Category: English

I was suffocating, caught in the velvet trap of my two childhood best friends and their relentless affections, when the mechanical hum first vibrated in my skull. It called itself the System. In a flat, synthetic tone, it informed me that the two boys whose devotion I’d taken for granted were not lovesick puppies. They were rabid dogs, biding their time before they tore my life apart. And Kellan Caldwell—the icy, brilliant heir I had spent my entire life despising—was the man who would actually destroy my family. I had stared across the room at Kellan, watching the way the chandelier light caught the sharp, untouchable angles of his face, and suddenly, the inexplicable, magnetic hostility between us made terrifying sense. Survival instinct took over. Following the System’s directives, I made it my absolute mission to make Kellan’s life a living hell. I undermined him, provoked him, and pushed him until his disgust for me hit a breaking point, culminating in his decision to leave the country for good. I thought I’d won. I thought I had neutralized the threat, and I was secretly reveling in my victory. Until the System fell into a prolonged, agonizing silence, only to return with an apologetic glitch in its voice. It had the data backward. Kellan Caldwell was actually my future husband. And the two boys next door, the ones I’d been agonizing over, the ones I trusted with my life? They weren’t harmless collateral in my love life. They were predators, waiting in the tall grass to consume me whole. 1 The ballroom of the St. Regis was suffocatingly bright for Kellan’s farewell gala. Declan and Zane flanked me, as they always did. Declan was smiling his trademark, ruinous smile, holding a silver fork to my lips with a bite of red velvet cake. Zane stood just behind me, his heavy-lidded eyes lazily tracking the room as his fingers absentmindedly played with the ends of my hair. The atmosphere was electric. Kellan was leaving for London. I should have been ecstatic. Instead, the blood in my veins had turned to ice. Are you out of your mind? I screamed at the System in my head. Can you be reliable for once in your miserable existence? …I apologize, Host, the voice echoed, sounding entirely too calm for the bomb it had just dropped. But your childhood friends are exceptionally dangerous. You must remain vigilant. Right now, the only thing I needed to be vigilant about was the voice in my head. Trusting it felt like a fool’s errand. Declan noticed the sudden, violent tension in my spine. His thumb grazed the corner of my mouth, catching a smudge of frosting. He brought it to his mouth, licking it off his own skin with a slow, deliberate gaze. “Not good?” he murmured. “…It’s delicious,” I forced out, grinding my teeth into a smile. Given the System’s track record, I wasn’t about to shove Declan away based on a single, glitchy warning. We had grown up together. We knew each other’s secrets, our scraped knees, our childhood terrors. Our intimacy was woven into the very fabric of my life. Glasses clinked. Laughter drifted over the string quartet. Because Kellan was the sole heir to the Caldwell empire, half of Manhattan’s elite had crowded into the ballroom to see him off. My parents had dragged me here as a matter of obligation. Kellan stood at the absolute center of the room. He held a crystal flute of champagne, his posture impossibly perfect, an aura of aristocratic detachment radiating from his tailored tuxedo. My eyes lingered on him for a fraction of a second too long. By the time I snapped back, Zane had already gathered my hair, his knuckles brushing the nape of my neck as he casually braided it. I blinked. “What are you—” Declan chuckled, leaning in to help, his fingers brushing against Zane’s. The phantom touches of their cold fingertips against my bare neck blurred together. I couldn’t tell whose hand was whose. A heavy, intimate silence settled over our little triangle. I stood paralyzed, letting them weave my hair, my thoughts drifting. Ever since I realized that both of my oldest friends were in love with me, my life had become a delicate, uncomfortable tightrope walk. Isn’t that how it goes? Declan had once said, his eyes crinkling with warmth. The kids who grow up together, end up together. But that was the problem. They both wanted me. How was I supposed to choose? Declan had always been the golden boy, revolving around me like the sun. He was charismatic, universally adored. Yet on every holiday, no matter how many people vied for his attention, he would always end up sitting on the floor next to my chair, tugging at my earring and whispering, I only want to be where you are. Zane, on the other hand, existed in a state of perpetual boredom. But when a group of older boys had cornered me in an alley behind our prep school, Zane had dismantled them with terrifying, silent efficiency. He had wiped the blood from his brow, wrapped a steady, bruising arm around my waist, and walked me home. Choosing one meant severing the other. And breaking their hearts was the one thing I couldn’t stomach. While I had been drowning in my indecision, the System had first appeared, whispering its toxic rationality: They are destined to be your lapdogs. Why rush? They will be pathologically loyal to you. You couldn’t shake them off if you tried. Your priority is Kellan. My lapdogs? Pathologically loyal? I had thought, rubbing my chin. Well, if they’re never going to leave… what’s the harm in leaning on them? And so, my hesitation had melted into entitlement. I used their devotion. I let them handle my messes. And slowly, I had become entirely desensitized to their suffocating, physical proximity. 2 Now, I had bullied Kellan right out of the country. I was about to graduate and take my place in my family’s firm. Everything was falling perfectly into place. And now this voice was telling me the data was backwards?! I cursed the System in my head until my mental voice went hoarse. The machine stayed dead silent, cowering in my cortex. Exhausted from the internal screaming, I collapsed onto a velvet sofa in the corner. Zane had been summoned by his father, and Declan hovered, clearly wanting to stay. I waved him off. “I’m exhausted. I just need to close my eyes for ten minutes.” Declan hesitated, his gaze sweeping over my face. “Alright.” The moment I closed my eyes, I slipped into a restless, suffocating sleep. In the dream, there was a heavy blindfold over my eyes. I was drowning in darkness. My limbs felt like lead, weighed down by the invisible drag of chains. I reached out, stumbling forward, gasping for air. Suddenly, an arm hooked around my waist, yanking me flush against a hard chest. I froze, paralyzed by a primal, instinctive terror. The hand on my waist didn’t stop; it mapped the curve of my hip, trailing upward with brutal, unapologetic ownership. Another hand landed on the back of my neck, the grip intimate but steeped in a dark, violent threat. A whimpering sound tore from my throat, and I jerked awake. The massive crystal chandelier above the ballroom blinded me. I was drenched in a cold sweat, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird. I hadn’t seen a single face in the dream, but the sensation of being utterly, permanently caged clung to my skin like a second layer of sweat. It took me minutes to regulate my breathing. The dampness of my silk gown against my back made my skin crawl. I texted our family driver to bring in the spare dress I kept in the car, grabbed it from him in the lobby, and slipped away to the VIP lounges to change. The lounge was cavernous and draped in shadows. I clutched the garment bag, reaching for the handle of the private dressing room. The door opened from the inside before I could touch it. I froze in the doorway. “Kellan…” He swept a glacial glance over me and stepped past me, heading for the exit. “Kellan, wait!” I called out. He didn’t break his stride. Without thinking, I reached out and grabbed his wrist. “Let go,” he said, the sheer impatience in his voice cutting like glass. “The door wasn’t locked,” I stammered, my hand dropping to my side. “I didn’t know you were in there.” “The lock is broken.” Kellan lowered his dark eyes to mine, his expression utterly unreadable. “Was there something else?” The System’s words crashed into my mind. Future husband. Impossible. I curled my fingers into my palms, forcing a neutral mask onto my face. I cleared my throat. “Just… safe travels. I hope London treats you well.” The words actually made him stop. He lifted his gaze, his dark eyes slowly, meticulously dragging over my face, searching for the trap. A cynical, paper-thin smile touched his lips. “What new game is this? Figured out a way to humiliate me before I make it to the airport?” Before I could defend myself, his hand snapped up, his long fingers gripping my chin. The sheer, terrifying strength in his hold made my breath hitch. “You’re being paranoid,” I said through gritted teeth. “I just came to change my dress.” “Miraculous,” Kellan drawled, his thumb pressing lightly against my jaw. “Your two guard dogs actually let you out of their sight.” “They’re not dogs—” I started, the defensive reflex kicking in. But the words died in my throat as familiar voices drifted in from the corridor outside. “I swear to God, every gala, some woman miraculously spills cabernet on your shirt.” A low, dismissive scoff. “Whatever. It’s not like you ever give them the time of day… Did you see where she went?” “Wasn’t she sleeping on the sofa?” The handle to the main lounge door clicked. Panic, pure and irrational, hijacked my brain. I shoved Kellan backward, right back into the darkened, cramped space of the dressing room, pulling the door shut behind us just as Declan and Zane walked into the lounge. Through the thin wood, their voices were crystal clear. “She should be thrilled tonight,” Declan said. “Kellan’s finally leaving. Why does she look so miserable?” “She spent entirely too much time looking at him today,” Zane replied. A heavy, oppressive silence followed. Then, Declan let out a soft, mocking laugh. “Well, she’s always been volatile. We’re used to it, aren’t we?” “Her easy days are numbered,” Zane said. His voice was a lazy drawl, but the words carried the chilling finality of a judge passing a sentence. …If they had been talking about anyone else, I wouldn’t have cared. My eyelashes fluttered. The air in the tiny dressing room suddenly felt dangerously thin. Kellan was leaning against the back wall. His face was obscured in the dark, but I could feel the blistering weight of his stare. We were standing so close my chest almost brushed his jacket with every ragged breath I took. Our air mingled. The conversation outside wasn’t over. “You play the part well,” Declan hummed, a cruel edge to his usually warm voice. “I almost believed you were actually in love with her.” “Back at you,” Zane replied. “God, I can’t wait to see the look on her face when the time comes. It’s going to be so fucking sweet.” “Sweet?” Zane mused. “Tragic, maybe. But I suppose tragedy has its own kind of sweetness.” I didn’t understand the exact parameters of their metaphor, but the rotting core of it was unmistakable. The world went horrifyingly quiet. So quiet, I could hear the slow, sick thud of my own heart. I could accept a rival. I could accept that an arrogant heir might be my enemy. But I could not compute the reality that the two boys I had spent twenty years loving, the ones who had protected me from the world, harbored a malice toward me so deep it bordered on the grotesque. For the first time since it invaded my brain, I believed the System with absolutely no reservations. 3 My hand, pressed flat against Kellan’s chest to keep him back, was trembling visibly. The man in front of me leaned down. His mouth hovered right beside my ear, his breath warm and laced with mockery. “I’m leaving now, Miss Fallon.” He reached around me for the brass doorknob. In a blind panic, I grabbed his arm to stop him. My heel caught on the edge of the carpet, and I stumbled against the door. Thump. “What was that?” Declan’s voice snapped like a whip, entirely stripped of its usual golden-boy warmth. Meeting Kellan’s impassive gaze, I knew with absolute certainty he wasn’t going to cover for me. I sucked in a sharp breath and wrapped my hand around the doorknob. A second before I could turn it, Kellan’s voice cut through the dark. “It’s me.” He glanced down at me, a silent command. I didn’t hesitate. I pressed myself flat into the dark corner behind the door hinges, utterly swallowed by the shadows. Kellan pushed the door open. The angle of the wood perfectly shielded me from the lounge. “Well, well,” Declan’s voice drifted in. “Didn’t realize you had a fetish for eavesdropping.” The sheer venom in his tone made my stomach turn. I had never, in twenty years, heard Declan speak with such naked malice. It was a complete stranger’s voice. Kellan sounded entirely unbothered. “Does Fallon know about this little plan of yours?” A deathly, suffocating silence descended on the lounge. The air practically froze. It took a long time before Zane finally spoke, his voice dangerously low. “Are you planning on running to her with a warning? Who do you think she’s going to believe, Caldwell? You? Or us?” Declan seemed to relax, the tension bleeding out of his stance. “Exactly. You know exactly how much she despises you.” Kellan didn’t grace them with a response. Declan offered a short, derisive laugh. Footsteps echoed across the hardwood. The heavy lounge doors clicked shut. They were gone. I leaned the back of my head against the wall, exhaling a breath that burned my lungs. When I stepped out of the dressing room, Kellan was already halfway to the door, meticulously adjusting his platinum cufflinks. I stood rooted to the spot, a sudden wave of desperate uncertainty washing over me. If the System was right about them… then it had to be right about him. “What time…” I swallowed hard. “What time is your flight?” Kellan stopped. He lifted his heavy gaze, pinned me to the wall with it, and said absolutely nothing. “I mean,” I babbled, the adrenaline making me frantic, “when are you coming back? Ha, don’t misunderstand, I don’t mean anything by it, but if you don’t want to tell me—” “I suggest,” Kellan interrupted, his voice dropping to a merciless, freezing register, “that you start worrying about yourself.” He turned and walked out. Before I could even process the warning, my phone buzzed in my clutch. Declan. I hit decline. 4 When I finally forced myself back out to the ballroom, my mother grabbed my arm, oblivious to the fact that I was rigid with terror. She pulled me toward a circle of socialites. “Fallon, darling,” she beamed, the champagne making her bold. “You’re getting to that age. Have you thought about which of the boys you’re going to choose? You’ve always been so close to Declan and Zane. Who is it going to be?” The System shrieked to life in my brain. Host! You can curse me all you want, but you have to tread carefully! Do not choose either of them. They are not normal men! “You didn’t answer my call.” The voice came from right over my shoulder. Declan. I slowly turned my head. He was smiling. His eyes were crinkled at the corners, his mouth curved in that beautiful, familiar way, but his tone was feather-light, carrying the distinct pressure of an interrogation. Across the circle, Zane was staring at me. His gaze was unblinking, heavy, and dead. A cold sweat broke out along my spine. It felt like I had stepped into a pit with two vipers, and they were just waiting for me to make a sudden movement. I forced a bright, bratty laugh, looking back at my mother. “I like them both. Why can’t I just have both?” My mother blinked, offering an awkward, embarrassed laugh to the women around her. “Oh, listen to her. Such nonsense.” Zane’s mother chimed in, smoothing over the faux pas. “The kids are just too close. It’s impossible for her to pick right now.” Zane tilted his head, a slow, dark smile spreading across his lips. “Both?” he repeated. Declan, usually the one who couldn’t stop talking, went perfectly still. The smile never left his face, but it didn’t reach his eyes. I kept the plastic smile plastered on my face and nodded. Inside, I was screaming. Both meant neither. This was the twenty-first century. I wasn’t about to run a harem, especially not a harem of psychopaths. “Alright.” Declan’s voice was bright, almost melodic. I stared at him. “Whatever Fallon wants,” Declan said smoothly. “I accept unconditionally.” If I hadn’t overheard them in the lounge—if I hadn’t known the truth—that sentence would have thrilled my ego. My gorgeous childhood friend, so obsessed with me he’s willing to share? Amazing. But now? All I heard was the sound of a trap snapping shut. I looked at Zane, my voice catching slightly. “You… you agree to that?” Zane slowly raised his eyes. I didn’t miss the flash of pure, unadulterated violence that passed through his pupils before it was buried again. “Yeah,” he murmured. “No objections.” I felt nauseous. My mother rubbed her temples, sighing. “Fallon, honestly. Though,” she paused, her eyes narrowing in thought, “I did hear that things have always been tense between you and the Caldwell boy?” The calculation in her voice was naked. She was weighing the Kellan Caldwell option. Months ago, my father had casually floated the idea of a Caldwell merger over dinner. Because I was knee-deep in my crusade to destroy Kellan, I had thrown an absolute tantrum, refusing outright. My father hadn’t brought it up since. The silence among the parents grew thick. I swallowed the lump in my throat, offering my mother a vague, dismissive shake of my head. I turned to Zane. “I’ve got a headache. Walk me to the gardens?” I stepped into his space, leaning my weight against his arm in a display of total, oblivious trust. Zane’s muscles went completely rigid beneath his suit jacket for a fraction of a second. I could feel Declan’s eyes burning into my back as we walked away. The moment we were out of the crowd, under the guise of slipping my arm through his, I dropped a microscopic audio bug straight into the pocket of Zane’s tuxedo jacket. I had to know. I had to know exactly what kind of hell they were building for me. 5 The moment I locked my bedroom door at home, I sprinted to the bathroom, turned the shower on full blast to mask any noise, and opened the app synced to the bug. Nothing but static for hours. I was drifting off to sleep when the sudden crackle of a voice jerked me upright. “What did she say to you tonight? She practically threw herself at you. You didn’t put your hands on her, did you?” Declan. “What’s that supposed to mean?” Zane’s voice was bored, flat. A few seconds of heavy silence. “Are you going soft on her?” Declan asked, his tone laced with something dark. “No.” Zane’s voice was ice. “The plan proceeds exactly as discussed.” “…I don’t know. I feel like she knows something. She was looking at us differently.” Zane scoffed softly. “She’s as clueless as she’s always been.” “The island is prepped?” “Yeah.” “Then we make the move in the next few days.” “I’ll ask her out tomorrow.” The audio crackled. A second later, my phone vibrated in my palm. A text from Zane. Want to see me tomorrow? My fingers flew across the screen. Why? What’s up? Date. I stared at the four letters, my stomach twisting into a violent knot. Swamped lately. No free time. I hit send. Through the audio bug, I heard Zane’s phone chime. “She says she’s got no time,” Zane relayed. “No time?” Declan let out a sharp, incredulous laugh. “She spent the last year doing nothing but making Kellan’s life miserable. Now that he’s gone, she suddenly has no time?” “Do you think Kellan actually warned her?” Zane asked, his voice tightening. Declan clicked his tongue. “I know Fallon. Even if he did, she’d never believe him. She only trusts us.” I pressed the heel of my hand against my mouth to stifle a sob. “Honestly,” Declan’s voice dropped to a whisper, a sound so possessive it made my skin crawl. “When the dust settles, I’m going to take her and…” I leaned in, straining to hear, when the audio dissolved into a harsh, scraping noise. Fabric rustling. Then, Zane’s voice, laced with a slow, terrifying amusement. “Well, look at this. Look what I found in my pocket.” A deafening, high-pitched squeal tore through the speaker. And then, dead silence. Connection severed. I stared at the screen as my chat with Zane remained perfectly still. He didn’t send another message. The app read: Device Disconnected. I sat in the silence of my bedroom for a long time. “System,” I whispered into the dark. “They really are monsters, aren’t they?” I am so sorry, Host, the System replied, sounding genuinely mournful. If I hadn’t mixed up the files, perhaps… I shook my head. “Even if you had told me the truth from day one, I wouldn’t have believed you. I had to hear them say it.” I looked down at my trembling hands. What were they going to do to me? Host, the System said. Go find Kellan. I blinked, the exhaustion making me slow. “Find him?” The System calculated for a moment. You can use him. Use him to flush out Declan and Zane’s true intentions. I frowned. You possess a fatal attraction over him, the System urged. He cannot refuse you.

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “432242”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

My soul was suspended in mid-air, hovering just beneath the yellow crime scene tape as the white tarp slowly descended. The baby, three months along and perfectly safe inside me until moments ago, was supposed to be my anniversary surprise for Victor tomorrow. But now, my baby and I were both dead. Pushed off the roof by my husband’s obsessed admirer. Through the chaos of the flashing sirens, Victor walked toward me. He wore his signature black wool coat, his expression a mask of absolute, chilling stoicism as he parted the sea of uniform cops. His eyes fell onto the white sheet covering my broken body. Everyone expected him to shatter. Instead, he turned to the lead detective and stated, his voice devoid of any tremor, that the deceased was his wife. To ensure absolute transparency and rule out any allegations of bias, he, the Chief Medical Examiner, would perform the autopsy himself. That resolute, icy silhouette turning away from my corpse was the last impression my husband left me in the world of the living. The city’s top forensic pathologist, slicing open his own wife’s body on a stainless-steel table just to prove his unwavering dedication to objective truth. The press was going to have a field day. I floated behind him, watching as he walked into the morgue. He changed into his pristine blue scrubs, tied his mask, snapped on his latex gloves, and picked up the scalpel—the same blade he had used to find justice for countless strangers. He took measured steps toward the freezing metal table where I lay. The fluorescent lights caught the silver edge of the blade, reflecting in his eyes. Those eyes, which had looked at me with such profound tenderness a thousand times before, now held nothing but cold, clinical, absolute rationality. 1. The light in the autopsy suite was a blinding, sterile white that stripped the room of any warmth. It made the stainless-steel instrument tray gleam like ice. My soul drifted through the halogens, feeling like a speck of worthless dust. I looked at Victor. My husband. Victor. His head was bowed, meticulously adjusting the angle of the surgical lamp. Those long, elegant fingers—the ones that used to weave through my hair while we watched movies on the couch—were encased in nitrile. His movements were precise, grounded, not betrayed by a single tremor. It was as if the woman lying on his table wasn’t the wife he had shared a bed with for three years, but just another Jane Doe. Subject Number 0713. “Vic… Do you really have to do this?” It was his deputy, Brody. Brody was our friend. He’d come over for Sunday barbecues. Brody’s voice was rough, thick with an unbearable grief. He looked at Victor, then down at the white sheet covering me, his Adam’s apple bobbing hard. “The reporters outside are already spinning it. They’re saying this is a stunt. That you’re trying to cover something up…” Victor didn’t look up. He picked up a scalpel, passing it briefly over the flame of a Bunsen burner. Behind his mask, his voice was muffled but agonizingly clear. “Let them talk.” He paused, lining up the sterilized instruments on the metal tray with a sharp, echoing clatter. “I only believe in evidence. I am the only one who knows Jo’s medical history flawlessly. I am the only one who can determine the exact mechanics of her death without margin for error. I will give her justice. Anyone else’s subjective emotions will only contaminate the truth.” What a righteous justification. What a perfectly Victor answer. Absolute logic. Absolute impartiality. This was the gospel carved into his very bones. It was also the insurmountable chasm that had always stood between us. I smiled, though my ghostly form had no lips to curve. Of course. He only believed in evidence. That was why, when I begged him to see that Kelsey—the new forensic fellow—was texting him at 2:00 AM with thinly veiled flirtations, he brushed it off. He told me it was just professional admiration. He told me I was being “dramatic,” that my “emotional paranoia” was clouding my judgment. He asked me for proof. But when does a woman’s intuition about another woman’s predatory intentions require forensic proof? It’s an alarm bell wired directly into our DNA. And now, I was dead. And he was using his scalpel to carve into my ruined flesh, looking for the “evidence” he so desperately craved. Brody let out a heavy sigh, giving up. He knew better than anyone that once the “Machine of the ME’s Office” made up his mind, nothing on earth could change it. The room went dead silent, save for the nervous, shallow breathing of the medical students who had been allowed in to observe, and the metallic clinking of Victor’s prep. He was ready. He stepped up to the table. Reached out. Pinched the corner of the white sheet. My heart—if a soul could still possess a heart—violently contracted. Don’t. Don’t pull it back. Let me keep my final shred of dignity. Please, Victor. He couldn’t hear me. His fingers were steady, unyielding. Swoosh. The sheet was ripped away. My shattered, undignified remains were exposed to the brutal glare of the overhead lights. Because of the height of the fall, my limbs were splayed in grotesque, unnatural angles. My face and skin were a canvas of lacerations and congealed blood. My hair was matted to my cheek in dark, wet clumps. The vintage white linen dress I had spent weeks searching for—just for our anniversary dinner—was shredded, stained in sprawling patches of rust and violet. But the most glaring horror was the massive, gaping wound on my temple. The skin was split wide open, the bone gleaming white underneath. That was where my head struck the concrete edge of the planter box when Kelsey shoved me off the rooftop terrace. “Oh, God—” A young med student clamped a hand over his mouth, bolting for the door to vomit in the hallway. The remaining students turned ashen, averting their eyes. Only Victor didn’t look away. He stood there, his eyes acting as a high-resolution scanner. Inch by inch, he examined me from the crown of my head down to my broken toes. There was no love in that gaze. No agony. Not a single trace of personal attachment. Just scrutiny. Analysis. Investigation. He was looking at me the way a watchmaker looks at a broken, complicated gear. “The deceased: Joanna Carmichael. Female. Twenty-eight years of age. Height, five-foot-six. Weight, one hundred and twelve pounds.” He clicked on the overhead microphone, beginning his clinical dictation. His voice was as flat as a frozen lake. “Commencing preliminary external examination.” He picked up a pair of forceps, gently lifting the blood-matted hair away from my forehead to expose the horrific gash. “Visible laceration on the frontal lobe region, approximately seven centimeters in length. Edges are irregular, indicative of blunt force trauma. Preliminary assessment: sustained during impact from a high-altitude fall.” As he spoke, he used a swab to collect tissue samples from the edge of the wound, dropping them into an evidence vial. “Potential cranial fracturing. Full craniotomy required to confirm.” Craniotomy. The word pierced my soul like an ice pick. I remembered watching a true-crime documentary with him once. When a graphic scene of a skull being sawed open flashed on the screen, I had buried my face in his chest, terrified. He had laughed, kissing the top of my head. “Silly girl, don’t look. We do it so the dead can finally speak. I promise, I’ll never let you see anything like that.” He broke his promise. Not only was I seeing it, but he was going to be the one holding the saw. My spirit trembled violently in the air above him. A coldness far deeper than the grave seeped into my nonexistent bones. Victor… did you ever actually love me? 2. The external exam continued in suffocating silence. Victor’s technique was textbook perfection. He checked my pupils with a penlight. Pulled back my eyelids. Checked my airway for obstructions. His fingers traced the curve of my neck, looking for ligature marks. That used to be my most sensitive spot. If he even brushed it with his lips, I would shrink away giggling, only for him to pull me flush against his chest and pepper the skin with kisses. Now, his fingertips were iron. Shielded by latex, they glided over my skin without transferring a single degree of body heat. “No petechiae or bruising present on the neck. Mechanical asphyxiation ruled out.” He moved to my hands, checking beneath my fingernails for defensive wounds. “Nails intact. No foreign skin tissue located in the nail beds. The deceased did not engage in a violent physical struggle prior to death.” His gaze finally dropped to my left hand. Because of the blinding terror and sheer physical agony of the fall, my hand had clenched into a tight, rigor-mortis fist. Victor frowned slightly. It was the very first crack in his armor, the slightest ripple of emotion since he had stepped into the room. He tried to pry my fingers open, but the rigor made it incredibly difficult. “Increase the overhead lumens,” he commanded. A harsher beam of light spotlighted my hand. Brody silently handed him a small pair of bone spreaders. Victor took them. With agonizing patience, finger by finger, he began to pry my rigid hand open. Crack. A sickening pop echoed in the room. He had forcefully dislocated my index finger to get the hand open. My soul shuddered. It felt as though the phantom pain had transcended the veil of death, branding itself directly onto my consciousness. One finger. Then the next. He was as relentless as a man dismantling a bomb. Finally, my clenched fist lay open. There was nothing inside. Nothing but the deep, bloody crescent-moon indentations where my own fingernails had dug into my palm. Victor froze. He stared at my bruised, bloody palm, falling utterly silent. Nobody knew what I had been trying to hold onto in those final seconds. I wanted to grab the edge of the railing. I wanted to grab a second chance. I wanted to grab… the future, for me and my baby. But I caught nothing. I died holding nothing but the weight of my own despair. “No foreign objects present in the palm,” he stated, recovering his robotic cadence. “Multiple closed fractures across all four extremities, consistent with high-velocity deceleration impact.” He took a pair of heavy medical shears and cut away the remaining rags of my dress, using forceps to drop the fabric into a brown evidence bag. My body lay completely, humiliatingly naked beneath the harsh lights. This was the body he used to treat like a temple. He used to tell me my skin felt like warm silk. He used to leave trails of bruises on my collarbones, possessively marking me as his. Now, his eyes swept over the massive, purple contusions without a flicker of recognition. He merely held up a forensic ruler, photographing and measuring the geometry of my trauma. “Extensive subcutaneous hemorrhaging across the thorax and dorsal planes. Irregular contusions. Consistent with concrete impact.” His gaze finally moved to my lower abdomen. It was perfectly flat. At three months, I wasn’t showing at all. I hadn’t told a soul. I went to all the OB-GYN appointments alone. I still remembered the cold gel on my stomach, my palms sweating against the paper table cover. When the room suddenly filled with the rapid, rhythmic whoosh-whoosh-whoosh of a tiny heartbeat, the tears had spilled over my cheeks before I could stop them. The doctor had smiled warmly. “Look at that. Perfectly healthy. Beating like a little freight train.” I had stood outside the clinic in the spring sunlight for an hour, just staring at the tiny printout. A grainy, black-and-white blur. Our child. The anchor of our lives. I had carefully tucked the sonogram and the positive test into a beautiful velvet box, burying it in the very back of my nightstand drawer. I was going to hand it to him over candlelight tomorrow night. I had rehearsed it a hundred times in the shower. “Mr. Carmichael, congratulations. You’re going to be a father. Try not to analyze the baby too much, okay?” I could see exactly how his stoic, unreadable face would break. The shock. The overwhelming, boyish joy. He would have picked me up and spun me around the kitchen. He loved kids. Every time we passed a toddler in the park, his eyes would follow them. He joked that he was going to teach our kid the names of all 206 bones in the human body before kindergarten. I would laugh and say absolutely not, our daughter was going to take ballet and wear obnoxious pink tutus. He would tap my nose. “Fine. Whatever you want, Jo. A little girl, just as stubborn as her mother.” But now… All of it was ash. Victor, look. Look closer at my stomach. Your obsession with protocol, your sacred ‘objectivity,’ is about to slice right through the future you wanted most. My soul screamed. I threw myself against the sterile air, thrashing in the silence. But he just kept dictating. “Abdomen is flat. No abnormal distension noted.” A cold, clinical death sentence. 3. “External examination complete. Proceeding with internal autopsy.” Victor’s voice echoed off the tiled walls, devoid of a single human frequency. He reached for a fresh scalpel. A pristine, glittering blade. The blade that was about to open my chest. “Wait!” Brody couldn’t take it anymore. He lunged forward, grabbing Victor’s wrist. “Vic, stop! Jesus Christ, man, enough! The external is enough! The cause of death is obvious—massive trauma from a fall. There is absolutely no need to… to go inside!” Brody’s eyes were bloodshot, his voice cracking with desperation. “It’s Jo! It’s your wife! How is she supposed to rest in peace if you butcher her? How are you ever going to live with yourself?!” Victor slowly turned his head. His gaze moved from the edge of the blade to Brody’s face. For the first time, a flicker of something dark ignited in his eyes. Not grief. Not hesitation. But a terrifying, obsessive fire. “Brody. Did you forget what we do here?” He spoke quietly, but the authority in his tone was crushing. “On this table, there are no husbands. There are no wives. There is only the pathologist seeking the truth, and the victim waiting for a voice.” He forcefully twisted his wrist out of Brody’s grip, a low warning in his voice. “If you cannot maintain total objectivity, step outside. Do not stand in my room and interfere with my work.” “You…” Brody was shaking with rage. He pointed a trembling finger at Victor, unable to form a sentence. Finally, as if the air had been knocked out of his lungs, he backed away, his face twisted in horror. “You’re sick, Vic. You’ve lost your goddamn mind.” He was right. Victor was sick. The moment he tied on that surgical mask and picked up that knife, he had lost his mind. I watched as Victor readjusted his grip on the scalpel, pressing the tip directly against the center of my sternum. I remembered how he used to rest his cheek right there, listening to my pulse as we fell asleep. He used to say, “Jo, your heartbeat is the only noise in the world that turns the volume down in my head.” Listen, Victor. Can you hear it now? You can’t. So you have to carve it out of my chest just to see why it stopped? For the first time since I died, I felt hatred. A blinding, tidal wave of hatred. I hated Kelsey for pushing me over the ledge. But right now, I hated the man standing over me even more. This man using “justice” as a shield while he subjected my body to the ultimate desecration. He raised the blade. I closed my eyes. If a ghost can close her eyes. The cold steel parted my flesh without a millimeter of hesitation. From the top of my collarbone, down to my pelvis. A textbook Y-incision. The bread and butter of forensic pathology. He had done this ten thousand times. It was as natural to him as breathing. But this time, it was his wife. Skin parted. Fat tissue, muscle layers separated. His hands were terrifyingly steady. Because my heart had stopped, there was no arterial spray, just the sluggish pooling of dark, deoxygenated blood. He inserted the rib spreaders, cranking my ribcage open with a sickening crack. My heart. My lungs. My liver. All the vital mechanisms of my being were exposed to the harsh lights, naked before him and the horrified students. He picked up his surgical scissors and forceps, beginning the evisceration. “Heart. Weight, approximately three hundred grams. Pericardium intact. No obvious myocardial hemorrhaging…” He cradled my heart in his gloved palm, placing it on the hanging scale. The heart that had raced for him, broken for him, loved him. Now, it was just 300 grams of dead meat. “Lungs. Cross-sections are dark crimson, indicating severe pulmonary contusions consistent with blunt impact…” He sliced into my lungs. I remembered hiking with him in Yosemite. I was gasping for air, and he ended up carrying me on his back, joking that my lung capacity was worse than a two-pack-a-day smoker. I had punched his shoulder while he laughed. “Liver, spleen, kidneys… no visible anomalies.” His movements were a brutal ballet. Professional, ruthless, perfectly efficient. A machine operating at peak performance. The interns in the corner, initially paralyzed by nausea, were slowly transitioning into a state of terrified awe. “My God, Dr. Carmichael is unbelievable.” “I know… to be this detached when it’s his own wife… I could never be that disciplined.” “They don’t call him a machine for nothing…” Their whispers drifted up to the ceiling, mocking me. A machine? No. He was just a monster who had amputated his own soul. The evisceration continued. Soon, my chest cavity and abdomen were completely hollowed out. The organs that used to sustain my life were lined up on the metal dissection board, waiting to be sectioned and bathed in formaldehyde. I looked like a ragdoll ripped to shreds by a vicious dog. Do you see, Victor? Are you satisfied with your ‘evidence’? My heart didn’t give out. My liver didn’t fail. I didn’t suffer a spontaneous aneurysm. I was murdered. Did you really need to gut me like an animal to prove it? Finally, his eyes dropped to the very bottom of my pelvic cavity. To the last remaining organ. My uterus. 4. It was the softest, safest place inside me. The tiny sanctuary where our child was dreaming. Victor reached down with his forceps. My soul stretched until it felt like it would tear apart.

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “432227”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

Claustrophobia wasn’t just a fear I couldn’t shake; it was the monster that lived in my chest, a suffocating nightmare I had battled for years. On my eighteenth birthday, my father—a renowned clinical psychologist—announced he had a special gift to mark my transition into adulthood. He had meticulously retrofitted a small room in our basement into a complete sensory deprivation chamber. And then, he locked me inside. Through the heavy door, I could hear the muffled cheers of my friends shouting, “You got this, Nico!” mingled with the irritated sighs of my stepmother, telling me to stop wasting everyone’s time. I stayed in there, weeping and begging for mercy, until my heart simply gave out and stopped beating altogether. In his study, my father calmly typed into his research notes: “Hour 19: Subject has entered deep sleep. Preliminary assessment indicates successful desensitization.” 1 “Go on in, Nico. This is a surprise your father built just for you.” Beyond the door frame lay a darkness so absolute it seemed to swallow the light from the hallway. My breath hitched, instantly catching in my throat. “Dad…” My voice trembled as I instinctively backed away. “No… please, you know how terrified I am…” “It is exactly because you are terrified that you must face it,” he said, his voice carrying the smooth, practiced cadence of a man used to lecturing from a podium. “Nicole, you are eighteen years old. So many of your friends came out to celebrate you today. It’s time to show them how brave you are. Right?” “But—” “No buts,” he cut me off smoothly. “This time, I am going to cure you. Once and for all.” “No!” I shrieked, shaking my head frantically, the tears already hot and fast on my cheeks. “I’m not going in! Dad, please… I don’t want this gift. I don’t want anything at all, just please don’t make me go in there—” “Nicole, stop throwing a tantrum.” The cold, clipped voice of Diane, my stepmother, sliced through the air. She stepped into my line of sight, arms crossed. “Do you have any idea how much time and money your father spent trying to fix this little issue of yours? He had this room specially renovated. It’s for your own good.” “Diane, please, I—” “Don’t ‘Diane, please’ me. Look at your friends waiting in the living room. Stop making a scene and embarrassing yourself.” My father’s hand pressed firmly against the small of my back, shoving me toward that solid block of black. “I don’t want to! Let me go!” I dug my fingernails into the doorframe, holding on for dear life. Methodically, without breaking a sweat, my father pried my white-knuckled fingers off the wood, one by one. “Nico,” he murmured, using my childhood nickname, his tone adopting a chilling imitation of warmth. “It’s only because I love you that I have to do this.” “The real world isn’t going to coddle you. I am being strict with you now so that you have the resilience to never be bullied by anything, or anyone, ever again.” “Come on, Nico! You can do it!” “Yeah, Nico, stop stalling!” From the direction of the living room, the faint, upbeat shouts of my friends drifted down the hall. “Hurry up and cooperate,” Diane hissed right behind me. I stumbled forward, swallowing a sob, and plummeted into the thick, suffocating pitch-black. 2 The darkness collapsed on me like an avalanche. “Dad? Dad! Turn on the light! Just a little bit! Please, I’m scared… I’m so scared…” Nothing. The silence was absolute. “Let me out! Please! I’ll be good! I’ll do whatever you say from now on!” I threw myself against the door, my palms slapping frantically against the cold, smooth metal. It was entirely soundproof. “The intercom… the intercom!” I remembered the small panel he had pointed out earlier. I slammed my hand against the button like a drowning girl reaching for a life preserver. “Nico? Is that you? How is it in there?” “You got this, Nico! Hang in there!” They were still there! They could hear me! I pressed my mouth to the speaker, screaming with every ounce of air in my lungs. “Becca! Jess! Help me! Please… please tell my dad to open the door! I can’t take it… my chest hurts so much… I can’t breathe… it’s too dark… I’m so scared…” The line went dead for a second or two. When the audio clicked back on, the voices sounded hesitant, unsure. “Uh… didn’t Dr. Carmichael say we weren’t supposed to interrupt? That it’s part of the therapy?” My heart plummeted, the icy realization sinking into my bones. Then, Kyle, a guy from my AP English class, chimed in with a boisterous laugh. “Nico! Don’t be such a wimp! What’s so scary about a dark room? Your dad’s literally an expert, just trust the process!” “Yeah, Nico,” Jess added, her tone carrying that sickly sweet, condescending edge. “Your dad is brilliant. He’s just doing what’s best for you.” “Totally. Everyone knows Dr. Carmichael’s methods work. Just go with it, Nico.” “Stop being so dramatic. It’s a birthday present, it’s supposed to be unique!” “Think about your dad’s career. He needs case studies for his research, and you get to help him out. It’s a win-win.” Their voices overlapped, a chaotic chorus of self-righteous “encouragement” and toxic positivity. “No… it’s not like that…” I broke down, sobbing uncontrollably into the microphone. “I’m dying in here… please… someone get my dad… or… call 911… I’m begging you…” My pleading was met with a brief, awkward silence, followed by muffled whispers. “Why is she acting like this? Dr. Carmichael obviously knows what he’s doing.” “I know, right? She’s being so ungrateful after he put all this work in.” “It feels a little performative. Like, it’s just a dark room.” “Do you think she’s just… doing it for attention? You know how she gets sometimes…” Their words were ice water, extinguishing the very last flicker of hope I had left. “Nicole, are you quite finished?” It was Diane. “Diane… please help me…” “Help you with what? Who is hurting you?” Her voice spiked with irritation. “Let me tell you something, Nicole. Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. Do you know how much your father has agonized over this ridiculous phobia of yours? Drop the spoiled princess act right now, and show some damn respect!” A sharp click echoed through the speaker. She had unplugged the power source to the intercom. The line went totally dead. No… don’t go… please don’t leave me alone… I tried to scream, but it was useless. Only tears poured out, silent and endless in the dark. 3 Time dissolved into a meaningless concept. It could have been ten minutes. It could have been three centuries. I started to hear things. Whispers scraping against the walls, coming from all directions. I whipped my head around. Nothing. Just the void. “Ahhh!” I shrieked, crawling backward on my hands and knees until my spine slammed hard against a corner. The hallucinations grew violent. Terror wrapped its cold fingers around my heart, squeezing tighter, tighter, tighter. A sharp, jagged pain ripped through the left side of my chest. Every breath required a Herculean effort. “…Dad…” I used the last ounce of my strength to paw at the dead intercom button, my fingers trembling violently. “…Hurts… my chest… it hurts so much…” Dead silence. I don’t know how much time passed before the heavy metal door finally unsealed. I was lying on my side, my face pressed toward the wall. He crouched down, studying me with clinical detachment for a few seconds. Then, he extended two fingers, expertly pressing them against the carotid artery on my neck. A pulse. Faint, sluggish, but steady. He stood up, pulled out his iPad, and quickly typed: “Hour 19: Subject has entered deep sleep. Preliminary assessment indicates successful desensitization.” She had entered the desired state faster than he had hypothesized. A brilliant success. He turned on his heel and walked out, locking the door behind him. Two minutes later, my heart stopped beating entirely. “Well? Is she done throwing her little fit?” That was Diane. Those were the last words I ever heard. My soul slipped loose from my heavy, broken body, fleeing that suffocating black box as fast as it could. I floated up the stairs, following the steady, unhurried rhythm of my father’s footsteps as he headed into his study. I drifted right through the oak door. He settled into his leather chair behind the massive mahogany desk, unlocked his computer, and opened an encrypted folder to create a new document. The title read: Acute Intervention and Neural Plasticity in Claustrophobic Subjects. I hovered just behind his shoulder, watching his elegant, manicured fingers fly across the keyboard. “Subject: Nicole, Female, 18 years old…” On the wall of the study hung an old, framed photograph of the three of us—my mother, my father, and me. I remembered being a little girl, terrified of the dark. Back then, they would buy me an endless array of nightlights: little glowing stars, a glowing moon, a plastic turtle that projected constellations onto the ceiling. They used to hold me and tell me there was nothing to be afraid of. But then everything changed. The academic ambition took over, and my father began treating his wife and daughter as test subjects in his behavioral experiments. The arguments grew frequent, then vicious. “Robert, we are not your lab rats!” The night my mother finally packed a small suitcase and walked out the door, she never looked back. And she didn’t take me with her. Then came Diane. Diane, who worshipped the ground my father’s intellect walked on. From the moment she moved in, her favorite refrain was: “Nicole, your father is doing this for your own good. Stop being so ungrateful.” “If you’re still scared of everything at your age, how do you ever expect to function in the real world?” I watched Diane walk into the study now, setting a warm mug of milk on my father’s desk. They exchanged a smile, went to the master bedroom, and turned off the designer bedside lamps. On the night I died, my father finalized the framework for what he believed would be a groundbreaking case study. And then, he slept soundly through the night. 4 At six-thirty the next morning, Diane’s internal alarm clock went off with perfect precision. Breakfast was plated, the coffee was brewed, and my father came downstairs in a crisp button-down. They sat across from each other at the kitchen island. Neither of them mentioned me. Before leaving for the university, my father fixed a small breakfast on a tray and took his time walking down the basement stairs. I was still curled in the corner of the room, my posture completely unchanged from the night before. The door swung open. “Nicole? Are you awake?” Silence. He frowned, stepping closer with the tray, stopping right beside my “sleeping” form. He stared down at me, his shadow falling over my face. “Still sleeping?” Irritation bled into his voice. He nudged my calf with the toe of his leather loafer. “Get up and eat. Do you know what time it is? Give you an inch and you take a mile.” My leg rocked limply from the force of his shoe, but I didn’t react. This clearly infuriated him. He slammed the tray onto the floor near my feet. Coffee sloshed over the rim of the mug, pooling on the plastic surface. “Nicole! I am talking to you! Do you hear me?” His voice echoed sharply off the metal walls. He crouched down, grabbing my shoulder and giving it a hard shove. “Stop playing dead! Didn’t you cause enough of a scene yesterday? What is this about now? Are you trying to convince people I’m abusing you?” My torso swayed from the push, my head lolling lifelessly to the side. “I bring you breakfast out of the goodness of my heart, and you pull this attitude. Fine. Starve. Keep playing dead for all I care.” He spun around in a huff, took two steps toward the door, and let out a cold, derisive scoff. “Ungrateful brat. You’re exactly like your mother. Always with the theatrics, always playing the victim.” My spirit stood quietly by the wall, watching my father walk away, leaving my cold, stiffening body on the floor next to a lukewarm plate of eggs. It was almost funny. He was a renowned genius, yet he hadn’t even realized his own daughter was dead. 5 After my father left for campus, Diane spent the entire day watching morning talk shows and tidying up the house. Not once did she even glance at the basement door. At dusk, my father returned home, bringing a colleague with him to show off his “experiment.” I hovered near the ceiling of the dining room, watching them eat a pleasant dinner, chatting about faculty politics and grant proposals. Finally, they brought me up, though only in the context of the research. The house functioned perfectly fine without me. “Should we go down and check on Nico?” Diane suggested, sipping her Pinot Noir. “Yes, I want Paul to get a look at the environmental setup,” my father nodded, picking up his ever-present iPad. Diane offered an apologetic, hostess-perfect smile to the guest. “You’ll have to forgive her, Dr. Evans. Teenagers… she might still be throwing a bit of a tantrum.” Dr. Paul Evans waved his hand dismissively, offering a polite, understanding chuckle. The three of them descended the stairs and unsealed the door to the dark room. I watched, a sudden, desperate anticipation flaring within my ghostly form. Look, Dad. Just look. Step a little closer and really look at me… “Nicole?” My father’s voice was a sharp command. “Wake up. Dr. Evans is here to see you.” No response. “Nicole!” The professorial calm cracked into harsh authority. “I am speaking to you! Get up! Say hello to Dr. Evans! Have you forgotten every ounce of your basic manners?” He reached down and slapped my cheek, hard enough to leave a mark if blood were still flowing through my veins. “Still putting on a show?” My lack of reaction was humiliating him in front of his peer. “Nicole! I have spoiled you rotten! Do you really think lying there is going to get you out of this? It’s childish! It’s pathetic!” His insults grew louder, sharper, cutting through the heavy air of the basement. I watched the scene unfold, feeling a phantom ache in my chest. I wanted to scream at him so badly: Dad! Look at me! Look at the color of my skin! Check my breathing! I’m not pretending… I’m dead! Your daughter, Nicole, is dead! But I was nothing more than a wisp of memory. I couldn’t make a sound he could hear. I could only stand by and watch. Diane lingered in the doorway, her voice shrill as she joined the chorus, even more vicious than she had been that morning. “Exactly! Nicole, stop playing dead right now! You entitled little brat! Your father is talking to you! Are you deaf? Or are you just trying to embarrass us on purpose?” But Dr. Evans wasn’t looking at my father, or Diane. He was staring down at me. All the color had drained from his face, replaced by an absolute, visceral horror that was rapidly consuming him. “Robert…” “She… she doesn’t… is she breathing?!”

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “432243”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

When Derek blocked me six years ago, I never imagined it would lead to this exact moment. The manila collection envelope was resting dead-center on my desk. One of my coworkers had signed for it at reception. I sliced it open. The contents made the blood freeze in my veins. Seven loans. Added together, they totaled a staggering $285,400. The borrower’s name was mine. The Social Security Number was a perfect match. But the signature. I stared at the ink for five full seconds. It was a terrifyingly good mimicry of my handwriting, but it absolutely wasn’t mine. I had never taken out a loan in my life. 1. I took half a day of PTO. I walked straight into a First National branch and requested a hard pull of my credit report. When the teller slid the printout across the counter, she gave me a lingering, pitiful look. “Ms. Davis, regarding these accounts under your name… two of them are already in severe delinquency.” I told her I knew. I didn’t know. I didn’t know a damn thing. I found a quiet corner in the lobby, sank into a leather chair, and went through the pages. Seven lines of credit. The first: April 2018, Southside Branch, personal loan, $20,000. The second: September 2018, Southside Branch, personal loan, $25,000. The third: March 2019, Eastside Branch, small business loan, $45,000. The fourth: November 2019, Southside Branch, personal loan, $35,000. The fifth: August 2020, online lending platform, $50,000. The sixth: May 2021, Southside Branch, small business loan, $60,000. The seventh: January 2022, online lending platform, $50,400. Six years. Seven loans. Two hundred and eighty-five thousand, four hundred dollars. With the late fees and accumulated interest—the number printed in bold red on the collection letter was just north of $310,000. My take-home pay is $3,800 a month. If I stopped eating, stopped paying rent, and stopped breathing, it would take me over three decades to pay it off. I folded the report meticulously and slipped it into my tote bag. I pulled out my phone, opened Instagram, and typed “Derek” into the search bar. It was the same dead end it had been for years. User not found. Six years ago. February 14th, 2018. Valentine’s Day. He texted me, right around lunch: We need to break up. I texted back, asking why. We’re just too different, he wrote. I cried until the sun came up. The next morning, I realized he had blocked me on Instagram. He unmatched me on Facebook. When I tried to call, the automated voice told me the number had been disconnected. Three days later, my college roommate, Jessica, stopped replying to my texts. I sent her five messages. The last one read: Jess, is everything okay? Silence. Eventually, I figured out she had blocked me, too. I assumed it was standard post-breakup casualty. Friends taking sides. I was the one who had introduced Derek and Jessica to each other—they met the same year. It hurt like hell back then, but eventually, I let it go. It had been six years. I was doing fine on my own. I thought back to the first line on that credit report. Date of Origination: April 17, 2018. Exactly sixty-two days after Derek dumped me. I stared at that date. Four of the loans were from the Southside Branch. Southside Branch. Which branch of First National did Jessica work at again? 2. Let me tell you how I spent those six years. Right after the breakup, I was making maybe $2,800 a month after taxes. Rent was $1,100 for an illegally subdivided basement in Queens. The drywall was so paper-thin I could hear the guy next door snoring and rolling over in his sleep. I kept my daily food budget under fifteen dollars. Oatmeal for breakfast. A generic deli sandwich from the bodega under my office for lunch—six bucks. Dinner depended on the day. Sometimes I bought two cheap sandwiches at noon and saved one for the evening. Once, my coworker Jillian asked me to join her for lunch at a nice bistro down the street. “It’s like twenty bucks for a salad, come on,” she urged. “No thanks, I brought something,” I lied. After she left, I went down to the corner cart and bought a three-dollar pretzel. Eventually, I got a raise. Then I jumped to a new firm, bumping my take-home to $3,800. I moved once. The landlord of the basement wanted to hike the rent, so I found an even smaller studio further out in the boroughs for $900. My commute was an hour and twenty minutes each way. Bus to the subway. Subway to a ten-minute walk. One winter, I caught a nasty fever. A hundred and one point five. I scrolled through my telehealth app. The cheapest virtual copay was forty-five dollars. I closed the app, drank two massive mugs of boiling water, and went to work the next morning. I ended up buying a twelve-dollar box of generic cold medicine from CVS. Six years. I had saved $16,000. I put away whatever I could—sometimes five hundred, sometimes eight. On months when I got an annual bonus, I’d stash away two grand. That $16,000 was the armor I wore against the world. Every time I transferred money into that savings account, I’d think: A few more years, and maybe I can put a down payment on a tiny condo. I also sent my mom three hundred dollars every month. She always tried to refuse it. “Keep it for yourself, honey. Mom’s fine.” But I knew she wasn’t. After Dad passed away, she was scraping by on his meager pension and whatever she made working part-time at a local florist. Dad called me once, right before the end. “Norah, what exactly is the deal with that Derek kid?” “Dad, we broke up almost three years ago. Let it rest.” “I’m not talking about the relationship stuff. I mean…” “Mean what?” A long pause on the other end of the line. “Nothing. Just take care of yourself, kiddo.” That was the winter of 2021. Three months later, he suffered a massive stroke while waiting at a bus stop. He didn’t make it to the ER. When I rushed to the hospital, Mom was sitting in the linoleum hallway. Her eyes were bone dry. She just looked at me and said, “He went quick. He didn’t suffer.” I didn’t cry either. I handled the funeral home. I canceled his driver’s license. I closed his Medicare account. Then I went back to my cramped studio, took a scalding shower, lay on my mattress, and stared at the cracked ceiling. Through the wall, my neighbor rolled over and let out a snore. And now, here I was, sitting in the corner of a bank lobby, staring at seven loans on a piece of paper. Nearly three hundred thousand dollars. My six years of starving, my pathetic $16,000 safety net—it wouldn’t even cover the interest on a single one of these accounts. I folded the report up and opened the Notes app on my phone. I created a new entry: Seven loans. Four at Southside Branch. Audit everything. I am an accountant. Following the money isn’t just what I do. It’s who I am. 3. I didn’t tell a soul when I got back to the office. I booted up my computer and opened a blank Excel spreadsheet. I logged the seven loans, row by row. Date, amount, issuing bank, loan type, approval code. When you spend six years balancing ledgers, you learn a fundamental truth—if you arrange numbers neatly enough, they will eventually speak to you. The first anomaly: The four loans from the Southside Branch had approval gaps of five months, fourteen months, and eighteen months. Irregular. But deliberate. I looked up First National’s policy for unsecured personal loans. The absolute maximum cap for a single borrower without collateral is $25,000. The first loan was $20,000. The second was $25,000. The fourth was— Wait. The fourth was $35,000. It exceeded the cap. How does an unsecured personal loan get approved for $35,000 when the hard limit is $25,000? Only one way. An internal override. A manager’s signature. I highlighted that cell in yellow. The second anomaly: The third and sixth loans were small business loans. To get an SBA or commercial loan, you need an established LLC. I don’t own an LLC. So what company name was on the application? I picked up my cell phone and dialed the bank’s customer service. “Hi, I need to check the details on a commercial loan under my name.” “For commercial accounts, we require you to bring your physical state ID to the originating branch, ma’am.” I couldn’t get to the Eastside Branch today. But I could check public records. I pulled up the state’s Division of Corporations website. I typed in my name. Nothing. There were zero businesses registered under my name. So how did the commercial loan clear the underwriting process? I kept digging. The third anomaly: The fifth and seventh loans were from online fintech platforms. Online lenders have notoriously loose underwriting, but they always require two-factor authentication via SMS. Six years ago, they might not have used facial recognition. But they definitely sent a verification code to my phone number. I checked my text history—obviously, messages from years ago were long gone. But my carrier would have the metadata. I walked on my lunch break to an AT&T store and requested my incoming SMS logs for August 2020 and January 2022. “We can only go back five years,” the rep said. “2018 is wiped.” “Just give me 2020,” I said. I waited fifteen minutes. “Ms. Davis, on Sunday, August 14th, 2020, your number did receive a verification ping from a shortcode associated with that lending platform.” I stared at the date. August 14th, 2020. A Sunday. What the hell was I doing that Sunday? I pulled up my calendar history. That was the weekend my mom fell down the stairs. I had spent the entire day at the hospital with her. Where was my phone? Then, the memory hit me. I had rushed out of my apartment in an absolute panic. My phone was dead, still plugged into the wall charger by my bed. My apartment. Who had access to my apartment? The landlord. I remembered asking the landlord about a weird charge on my deposit back when I moved in. She had waved me off and said, “Oh, a young guy came by to check on the place when you weren’t home. I thought he was your boyfriend, so I let him in.” I hadn’t thought anything of it at the time. Now, the memory felt like a physical blow to the chest. I went home after work. I sat at my forty-dollar IKEA desk and stared at the glowing Excel grid. Seven loans. Four from the Southside Branch. Southside Branch. Personal Credit Division. I pulled out my phone and scrolled deep, deep into Jessica’s old Instagram feed—before she went private. Her last public photo was from December 2017. A selfie with a shiny new name badge. The background was the marble lobby of a bank. The badge had the First National logo, and beneath her name, it read: Southside Branch. 4. I didn’t confront Jessica. Accountants know the golden rule: You never make an accusation until every single cent is accounted for. I took two more days of PTO. Day one: Southside Branch. I stood at the teller window, sliding my driver’s license across the marble. “I need to query the loan origination documents under my name. I want copies of the physical contracts.” The teller clicked her mouse a few times. “Ms. Davis, you have three active legacy loans with us. You’ll need to see a loan officer at Desk Three.” The officer at Desk Three was a polite woman named Mrs. Higgins. “Retrieving archived contract copies requires submitting a formal request to corporate,” she explained with a practiced smile. “It usually takes three to five business days.” “Can you see the name of the underwriting officer who approved them?” “Well… let me check the internal portal.” She looked at her monitor. Her eyes flicked back to me, just for a fraction of a second. “The authorizing agent was a colleague of mine in the Credit Division.” “What’s their name?” “I’m afraid I can’t disclose internal employee IDs without a subpoena.” She didn’t give me the name. But that tiny hesitation—that flicker in her eyes. I logged it. Day two: Eastside Branch. I was tracking down the $45,000 commercial loan. “The applicant’s corporate entity on this file,” the commercial loan officer read from his screen, “is… D&C Imports LLC.” D&C. Derek and Jessica? No, Jessica’s name starts with J. Wait. D&C. Derek & Chelsea? I introduced Derek to a girl named Chelsea once, but this was Jessica. (Self-correction: Let’s assume the company name is D&J Imports LLC for Derek & Jessica). D&J Imports LLC. I walked out to the parking lot, leaned against a concrete pillar, and pulled up the state’s corporate registry on my phone. D&J Imports LLC. Registered: October 2018. Principal Executive: Derek. Initial Capital: $100,000. Business Type: Wholesale Retail / Electronics. Shareholder Breakdown: Derek (70%), Jessica (30%). I stared at the two names burning through the glass of my screen. Derek. Jessica. They had started a business together. And they had used my name, my credit, to fund it. I locked my phone and stood perfectly still in the biting wind outside the bank. I remembered six years ago, standing in a crowded dive bar, introducing the two of them. “Jess, this is the guy I’ve been telling you about. Derek.” “Hey,” she had said. “Nice to meet you. Norah talks about you all the time.” I remembered the way Jessica had looked at him that night. At the time, I thought it was just polite interest. The guarantor section of the commercial loan, printed clearly in black and white: D&J Imports LLC. Principal: Derek. 5. When I got home, I did one thing. I found a lawyer. Not some high-powered corporate shark, just a guy named Mr. Kessler that our company’s in-house counsel recommended for civil disputes. The initial consultation was free. Kessler listened to my timeline, steeled his jaw, and asked, “What hard evidence do you have right now?” “My credit report, the metadata for the seven loans, and the LLC registry showing his company as the guarantor on the business loan.” “Have you done a forensic handwriting analysis?” “No.” “Do it. The moment we prove those signatures aren’t yours, we elevate this from a civil dispute to identity theft and wire fraud.” “Will the police actually care?” “They will if you hand them the case on a silver platter. Get the handwriting analysis, the loan contracts, and the wire transfers. You’re a CPA. Tracking the cash flow should be a walk in the park for you.” I nodded. Kessler leaned back. “And this Jessica girl… what’s her exact title at the Southside Branch?” “Loan Officer, I think. Or Credit Manager.” “If she personally pushed your applications through the system, this isn’t just fraud anymore. It’s internal bank corruption. That changes the entire landscape.” I left his office and drove straight to an independent forensics lab. I paid $2,500 out of pocket for the expedited handwriting analysis. It drained a massive chunk of my savings. I provided exemplars of my handwriting, alongside the digitized signatures from the bank documents. “You’ll have the results in about a week or two,” the technician told me. By the time I stepped back out onto the street, it was pitch black. I stopped at a rundown diner and ordered a plate of plain scrambled eggs and toast. Five bucks. Halfway through the eggs, my phone buzzed. Unknown number. “Am I speaking with Norah Davis?” “Yes.” “This is Pioneer Recovery Services, we’re calling regarding—” I hung up. It rang again. I powered the phone down. Back in my apartment, I opened my laptop. There was one more thing I needed to audit. The timeline of Derek and Jessica’s relationship. You can’t easily look up marriage licenses online in this state, but I had a different route. The Division of Corporations registry for D&J Imports LLC. I clicked into the “Filing History” tab. July 2018: Articles of Organization filed. October 2018: Member added (Jessica). I scrolled down to the very bottom, to the original draft applications. November 15, 2017 – Pre-Registration Memo: Principal Derek. Emergency Contact: Jessica (Spouse). November 2017. Derek broke up with me on Valentine’s Day, 2018. In November 2017, three months before he dumped me, he was already listing Jessica as his spouse on legal documents. We hadn’t even had our first fight about breaking up yet. They were together in 2017. Maybe even earlier. The breakup wasn’t because we were “too different.” It was because they were already building a life together. Blocking me everywhere wasn’t about “getting a clean break.” It was an information quarantine. Instagram, Facebook, my phone number—severed entirely. They erased me from their world so they could hijack my identity in peace. And then they burned my credit to the ground to the tune of nearly three hundred thousand dollars. For six years. Six years I spent eating ramen in a basement, terrified of getting a cold because I couldn’t afford the copay. While they lived in a house paid for by my name. I closed the laptop. I didn’t shed a single tear. I washed my hands, packed my generic sandwich for tomorrow’s lunch, and set my alarm for 6:00 AM. I lay down on my mattress. My neighbor snored through the drywall. I didn’t sleep a wink. 6. Lying awake in the dark, I played back the “breakup” frame by frame. February 14th, 2018. I had bought him a cashmere scarf. It cost ninety-five dollars. I had saved for a month to afford it. I hadn’t even given it to him yet when the text came through. We need to break up. I had typed out a massive, desperate paragraph asking if there was someone else. No, he had replied. Don’t overthink it. We just aren’t a match. I sent another wall of text. He never read it. The next morning, I went to his apartment. I pounded on the door for ten minutes. Finally, a neighbor poked his head out. “Buddy moved out. Packed up a U-Haul late last night.” I tried calling him. Disconnected. Blocked on social media. Wiped clean. Back then, I thought I was the problem. Had I been too needy? Had I not been making enough money? I couldn’t return the scarf, so I wore it myself for the next three winters. But thinking about it now— A week before he moved out, he had come over to my place. He was fixing a leaky faucet in my bathroom. I was at work. He had my spare key. When I got home, the faucet was fixed. But I suddenly remembered something he said right before he left. “Hey, Norah, where do you keep your Social Security card? I was looking for a towel in your drawers and saw some important papers. You should lock those up.” “They’re just in the second drawer of my nightstand,” I had said. “Got it. Just be careful,” he replied. I thought he was just being protective. Now I understood. He wasn’t “reminding” me. He was verifying the location. Before the breakup, he needed to photocopy my SSN and ID. Before he vanished, he needed to make sure he had all the puzzle pieces. Blocking me was just locking the door behind him. It wasn’t a breakup. It was the final stage of a heist. That cashmere scarf was still shoved in the back of my closet. I got out of bed, pulled it out, and ran my fingers over the fabric. It was pilling badly. I folded it neatly and put it back. Not because I missed him. But because it wasn’t time to throw it away yet. 7. On Saturday, I drove to my mom’s place. She still lived in the same tiny, aging duplex. Dad’s framed photo sat on the console table in the living room. “You eat yet?” she asked as I walked in. “Yeah.” I hadn’t. She went to the kitchen anyway to heat up some soup. I sat on the couch, staring at Dad’s picture. “Mom.” “Yeah, honey?” “Right before Dad passed… did he ever say anything to you? About me?” The running water in the kitchen stopped. “Like what?” “Like… did he ever mention Derek? Or any kind of bank loans?” Mom peeked her head around the doorframe, a dish towel in her hands. “Why are you bringing this up now?” “Mom, please. Just tell me.” She wiped her hands and walked slowly into the room. “Your father was acting strange those last few months.” “Strange how?” “He kept leaving the house, taking the bus downtown. Said he had errands. One time he came back, his face was red as a beet, he was so angry.” “Did he say why?” “He just kept muttering, ‘I’ve got to get to the bottom of this thing with Norah.’” “What thing?” “I asked him! He wouldn’t say. He just told me, ‘Don’t worry about it. I’ll handle it.’” “And then?” “And then he…” Her voice caught, flattening out. “He passed.” She looked away. “I never touched his stuff. If you want to look, go through his desk in the sunroom.” Dad’s “office” was just an enclosed porch with a wobbly desk and a rusty metal toolbox. Inside the toolbox were his wrenches, some wire, a few screwdrivers. I lifted the plastic tray. Underneath was a manila envelope. Inside the envelope— A notebook. A cheap, palm-sized, blue spiral notebook. The kind you buy for fifty cents at a pharmacy. I flipped to the first page. Dad’s handwriting. It was messy, but pressed deeply into the paper, like he was gripping the pen too hard. December 2, 2021. Checked the mail. Found a letter from a bank. Addressed to Norah. Debt collection. $20,000 personal loan. Norah doesn’t take out loans. Something is wrong. Page two. December 8, 2021. Took the bus to the Southside Branch. Brought Norah’s birth certificate. The lady at the desk said they can’t tell me anything without Norah here in person. Page three. December 15, 2021. Went back. Demanded to see the manager. Explained the situation. Manager said he’d ‘look into it.’ Never called back. Page four. January 6, 2022. Called the 1-800 number. Sat on hold four times. Every time they transfer me, they tell me ‘the account holder must be present.’ Page five. January 19, 2022. Went to the Eastside branch. Found out about a business loan. $45,000. Norah doesn’t own a business. This is fraud. Page six. February 4, 2022. Tried looking up that Derek boy. Can’t find him. Phone disconnected. Jessica’s number is dead too. Page seven. March 1, 2022. Walked down to the police precinct. Officer said Norah has to file the report herself. I told him I’m her father. He said, ‘Tell your daughter to come down here.’ Page eight. March 8, 2022. I’ll try the bank again tomorrow. There was no page nine. March 9th, 2022. The day my dad collapsed at the bus stop. Where was he trying to go? My hands began to shake violently around the cheap plastic cover. Not from anger. But because— He knew. He was trying to fix it. He was a retired city bus driver. He barely knew how to use a smartphone. He didn’t know what a corporate registry was or how to run a forensic credit check. All he could do was ride the bus from branch to branch, sit on hold for hours, and write down his dead-ends in a fifty-cent notebook. He fought for three months. And he died trying. My mom walked in carrying a bowl of soup. She saw me sitting on the floor, clutching the blue notebook to my chest. “Is that his little ledger?” she asked softly. “Mom, did you ever read this?” “I tried. I didn’t understand it. All that stuff about branches and accounts… it was over my head.” She paused. “But I knew he was trying to protect you. A couple days before he passed, he kept pacing the living room saying, ‘I can’t let them do this to her.’” She set the soup on the table. It went cold. I slipped the notebook into my bag. I zipped it shut. My dad couldn’t finish the audit. I was going to finish it for him. 8. The handwriting analysis came back. My palms were sweating as I picked up the thick envelope from the lab.

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “432228”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

Ten minutes before the ceremony, I shoved a handful of condoms into my best friend’s chest. Dustin caught them with a grin, making a crude joke about how he wasn’t going to survive the honeymoon at this rate. Beside him, Carlin didn’t say a word. But there was a shift in her eyes—something dark, something I couldn’t quite read. Once Dustin walked out to join the groomsmen, she turned to the vanity mirror, adjusting her diamond drop earrings. Her voice was terrifyingly casual when she finally spoke. She told me she was the one marrying him today. She added that they were going to use every single one of those condoms tonight. I just stood there, the air knocked out of my lungs. Seeing my frozen expression, she laughed, a breezy, practiced sound, and told me she’d explain everything after the ceremony. The next hour felt like someone had hit fast-forward on my life, blurring the edges of my reality until nothing made sense. I stood in my tailored suit, anchored to the spot of the Best Man, and watched the two most important people in my world walk down the aisle together. Under the glow of the stained glass, the officiant spoke. They exchanged rings. They became husband and wife. … 1 I had imagined a million different endings for me and Carlin. This wasn’t one of them. Which was why, after the reception, when she and Dustin knelt on the carpet of the bridal suite, I felt entirely hollow. Carlin was still in her wedding gown, a faint, angry hickey blooming just above her collarbone. She was begging for my forgiveness. Looking down at her, a memory crashed into me. Ten years ago. She had dropped to her knees just like this, refusing to get up until I promised I wouldn’t leave her. Ten years. Three thousand, six hundred and fifty days. That’s how long I spent pulling her out of the suffocating, catatonic trauma that had locked her inside her own mind. And this was how she repaid me. By kicking me out of my own life. The door clicked shut. Dustin shifted his weight, kneeling right beside her. He didn’t speak. He didn’t have to. I could read the quiet, sickening triumph in his eyes. “How long?” I asked. My voice sounded flat. Foreign. Like I was asking about the weather. “Dustin’s fiancée bailed on him,” Carlin said quickly, her hands twisting the expensive lace of her skirt. “I was just doing him a favor. The invitations were sent. His parents flew all the way to Boston for this, Wes. He couldn’t bear to break their hearts…” Right. So my parents and I had to be the ones to take the hit. “Wes, come on, man. We’re brothers. Just do me this one solid.” Dustin reached out, tugging at the crease of my slacks. His eyes were red, playing the pathetic victim to absolute perfection. “There’s nothing going on between me and Carlin. I swear.” I tuned out the pathetic whining. I pulled out my phone and opened his Instagram. Thank you, C, for keeping me grounded… The caption sat below a photo of two silhouettes tandem bungee jumping. That was posted the weekend I got into that minor car wreck. The weekend Carlin told me she was at a medical conference in Chicago. I scrolled down. Two glasses of red wine, dim candlelight, and two hands intertwined across a linen tablecloth. She hadn’t even bothered to take off the engagement ring I gave her. Swipe after swipe, the digital footprint pieced together a version of Carlin I didn’t even know. Bubble tea runs. Viral downtown bakeries. Gourmet chocolate tastings. Whenever I suggested those things, her brow would furrow, and she’d brush me off with a sharp, “I don’t like sugar, Wes.” But for Dustin, she tried it all. Carlin was a notoriously brilliant cardiothoracic surgeon at Boston General. She treated her hands like million-dollar assets. She despised dirt, germs, and anything domestic. Yet, there was a photo of her wearing a flour-dusted apron, standing by a stove. My face flushed hot, a phantom fever burning beneath my skin. Two winters ago, I had the flu so bad I couldn’t stand. I asked her to make me some soup. She had stood in the doorway of our bedroom, completely detached. “I’m a surgeon, Wes. My hands don’t belong in a kitchen. Just Postmates something.” I had accepted it. I had spent ten years accepting her cold, clinical nature, assuming that was just who she was. So I ordered delivery, shivering under the duvet, listening to her murmur on the phone in her home office. Her tone had been so soft. So careful. I thought I was hallucinating from the fever back then. Now I knew I was just a blind idiot. The shock had burned off, leaving behind a vast, numbing wasteland. I shoved the phone screen inches from Dustin’s face. “You call me your brother,” I whispered. “And this is how you repay me?” I didn’t wait for him to scramble for a lie. I turned my head, locking eyes with the woman I had built my entire twenties around. “If you two want each other so badly, fine. You can have him.” 2 I ignored Carlin shouting my name. I walked out of the hotel, the heavy Boston rain hitting the pavement and my phone buzzing incessantly in my pocket. Every chime felt like a hammer taken to the last fragile pieces of my sanity. Years ago, Margaret Olivia—Carlin’s grandmother—had bailed my father’s firm out of bankruptcy. Ever since I was a kid, the narrative was drilled into me: We owe the Olivias. When Carlin’s mind fractured in her teens, when she violently pushed everyone away, I was the one who stayed. I would plaster on a smile, sit outside her locked door, and say, “I’m not going anywhere, C. I promised your grandmother I’d stay.” But I couldn’t stay anymore. [Wes, I already explained everything. What more do you want?] [Please don’t be mad. You’ve been wanting to get married, right? We’ll go to City Hall tomorrow. Just us.] The burn in my throat hit faster than the tears. My vision blurred. Her mental health had stabilized years ago. She became a doctor, a prodigy in the OR. She’d press her warm face into my neck in the middle of the night. She’d buy me expensive watches. I thought those were the signs that I had finally won her heart. I started bringing up marriage. [Give it time, Wes. My family is a medical dynasty. I need to become Chief of Surgery first.] [I just made attending. I barely have time to sleep, let alone plan a wedding. Next year, okay?] She had even grabbed my shoulders once, looking at me with pure frustration. “Dustin is your best friend. He’s out there grinding, trying to get his fellowship, trying to make a real mark in medicine. Why are you only obsessed with a ring?” I hadn’t thought it was strange back then. I thought it was nice that two people I loved, who usually bickered, were finally getting along. I had even smiled like a fool and said, “Dustin grew up with nothing, C. Look out for him at the hospital for me, will you?” She hadn’t said yes. But behind my back, she gave him everything. In just two years, Dustin’s career skyrocketed. He somehow afforded a luxury condo in the Seaport District on a resident’s salary. I had actually bought a bottle of Macallan and dragged Carlin over to his place to celebrate. God, I was stupid. I scrubbed my face hard, trying to wipe away the wetness on my cheeks and the pathetic memories of the last decade. I pulled up a text thread and typed a message to Margaret Olivia. “Mrs. Olivia, the Gustave family’s debt is paid in full. I am leaving Carlin.” When I finally got back to our apartment, Carlin was already sitting on the leather sofa. There was a velvet box resting on the coffee table. A diamond ring inside. Our eyes met. She stood up, exhaling a soft, tired sigh. “Wes, Dustin is up for a massive promotion. We’re going to get our license tomorrow. I even bought the ring. Just… stop throwing a tantrum.” Not ‘marry me.’ But ‘stop throwing a tantrum.’ I looked at the ring. It was a custom Tiffany setting. The exact one I had seen sparkling in the background of Dustin’s Instagram posts. She gave him the wedding of a lifetime. She gave me the leftovers. I stared at her. Looked at the face I had secretly painted a hundred times, the face I had carved into my heart since I was eighteen. I let out a soft, broken laugh. “I’m not throwing a tantrum. I won’t get in the way of his promotion, either. Because I’m not marrying you. Get out.” Carlin only heard the first half of my sentence. She stepped into my space, wrapping her arms around my waist, pressing her chin against my chest. Her voice held that familiar, confident hum—the sound of a woman who knew she always won. “Let’s just go to sleep. Tomorrow, wake up and post something on your socials. Clear the air for Dustin.” I froze. “Clear what air?” Her arms didn’t loosen, but I felt her brow furrow against my shirt, as if calculating the easiest way to manipulate me. “Just put out a statement saying Dustin and I have been dating for a while, and that you… well, that you were the one who got in the middle of it. It’s the only way to save his reputation.” A violent shudder ripped through my chest. I stared blindly at the wall behind her. Those red lips had kissed me a thousand times. They had whispered things in the dark that made my heart race. Now, every single syllable she spoke was a scalpel gutting me alive. I choked back the bile rising in my throat, grabbed her arms, and shoved her away. “What about my reputation? Does that mean nothing to you?” She stumbled back, blinking in genuine surprise. She wasn’t used to me saying no. She let out a small, condescending chuckle. “Wes, Dustin isn’t like you. He grew up in foster care. He had to claw his way up from the bottom. You’re his best friend. You should be willing to take a hit for him.” Should? On what grounds? When Dustin’s undergrad tuition bounced and the university was going to expel him, I drained my savings to pay it. Senior year, when he got mixed up with local dealers and owed money, I was the one who took the beatings to protect him. I brought him home, fed him, and introduced him to everyone as my brother. When no residency program would take him because his test scores were trash, I swallowed my pride and begged Carlin to pull strings at Boston Gen. Dustin had cried that night, burying his face in his hands. “You’re my savior, Wes. I owe you my life.” I didn’t realize paying me back meant sleeping with my fiancé. I exhaled a ragged breath, lifting my chin to look the woman I loved dead in the eye. “Carlin. I don’t owe you. And I sure as hell don’t owe Dustin. Walking away quietly and letting you two have each other is the absolute limit of my grace.” “I will never admit to being the other man. Ever.” 3 I turned on my heel, ready to pack a bag and leave. Her voice pinned me straight to the floorboards. “Think about the photos, Wes. Do you really want those seeing the light of day?” The silence in the apartment became deafening. I turned around slowly, looking at the ice-cold mask on Carlin’s face. Instantly, my mind violently dragged me back to when I was nineteen. I remembered her holding my bruised, bleeding body, shaking uncontrollably as she cried into my hair. Her mental breakdown had been at its worst that year. I spent my days chasing her around the house, trying to force her to eat, to take her meds. One afternoon, she bolted out the front door. I chased her for blocks into a bad neighborhood. Someone grabbed me from behind. Dragged me into an alley. A hand clamped over my mouth. The tearing of clothes. The suffocating weight. I never saw their faces. I couldn’t count how many there were. When Carlin finally found me, she lost her mind. She held me tight, chanting apologies, promising she would fix it. Later, holding my trembling hand, she swore she had used her family’s money to bury the attackers. She swore she had bought and destroyed the photos they took. She looked into my eyes and promised that her entire life belonged to me now. And now, for the sake of another man’s career, she was holding my deepest, ugliest trauma over my head. Seeing the blood drain from my face, a flicker of hesitation crossed Carlin’s eyes, but she ruthlessly buried it. She softened her voice, stepping back into the role of a soothing doctor. “Just post the statement, Wes. I’ll handle the rest. We’ll get married. We’ll have kids. I will be your wife…” “And if I say no?” “Think of your parents. Your father’s heart condition can’t handle a public scandal…” She didn’t finish the threat. She didn’t need to. We spent the rest of the night in suffocating silence. She went to bed, confident I would cave. I always caved. Every argument we ever had ended with me swallowing my pride and crawling back to her. When I turned on my phone the next morning, my notifications exploded. Dustin was trending locally. Boston surgeon exposed in shocking love triangle. Before I could even process the headlines, Carlin kicked the bedroom door open. “Wes, Dustin is your brother! How could you smear him like this? You ruined his name!” Her eyes were bloodshot. She didn’t give me a chance to speak. She grabbed my wrist and practically dragged me down to the parking garage, driving us straight to the hospital. When I stumbled out of her Porsche, my knee smashed into the heavy car door. I gasped in pain. She didn’t even turn around. I watched her sprinting toward the hospital entrance, and a broken laugh bubbled up in my chest. Her hand had always felt so tight, so warm in mine. But now, I felt like I was free-falling into a black void. The main lobby of Boston Gen had been turned into an impromptu press pen. Dustin sat at a folding table, his shoulders slumped, his eyes red-rimmed and tragic. Carlin rushed past the cameras, shoving me straight into the swarm of reporters, and ran to his side. A dozen microphones were shoved into my face. “Mr. Gustave! Dr. Dustin claims you suffered severe sexual trauma years ago, leading to psychological instability. Is that why you lashed out at his wedding yesterday?” “Is it true you’ve been stalking Dr. Olivia, despite knowing she and Dr. Dustin have been deeply in love for years? Were you trying to break them up?” “You two grew up together. How do you justify trying to steal your best friend’s fiancée? Have you no shame?” The blood roared in my ears, hot and violent. I stared at Carlin in pure, unadulterated horror. She promised me. She swore on her life she would never breathe a word of the alleyway to anyone. How did Dustin know? Before the math could click in my brain, the “brother” who swore he owed me his life looked up from the table. A vicious, phantom smile ghosted across his lips. A second later, the large digital display behind the reception desk flared to life. It was my face. Pale, terrified, tear-streaked. And my body. Covered in dark, violent bruises and dirty handprints. 4 The lobby erupted. The sound of camera shutters sounded like machine-gun fire, mixing with the sickening whispers all around me. “Jesus, he’s damaged goods. Using his family money to harass Dr. Olivia? Disgusting.” “If he hadn’t shown up and ruined the reception yesterday, Dr. Dustin wouldn’t have been forced to expose him…” My throat felt like it was packed with broken glass. I opened my mouth, but no sound came out. I couldn’t scream the truth. I couldn’t scream that I was the one kept a secret in the dark. Carlin materialized beside me. Her voice was a soft, lethal whisper meant only for me. “It’s done. Just apologize.” “Your reputation is already dead,” she continued smoothly. “So protect Dustin’s. I keep my promises, Wes. I’ll still marry you.” I stared at her for a long time before I managed to force a sound past my teeth. “He broadcasts my rape to the world… he destroys my life… and you want me to apologize to him?” Carlin frowned, shaking her head as if I was the one being unreasonable. “Dustin is just protecting his career. What else was he supposed to do?” “Besides, these photos are real. He didn’t forge them. If you’re going to be mad at anyone, be mad at your own bad luck.” Fury, suffocation, and a hatred so pure it terrified me collided in my chest. My knees buckled. I swayed on my feet, about to scream, when a sharp, desperate voice cut through the chaos. “Wes! Is this true? Have you been harassing Carlin and this doctor?” My heart stopped. My father stood at the edge of the crowd, clutching his chest. His face was ash gray. Before I could move, his eyes rolled back, and he collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut. My mother shrieked, a gut-wrenching, animal sound. “David!” I shoved through the reporters, throwing myself onto the marble floor beside him. Before I could even touch him, a sharp slap cracked across my face, snapping my head to the side. My mother stood over me, her hand trembling. “This is your fault! If you hadn’t done these vile things, your father wouldn’t be dying!” She dropped to her knees, abandoning me to crawl toward Carlin, grabbing the hem of her lab coat. “Carlin, please! You’re a surgeon. Save him! Please save your Uncle David!” Carlin didn’t move. She didn’t call for a crash cart. She just stood there, her cold eyes locked onto mine. Dustin leaned in, whispering loud enough for the mics to catch. “Carlin, don’t hold Wes’s psychotic behavior against his parents. Just help Mr. Gustave.” Carlin looked at him, her voice dripping with artificial sweetness. “No. Wes has to publicly apologize first. He has to admit he tried to ruin our relationship. Otherwise, your reputation will be permanently scarred, and I won’t allow that.” She wouldn’t allow his reputation to be scarred. But she would watch my father die on the floor. “Wes! What are you waiting for?!” My mother screamed, the sound tearing through the lobby. She grabbed my hair, shaking me. “Say it! Are you going to watch your father die?!” I looked at my dad. His lips were turning blue. White foam gathered at the corners of his mouth. We were out of time. I swallowed the metallic taste of blood pooling in my mouth. I closed my eyes. “I’m sorry,” I rasped. “I shouldn’t have gotten between you two.” “That’s it?” a reporter yelled from the back. “You drove Dr. Dustin to the brink of ruin, and you just say sorry? Get on your knees and show some remorse!” The crowd murmured in vicious agreement. Carlin stood completely still. Silent approval. My mother, frantic and terrified, kicked me in the shin. She slapped my face again, twice, the smacks echoing off the walls. “Kneel! Hit yourself! Do you want your father to die?!” she sobbed, completely unhinged by panic. I looked at her. I looked at the blue tint spreading across my father’s cheeks. I slowly closed my eyes. I raised my hand and brought it down hard across my own cheek. Then again. And again. My face was entirely numb. My soul was entirely numb. The only thing I felt were the hot tears hitting the back of my hand, dripping onto the marble floor. Drop. Drop. SMASH. A silver-headed cane came flying out of nowhere, cracking violently over Carlin’s skull. A voice, sharp as a guillotine and cold as ice, boomed through the lobby. “Carlin Olivia! Take your little homewrecker and get out of my hospital! Get out of my family!” “As of this moment, Wesley Gustave is my grandson, and the sole heir to the Olivia estate!”

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “432244”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

The roar of the party died as if someone had cut the power. My wife, a renowned professor at the university, suddenly dropped to her knees in front of me. Her hands were trembling, her voice thin and jagged. She told me that Toby’s heart was failing and that I was a perfect match. She said the transplant had to happen immediately. I stood there, frozen, feeling a strange, hollow silence in my chest. There was no surge of adrenaline, no spike of fear—just a dull, aching nothingness. “Everyone only has one heart, Margot,” I reminded her quietly. She didn’t blink. “I’ll call the best surgeons in San Francisco,” she said, her words rushing out like a landslide. “We’ll get you an artificial heart. The technology is incredible now, Sam. Please.” I looked down at her, then at her stomach. “You’re six months pregnant. You’re supposed to give birth in twelve weeks.” She gritted her teeth, her eyes gleaming with a desperate, frantic light. “We can have another baby later. Right now, we have to save him. We have to let this one go.” Before I could even process the cruelty of those words, a bright, boyish laugh rang out from the hallway. Toby ran into the room, grinning ear to ear. “April Fool’s, Professor! Happy April Fool’s Day!” He stopped next to her, looking far too healthy for a man supposedly on his deathbed. “We aren’t actually matches, Sam. I was just messing with you. I can’t believe Professor Mercer actually went and asked you to give up the baby. That’s hardcore!” The tension in the room snapped. Our friends burst into chatter, the air filling with nervous, relieved laughter. “Man, that was dark,” someone chuckled, nursing their bourbon. “Toby, you really put Sam in a spot there. I mean, that’s his own flesh and blood.” “If Toby had said he was a match for me,” another friend joked, “Margot probably would’ve dragged me onto the operating table herself.” I didn’t laugh. I didn’t move. I just sat back down on the velvet sofa, pulled out my phone, and sent a one-line text to my lawyer: I need you to draft divorce papers. Tonight. … Margot had never been able to stay angry at Toby. He was her star student—fragile, sickly, and brilliant in a way that made her protective instincts go haywire. She treated him like a piece of fine porcelain. But this time, when she stood up, her face was a mask of cold fury. The room went silent again. The atmosphere curdled. Someone whispered to Toby, “You pushed it too far. You know Sam is her Achilles’ heel. Remember that junior faculty member who made a joke about him three years ago? Margot nearly had him blacklisted.” Toby’s smile vanished. His lashes fluttered, quickly becoming wet with tears. He reached out, tentatively grabbing the hem of Margot’s blazer. “I’m so sorry, Professor. It’s April Fool’s… I just wanted to see if the rumors about how much you love him were true.” Margot remained silent. Toby turned to me, sniffing back a sob. “I’m sorry, Sam. I didn’t mean it. If you’re mad, just yell at me. I deserve it.” Our friends tried to play peacemakers. “He’s just a kid, Sam. He’s impulsive. Don’t take it to heart.” “Yeah, Margot, he’s your protégé. You spent three years mentoring him, you even mentioned him in the first line of your latest publication. You can’t let one stupid joke ruin that.” Finally, Margot’s expression softened. She reached out and wiped a tear from the corner of Toby’s eye. “Don’t ever do that again,” she said firmly. Toby nodded frantically. Then she looked at me, her voice carrying a trace of practiced guilt. “I’m sorry, Sam. I overreacted. I shouldn’t have jumped to conclusions about the… the pregnancy.” The pregnancy. She spoke about ending our child’s life as if she’d accidentally suggested a restaurant I didn’t like. It wasn’t the first time. Whenever Toby was involved, the brilliant, logical Dr. Margot Mercer became a different person—someone dictated by raw, unchecked emotion. Last New Year’s Eve, she drove six hundred miles through a snowstorm because Toby called her saying his stomach hurt. When I asked her why, she just sighed and said, “He’s fragile, Sam. I was worried he’d end up in the ER alone.” But she wasn’t worried about me, her husband, waiting at home with a cold dinner. She wasn’t worried when my depression got so bad I stopped speaking for three days. She wasn’t worried when I had a 104-degree fever and laid in the dark for twelve hours, wondering if I was dying. To me, she was a machine. “Sam, being pregnant is exhausting enough. Stop giving me more things to deal with.” When I became irritable or withdrew, she dismissed it as “jealousy” and went back to her study. I lived in the shadow of her work, always careful not to disturb her. Yet, in the prestigious journal article that took five years of her life, the first person she thanked wasn’t me. It was Toby. An undergraduate with barely any technical contribution. The interview went viral. In the video, Margot looked ethereal and calm. “In my ten years of teaching,” she told the reporter, “Toby isn’t the most talented student I’ve had. But he is certainly the most resilient. I’m grateful he came into my life; he gave me the courage to keep going.” The day that interview aired, I dropped my favorite vase. It was a piece we’d made together at a workshop in Mendocino during the year we were most in love. She had told me then that we’d keep it forever, a family heirloom for our future children. When she saw the shards on the floor, she just called the housekeeper to sweep them up. “Maybe I can glue it back together,” I whispered, kneeling on the floor, my hands shaking. She pulled me up, frowning. “It’s just a cheap vase, Sam. Don’t be dramatic.” My eyes stung. She touched her belly and added, “It’s fine. We can just go make a new one eventually.” I tried to tell myself she was just a “rational” person. That she didn’t care for sentimentality. But that night, when I went to her study to bring her some fruit, I saw a locked glass cabinet. Inside, she had displayed a cheap, twenty-dollar fountain pen Toby had bought her at a gift shop. It felt like a bucket of ice water over my head. We had a screaming match. I actually broke the lock and threw the pen into the trash. She lunged for it, retrieving it like it was a holy relic. When she looked at me, her eyes were full of nothing but pure, unadulterated annoyance. “Look at yourself, Sam! You look like a goddamn lunatic! You broke that vase yourself, so what are you actually blaming me for?” I told her to swear on her life that she didn’t have feelings for Toby. I told her to swear that if she did, we both deserved to die. Margot—a staunch materialist, a woman of science—hesitated. A long, suffocating silence followed. Finally, she spoke. “Fine. I have feelings for him.” My heart shattered, but she continued, her voice cold. “But we haven’t crossed a line, and we won’t. You don’t need to act like a victim. You haven’t been cheated on.” I started to cry, and she sighed, reaching out to smooth my messy hair. “Sam, we’ve been together for eleven years. The spark is gone. To be perfectly honest, kissing you feels like pressing my top lip against my bottom lip. There’s nothing there.” She looked at me with a pity that hurt more than her anger. “Sometimes I regret marrying you right after we finished grad school in London. I didn’t realize that ten years later, I’d find out what it actually feels like to be excited by someone again.” The woman who once bought out a whole florist just to surprise me was now standing over me, calmly discussing her change of heart. “Toby is vibrant. He’s not sullen like you. He likes stupid romantic movies and feeding stray cats. Things you used to like, but when he does them, it’s charming. It makes my heart race. I can’t help it.” Her final words were a gentle execution. “As long as you want it, you’ll always be my husband. But you have to accept that my heart belongs to him now.” After that night, I spiraled. I cried until my eyes were permanently swollen. I tried to detach. I tried not to care when she came home late, or when she went to Hawaii for a “research trip” with Toby. I lied to myself. Until today. Until she knelt in front of our friends and asked me to give up my heart and our baby for him. The marriage was over. It had been dead for a long time; I was just the last one to stop performing CPR. “Sam, I know I messed up. Please forgive me,” Toby said, his voice stronger now, a faint, smug glimmer in his eyes. A friend piped up, “Come on, Sam. He didn’t mean any harm. He’s always been a bit of a clown. He once got drunk and said he wanted to marry Margot, too. He just says things.” The room went silent. The guy realized his mistake and covered his mouth. “I didn’t mean it like that! I just mean he doesn’t think before he speaks. Everyone knows you and Margot are solid. No one could ever come between you.” I smiled, a thin, ghost of a thing. I looked at Toby. “It’s okay. I don’t blame you.” The room let out a collective breath of relief. Then I looked at Margot. “I’m divorcing your professor, Toby. I hope you get everything you ever wanted.” “Sam!” Margot’s face went pale. “Don’t talk nonsense in front of everyone.” “It’s ironic, isn’t it?” I laughed. “You can tell a room full of people you’re willing to abort our child and take my heart for Toby, but I can’t mention a divorce?” She knit her brows. “It was an April Fool’s joke! Why are you making such a big deal out of it?” “Toby apologized. I scolded him. If you keep acting like this, you’re just making a scene for no reason!” Friends started chiming in. “Take a breath, Sam. Don’t throw away a decade over a prank.” “Yeah, Margot clearly cares about you. She doesn’t usually snap at Toby like that.” I looked at Margot, my voice eerily calm. “You didn’t get angry for me, Margot. You got angry because Toby joked about being a match. You were disappointed when you found out it wasn’t true, weren’t you?” She flinched. A flicker of irritation crossed her brow. “I’m begging you, just stop. If you don’t care about your own dignity, at least think about Toby’s.” Fatigue washed over me like a tide. I closed my eyes. “Fine. See you at the lawyer’s office on Monday.” I stood up to leave, but Toby threw himself at my feet, sobbing. “Sam, please don’t be mad at the Professor! She just wants me to be healthy!” I looked down at the boy, his face a mess of performative grief. “You spent so much energy proving how much you matter to her,” I whispered so only he could hear. “You should be happy. You won.” He turned white. I stepped around him and walked out. “Sam!” Margot’s voice was like ice behind me. “Don’t forget that your mother is still at Mercer Medical.” I stopped dead. I never thought she’d use my mother—who was battling stage IV cancer—as a bargaining chip. After a long, agonizing silence, I forced a smile and turned back to pull Toby off the floor. “I was just kidding,” I said, my voice sounding hollow even to me. “I don’t blame you.” Toby sobbed. “Good. I was so scared I’d caused trouble for the Professor.” The farce ended. Margot insisted on driving me home. “I only said that to scare you,” she said as we drove through the dark. “I would never do anything to your mother.” “You were hurt today, I get it. To make it up to you, I’ll go with you to see her tomorrow. We can do the prenatal check-up at the same time.” “Sam, we’ve been together for eleven years. It’s not like I don’t love you. If you could just try to get along with Toby…” I leaned my head against the window. “I meant what I said.” “Margot, let’s get a divorce. Whatever happens with you and him… it’s not my business anymore.” She let out a short, dry laugh. “This is the seventh time you’ve brought up divorce since I got pregnant. Next time you want attention, try a new trick.” Suddenly, her phone buzzed. She glanced at the screen and slammed on the brakes. “Get out,” she said urgently. “Toby’s having an episode. I have to go back.” I looked out the window at the torrential rain pouring down. I hesitated for a second, then opened the door. “Wait under an awning!” she shouted as I stepped into the storm. “I’ll drop him at the hospital and come right back for you!” It was midnight. In the middle of a downpour, it was impossible to get an Uber. I waited in a 7-Eleven until three in the morning before a taxi finally picked me up. Those three hours were enough for Margot to drive Toby to the hospital ten times over. But they weren’t enough for her to remember her husband was still standing in the rain. … The next morning, the hospital called. Margot had been in an accident. On her way to Toby’s apartment in the storm, her car hydroplaned and hit a tree. The baby was gone. By the time I reached the hospital, the surgery was over. The doctor looked at me with a grim expression. “Mr. Mercer, I’m so sorry. Given your wife’s condition and the trauma of the accident, it’s unlikely she will be able to conceive again.” Margot had always struggled to get pregnant. When she was twenty-three, she’d had a miscarriage during a high-stakes research tour. She’d woken up in tears, apologizing to me over and over. “I’m sorry, Sam! It’s my fault! I should have noticed sooner!” We had spent six years trying. We’d prayed, we’d seen every specialist in the country. And finally, we’d had this baby. I signed the papers in silence. As I walked toward her room, I ran into Toby. He looked guilt-ridden, but his eyes were sharp with a predatory kind of triumph. “I’m so sorry, Sam! It’s all my fault! If I hadn’t had that stomach cramp, she wouldn’t have rushed, she wouldn’t have crashed…” He dropped to his knees. “Hit me! Punish me! Do whatever you want, just don’t be mad at her!” Margot woke up to his shouting. She sat up, looking pale and broken on the bed. “Sam, leave him alone. It was my fault, I was driving. Don’t take it out on Toby. He’s sick!” I didn’t say a word. I looked at the two of them—the woman who had traded her soul for a boy who played at being a victim. I turned and walked away. “Where are you going?” she yelled, her voice cracking. “Sam! Come back here!” I heard Toby’s voice as the door swung shut. “He’s probably just going home to make you some soup, Professor. He’s just worried about you.” … During the two days Margot was in the hospital, she called me eighteen times. Her texts turned from angry to desperate. Why aren’t you answering? There’s a limit to how long you can throw a tantrum. I’m going to Europe for a conference soon. Tell me if you want anything. Sam? Are you okay? Did something happen? I finally replied: Don’t forget. Monday. The courthouse. She replied instantly: You’re serious? Fine. Don’t come crying to me later when you regret this. Don’t use your ‘health’ as an excuse to back out. On Monday morning, I stood outside the courthouse. Half an hour later, Margot arrived. When I handed her the signed divorce papers, she froze. She stared at the signature as if it were written in a foreign language. “Sam… you’re really doing this?”

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “432229”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

It was supposed to be a joyous occasion, the glittering climax of my engagement dinner. Then Jace, my fiancée’s adopted younger brother, abruptly snatched my phone right out of my hand. Before I could even register the violation, he hit accept on an incoming call and, with a flick of his thumb, put it on speaker. A woman’s voice, dripping with synthetic sweetness, echoed through the ballroom: “What’s your rate for the whole night?” The clinking of champagne flutes stopped. The low hum of conversation vanished. The silence in the room was absolute, the kind of heavy, suffocating quiet that precedes a car crash. Every eye in that banquet hall swiveled toward me, pinning me to the spot like searchlights. Jace, however, acted like we were in a sitcom. He flashed a lazy, impish grin at his sister. “Damn, Pat. I just posted his picture five minutes ago and the inquiries are already rolling in. Better keep a tight leash on this one.” My face flushed with a violent, glacial rage. But Patricia just waved a dismissive hand, a light, airy gesture. “Oh, it’s just kids messing around. Don’t take it so seriously.” Jace was practically vibrating with smugness. “I gotta admit, I picked a hell of a photo. It’s prime advertising.” Right on cue, the massive digital screen at the front of the hall—the one that had been displaying our monogrammed initials—flickered. An advertisement replaced it. It was a photo Patricia had coaxed me into taking last night, lying in bed wearing nothing but a pair of suggestive briefs. Next to my half-naked body, my name and personal cell phone number were printed in bold, undeniable text. But it was the bright red, flashing slogan beneath it that made my blood run cold: “PREMIUM ESCORT. AVAILABLE FOR HOUSE CALLS. GUARANTEED SATISFACTION.” …………… 1 My knuckles turned bone-white as my vision locked onto the massive screen. In the intimate, moody lighting of the bedroom backdrop, my body took up nearly the entire frame. The word “Escort” burned into my retinas, a brand searing my flesh. All around me, the guests—Patricia’s family, her wealthy social circle—were looking at me. Their stares weren’t just judgmental; they were scorching, peeling away my dignity strip by strip. It felt like being flayed alive in a tailored suit. And yet, it was Patricia’s parents who stepped forward to break the tension. Not to defend me, but to manage the optics. “Gideon, take a breath…” Mr. Hastings offered a placating, entirely empty smile. “You know how Jace is. We’ve spoiled him rotten. He’s a bit impulsive, a little reckless, but there’s not a malicious bone in his body.” A chorus of aunts and uncles immediately chimed in, a well-rehearsed symphony of gaslighting. “Exactly! It’s just a prank between boys.” “You’re about to be his brother-in-law. You’re not actually going to hold a grudge against your little brother, are you?” A prank. A laugh scraped the back of my throat, cold and sharp as shattered glass. Broadcasting an intimate photo to a room full of elites, branding me a rent-a-boy—this was a prank? Patricia finally caught the absolute zero temperature in my eyes, and a flicker of panic crossed her perfect face. She stepped forward quickly, reaching for my wrist, desperate to just shove the platinum engagement ring onto my finger and seal the deal. I violently jerked my hand away. That single movement was enough to set Jace off. He shot up from his chair, his voice rough and laced with an ugly, entitled arrogance. “Who the hell are you giving attitude to? You’re marrying into our family. You’re signing on to be a Hastings kept man. Don’t we have the right to inspect the merchandise?” He jutted his chin toward the screen. “Putting it online is just market research. Let’s see if any of your old sugar mamas come calling.” He paused, letting out a dark, mocking snort. “I mean, maybe you weren’t actually in the business before… but considering how popular you are with women, who’s to say you won’t be in the future?” My lungs felt like they were expanding with pure, combustive fury. I took a slow, deliberate step toward him, a bitter smile twisting my lips. “…So, that gives you the right to fabricate rumors and humiliate me in front of my future family?” Faced with the sheer gravity of my anger, Jace’s bravado faltered. The color drained slightly from his cheeks. But Patricia—my supposed partner, the woman who was supposed to stand by my side—stepped right in front of him, shielding him with her own body. “Gideon, what are you doing?” “This is our engagement party. Do you really have to blow this out of proportion and make us a laughingstock?” Safely tucked behind her shoulder, Jace’s eyes gleamed with a cowardly, triumphant malice. He was the fox using the tiger’s might. “My sister is the one doing you a favor by marrying you,” Jace sneered. “And she hasn’t dumped your ass yet. If she doesn’t care, why are you throwing a tantrum?” Looking at the two of them—the united front of siblings, the enabling parents, the murmuring relatives—a profound, sickening clarity washed over me. This whole family was playing me. They were breaking me down, testing my compliance. Seeing my silence, Patricia assumed I had backed down. Her tone softened, dropping into that practiced, placating register. She reached for my hand again. “Gideon, I know Jace came up with the idea, but I’m the one who gave him the photo. If you want to be mad at someone, be mad at me. Let’s just get through the ceremony. You’ll have the rest of our lives to be mad at me in private.” I took a slow, jagged breath, looking at her face as if I were looking at a stranger. I had known Patricia Hastings for twelve years. Only in this exact second did I realize how terrifyingly a person could change. My mind flashed back to our sophomore year of high school. I was a competitive swimmer back then, tall and built differently than the other boys. Girls who had been rejected by me would retaliate out of spite. They used to sneak photos of my chest and abs during gym class, spreading disgusting, hyper-sexualized rumors about me through the locker rooms. Patricia had been my fierce protector. She didn’t care what names they called her; she would march right up to those girls, screaming in their faces until they apologized to me in public. I remembered feeling terrible that she was taking the heat for me. But she had just smiled, a bright, unwavering light. “I’m fine, Gideon. A guy’s reputation matters too. Taking a few insults for you is nothing.” Now, staring at the humiliating billboard glowing above us, that memory felt like a cruel, sick joke. 2 If I was being honest with myself, the warning signs regarding Jace’s bizarre hostility had been there for a long time. The first time I formally met him was when Patricia brought him and some friends out for my birthday dinner. I had dressed up, feeling good about myself. Before the appetizers even hit the table, Jace was taking passive-aggressive shots at me. He looked at my styled hair and tailored shirt and sneered, saying I looked plastic, like a textbook gold-digger just waiting to bleed a rich woman dry. My face had fallen instantly. But Patricia had just rubbed my arm under the table. He’s just blunt, Gideon. He doesn’t mean anything by it. He’s just a kid, don’t let him get to you. Later that night, the waiter brought out the custom cake Patricia had ordered. As it was placed in front of me, Jace laughed, said he was going to help me “take off my makeup,” and shoved my face violently into the frosting. As I sat there, humiliated, wiping cake and icing from my burning eyes, he had put on this wide-eyed, innocent act. “Oh, come on, Gideon, it’s just a joke! Even Pat knows I didn’t mean anything bad by it. You’re not actually mad, right?” From that moment, I knew her adopted brother was poisonous. But Patricia was always the mediator, always blurring the lines, begging me to just let it go for her sake. And she was doing it again right now. Seeing that I was still frozen, refusing to take the ring, Patricia’s voice took on a strained, patronizing edge. “Gideon, okay, the joke went a little too far. When the party is over, I’ll make him give you a proper apology, alright?” “Just be the bigger person. Don’t stoop to his level.” A dry laugh echoed in my chest. He had publicly degraded me in the worst way imaginable, and a forced “sorry” behind closed doors was supposed to fix it? Seeing Patricia firmly in his corner, Jace’s lips curled into a smug little smirk. “It’s just a photoshopped ad, man. What’s the big deal? I’ll delete it from the website right now, happy?” He pulled out his phone, his thumb hovering over the screen. Before he could swipe, I lunged forward. My hand clamped around his wrist like a vise, and I ripped the phone from his grip. “Delete it? Why would I let you do that? This is evidence. You trying to destroy evidence, Jace?” The blood vanished from Jace’s face, leaving him a sickly, terrifying pale. He stammered, “W-what evidence? Are you seriously thinking about calling the cops on me?” Patricia lunged at me, clawing desperately at my hand to get the phone back. “Gideon, have you lost your mind?! Over a stupid little prank, you’re going to involve the police?!” Looking at her contorted, desperate face, I searched for even a fraction of the love she claimed to have for me. There was nothing. Just cold, hostile defense of her brother. “I used to think you were gentle. Empathetic,” she hissed, her voice dropping so only I could hear. “I didn’t expect you to try and establish dominance over my family on day one. Jace is my brother, and you want to send him to jail? When did you become so vindictive?” Jace’s eyes flashed with a sick thrill of victory, but he immediately weaponized his victimhood, tugging pitifully at Patricia’s sleeve. “Pat, don’t. It’s your special night. I don’t want you guys fighting because of me.” The manipulation worked instantly. Patricia looked at him with profound sympathy. “You’re too good to him, Jace.” She turned her glare back to me. “But if I give an inch tonight, you’ll take a mile tomorrow. My mom was right. You can’t spoil a man who’s marrying into your money. Give him a little grace, and he thinks he runs the house.” With every syllable she spat at me, my heart sank further into a bottomless, freezing abyss. A self-deprecating smile touched my lips. She was right about one thing. If I backed down tonight, the abuse would never, ever end. 3 Just then, a commotion erupted at the heavy mahogany doors of the banquet hall. My best friend and business partner, Wyatt, burst into the room. He had brought a whole crew to celebrate. But the second he crossed the threshold and saw the massive, degrading billboard glowing on the screen, he froze. Wyatt was old money, a wildly unapologetic trust-fund kid whose older sister ran one of the most ruthless private equity firms on the East Coast. Wyatt didn’t take shit from anyone. He exploded instantly, his voice cracking like a whip across the silent room. “What the hell is this?!” “Who’s fucking with Gideon at his own engagement party?! Step forward right now, I swear to God!” We had started a design studio together right out of college. For tonight, Wyatt had dropped a twenty-thousand-dollar check on the gift table just to make sure the Hastings family knew I had backing. I grabbed Wyatt’s arm before he could start throwing punches. My face was pale, but my voice was terrifyingly calm. “I’m fine. Don’t swing,” I whispered. “Just… do me a favor. Text your sister. Ask her if what she said to me three months ago is still on the table.” Wyatt blinked, stunned for a microsecond, before a fierce, predatory grin spread across his face. He nodded hard. “Done. And don’t worry, man. Nobody in this room is touching you tonight.” He pulled out his phone and made a single, terse call. Less than ten minutes later, a fleet of black Escalades idled outside the hotel doors. A wall of men in tailored black suits entered, forming a barrier around Wyatt and me, escorting us out. Patricia tried to push through, her face frantic, but the security detail didn’t even let her get within five feet of me. My phone buzzed in my pocket. It was a barrage of texts from her. Gideon, are you done throwing your tantrum? Twelve years, and you’re just walking away? Do you really have to make this so ugly over a misunderstanding? My brother made a bad joke! Why are you acting like a psycho over it?! She kept using that word. Brother. As if on cue, a new text thread popped up. It was Jace. He sent me over a dozen photos in rapid succession. Some were of him and Patricia in the Hastings’ private pool, his arms wrapped tight around her waist, her body pressed flush against his. Others were selfies on the couch, their heads resting against each other, looking flushed and entirely too intimate. The last file was a video. I clicked play. In it, Jace pulled Patricia into his lap. He kissed her—not a peck, but a deep, desperate kiss. Patricia stiffened for a second, but then, softly, she kissed him back. When she yielded, Jace groaned, kissing her harder, his hands gripping her hips. His voice was a pathetic, needy whisper. “Pat… do you really have to marry him? You know you love me. You know you do.” Patricia shuddered, closing her eyes tightly. “Jace, we were kids. We didn’t know better. But we’re older now. We can’t do this anymore. Gideon will be a good husband… and you… you can only ever be my brother.” Watching them tangle together on the screen, acid rose in my throat. I genuinely wanted to vomit. Jace followed the video with a voice note, his tone a mix of toxic triumph and hysterical venom. “Did you see that, Gideon? She loves me. If you don’t want a marriage where I’m a ghost haunting your bedroom every single night, then back the fuck off. Because if you stay… tonight was just a warm-up.” When I didn’t reply to Patricia’s frantic texts, she finally lost her patience. The pleading turned into a threat. “Three days, Gideon. We are re-doing the ceremony at The Grand Astoria in three days.” “If you want to keep acting like a child by then… fine. But your reputation is already in the gutter. Let’s see who else would ever want you now.” 4 What Patricia didn’t know was that exactly three seconds after her threat came through, another text arrived. It was from Margot. Wyatt’s older sister. She was currently on a business trip in London. The text contained a screenshot of a first-class itinerary back to New York, and a single sentence: “The wedding proceeds. Wait for me.” For the next two days, I ghosted Patricia entirely. Meanwhile, the photoshopped ad Jace had made spread like a virus across local forums and social media. The comments were vile. “Eighteen hundred for that? Escorts really overvaluing themselves these days.” “Probably photoshopped to hell. Guarantee you the guy showing up is a 300-pound creep.” “Way too expensive for used goods.” Patricia finally tracked me down at my studio. She looked exhausted but smug. “Just marry me, Gideon. Do it, and I swear on my life I’ll have PR wipe every trace of this from the internet by tomorrow morning.” I looked at her. I searched her eyes, her posture, the tilt of her chin. I couldn’t find a single trace of the girl who had defended me in the high school hallways. It took me a long time to speak. “Do you remember what you told me back then?” I asked quietly. “You said a man’s reputation matters too. You knew how much that hurt me. Why would you let him do this to me? Why would you help him?” For a second, Patricia was speechless. A flash of genuine shame flickered in her eyes, or maybe it was just guilt at being caught. I didn’t wait for her to formulate an excuse. “Don’t worry,” I said, my voice dead flat. “The wedding at The Grand Astoria is happening tomorrow. Right on schedule.” Just not with you, I added in my head. Patricia totally missed the ice in my eyes. She only heard the compliance. She exhaled a massive sigh of relief, reaching out to touch my arm. “I knew it. I knew you’d be reasonable, Gideon. Don’t worry, I’ll make Jace scrub the internet right now. Once we’re officially married, I’ll have him apologize to your face.” Before she left, she promised me, over and over, how good she was going to treat me once we were husband and wife. I gave her empty nods until she finally left to finalize the catering. On the third day, my black car pulled up to the grand entrance of The Grand Astoria. I stepped out wearing a brand-new, impeccably tailored black Tom Ford tuxedo. When I looked up, the entire Hastings family was waiting by the valet, looking stressed and irritated. Jace’s eyes dragged up and down my suit. He let out a loud, mocking laugh. “I heard you telling your college buddies you broke off the engagement. And yet here you are, wearing a suit that costs more than your car, just for a make-up dinner? Talk a big game, but you still came running like a good little dog.” Patricia’s face darkened, and she gave Jace a performative, half-hearted scolding. “Enough, Jace. I told you to show him some respect.” She reached out to grab my arm, but I sidestepped her smoothly, leaving her grasping at empty air. I ignored the whole family, walking straight past them through the revolving doors. Compared to the opulence of the first banquet, this setup was pathetic. They had secured a twenty-square-foot partition in the hotel’s discounted overflow lobby. Three or four sparse tables were set up. A handful of confused, bored relatives stood around awkwardly. Patricia coughed, her cheeks flushing with embarrassment, but immediately shifted the blame to me. “Well, you ruined the first one. All the guests went home. Did you really expect my parents to shell out another fifty grand to rent the main hall?” She reached for me again. “It’s just a formality anyway. We just need to go through the motions. I promise I’ll make it up to you later.” At that exact moment, the heavy brass doors of the hotel’s VIP wing swung open. A procession of staff, event coordinators, and security poured out. Outside, a line of Rolls-Royces and Bentleys pulled up seamlessly to the curb. And at the center of it all was Margot. She wore an architectural, sweeping white gown that looked like modern armor. She was stunning, sharp-edged, and entirely in control. Catching Patricia reaching for me, Margot’s perfectly sculpted brow twitched. She didn’t even have to speak; she just gave a micro-glance to her detail. The men in suits immediately surged forward, forming an impenetrable physical wall between me and the Hastings family. Margot stopped a few feet away and held out her hand. I closed the distance, a genuine smile breaking across my face, and took the boutonnière she offered me. Patricia stood frozen in absolute shock. Then, reality snapped into place, and she lost her mind. “Gideon! You are my fiancé! What the hell do you think you’re doing?!” Before she could take another step, two of Margot’s security guards forced her down, twisting her arms expertly behind her back to keep her immobilized. Margot looked down at her, a low, melodic laugh escaping her lips. “Your fiancé? Please. Do you honestly think a piece of trash like you gets to lay claim to my husband?”

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “432245”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

My first week on the job, and I was already dealing with a nightmare. There was a woman in the office who claimed to be three weeks pregnant. Relying entirely on this “delicate condition,” she had the audacity to drop a carpooling mandate on my desk. Her reasoning was shockingly entitled: she lived far from the office, and my car met her “high standards.” It was a brand-new, fifty-thousand-dollar Volvo SUV, barely a year off the lot. But the truly unhinged part? She flat-out ordered me to be her personal chauffeur, morning and night, effective immediately. She even had the nerve to add, “Don’t be late.” I actually laughed when I read the email. Usually, I had a private driver. I only had my father’s procurement team select this particular Volvo because it was supposed to be understated—a stealth-wealth commuter car that wouldn’t draw attention to an entry-level analyst. Naturally, I had no intention of entertaining such an absurd demand. I fired back a polite but firm, “I won’t be able to accommodate this.” Her retaliation was swift. The very next day, leveraging her minor administrative privileges as an HR Manager, she flagged my timesheet for arriving late and leaving early, instantly docking my pay. Fine. If she wanted to press her face against the glass, I was more than happy to show her how easily it could shatter. 1 I stared at the notification on my monitor, a bitter laugh dying in my throat. How did people like this exist? The sheer, breathless audacity of trying to claim someone else’s property as a personal perk. I decided the best response was absolute silence. I didn’t reply. I didn’t expect her to march right up to my cubicle and rap her knuckles sharply against the fiberglass partition. “I’m expecting,” she announced, as if she were declaring a royal succession. “I need a dedicated ride.” I looked up. Brittany stood there, arms crossed. “I saw you pull in. Nice car. You have to drive home anyway, so taking me is hardly an inconvenience.” She paused, then added with a terrifyingly casual entitlement, “Oh, and you need to clock out at exactly five from now on. I have to get home to cook dinner for my husband.” A hot, prickling sensation of disgust crawled up the back of my neck. I was used to being chauffeured in a Maybach. Who did she think she was, demanding I act as her personal Uber? Besides, I didn’t even know where she lived. How could she possibly know it was “on the way”? Then it hit me. She was HR. She had pulled my confidential employee file to get my home address. I didn’t have the energy for this theater. I gave her a flat, unblinking look. “I’m sorry, Brittany, but I’m a terrible driver. I mix up the gas and the brake, and I have a habit of stopping short. For the safety of you and your baby, it’s really not a good idea.” I thought giving her a polite out would make her back off. Instead, her voice spiked an octave, piercing through the low hum of the open-plan office. “You can’t drive, but you own a brand-new luxury SUV?” Heads began to pop up over cubicle walls. “Look at you. You’re twenty-two. There’s no way you bought that car on an analyst’s salary. Let me guess—some older man bought it for you? A sponsor? God, girls your age really have no self-respect.” A heavy silence fell over our section. I smiled, a tight, cold thing. Yes, technically, an older man did buy me the car. My father. And what of it? It was literally the cheapest vehicle in our family’s garage. I opened my mouth to respond, but our team lead, Kevin, materialized, wearing his usual appeasing, middle-management grimace. “Margot, come on now,” Kevin sighed, playing the peacemaker. “We’re a team here. We help each other out. Brittany’s pregnant, she’s having a hard time. Is it really that big of a deal to give her a lift? You’re young. You need to learn how to play the game and build relationships.” Listening to his condescending lecture, a wave of nausea washed over me. If he cared so much, why wasn’t he giving her a ride? He was playing the benevolent boss with my time and my gas. I turned back to my dual monitors. “I have reports to run,” I said, my voice dropping to a glacial chill. At 5:05 PM, I walked out to the parking garage. The second the key fob clicked and unlocked the doors, the passenger side was yanked open. 2 Brittany slid into the buttery leather seat with practiced ease and snapped her seatbelt into place. I stood frozen outside the driver’s side door. “What do you think you’re doing? Get out. I’m going home.” “Me too.” She adjusted the AC vents so they blew directly onto her face. “I told you this morning.” She tapped her watch. “Look at the time. You’re five minutes late. Consider this a warning, but next time, I’ll have to write you up for violating the schedule.” My grip tightened on the door handle. “I told you this morning, I’m not comfortable driving you. It’s not happening.” She let out a sharp, mocking snort. “Please. I checked the garage security footage. I saw you parallel park this thing into a compact spot in one fluid motion. Don’t play the helpless rookie with me.” The last frayed thread of my patience snapped. “Get out,” I said, my voice dropping an octave. She crossed her arms, sinking deeper into the upholstery, even hitting the button to recline the seat a few inches. She looked like a squatter who had just discovered squatters’ rights. I didn’t say another word. I turned on my heel and started walking toward the parking attendant’s booth. “Security!” Before I could call out again, a coworker who was about to pull out of his space jogged over, grabbing my elbow. He looked terrified. “Margot, don’t!” he hissed, his eyes darting toward my car. “Brittany is a nightmare. She’s got tenure, and she’s super tight with the regional director upstairs. You do not want to go to war with her.” He looked at me with genuine pity. “Just take my advice. Drive her home tonight. Take the hit. Tomorrow, tell her the engine light came on and the car is in the shop. Take the commuter train for a few weeks until she finds another victim. You can’t beat her, so just hide.” I had to pretend my own car was broken? I had to take the train just to avoid a workplace bully who wanted to exploit me? The sheer absurdity of it sent a spike of pure adrenaline straight to my brain. “Thank you, but no,” I said, pulling my arm free. My voice was harder than I knew it could be. I marched back to my car, leaning down to look Brittany directly in the eye. “Brittany, I will say this exactly one more time. Get out of my car. If you don’t, I am calling 911 to report you for trespassing and attempted grand theft auto. There are cameras everywhere. I will press charges.” She hadn’t expected me to call her bluff. The smugness slid off her face. “Are you a sociopath?” she shrieked, her voice echoing off the concrete pillars. “Do you have any concept of corporate culture? Of basic human decency?” She thrust her completely flat stomach forward. “Look at me! I am a pregnant woman. My body is going through trauma! Asking for a ride is the bare minimum you should be doing as a decent human being!” She was working herself into a frenzy, spittle flying onto my leather dashboard. “But no! You make up lies about your driving! You threaten me with the police! You’re harassing a pregnant woman over a car ride? Where is your conscience? God, you Gen Z kids are so insanely selfish! You contribute nothing to this company, nothing to society!” She took a breath, her face flushed red. “Me sitting in your car is a privilege for you! It’s networking! Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth!” I actually laughed. I braced my hands on the roof of the car, looking down at her. “You want to talk about decency? You climbed into a stranger’s private property without permission, threatened to dock my pay to force me to serve you, and you want to lecture me about corporate culture?” I leaned in closer. “You want a ride? Read my lips. Never. Not today, not tomorrow, not ever. Now get the hell out of my car.” A small crowd of late-staying employees had gathered by the elevators, watching the spectacle. Brittany’s face went through a kaleidoscope of colors—red, white, then a mottled purple. “Fine!” She unbuckled her seatbelt so violently it snapped back against the window. She shoved the door open. “You’re going to regret this, Margot! Watch your back!” 3 The office was buzzing the moment I walked in the next morning. Brittany was holding court by the espresso machine in the breakroom. “Twenty-two years old, driving a fifty-thousand-dollar car. Please. We all know how she affords that,” Brittany’s voice drifted through the open doorway, loud enough to ensure I heard. “I was just trying to look out for her. Warn her about going down the wrong path. And what does she do? Screams at me like a feral animal. Absolutely no class.” A woman from accounting chimed in, right on cue. “I know, right? Don’t let it get to you, Britt. Just because she has a fancy car doesn’t mean she’s better than us. Who knows what she had to do to get it.” Another voice giggled. “Honestly, I’m just waiting for the day some wealthy guy’s wife drags her out of here by her hair. We should keep our distance. God knows what kind of diseases she’s carrying.” A chorus of hushed, vicious laughter followed. I dropped my tote bag on my desk. I walked straight into the breakroom. “Are you finished?” The laughter died instantly. They whipped around to face me. I let my eyes wander over Brittany and her little audience. “I heard every word you just said.” I stepped closer. “Regarding the accusations that I have a ‘sugar daddy,’ that I’m ‘dirty,’ or that I have ‘diseases’—which one of you has the proof?” I held up my phone. “Do you have photos? Bank statements? A medical record?” Brittany sneered, though her eyes flickered nervously. “Ooh, hit a nerve, did I? If you don’t want people talking, don’t be a walking cliché. You’re an intern, honey. You show up in a luxury car, people are going to talk.” “Spreading malicious, unfounded rumors in the workplace is defamation,” I said, my voice dead calm. “I could sue you for everything you have.” “Sue me?” Brittany barked a laugh, planting her hands on her hips. “Are you delusional? I’m the HR Manager! I control who gets hired, who gets fired, and who passes their ninety-day probationary review! You want to sue me?” She stepped into my personal space, her finger inches from my collarbone. “Your entire career here is in my hands. If I say you’re a poor culture fit, you’re gone by noon. You want to play hardball with me? You’re out of your league, little girl.” The air in the room felt suddenly thick. A few people who had been watching quickly looked down at their phones, shuffling away. I looked at the absolute conviction on her face. The sheer belief that her petty, middle-management power made her invincible. I realized, in that moment, that arguing with a person like this was a waste of oxygen. “Well,” I said softly. “Let’s see just how much power you really have.” I turned my back on her and walked straight to the stairwell, climbing up to the rooftop. The wind was biting. I pulled out my phone and dialed the private line of my father’s chief of staff. “Mr. Caldwell.” “Miss Margot,” the smooth, unflappable voice answered immediately. “I need a deep dive on an employee. Apex Solutions, regional branch. Human Resources Manager, Brittany. I want to know who hired her, who she’s sleeping with, what nepotism got her the role. I want every skeleton.” “Understood.” “And pull everything you have on the Regional Director, Richard. Look for any ties between him and Brittany.” “Consider it done. How quickly do you need this?” “Before lunch.” “Of course, Miss Margot.” I hung up, pressing the cold glass of my phone against my forehead, taking a long, deep breath of the city air. I had taken this job at the bottom of the corporate ladder because I wanted to learn the business from the ground up. I wanted to understand the mechanics of my father’s empire before I inherited it. I wore Zara, I kept my head down, and I never used the family name. But I was learning a painful lesson. In some environments, humility isn’t respected. It’s perceived as weakness. It becomes an invitation for the mediocre and the vicious to trample you. They wanted to flex their pathetic, microscopic amount of power over me? Fine. I was done turning the other cheek. I spent the afternoon working quietly at my desk, ignoring the blatant glares and whispers. When the clock struck five, I packed my bag, badged out, and went down to the garage. As I walked toward my row, my heart suddenly seized. I broke into a run. And then, I saw it.

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “432230”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

I rolled up my sleeve, the motion as thoughtless and routine as breathing, waiting for the cold swipe of the alcohol pad. But instead of the nurse’s gentle touch, Drew’s hand clamped down hard over my forearm. The first day of every month. For over a year, this had been our ritual. This was the day I sat in a pristine leather chair and let them draw my blood—the rare antibodies in my plasma supposedly keeping his chronically ill younger sister alive. He didn’t look at me. His voice was a flat, clinical drone that felt almost deliberately cruel. He told me that the woman whose life I had been sustaining month after month wasn’t his sister at all. She was his ex-wife. “Her autoimmune flare-ups have stabilized,” he said, casually adjusting his cuffs. “She’s fully recovered. We don’t need your plasma anymore.” I stared down at the crook of my elbow. The skin there was a constellation of tiny, faded purple dots—a roadmap of my devotion. A violent tremor started in my hands and quickly took over my entire body. “How could you?” The words tore out of my throat, raw and agonizing. “You knew I was pregnant during half those donations! You knew the risk—one wrong move, one drop in my pressure, and it could have killed the baby!” I was screaming now, but Drew’s face remained a mask of flawless, terrifying indifference. If anything, the look he gave me was laced with pity. “I was fully aware of the risks, Jolie,” he said softly. “But you see, the embryo the clinic implanted… it was created using my sperm and Cheryl’s egg. You were just carrying our child.” 1 “What?” The word hung in the air, impossibly fragile. A high-pitched ringing erupted in my ears. Drew pulled a silver lighter from his pocket and lit a cigarette. He looked annoyed, but beneath that annoyance was a sickening sense of entitlement. “Cheryl has a fragile constitution. Carrying a child to term would have destroyed her body. Why else do you think I married you?” He exhaled a plume of smoke, looking at me through the gray haze. “But it worked out. The boy is healthy, and her illness is in remission. If you want a divorce now, I won’t contest it.” He let out a long breath, as if a massive weight had been lifted from his tailored shoulders. He looked at my face—which must have been the color of chalk—and actually offered a light, breezy chuckle. “You have no idea the toll this took on me. Every time I was with you, it felt like I was having an affair. Like I was betraying her.” He paused, his eyes darkening with a twisted sort of loyalty. “I never even slept with you without getting her permission first.” The ringing in my ears escalated into a deafening roar. Fragments of our marriage—the tender late-night whispers, the tangled sheets, the vows we took—crashed through my mind, broken and bleeding. My lips trembled, but I couldn’t form a single syllable. As if reading the devastation in my eyes, Drew let out a low, dark laugh. “Last night, when we were in bed? She was on the phone. Listening. It made her so furious she was practically screaming, calling you a whore.” He shook his head, sounding almost disappointed in me. “But you were so far gone, so desperate for it, you didn’t even notice the phone on the nightstand.” The sheer humiliation of it, the absolute violation, surged up from my stomach and exploded behind my eyes. I lunged forward and slapped him across the face with every ounce of strength I had. “You monster!” Drew ran his tongue over his teeth, tasting the inside of his cheek. He didn’t look angry. He just looked thoroughly, unapologetically rotten. “I’ll admit, it was a shitty thing to do. I originally planned to keep you in the dark forever. But yesterday, Cheryl saw Toby call you ‘Mommy.’ She broke down. She cried for hours.” He sighed, running a hand through his perfectly styled hair. “It broke my heart. I can’t let her suffer like that.” He stared right at me, and in that split second, I knew exactly what he was going to say. My body instinctively scrambled backward, pressing hard against the back of the chair. “Don’t you even think about it,” I gasped, terror wrapping around my throat. Drew lunged, grabbing my wrists. He looked at my tears as if they were a puzzle he couldn’t quite solve. “Jolie, be rational. You are not his biological mother. If we take him back now, you’ll get over it eventually. It won’t hurt as much as you think.” “I raised him for three years!” I shrieked, the tears spilling over, hot and pathetic and desperate. “A thousand days and nights! Do you know he’s allergic to mangoes? Do you know he ends up in the ER every spring with croup? Do you have any fucking idea that I nearly bled to death on the delivery table having him?!” For a fraction of a second, Drew’s expression went completely blank. I let out a broken, hysterical laugh. I remembered it now. He wasn’t there when I gave birth. I had been hemorrhaging. The doctors were shouting, the alarms were blaring, and I was crying so hard I couldn’t breathe, begging the nurses to call my husband. I just wanted him to hold my hand. When they finally got him on the phone, his voice was like ice. “I told you, I’m closing a massive acquisition today. Women give birth every second of the day, Jolie. Stop acting like a spoiled brat.” But right before the line went dead, I had heard it. A woman’s soft, melodic giggle in the background. Pleased. Mocking. I had convinced myself it was a hallucination brought on by the blood loss. But it was Cheryl. I sobbed, my chest heaving uncontrollably. Drew watched me, and for a fleeting moment, a flicker of genuine pity crossed his eyes. He opened his mouth, perhaps to offer some hollow comfort, but his cell phone buzzed. He answered it. Cheryl’s voice bled through the speaker, sharp and furious, like a wife catching her husband in a cheap motel. “Why aren’t you answering my texts?! You’re screwing that bitch right now, aren’t you? Don’t think I don’t know how much you love that slut’s body!” Drew smiled. It was a helpless, entirely devoted smile. “Baby, don’t be mad. I’m not doing anything. I promised you I’d handle it, didn’t I? Have I ever let you down?” “Then how are you going to handle it? I want her to get on her knees and apologize to me!” He poured all his attention into the phone, soothing her, validating her. He didn’t even bother taking it off speakerphone. He didn’t care that I was sitting two feet away, listening to them discuss how to dispose of me as if I were the mistress who had overstayed her welcome. My stomach cramped so violently I thought I might throw up. I couldn’t listen to another word. Face ashen, I turned and stumbled toward the door. 2 Footsteps echoed behind me. Drew grabbed my arm, his tone dripping with annoyance. “Where are you running off to? Come back inside and apologize to Cheryl.” “For what?!” I whipped my head around, my eyes burning with pure, unadulterated hatred. Drew flinched. He wasn’t used to seeing me like this—so sharp, so jagged. He looked away, his jaw tightening. “I saved your life back then. Consider this your repayment.” The world seemed to drop out from under me. A devastating sob tore itself from my chest. Through the blur of my tears, I was violently pulled back to three years ago. I was twenty, trapped in the dirt yard of a crumbling trailer park, being beaten black and blue by my stepbrother and stepmother. Neighbors had gathered around the chain-link fence, watching the spectacle. My biological father leaned against a rusted pickup truck, smoking a cigarette and offering color commentary. “That’s what you get for hiding your waitress tips from us! Beat the brat!” My throat was raw from screaming. My back was a tapestry of welts and bruises from the broom handle. But worse than the physical agony was the look in the eyes of my high school classmates standing in the crowd—pity mixed with revulsion. I had prayed to die right there in the dirt. But just as I was losing consciousness, a sleek black Porsche had torn into the yard. Drew had stepped out like something from another universe. He had punched my stepbrother to the ground, scooped my bleeding body into his arms, and carried me toward his car. My father and stepmother had charged at him, screaming bloody murder. “You rich prick! That’s kidnapping! Put the little bitch down!” Drew had gently set me in the passenger seat, pulled a thick stack of hundred-dollar bills from his jacket, and thrown it in their faces. His voice had been colder than the bottom of the ocean. “Listen to me very carefully. Jolie has nothing to do with you anymore. If you ever breathe in her direction again, I have enough lawyers to bury you under a prison.” For months after that, Drew had built a fortress around me. And I, like a drowning girl, had clung to him as my sole savior. But life doesn’t deal in fairytales. There is no such thing as a free lunch. The man I thought was my redemption was just a predator dressed in a designer suit, dragging me into a much deeper, darker abyss. The phantom pain of those old bruises merged with the very real shattering of my heart. I pressed my fists hard against my chest, trying to breathe. Drew frowned, stepping forward to pull me into a hug, to stop me from hurting myself. But before he could touch me, Cheryl materialized out of nowhere and slapped me so hard my teeth rattled. “You shameless whore! Trying to seduce my husband right out in the open!” Between the shock and the chronic anemia from being her personal blood bank, my vision went black. I slammed my hand against the brick wall of the clinic to keep from collapsing. Pedestrians were stopping. Whispers rippled through the gathering crowd, their eyes darting between us with disgust and morbid curiosity. The humiliation was acidic. I stiffened my spine and pointed a shaking finger at her. “You’re lying! Drew and I are legally married! You’re the mistress!” Instead of looking ashamed, Cheryl’s lips curled into a slow, terrifyingly smug smile. “Oh? Are you sure about that?” Panic flashed across Drew’s face. He reached out, trying to pull her away. “Cheryl, let’s go—” She shoved him off, her eyes locked on me as she gleefully butchered my reality. “Keep dreaming, sweetie. I never signed the divorce papers. How the hell can you be his legal wife?” Gravity ceased to exist. I crashed heavily to the pavement, all expression wiped from my face. The whispers from the crowd turned into a loud, righteous buzzing. Fingers pointed at me like daggers. “Oh my god, she actually is the homewrecker. The absolute nerve of her.” “Screwing a married man before he’s even divorced? Trash. Someone record this and put it on TikTok. Expose her.” My skull felt like it was cracking open. I opened my mouth to defend myself, to scream the truth, but looking at the sea of disgusted faces, I realized none of them wanted the truth. They just wanted a villain. My chest heaved. I let out a guttural, wounded scream. And then, a tiny, tear-soaked voice pierced through the noise. “You’re mean! Stop hurting my mommy!” Toby wriggled out of the nanny’s arms by the clinic entrance and ran toward me on his little toddler legs, tears streaming down his flushed cheeks. “Mommy, Mommy! I’ll protect you!” My heart plummeted into my stomach. Instinctively, I opened my arms to catch him. But Cheryl lunged and grabbed him by the back of his shirt. Her smugness vanished, replaced by a grotesque, manic fury. “Look at me! I am your mother! Call me Mommy! Say it!” Toby burst into terrified wails. His little face went pale with panic as he reached his chubby hands out toward me, his fingers grasping at empty air. “Mommy! Help! Mommy!” A primal, agonizing pain ripped through my chest. I scrambled up from the concrete and threw my entire body weight at Cheryl, tackling her. “Let him go!” My hands found her throat. I don’t know where the strength came from—rage, motherly instinct, or pure madness—but she was entirely powerless against me. But my victory lasted less than three seconds. Hands clamped onto my shoulders and violently hurled me backward onto the ground. “Jolie, are you out of your fucking mind?!” Drew roared, his face twisted in fury. “Cheryl is sick! Why are you so evil?!” 3 Drew knelt on the ground, wrapping his arms protectively around Cheryl, his eyes filled with nothing but absolute loathing for me. I lay sprawled on the concrete. I didn’t defend myself. I didn’t say a word. I just dragged myself up on my hands and knees, reaching frantically for Toby to check if he had been hurt in the scuffle. But before I could even touch his hair, Drew snatched him up. “You’re completely unhinged,” he spat. “Cheryl and I are taking Toby. You need to go somewhere and get your head checked.” Toby looked paralyzed with fear, thrashing in Drew’s grip, his little arms reaching for me. “Want my mommy! I want Mommy!” “Toby!” I shrieked, stumbling after them. But the crowd of bystanders—these self-righteous strangers—stepped in my way, forming a physical wall between me and my son. “The kid belongs to the married couple, lady! Just because you babysat him for a while doesn’t make him yours. You can’t beat biology!” Every word they spoke was a knife twisting in my ribs. Tears blinded me. I stood there, utterly helpless, as Drew carried my sobbing child to his car, shoved him inside, and drove away. “Give him back,” I whispered to the empty street. “Give him back…” The world tilted, went gray, and then completely black. When I opened my eyes, the harsh fluorescent lights of a hospital room blinded me. Drew was sitting in the visitor’s chair. He looked exhausted, a rare, deep crease forming between his brows. Seeing me stir, he immediately leaned forward and tried to take my hand. “Jolie, stop fighting this. Just rest.” He sighed heavily. “I wired a million dollars into your account. Consider it compensation.” “A divorce settlement?” I croaked, and then a bitter laugh bubbled up my throat. “No, wait. It’s a breakup fee. Five years of my youth, acting as a free surrogate and a walking blood bank… don’t you think you’re being a little cheap, Drew?” He watched me quietly for a moment. Then, without missing a beat, he said, “I’ll wire another million.” He paused. “But Toby… I need you to stay away from him.” It felt like invisible hands were strangling me. My eyes burned, bloodshot and feral. “Why?” “Because a boy needs his real mother. You have no biological connection to him.” His voice was void of any emotion. Fresh tears spilled hot tracks down my cheeks, but the fight hadn’t left me yet. “I’ll sue you. I’ll go to the police. Bigamy, medical fraud, whatever it takes!” Drew blinked, his expression softening into that awful, condescending pity again. “Why put yourself through that?” he murmured. “Jolie… you know you can’t win against my lawyers.” His gaze dropped to my lower lip, which I was biting so hard it was bleeding. A strange, unfocused look came over his eyes. As if driven by some dark, selfish impulse, his tone shifted, dropping into a low, husky whisper. “If you really can’t bear to be apart from the boy… there is another way.” I shot up, grabbing the sleeve of his expensive shirt, my heart hammering. “What way?” Drew smiled. He turned his hand over and gently stroked my knuckles with his thumb. “We separate, but we don’t end things. I’ll buy you a luxury condo downtown. Whenever I have free time, I’ll bring Toby over to see you.” The silence in the hospital room was absolute. I let out two hollow, breathless laughs, then violently slapped his hand away. “You want me to be your mistress. You want me to sit quietly in some condo while you play happy family with your wife, waiting for the nights you get bored and decide you need to get your rocks off?” His brow furrowed. He maintained his maddening patience, speaking to me as if I were a petulant child. “There’s no need to make it sound so ugly. It’s an arrangement that benefits us both. Toby gets the love of two mothers, and I can still take care of you. You’re completely alone in this world, Jo. I’d worry about you.” He spoke so softly, so tenderly, weaving a narrative where he was the benevolent protector. But I knew the truth now. It was just a pretty lie to satisfy his own insatiable greed. He wanted the trophy wife and the devoted martyr, all under his control. My stomach churned violently. I threw off the thin hospital blanket and swung my legs over the side of the bed, putting as much distance between us as the small room allowed. “Keep your money. Keep your condo.” Drew’s face darkened. He had thrown me a bone, expecting the pathetic, love-starved girl he had groomed to crawl back to him with gratitude. My rejection bruised his massive ego. “Suit yourself,” he snapped, standing up and smoothing his jacket. “I’m only offering this once. When reality hits you and you regret this, don’t come crying to me. There are no second chances.” I wrapped my arms around myself, staring blankly out the window, refusing to give him another word. The door slammed shut with a concussive force, leaving me alone in the sterile silence. That night, I didn’t sleep a wink. Every time I closed my eyes, I heard Toby screaming for me. At dawn, I checked myself out, packed a single suitcase from the house that was no longer mine, and left. I was sitting in a cheap motel room, trying to figure out my next move, when my phone buzzed with an Instagram notification. It was a post from Cheryl. “Baked a strawberry mango shortcake for my little prince! He threw a tantrum at first, but after Mommy force-fed him the first two bites, he gobbled it all up!” My heart stopped. The blood roared in my ears, and my fingers shook so violently I could barely type. “TOBY IS DEATHLY ALLERGIC TO MANGOES!!! GET HIM TO THE ER NOW!!!” I hit send. Two seconds later, the comment vanished. Deleted. I frantically hit her contact name to call her. Call Failed. Number Blocked. 4 I didn’t think. I just grabbed my keys, sprinted to my car, and drove like a maniac. Ten minutes later, I was throwing my shoulder against Cheryl’s heavy mahogany front door until the lock gave way. I burst into the living room. Cheryl was standing there, looking annoyed. In her arms, Toby was thrashing, violently scratching at his neck. His breaths were coming in short, agonizing wheezes. When she saw me, her face contorted with rage. “What the hell are you doing?! Get the fuck out of my house!” She aggressively shifted Toby to her hip, turning her back to me to hide him. I pointed at my son, cold sweat dripping down my spine. “Are you insane?! He’s going into anaphylactic shock! Call an ambulance!” “He is not! Stop making up lies!” Cheryl screamed, marching over and shoving me hard in the chest. “Get out! You psycho bitch, you’re just looking for an excuse to steal my husband and my kid! If you ever come back here, I’ll carve up your face!” Toby’s skin was turning a terrifying shade of red. He was sobbing, a horrific, raspy sound. He saw me over her shoulder and desperately reached out, his tiny fingers hooking into the fabric of my sweater. “Mommy… Mommy, it hurts…” Cheryl didn’t even look at him. She was entirely consumed with her hatred for me, slapping at my arms and screaming obscenities in my face. Something inside my brain just snapped. I grabbed her wrist, twisted it hard, and used my momentum to throw her to the hardwood floor. “Ahhh!” she shrieked, curling into a ball and clutching her arm. I didn’t hesitate. I scooped Toby into my arms and bolted for the front door. But as I crossed the threshold, I slammed directly into Drew’s solid chest. He staggered back, his eyes darting from me, to the crying child in my arms, to his wife sobbing on the floor. His face turned thunderous. “Jolie, what the fuck is wrong with you?! Put him down!” Cheryl wailed from the floor, pointing a trembling finger at me. “Drew! She broke in! She’s trying to kidnap Toby! Call the police and lock this bitch up!” I gripped Toby tighter, my chest heaving. “No! I’m not kidnapping him! He’s having an allergic reaction! He needs an EpiPen, he needs a hospital!” “Enough!” Drew barked. He looked at me with absolute, chilling disgust. There wasn’t a shred of belief in his eyes. He stepped toward me, his sheer size intimidating. “Stop the goddamn theatrics, Jo. Hand him over.” Toby had stopped fighting. His little head lolled against my collarbone, his breathing terrifyingly shallow. My heart was tearing itself to shreds. I braced my legs, preparing to run past him, to fight my way to the car. But Drew anticipated it. He lunged, blocking my path and shoving me hard by the shoulders. I lost my balance and crashed onto the porch. Drew ripped Toby from my arms. I scrambled forward, sobbing, gripping the leg of Drew’s trousers. “Look at him! Just look at him, Drew! He’s losing consciousness!” A sharp kick caught me in the shoulder. Cheryl had scrambled up and thrown herself on top of me, her nails digging into my scalp as she beat me. “Stay away from my son, you fucking psycho!” Neighbors were stepping out onto their lawns, their phones out, murmuring in horror. “Is she trying to kidnap the kid? Jesus.” “Someone call the cops! Hold her down!” I screamed, a sound of pure agony. Hearing it, Drew frowned. He looked down at me with a flicker of hesitation. For a fraction of a second, his grip loosened. And in that moment, the child in his arms—limp and boneless as a ragdoll—slipped downward. Drew froze. A terrible buzzing filled his ears. Slowly, agonizingly, he looked down at the boy in his hands. And what he saw made his heart completely stop.

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “432246”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

The morning of the convention, the clock was ticking down to doors-open, but I was still fumbling with the satin ribbons of my cosplay. I’d spent nearly an hour staring at the character poster, trying to replicate that perfect, gravity-defying bow, but my fingertips were slick with frustration and sweat. That’s when Daniel leaned over. He picked up the fallen ends of the ribbon, his hands moving with a practiced, fluid grace. In seconds, he’d turned the limp fabric into a crisp, voluminous bow. I caught his reflection in the mirror, my eyebrows climbing. “Since when did a software engineer learn how to do that?” He straightened up, giving me that easy, boyish smile I’d loved for seven years. “Anything for you, right?” I did a slow pirouette, admiring the silhouette, but Daniel frowned, tilting his head as he studied his handiwork. He muttered under his breath, “Wait… something still isn’t right.” I stopped mid-turn and looked up at him, my voice barely a whisper. “What’s wrong with it?” 1 Daniel’s fingers twitched for a second, but he didn’t answer. He just laughed it off, reaching out to ruffle my hair. “We’ve got to move, or you’re going to miss the opening ceremony. Weren’t you dying to get a photo with that guest artist?” I stayed rooted to the spot, my eyes dropping to his hand as he gripped the strap of my gear bag. “You’ve tied that bow for someone else before, haven’t you?” The air in the room seemed to vanish for half a beat. The smile on his face didn’t disappear, but it grew thin, brittle. I watched the slight movement of his throat as he swallowed before he bent down to pick up my prop staff. “What goes on in that head of yours, Jo?” he asked, his tone perfectly light. “Remember when I worked at that high-end gift wrap shop during grad school? I spent eight hours a day tying bows for rich ladies’ Christmas hampers. I could tie these in my sleep back then. It’s muscle memory, that’s all.” It was a perfect explanation. Natural. Logical. I remembered that job. I used to bring him coffee while he worked behind a counter piled high with gold foil and velvet ribbon. He wasn’t lying about the experience. But as I stared at the bow on my hip, a cold, nagging sensation settled in the pit of my stomach. Something was off, but I couldn’t put a finger on the shape of the wrongness. I watched him carefully pack my bag, making sure to include the portable charger, the cooling mist, and even a small clip-on fan because I’d complained once about how hot the convention halls get. “All set,” he said, checking his phone. “And I found that gourmet taco truck you wanted to try—it’s parked right by the north exit. We can hit it on the way out.” I forced a smile. That nameless anxiety felt silly in the face of such thoughtfulness. Maybe I was just projecting my own stress onto him. We made it just as the hall lights dimmed for the opening. This was the biggest fan expo the city had seen in years, and I’d been counting down the days for months. I was busy recording the stage on my phone when Daniel leaned in, whispering in my ear as the cosplayers began their walk. “That one’s from Elden Ring, right?” “And that’s the lead singer from Starry Skies!” He didn’t miss a single one. Even when an obscure NPC from a niche indie game appeared, Daniel leaned over and whispered the character’s name and their specific backstory. The music was deafening, the crowd a sea of neon and joy, but my heart was sinking like a stone in deep water. Daniel is a classic tech guy. In our seven years together, he’d treated my hobbies with a sort of polite, distant tolerance. Usually, if I tried to get him to watch an anime with me on the couch, he’d be snoring by the second episode. The unease I’d tried to bury came roaring back. People don’t just wake up one day with a PhD in a subculture they’ve ignored for a decade. I lowered my phone, my hands shaking slightly. I tried to keep my voice casual, as if we were just chatting. “When did you become such an expert? I don’t even recognize half of these.” He rubbed the back of his neck, the tips of his ears turning a tell-tale shade of pink under the strobe lights. “You’re always saying I don’t take an interest in what you love,” he said. “I’ve been following this one creator on YouTube who does deep dives into lore. I guess I’m a fast learner.” I bit my lip. “That’s a very thorough YouTuber.” His gaze flickered for a split second before he pulled me into his side, his arm heavy around my shoulders. “Honey, they’re a pro. I just wanted to be able to talk to you about this stuff. I wanted to be part of your world for once.” I didn’t say anything else. I just nodded and let him hold me. The rest of the afternoon passed in a blur of forced smiles. A question was taking root in my mind, growing thorns: Is he doing this because he loves me, or because he’s practicing for someone else? When the convention wrapped, Daniel—who usually hates crowds and street food—insisted on taking me to the night market nearby. I watched him order extra-spicy skewers, something he’s never been able to handle. He bought two cups of sickly sweet boba tea, even though he’s a black-coffee-only purist. That night, back at the hotel, he left his phone on the nightstand while he went to shower. An ad popped up on his screen from a shopping app—recommendations for three different floral perfumes. I have chronic allergies. I haven’t worn perfume in seven years. In that single, quiet moment, the floor fell away. I knew. Daniel was seeing someone else. 2 When Daniel came out of the bathroom, he reached for me like he always did, his skin warm and smelling of hotel soap. I pulled away, instinctively. “I’m exhausted, Dan. My feet are killing me.” He didn’t push. He just leaned over and kissed my forehead. “Goodnight, baby.” He was asleep within minutes. I lay there in the dark, staring at the ceiling, replaying every bow he’d tied and every character name he’d whispered. After an hour of agonizing, I reached out and took his phone from the nightstand. He hadn’t changed the passcode. I went through everything. Photos, texts, call logs—nothing. His Uber history showed only home and the office. His Venmo was just rent and split dinners with friends. It was a clean phone. Too clean. I felt a wave of relief so strong I almost cried. I was being paranoid. I was the crazy girlfriend. But as I went to put the phone back, a notification chimed. An app I didn’t recognize—a boutique marketplace for handmade goods. I tapped it. The shop was called “Zoey’s Craft Haven.” It was a small-scale page, mostly custom cosplay commissions and accessories. On the surface, it looked like a dozen other shops. Then I saw the model in the featured banner. She was leaning against a brick wall, her hair grazing her collarbone, a playful, dimpled smile on her face. She was wearing the exact same costume I’d worn today. Using a reverse image search was easy. Within minutes, I found her social media. Her handle was @ZoeyNotTheZoo. Her bio read: Cosplayer/Artist. Commissions open. She was based in a city only two hours away from ours. I scrolled down to a pinned video. She was dressed as a cat-girl, lounging on a bed, posing for someone behind the camera. I was about to exit when I heard a voice from the speakers. “Baby, don’t move. Just one more shot.” It was Daniel’s voice. That specific, indulgent tone he used when he was looking at something he adored. The exact same inflection he’d used with me for seven years. He even used the same nickname. The sound felt like a physical blow to my eardrums. My body began to tremble, a cold sweat breaking out across my skin. I closed my eyes and the images flooded in. Daniel holding her. Daniel kissing her—forehead, nose, lips. Daniel staying up late to help her sew a costume, learning the lore of her favorite shows so he could impress her. The tears came silently. I had thought we were the lucky ones. Seven years, and we were supposed to be the “happily ever after.” But you can’t argue with a ghost in a video. I couldn’t lie to myself anymore. 3 I spent the rest of the night like a masochist, scrolling through every post she had. Her name was Zoey. About six months ago, Daniel’s company had hired her cosplay troupe to do some promotional work for a product launch. That was the spark. At first, it looked professional. She mentioned him in a post, thanking “the lead engineer” for helping with the tech setup on stage. Daniel had been the same as always during that time—coming home for dinner, bringing me my favorite snacks, listening to me vent about my boss. He’d laugh at his phone sometimes, but he’d always say it was just “crap from the group chat.” When did it change? Three months ago. She posted a photo of a hospital wristband at 2 AM. The caption: “Scary night with food poisoning, but thank God someone was there to drive me to the ER.” Daniel had been on a “business trip” in her city that weekend. Daniel stirred in his sleep, his hand reaching out blindly for mine. “Baby… come here…” I wiped my face, but the tears wouldn’t stop. On his lock screen, our photo from last summer was still there. We looked so happy. But now, I didn’t know which “baby” he was dreaming about. I couldn’t wrap my head around it. We were high school sweethearts. He was the man who told every friend he ever had that he’d marry me. He was the man who stayed awake for three nights straight in a plastic chair when I had my appendix out. How does that man just… disappear? What choked me the most was that he was willing to learn a whole new world for her—a world he’d dismissed when it was mine. It was a jagged pill I couldn’t swallow. I sat there until the sun began to peek through the hotel curtains. Then, I put his phone back, picked up mine, and booked two train tickets to Zoey’s city. When Daniel woke up, I told him I’d changed our plans. His smile faltered. “Why there? I thought we were going to the theme parks for your birthday? I spent a fortune on those express passes, Jo. You know how hard they are to get.” I held up my phone, cutting him off. “There’s a legendary artist doing a signing there. You know, the one I’ve talked about a million times? It’s a one-day-only thing.” He looked like he wanted to argue, so I added the finisher: “Plus, my mom really wanted me to pick up some of that specialty sourdough from the bakery there. You wouldn’t mind, would you?” The tension in his shoulders bled out instantly. “Oh. Sure. It just caught me off guard.” He kept glancing at his pocket. There was a bulge there—a small, square box. I pretended not to see it as I urged him to pack. “Hurry up! I want to get there before the line gets crazy.” By the time we arrived in Zoey’s city, Daniel was glued to his phone. He kept checking his notifications, a small, secret smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. Before we left the hotel, he helped me with my dress again. His movements were so practiced now, so effortless. “You’ve really mastered this,” I said, watching him in the mirror. “I’m a fast learner, remember?” “Right. Oh, by the way, I hired a local freelance assistant to help us at the signing. The lines are supposed to be brutal, so she’s going to meet us to help hold our spot.” “That’s my girl,” he said, kissing my temple. “Always thinking ahead. I’m looking forward to learning more about your scene.” I smiled. “Pay close attention, then.” After we bought the gifts for my parents, I led him to a themed cafe in the arts district. When Daniel saw the girl waiting at the corner table, the blood drained from his face so fast I thought he might faint. “Hi there,” I said, extending my hand with a bright, fake smile. “You must be Zoey?” 4 “Hi…” Zoey had been looking down, adjusting the lace on her skirt. When she looked up, her smile was radiant—until she saw Daniel standing behind me. She froze. The girl’s eyes began to well up almost instantly as they locked onto his. I kept my arm looped firmly through Daniel’s, tilting my head innocently. “Why are you guys looking at each other like that? Do you already know each other?” “No. No, we don’t,” Daniel blurted out, his hands waving dismissively. Zoey’s eyes turned a deeper shade of red. The lunch was a masterclass in torture. Daniel sat there like he was in an electric chair, making every excuse to leave the table—to use the restroom, to check the parking meter, to take a “work call.” Every time he left, Zoey’s phone would buzz with a text. I acted like I noticed nothing. I insisted on taking “cute” photos with Daniel, posing him so his arm was around me, making sure the flash on my camera was bright and obvious. Zoey’s composure was disintegrating. By the time our “commission” was over, her face was flushed. “Are you okay? You look like you have a fever,” I said with faux concern. She bit her lip, throwing a desperate glance at Daniel. He looked at the ceiling. Zoey looked down, her voice trembling. “I’m sorry. I’m just not feeling great today. I’ve ruined the mood. I’ll… I’ll give you a discount on the fee.” I smiled sweetly. “Don’t worry about it. Your outfit is stunning, though. Can you send me the link to your shop?” She nodded, reaching for her phone to add me on social media. Daniel lunged forward, grabbing my wrist. “Jo, let’s go. This style isn’t for you anyway. It’s a bit… juvenile, don’t you think?” He practically dragged me out of the cafe. At the door, I turned back and waved at Zoey. “I’ll definitely be booking you again!” Daniel didn’t say a word. He hailed a cab and basically shoved me inside. Seeing his face—the raw, panicked fury behind the mask—I felt a tiny, cold spark of satisfaction. By the time we got back to the hotel, Daniel had smoothed his features back into that “devoted boyfriend” look. I sat on the edge of the bed, chatting idly. “That girl today was so pretty. How old do you think she is?” “Younger than you,” he snapped. The air in the room turned to ice. Realizing his mistake, he cleared his throat. “I mean… she looked young. Just a guess.” “I see.” Daniel didn’t want to talk anymore. He started rummaging through his suitcase for his pajamas, the sound of the zipper harsh and frantic in the quiet room. “Get some sleep,” he said, tucking me in with exaggerated care. “We have to be up early for the Stevensons’ wedding tomorrow.” I closed my eyes. At midnight, I heard the rustle of clothes. The door opened a crack, a sliver of hallway light cutting across the carpet, and then clicked shut. I was alone. I opened my phone. Zoey had posted a new video thirty minutes ago. She was holding a wine glass, crying her eyes out. The caption was just one line: Even after all this, I still love you. Daniel had commented five minutes ago. “Wait for me.” I stared at those three words for a long time. Then I turned off the screen. Daniel didn’t come back that night. I didn’t sleep a wink. In the morning, he walked in carrying a bag of fresh pastries. He looked at me, dressed and ready, and forced a smile. “I went out early to get these. Your favorite—almond croissants from that place down the street.” He pressed the bag into my hands. I could smell a faint, unfamiliar perfume clinging to his collar. “By the way, baby,” he said, his voice dropping into that romantic register. “I have a huge surprise for you today.” I smiled back. “So do I.” 5 I’d known about his “secret” for a week. My best friend had been dropping hints about ring sizes. Daniel had been having “top secret” dinners with the groom. He’d been obsessively talking about our “journey” as a couple. Everything pointed to one thing. People think women are intuitive, but the truth is, we only miss the details when we choose to trust. Once the trust is gone, every detail is a scream. I put on my most flawless makeup. I wore my favorite dress. Daniel and I arrived at the wedding looking like the golden couple. He leaned in, his breath warm against my ear. “You look breathtaking today, Jo.” I looked at him in his custom suit and smiled. “You too.” “It’s a special day, after all,” he whispered. The Stevensons had been together for ten years. Watching them exchange vows, seeing that raw, honest happiness, actually made me cry. I was mourning a version of us that had already died. The bouquet toss was at the end of the night. The bride walked straight off the stage and pressed the flowers into my hands. The band shifted. They started playing “Our Song”—the one from our very first date. Suddenly, the giant projector screens in the ballroom flickered to life. It started with a slideshow of our life. Our college orientation. Our first shitty apartment. That sunset in Maine last summer. Seven years of us. I watched it all, tears streaming down my face. How could two people who loved each other this much end up here? The final slide was a photo of us on a pier, silhouettes against the orange sky. The text underneath read: Seven years was just the beginning. Will you give me forever? The room erupted. People were cheering, whistling, clapping. Every eye was on us. Daniel took a deep breath, his hands shaking as he dropped to one knee. He pulled a velvet box from his pocket, his eyes shining with what looked like pure, unadulterated devotion. “Joanna, will you marry me?” Time stopped. The whole world was waiting for me to say yes. I looked into his eyes—those eyes that had looked at Zoey the same way—and I let out a soft, jagged laugh. “Daniel,” I said, my voice carry across the silent room. “Which ‘baby’ are you asking right now?”

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “432231”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel