Category: English

I had kept my family in the dark about my little experiment: taking an entry-level sales job at my uncle’s subsidiary firm just to see how the real world operated. I also happened to drop twenty-five thousand dollars on an elite, invite-only personal training membership at The Foundry. When the new girl in the office found out about the gym, she went absolutely ballistic. She pointed a French-manicured finger right in my face, screaming that my parents must be cursed to have raised such a financially reckless, ungrateful brat. She loudly accused me of funneling dirty money, claiming the only reason a girl like me would work out at a place like that was to dress like a slut and trap a wealthy man. Then, she played her trump card. She boasted that she was the daughter of the CEO, Jonathan Steward, and even she wouldn’t dare spend money so frivolously. She demanded to know who the hell I thought I was. She actually grabbed my arm, threatening to drag me down to the gym to cancel my membership, vowing to “teach me the lesson my parents never did.” I just stood there, completely stunned. Jonathan Steward is my father’s identical twin brother. He is notoriously, fiercely single. He has never been married. I had absolutely no idea where this embarrassing, unhinged “daughter” had crawled out from. 01 “Twenty-five grand on a gym membership? Have you completely lost your mind? That’s what your parents probably make breaking their backs in a decade, and you’re in here playing dress-up as a socialite?” When I didn’t respond immediately, lost in the sheer absurdity of the moment, my new coworker, Violet, mistook my silence for shame. “The corporate culture here has always been grounded. Humble,” she sneered, pacing the aisle between the cubicles so everyone could hear. “I’ve seen dozens of girls exactly like you. You think you can just sleep your way to the penthouse.” “Before I got here, people like you were turning this company into a joke. But I’m here now, and I won’t sit back and watch it happen.” Sleep my way to the top? If that were the case, I wouldn’t have gone through the trouble of anonymously submitting my resume for a grueling, entry-level grind. My uncle loved me like his own daughter. If I asked for a penthouse in Tribeca tomorrow, the deed would be in my name by noon. I wrenched my arm out of Violet’s grip, my brow furrowing. “I spend my own money. Since when does my bank account require your auditing?” Instead of backing down, Violet escalated. “You’re going to refund that membership to my card. I’ll hold the money in escrow for you so you don’t blow it again,” she demanded, her voice dripping with venomous authority. “And stop bringing that cheap, desperate energy into this office. Who are you trying to seduce? My father? Let me tell you something, you little gold digger—there isn’t a man in this company with more old money than him. As long as I’m breathing, you won’t get anywhere near him.” A sharp, incredulous laugh escaped my lips. “You are really committed to this bit, aren’t you? The Academy owes you an Oscar.” Beside me, Sophie, the only coworker who had shown me genuine kindness, tugged frantically at the hem of my silk blouse. “Gemma, please, just let it go,” Sophie whispered, her eyes wide with panic. “She really is Mr. Steward’s daughter. The last top sales rep who crossed her got fired on the spot. We can’t afford to mess with her.” I wasn’t about to buy into this collective delusion. I refused to believe this girl had the power to crush me under her designer knock-off heels. I rolled my eyes. “Just because she says she’s his daughter, you all blindly believe it? I could say I’m his niece. Where’s the proof?” I brushed past Violet and sat at my desk, but the hushed, mocking whispers of the peanut gallery immediately filled the room. “Is Gemma insane? Demanding Violet prove her own father is her father?” “Everyone knows about Violet and Mr. Steward. If she had half a brain, she’d be begging for forgiveness right now.” “Someone needs to learn her place.” Sophie slid her phone onto my desk. On the screen was Violet’s pinned Instagram post. “Mr. Steward personally dropped her off on her first day,” Sophie whispered. I stared at the screen. It was a photo of Violet, her arm looped affectionately through my uncle’s. I was paralyzed by a cold wave of shock. Violet’s caption was nauseatingly sentimental: Daddy’s spoiled girl. I promise to work hard and never let you down. #Legacy It took me only a few seconds to deduce what was actually happening. My uncle possessed the kind of quiet, devastating charisma that could rival a Hollywood leading man. People were always asking for photos with him at galas and charity dinners. When he was in his twenties, he experienced the great, tragic love of his life. After she passed away from cancer, something inside him locked away forever. He became Manhattan’s most famously untouchable, ascetic billionaire—married only to his empire. There was no physical way he had a daughter this age. If I hadn’t intimately known the ghosts of his past, her little performance might have actually fooled me. Seeing that Violet was spiraling into a power trip, and noting it was nearly five o’clock, I grabbed my gym bag and stood up. Just as I reached the door, I heard Violet barking into her cell phone. “I want Gemma relocated immediately. Send her to the Seattle branch for two months—better yet, just get her out of this city. I’ll show her who runs this place.” I let out a soft, dismissive scoff. But the moment my foot crossed the threshold, my phone violently shattered the silence. 02 “Gemma. Pack your bags. You’re flying out to the Seattle office for a two-month field assignment…” It was Derek, our smarmy Vice President. I kept my voice perfectly level as I ended the call, though a tempest of anger was brewing beneath my ribs. Violet crossed her arms, looking unimaginably smug. “I told you. You don’t deserve that kind of luxury. Since you wouldn’t listen, I had to make sure you’ll never step foot in that gym again.” “My father only has one daughter, and he spoils me rotten. Whatever I ask for, he makes happen in under five minutes. Do you believe me now?” When I remained silent, analyzing the variables of this sudden betrayal, her arrogance swelled. “If you get on your knees and apologize to me right now, and promise to wire that twenty-five grand into my account, I might ask my dad to rescind the transfer. You can stay in your little apartment and live your pathetic little life.” The office erupted into a chorus of sycophants. “We warned you, Gemma! Violet has the ultimate backing. You just had to touch the stove to see if it was hot.” “Just be obedient. Violet takes care of her people. Cross her, and she’ll end your career.” “You’re eating the crumbs off her family’s table, Gemma, yet you tried to outshine her. Look in the mirror.” “Exactly. What kind of ‘good girl’ spends that much time at a luxury gym anyway? Clearly, her mind isn’t on the company.” The sheer volume of their malicious, deeply misogynistic venom snapped something inside me. I shot a glacial glare across the bullpen. “There are cameras in this office. You want to keep spewing defamatory slander? Because my lawyer would love to hear it.” The sycophants visibly recoiled, their mouths snapping shut. But Violet stepped forward, dripping with fake sympathy. “I’m only doing this for your own good, Gemma. The job market is brutal right now. Where else are you going to go?” She reached out, attempting to grab my hands in a faux-sisterly gesture. “I’ve always felt a connection with you. If you just admit you were wrong today, we can still be best friends.” I picked up the iced Americano from my desk and launched the contents directly at her chest. “I don’t recall ever scraping the bottom of the barrel for ‘friends’ like you,” I said, my voice eerily calm. “You took a photo with Mr. Steward. Congratulations. Stop pretending you wear the crown.” The dark espresso bloomed violently across Violet’s pristine white designer dress. She shrieked, stomping her feet, pointing a trembling finger at me as a string of obscenities flew from her mouth. I didn’t have the patience for her theatrics. I pulled out my phone and dialed my uncle’s private number, needing to hear the truth straight from his mouth. “I’m calling Mr. Steward right now to report someone dragging his name through the mud.” The line rang. And rang. And went to voicemail. I tried twice more. Nothing. Even the coworkers who had stayed quiet couldn’t help but pity me now. “Gemma, stop embarrassing yourself. Mr. Steward is the Chairman of a global conglomerate. Why would he pick up a call from a junior sales rep?” “His number is listed in the executive directory, sure, but the only person here who has ever actually gotten through to him is Violet.” “Just stop acting.” At that precise moment, Violet pulled out her own phone, her eyes locked onto mine with a predatory gleam. Nice try, I thought to myself. Let’s see how far you take this charade. But a second later, the air was knocked from my lungs. The call connected. The voice pouring through the speaker was undeniably my uncle’s. A cold dread coiled in my stomach. 03 “Violet. Is something the matter?” “Daddy…” her voice morphed into a sickeningly sweet, infantile whine. “I just missed you so much. Are you coming home for dinner tonight?” “I have a business dinner. Next time.” … Later, at The Foundry, those words played on a relentless loop in my mind. I knew that voice better than my own. It was Uncle Jonathan. But why did she call him ‘Daddy’? And more importantly, why didn’t he correct her? Did my uncle actually authorize my banishment to Seattle? My personal trainer had to correct my form three times before I finally dropped the kettlebells and punished myself with a brutal five-mile sprint on the treadmill. Sweating and breathless, I stepped off the machine, intending to call my uncle again. But as I approached the lobby, I heard a familiar, grating voice. “There’s a member here named Gemma. I’m here to process the cancellation of her account,” Violet demanded, glaring down at the young receptionist. The girl looked entirely bewildered. “Ma’am, cancellations require the member to be present with their ID.” Violet slammed her hand on the marble counter. “Get me your manager. Do you want to stay in business? I can have this place shut down by tomorrow morning.” Before the poor receptionist could hit the panic button, I stepped out of the shadows. “Nobody is touching my account.” Violet flinched, genuinely startled to see me. “Why aren’t you on a plane? You were supposed to land in Seattle an hour ago!” I wiped my face with a towel, offering a cold smile. “The Crestview account is in its critical negotiation phase. If I leave now, I’m just handing my commission over to someone else. I’m not stupid.” Violet’s face contorted through shades of red and purple. “You’re a subordinate! Defying a direct executive order is insubordination! You’re completely out of control!” Because I was a VIP member, the commotion had drawn the attention of Roxy, the club’s owner. Sensing an audience, Violet puffed up her chest. “I am Gemma’s superior. She is under investigation for embezzling corporate funds to pay for this twenty-five-thousand-dollar membership. I demand you wire the prorated amount to my account immediately, or I will involve the authorities.” A visceral disgust washed over me. “Roxy, please ignore her. She’s completely unhinged. This has nothing to do with my company.” Roxy, a formidable woman who had dealt with every breed of entitled elite in the city, looked Violet up and down. “Ma’am,” Roxy said, her voice like steel. “Even if you are her boss, how she spends her time and money outside of office hours is her business. If you genuinely believe she committed corporate fraud, I suggest you call the police.” “Fine! I’ll call them right now!” “Do it,” I challenged, pulling out my own phone. “Let’s get them down here.” The sheer panic in Violet’s eyes was impossible to hide. The bluff had been called. She spun on her heel, her face burning, and marched toward the glass doors. “You’re going to regret this, Gemma. I’m going to make you pay.” I offered a dismissive wave. “I’ll be waiting.” 04 The very next morning, she delivered on her threat. I was halfway through my commute when the email from HR hit my inbox. To all staff: Gemma has been terminated, effective immediately, due to severe insubordination and refusal to relocate, which has severely impacted business operations. To absolutely no one’s surprise, my entire client portfolio—including the fifty-million-dollar Crestview contract I had spent months nurturing—was officially reassigned to Violet. Sophie called me, crying. “It’s so unfair, Gemma. It’s literal daylight robbery. She just wanted your commissions.” She wants my portfolio? I smiled to myself, staring out the window of my Uber. Violet didn’t have the intellect or the pedigree to close a deal like Crestview. The night before, my uncle had finally returned my call. I had told him, quite simply, that my little experiment was over. “Finally,” he had chuckled. “I wondered how long you’d last playing in the mud. The Managing Director’s chair has been waiting for you.” The Crestview signing ceremony had been in the works for two months. Today, the entire executive suite was dressed to the nines. Derek, the VP, hovered like a desperate moth around Violet, who was draped in a sapphire blue gown, acting as if she had personally built the company from the ground up. The moment I walked through the double doors of the banquet hall, the two of them froze. “Gemma?” Derek snarled, marching toward me. “You were fired. You have zero security clearance to be here. Security!” I slowly removed my sunglasses, meeting his gaze with absolute icy calm. “I’m here to take over the company.” “Take over the company?” Violet laughed—a high, grating sound that echoed through the room. “The Crestview deal is done. My father authorized me as the acting director of this branch. Who the hell do you think you are, waltzing in here with this psychotic delusion?” Derek immediately jumped in to defend his queen. “Mr. Steward is grooming Violet for the throne. She is the rightful heir to the entire conglomerate.” The executives in the room murmured in awe, showering Violet with sickening praise. “No wonder she carries herself with such grace. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree!” “To send his own daughter to the trenches—Mr. Steward really trusts Derek to guide her.” “I can’t believe Gemma actually showed her face. The sheer audacity.” The cacophony of insults washed over me, leaving no mark. Violet, drunk on the validation, pointed toward the doors. “Security! Clear the room. Throw this trash out onto the street!” Two burly guards began moving toward me. Moving with deliberate, excruciating slowness, I reached into my designer tote. I pulled out a heavy, custom-milled platinum embosser and set it gently on the nearest cocktail table. “The Chairman’s personal corporate seal is in my possession,” I said, my voice carrying effortlessly across the silent room. “The only person authorized to sign the Crestview contract today is me.” Derek’s face turned violently red. “You stole the corporate seal! You deranged little thief, I’ll have you thrown in federal prison!” A flicker of genuine terror crossed Violet’s eyes, but she desperately tried to hold the facade. “It’s a fake! A prop! Do you really think you can scare us with a piece of metal?” The crowd began to buzz nervously. “The Chairman’s seal is kept in the penthouse vault at HQ. Only Mr. Steward touches it. There’s no way a fired sales rep could get her hands on it.” I arched an eyebrow, letting my gaze sweep over the room, ensuring every single person was looking at me. “This seal,” I said, enunciating every syllable, “was handed to me directly. By my uncle.”

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I stared at the glowing screen of my phone in the dead silence of my apartment, the blue light harsh against my exhausted eyes. It was past 2:00 AM, and a trending thread on Reddit’s r/TrueOffMyChest had suddenly snagged my attention. The original poster was claiming, with absolute, agonizing sincerity, that he had fallen hopelessly in love with five different women. All in the exact same day. He went into excruciating detail about the objects of his newfound affection: the young barista at the local boba shop, the DoorDash girl, his morning Uber driver, a quirky TikTok streamer, and, finally, his newly hired executive secretary. The comment section was a bloodbath of cynical internet humor. “Bro, loving one person in this economy is exhausting enough. You’re trying to roster five?” one top comment read. “This is honestly terrifying. It’s giving severe attachment issues,” another user chimed in. “You order a burrito and fall in love with the delivery girl? You get in an Uber and want to marry the driver? Seek therapy.” But as I scrolled through the digital roasting, a quiet, hysterical realization bloomed in my chest. I knew a secret none of these keyboard warriors did. Those five distinct women? They were all me. Because in order to survive in this city and keep my bank account out of the red, I was currently juggling five different jobs. And the tragically earnest poster getting crucified in the comments? That had to be my boss. The billionaire CEO who suffered from a documented, severe case of prosopagnosia—face blindness. 1 I had just kicked off my shoes after finishing my late-night side hustle when the post popped up on my feed. [Title: I think I’ve fallen in love with five women at the same time. What do I do?] Normally, I scrolled past relationship drama. I didn’t have the luxury of time for romance; time was money. But as I went to close the app, the OP’s avatar caught my eye. It was a very specific, pretentious geometric logo. Wait. Is that Payne? My boss, Payne Sinclair? I clicked back into the thread, my fatigue momentarily vanishing. His narrative style was… uniquely unhinged. He explained that within a single twenty-four-hour window, he had been utterly captivated by a boba barista, a DoorDash rider, an Uber driver, a TikToker, and his new secretary. [This morning, both my Lamborghini and my Porsche refused to start. I had to resort to an Uber. The driver was this woman with a fiercely focused energy. But what really sealed the deal was the graceful, poetic way she rolled down her window and absolutely destroyed the lineage of a guy who tried to cut us off. It was beautiful.] The comments were relentless. “Which Wattpad billionaire romance did this guy escape from? ‘My Porsche wouldn’t start’? Bro, where’s the Rolls-Royce?” “The reason you fell for her is wild. She cussed out a dude in traffic and that did it for you?” Payne had actually replied to that one: [The Rolls-Royce is in the shop for detailing. And she didn’t just cuss him out. I told her I was running late for a crucial board meeting, and she defied the laws of physics to get me there on time. She was protecting my schedule. She cares about me.] I sat on my lumpy mattress, staring at the ceiling in stunned silence. This morning, I had been doing my usual 5:00 AM Uber shifts. By some cruel twist of algorithmic fate, I had picked up my own boss. His gated community had a ridiculous speed limit, and just getting out of the neighborhood took ten minutes. He had a meeting at ten. I had to clock in at the office by nine-thirty. I was driving like a stunt double in a Fast & Furious movie. If anyone tried to merge into my lane, I verbally dismantled them. I got us both to the high-rise with two minutes to spare. That was how Payne Sinclair fell in love with me? Before I could even process the absurdity, I refreshed the page. He had updated the post. [Because I was so distracted by the memory of the Uber driver, I couldn’t stomach the thought of going out for a proper lunch. I just ordered delivery. When the DoorDash girl arrived at my corporate lobby, some creep was harassing a woman on the sidewalk. My delivery driver took off her helmet and launched it in a perfect, parabolic arc, nailing the creep right in the back of the head. It was so badass. I am obsessed. The best part? She was holding my Thai food in her other hand, and she didn’t spill a single drop.] The comment section was losing its mind. “‘Couldn’t stomach a proper lunch so I ordered delivery.’ Ah yes, the male capacity for making excuses is truly boundless.” “So you fell in love again? What happened to the Uber driver? Are we over her already?” Payne replied immediately: [I still love the Uber driver very much. We are currently at two women.] I put the phone down, grabbed a towel, and went to take a shower. Mid-shampoo, my phone buzzed on the sink. It was the manager of the boba shop. “Jill, you only worked a two-hour shift today. Do you even want your paycheck this week?” I didn’t even bother rinsing the suds out of my hair before going on the defensive. “I did four hours’ worth of prep in those two hours, and I didn’t even charge you overtime. Plus, some guy practically choked to death in your lobby today and I gave him the Heimlich. I saved you a massive lawsuit. You’re welcome.” The manager paused. “Fair point. See you tomorrow. Don’t be late.” He hung up. I wrapped a towel around myself, picked up my phone, and saw another update on Reddit. [After work, I needed something sweet to calm my nerves, so I went to a boba shop. The barista there… her eyes looked so familiar. It felt like I had known her in a past life. I was staring at her, trying to figure it out, and I got so flustered that I inhaled a tapioca pearl right into my windpipe. I nearly died. But she vaulted over the counter and saved my life. I think I love her too.] [This feeling of having my heart pulled in so many directions is agony. A friend told me to just doomscroll on TikTok to distract myself. I did. I found this streamer. She is incredible. She can balance an entire dining chair on her chin while reciting the alphabet backward.] I stepped out of the bathroom and nearly tripped over the ring light I used for my streams. The comment section had officially turned into a circus. “This is unhinged. You’re just falling for every woman you make eye contact with.” “If you’re such a rich CEO, act like it. Call your secretary right now and demand background checks on all of them. Assert dominance.” Payne actually responded to that one too. [I absolutely cannot do that. Because I think I’m in love with my secretary, too. She is fiercely competent, and today she helped me yell at the board of directors. I really, really like her.] Before I accepted the job at Sinclair Holdings, the senior staff had warned me. The man at the top was brilliant, but he had face blindness. Because of his inability to recognize people, he had accidentally fired seven secretaries in the past two years, mistaking them for interns or trespassers. I was the eighth. On my first day, I made sure my massive corporate ID badge was pinned right at eye level. When I walked into his office, I said, “Good morning, Mr. Sinclair. I am your new executive secretary, Jill Gallagher.” He had looked up from his mahogany desk, his eyes lingering on my face without truly seeing it, before nodding. “Jill… hard to break, highly valued. Good name.” And I lived up to it. My goal in life was simple. Make money. Make a lot of money. 2 I took the corporate job not just for the competitive salary, but for the predictable schedule. Nine to five, with a strict two-hour lunch break. It fit perfectly into my ecosystem of survival. Wake up at 5:00 AM. Drive Uber until 8:30. Clock in at the corporate office at 9:30. Use my two-hour lunch break to run high-surge DoorDash orders in the financial district. Clock out at 5:00 PM. Head straight to the boba shop to shake teas for three hours. Go home, turn on the ring light at 9:00 PM, and stream ridiculous balancing acts for tips. Every minute of my day was monetized. My savings account was finally starting to look like a safety net instead of a countdown to eviction. Everything was going exactly according to plan. Except for the part where my billionaire boss was falling in love with my entire fragmented existence. The Reddit thread was going viral. The comments were getting sharper, the internet tearing into him with glee. “I’m struggling to text one girl back, and this dude is out here assembling the Avengers of crushes.” “Men who perceive every transactional interaction as romantic are a menace to society. She gave you your pad thai, bro, she doesn’t want your hand in marriage.” “If you’re so rich, stop whining on the internet and do something about it. Give the secretary a raise. Drop a grand on the streamer’s live. Tip your drivers.” I was reading that exact comment when my phone chimed with a text from Payne. “Miss Gallagher, your performance has been exceptional. Effective immediately, I am bumping your salary by 30%.” I physically leaped off my mattress. Seconds later, my Uber app dinged. A retroactive $100 tip. Then the DoorDash app. Another massive tip. A DM popped up on my TikTok account. “Hi. I find your content mesmerizing. When are you going live next? I would like to sponsor your stream.” My fingers were visibly shaking as I typed back a response. Then, my phone buzzed again. It was the executive Slack channel. Payne had tagged his chief of staff. “Please arrange for a custom floral arrangement and a cash bonus to be delivered to the boba shop on 5th Avenue tomorrow morning.” The chief of staff replied instantly: “Right away, sir.” I sat on my bed, clutching my head, my brain short-circuiting as it tried to process the influx of cash. After a few minutes of frantic pacing, I opened a burner Reddit account and left a comment on his thread. [OP, ignore the haters. I believe you. I understand exactly what you are going through. You need to follow your heart. Be bold! Show them you’re serious! And remember, the best way to show a woman you care is to support her financially. Throw money at the problem. Do not hesitate!] From that day on, I essentially became the phantom orbiting Payne Sinclair’s entire life. The next morning, I managed to snag his Uber request again. Compared to his cold, detached demeanor the first time, today, the man sitting in my backseat seemed… different. As soon as he got in, the expensive, cedar-and-bergamot scent of his cologne filled the car. His hair was meticulously styled, and his cufflinks caught the morning light. He glanced at the driver profile on the app, then looked up at the rearview mirror, a spark of genuine delight in his eyes. “You’re the same driver from yesterday, right?” I kept my eyes on the road, lowering my voice slightly. “Yeah. That’s me.” Payne’s smile widened, softening the sharp angles of his jaw. “Two days in a row in a city this big. You have to admit, that feels like fate.” I had to suppress a snort. Fate had nothing to do with it; it was the sheer, unadulterated finger-speed of a woman who had spent years fighting for the best gigs on the app. I drove with my usual terrifying efficiency, pulling up to the corporate plaza. I tapped my phone screen and turned around. He leaned forward, looking eager. “Do you think I could get your num—” “That’ll be $136,” I interrupted, pointing to the app. “Five stars would be appreciated.” As soon as he stepped onto the curb, I slammed the gas, ducked into an underground parking garage two blocks away, stripped off my casual driving jacket to reveal my tailored silk blouse, and sprinted into the lobby to clock in. The morning at the office was mostly normal, aside from the fact that I caught Payne staring wistfully at me through the glass walls of his office at least four times. At noon, I hit the streets for DoorDash. Thanks to my aggressive refreshing, I snagged his lunch order from a high-end sushi place. Result: A $200 tip. In the afternoon, I ran a few local courier errands on my way back from a corporate meeting. In the evening, I shook cocktails of sugar and tapioca while Payne stood awkwardly by the register, trying to make small talk before leaving another absurd tip. At night, I went live. A user named “T_SINC” dropped the equivalent of five hundred dollars in digital gifts while I balanced a broom on my chin. It was exhausting, but my bank account had never looked so beautiful. I was counting my digital earnings, my hands practically cramping, when I checked Reddit. Payne had posted a new update. [Loving five women is emotionally draining. But the strangest part is… in my mind, they are all starting to blur together. They’re beginning to look like the exact same person.] Because his previous posts had gone viral, the internet descended on this one like vultures. “The CEO is still at it! Bro, are you just projecting your mommy issues onto a specific type of working-class brunette?” Payne fired back: [I am taking this very seriously. My feelings for all of them are pure.] “Pure? You’re emotionally two-timing five women! You just have a type and you’re collecting them like Pokémon.” “If you’ve been pining for this long, make a move. Give your secretary a corporate card. Tell the DoorDash girl you’ll pay off her student loans. Drop a grand on the streamer and ask her out to dinner.” Alarm bells started ringing in my head. Sure enough, ten minutes later, a DM popped up on my streaming account from T_SINC. “Hi. You’re incredibly talented. Could we exchange numbers?” I hesitated, my thumb hovering over the screen. But the capitalist in me won out. I sent him a Google Voice number. To his credit, Payne was a complete gentleman. No weird comments, no crossing boundaries. He just asked why I was always streaming so late at night. I typed back, “I have a lot of day jobs. Just trying to stay afloat.” “That’s awful,” he replied. “You have to work all day and stream all night? Your boss must be a tyrant. He sounds like a terrible person.” 3 You have no idea, I thought, nodding to myself. Playing into the algorithm’s love for a sob story, I crafted a tragic backstory for my streamer persona. An absent dad, a mountain of medical debt for my mom, a younger brother trying to get through college. A shattered American dream. It worked like a charm. Payne’s sympathy was palpable through the screen. I pressed my advantage. “But it’s okay. Knowing there are generous people like you watching my streams makes it worth it. Your gifts really help.” Payne immediately promised he would be back every single night. “By the way,” he texted. “Can I ask your name?” “I’m… Jane,” I typed back. Over the course of the next month, Payne practically funded my entire existence. He drank enough boba to reach their highest VIP tier. He became a legendary “whale” on the delivery and rideshare apps, known locally as the guy who tipped 200%. He had successfully acquired the contact info for every single one of my alter egos. I interacted with this man in some capacity half a dozen times a day, and thanks to his broken facial recognition, he remained blissfully oblivious. To keep my stories straight, I built a mental spreadsheet. The delivery girl was a broke college student. The streamer was the tragic heroine. But sometimes, the wires crossed. A few days ago, working as his secretary, I had tried to dodge a weekend shift by claiming I needed to visit my sick father. Payne had looked up sharply from his tablet. “Miss Gallagher? Didn’t you tell me during your interview that your father passed away when you were seven?” I froze, the blood draining from my face. “My… stepdad. He stepped up.” By some miracle of my own fast-talking and his inherent gullibility, he bought it. In fact, my “dedication to my family” only seemed to make him respect me more. Which was great for my paycheck, but terrible for office politics. The other assistants were starting to sharpen their knives. “Jill. Take this contract to the downtown branch.” Courtney tossed a heavy manila folder onto my keyboard. She was the quintessential nepotism baby—her father sat on the board of directors, and she treated the administrative pool like her personal sorority pledges. The other girls in the office had warned me to keep my head down. “She’s had a crush on Mr. Sinclair since they were kids. Any woman who breathes his air gets targeted.” I had rolled my eyes at that. “Why target the women? For all we know, he’s not even into girls. Where’s the feminism?” But Courtney didn’t care about feminism. She cared about territory. “Did you hear me, Jill? I need this downtown in two hours.” I looked out the floor-to-ceiling windows. The sky was the color of bruised iron, and rain was lashing against the glass in aggressive sheets. “It’s a monsoon out there. Can’t you just use the corporate courier app?” “No. I want you to do it.” She crossed her arms, her designer heels clicking against the hardwood. I let out a long, slow breath. “Fine. Open the courier app and request a runner. Put it under the corporate account.” “Are you deaf? I said you are taking it.” “I heard you perfectly.” Without breaking eye contact, I reached under my desk, pulled out my bright yellow rainproof courier jacket, and zipped it up right over my silk blouse. I gave her a dazzling, corporate-approved smile. “Thanks for the gig, Courtney. Good looking out.” It was raining, which meant surge pricing. Delivering this folder across town would net me an easy fifty bucks. If she wanted to play petty power games, I was going to get paid for it. As I waited for the elevator, my phone buzzed. A coworker texting me: “Omg, you broke Courtney’s brain. She’s practically foaming at the mouth in the breakroom.” I didn’t care. I finished the delivery, internally calculating how I was going to force Courtney to give me a five-star rating on the app, and headed back to headquarters. But the moment I walked through the revolving doors, water dripping from my yellow jacket, my heart stopped. Damn it. Payne was standing in the lobby. What was a CEO doing loitering by the security desks in the middle of a workday? “Jane? What are you doing here?” My breath caught in my throat. I froze, dripping rainwater onto the pristine marble floor. His eyes lit up, and he walked toward me, completely ignoring the security guards. “Are you making a delivery? How is the fund for your brother’s tuition going? I meant it when I said I could write you a check.” I didn’t say a word. Cold sweat mixed with the rain on the back of my neck. He has face blindness. How the hell did he recognize me? “How did you know it was me?” I asked, my voice tight. Payne stopped a few feet away, suddenly looking shy. He shoved his hands into his tailored pockets. “I… I still can’t really picture your face. But I remembered the way you stand. The silhouette. And the jacket.” The corner of my mouth twitched. I forced a laugh, desperately looking around for an exit route. But the universe hates me, and at that exact moment, Courtney stepped out of the executive elevator. “Jill? You’re back already?” Courtney sneered. “Jill? Wait, I thought your name was Jane?” Payne looked between us, utterly bewildered. Courtney was closing the distance, looking ready to cause a scene. Panic seized me. I lunged forward, shoved the signed delivery receipt directly into Courtney’s chest, and inhaled deeply. “Hi, your delivery is complete, please remember to rate five stars—ACHOO!” I let out an ungodly, theatrical sneeze, spraying a fine mist of (fake) saliva in her direction. Courtney shrieked, stumbling backward in horror, wiping at her face. “You are disgusting!” She spun on her heel and sprinted for the restrooms. I slowly turned back to Payne. I gave him a weak, trembling smile. He stared at me, his brow furrowed in deep confusion. “Who exactly are you?”

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The corporate betrothal between Theo Sinclair and me was suffocated by a thick, suffocating layer of awkwardness right from the start. He always wore this rigid, stony expression, desperate to draw a line in the sand. “You are my little sister!” That was his favorite excuse, his ultimate shield against me. “How can a little sister become a wife?” Whenever those words left his mouth, his eyes would dart away, terrified of meeting mine. On the surface, I played the part of the compliant girl who understood his boundaries perfectly. But in the dark quiet of my own mind, I was already writing a different script. The very next day, I brought home the boyfriend I’d supposedly been dating for ages. Right in front of Theo, I looped my arm through my new prize and smiled brightly. “Hey, Theo. Come meet your new brother-in-law.” 1 When I leaned in for a kiss, Theo pushed me away. Again. “Noelle, since the day you were brought into this house, I have only ever looked at you as a little sister to protect.” “A sister is a sister. She cannot magically transform into a wife.” His jaw was set. Hard lines, rigid posture. It was highly amusing, really, watching him deliver this righteous, puritanical sermon while my crimson lipstick was still smeared across the pulse point of his neck. I sat obediently beside him, my gaze lowering past his tailored belt to his lap. Look at this rich boy. Pitching a tent in the middle of a Tuesday afternoon. We had been officially engaged for three months. Instead of moving forward, our relationship had plummeted off a cliff. And it was all because of one single sentence spat out by his best friend, Damian: “Dude, you practically raised her with your own two hands. How is marrying her any different from marrying your actual flesh-and-blood sister? It’s sick.” Theo had, in fact, raised me. When I was a toddler, the very first word that stumbled out of my mouth wasn’t Mom or Dad. It was Theo. My parents had discarded me long before I could form memories. They were ghosts haunting the upper echelons of the global elite, jet-setting between continents, far too busy for a child. The nannies they hired couldn’t have cared less; their only metric for success was that I didn’t die on their watch. When Theo came over to my estate one afternoon, he found me sitting on a filthy marble floor. The milk in the bottle clutched to my chest was ice-cold. It had already curdled and soured. I was so small, so devastatingly neglected, that I was practically withering away under the nannies’ indifferent eyes. I never spoke. My parents, in their rare moments of attention, preferred to suspect I was intellectually disabled rather than admit I was severely depressed. Theo saw the tragedy of my existence. Without asking permission, he simply scooped me up in his arms, carried me back to the Sinclair estate, and took it upon himself to keep me alive. That arrangement lasted for years. Our families, old money and deeply intertwined, were thrilled. A marriage alliance between us was the most logical, profitable conclusion. Theo and I ate at the same table, slept under the same roof, just like we did when we were kids. Everything was seamless. Until Damian’s little “it’s like marrying your sister” comment jolted Theo awake like a bucket of ice water. The guilt consumed him. He spent half his nights pacing the floor, terrified he was committing some grave, unnatural sin by desiring the girl he had protected. He practically wanted to take up monkhood to cleanse his soul of the urge to taste forbidden fruit. He moved out of the master suite overnight, opting to ruin his back on the living room sofa. If I so much as walked to the kitchen in a silk camisole, he looked ready to gouge his own eyes out. Every single day, it was the same broken record: A sister cannot be a wife. He started dressing like he was bracing for an arctic winter. Thermal layers under slacks, sweaters buttoned to the collarbone. He looked as though he’d rather castrate himself than give me an inch of access. It was starting to give me a complex. Determined to reclaim my pride, I spent hours today perfecting a devastatingly chic look. I padded my bra. I pushed the girls up until they defied gravity. I walked into his corporate headquarters playing the role of the devoted, doting fiancée dropping off a homemade lunch. I was going for an impromptu office-play vibe. I let my fingers brush against his knuckles, pretending it was an accident. When I leaned over his mahogany desk, I made sure my hair trailed lightly across his cheek. After a few calculated moves, Theo was completely intoxicated. He lost his grip on reality. But right in the middle of kissing me breathless, it was as if the Holy Ghost possessed him. He shoved me back, gasping for air, and started reciting his sisters can’t be wives gospel all over again. If you’re so pure, then why is the zipper on your slacks fighting for its life? Catching the direction of my gaze, a furious, humiliated flush crept up Theo’s neck. He pointed a trembling finger at his office door. His voice was a ragged rasp. “Get out!” 2 I was evicted. I stood in the sterile hallway of the executive floor, absolutely seething. In my head, I had already murdered Theo in eight hundred different, creative ways. I took a deep, shaky breath. Once I was done mentally assassinating Theo, I pivoted to cursing out his loud-mouthed friend. I shot a venomous glare at the closed oak door of the CEO’s office and scoffed under my breath. “Whatever. Who needs you.” I spun on my heel to storm off—and slammed face-first into a solid wall of muscle. I lost my footing entirely and went crashing down onto the carpeted floor. My tailbone screamed in agony. I was pretty sure my ass just died. God, that hurts! Tears of pure, unadulterated pain pricked the corners of my eyes. The man I collided with panicked. He dropped to his knees beside me, his hands hovering, unsure where to touch. “God, I’m so sorry. I wasn’t looking where I was going.” He retrieved my discarded stiletto from the floor and carefully, gently, slipped it back onto my foot. Then, he offered his hands to pull me up. I leaned heavily against his chest, catching a faint, expensive drift of cedarwood and bergamot cologne. The impact had thoroughly rattled me. He cleared his throat, the awkwardness radiating off him in waves as he desperately searched for small talk. “I don’t think I’ve seen you around here before. Are you a new hire?” I turned my head slowly to look at him. Spite was a bitter pill on my tongue. Without thinking, I fired back: “I’m Theo Sinclair’s little sister.” When our eyes met, he froze. A sharp intake of breath. “Wow. Small world. I’m Theo’s brother-in-law!” The moment those words left his mouth, a suffocating silence fell between us. His face contorted in sheer panic as he realized what he just said. He fumbled over his words, trying to backtrack. “I—I mean, small world. I’m Theo’s best friend. I’m Damian.” Hearing that name, I paused. My eyes raked over him, taking in the sharp jawline, the expensive suit. A slow, wicked smile curled in the shadows of my mind. I let my body go completely limp, melting against his chest like I had no bones at all. “I think I twisted my ankle,” I whispered, looking up at him through my lashes. “Could you take me home?” 3 Damian was a nervous wreck. His entire body was rigid, strung tighter than piano wire. A violent red flush crept up his neck and consumed his ears. He wouldn’t even look me in the eye. “Theo… never really mentioned having a little sister.” I looked at him, my expression hovering somewhere between a smile and a smirk. “Really? I’m quite sure he brought me up to you.” And you laughed in his face and told him he was sick for eating from his own family tree. You son of a bitch. I could have strangled him right then and there. Damian stole a quick glance at me, then forced a dry, hollow laugh. “Right, right. Now that I think about it, he did mention he had a very… cute… younger sister.” You don’t remember shit. When the engagement was finalized, our families had kept it incredibly private—just a quiet dinner with the immediate relatives. Damian hadn’t been invited. He had never seen my face. Now, Damian was bending over backward to play the gentleman. He practically tripped over himself to open my car door. He rushed into a pharmacy to buy expensive cooling gel for my ankle. When he finally parked outside my luxury apartment building, he awkwardly asked for my number. He threw out a hurried “See you around” and turned to bolt like a dog off a leash. I reached out and hooked my fingers onto the fabric of his shoulder. “Aren’t you going to help me apply the gel?” Damian froze in his tracks. His gaze dragged down, painfully slow, landing on my exposed ankle. “Is… is that really appropriate?” I tilted my head. “Are you planning to hit and run? Aren’t you going to take responsibility for injuring me?” “Responsibility! Yes, of course I want to take responsibility!” Damian blurted out instantly. “I just didn’t want to overstep.” He supported my weight as we took the elevator up. Once inside my apartment, he looked around like he was walking through a minefield. In my pocket, my phone was having a seizure. It was a relentless barrage of texts from Theo. [I’m sorry. I was too harsh earlier. Are you mad at me?] [I wanted to apologize right away. When I went out to the hall to find you, you were already gone.] [Noelle, please don’t do things like that anymore. I hate it when we fight over this.] [When you were little, you used to follow me everywhere. You called me ‘Theo’ with such trust. Can’t we just go back to how things used to be? Please?] Did you pop a boner for me when I was little too? Fucking hypocrite. I didn’t even have the energy to type out a reply. Damian was watching me, his eyes darting between my face and my pocket. He tried to sound incredibly casual, failing miserably. “Texting your boyfriend?” I tossed the phone onto the kitchen island and shook my head. “No.” Just my fiancé. Damian let out an audible sigh of relief. I stepped closer to him. “Do you care whether I have a boyfriend or not?” The question hit him like a physical blow. He turned a spectacular shade of crimson, stammering, completely lost for words. I didn’t let him breathe. “…Do you want to be my boyfriend?” Damian stopped breathing. He stared at my face for a long, heavy moment. Then, the blushing intensified. When he finally spoke, his words tripped over each other. “I mean… if you’re okay with it, I would absolutely love to be your boyfriend…” “It’s just, I’ve never really dated anyone before. I don’t even have female friends. I’m not very good at… talking to girls.” My phone buzzed against the marble counter. The screen lit up with back-to-back messages from Theo. [I’m in the elevator. I’m almost at your door.] [Can you forgive me? I brought you that strawberry shortcake from the bakery you love.] I tore my eyes away from the screen and looked at Damian. “My brother is coming upstairs.” Damian blinked, suddenly remembering that his entire reason for being downtown was to meet Theo at the office. But he had quite literally crashed into me and followed me home in a haze. He hadn’t even seen Theo yet. “Oh, right. I actually needed to talk to him about something.” Seeing that he completely missed the gravity of the situation, I spelled it out for him. “Do you want to hide? I mean… look at the time.” I gestured toward the floor-to-ceiling windows, where the city skyline was already swallowed by the dark. “If he finds the two of us alone in my apartment at night, he might get the wrong idea.” Damian processed this. A look of grim realization washed over his face. He nodded. I grabbed his wrist and dragged him down the hall, straight into my bedroom. I pointed at my massive king-sized bed. “Get in.” I pulled back the blush-pink duvet, releasing a cloud of sweet, feminine perfume into the air. Damian was completely dizzy. By the time his brain caught up with his body, he was already lying flat on his back in my bed, buried under my blankets. From the front door, the heavy, rhythmic thud of Theo knocking echoed through the apartment. “Noelle? Can I come in?” 4 By the time I walked out to open the door, Damian had dutifully pulled the covers all the way up to his chin. He was drowning in the scent of my expensive lotions and silk sheets. It was subtle, but intoxicating. A dumb, euphoric smile plastered itself across Damian’s face. But before he could take another deep breath, Theo’s deep, authoritative voice carried through the living room. “I tolerate your little games when we’re at home, but what on earth possessed you to kiss me in the middle of my office?” Damian’s euphoric smile shattered. He lay there, paralyzed, wondering if he had suffered a concussion and was hallucinating. In the living room, I crossed my arms and glared at Theo. “Why can’t I kiss you? Honestly, I’d like to bang you on your desk!” Theo pinched the bridge of his nose. He looked physically pained, like a man being tortured for state secrets. “We grew up in the same house! I practically raised you. I cannot do those things to you!” Under the pink duvet, Damian clapped both hands over his mouth in sheer terror, too terrified to even draw a breath. Theo and I stood in a suffocating standoff. Seeing that I wasn’t going to back down, he finally cracked. He let out a ragged sigh, his shoulders slumping in defeat, and held out the pristine white pastry box. “I went to that bakery you love. I stood in line for forty minutes.” “I heard the strawberries are exceptionally sweet today.” He was desperately trying to change the subject, terrified of where the argument was heading. I didn’t even look at the box. “Do I look like a toddler to you? You break my heart, and you think the price of admission is a slice of cake?” Theo’s eyes softened. He reached out, pulling me flush against his chest, and pressed a tender, lingering kiss to my forehead. “Then what does my girl want?” his voice dropped, a soft rumble in his chest. “Bags? Diamonds?” I shook my head. I slid my arms up to loop around his neck, forcing his head down so our mouths were agonizingly close. “I just want to finish the kiss we started this afternoon.” “Please, Theo…” Theo’s spine went rigid. His instinct was to shove me away. But the memory of how cold he had been lately, the harshness of his rejection in the office—it weighed on him. He couldn’t bring himself to push me away again. His hands drifted down to grip my waist. He walked me backward, guiding me through the open door of the bedroom, right toward the edge of the bed. The mattress dipped under our shifting weight. Lying just inches away on the other side of the bed, Damian’s soul left his body. He was stiff as a wooden plank, praying to a God he didn’t believe in that he wouldn’t be discovered. In that moment, he genuinely wished for a swift death. I traced the line of Theo’s lapel, my fingers hooking onto the knot of his silk tie, pulling it loose. Theo’s large hand clamped down over mine, stopping me. “Noelle, no…” his voice was a tortured rasp. “We’ll be quiet,” I whispered, a dark promise. “I won’t tell anyone.” Theo’s breathing turned heavy, jagged. He was teetering on the absolute edge of his control. He closed his eyes, taking a shuddering breath to claw back a shred of his sanity. “…You’re my sister.” He turned his head away, desperate to break the spell. And as he looked away, his eyes landed on the massive, human-sized lump under the duvet on the other side of the bed. He frowned, the haze of lust instantly vanishing. “What the hell is that?” Beneath the covers, Damian’s face was the color of ash. His eyes stared blankly ahead, completely hollowed out by despair. I smiled. A slow, terrifying smile. Without a second’s hesitation, I gripped the edge of the duvet and yanked it back. Zero warning. Damian didn’t even have time to flinch. He just lay there, perfectly rigid, looking like a corpse in a morgue. The look he gave me was utterly shattered. Pure, unadulterated devastation. I leaned over, wrapping my arm intimately around Damian’s neck, pressing my cheek against his shoulder. I looked up at Theo and purred. “Theo, meet your brother-in-law.” Damian’s heart stopped beating. He turned his head, moving in slow motion, until his eyes met Theo’s. Theo’s gaze was pitch-black, a terrifying, homicidal void. Damian forced a smile that looked more like a grimace of agony. “If I told you I was just taking a walk and stopped in for a rest… would you believe me?” Theo didn’t smile. He didn’t speak. His answer was a textbook, devastating right cross straight to Damian’s jaw. Damian’s eyes rolled into the back of his head, and he instantly descended into the sweet release of unconsciousness. I calmly reached for my phone and dialed. “Hello, is this the crematorium?” 5 Theo, despite his flaws, had a conscience. Seeing that Damian was still drawing breath and hadn’t technically expired yet, Theo decided that an immediate cremation might be considered poor etiquette. After a brief internal struggle, he hauled Damian into his SUV and drove him to the ER. Damian kept his eyes firmly shut, playing dead. He lay in the hospital bed for hours. Only when he heard the distinct click of the door closing behind Theo did he dare to peel one eye open. Confirming that the Grim Reaper had left the room, he let out a massive exhale. Before he could finish the breath, he turned his head—and nearly screamed. I was standing directly over him. Damian aggressively rubbed his temples, his face twisted in a mess of frustration, terror, and profound confusion. He wrestled with his words for a solid minute before hesitantly asking, “What exactly is the relationship between you and Theo?” “Brother and sister,” I replied smoothly. The moment those words hung in the air, Damian looked like he was going to throw up. “Your brother is engaged to be married.” I nodded. “I know. And I’m dating you, my new boyfriend.” The word ‘boyfriend’ acted like a cattle prod. Damian nearly launched himself out of the hospital bed. “I am not! I never said that! Don’t you dare put that on me!” He frantically checked the door, terrified Theo was lurking in the hallway. Whatever carnal desires he had harbored for me were entirely eradicated. The man was operating solely on survival instinct. I tapped my chin, pretending to think deeply. “So… does that mean my brother is actually my boyfriend?” Damian paled. “…Please stop telling ghost stories in broad daylight.” The way he looked at me slowly shifted from sheer terror to a strange, misplaced pity. In his mind, he was piecing together a tragic narrative: a twisted, psychologically damaged girl, raised in a gilded cage, trapped in a sick, taboo obsession with her surrogate older brother. Damian physically shivered as his imagination ran wild with this gothic romance. He chewed on his bottom lip, clearly conflicted, before leaning in to offer a solemn warning. “You’re going to destroy him, you know that?” Even after getting his jaw realigned, he was still defending Theo. The man had the health bar of a raid boss. A brutal punch to the face didn’t deter him; it seemed to increase his loyalty. A glutton for punishment. A textbook masochist. I genuinely wanted to laugh in his face. Damian took a deep, centering breath. With the noble resignation of a martyr marching to the guillotine, he looked at me and said: “Let your brother go. I will be your boyfriend.” In a span of ten seconds, the concept of ‘bro code’ had ascended to terrifying new heights. I let the silence stretch. Then, I smiled. “Okay.” I reached out, wrapping my fist in the fabric of his hospital gown, and yanked him forward so his face hovered inches from mine. “My brother owes me a kiss. You can pay his debt.” Damian squeezed his eyes shut, compliant and entirely submissive. “You know, for a guy who claimed he’s never dated, you seem pretty experienced,” I murmured, a teasing edge to my voice. Damian’s eyes fluttered open, narrowing slightly. “I’ve never dated you.” Behind me, the hospital door cracked open. Theo stood perfectly still in the doorway, watching me and Damian share an intimate, whispered exchange. His arms hung loosely at his sides, but his hands slowly curled into fists. The sickening sound of his knuckles cracking echoed loudly in the sterile room.

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “433119”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

My husband, the man who once reigned supreme as the most terrifying Boss in the entire gaming multiverse, staged his own death to make a clean getaway. To drown out the silence of my suddenly empty manor, I started picking up a few male players in the game world. It was a casual distraction, or so I told myself. One gilded afternoon, while I was tucked away in the solarium enjoying a meticulously prepared tea, the sky fractured. A global system announcement blared across every server: The Duke of Roses has fallen in battle. In that heartbeat, my throat tightened. A cold, visceral fear clawed at my chest. I was the Duchess, after all. But in this world of blood and strategy, I was nothing more than a “waste”—a decorative object with a pretty face who spent her days indulging in luxuries while others bled through dungeons. I didn’t do raids. I didn’t do combat. I was the porcelain doll in a house of glass. As I sat there, paralyzed by indecision, a frantic stream of “Bullet Chat” comments began to flicker across my vision—the collective consciousness of the players watching my life like a reality show. [Can we talk about the plot twist? The Male Lead faked his death just so he wouldn’t scare the Female Lead with his Boss identity. He’s going undercover as a regular player just to be near her? That “Power Couple” trope is giving me life.] [Ugh, look at the Duchess. She’s such a waste. She should just stay put and be a pretty flowerpot. The Boss gave her maximum clearance; she’s literally invincible in this domain. Why the hell did she wander into other dungeons just to get hunted like a common NPC?] [Honestly? The Boss should have just killed his wife to prove his resolve. She’s nothing but dead weight.] [Did you see the latest chapter? The Female Lead’s hand shook when she saw the Duchess hurting people. She let her go so many times out of pity. Finally, she just got annoyed with the Duchess’s persistence. One clean strike, and the Duchess’s head was off. Brutal.] The delicate macaron in my hand hit the floor with a soft thud. Right then and there, I made a decision: I was staying put. I would stay in this dungeon and play the part of the “Little Queen” until the world ended. It was safer that way. But as the game cycles rolled on, the number of men I “rescued” and brought back to the castle began to multiply. It was getting out of hand. Desperate, I pulled out the one relic my “dead” husband had left behind—the Enchanted Mirror. “Mirror, mirror,” I whispered, looking at the glass. “The players I’ve picked up are top-tier, but they’re all demanding I ‘take responsibility’ for them. I’m exhausted. What am I supposed to do?” The words had barely left my lips when the air in front of me tore open. Space itself groaned as a familiar figure ripped through the fabric of the reality from another dungeon, stepping into my room with a dark, thunderous expression. 1. My husband died. As one of the most enigmatic and powerful Bosses in the network, Lucius, the Duke of Roses, was supposedly slain by a mediocre party of players. I was… melancholic. The Enchanted Mirror tried to cheer me up: “Think of the silver lining, mistress! A promotion, a fortune, and a dead husband—you’ve hit the trifecta of luck! This is a day for celebration!” I sighed, the lemon sponge cake in my mouth suddenly tasting like ash. Suddenly being thrust into the role of the primary Boss was like being asked to solve multivariable calculus when I’d only just mastered basic addition. The Bullet Chat scrolled by: [Say what you want, the Duchess is dim-witted, but she’s breathtakingly beautiful.] [Beauty is useless in a horror dungeon. She hasn’t even killed an ant. Meanwhile, the Female Lead cleared her starter dungeon on day one and unlocked the Hidden Ending.] [No wonder the Male Lead is obsessed. Faking his death to be a ‘newbie player’ just to get close to the FL… the strongest Boss and the strongest Rookie? They’re literally soulmates.] The truth was a bit more complicated. When I first tested into the NPC academy, Lucius was already a legendary Boss. As a wood elf, I looked much younger than I was. He actually thought the System had become so depraved it was recruiting child labor. He spent two hours screaming at the System developers before he finally picked me up and carried me back to his castle. Only after several cross-checks did he realize he’d misjudged my age. But because Lucius had essentially kidnapped me on my first day of work, my assigned dungeon collapsed. No other Boss wanted to take me in—I was tainted goods. Feeling a rare flicker of guilt, Lucius kept me at Rosehaven Estate so I could at least collect a paycheck. To ease my mind, he told me I was the “face” of the estate. My only job was to eat, drink, and look beautiful to show off how high-quality our dungeon’s benefits were. Occasionally, players would mistake me for a key quest-giver. They’d hide me away in secret rooms or bribe me with strange, colorful candies. I knew they wanted clues, but I truly had nothing to give. Lucius used to get so angry, convinced I was ruining the “integrity” of his game design. That was how I became the Duchess. [“She has hair like moonlight and eyes more brilliant than any gem. Do not look into them, or you will soon discover where the red-and-white cakes come from…”] I bought them. At the bakery. But out here, everyone’s identity is a lie. After that lore entry was added, players started avoiding me like the plague. One day, bored out of my mind while the Head Butler and the maids were out hunting players, I cornered Lucius and demanded a real job. His hand paused as he adjusted his formal cravat. He looked at me with a gaze that flickered between pity and annoyance. “You’re still young, and your strength is…” He saw the spark of hope in my eyes and coughed. “Your strength has… immense potential.” “So, the most important thing for you right now is to simmer. To observe. To wait.” He sounded so convincing. But I felt a hollow ache in my chest. When the dungeons closed for maintenance, the other NPCs would swap war stories, but I had nothing to share. Seeing my silence, Lucius tossed me the Enchanted Mirror. He told me it knew everything. He lied. The mirror didn’t even know he was faking his own death. 2. On my first day as the reigning Boss, I accidentally picked up a man. A new game cycle had begun. I remembered the Bullet Chat saying I was invincible in this dungeon, and I decided to see if it was true. As the new batch of players materialized in the courtyard, I smoothed my skirts and walked right up to them. They froze, sweat beading on their foreheads. I tapped the shoulder of the player closest to me, wanting to ask if he’d mind hitting me with a low-level spell just to test my defenses. The next second, he let out a scream like a slaughtered pig. I blinked, confused. An older, more experienced player hissed, “Stay calm! It’s the Duchess! Don’t look at her eyes!” They all squeezed their eyes shut and started hurling items at me—holy water, iron daggers, enchanted stones. Everything bounced off me without leaving a scratch. The Bullet Chat didn’t lie! I was so thrilled that I picked up a small girl standing nearby and spun her around three times in celebration. Seeing their weapons fail, the players shrieked and scattered. Within seconds, the courtyard was empty, save for a breathtakingly handsome man and the trembling little girl in my arms. The man was stunning—more beautiful than any NPC I’d ever seen. His skin had that marble-cold paleness of someone who never saw the sun, and his ice-blue eyes were clear but vacant. When I looked closer, I realized his pupils weren’t focusing. He wasn’t running because he couldn’t see me. A damp warmth on my chest reminded me of the girl. She was tiny, maybe six or seven years old. As soon as I set her down, she covered her eyes with her hands and huddled at my feet like a terrified kitten. “Please,” she whimpered. “Don’t kill me. My mommy is waiting for me. She’s sick, and it hurts every day. I have to go back.” The first lesson they teach you at NPC school is: Never show mercy. But I wasn’t an NPC anymore. I was the Boss. And a Boss does whatever she wants. I knelt down beside her. “I have a hidden quest for you,” I whispered. “If you eat this little cake I made, you clear the dungeon instantly and get a ten-fold reward. Do you dare to take the challenge?” The girl kept her eyes squeezed shut, her face a mask of terror. She thought about it for a long time, then shook her head. “Uncle Kay said monsters always lie.” I sighed and pressed a piece of candy into her hand instead. “Fine. But when the ‘Great Hunt’ starts, I’m going to hide you.” Before she left, the girl gathered her courage and looked up. She stared at me, awestruck. “Sister… they said we shouldn’t look at your eyes. Is it because they’re too pretty?” I let out a genuine laugh. It was the first time I’d felt truly happy since I took the job. The girl ran off to find her team, and I turned to go back inside. At the castle gates, I finally lost my patience and turned to the player who had been shadowing me the whole time. It was the beautiful, blind man. “Listen, player,” I said, trying to sound as menacing as possible. “Respect the game. If you step one foot inside this castle, I will kill you.” Then, he walked right in. The Butler and the maids looked at each other, then at me. I was floored. NPCs need a ‘trigger condition’ to kill, but Bosses don’t. Still, I lacked the experience. I couldn’t just execute him. The man turned his head toward me with eerie precision. His pupils were still dilated, but I felt like I was being pinned down by a predator’s gaze. “Caspian,” he said softly. “That is my name.” “Duchess… you remind me of someone I used to know.” “May I call you Rose?” I stared at him. The nerve! And how did he know my name was Rosalind? “Rose, may I stay?” His voice was like silk, each word carrying a hypnotic pull that made my defenses crumble. My head spun, and before I knew it, my body had already betrayed me. “You may.” The Bullet Chat exploded: [Wait, why is the secret antagonist in the Duchess’s dungeon? Isn’t he the final Boss of the Female Lead’s ultimate arc?] [The Duchess is such a fool. That’s not a player; that’s one of the strongest Bosses in the game. He’s a High Siren. His whole thing is soul-manipulation.] [Did you guys skip the lore? The Duchess saved him when they were kids. He’s been obsessed with her for centuries. He finally got strong enough to take her, only to find out she was married. He must have seen the death announcement for the Duke and hauled ass over here.] [I don’t remember this in the original script?] [In the original, the Duchess was supposed to find out her husband faked his death, get pissed, and go hunt the FL. The Siren came by, but she wasn’t there. Later, when he heard the FL killed the Duchess, he designed a ‘Hell Mode’ dungeon specifically to torture the FL. Wait… why is she still here?] What? Caspian wasn’t a player? I searched my memories, but I couldn’t find a trace of him. I took a cautious step back. If he was as powerful as my husband, I was in way over my head. 3. [GAME OVER! Congratulations to Boss Rosalind for achieving the achievement: NO SURVIVORS!] The system announcement echoed through the halls. I stood in a pool of blood, my new silk dress stained a sickening crimson. In front of me, the little girl lay still on the cold stone. Her face was frozen in a mask of absolute terror. Her fingers had been snapped back at impossible angles, but she was still clutching that piece of candy. The Bullet Chat was a blur of motion: [Holy crap, the Duchess isn’t a waste after all!] [She did the right thing! Those scumbags deserved to die!] [I’m so angry! That old player lied to the girl, telling her she could earn money for her mom’s medicine, but he just wanted a human shield. She was six!] [They saw the girl had a high-tier ‘item’ from the Duchess and they tried to rip it away from her. They tortured a child. Disgusting.] I stared at the blood-stained candy. An item? It was just a normal piece of candy. I’d only imbued it with a bit of my scent so I could find her during the Hunt. I knelt down and placed my hand over her eyes. A second later, every other corpse in the room detonated into a fine red mist, leaving the little girl lying there alone in the silence. “Goodnight, little one,” I whispered. I felt a hollow ache. I didn’t even know her name. Caspian appeared behind me. With a flick of his wrist, a stream of pristine, clear water flowed from his palm, wrapping around me and the girl. The filth washed away instantly. When the water vanished, the dungeon was serene again. The System reclaimed the girl’s body. “It wasn’t your fault, Rose,” Caspian said, stepping closer. “It’s not your fault. Destiny is never decided by a single piece of candy.” He pulled me into a gentle embrace. His voice was like a cool spring, soothing the jagged edges of my nerves. I remembered why I’d applied to be an NPC in the first place. My mother. Wood elves rarely choose this life; we don’t have the natural armor or the bloodlust. We’re easy prey for players. But my mother was dying. She grew weaker every day, and in her lucid moments, she’d write in a leather-bound journal. I’d peeked at it once. It was filled with advice for every stage of my life—things a mother wanted her daughter to know. She wrote it as a parent who knew she wouldn’t be there. Back then, I was just a girl who didn’t want to lose her mother. And the Horror Game paid very, very well. That night, I stared at the canopy of my bed. Since coming to Rosehaven, I rarely suffered from insomnia. The few times I did were after witnessing a particularly brutal massacre. But today, I was the one who had done the killing. I missed Lucius. When I couldn’t sleep, he’d read to me. It never worked, but he tried. Suddenly, a faint melody drifted into the room. My mind felt light, my vision blurring. Caspian was sitting on the edge of my bed. He looked different than he did in the daylight. He was devastating. His dark hair spilled over his shoulders like sea ink. Luminescent markings glowed on his skin, and delicate, silver-scaled fins peaked from behind his ears. His ice-blue eyes were focused now, burning with an intense, tender heat. “Rose… I’ve missed you so much.” “When I heard you’d married Lucius, I nearly tore the ocean apart with jealousy. He didn’t deserve you. I’m glad he’s dead. If he weren’t, I would have had to kill him myself.” “Rose, we were meant for each other long before he found you.” The world seemed to recede. I couldn’t hear his words clearly anymore, only the rhythmic movement of his lips. Driven by an impulse I didn’t recognize, I leaned forward and kissed him. Caspian let out a low, dark chuckle and pulled me closer. “Come with me, Rose. Let me show you what real devotion feels like.” That sentence, I heard perfectly. My consciousness rose and fell like the tide. Outside the castle, the withered roses in the garden bloomed all at once in the middle of the night. I remembered him then. Caspian was the little merman I’d saved years ago—the one who insisted he had to marry me to repay the debt. The next morning, I kicked him out of my room. He didn’t even seem angry. I grabbed the Enchanted Mirror. “Mirror… is there any way to resist a Siren’s charm?” In another dungeon, miles away, Lucius received the query and frowned. Where would she have encountered a Siren at Rosehaven? He figured she was just being curious. The mirror pulsed with his reply: Sirens cannot create desire from nothing. They only amplify what is already there. 4. And then, I got stuck with an Incubus. It was an accident. Unlike Sirens, who amplify existing feelings, Incubus magic is pure, unadulterated temptation. I’d decided to do a “performance review” of my dungeon’s perimeter. I was wandering the edge of the Whispering Woods when I blacked out. When I woke up, a man named Valentin was kneeling before me, his clothes in disarray, his damp eyes fixed on mine. He was the Incubus, and he was demanding an “explanation.” I rubbed my temples, tempted to just execute him and be done with it. But as I raised my hand, Valentin leaned his face into my palm, his pale violet eyes shimmering with unshed tears. My heart softened. Dammit. The Bullet Chat chimed in: [The Duchess is a beast! She just claimed the little Incubus right there in the woods. But where did he come from?] [Who knows? In the original timeline, the Duchess was already dead by now. Honestly, as long as she stays away from the FL and ML, I’m happy.] [The Incubus is so sweet, though. Look at him! He’s hungry, but he stops the moment she asks, unlike that Siren who just keeps pushing. Team Valentin!] [Why choose? I want her to have both.] I fell into a deep silence. Was the chat really suggesting that this man—with his eight-pack abs, sharp jawline, and forearms thicker than my waist—was the one who had been “claimed” by me? But I was a traditional woman! My husband was barely cold, and I already had a merman living in the guest wing. Valentin nuzzled my palm. “Mistress… please, have mercy,” he whispered, his face flushing a deep crimson. “My kind only has one partner for life. I already belong to you.” I sighed. I was just a soft-hearted wood elf. He looked so starved; I had to help him. But just as I moved toward him, a cold, familiar voice echoed from the forest path. “Rose? Are you out here?” Panic spiked in my chest. I instinctively shoved Valentin behind a massive oak tree, pinning him there and signaling for him to be quiet. Valentin seemed to be struggling. He kept shifting against me, his breath hot against my neck. I swatted him—a warning to stay still—but he let out a muffled, uncontrollable groan, his face turning even redder. I nearly jumped out of my skin. Please, let Caspian be deaf today. Caspian paused in front of the tree. “Rose?” The silence was deafening. I could hear my heart hammering against my ribs. After what felt like an eternity, Caspian murmured, “I suppose she isn’t here.” His footsteps faded. I exhaled, my knees going weak. By the time the little Incubus was “fed,” the sun had already set. My back ached. I told Valentin to find a place to hide for now, and I’d come for him when the coast was clear. I needed to go pacify my merman first. He couldn’t kill me, but he could certainly flood my dungeon. Valentin’s eyes went dim. He gave me a heartbreakingly fragile smile. “It’s alright, Mistress. You don’t have to look after me. I’ll hide from the monsters… I might lose an arm or a leg, but… it doesn’t matter.” He was so pathetic. How could I leave him? I decided to smuggle him into the castle. It was huge; surely I could hide one Incubus in the east wing without anyone noticing. The whole way back, Valentin clung to me, his tail wrapped tightly around my waist. Poor thing, I thought. He must be terrified of the forest mobs. When we reached the gates, he finally let go, looking down bashfully. “Mistress… is it wrong for me to stay? I don’t want to be a burden. I don’t need a title or a status. I just want to be near you.” I was genuinely moved. I led him inside, creeping through the foyer. The Butler and maids were out, so the coast was clear. Or so I thought. “You seem to have had a very busy day, Rose.” Caspian’s voice dropped like a guillotine blade. He was leaning against a pillar in the shadows, his expression unreadable. I froze. Caspian stepped forward, his shadow stretching long under the flickering oil lamps. He pointed a long, pale finger at Valentin. “Is this player proving difficult to handle?” “Let me kill him for you, Rose.”

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “433135”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

It started as a whim, a bit of Friday-night madness between me and Beatrice. We decided to play a real-life version of “Identity Swap.” We went all in. We didn’t just borrow each other’s clothes; we ordered identical wigs and matched our makeup down to the exact shade of crimson on our lips. We wanted to see if we could actually pass for one another, a social experiment to see how much of “us” was just the packaging. The rules were simple: swap lives for twenty-four hours. Experience the world through the other’s eyes. After a day of playing the part, Beatrice decided to stay over at my place. As I started toward the master suite to crash, she caught my arm, a playful glint in her eyes. “If we’re doing this for real, you have to sleep in the guest room tonight,” she laughed, tossing her head—or rather, the wig that looked exactly like my hair. “Authenticity, remember?” I gave in with a tired shrug. My husband, Wyatt, was supposed to be out of town on a business trip anyway. It didn’t seem to matter which bed I collapsed into. In the dead of night, while I was drifting through a deep, dreamless sleep, the guest room door creaked open. Before my brain could fully shake off the fog of sleep, the mattress sank. A man’s weight pressed down on me, his breath ragged and hot against my neck. His hands were already moving, tugging at the hem of my silk camisole. “You little devil,” he whispered, his voice a low, playful growl. “How’d you get the nerve to come back to my house tonight?” He chuckled, a sound that made my skin crawl. “Couldn’t handle being lonely? Had to come over and tempt me right under her nose?” 1 Those words hit me like a physical blow. I froze, my heart leaping into my throat, every trace of sleep vanishing in an instant. I knew that voice. It was Wyatt. The man who had called me six hours ago to say he was stuck in Chicago. My husband. But he hadn’t come home and headed for our bedroom. He had crept into the guest room in the dark. His hands were restless now, fumbling with the buttons of my sleep shirt, his touch familiar yet suddenly repulsive. He began to slide his hand beneath the fabric, tracing the skin of my waist with a practiced ease that suggested this wasn’t the first time. I didn’t make a sound. I couldn’t. I forced myself to stay limp, pretending to be caught in the heavy grip of sleep. The room was a void of shadows; thank God he hadn’t turned on the light. He couldn’t see my face. But as his breathing grew heavier, a sickening, jagged realization tore through me. Did he know it was me? Or… did he think I was Beatrice? “Quiet tonight, are we?” Wyatt murmured, his body pressing firmly against my back, his heat radiating through the thin silk. He nipped at my earlobe, his breath smelling faintly of bourbon and something sweet. I remained a statue, terrified that even a sharp exhale would give me away. More buttons gave way. His breath hitched, turning raspy with a desire I hadn’t seen in months. “You little liar,” he groaned. “You said I should come to your place tonight. I went there and found the house empty. Then I find you here, dressed like this… is it the thrill? Does being in my house make it better for you?” “You just couldn’t wait, could you? Sleeping in the guest room, waiting for me to find you…” “Hmm? Why won’t you talk to me?” A bone-chilling cold washed over me, starting at my toes and settling in the pit of my stomach. Fury, sharp and acidic, surged up to drown out the shock. In that moment, the truth was undeniable. Wyatt was cheating on me. He wasn’t looking for his wife, Isla. He was looking for his “guest.” He had been sleeping with my best friend long before tonight’s little game. The rage peaked, blinding and hot. “Get off me!” I shoved him with everything I had and lunged for the lamp on the nightstand. The light flooded the room, harsh and unforgiving. Wyatt instinctively threw his arm up to shield his eyes. “Bea, babe, keep it down…” But as his eyes adjusted and he saw my face, the color drained from his skin until he looked like a ghost. I ripped the wig from my head—the one that made me look exactly like Beatrice—and hurled it at him. It landed on his chest like a dead animal. Wyatt sat there, paralyzed, his face a mask of pure terror. “Isla… what are you… why are you in here?” I let out a short, jagged laugh that felt more like a sob. “Who else were you expecting, Wyatt?” He continued to stare at me, his forehead slick with sudden sweat. He tried to speak, but his jaw just worked silently, like a fish gasping for air. I leaned in, my voice dropping to a deadly, quiet edge. “I’m going to ask you one time. Who did you think I was just now?” Wyatt scrambled, his eyes darting around the room as if looking for an escape hatch. “Honey, I… I was joking! It’s a prank!” “We’re in our house, Isla! I knew it was you the whole time. I was just… playing along with the game. I saw you guys earlier, and I thought I’d give you a scare. It was just a roleplay thing…” 2 “Was it?” His body was rigid, his pulse thrumming visibly in his neck. He was a terrible liar when he wasn’t prepared. My heart felt like a piece of lead. It all clicked into place—the countless times Beatrice had found an excuse to crash in our guest room over the last year. The time I’d woken up at 3:00 AM and thought I heard muffled laughter and the rhythmic creak of floorboards from the guest wing. I had told myself everyone deserved their privacy. I told myself she was my sister in every way that mattered. I had protected her secrets, never imagining that the secret was my own husband. I had been wearing a crown of thorns for months, and I was the only one who didn’t know it. The door clicked open. Beatrice stood there, yawning, wearing one of my old silk robes. When she saw Wyatt, she gasped, clutching the lapels of the robe over her chest in a theatrical display of shock. “Isla? Wyatt? What’s going on? Wyatt, I thought you were in Chicago!” I looked at Beatrice—my “best friend”—and felt a wave of nausea so strong I thought I might actually get sick. “I’d like to know that too,” I said, my voice dripping with ice. Wyatt’s face was ash-gray. “The trip… the meeting got pushed. I didn’t want to wake you up, Isla, so I just… I came in late…” He reached out, trying to tuck a strand of hair behind my ear, trying to reclaim the role of the doting husband. “I’m so sorry I scared you, honey. I should have called.” I stepped back, revulsion blooming in my chest. I didn’t say a word, just let my gaze drift between the two of them. It settled on Beatrice’s nightgown—a low-cut, lace thing I’d never seen before. I remembered telling her once that her sleepwear was a bit… much for a guest staying with a married couple. She’d laughed it off. “What are you worried about, Isla? You think I’m gonna seduce Wyatt? Please. He’s like a brother to me. Only you could find that man attractive.” The lies were so thick they were suffocating. “Wyatt, I’m curious,” I said. “I never told you about the ‘Identity Swap’ game. I didn’t tell a soul that I’d be sleeping in the guest room tonight. So tell me… why did you come straight here instead of our bedroom?” The silence that followed was deafening. “Isla, I…” Wyatt fumbled, his eyes darting to Beatrice for a lifeline. “One question, Wyatt. Why was the guest room your first stop?” Sweat was rolling down his temples now. “I… I saw a light. I thought I heard a noise… I thought maybe someone had broken in…” It was pathetic. A child could have told a better lie. Seeing me unmoved, Beatrice stepped forward, a forced, sugary smile on her face. She reached out to grab my arm. “Isla, don’t be like that. It was me. I told him.” She squeezed my arm as if we were still co-conspirators. “I didn’t want him coming into the master bedroom and grabbing me by mistake in the dark! How awkward would that have been? So I sent him a quick text saying we’d swapped rooms for the night. Just to be safe.” I shook her hand off as if it were a spider. My eyes stayed locked on Wyatt. “And the ‘little devil’ comment? Calling me ‘Bea’ in the dark?” Wyatt’s composure shattered. His hands shook. “I didn’t! You misheard me, Isla!” He was desperate now, the veins in his neck bulging. “I called you… ‘Baby’! I said ‘Baby’!” “Baby?” I let out a jagged laugh. “We’ve been married for seven years, Wyatt. You haven’t called me ‘Baby’ since our honeymoon. Give me your phone.” Wyatt recoiled, shielding his pocket. “Isla, stop. You’re being paranoid.” I didn’t ask again. I lunged, snatching the device from the nightstand before he could grab it. “Isla!” My thumb found the sensor—he hadn’t changed his passcode. I opened his messages. There, pinned at the very top, was a contact named ‘Sweetheart.’ My heart stopped. “A sweetheart,” I whispered. I turned the screen toward them. “Except ‘Sweetheart’ is Beatrice’s number, isn’t it? Look at these messages. Look at how ‘ironic’ this roleplay is. Care to explain?” Wyatt looked like he was about to faint. Beatrice’s mask finally slipped, her face hardening into something cold and unrecognizable. “Isla, it’s a misunderstanding,” Wyatt pleaded. Beatrice stepped in, her voice losing its sweetness. “Oh, come off it, Isla. The ‘Sweetheart’ thing? It was part of the game! We were trying to see if we could trick everyone, even digitally. It was just a joke!” I reached the end of my rope. I swung my hand, the crack of my palm against her cheek echoing like a gunshot in the small room. “How do you even breathe with that much bullshit coming out of your mouth?” I pointed toward the door, my finger trembling with rage. “Both of you. Get out. We’re done.” I retreated into the study and slammed the door, locking it. I sat at my desk, my breath coming in shallow hitches, and pulled up the cloud storage for our home security system. Outside, the muffled sounds of their voices continued. Wyatt was begging, Beatrice was insisting it was a “prank gone wrong.” “Isla, I’m leaving,” Beatrice shouted through the door. “I’ll come back tomorrow when you’ve calmed down and we can talk this through like adults.” Eventually, the house fell silent. But I stayed awake, my eyes glued to the monitor. When we renovated three years ago, I’d installed a discreet camera in the hallway near the guest wing. We’d forgotten about it months ago. I began to scroll through the archives. Every Friday night Beatrice stayed over. Every “business trip” Wyatt took. By the fifth clip, I was numb. The tears started to fall, hot and silent, blurring the screen. 3 The footage was a catalog of betrayal. Every time Beatrice stayed over, Wyatt would “get up for a glass of water” in the middle of the night. He would walk straight to the guest room. Minutes later, he’d emerge carrying her, or they’d stumble out together, heading for the downstairs bathroom or the laundry room—places they thought were safe. The things they said to each other… the way they laughed at me while I slept upstairs… it was a visceral poison. “Your wife is right down the hall,” Beatrice whispered in one clip, giggling as he pressed her against the wall. “You’re gonna get caught, Wyatt.” He just kissed her harder. “She’s a heavy sleeper. She doesn’t have a clue.” “You little devil,” he murmured—the same phrase he’d used tonight. “You came here just to tempt me, didn’t you?” “You know me too well,” she replied, her voice a purr. My chest felt like it was being crushed by a hydraulic press. I couldn’t breathe. Beatrice. My maid of honor. The person who helped me pick out my wedding dress. The person who sent me links to “the best lingerie” and told me, “Keep that man happy, Isla, he’s a catch. Don’t get pregnant too soon, you need to keep the spark alive for a few more years.” She wasn’t giving me advice. She was protecting her own playground. I sat in that chair until the sun began to bleed through the blinds. When I finally opened the study door, Wyatt was slumped against the wall, his eyes bloodshot and dark. “Isla, thank God. Please, just let me explain. Beatrice and I, we aren’t—” I didn’t let him finish. I threw the tablet at his chest, the footage of them in the hallway playing on a loop. Wyatt watched for three seconds before his knees gave out. He collapsed onto the floor. “Isla… I… it was a mistake. A moment of weakness.” “Which one, Wyatt? The one in June? The one last Tuesday? Or the one ten minutes before I caught you?” My voice was a dead thing. “It was her! She set me up, she dressed like you, she made me think—” “Stop,” I snapped. “Don’t ever speak to me again. We’re getting a divorce.” I called a lawyer that morning. “The house stays with me. I bought it with my inheritance before we were even engaged. You’re the one who strayed. You’re leaving with nothing.” “You have three days to pack. If you’re still here on the fourth, I’m filing a police report for trespassing and releasing these videos to your mother and your boss.” The next week was a blur of cold fury. Wyatt tried to crawl back, tried to buy me flowers, tried to cry. Each time, I shut him down with a clinical precision that surprised even me. Eventually, he left, bruised and broken, moving into a shitty studio apartment across town. Beatrice tried a different tactic. She sent me “checking in” texts. She invited me to brunch as if nothing had happened. When I blocked her, she showed up at my favorite coffee shop. “Isla, seriously, what is wrong with you?” she asked, her voice tight with feigned indignation. “If you’re mad, just say it. Why the silent treatment?” I looked up from my book, my gaze level. “Ask yourself that, Bea.” “I’ve been your best friend for a decade. Do you really want to throw that away over a guy?” I felt a ghost of a smile touch my lips. “A guy? You mean my husband? The one you were fucking in my guest room while I slept twenty feet away?” She didn’t even flinch. She just let out a sharp, mocking laugh. “Fine. I slept with him. So what? If he actually loved you, Isla, a million ‘temptations’ wouldn’t have worked. The fact that he came to me just proves your marriage was a shell. I was doing you a favor, showing you what he really is.” I closed my eyes, exhausted by her narcissism. “Get out of my sight, Beatrice. If I see you again, those videos go public. I’m sure your ‘influencer’ lifestyle won’t survive the scandal.” She stepped closer, a cruel glint in her eyes. She placed a hand over her stomach, which was still flat, but her gesture was deliberate. “Don’t be so sure you’ve won, Isla. Did you know I’m pregnant?” “And it’s Wyatt’s.” 4 The world tilted for a second, but I didn’t let my expression flicker. I let the news settle into the silence between us. “That’s between you and your lawyer,” I said finally. “Wyatt and I are over. Do whatever you want with his kid.” I turned to walk away. “Isla, wait,” she called out, her voice dripping with mock sympathy. “I know how much you wanted a family. Don’t you want to know why he chose me to carry his child?” I tightened my grip on my bag. “Not really.” “He didn’t want it at first,” she continued, following me. “He was so careful. But after a while, he told me he liked my body better. He said he wanted a daughter who looked like me, because your genes were… well, a bit plain. He didn’t want a kid who looked like you, Isla.” “I was trying to be a good friend,” she added with a shrug. “I was going to tell you eventually.” “Enough!” The scream tore out of my throat before I could stop it. I was shaking, the image of them discussing my “plain” genes while they betrayed me burned into my mind. “Get away from me. If I ever see your face again, I will forget that I’m a lady and I will end you.” Three days later, Wyatt showed up at the door, looking like he’d been living in a dumpster. “Isla, I can’t sign the papers. Give me one more chance.” “Sign them, or I see you in court. And tell your mistress that if she contacts me again, I’m sending the ‘Sweetheart’ archives to her parents in Florida.” Wyatt’s face crumpled. He signed the papers with a shaking hand, the finality of it finally sinking in. He slinked back to his apartment, where Beatrice was waiting for him. “You’re back,” she said, lounging on his meager sofa. “You should be happy. You’re free now. No more ‘plain’ Isla to answer to. We can do whatever we want.” Wyatt didn’t look at her. “Don’t come here anymore, Bea.” Her smile faltered. “Oh, did I forget to tell you? I’m pregnant.” Wyatt froze. He looked at her, shock flickering in his eyes, followed quickly by a cold, hard resolve. “Get rid of it. We can’t have a kid.” “What? Why?” She stood up, grabbing his arm. “You said Isla was ‘barren.’ You said you were bored to death with her. You said if I got pregnant, you’d leave her for me! Well, she’s gone! This is your baby!” “It was a mistake,” Wyatt said, his voice flat. “Everything with you was a mistake. Isla is divorcing me because of you. If she finds out about a baby, she’ll never look at me again. There will be no chance of winning her back.” He looked at the small apartment, the reality of his new life hitting him. He didn’t want “freedom” with Beatrice. He wanted his big house, his comfortable life, and the wife who actually cared if he was fed and happy. He realized he’d burned his kingdom down for a handful of ash. “I’m taking you to the clinic,” he said, grabbing her wrist. “Now.” Beatrice fought him, screaming. “You coward! You pathetic excuse for a man!” “Beatrice, listen to me,” he hissed. “Isla is everything. You were just… a distraction. We have to fix this.” Beatrice stopped struggling and let out a chilling laugh. “You think she doesn’t know? I already told her, Wyatt. I told her days ago.” Wyatt’s face went white. “You did what?” “She’s never coming back. She hates you. But I have a plan. I know how to make her stay.” Wyatt looked at her, desperate. “How?” “Isla is so proud,” Beatrice whispered, her eyes alight with a frantic, dark energy. “She thinks she’s better than us because she’s ‘pure.’ But if she’s ‘dirty’ too… if she has a secret just as dark as yours… then she has no reason to leave you. You’ll be even.” “What are you talking about?” “We hire someone. We stage a ‘mishap.’ She loses her ‘purity’ to a stranger, and you ‘rescue’ her. She’ll be so broken, so ashamed, she’ll crawl into your arms and never let go. You’ll be her hero again.” Initially, Wyatt recoiled. But as the days passed and my lawyer squeezed him harder, his desperation turned into a localized insanity. He convinced himself he was doing it for me. To “save” our marriage. “Don’t hate me, Isla,” he whispered to my photo the night before. “I’ll still love you, even after you’re broken. I won’t care that you aren’t ‘clean’ anymore. I’ll be the only one who stays.” He waited in his car, heart hammering against his ribs, waiting for the clock to hit 10:00 AM. That was the plan. The men Beatrice hired would have been “finished” with me by then. He would burst in, the knight in shining armor, and take his traumatized wife home. “I’m coming, Isla. Hang on.” He and the police—whom he’d called to “report a suspicious tip”—kicked in the door of the abandoned warehouse on the edge of town. But as the dust settled, Wyatt didn’t see me. He saw a woman huddled on the floor, her face pale and streaked with blood. He gasped, his eyes bulging. “Bea? Where… where is Isla?”

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This marriage was a transaction from the very beginning. My family’s firm desperately needed an influx of capital to stay afloat; her family’s corporation was staring down the barrel of a massive lawsuit that only our political connections could make disappear. We were business partners, signing a contract disguised as a marriage license. Sleeping in separate bedrooms became the unspoken rule. Once, early on, I tentatively asked if she might want me to move my things into the master suite. She rejected the idea without a second of hesitation. Her reason was simple: “Patrick would mind.” Patrick. The golden boy. The untouchable first love carved so deeply into her bones that there was no room left for anyone else. She had looked at me with eyes like cracked ice and delivered the final blow: “If your family hadn’t forced this hand, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation. This arrangement is fine as it is.” I had stood frozen in the hallway for what felt like hours, my throat tight, before finally managing a hoarse, “Okay.” Since the parameters were so clearly drawn, I stopped looking for warmth in a house built on ice. For the next three years, the ghost of Patrick haunted every corner of her life. Whether it was a Belmont family dinner, a corporate gala, or even my own father’s birthday banquet, the man standing dutifully by her side was always him. I could see the whispers behind the champagne glasses, the polite but pitying stares of the elite circle, silently placing bets on who the real husband in this story was. But it’s fine now. The lawsuit is buried, my family’s firm is thriving again. Our mutual usefulness has run its course. It is time to leave this hollow shell of a home. 1 I sat in the dim light of the study, reading the divorce agreement from top to bottom one last time. Black ink on stark white paper. Methodical. Clean. Under the division of assets, I had left every box blank. I didn’t want a single dime. This sprawling estate in Beacon Hill belonged to her before we wed, the cars were hers, the company shares had nothing to do with me. I was leaving with the exact balance my personal checking account held the day we walked down the aisle. I uncapped my pen and signed my name. Wesley Callahan. Three years ago, I was foolish enough to believe that even a marriage born of corporate strategy could grow into something real, if only I tended to it well enough. God, I was so stupid. I slid the papers into a manila envelope, leaving it dead center on the mahogany coffee table. Then, I pulled out my phone and tapped on my text thread with her. “Come home a little early tonight. We need to talk.” Two minutes bled by. A single grey bubble popped up next to her immaculate headshot. “Yeah.” I locked my screen and tossed the phone onto the leather sofa. Turning on my heel, I walked into the kitchen to pour myself a glass of water. It was a designer’s dream—a massive Sub-Zero fridge, double built-in ovens, imported German cutlery—all gleaming, untouched, arranged like a museum exhibit. I rarely used it anymore. When we were first married, I tried. I really did. I wanted her to come home to the smell of a warm meal. The first time, I spent hours slow-roasting red wine braised short ribs. She took one polite bite, said it was “fine,” and then her phone buzzed. She walked out the door five minutes later. Patrick needed something. The second time, I made pan-seared scallops. She never even came home. The third time, I cooked an absolute feast. I stood over the stove from four in the afternoon until seven in the evening. She actually walked through the front door—but Patrick was trailing right behind her. They were laughing, a shared inside joke dying on their lips the moment they saw me standing there with flour on my apron and a table full of food. Viola blinked, her smile faltering. “We have reservations,” she said flatly. “We’re heading back out.” Patrick stood just behind her shoulder, tilting his head. He offered me a soft, patronizing smile. “Looks like you worked hard.” Just thinking about that smile now makes battery acid pool in my stomach. I never cooked another meal. Seven o’clock came. She wasn’t home. Eight o’clock. Nothing. At nine, my phone finally vibrated. I picked it up. A text from Viola. “Patrick is dealing with something. I’m going to be late. Don’t wait up.” I stared at the glowing screen for a long time. Don’t wait up. I had lived inside those three words for three years. It was always like this. It was always Patrick. He was a man in perpetual crisis, and she was his eternal savior. If he caught a cold, she had to be there. If he felt melancholic, she was his sounding board. When he moved apartments, she was boxing up his life. When he adopted a stray cat, she was picking out the kibble. Once, Patrick mentioned craving a specific slice of red velvet cake from a bakery across town. Viola drove forty minutes in gridlock traffic, delivered it to his loft, and waited for him to finish eating before driving back. She got home at 1:00 AM. “Did you even eat dinner?” I had asked her in the dark kitchen. “I ate at Patrick’s,” she replied, not looking at me. She went straight to the shower and then locked herself in the guest bedroom. I should have understood it then. But I didn’t. I held onto the naive belief that a wedding ring bought me time. I thought that if I was patient, if I gave her space, she would eventually notice that I wasn’t so bad. That if I was just good enough, quiet enough, supportive enough, she would eventually turn her head and look at the life we could build. Looking back, it’s laughable. When someone has absolutely no space for you in their heart, your goodness is just white noise. She wouldn’t love me for being perfect; she would just view my perfection as entirely irrelevant to her. I didn’t reply to her text. In the past, I would always type back an immediate “Okay,” just to show I was reliable. Sometimes I’d add a pathetic “Drive safe,” desperate to perform the role of the understanding, magnanimous husband. Tonight, I couldn’t stomach it. It didn’t matter anyway. In a few days, she wouldn’t have to text me at all. 2 I left my phone on the table and picked up the remote, flipping channels blindly. A late-night talk show was on, celebrities throwing their heads back in exaggerated, booming laughter. I sank into the cushions, struck by the sudden, suffocating absurdity of my existence. Here I was, sitting in a multi-million dollar mansion, guarding a hollow marriage, waiting for a wife who would never prioritize me. And she was out with her first love. Openly. Righteously. Because on the day we signed our marriage license, she had made it crystal clear: If it weren’t for you, we wouldn’t be in this mess. In her eyes, I was the villain. I was the one who had driven a wedge between her and Patrick. I had used my family’s power to strong-arm her into a gilded cage. But what was the actual truth? The truth was, my father’s real estate empire had over-leveraged, and the cash flow had completely dried up. Her family’s tech firm had been caught in an ugly, potentially devastating federal probe, and they desperately needed my father’s political leverage to quash it. The patriarchs of our two families sat down over dry martinis and thick steaks, and our lives were traded like poker chips. No one asked me if I wanted to marry her. No one asked her if she wanted to be my wife. To the rest of the world, it was a perfectly balanced equation. Her family provided the capital, mine provided the shield. A flawless corporate merger. But Patrick became the casualty of our merger. Viola genuinely believed I had stolen his rightful place. I had demoted him from the man she was meant to marry to the dirty little secret she had to hide. And so, she gave every ounce of her guilt and devotion to Patrick, and reserved all her coldness for me. On our wedding night, she drank heavily at the reception. When someone finally helped her up to the master bedroom, I reached out to help her out of her heavy, beaded gown. She gripped my wrist. Her grip was terrifyingly strong. “Wesley Callahan,” she whispered, her voice rough with champagne and venom. “You know exactly what this marriage is. I don’t love you. I will never love you. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll play your part, go to work, and stay out of my way. We live our own lives.” She dropped my arm, stumbled out the door, and locked herself in the guest suite. We had slept in separate rooms ever since. She took the guest room; I took the master. Now that I thought about it, in three years, she had only crossed the threshold of the master bedroom twice. The first was that wedding night. The second was last winter, when my fever spiked to 103 degrees. I was delirious, shivering violently under the heavy down comforter. Marta, our housekeeper, had called her in a panic. Viola showed up two hours later. She stood in the doorway, her tailored trench coat still on, looked at my sweating, trembling form, and told Marta to call an Uber to take me to urgent care. Then she left again. She said Patrick had a gallery opening he was nervous about, and she had to be there to support him. She didn’t come home that night. When I woke up at 7:00 AM, throat feeling like broken glass, I checked my phone. Not a single notification. I washed up and walked slowly downstairs. Marta was already at the stove. When she saw me walk in alone, she stopped, her mouth opening and closing before she finally settled on a quiet, “Mr. Callahan, what can I make for you this morning?” “Just some toast and black coffee, Marta. Thanks.” I sat at the vast, empty granite island. My phone lit up. A text from Viola. “Patrick had too much to drink last night. I stayed over to make sure he was okay. I have a board meeting all morning, won’t be back.” I set the phone face down and took a sip of my bitter coffee. “Marta,” I said softly. “Could you pick up some cardboard moving boxes for me when you go to the store today?” She froze, the dish towel slipping from her hands. “You’re… moving, sir?” “Yeah. In a few days.” She opened her mouth, her eyes welling with questions she didn’t dare ask. But reading the absolute exhaustion on my face, she swallowed them down. She had worked in this house for three years. She had seen the quiet indignities. She knew. “Of course, Mr. Callahan.” 3 Marta nodded quietly and turned back to the stove. After breakfast, I went upstairs, pulled on a pair of raw denim jeans and a simple sweater. I was meeting a realtor today. Before I could officially walk away from this house, I needed a place to land. I hadn’t asked for a dime in the divorce, but that didn’t mean I was destitute. I had my own savings from before the marriage. And over the last three years, though I hadn’t worked, the Belmonts had dutifully deposited a $20,000 monthly “allowance” into my account. I rarely touched it. I had saved enough to float myself in a nice apartment for a year or two while I figured out the rest of my life. The realtor was a kid named Josh—sharp suit, fast talker, eager to please. He showed me a sun-drenched two-bedroom loft in Somerville, just outside the city center. The neighborhood had a quiet, artistic pulse to it. “Mr. Callahan, the natural light in here is incredible,” Josh pitched, gesturing to the floor-to-ceiling windows. “The owner just did a full gut renovation. Everything is brand new. They’re asking six and a half thousand a month. What do you think?” I stepped out onto the Juliet balcony. The air was crisp, overlooking a neighborhood park where autumn leaves were turning gold. It wasn’t massive, but it was enough. Most importantly, there wasn’t a single trace of Viola Belmont in these walls. “I’ll take it,” I said. Josh blinked, clearly not expecting me to bypass the negotiation phase entirely. Then his face broke into a massive grin. “Amazing! I’ll draw up the lease with the owner right now.” I signed a one-year lease, wired the first, last, and security deposit on the spot. Stepping out onto the pavement with the brass keys heavy in my pocket, the afternoon sun hit my face. It felt warm. For the first time in years, I felt incredibly light. By the time I got back to Beacon Hill, Marta had stacked flattened Home Depot boxes in the center of the living room. I was just about to head upstairs to tackle my closet when the heavy oak front door clicked open. I didn’t turn around. I could already feel the shift in the air. Sure enough, a second later, a voice rang out behind me. “Oh, you’re home.” I turned. Patrick Giles was standing in the foyer, shucking off a designer cashmere coat. His eyes drifted from my face down to the cardboard boxes at my feet, pausing for a fraction of a second. “Packing up?” I didn’t answer him. Instead, my voice came out flat, stripped of any emotion. “What are you doing here?” “Viola brought me.” He strolled into the living room like he owned the place. “The lease on my loft is up, and I haven’t found the right spot yet. She told me to crash here. Said I could stay as long as I need.” I simply nodded. “Oh.” Patrick clearly hadn’t anticipated such a lifeless reaction. The smug little smile playing on his lips faltered. “You don’t mind, do you?” He tilted his head, feigning innocence. “I mean, I told Viola it might be a little awkward, but she insisted. She said—” “If she told you to stay, then stay,” I interrupted, my voice perfectly level. “It’s a big house.” His jaw tightened. He walked over to the velvet armchair and sank into it, crossing one leg over the other. “You are just so incredibly generous, Wesley.” The venom was barely hidden now. “First you generously take my place at the altar, and now you generously let me sleep under your roof.” I looked down at him. Suddenly, I found the whole scene deeply, profoundly pathetic. I didn’t take the bait. I turned my back to him and started for the stairs. Feeling dismissed, Patrick raised his voice. “Wesley, I’m talking to you.” I paused on the first step and looked back over my shoulder. “I heard you. But you didn’t come here to bond with me, Patrick, so let’s not waste each other’s time. I have packing to do.” Patrick stood up, the faux-polite smile completely vanishing from his face. “You’re leaving?” The words slipped out, laced with genuine disbelief. “What else would I do?” I asked quietly. “Stay here and be a third wheel in my own marriage?” 4 Patrick stood frozen, struck completely dumb. I continued up the stairs, leaving him stranded in the vast, echoing living room. I opened my closet doors and began pulling hangers off the rack. After three years, I didn’t have much to show for my life here. Viola had never taken me on a vacation. She had never bought me a single gift. Not for our anniversary, not for my birthday, not for Christmas. Looking back, the sheer asymmetry of it all was staggering. I folded my last wool peacoat and placed it gently into the box. As I reached for the packing tape, my phone buzzed on the nightstand. Viola. “Dinner with clients tonight. Won’t be back to eat. Patrick moved his things in today. Make sure you set up the east guest suite for him.” I stared at the screen, locked the phone, and went back to taping my boxes. By early evening, my closet and study were practically stripped bare. When I finally walked downstairs, Patrick was sitting on the living room sofa, nursing an espresso. Hearing my footsteps, he glanced up. His eyes immediately locked onto the manila envelope I had left sitting squarely on the coffee table. “What’s that?” he asked. I didn’t answer. I walked over, picked up the envelope, and sat down in the armchair directly across from him. Patrick stared at the envelope for a few heavy seconds. Suddenly, he let out a short, sharp laugh. “Divorce papers?”

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My wife is a glitch in the universe. She was supposed to be the lead in someone else’s story, destined to fall for the golden boy, the hero, the man who has everything. But the moment she arrived in my world, she chose me instead—the hero’s best friend. We weren’t supposed to happen. And the “Narrative”—that cold, invisible force that governs her life—didn’t take kindly to being rewritten. To tear us apart, it orchestrated a car wreck that should have killed me. I survived, but only just. I walked away with third-degree burns that turned my face into a topographical map of scars, a shattered spine that left me tethered to a wheelchair, and the indignity of a catheter bag. I became a ghost inhabiting a broken shell. But Noelle’s love didn’t waver. Not at first. When the tragedy failed to break her, the Narrative went after her world. It stripped her of her career, her savings, her reputation. She went from a rising star to absolute rock bottom. Without money, she became my sole caretaker. During our darkest month, she lived on a single loaf of bread for three days just so she could afford the three-hundred-dollar bags of specialized IV nutrients I needed to keep my muscles from wasting away. I couldn’t stand it. I couldn’t be the anchor that drowned her. So, I tried to end it. When the paramedics brought me back, she collapsed over my chest, sobbing so hard I thought her lungs might give out. “Jude,” she gasped through the tears, “I can’t do this without you. If you go, I’m going with you. Do you hear me? I’ll follow you into the dark.” For her, I tried. I threw myself into physical therapy, but my body was a locked room with no key. Still, I nursed a tiny, pathetic ember of hope that maybe, one day, I’d be enough for her again. Until today. Beckett, the man she was “destined” to be with, came to visit. In my agitation, I accidentally took a few extra doses of my nerve blockers. Noelle didn’t just worry. She snapped. Something inside her finally fractured. She grabbed the bottle of pills and began forcing them into my mouth, her eyes wild and unrecognizable. “I told you!” she screamed, shoving the tablets past my teeth. “I told you there’s nothing between us anymore! Why do you keep doing this? Why do you keep making me pay?” She shook me, her voice cracking into a jagged edge. “If it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t be living in this hellhole! I wouldn’t have lost everything! You want to die so bad? Fine! Fucking die then!” She dumped the rest of the bottle into my lap, slammed the door, and vanished. That’s when the Voice—the cold, mechanical hum of her “System”—spoke in my mind. It told me that Noelle had finally realized her mistake. It told me she was falling back in love with Beckett. It asked if I was willing to die to set them both free. I stared at the closed door and whispered, “Yes.” … The Voice was silent for a few heartbeats. Then, it buzzed: “I’m not actually asking you to commit suicide. You feel it, don’t you? Noelle’s love has turned into a prison sentence. She’s staying out of obligation, not desire. If you agree to leave, I can move your soul to another world. I’ll give you a new body. A life without the chair.” “Stop talking,” I said, my voice raspy. “Just let me go.” The moment the words left my lips, a paring knife appeared on my lap, glinting under the dim fluorescent light. I gripped the handle, bracing myself to find the space between my ribs, when the door creaked open. Noelle was back. She didn’t say a word. She knelt before me, forced my jaw open, and hooked her fingers into my mouth to sweep out the pills she had forced on me minutes ago. I palmed the knife, hiding it beneath the cushion of my wheelchair. She brought in a basin of warm water. She brushed my teeth, washed my face, and began the familiar, clinical routine of wiping down my body. In the old days, she would kiss the scars. She would whisper apologies for losing her temper, calling herself a “grumpy wife” and promising to make it up to me. Tonight, there was only the sound of the washcloth against skin. When she finished, she flicked off the light and lay down on the narrow cot next to my bed, her back turned to me. She pulled out her phone, the glow illuminating the sharp line of her jaw. In the silence, I whispered her name. “Noelle.” Immediately, a voice memo played from her phone. “Noelle, today was…” She muted it instantly, but I’d heard enough. It was Beckett. The man she was supposed to love. The “Lead.” I didn’t know which universe Noelle had come from, but I remembered the first day we met. She had walked up to me, bold and radiant, and confessed everything. She told me she was a traveler, that she was sent here to win over Beckett, but that she’d caught one glimpse of me and decided the script could go to hell. Back then, I thought it was a charming, eccentric joke. It wasn’t until we got married that the Voice entered my head. It offered me a deal: leave Noelle, and I’d have a long, healthy, successful life. I’d refused without a second thought. The next day, the truck hit my car. Thinking about the Voice’s words from earlier, I couldn’t stop myself. “Noelle… do you love him now? Do you love Beckett?” The room stayed quiet for five agonizing seconds. Then, Noelle stood up. She didn’t answer. She just grabbed her phone and walked out into the living room. The walls in our cheap apartment were paper-thin. I heard the muffled vibration of the call connecting. “Noelle,” I heard Beckett say on the other end, “my friends all want to see you. Can you come over?” She whispered something too low for me to catch. When she stepped back into the bedroom, she was dressed in her street clothes. “Company emergency, Jude. Go back to sleep.” It was a pathetic lie. Ever since the Narrative forced her into bankruptcy, every door had been slammed in her face. To keep us afloat, she’d taken a job as a manual laborer on a bridge construction site. It was grueling twelve-hour shifts, but it never required late-night “emergencies.” And because I needed to be turned every two hours to prevent sores, Noelle never left me alone at night. Until now. I waited until the sound of her footsteps faded down the hall. Then, I pulled the knife from under my pillow. The blade was unnervingly sharp—a gift from the System. One quick swipe across the carotid, and the Narrative would finally get its way. After the accident, the doctors told me I was a “complete” spinal cord injury. Everything below my neck was dead weight. But after three years of agonizing, secret struggle, I had regained just enough function in my arms to sit up and pull myself into the wheelchair. I had planned to surprise Noelle on her birthday. I wanted to show her I could move again. I guess I’d be using that strength for a different purpose tonight. I didn’t want to die in bed. The mess would be too much for her to clean up. I hauled myself into the chair, the effort making my vision swim, and rolled into the bathroom. I held the knife to my wrist and pressed down. The lights flickered on. The harsh glare revealed Noelle standing in the doorway, her face ghostly pale. “Jude! What are you doing?” Before I could react, she lunged forward and twisted the knife out of my hand. The next thing I felt was the stinging heat of her palm against my cheek. She slapped me so hard my head barked against the tiled wall. “You lunatic!” she screamed, her voice breaking. “What did I do to deserve this? Why are you doing this to me?” She was shaking, her eyes bloodshot. She went on a rampage, smashing the toothbrush holder, the soap dish, anything she could reach. When the rage spent itself, she sank to the floor in front of my chair and looked up at me. “Why?” she whispered. She smelled like expensive cologne. The exact scent Beckett had been wearing when he visited me earlier that day. I looked at her, my heart feeling like it was being ground into glass. “Did you go see him?” Noelle froze. She went silent for a long time before finally nodding. “Is that what this is about?” “Jude, stop being so paranoid. I told you, there’s nothing going on. I only went because—” “Noelle,” I interrupted, my voice flat. “Let me go. I’m tired. I just want it to be over.” Her face went rigid. For a second, I thought she agreed. I thought she finally saw that our life was nothing but a slow-motion car wreck. But then she grabbed the knife from the floor and shoved the handle into my hand, pressing the tip against her own chest, right over her heart. “You want to die? Fine. But you have to kill me first.” I recoiled, trying to pull my hand back. “Noelle, stop it! Let go!” “You think you’re the only one who finds this life hard?” Her strength was terrifying. I felt the blade snag on the fabric of her shirt, piercing the skin. “Do you think it’s easy for me to watch you wither away every day? You want out? Good. We go together.” I felt something warm and wet hit my hand. Her blood. The horror of it shattered me. My chest felt like it was being crushed by a physical weight. I broke. “I’m sorry,” I sobbed, the sound torn from my throat. “I’m sorry, Noelle. I won’t do it. I won’t leave. Please, just stop.” The knife clattered to the floor. Noelle’s shirt was stained red. A few minutes later, she seemed to come back to herself. she reached out and stroked my hair, her expression unreadable. “Jude,” she said softly, “stay with me for one more birthday, okay?” Her birthday was in three days. After that night, Noelle stripped the apartment. Every knife, every glass, every sharp edge was gone. We ate off plastic plates. She continued to care for me, but the silence between us grew into a canyon. She spent every spare second glued to her phone. She still worked the days and came home to me at night. But I knew. I knew the “work” was no longer the construction site. I started checking Beckett’s social media. He posted constantly. Photos of Noelle bringing him water at his basketball games. Photos of them at the pier, laughing in the salt air. A photo of them at a candlelit table at a bistro we used to love. In the pictures, Noelle was smiling—that real, radiant smile with the dimple I hadn’t seen in three years. I stared at those photos until the image blurred. I realized I couldn’t even remember the last time she’d looked at me like that. The night before her birthday, Noelle came home late. She was stumbling, smelling of tequila and lime. Beckett was the one who walked her through the door. I was awake, watching from the bedroom. I saw him help her out of her coat, saw him use a warm towel to gently wipe the makeup from her face. “Don’t… don’t mess with my Beckett,” Noelle mumbled, her voice thick with drink. “I’ll take the hits for him. I’ll drink for him.” Beckett chuckled, brushing a stray hair from her forehead. “I know, Noelle. Everything I have is yours. I’m yours.” She whispered something back—a soft, intimate murmur that made Beckett’s face light up with pure joy. After he tucked her into the sofa, Beckett did something he’d never done before. He walked into my room. He saw I was awake and paused. He glanced back at Noelle on the couch and realized I’d seen everything. “Jude, don’t get the wrong idea,” he said, though there was no apology in his eyes. “I have a huge game tomorrow. The scouts are coming. The guys wanted to party, and Noelle was worried I’d be off my game if I drank, so she stepped in and did it for me. She was protecting me.” Beckett and I had grown up together. We’d played ball since we were ten. We made the state team together, signed to the same club. I knew exactly what tomorrow’s game was. It was the championship. The bridge to the national team. The chance to be scouted by the NBA. If the truck hadn’t hit me three years ago, I would have been standing on that court next to him. Beckett didn’t seem to care about my ghosts. He turned off my light and lay down on the cot Noelle usually slept in. “Go to sleep, Jude. I’ll look after you tonight since she’s out of it. Let me know if you need anything.” I grunted a “thanks.” I thought that was it. But then, Beckett’s voice drifted through the dark. “Jude? Have you ever thought about just… ending it?” My breath hitched. “You know the truth, right?” Beckett continued. “Noelle was meant to be with me. If she had stayed on her path, her life would be effortless. She’d be successful. She wouldn’t be living in this dump, killing herself to keep a ghost alive.” “Do you even know what she does for money?” he asked, his voice sharpening. “She’s a ‘water ghost’ for the bridge crews. She does deep-well saturation diving.” My heart stopped. I knew what that was. It’s one of the most dangerous jobs on the planet. Diving into narrow, mud-filled shafts to recover drill bits or clear obstructions. You’re blind, buried in silt, breathing through a thin tube. One mistake, one equipment failure, and you’re buried alive in a watery grave. Noelle… my Noelle was doing that? For me? When I didn’t answer, Beckett’s frustration boiled over. “Jude, listen to me. Noelle told me she loves me. But she says she can’t be with me because of you. Because of the guilt. If you actually cared about her, you’d stop being an anchor. You’d let her go.” The Voice had said the same thing. Hearing it from Beckett’s mouth felt like a physical blow to the stomach. I knew she was tired. I knew she deserved a life of light and ease, not mud and shadows. And I knew, with a crushing certainty, that she didn’t love me anymore. So, when Beckett whispered that he could leave a bottle of his mother’s extra-strength sleeping pills under my pillow, I nodded. Through the tears, I finally said yes. The next morning, the bottle was there. Beckett left before Noelle woke up. When she finally stirred, she came into the room. She didn’t mention the drinking or Beckett. She just told me she’d be late coming home again. “It’s your birthday,” I said, a final, selfish plea rising in my chest. “Noelle, please. Can you stay home today? Just today?” She hesitated. “The site… the crew is behind schedule…” “Just one day,” I begged. “That’s all I want. Please. We haven’t had a real day together in so long.” “Jude, grow up!” she snapped, the stress finally breaking her. “I don’t own the company. I can’t just skip work whenever I feel like it.” She saw my face fall and softened, just a fraction. “Look, I’ll try to be back early. I promise.” After she left, the home health aide arrived. I told him Noelle had called and given him the day off—paid. He was thrilled to leave early. Once the apartment was empty, I did something impossible. I hauled myself into the kitchen. Using every ounce of my agonizingly slow progress, I baked a cake. On our first birthday together, I had made her a cake from scratch. She’d cried, telling me it was the best thing she’d ever tasted because, as an orphan, no one had ever made her a cake before. I’d promised her then that I’d make her one every single year. It took me hours. My hands shook so much the frosting was lumpy and the “Happy Birthday, Noelle” was barely legible. It was ugly, but it was done. Then, I went to the closet and found my suit. The one I’d worn the night we met. She told me then that I was the most handsome man she’d ever seen. I changed, crawled back into the bedroom, and turned on the TV. The championship game was being broadcast. Beckett was spectacular. He was the MVP, the star, the man the world was built for. I watched him stand under the spotlights, clutching the trophy, his smile blinding. “Thank you,” he said into the mic, his voice echoing through the arena. “This win means everything. But there’s someone here tonight who means even more. Someone I need to say something to.” My chest tightened. “Noelle,” he said, his voice dropping into that tender tone. “I’m standing here because of you. This MVP trophy? It’s a confession. I love you. If you’re willing to give us a real chance… come up here.” The camera panned. Noelle was standing in the front row, holding a bouquet of lilies. The crowd began to roar, chanting for her to go up. “Go! Go! Go!” I saw the hesitation in her eyes, but then she started to move. I twisted the cap off the pill bottle. Step one. She looked down at the flowers, a shy smile touching her lips. I took one pill. I swallowed it dry, the bitterness coating my throat. Step two. She looked up, her gaze fixed on Beckett, her expression hardening into resolve. I took two more. A sip of water. The bitterness began to spread. Step three. Three more pills. By the time she reached Beckett—exactly ninety-nine steps from her seat—I had swallowed ninety-nine pills. My vision began to blur. I couldn’t tell if it was the drug or the tears. “Kiss her! Kiss her!” the crowd screamed. Noelle looked up at Beckett. He looked down at her, his face full of triumph. She reached out and wrapped her arms around his waist. I shook out the very last pill. As their lips met on screen, I swallowed it. I closed my eyes. The empty bottle slipped from my numb fingers and rolled across the floor. The roar of the crowd on the TV was deafening, but for me, everything was finally, mercifully, falling silent. … Noelle didn’t actually kiss him. At the very last second, as their breaths mingled, a sharp, electric jolt of panic shot through her heart. My face—the version of me that laughed, the version of me that looked at her with pure devotion—flashed in her mind. She shoved Beckett back, stammered an apology, and bolted through the confused crowd. As she ran, she screamed inside her head: Voice! System! I did it! I helped him win. Now give me what you promised. Fix Jude. Make him whole again! The Voice didn’t answer. Noelle didn’t care. She just ran for home. Two months ago, the System had offered her a bargain. It had “relented,” telling her that if she stayed by the Lead’s side and helped him reach his peak, it would restore Jude’s health. Noelle couldn’t bear to see me suffer anymore. She’d agreed instantly. For two months, she’d played the role of the devoted muse. She’d drunk for him, cheered for him, endured the gossip and the guilt, all while coming home to a husband who looked at her with dying eyes. Every time she saw my despair, she wanted to scream: Just a little longer! You’re going to walk again! But she couldn’t. The System had warned her that one word of the deal would void the contract. Almost there, she’d whispered to herself every night while I slept. When you’re better, I’ll spend the rest of my life making you forgive me. She stopped to buy a bouquet of gardenias—my favorite flower to give her. “Jude!” she called out, breathless as she raced up the stairs. “Jude, I’m home! Look what I got—” She threw open the door, and the words died in her throat.

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Tomorrow was supposed to be the day I married Hudson. But instead of final fittings or rehearsing vows, my world started glitching. Strange, translucent lines of text—scrolling “bullet comments”—began drifting across my vision like a live social media feed only I could see. The comments called me the “Venomous Second Lead.” They said Hudson was so desperate to escape our marriage that he’d literally turned into a dog. Even worse, they mentioned that in exactly one week, I’d be dead, having fallen from the roof of a skyscraper. I was still reeling, staring at the empty air, when my parents burst into my room. Their faces were pale, their expressions twisted with a mix of confusion and disgust. They told me Hudson was gone. Missing. In his place, they found a dog in his bedroom. They were holding it now. I looked down at the Samoyed in my father’s arms. The dog looked back at me, its eyes narrowed in a look of pure, unadulterated loathing. In that instant, it clicked. The comments were right. This wasn’t just a pet. This was Hudson. Without a word, I lunged forward, snatched the dog from my father’s startled grip, and bolted for the door. “Paige! Where are you going?” my mother shrieked behind me. I didn’t look back. I just threw my voice over my shoulder as I reached the driveway. “To the vet. This dog needs to be fixed. Immediately.” The creature in my arms visibly recoiled, a pathetic whimper escaping its throat. My vision flared with a fresh wave of comments. The digital crowd was losing its mind, screaming about whether I was actually going to “neuter the male lead.” … 1 The moment I peeled out of the driveway with the dog, my vision became a chaotic mess of scrolling text. [??? Is she actually going to snip him???] [The villainess has finally lost it. How does she even have the nerve?] [RIP Hudson’s manhood. This is going south fast!] [Chill, she’s just bluffing. She’s obsessed with him. She’d never actually go through with it.] [Exactly. She’s ‘ride or die’ for Hudson. She’ll probably end up pampering the dog because it belongs to his family.] I glanced at the comments and let out a sharp, cold laugh. I slammed my foot onto the gas, the engine roaring in response. In the passenger seat, the Samoyed—Hudson—was a mess. His paws were dug deep into the leather upholstery, his white fur standing on end as we drifted around a sharp corner. He was terrified. Good. [Poor Hudson! Look at him shaking!] [My heart is breaking for him! He’s a mess!] [But honestly, look at how cute he is when he’s scared? Paige’s heart has to be melting right now.] [Are you guys blind? This isn’t ‘cute’ time! He’s about to lose his ability to produce heirs!] [Don’t worry, he’s the protagonist. He’s got plot armor. Something will stop her!] I kept one hand on the wheel and reached over with the other to pat his head. Hudson snapped. He whipped his head around, baring his teeth at my hand in a snarl of pure aggression. He was ready to tear my skin off. I gave him a wicked, sideways grin. “Go ahead. Bite me. Give me a reason to just skip the surgery and go straight to euthanasia.” His teeth chattered for a second, then he slowly pulled his lips back over them. He slumped into the seat, defeated. The feed went wild again: [Damn, she’s cold. Euthanasia?!] [To be fair, Hudson’s a coward. He couldn’t even man up and call off the wedding, so he turned into a dog and left her to die in the original plot. Total trash move.] [Hey! It’s the plot! He’s a victim of fate!] [Victim? A real man says ‘I don’t love you.’ He doesn’t pull a disappearing act and leave his fiancée to jump off a building!] [Technically he’s not a man right now. He’s a male dog. LOL.] By the time the comments peaked, I was pulling into the parking lot of ‘Everheart Specialty Vet.’ The moment Hudson saw the sign with the little blue cross, he went ballistic. He scrambled up, front paws scratching frantically against the glass of the passenger window. “Awoo! Awoo-woo!” He was howling for help. But tonight, help wasn’t coming. He tried the door handle with his paws, desperate and clumsy. I leaned in close to his ear, my voice a silky, cruel whisper. “Don’t fight it, babe. Think of it as a gift. I’m just being a responsible new owner.” His mouth fell open, his eyes wide with a very human sense of despair. The screen in my head was a blur: [Oh my god, poor baby!] [But wait… he IS a dog right now. Neutering a dog is like… basic pet care…] [Shut up! That’s the Male Lead! He’s going to turn back eventually!] [Exactly! If she snips the dog, what happens to the man? How is he supposed to have his ‘steamy nights’ with the True Heroine later?!] [Wait for it… the original story says the True Heroine is his guardian angel. She always shows up when he’s in trouble!] [A ‘Beauty Saves the Beast’ moment! I’m here for it! He’ll fall so much harder for her after this.] [And the villainess will be one step closer to her rooftop exit! Hahaha!] I stared at that last comment, a cold lump forming in my chest. Fine. If I’m destined to fall off a building, I’m making sure your “Golden Boy” falls with me—starting with his dignity. Let’s see how he enjoys his “happily ever after” without his favorite equipment. I hopped out of the car, hauled Hudson out by his collar, and marched into the clinic. 2 The second we hit the lobby, I tried to set him down, but he turned into a thrashing blur of white fur and claws. “Awoooo!!!” [The agony in that voice… I’m literally crying.] [Where is the Heroine?! If she doesn’t show up in thirty seconds, it’s over!] I had to pin him against my chest, shouting for a technician. Hudson didn’t hesitate; he lunged for my wrist, his teeth sinking into my skin. I didn’t flinch. I grabbed his head, forcing him to look me in the eye. My voice was a low, dangerous growl. “Bite me one more time, and I’ll tell the surgeon to take an extra two inches off.” He froze. His jaws went slack. [The ‘extra two inches’ comment, I’m dying! I feel bad but that’s hilarious.] [IT IS NOT FUNNY!] The girl at the front desk, a teenager with a messy ponytail, didn’t even look up from her computer. “Sorry, we’re closing. Come back tomorrow at eight.” “I need an emergency neuter. Now.” She sighed, finally looking up. “Look, it’s 10 PM. The doctor is literally walking out the—” “I’ll pay extra.” “How much extra?” I pulled out my phone and scanned the QR code on her desk. Ping. Transaction successful: $15,000. The girl’s jaw dropped so far I thought it might hit the linoleum. I gave her a sharp, predatory smile. “Fifteen thousand dollars for a standard neuter. But I want it done now. Swiftly. I want him completely… decommissioned.” The girl practically vaulted over the counter. “Ma’am, for fifteen grand, I’ll sharpen the scalpel myself. One second!” Hudson looked like he was about to faint. The receptionist snatched him from my arms and sprinted toward the back, screaming at the top of her lungs, “Dr. Miller! Stop! Don’t leave! We’ve got a fifteen-thousand-dollar balls-ectomy! We’re rich!” The comments were stunned: [She’s for real…] [She dropped fifteen grand just to spite him. Honestly? Iconic.] [The Villainess is giving ‘Unhinged Queen’ energy and I’m kind of obsessed.] [Are you people crazy? Hudson is about to be castrated! My poor baby!] [Heroine! Where are you?! Your future happiness is on the line!] Dr. Miller, who had been halfway out the back door, didn’t hesitate for a single second. For fifteen thousand dollars, ethics and office hours were merely suggestions. Within minutes, he was back in his scrubs, snapping on latex gloves. “Jenny, prep the anesthesia and the tray.” As Hudson was hoisted onto the cold stainless steel of the operating table, his eyes were fixed on me. They were full of disbelief. He probably never thought I—Paige—would do this. In his mind, my devotion was supposed to be hardcoded into my DNA. That’s why he’d let his family bring him to me after he transformed. He hated our arranged marriage, hated that I was “forced” upon him, but he knew I loved him more than life itself. He figured he’d hide out as a pet, let me wait on him hand and foot, and watch me crumble in grief over his “disappearance.” He wanted a front-row seat to my misery. Instead, he got a front-row seat to his own surgery. The receptionist, Jenny, was moving with lightning speed, laying out the tools. Forceps, scalpels, sutures, antiseptic. The sight of the blade triggered a primal fear in Hudson. He tried to bolt, his paws slipping on the steel table. He let out a piercing, soul-shattering howl. Jenny pinned him down with practiced ease. Then, Dr. Miller stepped forward with the sedative. Hudson’s eyes stayed locked on mine, wide with betrayal, until the drug took hold and his head finally slumped over. Just as the doctor raised the scalpel… “STOP!” The front door slammed open with a violent crash. [SHE’S HERE! THE QUEEN IS HERE!] [Hudson is saved! I knew she wouldn’t let him down!] I turned around, my eyes narrowing. It was my sister. Daisy. The “True Daughter” who had been brought back to our family only six months ago. 3 The comments went into a frenzy: [The Heroine has arrived! I knew the universe wouldn’t let him be snipped!] [Daisy is the one Hudson is destined for. Paige is just a stepping stone.] Daisy was panting, sweat beading on her forehead. She must have sprinted from the house. Her eyes bypassed me entirely, landing on the limp white dog on the table. Her eyes welled with tears instantly. “Paige, stop! You can’t do this!” [Daisy’s heart is breaking. That’s her future husband’s legacy on that table!] [Move, Paige! Get out of the way!] When I didn’t move, Daisy rushed over and grabbed my arm, her grip surprisingly strong. “Paige, this is Hudson’s dog! Hudson is missing! If he comes back and finds out you mutilated his favorite pet, how are you going to explain yourself? He’ll never forgive you!” I looked at Daisy’s tear-streaked face and felt a wave of cold amusement. My “True Daughter” sister. Since she’d arrived, she’d taken everything. My room, my jewelry, my place in the company. I just hadn’t realized she was planning on taking my fiancé, too—even in dog form. I shook her hand off. “Doctor, proceed.” Dr. Miller looked between us, sweating. “Look, if this is a family dispute…” “Do it,” I snapped. “I’ll double the fee.” “No!” Daisy shrieked, throwing herself over the dog’s body like a shield. “This is animal cruelty! I’ll call the police!” I let out a dry, jagged laugh. “Daisy, this is my fiancé’s dog. Making a medical decision for a pet isn’t a crime. It’s called being a responsible owner.” Daisy glared at me, her voice trembling. “You’re only doing this because he left you at the altar. You’re taking your petty anger out on a helpless animal!” [Daisy’s right! Paige is just a bitter, rejected woman!] [With Daisy there, the villainess won’t touch a hair on his head!] I stepped closer to Daisy, looming over her. “Hudson humiliated our family. He made me a laughingstock. And you’re telling me I can’t even touch his dog?” I leaned in, my voice a whisper. “Or is it that you know exactly who this dog is?” Daisy’s pupils shrunk. She flinched. [Did she catch on?] [No way. In the original book, she never finds out until the very end!] I straightened up, watching the guilt flash across her face. The comments were right—my sweet little sister knew everything. “Doctor,” I said, my voice flat. “Continue.” “No! Please!” Daisy started sobbing, grabbing my hand. “Paige, I’m begging you. Don’t do it. Please?” “He’s Hudson’s… he’s so special to him!” She bit her lip, clearly dying to tell me the truth but bound by the ‘rules’ of the story. [Ugh, my heart. Daisy is literally begging for his life.] [Paige is a monster. Look at her crying!] I looked at Daisy’s miserable face and gave a slow, wicked nod. “Fine.” Daisy’s eyes lit up. “Really?” I smiled. “We don’t have to neuter him. Let’s just change the procedure.” “What procedure?” Daisy asked, her voice cautious. I turned to Dr. Miller. “Doctor, do you perform vocal cord clips? I’m tired of hearing this dog howl. I want him silent.” The feed exploded: [PAIGE, YOU ARE THE DEVIL!] [A mute dog?! That’s even worse than being a eunuch!] [Daisy, do something! Your man is about to get his throat slit!] Daisy turned white. I watched her face, feeling a sick sense of satisfaction. Hudson, Daisy… you thought you could hide behind a curse to avoid me? Think again. I’ll break you both. Dr. Miller swallowed hard, his hand shaking as he held the scalpel. He’d clearly never dealt with a client this unhinged. Daisy dropped to her knees, clutching the hem of my coat. “Paige, I’m begging you. Just let him go. Please.” [Kneeling for her man… I’m sobbing!] [Paige, that’s enough! She’s on the floor!] I looked down at her, and suddenly, a new idea struck me. A truly evil, wonderful idea. 4 I pulled out my phone. Without breaking eye contact with Daisy, I tapped a few buttons. Ping. Daisy’s phone buzzed in her pocket. She pulled it out, looking confused. Transaction received: $200,000. [Wait, what?] [Is she trying to buy her off? Daisy can’t be bought!] I squatted down so I was eye-level with her. “Is that enough for you to step aside?” Daisy looked at the screen, then back at me, her expression one of insulted pride. “Do you think I’m that shallow? You think money matters more to me than Hudson—I mean, the dog?” [Yes! Tell her, Daisy! Your love is priceless!] [Look at that resolve! She’s a saint!] I smiled and tapped my screen again. Ping. Transaction received: $200,000. “Priceless?” I whispered. “Nothing is priceless. It just has a market value.” [Daisy, don’t look at the phone!] [It’s a trap! Don’t let her corrupt you!] Daisy bit her lip. Her voice lost its edge. “Paige… money can’t buy loyalty…” I watched her closely. A thought occurred to me. Hudson was a rich kid, sure, but he was also a stingy bastard. He probably hadn’t given Daisy a dime since she’d arrived. Daisy grew up in the middle of nowhere. She’d spent her life counting pennies. Being the “True Daughter” meant she had the name, but our parents were still keeping her on a tight allowance to “teach her the value of work.” I leaned in closer. “Tell me, Daisy. Since you and Hudson started your little… secret friendship… has he ever bought you anything? A car? A house? Has he even sent you a Venmo for coffee?” Daisy’s face turned a deep, shameful red. “No.” “Not a single dollar?” She shook her head. She wanted to lie, but the truth was written all over her face. The comments shifted: [Wait… he hasn’t given her anything? Not even a gift?] [Okay, that’s actually kind of a red flag.] I let out a harsh laugh. “He’s engaged to me, screwing around with you, and he hasn’t even paid for your Uber? What a joke.” I stood up and did a final tap on my phone. Ping. Transaction received: $1,000,000. Daisy gasped. It was a sharp, audible sound that filled the quiet clinic. I patted her shoulder, my voice dripping with honey. “Sweetie, you’ve been eating crumbs. Hudson is a dead end. Once this is over, I’ll take you out. I know a place downtown with the best drinks and even better-looking men. Real men. Not dogs.” [Daisy, no! She’s poisoning your soul!] [She’s wavering! I can see it in her eyes!] [Their love can survive this! It has to!] Daisy looked at the million-dollar balance on her phone. Then she looked at the unconscious Samoyed on the table. Her eyes flicked back and forth, a war raging in her head. Then, she took a deep breath. Her voice was suddenly very, very steady. “Dr. Miller? Please continue.” The comments went silent for a full three seconds. [Daisy, WHAT?!] [She sold him out for a million bucks?!] [Where is the ‘eternal love’?! Where is the loyalty?!] I stood there, stunned. Daisy didn’t even look at me. She was too busy scrolling through her bank app, a tiny, blissful smile playing on her lips. She looked like she’d just won the lottery. “Doctor,” she urged, her voice impatient. “Let’s get on with it. Make it quick. Snip-snip.” Before I could even process her sudden heel-turn, Hudson’s eyes fluttered open. The anesthesia hadn’t fully knocked him out yet. He gropped for Daisy with a faint “awoo,” looking for comfort. But when he heard her words—the “snip-snip”—his pupils dilated with pure horror. Thud. His head hit the table. He’d passed out from pure shock. “You heard the lady, Doctor,” I said, feeling better than I had in years. “Proceed.” Daisy didn’t even look up. She was too busy checking her reflection in her phone screen, already picking out which designer bag she was going to buy first. Hudson was going to wake up a very different man.

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My best friend had just given birth, and I was cradling the tiny, swaddled bundle, lost in that soft, new-baby scent. It was a rare moment of peace—until Mark stepped toward us, his voice cutting through the quiet like a serrated blade. He didn’t say he was the godfather. He said he was the father. The world tilted. I froze, my heart hammering against my ribs, certain I’d misheard him through the haze of hospital-grade disinfectant and exhaustion. But Mark just let out a sharp, cynical breath and repeated it. The boy was his. Then he twisted the knife. He told me that on the very night my father died—the night I was drowning in grief—he had been with Chloe. They’d spent the entire night locked in a hotel room, burning through an entire box of condoms while I sat alone by my father’s cooling body. I stood there, paralyzed. My throat felt like it was closing up, thick with something bitter and suffocating. It took everything I had to squeeze out a single sentence: “We just signed our marriage license yesterday.” Mark didn’t flinch. He reached out, pulling me into a mocking half-embrace, his voice dropping into that low, soothing register he used when he wanted to manipulate me. He told me Chloe was nothing more than a “fun distraction.” If he’d wanted to marry her, he would have. Then, with a glint of cruel amusement, he added one last detail: Chloe had been keeping a secret from me, too. They had a history. He had been her first. … 1 I don’t remember the drive home. Memory is a fractured thing when your life implodes. By the time Mark walked through the front door, the penthouse was a battlefield. I had smashed our wedding portraits, the floor a sea of jagged glass and silver frames. I’d ripped the “Just Married” banners from the walls and shredded the silk ribbons. I’d even taken a golf club to the designer bed frame we’d picked out together. Mark stood in the foyer, silhouetted against the city lights. He didn’t yell. He just leaned against the wall and finished a cigarette in silence. When he finally moved, it was to check my hands. “Did you cut yourself?” I recoiled, hissing as I shoved him away. The rage I’d been clutching like a live wire finally snapped. “Why?” I screamed, my eyes burning. “Why her? Why any of this?” Mark arched an eyebrow, looking genuinely thoughtful for a second. Then, he smiled. It was the most terrifying thing I’d ever seen. “Because you’re stable, Norma,” he said, his voice terrifyingly calm. “You’re detail-oriented. You’re peaceful. You were willing to walk away from your acting career, to step out of the spotlight and be a ‘wife.’ You’re the woman a man comes home to.” He paused, a shadow of something like disdain crossing his face. “Chloe? She’s a disaster. A gorgeous, reckless trust-fund brat who can’t even boil an egg. She’s not wife material.” The more honest he was, the more my heart felt like it was being fed through a paper shredder. Seeing the tears spill over, Mark stepped in again, wrapping his arms around me. “Look, I told you. There’s no future with her. From now on, it’s just… a co-parenting situation. That’s it.” I tore myself out of his grip, a raw, guttural sob breaking from my chest. “Then why marry me? If you have a child with her, why would you put me through this? Why did you lie to me for years?” One was the man I had worshipped for three years. The other was my sister in every way that mattered. They had played me like a fool. I clutched my chest, the weight of the truth making it impossible to breathe. Mark didn’t answer. He just looked at me with a cold, clinical pity, as if I were a patient having a psychotic break. “Stop the drama,” he said, his voice turning brisk and impatient. “Chloe is waiting for me to bring her some homemade chicken soup. She’s recovering.” I stood rooted to the spot, watching the man I loved walk into the kitchen. I watched him move with practiced ease—chopping vegetables, skimming the fat off the broth, adjusting the flame. In three years, he had never cooked for me. Not once. I had always assumed he didn’t know how. But as I watched him, a memory of Chloe’s voice drifted back to me. Years ago, she’d laughed about an ex-boyfriend—some rich kid who’d never stepped foot in a kitchen until he met her. She said he’d spent weeks obsessively learning to cook just to fix her picky eating habits. She’d joked that he almost blew up his parents’ kitchen trying to make her the perfect risotto. I had pictured that scene a thousand times, wondering what kind of man loved a woman that much. Now, the pieces were clicking into place with a sickening thud. All the moments I’d forced myself to ignore came flooding back. When we were out, Chloe always had his sunglasses ready before he even asked. At dinner, she’d instinctively tell the waiter, “No onions for him,” before I could speak. When Chloe tripped, Mark’s hand was on her arm before I’d even realized she’d stumbled. When Chloe got a fever, Mark walked out of a board meeting, leaving fifty executives sitting in silence, just to drive her to the ER. My vision blurred. “Mark,” I rasped. “I want a divorce.” He looked up then, a small, annoyed crease appearing between his brows. Before he could respond, his phone buzzed. He glanced at the screen, and a genuine, soft smile—the kind he never gave me—lit up his face. “Hey, princess,” he answered. “Yeah, the soup’s on the stove. Just play with the baby for a bit, okay?” He paused, casting a long, meaningful look in my direction. “She doesn’t know. Don’t worry.” He hung up and looked at me. “Chloe doesn’t know I told you. Keep it that way. She doesn’t want to lose you as a friend.” He began pouring the soup into a thermal flask, his movements hurried. He was already halfway out the door. “I said I want a divorce,” I repeated, my voice shaking. Mark turned back, looking genuinely confused. “We literally just got the license, Norma. What is wrong with you? Do you want us to be the laughingstock of the city? Grow up. Be dignified.” I grabbed the crystal vase off the entry table and hurled it at his feet. It shattered, water and lilies spraying across his expensive shoes. “Dignified?” I roared. “Did you think about my dignity when you were screwing her while I was burying my father? Did you think about it when you got her pregnant? Why do I have to be the one who’s dignified?” The tears were thick now, hot and humiliating. Mark just narrowed his eyes and muttered a single word: “Psychopath.” Then he slammed the door. I collapsed onto the floor, the silence of the apartment pressing in on me. A second later, my phone began chirping. It was Chloe. [Norma, why’d you leave before I woke up? 🙁 ] [Did you see your godson? Isn’t he perfect?] [When are you and Mark leaving for the honeymoon? I’m so jealous!] [Ugh, Mark is such a jerk for dragging you to the courthouse the day I went into labor. I need you here for the recovery! Waaaah!] Then, another text: [Actually, don’t worry about me. The baby’s dad is here taking care of us.] She followed it with a photo. A man’s elegant, long fingers were holding a baby bottle. On his ring finger sat a gold band—the exact match to the one I was wearing. I started to shake so hard the phone nearly slipped from my grip. They weren’t even hiding it anymore. They hadn’t even bothered to take off the rings. At that same moment, Chloe posted to her Instagram story. Just one line of text over a black screen: If I asked you to stay this time, would you? A notification popped up from Mark: [Go on the honeymoon by yourself. I’ll catch up when I can.] The air left my lungs. My chest felt like it was being crushed by a physical weight. Shaking, I went to Chloe’s post and typed a comment for everyone to see. No need for the cryptic bullshit. You can have him. I dragged my broken body upstairs and began to pack. I couldn’t spend another second in this “dream home” I had spent months decorating. But as I reached into the back of the closet for my suitcase, my hand brushed against something cold. An old phone. Without thinking, I entered Chloe’s birthday as the passcode. Unlocked. The wallpaper was a photo of them kissing. The notes app was a shrine to her. Chloe’s cycle. Chloe’s allergies. Chloe’s prenatal appointments. The gallery was worse. Thousands of photos of her. Chloe sleeping. Chloe laughing. Chloe pouting. Chloe flushed in the heat of a moment I wasn’t meant to see. Chloe with tears in her eyes as she was wheeled into the delivery room. A digital timeline of a life lived in parallel to mine, dating back to when they were twelve years old. In some of the photos, I was there—captured in the background, a blurry, oblivious ghost in my own life. My fingers were numb. Mark and I had been together for three years. Aside from our staged wedding photos, I could barely find a picture of us together. Whenever I’d asked for a selfie, he’d pull away. “You’re a public figure, Norma. We don’t need the tabloids tracking our every move.” He had never visited me on a film set, yet he’d never missed one of Chloe’s gallery openings or charity galas. He’d complained that my dream honeymoon to the Amalfi Coast was “too far,” yet they had traveled the world together. They’d been to Disney twenty-seven times. Twenty-seven times. Every time I’d suggested a theme park for our anniversary, he’d called it “childish” and “boring.” I scrolled until my eyes burned and the tears ran dry. I put the phone back exactly where I found it. I texted my agent: [That Hollywood project—the thriller. I’m in. Send Paul to pick me up. Now.] My agent replied instantly: [Norma! Thank God. I knew you weren’t done. I’ll have him there in twenty minutes.] I dragged my suitcase to the curb, but as I moved to get into the car, a hand clamped onto my shoulder like a vice, spinning me around. Mark’s eyes were bloodshot, his face a mask of primal fury. “Norma, Chloe tried to kill herself.” “Because of what you posted.” I froze. “What?” “You knew she was fragile!” he screamed, shaking me. “You knew she just gave birth! Why would you trigger her like that?” Before I could speak, he shoved me into his car. “You and her are both O-negative,” he hissed, his voice cracking. “You’re the only one who can save her.” He tore through red lights, his hands white-knuckled on the wheel, dragging me into the hospital. “Doctor! She’s O-negative! She can donate!” He was trembling. I had never seen him so undone, so utterly terrified. I stood there like a hollowed-out shell, letting him drag me into the donor room. He stayed there, his grip bruising as he forced my sleeve up. I was staring at the wall, my mind a static hum of nothingness, until the doctor’s voice broke through. “I’m sorry, sir. We can’t take her blood. This woman is pregnant.” The world went silent. I instinctively moved my hand to my stomach. Then Mark’s voice shattered the silence. “I said draw the blood! I don’t care about the baby! I want Chloe alive!” The blood in my veins turned to ice. My tears started falling before I even realized I was crying. “Mark… this is your child.” But he was already screaming at the nurses, demanding they stick the needle into my arm. “Mark—no!” I tried to rip the needle out. I tried to run. But I only made it one step before his hands were on me again, pinning me down. He looked at me, his expression suddenly, eerily calm—a calm that made my skin crawl. “Norma. Give the blood to Chloe. Now.” Four security guards held me down in that sterile room. I watched, tube after tube, as the life was drained out of me and rushed down the hall to save the woman who had stolen my life. The room began to spin. My face went gray. Before the last vial was full, the world went black. … I woke up three days later. The doctor told me, with a heavy, sympathetic look, that the blood loss had been too severe. I had slipped into a coma. My body couldn’t sustain the pregnancy. The baby was gone. I felt nothing. Just a vast, echoing numbness. I turned my head to see Chloe sitting by my bed, her eyes red and puffy. “Norma… you know everything now, don’t you?” “I’m so sorry. I felt so guilty, I just couldn’t handle it. I didn’t think Mark would… I didn’t know he’d do that to you.” She collapsed against my bed, sobbing. It was a loud, performative sound. I noticed the bandages on her wrists were just Band-Aids. She didn’t look like someone who had been on the brink of death. She looked up, her face twisted with a sudden, desperate resolve. “Norma, listen to me. My baby… he’ll be your baby too. We’ll raise him together. I’ll share him with you.” A surge of pure, acidic loathing rose in my throat. “Get. Out.” Chloe blinked, looking wounded. She grabbed my hand and tried to use it to slap her own face. “I know sorry isn’t enough! But I don’t want to lose you! Hit me! Do whatever you want, just don’t hate me!” As she tried to force my hand against her cheek again, Mark appeared in the doorway. He rushed over, tearing Chloe away from me. In the chaos, I was shoved, tumbling out of the high hospital bed and crashing onto the floor. I felt a sharp, warm gush between my legs. I groaned, gasping for a nurse. Mark froze, his hand hovering toward me, but Chloe’s wail cut him off. “Mark! It’s all your fault! Norma hates me now! I’m going to lose my best friend!” Mark immediately turned to her, shushing her. “It’s okay, it’s okay. I’m sorry. Don’t get upset, you’re still healing. Let’s get you home. The baby needs you.” I watched their retreating backs from the floor. “Mark,” I spat, my voice a jagged edge. “I will never forgive you. Not in this life. Not in the next.” He hesitated for a fraction of a second, but he didn’t turn around. Ten minutes later, my phone buzzed with a text from him. [I’m sending Chloe and the baby away. I’m ending it with her for good.] [When you’re recovered, we’ll go on that honeymoon. We’ll start over.] I turned off the screen. I didn’t reply. I thought of the child I’d never meet. My father was gone. I had no one left. I had pinned all my hopes on a family of my own, and Mark had murdered that hope with his own hands. I stayed awake until dawn. When the nurse came in, I told her I was checking out. Mark walked in as I was signing the papers. He didn’t say a word. He walked up to me and backhanded me across the face so hard my ears rang. The copper taste of blood filled my mouth. Before I could even process the pain, he grabbed me by the hair and slammed my face toward his phone screen. The headlines were exploding. Pop Star Chloe’s Secret Baby: The Dark Truth Revealed. Below the fold were photos from years ago—grainy, horrifying images of Chloe from a kidnapping incident she’d survived in her teens. His voice was a low, terrifying hiss. “I made a concession, Norma. I was going to choose you. Why did you do this?” “Do you have any idea what this will do to her? It took me ten years to pull her out of that depression! You destroyed everything!” I stared at the screen, dazed. “I didn’t do it,” I whispered. But he wasn’t listening. He dragged me out of the room and into a secluded wing of the hospital. The room was flooded with blinding fluorescent light. A row of men—men who looked like they’d been pulled from the darkest corners of the city—stood there, naked. Cameras were mounted in every corner. My heart plummeted. I gripped Mark’s arm. “What are you doing?” A sick, twisted smile spread across his face. “You’re an actress, Norma. You know how the industry works.” “The fastest way to bury a scandal is with a bigger one.” His eyes were manic. “You’re an Oscar winner. If photos of your assault hit the internet, no one will care about Chloe anymore.” I stopped breathing. I looked at the man I had married. I had just lost his child because of him. And now, he was handing me over to be destroyed to protect his mistress’s reputation. Mark shoved me away and walked toward the door. “Make it quick,” he told the men. He stepped out and locked the door behind him. I threw myself against the wood, screaming, pounding until my knuckles bled. “Mark! Let me out! I didn’t do it! Mark, please!” Outside, there was only the roar of his car engine as he drove away. I sank to the floor. As the men began to close in, reaching for my clothes, I closed my eyes and let the darkness take me. … I don’t know how much time passed. The lights were dimmed now. I lay in the center of the room like a piece of discarded meat. There wasn’t an inch of skin that wasn’t bruised. The blood from the miscarriage was still seeping out, staining the linoleum floor. I crawled, inch by agonizing inch, toward a ceramic vase in the corner. With the last of my strength, I knocked it over. I picked up a jagged shard. Without a moment’s hesitation, I drew it across my wrist. The world was fading when the door was finally kicked in. A massive shadow rushed toward me, a voice roaring in agony. “Who did this? I’ll kill them! I’ll kill them all!”

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

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