a move that scandalized high society, he turned his back on his family’s wealth to marry an entry-level employee named Patricia Croft. After the wedding, he stepped down as Vice President, resigning himself to the role of a stay-at-home husband. Meanwhile, Patricia leveraged her wealthy father-in-law’s connections to build her own corporate empire from the ground up. Three years ago, Gideon’s parents died in a tragic aviation accident. He inherited an obscene fortune. Recently, the tabloids were swirling with rumors of an impending, messy divorce. I stared at the glowing screen, a profound sense of detachment settling over me. My first, instinctual thought was: This Gideon guy is a total idiot. He had all that money, all that power, and he threw it away to become a house-pet for a woman who clearly used him? 3 Ms. Croft—Patricia—hired a new private chef. She was a middle-aged woman who treated me with an uncomfortable level of reverence. “Mr. Wright, what would you like for dinner?” she asked on her first day. I stiffened. “Oh, no, I’m not…” “Don’t mind him, Maria,” Tristan chimed in from the kitchen island, nursing a glass of scotch. “He’s just really into cosplaying as the help right now. Just call him Mr. Wright.” Maria looked thoroughly bewildered but offered a slow, hesitant nod. Since the hospital incident, Sophie treated me like I was radioactive. Once, I saw her struggling to reach a puzzle box on a high shelf. I picked it up and held it out to her. She slapped it out of my hands, the box hitting the hardwood and spilling pieces everywhere. “Don’t touch my things!” she screamed. Patricia was standing in the doorway. She watched the entire exchange, offered a cold, satisfied smirk, and walked away without a word. Later that week, the house was empty. I decided to tackle the deep cleaning of the mahogany-paneled study. I pushed open the heavy double doors and started dusting the massive built-in bookshelves. They were cluttered with leather-bound books and silver-framed photographs. Halfway through the second shelf, I picked up a photo. It was Patricia and Tristan. They were on a boat somewhere tropical, the wind in their hair, their arms wrapped around each other, laughing with an intimacy that felt almost intrusive to look at. I frowned and kept scanning the shelves. There were at least seven or eight photos of the two of them. It took me ten minutes of searching to find a single photo of Patricia with “Gideon Wright,” shoved unceremoniously behind a stack of hardcovers in the darkest corner of the room. I snorted to myself. The dynamic between those two was aggressively obvious. How on earth did the ‘man of the house’ tolerate this level of blatant disrespect? My internal rejection of my supposed identity solidified. There was no way I was this Gideon guy. I simply did not possess that level of romantic martyrdom. While organizing the heavy oak desk, I slid open the bottom drawer and found a black Moleskine notebook. Curiosity got the better of me. I flipped it open. The very first entry was a single, jagged line of ink: “Why isn’t she home yet…” I turned the pages. They were filled with the manic, suffocating scribbles of a man drowning in his own life. “3:00 AM. I’ve been sitting in the dark living room all night.” “Tristan is back today. He swears they’re just friends, but if that’s true, why does he practically live in our house?” “Sophie told me she wishes Uncle Tristan was her dad. I think my heart actually stopped beating.” I stared at the handwriting. God, what a disaster. Breaking yourself in half for someone who won’t even look at you? It was pathetic. I’d rather scrub toilets for minimum wage than live like this. I flipped toward the back of the book. “We fought again today. She told me I was being completely irrational.” “Is it irrational to just want an explanation? To want my wife to act like my wife?” “Sophie defended him today. She called me the bad guy. She called me a monster.” “I’m so exhausted…” The handwriting devolved into a frantic scrawl toward the end. The paper was warped in places, the ink blurred. Teardrops. I turned to the very last page. Four words, pressed so hard into the paper the pen had nearly torn through. “I want a divorce.” I snapped the book shut. Finally. Some sense. Whoever this guy was, he was right. Divorce was the only sane option. I shoved the notebook back into the drawer. Whoever this pathetic, weeping, lovesick man was, he wasn’t me. Dinner that night was an exercise in silent endurance. Sophie kept shooting me these heavy, tear-filled glances from across the table. “Daddy…” she whispered suddenly, her voice barely carrying over the clinking of silverware. I looked up. “Did you… did you really forget about me?” she asked, her bottom lip trembling violently. I froze, caught in the headlights of a child’s grief. I didn’t know what the right answer was. Patricia set her wine glass down. She stared at me, a dangerous, fragile spark of anticipation flickering in her eyes. I opened my mouth, closed it, and finally, gave a slow, honest nod. Sophie shattered. She let out a devastating wail. Tristan was out of his chair in a second, wrapping his arms around her. “Hey, shh, Sophie, it’s okay, I’m here…” “Miss Sophie,” I offered, trying to be helpful. “You mentioned you prefer Mr. Blake anyway. So… it works out, right? You have him.” Sophie stopped crying for a fraction of a second, her face twisting in pure shock, before bolting from the table and running upstairs. Patricia stood up slowly. Her face was a mask of cold fury. “Have you had enough of this sick game?” she demanded, her voice vibrating with anger. “Torturing your own daughter just to make a point?” She didn’t wait for an answer before storming up the stairs after Sophie. The dining room descended into a heavy silence. Just me and Tristan. He let out a long, theatrical sigh and leaned back in his chair. “Gideon, man. Why do this to yourself?” I just looked at him, completely unbothered. He stood up, walking around the table until he was standing right next to me. He dropped his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “You know, Patricia actually does care about you.” “She’s just… you’ve disappointed her so deeply these last few years. You smothered her.” He gave my shoulder a patronizing pat and headed for the stairs. I sat there, watching him go, shaking my head. What is there to pretend about? She might care about me, but the problem is, I don’t give a damn about her. 4 For the next few days, the temperature in the house rose a few degrees. Patricia stopped throwing sarcastic barbs my way, but she didn’t engage with me either. It was as if I truly had become a piece of the furniture—a real employee. That morning, Tristan ambushed me in the living room. “Gideon. We need to talk,” he said, his tone serious. We sat opposite each other. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, looking the picture of earnest vulnerability. “Patricia and I… we were college sweethearts,” he began.

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I walked in on my husband, Blackrock Pack Alpha Kane, rolling around in our marital bed with his mistress Talia. I demanded a divorce on the spot. Talia, clothes still disheveled, immediately slapped me across the face and shrieked mockingly: “You’re nothing but a lowly waitress from a border club. What makes you think you have the right to ask an Alpha for a divorce? Do you really think you’re the Luna of Blackrock Pack?” Kane’s sister Jessa chimed in from the side: “So what if my brother has a mistress? What are you making such a fuss about?” Kane looked at me with undisguised impatience and warned: “Everything you have, I gave you. Without me, you’re nothing. Are you really going through with this divorce?” I nodded decisively: “Yes.” After all, my father, the Rogue King who strikes terror into the hearts of North American werewolves, was about to be released from prison. He’d been wanting to throw Kane to the rogues at the border to be torn apart for a long time now. Talia was Kane’s most favored mistress. Despite her humble origins, she was the most arrogant of all his lovers. Seeing my determination to divorce, a flash of joy flickered through Talia’s eyes. She crossed her arms and leaned against the wall, sneering at me with contempt: “Ungrateful women never come to a good end.” “Kane is the Alpha of Blackrock Pack. For a lowly waitress like you to marry him was your good fortune. Instead of being grateful that he pulled you out of the gutter, you’re making a scene about divorce over such a trivial matter as him having other women. You’re an absolute fool.” “You just got lucky, meeting Kane before he became Alpha. Otherwise, with your status, you wouldn’t even qualify to set foot in Blackrock Pack territory.” “If I could become Kane’s mate, I would never be as jealous as you. I would arrange all the women around him properly and never let such trivial matters distract him!” Talia’s words made it clear she wanted to steal my position as Luna. In the past, I might have confronted her angrily. But now, I’d completely given up on Kane. This so-called Luna position was nothing more than a cold cage to me. Jessa toyed with a sharp dagger, sneering at me with contempt: “You waitress, are you planning to use this divorce to blackmail my brother and force him to give you an astronomical settlement?” “Raina, can you stop being so naive?” “Do you think divorcing my brother will let you take a share of Blackrock Pack’s power and wealth? Like that Omega who divorced the Whitespire Pack Alpha a while back and became a top-tier rich woman overnight?” “You’d better abandon that idea right now! Before my brother married you, he made you sign a prenuptial agreement. And with me, Blackrock Pack’s chief lawyer, here, the moment you dare to divorce, you’ll leave with nothing but the clothes on your back. Not even a single strand of wolf fur!” Jessa certainly had grounds for her confidence. She’d studied countless loopholes in Alliance law. Though not the most elite lawyer, she’d fought plenty of divorce cases with extremely ruthless tactics. Even though I’d completely given up on Kane, hearing Jessa’s naked threats, I couldn’t help but feel a bone-chilling cold rise in my heart. I glared at Jessa and shouted: “Without me, the lowly waitress you speak of, you siblings wouldn’t be where you are today!” “Your brother was critically injured by rogues back then. I stayed by his side day and night, which let you study without pressure.” “And you? You couldn’t even afford tuition back then. If I hadn’t used my savings, you would’ve been expelled from the academy and sent back to the border long ago!” “You knelt before me back then, saying if your brother ever treated me badly, you’d be the first to hold him accountable…” Without my help back then, Jessa never could have completed her education. Kane would have died in the border’s snowfields long ago, let alone risen to his current position as Alpha. Back then, the siblings were grateful to me, practically wanting to worship me. I foolishly thought I’d found people who truly cared about me. And what happened? “You grabbed my hand back then, crying and saying I’d given you this life, and anyone who disrespected me would have to answer to you…” Without my unreserved efforts to save them, Jessa would have become just another corpse at the border long ago. Kane would have died in some unknown corner, never becoming Blackrock Pack’s Alpha. Back then, the siblings treated me like a second parent, ready to give me their very hearts. I foolishly thought I’d found family I could trust with my life. And what happened? After Kane firmly secured his position as Blackrock Pack’s Alpha, he stopped coming home. Instead, I frequently saw him in tabloid news, entering and leaving clubs with different Omegas, living it up without a care in the world. Ever since Jessa became Blackrock Pack’s lawyer and started dealing with elite wolves from various packs, she looked down on me more and more. She thought I, a club waitress, wasn’t worthy of her brother and brought shame to both siblings. Now they fancied themselves superior, never mentioning those days of struggling to survive in the garbage dumps. As if that period when they relied on my support was the greatest stain on their lives.

Kane and Jessa’s faces instantly turned ashen. Before I could finish speaking, Jessa suddenly grabbed the teacup beside her and hurled it viciously at me. The heavy cup struck my temple, and pain exploded through my head, darkening my vision. Warm blood trickled down from my brow bone, blurring my sight and leaving me in a wretched state. Jessa stared at me with vicious eyes and cursed: “Ungrateful trash! Who do you think you are, bringing up the past in front of me?” “Without my brother elevating you, you’d spend your whole life licking boots for lowlife wolves at that club! That little bit of kindness you showed us was your own choice. Did we beg you?” Kane leaned back on the sofa, legs crossed, watching me coldly: “Enough, Raina. Let me be frank with you. Omegas wanting to climb into my bed could form a line from here to the border. You’ve occupied the Luna position for years. I’ve provided you with the best food and lifestyle. I’ve done more than enough.” “This divorce is happening whether you like it or not. I don’t want people digging up the fact that my Luna used to serve plates at a club.” “Sign voluntarily, and I’ll let you keep some dignity. If you insist on making trouble, I have a hundred ways to make you disappear without a trace.” “But since you’ve been with me these past few years, I won’t go to extremes. Sign this agreement, and I’ll give you a million dollars. Take the money and disappear forever.” Kane had me sign a non-disclosure agreement. The agreement stated that after the divorce, I couldn’t mention how I’d helped the siblings in the past, and I couldn’t tell any pack that I’d been Kane’s partner or Blackrock Pack’s former Luna. I agreed without hesitation. Although Kane and I had been married for over three years, almost no one outside knew of my existence. Everyone assumed Blackrock Pack’s Alpha Kane was still single. After all, our wedding was extremely simple with no guests from any pack invited. The only witnesses were Blackrock Pack’s old priest and Jessa. Plus, after the marriage, Kane began his philandering, deliberately maintaining his persona as a single, eligible Alpha. Jessa also hinted at various occasions that both siblings were single. So these past three years, very few people knew I was Kane’s partner. I signed both the divorce and non-disclosure agreements, picked up the million-dollar check Kane tossed at me, and turned to leave this place that disgusted me. Just then, Talia spoke up with a mocking laugh: “Now that’s better. Raina, being sensible is good for everyone.” “Oh, by the way, isn’t your crippled old man in prison about to get out? What do you think he’ll do when he finds out his only daughter got kicked to the curb? Will he get so angry he ends up back inside?” Jessa picked up the thread, adding coldly: “Her dad? Ha, one old waste raising a younger waste, that’s all. If my brother hadn’t been kind-hearted back then, trash bloodlines like yours wouldn’t even qualify to step foot in our Blackrock Pack territory.” Kane looked at me coldly, his voice devoid of warmth: “You’ve signed the agreement and taken the money. From now on, you have no relationship with us siblings.” “I don’t care where you go or what you do, just don’t appear before me and dirty my sight.” “If I hear even half a word about us outside, I have ten thousand ways to make you regret leaving here alive.”

I said nothing, suppressing the grief and rage churning inside me, and walked out of Blackrock Pack’s main fortress without looking back. Returning to what used to be our residence, I quickly packed my personal belongings, tears falling despite my efforts to hold them back. Who could I blame for things ending up this way? I could only blame myself for being blind, for showing mercy back then and saving these ungrateful siblings! I dragged my suitcase out of the residence, wanting to take a shortcut through the back alley behind the main fortress to get to the station. I’d just entered the alley when I heard chaotic, heavy footsteps behind me. Before I could turn around, several rough hands shoved me hard from behind. Several burly men blocked both ends of the alley, each emanating the fierce aura of werewolves. I recognized them. The leader was Vorn, Kane’s head of security. Vorn and his men used to be rogues from the border. After following Kane, they’d transformed into Blackrock Pack’s guards. Before, when they saw me, they would respectfully call me Luna. Now, their faces were twisted with savage grins, looking especially terrifying in the dim alley. “Why the rush? Luna,” Vorn drawled, stepping closer to me. “The brothers haven’t seen you off yet.” I backed up until my spine hit the wall, saying in a low voice: “I’ve already signed the divorce papers. I have nothing to do with Blackrock Pack anymore. Let me pass.” Vorn and the men behind him laughed. “Let you pass? That won’t do.” He walked up to me and looked down, lowering his voice: “Don’t blame us for being ruthless. You shouldn’t have offended people you can’t afford to offend.” “Jessa said it herself—you taking that million and walking out the door is like slapping her face. She needs to teach you that Blackrock Pack’s money isn’t easy to take.” “She told us brothers to take good care of you, preferably filming something as a keepsake. That way, even if you try to make waves later, you’ll have to consider your own reputation first.” “Talia said you were quite good at servicing people at the club back in the day. Today we’ll let you practice your old skills so they don’t get rusty.” “Blame your own bad luck for deserving to be disposed of like garbage!” With that, Vorn and his men reached out with lecherous grins, trying to tear at my clothes. At this critical moment, a tremendous noise came from the mouth of the alley. They turned with furious expressions, ready to curse, but the next second, that anger froze on their faces, replaced by bone-deep terror as they all looked toward the alley entrance. A group of men radiating fierce auras, carrying steel pipes and silver blades, surrounded Vorn and his men. The leader strode up to us and shoved Vorn aside roughly. Vorn and his men trembled under the oppressive presence, hastily begging for mercy: “Bosses, have you got the wrong people?” “We’re from Blackrock Pack. Our boss is Alpha Kane!” “Bosses, let’s talk this out, let’s talk…” The group of men completely ignored Vorn’s pleas and turned in unison to bow respectfully to me: “Luna Raina, Rogue King Gareth wishes to see you!”

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I loved the three Hunt brothers for ten long years. I thought giving them everything would make them cherish me. It didn’t. I gave them my heart. I worked for them for free for ten years. But they took the glory that should have been mine. They took my wedding dress. They gave it all to Serena. That fake little snake. The most ridiculous part? When the earthquake hit, I was the one who risked my life to save them. And they still chose the fraud who stole my identity. They pushed me into the frozen lake. The moment the water closed over my head, my heart died. After they pulled me out, I called their uncle. “Can we move up our wedding?” Elara’s POV “The winner of this year’s Most Influential Internet Personality Award is…” The spotlight swept across the vast ceiling. The entire audience held its breath, waiting. I sat in the front row, took a deep breath, and lifted my dress. As a lifestyle blogger with thirty million followers, I had to win this award. And tonight’s gala was hosted by Hunt Corporation. The three Hunt brothers, Cole, Nathan, and Ethan, weren’t just the presenters. They were the men I’d grown up with. The men I was supposed to marry one day. I planned to officially announce my choice of husband in tonight’s acceptance speech. “Serena Shaw! Let’s congratulate Serena!” The host’s voice rang out, brimming with excitement. My hand stopped on my dress. The spotlight swung past me and hit a woman in the back row. White dress. Fake surprise plastered on her face. Serena Shaw. She’d been active for less than six months. Her entire career was built on copying me. She was also the Hunt family maid’s daughter. The room was stunned. My followers erupted. “What’s going on? Elara’s award was stolen?” “How does Serena even qualify? She clearly cheated!” But what really made my blood boil were the three men coming down from the stage. Cole Hunt, wearing an expensive suit, extended his hand to Serena. Nathan Hunt carefully smoothed her dress. And Ethan Hunt, the superstar, casually put his arm around her shoulders and led her toward the stage. The three of them didn’t even glance at me. I sat there in the front row, awkward and furious, like a complete fool. After the awards ceremony ended, I returned to the backstage lounge. I pushed open the door to see the three brothers celebrating with Serena. I asked them, hurt and confused. “Why? My fan vote count was clearly far higher than everyone else’s.” Cole frowned with impatience. “Elara, you already have thirty million followers. Do you really care about one trophy? Serena’s just starting out. She needs this award to support her career more than you do.” “Exactly,” Ethan laughed, playing with his lighter. “Can you stop being so greedy? Don’t you know how long Serena prepared for this gala?” Nathan said coldly, “As compensation, I can give you ads for next quarter. Stop making a scene. You’re acting like a clown.” I looked at these three familiar faces, my heart clenched by an invisible hand, the pain suffocating. These were the three men I’d loved for so many years. For Cole’s media company, I’d worked for free as a tool to boost engagement for all his accounts. For Nathan’s investment business, I personally helped him sell products. For Ethan’s acting career, I promoted his work on my account every single day. But now, they were viciously putting me down just to make Serena happy. “I understand.” I didn’t lose control. I just answered very calmly. I turned and walked out of the lounge. The cold wind outside hit my face, and my mind had never been clearer. I’d planned to marry one of the three. But now I had a better idea. Half an hour later, I stood shivering in my grandparents’ living room. “I’ve decided. The person I want to marry is Damon Hunt.” Grandma was so shocked she nearly dropped her cup. “Are you crazy, Elara? Damon is Cole’s uncle! He’s six years older than you, cold, and impossible to get along with…” “I’m not crazy.” I clutched my clothes, nails digging into my palms. “Those three don’t love me, and I’m done hurting myself. Please, Grandma. Ask Damon if he’ll marry me.” Grandma saw the pain in my eyes and let out a long sigh. She dialed Damon Hunt’s number. The moment the call connected, I was incredibly nervous. “Hello.” Damon Hunt’s voice was deep and pleasant. Grandma briefly explained the situation. The silence on the other end was suffocating. Every second of pause was torture for me. My mind went blank. I’d even prepared myself for a ruthless rejection. After a long time, Damon Hunt on the other end laughed softly, his tone lazy and unreadable. “Sure. Tell Elara I’m willing to marry her.” The weight on my heart finally lifted. Tears streamed down my face. I squeezed my eyes shut.

Elara’s POV When I returned to the villa I shared with Cole and the others, it was already late at night. The villa blazed with lights. Serena’s and the Hunt brothers’ cheers pierced my eardrums. Streamers hung in the living room. A champagne tower was stacked high. Cole, Ethan, and Nathan surrounded Serena as she cut a cake, celebrating her award. Hearing the sound of the door opening, everyone looked at me. Serena fearfully hid behind Cole, calling out softly, “Elara, you’re back… I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to take your award. Cole and the others insisted on giving it to me…” “Enough, Serena. Why are you apologizing to her?” Ethan impatiently cut her off, then turned to look at me with contempt. “Elara, who are you throwing a tantrum for? It’s just an award. Does it really make you this crazy?” I ignored him and walked straight toward the stairs, ready to pack my belongings. “Stop.” Cole’s loud voice halted me. His tall frame blocked the stairway. “Since you’re back, there’s something I need to tell you. Hand over the password to your account with ten million followers. Give it to Serena.” I suspected I’d heard wrong. “What did you say?” “Are you deaf?” Nathan mocked. “Serena just won an award. She needs traffic and exposure right now. Your account has a lot of followers. It’s perfect for her to use for business deals. You have other accounts anyway.” I was livid with rage. I’d spent four years building that account. I’d traveled alone to cities all over the country with my camera, spent countless nights editing videos, slowly accumulating those followers! And now they wanted me to just hand it over to Serena with one sentence? “Impossible.” I looked into Cole’s eyes and immediately refused. “That’s my personal property. It has nothing to do with you. Want to give my account to Serena? I refuse.” “Elara, you’re such a bitch!” Ethan suddenly stood up, pointing at my nose as he cursed. “You usually spend our money, live in our house, and now when we ask you to help Serena with one small favor, you refuse. How can you be so selfish and vicious?” “I spend your money?” I said mockingly. “I bought this villa. I earned the money for your daily expenses by taking on ads! Who’s spending whose money?!” “Enough!” Cole’s expression turned ugly, as if I’d hit a nerve. “Elara, I’m asking you one last time. Are you giving up the account or not?” “No.” “Good. Very good.” Cole laughed mockingly and pulled out his phone to call his assistant. “Freeze all of Elara’s social media accounts registered under the company immediately. No one is allowed to unlock them without my permission.” After hanging up, he looked at me with contempt. “Since you’re so principled, let me see how you survive on your own without our help. When you come to your senses, kneel down and apologize to Serena. Then I’ll consider returning your accounts.” Serena gently tugged on Cole’s sleeve from behind, saying softly, “Cole, forget it. Elara just cares too much about that award. I don’t need her account anymore…” “Serena, stay out of this. We need to fix her arrogant attitude today!” Nathan chimed in. Looking at these three men in front of me, I suddenly felt disgusted. I didn’t want to spend another second in this house reeking of disgust. I turned and went upstairs. Ten minutes later, I came down dragging a suitcase. “What are you trying to do now?” Ethan sneered. “Running away from home in the middle of the night? If you’ve got guts, don’t come back once you walk out that door!” I didn’t give them a single glance. I dragged my suitcase straight toward the door. The moment my hand gripped the doorknob, I paused. Without turning back, I said, “Don’t worry. I’ll never set foot in here again. I don’t want this house anymore.” The door slammed shut with a bang, cutting off the noise inside. The night wind was very cold. I pulled my coat tighter and took out my phone. Looking at the forced logout notification on the screen, my eyes held no tears, only hatred. It’s fine. If my account is gone, I can rebuild.

Elara’s POV The day after moving out of the villa, I received a call from my mother. The moment she answered, her abuse came through. “Elara, have you lost your mind?! What did you do to make Cole angry? This morning he cancelled three collaboration projects with our company! Are you trying to destroy our whole family?!” I gripped my phone tightly, saying painfully, “Mom, they forcibly froze my accounts just to promote Serena, and they tried to steal my work…” “I don’t care!” Mom’s shrill voice stabbed my eardrums. “What use is a woman doing social media? Your job is to please the Hunt men and successfully marry them! I order you to go apologize to them right now. Even if you have to kneel to that woman, you need to get those collaborations back for me!” Before I could speak, she hung up. I looked at the darkened screen, my lips twisting into a smile uglier than crying. This was my family. In their eyes, I’d never been a daughter, just a bargaining chip for profit. Taking a deep breath, I pushed down the bitterness and took a cab to Hunt Corporation. I wasn’t going to apologize. I was going to retrieve my personal hard drive. It contained all my original footage and unreleased work from the past few years. My only capital for rebuilding my accounts. When I reached my former private office, I was shocked. The office door stood wide open. The minimalist decor that had been mine was completely gone, replaced with frilly lace and stuffed animals. Serena sat in my chair, playing with my personal hard drive in her hands! “Who said you could touch my things?” I strode in, demanding coldly. Serena jumped in fright. Her hand slipped, and the hard drive hit the desk with a clatter. “Elara…” Serena’s eyes instantly reddened like a startled rabbit’s. “I’m sorry. Cole said this office is mine now. I didn’t know this was yours…” “Give it back to me.” I was too lazy to listen to her talk. I reached out directly to take it. Just as my fingertips were about to touch the hard drive, Serena suddenly cried out. Her body lurched backward, and along with it, the hard drive in her hand fell heavily toward the massive decorative fish tank beside her! Splash! The hard drive sank instantly to the bottom, releasing a few bubbles before being completely ruined. “My hard drive!” I screamed in shock and pain. That contained five years of my work! “What are you doing?!” An enraged male voice came from the doorway. Cole rushed in quickly, shoving me aside and carefully helping Serena up from the floor. Nathan and Ethan followed behind them. Seeing this scene, their expressions instantly darkened. “Elara, have you gone crazy?!” Ethan rushed forward, pointing at my nose as he cursed. “You not only ran away from home, now you’re coming to the company to attack Serena? Are you sick?!” “I didn’t push her. She fell on her own and threw my hard drive in the water!” I pointed at the tank, my whole body trembling. “That had all my footage!” “Enough!” Cole cut me off, his eyes as cold as if looking at an enemy. “Serena is so kind. How could she deliberately destroy your things? You’re clearly jealous she took your office!” Nathan pushed up his glasses, his tone cutting. “Elara, you’re getting more and more insane. It’s just a hard drive. How much could it be worth? You scared Serena like this. Apologize to her immediately!” Looking at these three stupid men, I suddenly felt absurd. I used to think that if I just tried hard enough, was enthusiastic enough, I could eventually move them. But now I understood. Idiots can’t see the truth. “Apologize?” I stared at them, the light in my eyes extinguishing bit by bit, turning into a desolate wasteland. “Impossible.” I didn’t look at the hard drive in the tank again. I turned, straightened my back, and walked out of the office step by step. Ethan’s shout came from behind. “Elara, if you dare walk out that door today, even if you beg us on your knees later, we’ll never forgive you!” My steps didn’t pause. Forgive me? You don’t deserve to.

Elara’s POV After leaving Hunt Corporation, I went to New York’s largest underground auction house. Next month was my wedding with Damon Hunt. Although it was a contractual marriage, Damon had given me enough dignity and respect on the phone. I wanted to prepare a wedding gift for him. In the auction catalog, a pair of sapphire cufflinks from European royalty in the last century caught my eye. Expensive and luxurious. They seemed exactly like the feeling Damon gave me. I checked my account. Although my main account was frozen, I still had some money in my personal account. Just enough to buy these cufflinks. The auction progressed to the second half, and the cufflinks were finally presented on the display stand. “Starting bid, two million.” I bid without hesitation. “Two million five hundred thousand.” “Three million.” A female voice came from the front row. I frowned and looked up to see Serena sitting on Nathan’s lap, holding up her bidding paddle. Cole and Ethan sat on either side of her. Just my luck. I gritted my teeth and raised my paddle again. “Three million five hundred thousand.” Serena looked back at me, bit her lip pitifully, and acted coy with Nathan. “Nathan, those cufflinks are so beautiful. I want to buy them as a birthday gift for Cole, but it seems Elara really likes them too…” Nathan laughed coldly and raised his paddle directly. “Five million.” The whole venue was shocked. Five million for a pair of cufflinks was way over market value. My palms were sweating. I only had eight million in liquid funds in my account. “Six million.” I gritted my teeth and followed. Ethan laughed mockingly. “Elara, we kicked you out, and you still have money left? Buying expensive men’s cufflinks. Who are they for? Don’t tell me you’re trying to butter us up and get back in our good graces.” Cole said contemptuously, “It’s useless. Anything you give, I’d find dirty.” I didn’t even look at them, keeping my eyes on the auctioneer. Nathan was enraged by my disregard and raised his paddle directly. “Eight million.” At that number, my heart sank completely. I had no more money to bid. Just as the auctioneer was about to drop the hammer, Serena suddenly grabbed Nathan’s hand. “Nathan, forget it. Elara doesn’t even have a job now. This might be her last savings. I don’t need them. Let her have them.” Nathan snorted coldly. “She’s lucky. Serena, you’re just too kind.” In the end, I bought the cufflinks for eight million. I emptied every penny in my account and walked out of the auction house with the beautifully packaged velvet box. Just as I reached the main entrance, Serena blocked my path. Cole and the others stood not far away smoking, not following over. “Elara, can I see the cufflinks?” Serena’s face wore a provocative smile. “Something you spent all your savings on must be very precious, right?” I looked at her coldly. “Get lost.” “Don’t be so stingy.” Serena suddenly reached out and snatched the box from my hands. “What are you doing!” I was furious, reaching to grab it back. But Serena suddenly stepped back and loosened her hand. Click. The velvet box fell to the ground, and two exquisite sapphire cufflinks rolled out. Serena’s high heel seemed to accidentally step forward, directly kicking one of the cufflinks into the nearby storm drain grate! “Oh no!” Serena covered her mouth, crying out in surprise. “I’m so sorry, Elara. I didn’t mean to. My hand slipped…” My brain buzzed. That was the gift I’d spent all my money on for Damon! I raised my hand and slapped Serena hard across the face! Smack! The crisp sound of the slap was especially loud in the night. Serena screamed and fell to the ground, clutching her face as she burst into tears. “Elara, you’re asking for death!” Ethan was the first to rush over, shoving me aside. My back slammed hard into a solid column, making me gasp in pain. Cole and Nathan also rushed over. Seeing Serena’s swollen face, their eyes instantly became terrifying. “Elara, you actually dared to hit her?!” Cole grabbed my throat, pinning me against the column, his eyes full of rage. “They’re just cufflinks. Serena accidentally dropped them. We’ll pay you double! How dare you get physical!” “Pay?” I was being choked, struggling to breathe, but I still stared at them, a cold smile on my lips. “Pay with what? You blind trash don’t even understand what’s valuable!” “You still dare to talk back!” Nathan’s eyes were frightening. “Ethan, throw her in the lake nearby. Let her sober up!” Ethan didn’t hesitate. He came forward, grabbed my arm, and regardless of my struggles, dragged me toward the icy lakeside. Splash! The lake water was freezing, instantly swallowing my head.

Elara’s POV The freezing lake water rushed into my nose. I struggled violently in the water. I couldn’t swim. On the shore, the three Hunt brothers watched coldly. “What’s she pretending for? The water’s only five feet deep. She could stand up and live.” Ethan had his hands in his pockets, saying mockingly, “Elara, your acting is way too fake.” Serena leaned against Cole, deliberately saying, “Cole, Elara really seems like she can’t swim. Maybe we should pull her up. What if something happens…” “What could happen? She’s strong as an ox.” Nathan pushed up his glasses, his eyes cold. “Let her soak in the water for half an hour. Then we’ll see if she dares hit you again.” Underwater, I heard these words, and the despair in my heart was colder than the lake water. I gave up struggling and let my body slowly sink. Just as my consciousness was about to blur, park staff finally noticed something was wrong and jumped in to rescue me. I was completely soaked, coughing violently on the shore in a wretched state, almost vomiting bile. Cole looked down at me from above, like looking at garbage. “Today’s just a warning. If there’s a next time, I guarantee you won’t be able to stay in New York.” After speaking, they escorted Serena into their luxury car and left. The night wind blew, and I shivered all over. I dragged my heavy steps to kneel by the storm drain grate, using my frozen fingers to pick at the gaps bit by bit, trying to retrieve the fallen cufflink. But it was too deep. I couldn’t feel anything. I was alone on the deep-night street, like a pitiful ghost abandoned by the whole world. The next day, I developed a high fever. I forced myself to open my phone, only to find that online abuse had completely drowned me. Serena had done a livestream last night. In the stream, she held my golden retriever “Buddy” that I’d raised for three years, crying miserably. Buddy looked very unwell. Serena said in the livestream, “Poor Buddy. His previous owner often locked him in a cage for work and didn’t even feed him. Now that I’ve brought him home, I’ll definitely take good care of him.” The three Hunt brothers even reposted this video from their respective accounts with the caption: “People who abuse animals don’t deserve forgiveness.” This was undoubtedly slandering me with a scandal. Online fury was completely ignited. “Elara can go die! Dog-abusing bitch!” “I used to like her, but she’s actually a poisonous woman!” “Boycott Elara! Make her get off the internet!” I looked at those vicious curses on the screen, my whole body shaking with anger. Buddy was a pet I’d raised from a puppy. I loved him like family. The day I moved out of the villa, Cole forcibly kept Buddy, saying he’d give him to Serena. Now they were turning it around, slandering me for abusing him! Just then, Mom called again. “Elara! What have you done! Cole officially announced the withdrawal of investment today. Our company’s stock has already hit the limit down!” Mother screamed on the other end. “You need to start a livestream right now and kneel to apologize to Serena! Admit that you abused the dog, that you’re jealous of her! Otherwise, I’ll act like I never had a daughter!” I closed my eyes as tears finally slid down my burning cheeks. “Mom,” my voice was hoarse, “I have a fever. One hundred and three point six degrees. I’m dying.” “That doesn’t matter!” Mom cut me off. “Even if you die, you need to resolve our company’s crisis first! I’m giving you one hour to post an apology video, or don’t ever come home again!” The call was hung up again. I curled up in the cold blanket, feeling like all the blood in my body had frozen. No one cared if I lived or died. My lovers. My family. My fans. Every one of them was pushing me toward the edge. Just as I was suffering, my phone screen suddenly lit up. It was a text from an unknown number. “Need help? -Damon Hunt.” Seeing this short sentence, my despairing heart suddenly beat violently. I bit my cracked lips and replied with trembling fingers. “No. I can handle it. Damon, can we move up our wedding?” He replied almost instantly. “As you wish. See you tomorrow, Elara.”

Elara’s POV After recovering from the high fever, I completely changed my life focus. I didn’t post an apology video, didn’t pay attention to the online abuse, but focused wholeheartedly on wedding preparations. Although Damon was abroad, he arranged the best team to assist me. The wedding venue was set at New York’s most expensive hillside manor, a private property under Damon’s name. That afternoon, I went to the bridal shop to try on the wedding dress I’d personally participated in designing. I’d spent an entire year designing it, originally intending to wear it for Cole and the others. Now, I just wanted to wear it and marry Damon beautifully. After trying on the dress, I took the packaged gown and headed to the hillside manor to decorate the wedding venue. However, the moment I pushed open the manor’s main door, I was completely shocked. The romantically decorated wedding venue was now in complete chaos. Expensive imported roses were trampled into mud. Carefully selected delicate decorations were thrown everywhere. In the center of the living room, the three Hunt brothers were playing loud music, partying with a group of friends. And Serena was wearing an extremely familiar white dress, laughing happily in the crowd. That was my backup wedding dress! “Well, well, if it isn’t our big star Elara?” Ethan walked over with a wine glass, swaying drunkenly, his face full of mockery. “What, did you come to attend Serena’s birthday party?” I stared at the wedding dress on Serena, my voice cold as ice. “Who allowed you to come in? Who allowed her to wear my wedding dress?!” “What are you yelling about?” Cole walked over frowning, protecting Serena behind him. “This manor is our company’s property. We can use it if we want. As for this cheap dress, Serena thought it looked nice. What’s wrong with her wearing it? Are you really that petty?” “Exactly.” Nathan sneered. “Elara, don’t tell me you actually think that by finding some random man and holding a fake wedding, you can provoke us?” They thought there was no way I could actually marry someone else. Everything I did was just to pressure them. Serena deliberately tugged at the wedding dress hem, saying delicately, “Elara, I’m sorry. I didn’t know this was your wedding dress. But this dress fits me perfectly. Cole said when we get engaged, he’ll let me wear this one.” As she spoke, she deliberately let her hand slip. Her wine glass tilted, and dark red liquid instantly splashed onto the pure white dress, leaving conspicuous stains. “Oops, I got it dirty.” Serena covered her mouth, apologizing without sincerity. I watched this scene without losing control like before, without shedding a single tear. I suddenly felt it was ridiculous. How stupid must I have been to fall in love with these three idiots? I calmly took out my phone, opened the camera, and clearly recorded this floor full of trash and their ugly faces. “What are you doing? Put your phone down!” Ethan’s expression changed, reaching to grab my phone. I stepped back, avoiding his hand, a mocking smile on my lips. “Cole Hunt. Nathan Hunt. Ethan Hunt.” I called out their names one by one, looking at them like they were already dead. “This wedding dress? Think of it as Serena’s funeral gown. And this venue? Since you like it so much, stay as long as you want. Play slowly.” “Because tomorrow, I’ll put on the world’s most expensive wedding dress, at New York’s most luxurious hotel, and marry a man you could never measure up to.” After speaking, without a trace of reluctance, I turned and walked out of the manor. Cole roared from behind. “Elara! Walk out that door, and tomorrow we’ll crash your fake wedding. We’ll make you the joke of New York.” I didn’t stop. I just kept walking. Crash it? Good. I’m looking forward to it. I couldn’t wait to see their faces when they found out who the groom really was.

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After the arts exam ended, I was cornered at the school gate by a small-time livestreaming influencer. She suddenly whipped her camera around viciously to point at me. “It’s her! Someone with zero coordination who somehow got first place in the dance exam.” “While I ended up in last place.” “You all know how hard I work—I livestream my dance practice for you before dawn even breaks.” “I wonder if she didn’t sleep her way onto an examiner’s bed to…” She wiped away her tears pitifully, instantly stirring up emotions among her so-called family. They all proceeded to cyberbully me en masse. Just as I was about to clarify. She said to the livestream with fake sincerity: “I just want everyone to give me justice, that’s all…” “I’m definitely not doing this for attention. If this turns out to be fake news, I, Lily Matthews, will apologize live on stream!” I let out a cold laugh, suddenly no longer wanting to clarify. I do indeed have poor coordination, but I didn’t even take the arts exam—my scores came entirely from my academic subjects, earned fair and square.

A few comments on the screen made her even more defensive. “You don’t even have evidence. Aren’t you just jealous of first place and maliciously slandering her?” “I’ve seen this kind of thing plenty of times—it’s just spreading sexual rumors!” Lily’s face flushed redder with anger as she pulled up a video of me dancing. “You want evidence? Go watch this! This is the evidence!” In the video, my entire body was stiff, my limbs uncoordinated, like someone with a disability. I looked at the video she’d pulled up on her phone and froze for a moment. I really did dance poorly in that video. If I had gotten first place, the arts exam might as well take my last name. But I didn’t take the exam. This was just a video my twin sister recorded after she finished her exam, insisting I try dancing. I have a twin sister. We share the same name. I never expected it to be used as evidence. I found the online comments amusing and didn’t defend myself. I even liked some comments critiquing my dancing. Seeing how unconcerned I was, Lily shoved her streaming equipment right in my face. “Family, look at her—she doesn’t feel guilty at all, she can still smile.” “If she doesn’t have someone backing her up, what else could it be?” “We’ve been classmates for three years, and I never thought she’d stab me in the back like this…” I frowned impatiently and pushed her away. Her equipment clattered to the ground. “I don’t know you. Keep this up and I’m calling the police!” She froze for a moment, her eyes full of contempt for me, then leaned close to my ear and said viciously: “Stop pretending, Sophia Smith. It won’t work!” “What I can’t stand most is rich people like you acting all high and mighty!” Seeing her like this, I understood. She had mistaken me for my twin sister. We’re both named Sophia Smith, and our faces are identical. Aside from the mole under our eyes being on different sides, there’s no difference between us. But I’m nothing like my sister—I’m not soft and easy to push around. I chuckled softly and leaned close to her ear: “What can you do about it? You’re still in last place.” Lily seemed shocked that I would say such a thing. She covered her face, picked up her streaming equipment, and burst into tears. “I just wanted to show all the arts exam students her true colors, so next time she takes an exam, don’t bother showing up—you won’t win…” “But she hit me… I really feel it’s not worth it for those of us who practice dance non-stop every day.” Watching her forcefully press handprints onto her own face and cry to the livestream viewers, I just found it noisy. Just as I was about to leave, she grabbed me tightly. “You can’t leave. Today I’m going to expose your true face… and get justice for all arts exam students!” I looked at her coldly. “I’m giving you one more chance. I don’t know you. Let go!” But she still gripped me tightly, her eyes full of provocation. I let out a cold laugh. “Don’t regret this!” During our standoff, she stirred up her family’s protective instincts. They ran straight to the school, pulled me away from her, and shielded Lily protectively. “You’re the one, aren’t you? Bullying Lily wasn’t enough, now you want to threaten her too?” “A social parasite like you should just die, along with your parents. Stop harming other people.” “Your parents are no good either, letting their child sleep with examiners. Disgusting. You should all go to hell!” Listening to the accusations around me, I clenched my fists. Lily looked at me smugly and made an unfriendly gesture. I laughed in anger and pulled out my phone to call the police. Lily’s expression changed instantly when she heard. “Who knows if real police will come? You’re probably trying to threaten me into silence!” Hearing this, her family rushed forward and knocked my phone away. They pushed me to the ground and pinned me down. But I had already called the police. The police arrived quickly, stopped this farce, and safely escorted me home. Those who had caused the disturbance were all given verbal warnings by the police. But the next day, her video accusing me by name of faking my scores went viral. She even took me to court, saying she wanted to seek justice for all arts exam students. I let out a cold laugh and retweeted the post. “See you in court in three days. I hope your last place ranking is well-deserved!”

Over the next three days, the online abuse and questioning didn’t decrease at all. Some netizens even mocked me for being stupid. Why make such a big deal of something that could be resolved privately? Did I have a grudge against my own parents? I wasn’t worried at all. I sent all the IDs spreading rumors and defaming me to my lawyer, preserving the evidence. At that moment, my parents called. “Sophia, should we tell your sister to come back and clarify things?” I refused. My sister had finally gotten into the world’s top dance academy for intensive closed training. I didn’t want her distracted at this time. My parents sighed, told me to stay safe, and hung up. Soon, the court day arrived. Outside was already packed with people, camera equipment pointed at my face like cannons. “Sophia Smith, did you really get those scores by using your body?” “Is it because your family can control everything that you’re so calm?” “Sophia Smith, do you think money can fix everything?” I raised an eyebrow, ignored everyone, and walked straight in. Everyone inside had already arrived. The gallery was full, and streaming equipment was set up everywhere. When Lily saw me arrive, she instantly put on an aggrieved expression and pretended to wipe away tears. Immediately, voices appeared sympathizing with her, and the insults toward me increased. I sat down across from her, my expression unchanged. As soon as I sat down, tears poured from her eyes. “Your Honor, I didn’t want to use public resources, but this matter really has corruption…” “Although I’m insignificant, I still want to get justice for myself and fairness for all arts exam students.” She paused, then turned to the camera with red eyes. “And thank you all for giving me the courage to speak out!” After speaking, she handed evidence to the staff, and the screen displayed that video from online. “I’ve seen her dance. Her coordination is terrible. She can’t even do basic exercises without her hands and feet fighting each other. This video is proof.” When the video ended, the judge asked me seriously: “Sophia Smith, do you admit the person in the video is you?” I didn’t hesitate: “I admit it. It’s me.” Instantly, mocking laughter filled the room. “Where was this attitude earlier? Now she’s scared.” “She’s just stubborn. Boring. I thought there’d be a plot twist.” My tone shifted. “But this video was just taken while I was fooling around, not during the arts exam. How can it prove my scores are fake?” Lily hadn’t expected me to say this. She was stunned for a moment, then retorted: “Sophia Smith, even when we dance students are fooling around, you can tell we have foundation. You’re worse than someone with zero foundation. Stop making excuses. Admitting your mistakes isn’t shameful.” I glanced at her coldly and said to the judge: “Your Honor, I don’t accept this evidence. Please have the opposing party present other evidence.” The judge indicated for her to proceed. The screen suddenly changed to show photos of me and a man entering a hotel at night. The blurry quality made it seem like the man and I were very close. The date in the bottom right corner was exactly the day before the arts exam. Lily looked at me and wiped away fake tears. “Sophia, I considered you a good friend and didn’t want to turn hostile, but you’ve gone too far.” “You entered a hotel with Professor Miller the night before, and then your score became first place. If you say this is a coincidence, I don’t believe it!” The judge looked at me: “Do you admit this?” I nodded calmly. “I just stayed at a hotel near the exam venue in advance. I don’t know this man, and besides, the quality is blurry—it doesn’t prove we were intimate.” She suddenly smiled and said: “I knew you wouldn’t admit it, so I invited Professor Miller here.” Professor Miller walked in at that moment. He saw me and froze, then pointed at me and said: “I think I’ve seen you before!”

I froze and asked back: “Are you sure it was me?” He looked at me for a long while, nodded, then shook his head. “That night I had some drinks with other teachers at a gathering. I think I ran into you outside the hotel. You seemed like you wanted to get close to me…” I rolled my eyes internally. At the time, I had just felt sympathetic, seeing him about to collapse and preparing to help him up. Gasps filled the room. “It’s confirmed—she got those scores by using her body.” “If Lily didn’t have some followers, this matter would probably have been swept under the rug.” “It’s too hard for ordinary people to speak up.” The judge spoke. “Sophia Smith, regarding Lily’s claim that you obtained high scores through improper relationships, do you admit it?” I shook my head. “No.” The gallery erupted in murmurs, all telling me to stop struggling. Lily symbolically shed two tears, her voice choking up. “Sophia, we’ve known each other for three years. I don’t want to see you go to prison. As long as you apologize, I’ll plead for you. Although you won’t be able to go to college, you can do other things, or just live off your family—you’re rich anyway. Please leave us ordinary people alone…” After listening to her finish, I slowly spoke. “But this doesn’t prove I had relations with him and made him alter my scores. Besides, the hotel has records—I stayed alone.” “Professor Miller, did I sleep with you that night and have you change my scores?” Hearing this, Professor Miller quickly waved his hands. “I would never have relations with a student. Although I drank that night and wasn’t clear-headed, I was definitely alone!” “The arts exam is scored jointly by several teachers. It’s impossible for one teacher’s score change to matter!” But everyone present showed expressions of disbelief. They thought he was trying to cover it up. Finally, he was sent back to the witness seat. Seeing this, Lily covered her face and sobbed. “Since you’re so obstinate, I can’t care about our friendship anymore.” “Emma Sweet, you tell them!” Emma Sweet walked up from the witness stand, looking at me with provocation in her eyes. I knew her. She was that friend who always resented my sister for being better than her despite coming from a poor family. She even took my sister’s kindness as malice and ostracized her, causing my usually sunny sister to become gloomy for a while. Later, after my guidance, my sister came out of it and distanced herself from this toxic friend. She addressed the judge: “I’m her best friend. I personally saw her dance terribly in dance class. Her coordination was awful—she would always step on herself and fall flat on her face.” “Even classmates asked me if she had just started learning, and told me to ask her why she was only starting so close to the arts exam—she’d never pass.” I scoffed. My sister had danced very well in class with her before. Only after becoming mentally exhausted and not wanting to attend class with Emma, but also not wanting to waste the tuition, did she have me go instead. That’s how this scene came about. The judge asked me: “Do you agree?” I nodded. “What she said is indeed me.” “But I…”

Lily immediately interrupted me, her eyes showing unconcealed malice. “But what? Are you going to say she saw you dancing casually?” “Or that she’s not your best friend? That we’re all lying to everyone?” She addressed the camera indignantly. “I don’t want to be so aggressive, but I just want fairness, to keep the arts exam the pure place it used to be.” Watching her speak so righteously, with tears and snot covering her face, I couldn’t help but laugh. Lily froze in place, so angry she pointed at me. But before she could say anything, Emma shrieked at me: “Do you think I’m lying? All the dance class students can testify—with your level, there’s no way you could be first place!” “I don’t know what you’ve been so arrogant about around me. You’re just relying on your family’s money and power, treating us like servants.” “Now we’re not indulging you anymore. Not used to it, are you?” The judge banged the table and asked: “Sophia Smith, since you’ve admitted to all the evidence Lily has presented, that’s essentially admitting everything she said is true.” “Your scores were obtained through an improper relationship. We have the right to investigate you and cancel your exam results.” The gallery laughed mockingly, all feeling sorry for Lily. “I thought she had some tricks. Lily’s score was probably switched with hers!” “Exactly. They should give Lily back her first place!” Some even threw paper balls and water bottles at me. It was chaos all around, but my smile grew wider. The judge banged the table. “Quiet!” “Sophia Smith, if you don’t have other evidence to prove your scores aren’t fake, the judgment will take effect immediately.” Just as I was about to speak, my sister’s voice came from outside. “Of course she has evidence.” “Because I’m the one who got first place in the arts exam, and she, my sister.” “Never took the arts exam at all. All her scores came from academic subjects, earned fair and square!”

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My twin sister eloped for love, and I was forced to pretend to be her and marry Matias. But I was also Matias’s secretary. So during the day, Matias wore sharp suits, all refined and restrained, scolding me with an icy face until I wanted to die. At night, he’d loosen his tie and turn wild, insatiable and filthy-mouthed, biting my neck and saying: “Kate, if it weren’t for you, I would’ve fired your sister Violet ages ago.” Me: “…Haha.” The second before my total breakdown, my twin sister Kate came home, demanding I give her back the position of Matias’s wife. At the same time, Matias told me to get lost. “You’ve been secretly seducing me all along. Don’t think I haven’t noticed! Out of respect for your sister, I’m giving you face. Resign yourself. I don’t want to see you again!” Me: “…Wow.” I scammed them both out of a fortune and made a clean getaway. Three months later, I was lying on a beach sunbathing when Kate called me crying: “Matias won’t touch me. Come back and help us have a baby, please?” “Violet, I’m begging you to help me.” I hung up and fell into deep thought. Matias, that horny bastard, went three months without sex? How hasn’t he died from pent-up frustration?

I was Matias’s secretary, but I was about to quit. Who would’ve thought that Matias, who was ice-cold and kept everyone at arm’s length during the day, turned into a horny mess in bed at night? During meetings, his slender fingers would tap lightly on the table, his expression sharp and commanding, radiating intimidating pressure. But all I could think about was how he’d worn black lace lingerie last night, curling his toes and whining sweetly: “Hurry up~” “Violet!” A colleague next to me poked me, and only then did I hear Matias calling my name. I immediately apologized: “I’m sorry, I was just…” “Spacing out during a meeting? Am I paying you all this money to sit around doing nothing?” His face was full of disgust: “Don’t you sleep at night? You look half-dead every day. And when did SKY’s secretaries start coming to work looking so disheveled?” I was confused for a moment. Following his gaze, I realized he was talking about the hickey on my neck. Even my scarf couldn’t hide it. I pressed my lips together and said softly, “I’m sorry, I…” “I don’t need explanations!” He looked at me coldly: “Violet, I hope you understand—if it weren’t for your sister, you wouldn’t even deserve to be in this position! “Keep things with your boyfriend under control. I don’t want to see this kind of indecent display again. One more time, and you’re fired!” With that, ignoring my utterly mortified expression, he slammed the documents on the table, lifted his chin, and declared sharply: “Meeting adjourned!”

I’d been scolded, and I felt ashamed, but I still couldn’t muster any energy. Last night I’d only managed three hours of sleep total. My head felt like it was about to explode. I sat at my desk in a daze, looking depressed. Near lunchtime, I wobbled downstairs and went to the company’s adjacent apartment building. I rummaged through the closet and pulled out an elegant haute couture outfit and a dazzling diamond necklace. Under the dim lighting, the yellow diamond was as rich as solidified amber. It was the set Matias had bought for his wife at an auction last month. Worth ten million dollars, it even made headline news at the time. Now it was in my hands, and I was casually tapping it against the table, playing with the sound it made. That’s right—the wife he loved to his core was me, and the secretary he scolded into wanting to die was also me. He thought we were twin sisters, but it was actually both me. The hickey he found indecent—he’d made it himself last night. Half a year ago, I’d just started working as Matias’s secretary when my parents called me home. They said Kate had eloped with her boyfriend, and now there was no one to marry into the Williams family. They wanted me to marry him, under Kate’s name. “Kate will definitely regret this later. We can’t leave her without options!” Mom cried and begged me: “Violet, you’ve been with us since you were little, but Kate stayed in the countryside—she hasn’t had your advantages. She didn’t even get into high school.” “Just think of it as paying back what you owe her. Do this for her, okay?” She threatened to kill herself. Helpless, I agreed. I’d originally thought I’d just need to be Matias’s wife in name only, like most couples—politely minding our own business, maybe even living separately. At first, that’s exactly how it was. But later, Matias turned into a sex-crazed demon, clinging to me every night. Whenever I said no, his eyes would turn red and he’d look at me pitifully, his strong thighs wrapped around my waist, asking hoarsely: “Honey, don’t you love me anymore? Do you have another man out there?” Sigh… What could I do? He was the one clinging to me, so I could only reluctantly indulge him. It was exciting at first, but later, I just wanted to castrate Matias. Especially this past month—I’d averaged only three hours of sleep per night. Severely sleep-deprived, I made mistakes at work constantly, getting chewed out every single day. This life of working during the day and “overtime” at night—I really couldn’t take it anymore. I clutched my hair and collapsed onto the bed. Before I could figure out what to do, I fell into a drowsy sleep.

An hour later, the alarm woke me up. Resentfully, I put on makeup, pinned up my hair, transferred takeout into lunch boxes, and carried them over to Matias to bring him food. He was in a video conference, his brows sharp as he listened to reports from his European subordinates. When he saw me, he beckoned me over, gesturing for me to sit on his lap. “Why so late?” He buried his head in the crook of my neck, half-acting spoiled, half-complaining: “I thought you weren’t coming today.” The computer was still playing the formal report on speaker. Even though the mic and camera were off, I still felt embarrassed. I pushed him away uncomfortably and said: “You’re still in a meeting. Don’t do this.” “What’s there to be afraid of? We’re married. It doesn’t matter if others see.” “Don’t you think it’s indecent?” He paused before catching on, his face darkening instantly: “Did Violet complain to you again?” “She’s a young woman. Being scolded by you in public would hurt her feelings too… Don’t scold her next time, okay?” Matias fell silent. After a long moment, he kissed the corner of my mouth: “I know you’re kind, but don’t you think she’s imitating you in every way?” “Huh?” Matias turned on his mic and told them to move the meeting to the afternoon, then turned back to me: “Even twins can’t be identical in behavior and preferences. “But you like pearls, so she wears pearl earrings every day; you have a lively, cheerful personality, so she bounces around at work; you have a rising inflection at the end of your sentences, and she does the same. It’s obviously calculated.” “You mean…” “She’s imitating you to seduce me.” Matias said with certainty: “I’ve seen plenty of women like her. They take advantage of your trust in them to steal your man.” “You’re just too kind, that’s why you think she’s a good person. She’s bullied you since childhood, and your parents favor her. You need to be careful.” As he spoke, his fingers caressed my waist. His tone was serious and earnest, adopting the posture of educating his naive wife, leaving me thunderstruck. “Are you sure you’re not mistaken?” I smiled weakly: “Violet isn’t that kind of person.” “I knew you’d say that.” Matias sighed in disappointment: “Kate, I’m the person closest to you. Why don’t you believe me, and instead trust her?” Me: “…” I was speechless. Fortunately, Matias didn’t dwell on this matter. He just lovingly kissed me and held me while we ate in that position. When I left, he pulled me in for a goodbye kiss. After I tiredly walked out of the Williams Group building and had just wiped away the sticky sensation on my lips, I received a call from Matias. He tore into me: “Are you a child? Running to Kate to tattle when you get scolded? And what about last month’s report? It’s riddled with errors. If you can’t do the job, get out! Useless!” In that instant, I couldn’t control the twisted expression on my face. The next second, another call came in. I answered furiously: “I already said I’d be right back. Can you stop rushing me—” “Violet.” A gentle, familiar voice came through: “It’s me, Kate. I’m back.”

My relationship with Kate was complicated. We were indeed twins, but we hadn’t grown up together. I’d been with our parents in New York while they ran their business; she’d stayed with our grandparents in our hometown. Our parents always felt they’d wronged her. After bringing her to New York, they doted on her excessively and made me give in to her in everything. Whenever anything happened, it was always: “You stole Kate’s affection. You owe her this!” Later, when my sister didn’t get into high school, our parents sent her to study in Europe while I stayed in the country. We weren’t very close to each other. So hearing her speak to me in such a warm, familiar tone, my first reaction was confusion: “What do you want?” “I heard from Mom about our family’s arrangement with Matias.” Hearing my impatience, she stopped with the fake politeness: “Now that I’m back, shouldn’t you return the position of Matias’s wife to me?” “Come back to steal the position! What, did that gangster boyfriend dump you?” I mocked. “Violet, don’t push your luck!” She lowered her voice angrily: “Don’t forget, the Matias’s wife that the Williams family acknowledges is only me, Kate. What right does a fake like you have to be arrogant?” She had a point. Whether it was the Johnson family claiming their married-off daughter, or the wife Matias publicly acknowledged, it was Kate. Sometimes when Matias got in the mood, he’d call me Kate sweetly in bed. Disgusting. I crossed my arms: “I can’t clean up your mess for nothing!” “What do you mean?” She asked warily. “Give me ten million, or we’ll go to Matias and hash out who’s really his wife.” I said with a beaming smile: “Ten million for the position of Matias’s wife—that’s a great deal.” Out of guilt toward her, our parents stopped giving me money after I became an adult, using all their money to support her instead. When I was working odd jobs everywhere to pay for tuition, she was living it up in Europe. I had to get back some of what I was owed. But no matter how much our parents spoiled her, they couldn’t give her the entire family fortune. Ten million—even if she could come up with it, it would cost her dearly. So she hesitated for a long time before asking cautiously: “You promise you’ll leave after taking the money?” “If you don’t trust me, forget it. I’ll go right now…” “Don’t… I’ll give it to you!” She made up her mind: “I’ll give it to you, but you have to promise never to appear in front of Matias again.” I agreed readily. After hanging up, my mood improved considerably. I removed all my makeup, put on a blouse and pencil skirt, and admired my figure in the mirror. Thinking about how Matias said I was imitating and seducing him, I was silent for a moment, then let out a soft laugh. I found it absurd, but I didn’t want to cause more trouble. I replaced the pearl earrings with sapphire ones, then dug a long trench coat out of the closet, covering my body’s curves completely, before heading out to work.

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The night before our engagement, Marcus had my stepsister Olivia pinned down on our wedding bed, tangled up together. He didn’t answer my calls. Only after finishing sex did he bother to text me back. “I’m having dinner with a client. My phone died earlier. What’s up?” I uploaded the surveillance footage I’d just downloaded straight to Twitter and announced the cancellation of our engagement. Marcus hadn’t noticed my Twitter post. He was too busy cuddling with Olivia in his arms for another round. Less than a minute after I posted, my notifications blew up to 99 messages. Marcus’s cousin Lester messaged excitedly: “Shit, this content is R-rated! No minors allowed!” “Sophie, did you get hacked?” “You and my brother should watch this kind of porn video under the covers, not post it publicly~” “Wait a second! Why does this guy look like my brother??” I sneered and replied: “It looks like him because it IS him. Your brother’s starring in it himself.” I didn’t bother replying to the other comments. Instead, I posted another pinned tweet: “Thank you all for your concern. My engagement to Marcus tomorrow is cancelled.” After posting that, I logged out of Twitter. My mom called me several times in a row. I didn’t answer. She was extremely satisfied with Marcus, practically wanting to announce to the whole world that I was about to marry into a wealthy family. Now that she’d suddenly seen I was calling off the engagement, she’d definitely make me delete everything. My phone kept vibrating in my palm. I simply turned it off. Out of sight, out of mind. After driving to a bar, I ordered a whiskey and waited patiently. Someone like Marcus never checked Twitter. It was normal that he hadn’t seen my messages yet. But I knew it wouldn’t be long before someone with a loose tongue would notify him. My friend asked why it took me so long to arrive. I laughed bitterly: “I was helping someone catch cheaters.” And speak of the devil—here came the cheater himself. Marcus pushed through the noisy, crowded bar toward our private room. His brows were furrowed, his expression dark. He kept pulling out his phone to make calls, like he had urgent business. And the woman who’d just been desperately entangled with him in bed was following right behind him, step for step. She wrapped her arms around his waist from behind and said something I couldn’t hear, tears in her eyes. Marcus looked extremely impatient. He pried her arms off and shoved her aside, turning to leave without a backward glance. The woman burst into tears, sitting on the ground crying her heart out. I hadn’t been able to see her face clearly in the surveillance footage earlier. Now, as the bar lights flashed, I finally got a good look at her. Fair skin, beautiful features, big eyes, an oval face—exactly Marcus’s type. And as it happened, I knew this person too. It was none other than Olivia, the daughter my stepmother had brought into the family. I stared at her in a daze. My friend patted my shoulder. “Sophie, is your phone dead?” The bar was too noisy for me to hear her clearly. Seeing this, she sighed and leaned closer. “Marcus is going crazy looking for you! He even called me!” She held her phone in front of me, showing an active call. The bar was blasting DJ music at that moment, making my head throb. My friend very considerately held the phone to my ear. I could faintly hear Marcus’s voice on the other end. “Sophie, it’s not what you think! Let me explain!” I snatched the phone and threw it into the ice bucket. My friend shrieked, “Sophie, my phone! Why are you dragging me into your fight!” My gaze swept over the woman who’d been crying her eyes out moments ago. I snorted coldly: “I’ll buy you a new one later.” “Men are like phones. When they don’t work right, you throw them out.”

At three in the morning, I dragged my exhausted body home. Sure enough, Marcus was waiting at my door. He crushed out his cigarette and quickly walked toward me. “Sophie, where were you? Why didn’t you answer any of my calls?” Smelling the alcohol on me, his tone turned concerned: “You’re drunk. Let me carry you inside.” I shoved away his embrace. “Don’t touch me. You’re filthy.” Marcus’s hands froze in midair. “Sophie, let me explain. It’s not what you think.” “That video must be AI-generated. I absolutely didn’t do anything to betray you!” I looked at him coldly, my face full of mockery: “Marcus, can you stop treating everyone like idiots?” “I downloaded that video from the surveillance system myself. I’m not blind. I saw everything crystal clear.” Marcus’s expression froze instantly on his face. His body went rigid, and his eyes dodged mine in panic. The alcohol hit me, and my stomach churned violently. I shoved past the man in front of me and rushed into the bathroom to throw up endlessly. Marcus followed me in. He gently patted my back, handed me tissues and water. I even accidentally threw up on him. Marcus had a cleanliness obsession. If he’d done this for me before, I would have been touched. But now, images of him and Olivia tumbling together in bed played on repeat in my mind like a movie. I just found this man utterly hypocritical. “Marcus, leave my house. I don’t want to see you anymore.” Marcus didn’t answer me. He just silently cleaned up the bathroom, then went to the kitchen to make hangover soup and placed it by my bedside. “Sophie, remember to drink the hangover soup.” “Let’s not talk about this right now. Get some rest, and we’ll talk after you’ve sobered up.” I closed my eyes to avoid looking at him and coldly spat out one word. “Get out.” I couldn’t sleep all night. And my mom showed up right on time at eight in the morning. She literally dragged me out of bed. “Sophie! You still have the nerve to sleep!” “Who gave you that video? That absolutely cannot be Marcus! Don’t let people manipulate you—they just can’t stand to see you happy!” “You called off the engagement without consulting your family. Do you know how many people are laughing at us? You’ve completely humiliated me!” I rubbed my throbbing temples and sighed: “Mom, I downloaded the video from the surveillance system in our new house myself. It can’t be faked.” “Marcus cheated. He…” My mom didn’t let me finish. She cut me off directly: “Don’t give me your lectures! Who is Marcus? When he stomps his foot, all of Los Angeles shakes! It’s completely normal for a man like that to have women throwing themselves at him! You eat his food and wear his clothes—can’t you show him some understanding? You think calling off an engagement is like playing house when you were three? Where are you going to find another man with such good conditions after leaving Marcus!” I wasn’t at all surprised to hear these words from my mom’s mouth. Her low standards for men were legendary. But I was different from her. “Mom, if you like Marcus so much, why don’t you marry him yourself? The engagement can go on as planned.” My mom’s face turned red with anger. She raised her hand to hit me. My stomach churned violently. I pushed her aside and rushed into the bathroom to hug the toilet. Behind me, my mom cursed that I was outrageous—nearly thirty years old and still getting drunk, not knowing how to take care of my body at all. Finally, the topic circled back to Marcus. “The Williams family is prestigious. Marcus is handsome and rich. If you miss him, think it through yourself!” My mom’s words, spoken word by word, made me think again of Olivia lovingly entwined with Marcus. “Look at you—this room is a complete mess. Can’t you clean up a bit? Why is there blood on the sheets?” “Look how sloppy you are. Who would want you besides Marcus! And you’re still not satisfied!” I silently closed the bathroom door, blocking out her voice. Curled into a ball, I buried my face in my arms and let my tears flow freely.

The story between Marcus and me wasn’t what outsiders saw—him chasing novelty, me chasing money. We’d been together for eight years. We got together back in high school when the school was cracking down hard on teen dating. When we celebrated our eighth anniversary, I couldn’t help asking him while cutting the cake if there’d be another anniversary to celebrate. He smiled and pinched my nose, pulling out a diamond ring and slipping it on my ring finger. “Next time we’ll celebrate our first wedding anniversary together.” “Sophie, will you marry me?” No. I regret it. I should have refused then. Marcus, you said you’d love me forever. You said I was your first love, your first kiss, and I’d be everything for the rest of your life. Then who is she to you? My mom made a huge scene at my place, trying to get me to reconcile with Marcus. But when she found I was completely unmoved, she eventually cursed at me a few times and left. I stayed home for two days with my phone off, refusing to look at any messages about him. Trying to patch up my heart that was riddled with holes. On Monday, I pulled myself together and went to work as usual. As soon as my coworkers saw me, they congratulated me and asked for wedding candy. “Sorry, my engagement is cancelled. I’ll bring you some another time.” My coworker’s smile froze on her face. “Oh, that’s okay.” “Um… are you alright?” I nodded and smiled: “I’m fine. Really good.” With that, I opened my computer and started working. During lunch break, I overheard several coworkers chatting together in the hallway. “Why did Sophie suddenly call off her engagement?” “Her boyfriend is so handsome and rich. Did he dump her?” “Don’t talk nonsense. I’ve met her boyfriend. Last time when it was snowing and the roads were so slippery, her boyfriend came to pick her up in a Porsche. When he saw Sophie wearing high heels, he got out of the car and just picked her up. They seemed so in love—how could they just break up like that?” “Then what else could it be? Did Sophie cheat?” “I told you not to spread rumors. We’ve worked with Sophie for so long—don’t you know what kind of person she is? Sharp tongue but soft heart. She’s a really good person.” I didn’t keep listening. I turned back to my workstation to continue working. Two messages popped up on my phone screen. My mom was nagging at me again. [I heard from Marcus that you blocked him?] [You’re too old for this kind of behavior. Hurry up and add him back. Apologize. Talk through whatever misunderstanding you have.] I stared at her messages in a daze. My heart was completely calm. Coming back to my senses, I clicked on my mom’s profile and put both her and Marcus on my blocklist together. After work, it started drizzling. I opened a rideshare app. It showed 120 people in the queue. I stood in front of the building, waving goodbye to my coworkers one by one until I was the only one left. I suddenly thought of Marcus. All these years, whether it was windy or rainy, he always came to pick me up. Because I depended on him, I’d stopped even carrying an umbrella. Habits really are a terrible thing. Holding my bag over my head, I took a breath and rushed into the rain. I’d barely run a few steps when someone grabbed me and pulled me under an umbrella. The moment I looked up, I met Marcus’s eyes. “Sophie, I came to take you home—” “Get lost!” I pushed away his hand and ran toward the bus stop without looking back. But Marcus persisted. He kept following behind me, desperately holding the umbrella over my head. “Sophie, be good. What if you get sick from the rain?” “Even if I die, it has nothing to do with you!” I turned around and couldn’t help hitting him several times with my bag: “Can’t you understand human language! I don’t want to see you anymore! Every word you say to me makes me sick!” “Stop bothering me! We have nothing to do with each other anymore!” “Get lost! Just get lost!” My hysterical appearance in the rain made me look like a madwoman. Turns out losing control of your emotions really does happen in an instant. I’d had a pretty good day up until then. The weekly meeting went smoothly, my boss praised me, and I’d even treated everyone to coffee. But the moment I saw Marcus, he so easily shattered all my strength. Marcus seemed nailed to the spot. He stood motionless, letting me hit him until it hurt. My bag fell to the ground. He bent down to pick it up and placed it in my hands. His lips moved like he had something to say, but ultimately it was all swallowed by the rain. I flagged down a taxi and got in without looking back. In the rearview mirror, Marcus’s figure grew farther and farther away. Finally, I couldn’t see anything clearly anymore. After getting home, I took a hot bath. While I was in the kitchen making soup, I received a call from an unknown number. “You dare block me! Marcus just got in a car accident, do you know that?!” “Los Angeles Hospital, get over here now! Any later and you won’t even see him one last time!”

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To replace my husband’s car, I secretly applied for a housekeeping job. The first time I saw such a luxurious house, I got nervous and accidentally broke a cup. Just as I was feeling anxious, Kelly, the lady of the villa, let out a scornful laugh: “It’s just a cup worth over ten thousand dollars. Is that really worth getting so nervous about? Don’t worry, you don’t have to pay for it.” I got even more nervous: “Thank you, ma’am. If even a single cup in your house costs over ten thousand, you must be really rich.” Kelly smiled: “It’s not that I’m rich. It’s that my sugar daddy is rich.” She showed me: “This bracelet cost a hundred and eighty thousand. My sugar daddy bought it for me without even blinking.” I froze. I had seen this necklace before on my husband’s phone. He said that once we had money, he’d buy it for me. Looking at it more would give me motivation. I smiled enviously: “Your sugar daddy is really wealthy. My husband said he’d buy it for me too, but there’s no way he could afford it. Still, just knowing he has that intention is enough for me.” Hearing me say this, Kelly looked disapproving. “Let me tell you, women need to treat themselves better.” “Otherwise you’ll end up like my sugar daddy’s wife. My sugar daddy is a billionaire, but his wife still lives in a rental in the slums.” Looking at the photo on her phone, I froze. Wasn’t this my home?

I tightened my grip on the cleaning cloth in my hand. “But since your sugar daddy has already become a billionaire, why doesn’t he tell his wife?” Kelly blew out a puff of smoke and laughed, “Actually, I’ve asked him that too. Guess what he said?” I shook my head. “He said that a woman willing to suffer hardships with him is so rare, someone who’s devoted her whole heart to him. That kind of genuine love shouldn’t be tainted with money.” Kelly sneered, “If you ask me, my sugar daddy is just tired of that old hag at home.” “I heard that old woman has been with him since she was eighteen. To support his startup, she went out to run a street stall every day. She did that for nine years straight.” “In that kind of street stall environment, exposed to wind and sun, no matter how good-looking someone is, how attractive can they stay?” She lowered her voice: “Let me tell you, my sugar daddy actually succeeded in his business five years ago. He’s loaded!” “But to keep up the act of being poor, even when his wife was eight months pregnant, he still made her go out to the street stall.” “Once, some troublemakers showed up. His wife’s belly got hit, and she almost died along with the baby!” She clicked her tongue with a sigh: “When his wife called him from the hospital, he was still on top of me, working hard, if you know what I mean.” “I asked him if he was going to go. He said he’d told his wife he was on a business trip with his boss, so if he went, his cover would be blown.” “I heard that poor wife had it terrible. She lost the child, and her uterine wall got scraped so thin.” “Who knows if she’ll ever be able to get pregnant again in this lifetime.” I instinctively covered my stomach. My memory drifted back to that winter. That day, I went out to my street stall as usual. A bunch of thugs came to eat burgers. When it was time to pay, they claimed there was a fly in the burger and refused to pay. I got anxious and grabbed the man’s hand, asking him to pay up. I didn’t make much money from a single burger. Going out in such cold weather was just to earn a bit more. But the man got angry and shoved me away hard. The gutter on the ground was frozen over. I slipped, and my whole body fell heavily to the ground. The pain felt like my pelvis had cracked. That group of thugs ran off immediately. I called Howard many times, but couldn’t get through. Later, someone nearby called 911 for me. After getting to the hospital, I was sent straight to the emergency room. The doctor told me there was an imported medication that might save the baby and would be better for my body too. But one injection cost fifty thousand dollars, and I needed two injections total. I called Howard. This time he finally picked up. On the other end, he sounded both anxious and hesitant, but in the end said we didn’t have that much money, so maybe we should just forget it. My child was just gone like that. And because of that surgery, my body was completely ruined. A day later, Howard appeared before me. He knelt heavily in front of me, slapping himself repeatedly. He said it was all because he was useless, and swore viciously that he would make big money in the future and never let me and our child face danger again. But I never imagined that he was already very rich back then. He was just busy pretending to be poor, busy rolling in the sheets with Kelly. Howard’s message suddenly came through. “Honey, I’m accompanying my boss on a business trip today. I got an extra five hundred dollars!” “Look at the gift I bought you. You’ll definitely love this necklace.” The picture showed a silver-plated necklace. Kelly let out an excited cry: “Look, my sugar daddy bought me an emerald and diamond necklace. I checked, and it costs three million eight hundred eighty thousand!” “He also said he’s coming to see me tonight. It must be to make up for not being with me the day my mother-in-law died!”

I was stunned. “His wife’s mother passed away?” Kelly nodded. “Yeah. That old woman was apparently from a single-parent family. Her mom worked hard to raise her alone and developed all kinds of health problems.” She wrinkled her nose. “Talk about bad luck. That day was our five-year anniversary, and she just had to pick that day to die. So annoying!” “I didn’t want to let him go, but he said her mom died trying to save his parents from a fire, so he had to go.” “I managed to delay him for three hours, making him have sex with me twice before leaving.” “Thinking about it now, I’m still a bit angry!” “If you ask me, that old hag deserved to die. She just had to go check on my sugar daddy’s parents.” I suppressed the rage in my heart and said hesitantly: “She was probably worried about them and wanted to make sure they were okay.” Kelly let out a scornful laugh and rolled her eyes. “His parents usually live in a villa community with plenty of housekeepers taking care of them. Why would they need that dead old hag to check on them?” “If it weren’t for cooperating with my sugar daddy’s act, they never would have gone back to that old rundown house.” “If they hadn’t gone back, there never would have been a fire.” “So you see, that old hag just had a cheap life. She deserved to die!” I clenched my fists. “So you’re saying your sugar daddy’s parents always knew their son had become rich, but they went along with him to deceive his wife and his wife’s mother?” Kelly admired her manicure and said casually: “No matter how heartless my sugar daddy is, he couldn’t possibly let his own parents suffer, right?” “His parents didn’t want to go along with it at first. They gave my sugar daddy a harsh scolding.” “But when my sugar daddy mentioned that his wife probably couldn’t even have children anymore, they agreed.” My heart felt desolate. When I first met Howard, his father was critically ill and his mother was disabled. They were the type who got bullied by neighbors even in daily life. When my mom found out I had a boyfriend, the first time she went to meet his parents, she saw them being bullied by a group of people. Those people threw stones at them and dunked their heads in sewage for fun. My mom’s loud voice scared them off as she swung a broom at them. Later, my mom felt sorry for them and would bring groceries to visit them from time to time. My mom even paid out of her own pocket to find doctors to treat them, trying to lighten my burden. That day, my mom went to check on them as usual, but a gas leak caused a massive fire. Seeing the bad situation, my mom forced her body to carry his parents, who had already been knocked out by the smoke, outside. My mom suffered severe burns over a large area of her body, and right before getting out, a falling beam crushed her leg. That day I knelt in the hospital begging the doctor to save my mom. The doctor said skin grafts and leg surgery were both major operations that would cost a lot of money—at least three hundred thousand. That day I kept calling Howard, wanting to tell him to maybe withdraw the money from his bank account for emergency use. But the phone just wouldn’t go through. My mom was tortured to death by the pain! And he was rolling in the sheets with Kelly again? Kelly seemed to remember something and laughed. “Let me tell you, his wife kept calling while my sugar daddy and I were having the time of our lives, so I just threw the phone away.” “Later when we finally finished, my sugar daddy wanted to call his wife back. Guess who picked up? That dead old hag.” She laughed heartily. “I’m telling you, when I heard that old hag’s voice, I moaned right into the phone.” “After a brief pause on the other end, she actually got so angry she started screaming at us through the phone, cursing us for being shameless.” “That day my sugar daddy got angry for the first time and actually slapped me.” She said indignantly, “Later I heard that dead old hag died.” She lowered her voice. “But let me tell you, that old hag actually could have survived.” “But my sugar daddy was afraid his wife would find out about his affair, so… he had someone pull the old hag’s tubes.”

Furious beyond control, I slapped Kelly across the face. “You scumbags and homewreckers, go to hell!” I grabbed Kelly by the throat, wishing I could drag her down with me. “You… what’s gotten into you? Someone, get over here and pull her off me!” I was quickly restrained by the other servants. Kelly slapped me across the face again and again, beating me until my mouth was full of blood. “You crazy woman, what’s gotten into you?” Enraged, I kept trying to lunge at her even as the servants held me down. One servant tried to reason with me: “My God, do you know who you just hit?” “That’s the woman of the Aimar Group CEO!” “She has power and influence. She could crush people like us with just a finger. Stop this madness!” I let out a cold laugh. Aimar Group? When Howard said he wanted to start a business, he said the company name absolutely had to be ‘Aimar.’ Because my name is Aimar. This was the new name my mom gave me after she took me away from my father’s hellhole. Howard used to say this company was created so I could live a good life. So not only would he use my name, but all the money the company made would go to me. He said no matter what he did, everything would only be for me. But I only knew about going out to my street stall every day. I didn’t even know his company had already been established! I struggled hard to break free, shouting, “I just can’t stand these homewreckers!” Seeing I still wouldn’t back down, the servant punched me several more times. He growled in my ear in a low voice: “Who do you think you are to look down on mistresses?” “People laugh at poverty, not prostitution. If you’re so capable, make your husband rich too. Otherwise, why are you working as a housekeeper?” “Let me tell you, since you’re working as a housekeeper, keep your mouth shut. Not everyone is someone you can afford to provoke!” Kelly started calling Howard, and the call connected in a second. Kelly’s voice was pitiful and tearful. “Hello…” Hearing something was wrong, he immediately asked what happened. “What’s wrong, baby? Who doesn’t want to live anymore and dared to bully you?” Kelly glared at me hard. “It’s the newly hired housekeeper.” “I don’t know what got into her. She just jumped up and hit me!” “She hit me so hard it hurts…” The other end sounded heartbroken, constantly comforting her. “It’s okay, it’s okay, baby. I’ll be home soon. When I get back, I’ll teach her a harsh lesson for you!” Kelly seemed unsatisfied. “How is that enough? That housekeeper even dared to call me a gold digger!” The other end chuckled lightly. “She’s not wrong, though. Aren’t you a gold digger?” Kelly got angry and shouted at him: “It’s one thing for me to be insulted, but can you really bear to let your son be called a bastard as soon as he’s born?” I froze. She even had a child?

Howard seemed equally shocked. “You’re pregnant?” Kelly glanced at me smugly. “Of course. You worked so hard planting seeds, naturally I got pregnant!” She said coquettishly: “You’ve been tired of the one at home for a long time, haven’t you?” “When are you finally going to kick her out and give our mother and son proper status?” Howard coaxed, “Be good. Let’s not keep the child. Find a time to abort it, and I’ll go with you.” Kelly sounded incredulous. “Howard, you’re actually saying you want to abort our child?” “I’ve been with you for five years. Am I still not as good as your wife in your eyes?” “Let me tell you, if you don’t give our mother and son proper status, I’ll make a scene in front of your wife!” The other end went silent for a moment, then Howard’s voice rang out again. Different from before, this time his voice was frighteningly cold. “Didn’t I tell you? Don’t even think about positions you shouldn’t covet.” “What are you to compare yourself to my wife?” “Let me tell you, if you dare make a scene in front of my wife, I’ll make your life a living hell!” Kelly got scared. “I… I won’t make a scene. I’ll be good.” The other end quickly softened his tone. “Good girl. I like it when you’re obedient. Pick any bag you want. This is your reward for being good.” Kelly nodded like she’d been frightened silly. She suddenly looked at me. “But I’m still not satisfied about that housekeeper hitting me!” Howard on the other end laughed. “Didn’t she call you shameless? Then make her become a plaything for men too. That way you’ll feel better, won’t you?” Kelly’s eyes lit up. “Howard, you’re right!” “She keeps going on about how great her husband is, acting like she loves him to death.” “I want to see if she’ll still have the face to call me a mistress after she has sex with another man in front of her own husband!” I struggled frantically, trying to speak. “No, I…” But my mouth was quickly covered. Howard on the other end sounded puzzled. “Who was that talking just now? Why does the voice sound so familiar?” Kelly dismissed it with a wave. “Just that crazy woman.” She excitedly grabbed my phone. “Howard, I’ve got her phone. I’ll call her husband in a bit.” “I want her husband to hear with his own ears the sounds of her sleeping with another man. Then we’ll see who’s more shameless!” She looked at me with a mocking smile. “I’ve already had someone strip off her clothes. Howard, when will you arrive? I want to watch with you.” A chuckle came from the other end. “I’m already at the door.”

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