Category: English

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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I was born with a natural milky scent. Any baby who came near me would stop crying. The owner of the maternity care center was amazed by my talent and offered me a $50,000 salary on the spot to work there. But I refused immediately and went to Europe to study the most difficult finance program. Because in my past life, I worked as a top-tier maternity nurse for the wealthiest family in the country, taking care of their newborn daughter and granddaughter. At the baby’s full moon celebration, a woman’s underwear stained with a fragrant scent suddenly fell from the wealthy heiress’s husband’s jacket. When confronted, that damned son-in-law insisted I had tried to seduce him and failed, then planted my own underwear to frame him. I desperately tried to explain, but because the underwear carried the exact same scent as mine, the wealthy heiress had me dragged out and mauled to death by dogs. My parents came to seek justice for me, but they were chopped into pieces and fed to fish. When I opened my eyes again, I painfully rejected the $50,000 salary and went overseas, working myself to the bone to become a Chief Securities Analyst. With a million-dollar annual salary, I successfully joined an international company and was invited to attend the full moon celebration of a business partner’s great-grandson, while also evaluating their company. At the celebration, the wealthy heiress’s husband’s jacket once again dropped that same piece of underwear. Facing the wealthy patriarch’s interrogation, he calmly looked past the crowd and pointed directly at me. “She tried to seduce me and failed, so she deliberately planted her intimate clothing to frame me!” “I can swear to God that I’ve never done anything to betray Scarlett!” —

The lace underwear was stained with bodily fluids. The full cup size definitely didn’t belong to the flat-chested heiress Scarlett Harper. Meeting Scarlett’s gaze that wanted to cut me into a thousand pieces, I calmly set down my wine glass. My eyes showed none of the panic from my past life. Instead, I looked directly at the Harper family’s son-in-law, Marcus Kane, and spoke. “Mr. Kane, I went abroad to study at eighteen and only returned today after completing my studies.” “Today is the first time we’ve ever met. How could I possibly plant underwear in your jacket?” “I’m afraid you had an affair and still weren’t satisfied, so you kept your lover’s underwear in your jacket to reminisce over it from time to time!” My words were too blunt and explicit. All the guests stared at him in shock. Marcus’s face turned red as his thoughts were exposed, but he still defended himself. “Nonsense! You’re clearly one of the maternity nurses working at my house!” “From your first day on the job, you kept making eyes at me. When I ignored you, you kept trying to seduce me!” “Last night I was caught off guard when you pushed open my door and crawled into my bed, offering yourself to me.” “If I hadn’t threatened you that my wife was right outside the door and I’d call her in to fire you if you didn’t leave, you wouldn’t have given up!” Marcus’s words made Scarlett frown slightly. Ever since giving birth to the baby, she had been sleeping in a separate room from Marcus on the professional maternity team’s recommendation. Last night when she got up thirsty for water, she did hear noises when passing by Marcus’s room. Her sharp gaze immediately fell on me. Seeing that Scarlett believed his words, Marcus continued to slander me with a pretentious air. “I saw you were a woman trying to make a living as a maternity nurse, so I didn’t want to expose you.” “I never expected you to be so vicious—failing to seduce me, you went straight to framing me! What a wicked heart!” “My daughter absolutely cannot be left in the care of such a maternity nurse. She should be fired immediately!” Marcus’s words hit Scarlett’s sore spot. Scarlett immediately demanded of Nathaniel Harper, the patriarch. “Nathaniel, this maternity nurse is too sinister. I’m afraid she’s already done something harmful to the baby.” “We should bring out Shadow and interrogate her thoroughly until she confesses on her own!” Nathaniel nodded. The next second, a huge iron cage was wheeled to the center of the banquet hall. When the black cloth was removed, a hunting dog as tall as a person stared at me fixedly, letting out excited low growls. The bodyguards opened the cage, preparing to stuff me inside. The image of being torn to shreds by the vicious dog in my past life seemed to play before my eyes. I immediately spoke up. “This underwear has the smell of breast milk on it. I’m not in my lactation period, so the clothing definitely isn’t mine!”

Marcus’s face darkened immediately, and he looked panicked as he tried to throw the underwear into the nearby swimming pool to destroy it. Unfortunately, Scarlett beat him to it, taking the underwear and having it examined. After seeing the obvious stains on it, her face turned as black as the bottom of a pot. Her gaze swept over my unremarkable chest, then she backhanded a slap directly across Marcus’s face. “I remember everyone who’s been breastfeeding my daughter. It’s definitely not her!” “Who is that bitch?” Marcus’s face was scratched bloody by the ring on Scarlett’s hand, but he didn’t dare show even a hint of anger. He could only lock his venomous gaze on me and continue throwing dirt on me. “Who says people not in their lactation period can’t have this scent?” “I’ve heard of people with special gifts who secrete milk even when not lactating, and they carry a unique fragrance on their bodies.” “No matter how fussy a child is, they’ll stop crying when near such a person and can’t help but feel close to them.” “She’s so young yet earning a $50,000 salary as a maternity nurse at the Harper house. Maybe it’s precisely because she has this exceptional quality.” “The owner of that underwear is her!” Marcus spoke with such conviction that Scarlett demanded I undress on the spot to prove my innocence. Naturally I refused, taking out my phone to call the police. But Marcus snatched my phone and smashed it on the ground. “If you say it’s not you, just have someone verify it! Why keep avoiding it? I think you’re guilty!” I wasn’t backing down either. “I didn’t do it, so I didn’t do it! Just because of baseless slander, I have to use this humiliating method to prove myself? Well then, I say you’re impotent!” “Why don’t you take off your pants and prove it to everyone?” Marcus was left speechless, but Scarlett’s brow furrowed tightly. She told me, “Marcus would never slander someone randomly. Since you say this underwear isn’t yours, then find a way to prove it.” “Or else, go in and have a chat with Shadow.” “I believe facing Shadow’s fangs, any liar will become honest.” Scarlett was forcing me. Either strip to prove my innocence, or enter the cage to be fed to the dog. The Harper family’s bodyguards had already surrounded me. If I showed any sign of trying to escape, they would immediately swarm forward, capture me and stuff me into the dog cage, making me a wronged soul under that hunting dog’s claws. Taking a deep breath, I made my choice on the spot. I pulled out my credentials from my carry-on bag. A graduation certificate from a top German university, a doctorate degree in economics. And an employment certificate as Chief Securities Analyst for Oceanic International Corporation. But I didn’t take that one out. I didn’t want to mix business with personal matters. Showing the two certificates, I told Scarlett. “Miss Harper, I studied at university in Germany. Anyone knows how difficult it is to study there.” “I spent six years working myself to the bone to become a finance doctorate from a world-class institution, with a million-dollar annual salary.” “Do you think I would work day and night for a measly $50,000 monthly salary taking care of a crying child and constantly watching out for ill-intentioned men in my employer’s household?” That last sentence was deliberate. I wanted to tell Scarlett that I looked down on her $50,000 maternity nurse position. Only a wealthy heiress like her—born into privilege but with an underdeveloped brain—would believe the lies of a man like Marcus who constantly ran his mouth. Sure enough, Scarlett’s gaze at me softened after seeing those two certificates. No matter how stupid she was, she should understand the value of a German doctorate. Her sharp gaze fell back on Marcus, but then a woman rushed forward and slapped me three times, screaming. “Sophia Clark, have you lost your mind! Forging credentials to deceive the wealthy heiress.” “Aren’t you afraid of being exposed and dragging our whole family to hell with you!”

My cheeks swelled up from the beating. Five clear finger marks appeared on my face. Looking closely at the woman before me, I realized I didn’t recognize her at all. With a cold expression, I covered my injured cheek and warned her. “I don’t know you at all! If you don’t apologize and compensate me immediately, I’ll have my legal team sue you!” But the woman wailed dramatically. “God help me! How did I give birth to such a troublemaker!” “To deceive people, she won’t even acknowledge her own mother!” “Miss Harper, Mr. Kane, I apologize to you. I failed to raise my daughter properly.” “However you want to punish her this time, go ahead. I won’t stop you anymore, to prevent her from continuing to swindle people everywhere!” The woman’s words caused an uproar. Many people gasped. “This girl is actually a professional con artist?” “Even her own mother is saying this, it must be true!” “Thank goodness she showed up in time, or we’d all have been fooled!” Scarlett gritted her back teeth and asked me. “Is it fun to play me for a fool?” “Someone, lock her up with Shadow. I want her to have a really good time!” Seeing the triumphant expressions flash in both the woman’s and Marcus’s eyes, I immediately called out loudly. “I’m not lying! This woman isn’t my mother! I’m not called Sophia Clark either.” “My name is Madison Smith. She doesn’t even know my name, so how could she be my mom?” Only then did Scarlett notice that the graduation certificate and degree in my hands indeed had the name Madison Smith written on them. Seeing the wavering in her eyes, Marcus quickly stepped forward to cover. “How could a mother possibly mistake her own daughter?” “She is Sophia Clark!” “To deceive you, she could even forge credentials.” “It’s just a name. Who knows if she made it up randomly because she’s swindled so many people and is afraid of being held accountable!” I immediately demanded that Scarlett send someone to the police department’s identity records to verify. My name was Madison Smith, and the parents listed in my records were definitely not this woman in front of me! Scarlett called the records department skeptically and soon received confirmation. I was indeed called Madison Smith, and the woman before me was not my mother. But facing Scarlett’s sharp gaze, the woman insisted she was my biological mother. “Sweetie, I divorced your abusive, cheating father when you were three years old, all for your sake, and raised you into adulthood by myself.” “You can’t just stop acknowledging your mother because that bastard said he’d buy you a car and house if you took his surname!” “He’s lying to you! Only I truly love you!” The woman spoke with tears streaming down her face and even pulled out a paternity test proving she was indeed my biological mother. Only then did I remember that when I was young, my father did tell me that the woman living with us wasn’t my biological mother. My birth mother was a gambling addict who tried to bet me at the card table when she got desperate. My father couldn’t stand her being so despicable, so he divorced her immediately, moved overnight, and cut ties completely. Our family hadn’t kept a single photo of her all these years, no wonder I didn’t recognize her. But no one believed my explanation. Even Nathaniel, who had been silent all along, stood up and said. “Miss Smith, I want to believe you too.” “But your mother has been working at the Harper house for twenty years. I trust her character.” “I absolutely won’t allow a woman who tries to destroy my daughter’s marriage and lies constantly to continue living in this world.” With a wave of his hand, Nathaniel signaled the bodyguards to stuff me into the dog cage. My gaze fell on Scarlett nearby, who had breathed a sigh of relief. Suddenly thinking of something, I quickly grabbed Nathaniel’s pant leg. “Mr. Harper, I know who the woman having an affair with your son-in-law is! It’s her!”

Everyone looked in the direction I was pointing. Seeing that I was pointing at Scarlett herself, they all thought I’d lost my mind. Even Scarlett was amused by my accusation. “Madison, do you know what you’re saying?” “I’m Marcus’s wife! Me having an affair with him? Does that even make sense?” Nathaniel also looked at me with utter disgust. “If I’d known you were such a stupid con artist, I should have let Shadow tear you apart before you even spoke your first word!” “Take her to the beast arena. Notify the fireworks crew to postpone tonight’s fireworks display. I, Mr. Harper, invite everyone to watch a show of human versus beast combat!” Nathaniel spoke cruelly, and I was dragged toward the beast arena by the bodyguards. I struggled desperately to explain, but they found me too noisy and gagged me. Just as I was about to be taken out of the banquet hall, a business card fell from my shirt pocket with a soft sound. The bodyguards looked closely, and the next second their faces went white with fear. Trembling, they handed the card to Nathaniel. I also straightened my clothing and told Nathaniel. “To be honest, my real identity is Chief Securities Analyst for Oceanic International Corporation.” “I came to this family banquet today to evaluate whether the Harper family qualifies for Oceanic International’s first investment opportunity domestically…” “Ha ha ha!” Before I could finish, Marcus was laughing so hard tears came out. He clutched his stomach, pointing at me. “Madison, though your con is clumsy, I really admire your imagination.” “First a high-achieving overseas student, now Chief Securities Analyst for Oceanic International.” “Oceanic International is the world’s largest financial company. Even a janitor there makes more in a month than you do in a year!” “You’re just a nanny who wipes shit and piss. Stop putting gold on your face! Just go perform in the beast show!” Scarlett’s face also wore mockery as she casually tore up the business card and tossed it in the air. “I’ve seen this kind of trick plenty of times. You can’t fool people just by randomly printing some business cards.” “Your mouth is too stubborn. Shadow alone might not be enough to handle you.” “Nathaniel, didn’t you just buy me a few lions and tigers from Africa as gifts? Why not release them today and let everyone see?” Nathaniel’s gaze fell on the gold-embossed business card on the ground. The special watermark shone in the Smithlight so brightly he could barely open his eyes. But he still nodded, signaling his subordinates to throw me into the beast arena with the predators. Lions and tigers that had been starved for days immediately stood up, roaring excitedly at me through the bars. Marcus grabbed my hair, forcing me to make eye contact with the beasts. He didn’t forget to lower his voice by my ear, speaking in a volume only the two of us could hear. “Madison, you’re very clever. You almost got close to the truth.” “What a pity—you had bad luck. Just be good and let the beasts tear you apart, and no one will discover my secret.” He laughed arrogantly, raising his hand to signal the bodyguards to lift the bars. I watched helplessly as the bars were slowly raised. Death was only one step away from me. Just as the entire barrier was about to be opened, a hearty laugh suddenly rang out from outside the door. “Mr. Harper, congratulations on your great-grandson!” Seeing that it was the U.S. representative from Germany’s Oceanic Corporation, Nathaniel’s eyes lit up, and he enthusiastically invited the man to sit and watch the beast show. But when the man’s gaze fell on my disheveled appearance in the beast arena, his expression changed dramatically. He rushed into the arena regardless of everything, shielding me with his body.

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On May Day, my cousin had a wedding. I specifically turned down several major clients. I cleared out the top-floor banquet hall of our family’s five-star hotel to host her wedding reception for free. Who knew that during the toasting ceremony, her mother-in-law would die from suffocation after suffering an asthma attack without her medication. My cousin’s family immediately spread rumors that our hotel’s wild mushroom soup contained poisonous mushrooms. They claimed the old lady ate them, had hallucinations, and then fell ill, demanding we pay them a million dollars in compensation. The incident made it to the top of the local trending topics, and the hotel was shut down by the authorities. After my family of three went bankrupt and ended up homeless, we were hit and killed by a car. Those relatives who had been drinking wine worth tens of thousands of dollars per bottle at the wedding banquet even cursed me in the comments, saying I deserved to die. When I opened my eyes again, I had returned to one week before May Day. My parents were discussing: “Lily, your cousin suddenly decided to get married on May Day. It’s hard to book a venue. Should we reserve a few private rooms for her at our hotel?” I put down the ledger. “No need. Don’t even reserve a single table.” My parents froze. “But everywhere is fully booked for May Day, and her in-laws are so stingy…” I let out a cold laugh. “What the hell does that have to do with me!”

I touched my frantically beating heart. The excruciating pain of being crushed by that truck in my previous life still lingered in my mind. Looking at my parents standing before me, completely unharmed, my eyes welled up. But I quickly calmed down. The bitter lessons of my previous life taught me that showing kindness to these bloodsucking relatives was asking for death. I grabbed the desk phone and called my assistant in. “Contact Mr. Lee immediately, the one who wanted to book our May Day slot.” “Tell him the panoramic banquet hall on the top floor is available for his business association event.” “Increase the price by ten percent from the original quote. The deposit must be paid in full today, or no deal.” My assistant looked somewhat surprised but moved quickly, immediately going to return the call. In less than half an hour, an urgently printed high-priced contract was placed on my office desk. I stared at the five million dollar deposit that had just arrived in the account and finally relaxed. I filled up all the hotel’s available slots during the May Day period. In this life, my cousin could forget about freeloading at our hotel. At two in the afternoon, someone kicked open my office door. My aunt Martha swaggered in with my cousin Shannon. Martha didn’t even knock, plopping her butt down on my leather sofa. She grabbed the imported cherries from the fruit plate and shoved them in her mouth. “Lily, your cousin is getting married on May Day. Have someone go change the carpet in the top-floor hall right away.” “That color is too dark, not festive enough. Change it to bright red.” Shannon, wearing high heels, walked to my desk and rolled her eyes. “Lily, that French menu of yours is too plain. It won’t impress anyone.” “My in-laws care about appearances. You must add Australian lobster to the menu.” “Oh, and wild mushroom soup – that dish looks high-class. Every table must have one.” “You can cover the price difference yourself. After all, you run such a big hotel, this small amount won’t matter to you.” Hearing this entitled tone, I almost laughed from anger. In my previous life, she used these exact words to get a million-dollar wedding banquet for free. I leaned back in my chair, watching this mother-daughter duo perform with cold eyes. Martha spat out a cherry pit and urged impatiently: “I’m talking to you! Are you deaf? Hurry up and call the kitchen to prepare the ingredients!” I pulled open my drawer, took out the newly signed contract, and slapped it hard in their faces. “No need to call.” “All the banquet halls have been booked.” “During May Day, our hotel is fully booked. We can’t even spare a spot in the employee cafeteria.” “Find someone else.” Shannon froze for a moment, picked up the contract, glanced at the numbers, and her face instantly turned extremely ugly. “Lily, what do you mean? You know I’m getting married!” Martha threw a tantrum on the spot, slapping the desk. Cherries rolled all over the floor. “You’re obsessed with money, aren’t you!” “For a few stinking dollars, you don’t even care about your cousin’s lifelong event?” “I’m your aunt! Is this how your family treats relatives?” Shannon’s eyes turned red. She squeezed out a few tears and started playing pitiful. “Lily, my life is so hard. My in-laws are poor and can’t afford a wedding.” “I was counting on hosting a grand wedding at our family hotel to collect more gifts and save face.” “If you don’t help me, how can I get my investment back?” I stared into her eyes and mercilessly exposed her. “How is your in-laws being broke any of my business?” “Are you going to split the gifts you receive with us?” “If you want a luxury wedding, pay for it yourself. Coming here to freeload – do you think I run a charity?” Shannon’s expression changed drastically. Her previously righteous gaze suddenly became flustered and evasive, and even her crying stopped. I keenly caught this detail. In my previous life, I found it strange – why would this family of extreme cheapskates insist on putting up a false front for an extravagant wedding? It seemed there was something going on here that I didn’t know about.

Seeing I was unmoved, Martha decided to go all in. She threw herself on the floor, kicking and screaming like a toddler having a meltdown. “This is outrageous! Rich people bullying poor relatives!” The commotion drew the attention of employees in the hallway. My parents happened to walk by after inspecting the guest rooms and were shocked by the scene. Seeing my parents, Martha immediately crawled over and grabbed my father’s leg. “Richard! You can’t forget your roots!” “Thirty years ago when you were dirt poor, I lent you two hundred dollars to buy rice.” ” I did you a small favor back then, and now you should repay me tenfold.! Now you run a five-star hotel and won’t even arrange a wedding venue for Shannon!” “You’re trying to kill us mother and daughter!” My father was soft-hearted and couldn’t stand hearing about these old debts. He looked troubled, glancing at my mother, then at me. “Lily, how about… we clear out the employee cafeteria on the first floor and set it up simply for Shannon’s wedding?” My mother Emily chimed in: “Yeah, they’re family after all. It’s not good to make things too ugly.” The horrifying scene of being crushed to death in my previous life flashed crazily through my mind. I felt a surge of rage shoot straight to the top of my head. I slammed the desk and pointed at the door, roaring. “Absolutely not!” “The banquet halls have all been rented to major clients. The first floor is also an auxiliary exhibition hall for their business association.” “The five million dollar deposit is already in the account!” “Breaking a contract with a billionaire client means we can’t survive in this industry!” “Whoever dares agree to clear the venue can pay the five million dollar penalty fee themselves!” My parents immediately shut up when they heard “five million dollars.” Shannon was so frightened by my murderous aura that she took two steps back. But she still wasn’t willing to give up, pointing at my nose and cursing. “Lily, you’re a cold-blooded monster!” “You’re such a vicious woman, you’ll never get married in your life!” I looked at her flustered, exasperated expression and sneered back. “Whether I get married or not is none of your business.” “But you, requesting time off for May Day and rushing into a wedding.” “Is there something unspeakable in your belly, and you’re desperately looking for an honest man to be your cleanup crew?” Shannon jumped up. “Bullshit! How dare you slander me!” She raised her hand and rushed at me to slap me. I was prepared, dodged to the side, and delivered a crisp slap in return. The sharp crack echoed as Shannon was sent staggering and fell to the ground. Half her face instantly swelled up red. Martha shrieked and lunged at me to pull my hair. “You little bitch, how dare you hit my daughter!” I coldly pressed the intercom on my desk. In less than ten seconds, four burly security guards rushed into the office. “Throw these two troublemakers out. If you ever let them into the hotel again, the security captain is fired immediately!” The guards immediately took action, dragging the shrieking mother-daughter duo and throwing them out of the hotel entrance. That evening, I stayed late to check the storage room. While inspecting the fire escape in the back alley of the hotel, I smelled cheap perfume. Then I saw a familiar figure – Shannon. What was she doing at the hotel so late? I lightened my footsteps and pressed against the wall corner. In the dark corner, Shannon was covering her swollen face while making a phone call, her voice trembling. I quietly turned on my phone and started recording. After listening to Shannon’s phone call, my whole body trembled. I finally understood the truth behind being scammed to death in my previous life. The poisonous mushroom scam in my previous life wasn’t an accident at all. What a vicious scheme. In my previous life, you stepped on my entire family to get ahead. Since that’s the case, in this life I’ll not only cut off your money path but personally send you to hell.

Early the next morning, my phone was bombarded with messages. The family group chat had exploded. Martha had posted a thousand-word essay in the group, tearfully accusing us. She denounced our family for being heartless after making money, refusing to acknowledge poor relatives. She said I beat my own aunt and cousin black and blue and threw them out the door, ruining my cousin’s marriage prospects. Several distant relatives who usually liked to freeload and didn’t know the truth immediately jumped out to take sides. George, a distant relative: “So what if you’re rich? You’ve lost all humanity!” Helen, another relative: “Lily has been heartless since she was little. She won’t even help relatives. When the hotel goes bankrupt, let’s see who goes to eat there!” Some even threatened to unite the whole family to boycott our hotel. Shannon also put on quite a show on social media. She posted: “Maybe I don’t deserve a perfect wedding. I’ve prepared everything, just missing a stage.” The accompanying image was an obviously filtered and blurred photo of her wrist with red marks, a fake suicide attempt photo. My father sat on the sofa, looking at the screen full of curses. His blood pressure nearly spiked as his hands trembled. “What… what is all this! We’ve offended all our relatives!” He anxiously typed on the screen, wanting to apologize and clarify in the group. He even planned to pay out of his own pocket to book a few tables for them at another hotel. I sneered and walked over, pressing down on my father’s hand and taking away his phone. “Dad, showing kindness to these bloodsuckers will only make them bite harder.” I took out my own phone, opened the financial software, and directly exported a statement. This was a receipt three meters long. I threw it directly into the family group chat. The statement clearly recorded every detail of Martha’s family’s consumption at our hotel over the past five years. Including but not limited to: eating for free, taking things for free, forcibly taking gifts. Down to the plate of peanuts she took last Thanksgiving, all with surveillance footage to match. The last line was marked in large red letters with the total amount: one hundred twenty-five thousand four hundred dollars. I directly @ Martha in the group. “Since Aunt Martha keeps saying we want to cut ties, then settle this account first.” “We’re family after all, so I’ll round down. One hundred twenty thousand, not a cent less.” “As long as you settle this one hundred twenty thousand, I’ll immediately pay out of my own pocket to host a wedding for you at the highest standard.” The distant relatives like George and Helen, who had just been wildly attacking, all played dead. These relatives had all freeloaded food and drinks at our place to some extent. They were afraid the fire would spread to them. After a minute, Martha sent a furious voice message in the group. “Lily, you’re full of shit. You forged the statement. You’re crazy for money and extorting your elders.” I had anticipated she would deny the debt. Calmly, I opened my photo album. I posted a surveillance video screenshot to the group. In the footage was last month when she brought people to dine and dash. After eating, not only did she not pay, but she also sneaked into the bar. When the cashier went to the bathroom, she directly shoved a box of cigars into her pants and took them. The video was extremely clear, even capturing the greedy expression on her face. I sent a voice message: “Martha, theft of property worth over five thousand dollars is prosecutable.” “Do you want me to call the police to arrest you, or will you pay back the money immediately?” Public opinion instantly reversed. Although the relatives didn’t dare speak up, soon several younger family members posted screens full of mocking emojis below. Shannon also quietly deleted that wrist-cutting post from social media. The mother-daughter duo became the laughingstock of the entire family. I knew that ever since I overheard Shannon’s phone call and learned that secret, given her viciousness, she would never let this go.

As I expected, after Shannon’s online narrative backfired, unable to gain relatives’ sympathy, she was planning another big move. Three days later at noon, Shannon brought her mother-in-law Edith, who suffered from severe asthma, and swaggered into our hotel lobby, ordering a table of the cheapest dishes. I figured this wasn’t just a simple meal, so I quietly sent a message to my friend who was deputy director of the emergency department at a major hospital, asking him to drive over immediately. At the same time, I called the security captain to my office. “Prepare two of the most concealed hidden cameras for me. Follow and film those customers comprehensively with no blind spots. Don’t miss a single fly.” Sure enough, after they quickly finished eating, they walked straight to the center of the hotel’s revolving door. Edith plopped down on the ground and started wailing. “There’s no justice. A five-star black-hearted shop bullying honest people.” “There were bugs in the food and they won’t refund the money, and they even hit an old woman.” “They promised to host a wedding banquet here before, now they suddenly broke the contract.” ” If you don’t agree to host my daughter-in-law’s wedding today, I’ll throw myself against this wall and make sure you get sued and let you lose all your business.” It was peak lunch hour, and more and more diners and passersby gathered to watch. Shannon took the opportunity to crouch down next to Edith, pretending to comfort her, while secretly slipping a small white medicine bottle to her mother-in-law. Edith immediately threw one pill into her mouth. At first, the old woman was still throwing a tantrum on the ground, and the onlookers were pointing and watching the excitement. But in less than a minute, after wailing twice, she suddenly convulsed violently all over and collapsed on the ground. Edith’s eyes rolled back, clutching her chest tightly. A wheezing sound came from her throat. She looked like she was dying from an acute asthma attack. Martha, who had been hiding outside the crowd, immediately rushed in, screaming at the top of her lungs. “Murder. A black-hearted five-star hotel drove my in-law’s mother to death.” “Everyone look. This restaurant has poisonous food.” This sudden turn of events attracted a large number of internet celebrities who had been camping nearby, all holding up their phones and starting live streams. Shannon, with red-rimmed eyes and the appearance of a wronged, filial daughter-in-law, pointed at my nose and cursed. “Lily. My mother-in-law just ate at your hotel, and now she’s dying.” “If someone dies today, your hotel is fully responsible. Compensate us. If you don’t pay several hundred thousand, this isn’t over.” I quickly calmed down. I arranged for security to maintain order while having my emergency department friend rush forward with a first aid kit. At the same time, I dialed 911 to report. I led the doctor through the crowd. “Everyone move. This is a deputy director physician from the emergency department. Let her perform first aid.” Seeing the doctor arrive, Shannon’s eyes instantly panicked, and she reached out to block. “We don’t need your fake kindness. Don’t touch my mother-in-law.” I was quick-eyed and quick-handed, fiercely grabbing Shannon’s wrist. With my other hand, I pulled out the white medicine bottle from Edith’s pocket. Shannon was shocked and wanted to scream and snatch it. But I had already quickly handed it to security to take to the hospital for drug testing. Just then, the piercing sound of police sirens roared in.

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My boyfriend recently made a choice that felt like a localized earthquake: he hired his childhood sweetheart to be the head of administration at his boutique private hospital. The very next day, this new “Administrative Director” summoned me to collect my employee benefits. When I opened the bag, I found three pounds of bruised, weeping, fermented apples. The stench of rot hit me like a physical blow. I actually laughed, thinking it was a prank—an early April Fool’s joke, maybe. “Okay, very funny. You got me.” She didn’t laugh. She looked me up and down with a clinical, freezing contempt. “Dr. Sinclair’s orders. Starting today, benefits are allocated based on individual contribution. Even a Chief Surgeon isn’t exempt from the new metric.” Her lip curled into a smirk. “If you’re unhappy with your haul, maybe you should look inward. Find the root of your own lack of value.” My lack of value? I felt a surge of indignation and snatched the benefit ledger from her desk. Right there, next to her name—Lexi Dalton—the entry read: 3.5 oz 24k Gold Bar. She screeched, lunging across the desk to grab the folder. “That’s a confidential document! You have no right!” The shouting brought Parker running. He didn’t even look at me. He stepped between us, shielding Lexi as if I were a physical threat. “Claire! What is wrong with you? If you’re so incompetent that you have to take your jealousy out on her, do it on your own time. Don’t you dare bully her in front of me.” The dam broke. I slammed the bag of rotting fruit onto the mahogany desk, the juice splattering. “This is what you call a benefit? She is intentionally insulting me, Parker, and you’re standing there acting like her bodyguard?” Lexi didn’t look insulted. She looked victorious. she leaned in, looping her arm through Parker’s with a sickening familiarity. “Dr. Whittaker, really, have you no shame? Parker is my fiancé. Why on earth would he take your side?” I felt the air leave my lungs. I looked at Parker, waiting for the denial, the “it’s a misunderstanding,” the “she’s just joking.” Instead, he pulled her closer, his expression softening into a tenderness he hadn’t shown me in months. He didn’t say a word. He didn’t have to. The silence was his confirmation. In that moment, the scales fell from my eyes. All those years he insisted on keeping our relationship a secret “to maintain professional boundaries” and “protect our careers”? It was never about the hospital. It was so he could cut me loose whenever he wanted, without a single tether to hold him back. … Watching them smile at each other, lost in their own private world of shared history, I felt a dry, bitter laugh bubble up in my throat. “So much for your rule about ‘no romance in the workplace,’ huh, Parker?” He turned to me, his eyes narrowing. That look—the one that always meant I was being a burden. “Claire, don’t be so incredibly childish.” “Childish? We’ve been together for six years.” “We dated,” he corrected, his voice flat. “But what was it, really? We were a couple, sure, but it wasn’t a life sentence. There was no need to broadcast it to the world.” He squeezed Lexi’s hand, a genuine smile finally breaking through his mask of coldness. “But Lexi… Lexi is different. She’s the person I want to build a future with. She’s always been the one.” Lexi beamed, leaning her head against his shoulder, pressing herself into him. Parker’s hand settled on her waist, marking his territory. When he looked back at me, the warmth vanished. “I kept us under wraps precisely because I knew you’d get like this. Obsessive. Clinging. If you have any dignity left, we can end this like adults.” Obsessive? Clinging? I felt like I was looking at a stranger. Six years ago, when I agreed to be his girlfriend, he had swung me around in his arms until we were both dizzy. “Claire, as soon as we graduate, I’m putting a ring on your finger. I want my whole life to be about you.” But for six years, that “future” kept receding like a mirage. Year one: “The market is too unstable; I want to give you the life you deserve first.” Year two: “The clinic is just starting; I’m too busy training staff. Just a little longer, baby.” Year three: He started getting annoyed. “Why are you pressuring me? Don’t you understand how much stress I’m under?” So, I stopped asking. I thought I was being the supportive partner. I thought I was giving him the space to build his dream. I didn’t realize that while I was waiting for him to build a home for us, he was just building a porch for someone else to move into. A year ago, the hospital needed a new MRI suite. He was short on capital, frantic, losing sleep. I had been ready to mortgage the house my grandmother left me to give him the cash. But then he vanished for a week. Didn’t return my texts. When he finally showed up, he blew up at me. “The hospital is at a critical juncture! I don’t have time to coddle you and your little princess moods!” And I—fool that I was—apologized. I blamed myself for being “needy” while he was under pressure. Contrast that with yesterday: Lexi, in her second day on the job, locked the hospital’s primary operating account because she forgot the password and tried too many times. Did Parker yell? No. He stroked her hair and whispered, “Don’t worry, honey. It’s just a glitch. We’ll fix it.” He dropped a million-dollar contract negotiation mid-meeting to drive her to the bank personally. He spent a week sorting out her mess, and not once did he lose his patience. He did have a soft side. He was capable of gentleness and grace. He just didn’t want to waste it on me. The realization was like a series of dots finally connecting into a picture I didn’t want to see. Within hours, the news of our “triangle” had burned through the hospital breakrooms. As the loser in the equation, I was treated to a gauntlet of pitying looks and whispered jokes every time I walked down a hallway. I kept my head down, my fingernails digging into my palms, performing my rounds like a hollowed-out doll. When my shift finally ended, I just wanted to go home and collapse. But when the elevator doors opened on my floor, my heart stopped. The hallway was a labyrinth of cardboard boxes. Two guys from a moving company were stacking my life against the wall like it was trash day. I pushed past them, my breath coming in short, sharp bursts. Beep—Access Denied. Beep—Fingerprint Not Recognized. I tried again. And again. Panic rising like bile. Then, the door clicked open from the inside. Lexi stood there, draped in a plush white towel—my towel. Her skin was flushed, and her neck was a roadmap of fresh, dark bruises. The air in the apartment smelled like sex and Parker’s expensive cologne. “Oh, hey,” she said, her voice airy and satisfied. “Parker said the move was happening today. He didn’t want things getting messy with too many people having access, so he wiped your biometrics and changed the codes. Hope you don’t mind.” I looked past her at the boxes. Six years of my life. My books, my clothes, my specialized medical journals—all evicted. “Move,” I said, my voice eerily calm. “I need to get my things.” Parker stepped out of the bathroom, his lips swollen, looking every bit the man who had just been thoroughly satisfied. He pointed to a single, small suitcase in the corner of the foyer. “Everything you actually brought into this relationship is in there,” he said. “The rest… well, consider it a parting gift to the hospital you claim to love so much.” Six years. Reduced to a carry-on. Thud. The door slammed and locked. I walked down the dark sidewalk, the single suitcase rattling behind me on the pavement. That’s when the tears finally came. A pound of rotten apples. A suitcase. A “goodbye.” Six years. This was all I was worth. The next morning, the alarm on my phone woke me in a generic, windowless room at the Holiday Inn. I stared at the ceiling for a long minute, wondering if this was the day I finally broke. Instead, I splashed my face with ice water, bought a cold Coke from the vending machine, and pressed the can against my swollen eyelids. The relationship was dead, but my career wasn’t. The thought of resigning flashed through my mind, but I killed it instantly. I hadn’t done anything wrong. Why should I be the one to go into hiding? I wanted to see how this farce ended. When I reached my office, the waiting area was eerily empty. No patients. A clerk from the medical board stopped me. “Dr. Whittaker, clinic is canceled for you today. You’re needed in the conference room. Now.” The room was packed. HR, the board, even my department head. Parker sat at the head of the table, looking every bit the powerful CEO. Lexi sat right next to him, dressed in a sharp power suit that looked like it cost more than her monthly salary. Parker didn’t look at me. He looked at the room. “I’ll keep this brief. Due to a documented history of professional negligence and a poor attitude, Dr. Claire Whittaker is being stripped of her title as Chief Surgeon, effective immediately.” A collective gasp rippled through the room. Dozens of eyes turned to me—some sympathetic, some mocking, most just curious. “She is a long-tenured employee,” Parker continued, his voice dripping with mock-humanity. “In the spirit of charity, we won’t be firing her. However, the Facilities and Logistics department is currently understaffed.” Facilities and Logistics. That was the hospital’s euphemism for the janitorial crew. Our head housekeeper had just retired, and they needed someone to scrub the toilets in the inpatient wing. The room erupted into hushed, frantic whispers. The looks shifted from pity to pure, unadulterated shock. Parker cleared his throat, calling for silence. “Furthermore, Dr. Whittaker has been the subject of several patient complaints. As such, she is no longer fit to hold equity in this institution. Her founding shares will be transferred to our new Administrative Director, Lexi Dalton.” I stood up, my chair screeching against the floor. “Complaints? Parker, that one malpractice claim was a confirmed setup. I called the police myself! They apologized to the hospital!” “And yet,” Parker said, leaning back, “it’s a stain on our reputation. Lexi, however, has already proven her worth. Yesterday, she successfully brokered a partnership with the world-renowned cardiothoracic specialist, Dr. Lawrence.” He paused for effect. “You claimed you had the ‘connections’ to get Dr. Lawrence for years, Claire. You burned through a million dollars of hospital funds on ‘research’ and never even got him on the phone. Lexi got him in one day.” I stared at him, genuinely impressed by the sheer scale of his lies. Dr. Lawrence was my mentor’s closest friend. I had spent two grueling months fly-fishing with the man in Maine just to get him to listen to the proposal. He finally agreed, but only on one condition: the hospital had to purchase the latest Da Vinci surgical robot. Those robots were on a two-year backorder. I spent months pulling every string I had, calling in favors from my family’s old circles, just to get us on the priority list. The night before Dr. Lawrence was supposed to sign the contract, Parker told me he’d handle the final meeting. He told me I deserved a night off. Lexi stood up amidst a smattering of coached applause. “I just got lucky,” she said, her voice sickeningly sweet. “But I’ll always do whatever it takes for the good of this hospital.” I didn’t wait for the rest of the speeches. I turned and walked out. Parker caught up to me in the hallway, his face dark. “Claire! You don’t just walk out on a board meeting. You’re lucky you even have a job!” I stopped and looked him dead in the eye. He flinched, just for a second, then doubled down. “Look, the janitorial position… it’s still a paycheck. The market is tough right now. I’m doing this because I care about our history…” “History?” I laughed, the sound sharp and jagged. “Parker, if you cared about history, you wouldn’t be cheating on your ‘history’ with a girl who can’t even remember a login password. You wouldn’t be stealing my work and handing it to her like a trophy.” He snapped. The mask of the “fair CEO” fell away, revealing the petty, cruel man underneath. “You should watch your mouth. Lexi is twice the woman you are. She’s kind. She’s loyal. When I met her—” “I don’t care how you met her,” I interrupted. “Give me my money back. Give me the fifteen million I put into this place, and I’ll walk away and pretend these last six years were just a bad fever dream.” He laughed, a cold, ugly sound. “Your money? What money? That fifteen million you mortgaged? It’s gone, Claire. Spent on ‘operating costs’ during the lean years. And that equity transfer? You signed the papers last week during the ‘routine audit.’ You don’t own a single brick in this building.” Ice water seemed to fill my veins. A week ago, he’d brought me a stack of papers while I was exhausted after a twelve-hour surgery. “Just some insurance stuff, babe. Trust me.” And I had. Lexi strutted up then, swaying her hips, her eyes gleaming with malice. “Parker, why are you even explaining things to this woman? You’re being too nice. She’s ungrateful. She’s a brat. If I were you, I’d have security escort her out right now.” I looked at them. The greed, the pettiness, the absolute lack of a soul. I had wasted six years on a man who was, at his core, a common thief. I didn’t argue. I went to the basement. I checked in with the custodial supervisor. I picked up a mop, a bucket, a scrub brush, and a pilled, scratchy uniform that smelled like industrial bleach. I took off my white coat. I put on the blue vest. As I was scrubbing the tiles in the east wing, a patient recognized me. “Dr. Whittaker? Why are you… are you cleaning the floor?” My colleagues avoided my eyes. They walked on the far side of the hallway, staring at their tablets. A memo had been circulated: No discussion regarding personnel changes. Everyone knew. Everyone saw the fall from Chief Surgeon to Janitor. And because I didn’t scream or cry or jump off the roof, the rumor mill decided I must be guilty of something. Or maybe I was just so pathetic I couldn’t leave him. The night Dr. Lawrence was officially welcomed to the staff was also the hospital’s sixth anniversary. I was at the mop sink when I heard that shrill, nasal voice behind me. “Dr. Whittaker! Oh, I’m sorry. I should call you ‘Claire the Cleaner’ now, shouldn’t I?” I turned. Lexi was standing there, holding her nose as if the very air I breathed was toxic. “The anniversary gala is tonight at the Royal Springs Resort,” she said, her eyes dancing. “Six o’clock sharp. Don’t be late.” I didn’t answer. I just kept wringing out the mop. “Normally, the help isn’t invited to these high-end events,” she continued, “but I begged Parker to let you come. For old time’s sake. Of course, if you’re too ashamed to show your face…” I flicked the mop, a few drops of grey water landing near her designer heels. “Six o’clock. I’ll be there. Now move. You’re in my way.” “You… ugh!” She huffed and stomped away. I showed up in my pilled blue vest. The doorman at the Royal Springs blocked my path for ten minutes, interrogating me until I showed him my employee ID. When I finally entered the ballroom, the room was a sea of tuxedos and silk gowns. Lexi was the center of attention in a plunging red dress, her hair in Hollywood waves, her lips a violent shade of crimson. She saw me and raised her voice so it carried across the room. “Oh look! Our custodial representative has arrived! Sorry, Claire, did a toilet overflow? Is that why you’re late?” The room erupted in cruel, snickering laughter. She pointed to a tiny, wobbly card table tucked into the corner next to the kitchen doors. “Go on. We saved a special seat just for you.” I walked through the gauntlet of whispers and sat down. A waiter arrived and placed a dented stainless steel bowl in front of me. Inside were brown, slimy cabbage leaves and a handful of dirt. The deputy head of HR walked over, swirling a glass of expensive Bordeaux. “Did you think you were getting lobster, Claire? Take your salad to the kitchen and wash it. Or better yet, go look in a mirror and realize exactly where you belong.” She was Lexi’s biggest sycophant. I didn’t say a word. I just pulled out my phone and took several high-resolution photos of the “meal” from multiple angles. This will look great on the internet, I thought. Crash! Dr. Wells, a brilliant young cardiologist I had mentored, slammed his glass onto his table. He stood up, his face flushed with rage as he looked at the silent board members. “How can you all sit there?” he demanded. “Dr. Whittaker built half of your departments! She mentored half of the people in this room! And you’re going to let this… this circus continue? This is disgusting. I’m done.” The silence in the ballroom was deafening. Parker, sitting at the head table, narrowed his eyes. “Sit down, Wells. Or follow her to the basement. Your choice.” “I’d rather work in a basement than for a man like you,” Wells snapped. He pushed back his chair and walked out. Parker turned his gaze to me, his voice a low growl. “You’re quite the temptress, aren’t you, Claire? Even as a janitor, you’re still finding men to do your dirty work.” I looked at the man I had once loved. The “gentle” Parker Sinclair was gone, replaced by this ugly, bloated ego. I stood up, picked up the bowl of rotting cabbage, and walked straight to the head table. “A person with a dirty heart sees filth everywhere,” I said. With one swift motion, I dumped the bowl of mud and slime directly onto the white linen in front of him. I didn’t look back as I walked out of the ballroom, leaving the screams of outrage behind me. Outside, the cool night air felt like a benediction. My phone rang—a specific, jarring ringtone I hadn’t heard in years. I answered. “Claire,” the voice on the other end boomed, vibrating with suppressed fury. “How much longer are you going to let these gutter-rats play in your yard?” “Uncle Thomas?” “You are a Whittaker. My god, Claire, if I hear that you let those two humiliations touch you again, I’m coming down there myself to burn that hospital to the ground.” The next morning, I walked back into the hospital in my blue vest. The staff looked at me like they were seeing a ghost. After the scene at the gala, everyone assumed I’d be hiding under a rock. Instead, I was mopping the lobby as if nothing had happened. By noon, the rumors started flying. The partnership with Dr. Lawrence was falling apart. “I heard Lexi canceled the order for the surgical robot to ‘save costs.’ Dr. Lawrence found out this morning.” “He brought a research team from Johns Hopkins to see the suite, and it was empty. He went ballistic!” “Why did Parker put an admin girl in charge of surgical logistics? Is he insane?” “Shhh! You want to end up like Dr. Wells?” Parker was spiraling. I could hear him yelling from his office all the way down the hall. He cornered me near the elevators. “Claire.” He tried to smile, but it looked like a grimace. “Look, there’s been a… misunderstanding with Dr. Lawrence. I need you to call him. Apologize for Lexi. Smooth things over.” “And if I do?” “I’ll fast-track your reinstatement. You can have your office back. We’ll pretend the last few days never happened.” His phone buzzed in his pocket. He glanced at it, then stepped away to answer. “Lexi, honey, it’s fine. Don’t cry. I’ve got it under control. I love you too.” He turned back to me, the ‘love’ still in his eyes for her, while he looked at me like a tool he needed to sharpen. “So? Dr. Lawrence?” “You have the wrong person, Director Sinclair,” I said, leaning on my mop. “I’m the janitor. I don’t have that kind of pull.” “Claire, don’t be difficult.” “I’m responsible for the floors, Parker. I’m not responsible for cleaning up your mistress’s messes. You’re a big, powerful CEO. Figure it out.” His face turned a dangerous shade of purple. “You’re going to regret this. I’ll make sure you’re blacklisted from every hospital in the country. You’ll be begging me for a job at a gas station!” He stormed off. Five minutes later, Lexi arrived in four-inch heels to finish the job. She kicked over my mop bucket, the dirty water cascading down the stairs I had just cleaned. I stepped back, avoiding the splash. “You bitch!” Lexi screamed. “Parker was being nice to you! You think you’re still the big-shot doctor? I can ruin you with one phone call!” She grabbed my arm, her diamond-encrusted nails digging into my skin until I felt the sting of blood. “If you’re so powerful, Lexi, why haven’t you fired me yet?” I asked quietly. “Is it because Parker is terrified? Because deep down, he knows he’s drowning and I’m the only one who knows where the life jackets are?” Her face contorted. She raised her hand to strike me. “I’ll kill you!” “Stop right there!” A hand like a vice gripped Lexi’s wrist mid-air. She spun around, eyes wide with terror. Standing there was a man in a perfectly tailored charcoal suit, his expression like granite. Behind him stood Dr. Lawrence and half a dozen other prominent surgeons. Lexi tried to wrench her arm away, then immediately shifted into “damsel” mode. “Dr. Lawrence! Oh, thank goodness. This woman was attacking me—” Dr. Lawrence didn’t even look at her. He stepped toward the man in the charcoal suit. “President Lin, I am so incredibly sorry. I had no idea Dr. Whittaker was being treated this way.” Lexi’s jaw dropped. “President… Lin?” Thomas Lin. The Chairman of the National Medical Oversight Committee. The man who held the licenses of every private hospital in the state in the palm of his hand. Thomas ignored her. He was staring at the blood dripping from my arm. “You’re bleeding, Claire. You need a bandage.” “I’m fine, Uncle Thomas,” I said, wiping the scratch. He looked at my blue vest, his voice trembling with a mix of heartbreak and rage. “Why are you wearing this? Who did this to you?”

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The afternoon sun was warm as I stood by the gates of the elementary school, my heart doing that familiar, eager little flutter. When I finally spotted her walking out, I immediately threw my hand up. “Mia, Mommy’s right here!” I called out, a bright smile on my face. But she only shot me a frigid, sideways glance before deliberately turning to walk in the opposite direction. Panic spiking, I hurried after her and caught her gently by the arm. “Mia, sweetie, it’s Mommy. Didn’t you see me?” I asked, my brow furrowing in confusion. To my absolute shock, she yanked her arm out of my grasp and began to scream. “You’re a bad lady! I don’t know you!” Her high-pitched voice pierced the noise of the crowd, drawing the stares of every parent nearby. A teacher quickly stepped in, pulling Mia behind her back and eyeing me with intense suspicion. I froze, completely bewildered. I threw my hands up in a placating gesture. “Mia, stop playing around, honey. It’s Mommy.” But my daughter just cowered behind her teacher’s legs, her voice trembling with manufactured grievance. “Ms. Davis, I don’t know her. My mommy isn’t fat and ugly like that.” 1 Before I could even process the words, the teacher was already dialing 911. Ten minutes later, a police cruiser idled by the school gates. Two officers approached. After listening to the teacher’s breathless account, they looked me up and down, their expressions guarded. “Ma’am, who are you? What is your relationship with Mia?” My hands shook as I dug my driver’s license out of my purse and handed it over. “I’m not lying. I am her mother. I am Paige.” The officer glanced at my ID, then knelt down to eye level with my daughter. “Sweetheart, do you know this woman?” Mia shook her head, her voice dropping to a whisper. “No. I don’t know her.” The teacher chimed in, crossing her arms. “Her grandmother is usually the one who picks her up. In all my time teaching Mia, I’ve never once seen her mother.” Desperation clawed at my throat. “Her grandmother went to her bridge club today and lost track of time! She specifically called me to come get her.” No one was listening. I crouched down, forcing myself to look directly into my daughter’s eyes. They were the exact replica of her father’s—narrow, sharp, and capable of a coldness that felt entirely unnatural for a six-year-old. “Mia, what is going on with you today? How can you suddenly not know your own mother?” She shot me a fleeting, guilty look before shrinking further behind the teacher’s skirt. “Ms. Davis, my mommy is skinny and beautiful. That’s not my mommy. Can you please call my daddy to come get me?” A sickening realization began to settle over me. I looked down at myself. My sneakers were clearance rack slip-ons I’d bought at Target a year ago, the white rubber edges now scuffed to a dull gray. My shirt was an oversized, faded cotton tee, the collar stretched out, a faint grease stain from cooking lunch blooming near the hem. I could literally smell the lingering scent of minced garlic and onions on my own skin. Standing in the sea of polished, Lululemon-wearing, blowout-sporting suburban mothers, I was decidedly not beautiful. The police called my husband, Trent. He arrived shortly after. He parked his Audi, walked over, and caught sight of me from a distance. The look in his eyes was a mirror of Mia’s—a desperate, palpable desire to distance himself from me entirely. A deep chill seeped into my bones. My daughter wasn’t the only one disgusted by my appearance. The officer pointed at me. “Sir, do you know this woman?” Trent nodded stiffly, letting out a reluctant, “Yeah.” “Your daughter claims this woman is not her mother. Can you clarify her relationship to the child?” Trent went silent. One second. Two seconds. Three. He looked at me again, his jaw set. “She’s our nanny. Something came up at work, so I asked her to do the school run today.” A nanny. I stood rooted to the pavement, the shock so profound it robbed me of speech. The daughter I had carried for nine months, the child I had raised with my own two hands, had just called me a stranger. The husband I shared a bed with, the man whose every need I had meticulously catered to, had just called me the help. It hit me then, a brutal, blinding truth: in that house, I wasn’t a family member to anyone. The whispers of the surrounding crowd grew louder. I could feel their scorn, their absolute contempt burning into my skin. “No wonder the poor kid was terrified. It’s the nanny trying to pass herself off as the mom.” “I know, right? Look at how she’s dressed. Tragic. Definitely not the mother.” My face burned with a heat so intense I wished the asphalt would crack open and swallow me whole. I looked pleadingly at Mia and Trent, begging them silently to say something, anything, to clear my name. They both turned their heads away. Deliberately. In that single, quiet moment, I understood my place. In our home, I didn’t even exist. 2 The atmosphere in the car ride home was suffocating. Trent caught my eye in the rearview mirror, his tone clipped and defensive. “I’ve told you before not to do the school run looking like that. You embarrassed her today. I need you to be more considerate of our daughter’s feelings.” When I didn’t respond, Mia began to fake-cry in the backseat, dramatic little sniffles filling the silence. “Yeah, Mommy. Look at the other mommies. They’re all skinny and pretty and wear nice clothes. But you? You’re fat and ugly. My friends are going to laugh at me.” I turned my head slowly to look at her. Today, my daughter was wearing a pristine blush-pink sundress. I had spent twenty minutes that morning braiding her hair into twin buns, securing them with little rhinestone crown clips. She looked like a perfect, flawless little princess. Every single item of clothing she owned, I had painstakingly picked out. Every hairstyle, I had crafted with aching hands at dawn. And the crisp button-down shirt Trent was currently wearing? I had washed it, treated the collar, and ironed it three times to get the creases just right. I did the laundry. I cooked the meals. I scrubbed the floors. I served the elders, I served the child, I served the house. I was, in every practical sense, nothing more than a nanny. Taking my silence as submission, Trent’s voice softened slightly. “I’m sorry, Paige. I’m just trying to protect Mia’s feelings. Just… dress a little better next time you go to the school.” I sat in a haze of numbness. So a child’s love for her mother was entirely conditional upon the clothes she wore. Then what, exactly, did the last six years of my bleeding, sweating devotion count for? When we got home, muscle memory took over. Before I could even think, I found myself in the kitchen. Heating the oil. Tossing in the chicken wings. Flipping them. Adding the minced garlic. The hot oil sputtered, stinging my eyes. I rubbed them with the back of my wrist and kept cooking. After nearly an hour of standing over the stove, I carried Mia’s favorite honey-garlic wings to the dining table. By the time I finally sat down, they had already eaten most of the sides. I picked up my fork and reached for a wing. Smack. Mia brought her fork down hard against the back of my hand. My wing slipped from my grip and tumbled back onto the serving platter. “Mommy, why are you eating the chicken? If you eat it, what are Daddy and Grandma going to eat?” 3 I froze, the sting on my hand barely registering over the ringing in my ears. There had been twelve wings on that plate. Mia had eaten four. Trent had eaten three. My mother-in-law, Helen, had eaten two. There were exactly three left. I hadn’t had a single one. “Grandma and Daddy have already had theirs,” I said, my voice dangerously quiet. “Mommy hasn’t eaten yet.” Mia looked at me with staggering entitlement. “There are three left. Daddy, Grandma, and I get one each. If you eat one, we can’t divide it equally.” The blood rushed to my head. I stared at my six-year-old daughter, utterly completely blindsided. Helen reached over, picking up one of the remaining wings and placing it onto Mia’s plate, her eyes crinkling with fond approval. “Our Mia is such a good girl. So sweet, always thinking of her daddy and her grandma.” With that, Helen picked up the last two wings, dropping one onto Trent’s plate and the other onto her own. Only then did she lift her chin to look at me, her face twisting in pure disdain. “Paige, you’re a grown woman. Are you seriously fighting a child for food?” Trent, forever the peacekeeper of his own comfort, chimed in smoothly. “Paige, come on, Mia’s just playing with you. Besides, weren’t you talking about going on a diet? Have some more of the salad.” “Exactly,” Helen scoffed. “Look at the state of you. Dressing like you’re off to collect scrap metal to pick up the kid. Have you no shame? Mia told me everything as soon as she got home. How is the poor girl supposed to hold her head up around her classmates when you look like that?” “Yeah, Mommy,” Mia chimed in, her mouth full of chicken. “Don’t eat it. You’re too fat anyway. You need to diet.” I set my fork down. I looked at the empty serving platter, and I felt something deep inside me snap, crystallizing into pure, arctic ice. The last time I made this, Mia had complained they weren’t flavorful enough. So today, I had marinated them for two extra hours. I had gone to the butcher to pick out the best cuts. I had minced every single clove of garlic by hand. I had scrubbed the cast-iron skillet until it gleamed. I had stood in that kitchen for an hour. And at the end of it all, I wasn’t even deemed worthy of a single bite. I didn’t pick my fork back up. I didn’t swallow my pride and stay silent like I had a thousand times before. I stood up, grabbed the platter of chicken wings, the salad, the braised fish, and the soup, and dumped every last bit of it straight into the garbage can. The entire room went dead silent. Helen was the first to recover. She slammed her hand flat against the table. “Paige, have you lost your mind?! What are you doing throwing perfectly good food away!” Trent shot up from his chair, pointing a finger at me. “What the hell is wrong with you?” I ignored them. I crouched down so I was eye-level with my daughter. “Mia. I have raised you for six years, and I don’t even deserve a piece of chicken?” Mia burst into terrified, wailing sobs. Helen lunged forward, pulling the girl to her chest, screaming at me. “She’s a child! Why are you bullying a child! Is it really that serious?!” Trent stepped toward me, his face red. “She’s right! It’s just a damn chicken wing! Do you really need to throw a psycho tantrum over it?” Just a chicken wing? I stood up slowly, looking at the three of them. The family I had built. “Everyone in this house is allowed to eat the food I cook, except me. Fine. Then I’m done cooking.” I turned on my heel, walked into the master bedroom, and shut the door. Outside, Helen’s shrill voice bled through the wood. “Spoiled brat! Over nothing! If she won’t cook, fine! My son makes enough money to take us to a restaurant!” Trent’s voice followed, soothing her. “Mom, don’t let it get your blood pressure up. She’s probably pre-menopausal or something. Just ignore her.” I leaned my back against the heavy wooden door, listening to them, and suddenly found myself wanting to laugh. I had served as the lifeblood of this family for six years. I flipped one table, and suddenly I was the crazy woman. My phone buzzed in my pocket. It was a notification from the parents’ group chat. The teacher had posted an announcement: “Congratulations to Mia for winning first place in the first-grade essay contest with her piece, ‘My Mother’!” I tapped on the attached photo of the handwritten essay. “My mother is a piano teacher.” “She is very beautiful, and she has a very gentle voice. Every time she picks me up from school, all my friends tell me my mommy is so pretty.” “She is very classy and smart, and she plays the piano beautifully. I love my mommy the most. She is the best person I’ve ever met.” I stared at the glowing screen, reading every single word. My eyes began to burn. Because the mother in my daughter’s essay wasn’t me. It was her piano teacher, Queena. I wiped roughly at the corner of my eye. I couldn’t figure out when it happened. When did my little girl change so much? She used to cling to me. When she was a toddler, she would crawl under my covers every single night, begging me to read her Peppa Pig books. I would read them over and over until she finally drifted off, her soft little cheek pressed flush against my arm. Before I married Trent, I used to be just like Queena. Cultured. Gentle. Put-together. But then I got married. I had a baby. My entire universe shrank to the perimeter of a kitchen stove. Standing in the kitchen for hours every night, my skin constantly blasted by cooking steam, my hands perpetually pruned from washing dishes in freezing water. Three hundred and sixty-five days a year, on an endless, looping track. I took care of everyone else, and in the process, I ground myself down into a tired, invisible ghost of a woman. I took a long, shaky breath. Then, I pulled up my contacts and called my parents. “Dad? Mom? That next round of funding you were planning to inject into Trent’s company? Put a freeze on it.” “There’s something I need to figure out first.”

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

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

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

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

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